Posted by Jtpsops on 6/25/2016 3:39:00 PM (view original):
Edgar grounded into 190 DPs in his career. He had 77 SF and 10 SH. So, as long as 103 of those 3,764 outs in play moved a runner over, then clearly non-strikeout outs are better over the course of a career than strikeouts.

And I'll bet very good money that way more than 103 of those 3,764 outs were productive.

SF and SH are not counted as ABs, so they're not included in his 3,764 non strikeout ABs that I converted to strikeouts.

Posted by tecwrg on 6/25/2016 3:34:00 PM (view original):

Posted by bad_luck on 6/24/2016 11:19:00 PM (view original):

Posted by tecwrg on 6/24/2016 10:41:00 PM (view original):

Posted by dahsdebater on 6/24/2016 9:49:00 PM (view original):

Posted by tecwrg on 6/24/2016 9:17:00 PM (view original):
I know that balls in play can become:

• hits
• ROE
• productive outs
• non-productive outs
• double plays

I know that strikeouts can become:

• non-productive outs

Did I miss anything?

Ok, no disagreement here. But we're talking about after-the-fact analysis of outs in play. Outs in play can become:

• productive outs
• non-productive outs
• double plays
• errors

Once you take the hits out of the equation outs in play are only slightly better than Ks. Groundouts are slightly worse than Ks because the vast majority of double plays occur on these outs and a small majority of productive outs are made on flyballs in the modern baseball environment.

The fact that you refuse to acknowledge that there is even a different between a groundball and a groundout makes this discussion kinda pointless, though. When you're looking back at a season's worth of stats, you know which groundballs turned into outs. They can be differentiated. It's not a black box. Not sure why you're having such a hard time understanding that.

Of course a groundball and a groundout are two different things. The latter is one possible result of the former.

What's pointless is trying to intelligently discuss anything with a person who has such a fundamental lack of baseball understanding that they believe that, in general, strikeouts are the equal, if not better, than all other outs.

Going back to my Edgar Martinez example, you and BL are basically saying that if you converted all of EM's non-strikeout outs to strikeout outs, he would essentially be the same, if not a slightly better, player.

.312/.418/.515 with 1,202 career strikeouts

versus

.312/.418/.515 with 4,966 career strikeouts

Because, according to the two of you, when looking at season wide, or even career numbers, all outs are basically the same.

That's really, really, really, really, really dumb.

What difference does it make how he made his outs?

So 1,202 K Edgar is basically the same hitter as 4,966 K Edgar?

Like I said before, your hypothetical is extreme and I doubt that anyone who had such a hard time making contact could still hit .312 but, since he did, yes, he's essentially the same. How he made his outs doesn't matter.

Posted by dahsdebater on 6/25/2016 1:45:00 AM (view original):
Ok, here's a quick 3-minute Excel analysis of impact of team stats on run scoring done without writing any special macros. Unfortunately LINEST doesn't output statistical weights for multivariate analyses, but it gives the contribution of each variable along with the associated standard error. Here are the numbers for the steroid era, which I've given as 1994-2005:

AVG	OBP	SLG	K%
498.9127	1936.828	2815.681	-412.566
289.6629	239.1281	510.2548	741.7796

You'll note that for K rate, the error associated with the impact on run-scoring is considerably larger than the value itself. Thus, 0 impact on run scoring is firmly within the confidence interval, as well as a number of positive values. In other words, K rate has basically no impact on run scoring independent of other things it might influence like AVG and OBP.

Here are the numbers for 2007-present:

AVG	OBP	SLG	K%
-153.153	1836.141	2540.96	-480.846
93.44375	96.98936	212.8566	271.6744

Now the K rate is decidedly a negative factor. It's still extremely small relative to OBP and SLG, but it's clearly contributing an additional negative value in and of itself. So in the post-steroid era, Ks do matter, just not a lot.

During the steroid era, they didn't matter. It's a statistical fact. Teams that struck out more did not score less. No way to argue around that. It's just the way it was. You can outline any set of scenarios you want. It's inherently foolhardy to argue with empiricism. You can't win that argument.

I assume you guys are never going to respond to this because there is no way you can argue against statistical facts without looking stupid, right?

It's much more fun to point fingers and say "hey, look at the idiots over there with that ridiculous position" and ignore the mathematical proof that the 'ridiculous position' is unequivocally correct.

That's what I thought. It's easy to say something like "it's absurd to think that the positive and negative outcomes of outs in play balance each other," but only if you conveniently ignore the fact that for a fairly recent 12-year period it was a mathematical fact.

You're over-reaching with your statistical argument. Just because there is little correlation between strikeouts and runs scored, doesn't mean "an out is an out". And isolating the past 12 years (of 120 years of actual baseball history). Why not 20 or 30? Is your "unequivocally correct" idea only valid for those years?

The fact that we're 40 pages into this and jtpsops is stil arguing that sometimes ground balls become hits should tell you all you need to know.

Posted by toddcommish on 6/25/2016 5:18:00 PM (view original):
You're over-reaching with your statistical argument. Just because there is little correlation between strikeouts and runs scored, doesn't mean "an out is an out". And isolating the past 12 years (of 120 years of actual baseball history). Why not 20 or 30? Is your "unequivocally correct" idea only valid for those years?

The more history you use, the less strikeouts matter.

And I admit to a BIG blind spot. I just realized your name is "dahsdebater" which is probably a reference to DA High School debate team, which means you like arguing for arguing's sake... and fiddling with statistical "facts" just to take a contrary position... or support a tenuous one.

Posted by bad_luck on 6/25/2016 5:19:00 PM (view original):

Posted by toddcommish on 6/25/2016 5:18:00 PM (view original):
You're over-reaching with your statistical argument. Just because there is little correlation between strikeouts and runs scored, doesn't mean "an out is an out". And isolating the past 12 years (of 120 years of actual baseball history). Why not 20 or 30? Is your "unequivocally correct" idea only valid for those years?

The more history you use, the less strikeouts matter.

So you're saying they DO matter in the shorter term...? Actually, this supports what I said about this whole argument, which is over the span of a career, the type of out will lose significance, but in the context of a single game, it makes a big difference.

Posted by toddcommish on 6/25/2016 5:23:00 PM (view original):

Posted by bad_luck on 6/25/2016 5:19:00 PM (view original):

Posted by toddcommish on 6/25/2016 5:18:00 PM (view original):
You're over-reaching with your statistical argument. Just because there is little correlation between strikeouts and runs scored, doesn't mean "an out is an out". And isolating the past 12 years (of 120 years of actual baseball history). Why not 20 or 30? Is your "unequivocally correct" idea only valid for those years?

The more history you use, the less strikeouts matter.

So you're saying they DO matter in the shorter term...? Actually, this supports what I said about this whole argument, which is over the span of a career, the type of out will lose significance, but in the context of a single game, it makes a big difference.

Not really. There's a very slight negative correlation if you only look at 2007 on (-0.16). The correlation is tiny and I'd guess it has more to do with the league wide dip in OBP. If you use more years, the correlation disappears.

Posted by toddcommish on 6/25/2016 5:18:00 PM (view original):
You're over-reaching with your statistical argument. Just because there is little correlation between strikeouts and runs scored, doesn't mean "an out is an out". And isolating the past 12 years (of 120 years of actual baseball history). Why not 20 or 30? Is your "unequivocally correct" idea only valid for those years?

Yes, it is only valid for those years. I showed that strikeouts do matter for the period 2007-2015, albeit not very much. But they matter a little.

Basically, in high run-scoring environments, Ks don't matter. In lower-scoring environments they do matter. This is because the value, in runs, of productive outs change less with run-scoring environment than the cost of double plays. As double plays get less costly (low run-scoring environments when outs are less valuable in absolute numbers of runs), then strikeouts start to hurt you a little bit (relative to outs in play).

Posted by sjpoker on 6/25/2016 11:03:00 AM (view original):

Posted by sjpoker on 6/24/2016 11:57:00 PM (view original):

Posted by sjpoker on 6/24/2016 10:38:00 PM (view original):

Posted by bad_luck on 6/24/2016 10:19:00 PM (view original):

Posted by sjpoker on 6/24/2016 9:48:00 PM (view original):
Mmmm. Yeah not sure about that methodology. If there's a strikeout, or the hitter walks, or even if there's a fielders choice or flyout, the previous runner did not score. The productive out definitively helped score a run.

And attributing the negative value of the GIDP only to the batter is a fallacy as well. Because that is implying that the runner did not make a mistake.

And what methodology did you use?

Nope. You are trying to redirect. It's not about my opinion. I said we'd listen to you. And that's what I am doing.

The models I presented are not active events. They are history. The plays are over. We are evaluating them after the fact.

We know the fly outs resulted in runs. The GIDPs wound up wiping out - potential - runs. Those are unrealized events. So evaluating a potential event that will not occur against something positive that definitively occurred.

Think about it for a second. Between the two models ,there were the same number outs. But one resulted in 10 runs. The other resulted in zero runs.

Still waiting BL.

BL how could wiping out the 'positive contribution' of the GIDP runner be LARGER than scoring a run?

BL is ducking me. Oh well wasn't something he could answer anyway.

Posted by bad_luck on 6/25/2016 5:27:00 PM (view original):

Posted by toddcommish on 6/25/2016 5:23:00 PM (view original):

Posted by bad_luck on 6/25/2016 5:19:00 PM (view original):

Posted by toddcommish on 6/25/2016 5:18:00 PM (view original):
You're over-reaching with your statistical argument. Just because there is little correlation between strikeouts and runs scored, doesn't mean "an out is an out". And isolating the past 12 years (of 120 years of actual baseball history). Why not 20 or 30? Is your "unequivocally correct" idea only valid for those years?

The more history you use, the less strikeouts matter.

So you're saying they DO matter in the shorter term...? Actually, this supports what I said about this whole argument, which is over the span of a career, the type of out will lose significance, but in the context of a single game, it makes a big difference.

Not really. There's a very slight negative correlation if you only look at 2007 on (-0.16). The correlation is tiny and I'd guess it has more to do with the league wide dip in OBP. If you use more years, the correlation disappears.

So there's no correlation between run scoring and strikeout rate as long as you disregard the correlation between run scoring and strikeout rate.

Got it.

It used to be true that Ks didn't matter. When sabremetrics started being popular. But they do matter a little bit in the current run-scoring environment.

Posted by dahsdebater on 6/25/2016 10:05:00 PM (view original):
It used to be true that Ks didn't matter. When sabremetrics started being popular. But they do matter a little bit in the current run-scoring environment.

So strikeout rates matter with respect to run scoring.

Thanks for clarifying.