What's a + play really worth? Topic

jfranco77
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You might recall that I did a LOOOONG post on this about 9 months ago, where I drafted a team of all high-range players, tracked every + play they made and figured out the linear weights value of each play. 

If not, you can read through it here (I highly recommend it): whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx

To sum up very briefly:

Using the linear weights by situation/baserunner I will estimate the change in run value based on the play made. I'll walk through an example

From this link, we get this table:

http://www.tangotiger.net/RE9902.html 

RE 99-02 0 1 2
Empty 0.555 0.297 0.117
1st 0.953 0.573 0.251
2nd 1.189 0.725 0.344
3rd 1.482 0.983 0.387
1st_2nd 1.573 0.971 0.466
1st_3rd 1.904 1.243 0.538
2nd_3rd 2.052 1.467 0.634
Loaded 2.417 1.65 0.815


So, if there is nobody on and nobody out, and Bid McPhee makes a + play on a grounder, then the run expectancy is 0.953 if he doesn't make the play (runner on 1st, nobody out) and 0.297 if he does (1 out, nobody on), so that + play is worth 0.656 runs
3/30/2011 12:55 PM
jfranco77
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I wanted to update this since I just finished going through and doing the LW values for a 2nd team. The values are slightly different, but in the same range, so here goes. To read this table... the AVERAGE value of a + play made by Albert Pujols at 1B was 0.88 runs - in other words, the average runs saved was 0.88. He made a total of 31 plays, so the total runs saved was about 27.3 runs.

Player Position Run Val Avg Total + Plays
Pujols 1B 0.88 31
Anson 1B 0.826 27
McPhee 2B 0.813 29
Lajoie 2B 0.754 36
Latham 3B 0.943 19
Lyons  3B 0.849 37
Speaker  CF 0.557 26
Ashburn CF 0.411 35
Cobb LF 0.626 17
Douthit LF 0.459 13
B Williams RF 0.63 27
O'Neill RF 0.532 25
Wagner SS 0.885 21
H Long SS 0.782 24

Eventually, I want to do this for a couple more teams, but it's horrendously time consuming and has to be done while the season is going on.
3/30/2011 12:58 PM
flakfizer
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So, if I'm understanding this correctly, the total runs saved for your team through + plays was about 262.  That seems huge.  A team could see a big reduction in their own runs scored and still be highly competitive if you're saving that many runs.

If the general pattern has held between your experimental teams (and continues to do so for future teams), the next question to ask would be how many runs those guys produced, as compared to non-high range players, and whether the high price one pays for range is worth the cost of reduced offense and/or pitching.
3/31/2011 12:18 PM
jfranco77
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These are for 2 different teams. So the first team saved about 121 runs, and the 2nd saved about 142. But yes, the goal is to get an answer to the question of whether or not the defense is actually cost effective. From the original thread:

McPhee had a .771 OPS# and 720 PA/162 for 5.76mil. Let's say that his fielding was worth 50 points of OPS# (29 hits over 700 AB would be about 0.040). I could have had Charlie Gehringer '28 for 5.72mil, and his OPS# is 0.831 for 727 PA. His fielding is C-/B (McPhee was C-/A+). That would still put Gehringer ahead (.831 vs .821 (.771+.050)) and it's not like B range is total crap. 

But still. There's something else that makes teams with really good range play better. Maybe it's the DPs. You can get lucky and get a top-5 team in DP% with low range or you can lock it down with a great range team. 

3/31/2011 12:55 PM
flakfizer
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Duh, now that I look that is obviously two teams.  Oops.  ~130 seems much more reasonable, and with your quote from the earlier thread it doesn't seem like it's quite worth it.

So then, the impressive question to answer would be where the threshold lies for financially-worthwhile range.  It doesn't look like A+ quite cuts it, at least with the McPhee/Gehringer example, But what if Gehringer's range was a D?  Would that change his total run-value enough that McPhee becomes the better buy? 

I think you should make a sample of 100 teams of different ranges, keep meticulous stats, and report back to us right away, so we can get all the info with none of the work.  TIA.
3/31/2011 8:23 PM
jfranco77
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I picked Gehringer because he was a B ... which means he shouldn't really have any + or - plays. If you had a D player you'd have some - plays. What's the value of a - play? Is it the same as a + play? Probably not. What I really need to do is run a team of all D- players and get an estimate for that.

What's the impact on DPs of having a B versus a D? Slightly less time consuming to research, but I still haven't had the time.
3/31/2011 9:50 PM
What's a + play really worth? Topic
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