Rotoman

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I’ll only make one quick comment about the Carlos Pena-Mario Ramos et al deal between the Athletics and the Rangers: I’m getting tired of the Billy Beane hagiography. But that’s because I’m at heart contrarian and impatient. It’s hard not cheering for the little Athletics that could, and the engineer driving the train.

But what I’m responding to is the second half of Rob’s column on Monday, about the comparison between DiMaggio and Ted Williams’ most famous streaks. The story is here: ESPN.com: MLB – DiMaggio’s streak not even one in a million

Here is what I wrote to Neyer, after some time working through the numbers:

Hi Rob,

I enjoyed watching Jose Burilla’s math from my untenured position here in Brooklyn, but I think he missed one pertinent detail: The question being asked is about the odds of someone else breaking the record, not for the odds of the immortal repeating? Right?

While Williams’ consecutive times on base streak would be relatively easy for him to equal, because he’s the all time OBP leader, it would be significantly more difficult for the average player to best.

And while DiMaggio was no slouch in AVG during his career, he ranks 41st all time in that category, I think that means he was more average in AVG than Williams is in OBP.

The odds of a .334 OBP (last year’s AL OBP) hitter to equal Williams mark are about 1 in 42,000,000.

While the odds of a player who gets hits in 23.8% of his AB (last year’s AL average hits per PA) getting a hit in 56 consecutive games is roughly 1 in 220,000,000. While it will clearly be easier for someone else to break the Splinter’s record than the Clipper’s, the difference is about half as large as advertised because of the differing contexts.

I suppose that the proper way to ask this question, however, would be to look at peak values. It only takes one hot run by one player, after all, to break either record. So, last year the top AL OBP was Jason Giambi’s .477, which is quite similar to Williams’ lifetime OBP, but significantly lower than Williams .526 OBP in 1957, the year he set the record.

The times Giambi would match Williams’ record in 1 million games, given his performance last year, is 7 (Williams, at the pace he performed in 1957, would have done it 34 times).

The best hit per plate appearance mark in the AL last year was by Ichiro, of course, who had hits in 33 percent of his plate appearances. Given a million games at that rate Ichiro could be expected to hit in 56 straight games 38 times.

For DiMaggio to repeat his feat would have been much harder than for Williams to repeat his, but that doesn’t mean DiMaggio’s is a harder record to break.

Best,
Peter

Almost immediately after sending that off I realized I’d overlooked something. So I fired off another letter:


It occurred to me after I sent the last email that DiMaggio probably had a better than normal year in 1941, too. So I looked it up.

His H per PA was .307, a far sight lower than Ichiro’s, though better than his career mark.

That translates to him hitting in 56 straight games 7 times out of a million. As Jose pointed out, at his career average level he would have done it once (which he in fact did, of course).

BTW, I’ve fudged the PA per game data. Ichiro would have more than DiMaggio, of course. The average ALer last year had fewer appearances (4.28) per game. I did all the probabilities at DiMaggio’s 1941 rate as calculated by Jose.

Thanks for listening.
Peter

I’m not sure what the lesson here is. What surprises me a little are the huge swings in probability, depending whether you measure from peak value or average value. The bottom line is that the odds are long (one million games represents 6,173 seasons) and a slight difference can improve the odds seven fold, but that doesn’t mean we’re ever likely to see its like again.

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Happy New Year to all. There promise to be a lot of changes around here soon, if there is a season.

Now that Shige Hasegawa is signed and Keith Law is working for the Blue Jays, things are looking pretty good. But I don’t even want to think what will happen if Charles Dolan ends up with the Red Sox.

Please check back in a few days for all the details on the new site Alex Patton and I are creating.

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I don’t know about you, but Bill James is the guy who took my wobbly love for the game in a specific and rather satisfying direction. I loved baseball before I read Bill James, but I didn’t really get it.

James subbed for Rob Neyer at ESPN.com on Monday. If you missed it here is the column. ESPN.com: MLB – James: Rooting for the home team

It demonstrates why James is so damned good. Bill takes his guest shot and uses it to dig at one of the more irritating qualities Neyer has. More importantly, Bill makes the rather important point that all the calculating, and all the sabremetric hoo-ha, really just point to a set of advantages. It doesn’t mean that if you do everything by the sabremetric book everything is going to be easy.

This is important to remember in roto because the in competitive leagues, where the majority of owners know what they’re doing and pay attention all season long, the principles that sabremetrics bring to the game (like Shandler’s LIMA Plan) are only advantages when other people disregard them.

Once a pitcher’s price jumps because he meets the LIMA standards, for instance, he’s no longer a bargain and no longer someone to go after.

The same is true in the big leagues. The Oaklands are doing great and Billy Beane deserves credit, following the principles that Gene Michael used putting together those great Yankees teams of the mid-nineties, without the rather sizeable budget. But once the other big spending teams starts stocking up on those guys, all that will be left for the little spending teams will be big swinging, no walking guys at every position.

And that sabremetric option won’t be available to Billy Beane any longer.

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Yes, an infrequent contribution here. Actually, I’ve made some others that have gotten lost in the ether, which as you might imagine is a kind of negative reinforcement. Sorry about that. I appreciate you all writing directly. I think I’ve been pretty good about getting back to you on those.

In Friday’s column by Neyer, linked here, ESPN.com: MLB – Neyer: How good is Scott Rolen? Rob talks about Scott Rolen, who for the first time in three years is playing a sizeable percentage of the Phillies’ games. The article is about Rolen’s defensive value and Larry Bowa’s silly assertion that Rolen saves the Phils 75 to 100 runs per year with his defense.

I have no issue with Rob simply stating that Rolen probably saves something closer to 12 runs per year over an average replacement. I’ve watched him do the math on this issue before, so he doesn’t have to prove it again.

But he also suggests that Rolen is healthy and it is odd that his power numbers are down so much this year over his previous performances. But I wonder. If Rolen has chronic back problems, could they really get all better and yet his performance would then decline? There is the new surface at the Vet this year, which was in part intended to help Rolen cope.

And there is a the new strike zone. Which hasn’t affected Barry Bonds or Luis Gonzalez negatively, but could be a factor for Rolen. He was a guy with great count control in the early part of his career, but as his back has hurt more he has become more of the prototypical slugger. He has tried to pull everything and is less concerned with getting a favorable count.

If I’m right, that his decreased patience comes because of his decreased stamina (“It hurts! It hurts!), might his increased playing time come because he knows he’s not going to get a big contract if he sits too much in this, his contract year?

This position needn’t be as cynical as it sounds. I’m not a big fan of “contract drives,” but if he doesn’t hurt quite as much because of the improved surface but he hurts enough to cause him to pull the ball rather than drive it to all fields, wouldn’t the result be that he’d play, but his power numbers would fall off?

The point for roto players is that Rolen is still young, but if his back is an ongoing problem it shouldn’t be overlooked just because he’s played more than 150 games this year.

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There is less than 30 minutes left before the trading deadline, and so far it has been all NL. Actually, Houston’s two deals mean that Shannon Stewart probably isn’t going to Colorado. And Mike Williams won’t be going to Boston.

Ever notice how these deals often end up involving teams like the Astros, who haven’t really been mentioned much. Teams like to make deals with teams that keep secrets, and usually the rumor that a deal is in the works means that one side or the other is unhappy and unwilling to do it.

ESPN.com: MLB – Astros acquire Astacio, Pirates closer Williams

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Wow. The Mets dealing Rick Reed was kind of expected, but him landing in Minnesota surprises me. Especially since the Twins, like the Mets, lack offense.

Reed should do just fine in the AL. The qualitatives may take a hit because of the DH, but that isn’t a foregone conclusion. The Twins record the rest of the way is pretty easy. The only teams with winning records they play are Cleveland and Anaheim. Even so, he may not win many games because this doesn’t appear to be a team that’s going to score many runs.

The rumor is that they will add Dmitri Young, presumably for prospects. We’ll see. Twins fans should fear that the team thinks that the return of David Ortiz will allow the team to produce as many runs as they did with Lawton when Ortiz was hurt.

I have always loved Lawton. When he was in the minors I remember sitting behind home plate at the Twins spring training field in Fort Myers and admiring his compact swing, patient eye and pugnacious approach. If not for the broken eye bone in 1999 I suspect he would be an elite player today. Or close to it.

Both Reed and Lawton are all-in FAAB bids this week.

ESPN.com: MLB – Twins add Mets’ Reed to staff in trade for Lawton

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This Rotoworld comment has Albie Lopez winning 5-6 games with a 4.30 ERA. Maybe.

He’s been pitching better of late and he has a quality arm, as they say. Everybody needs pitching so there’s probably no reason not to go after him. But the thing that stands out for me is the 7 quality starts in 20 chances this year. If he has fixed what was wrong than Rotoworld may have gotten the ERA right (but really, moderate level pitchers will win 4 games, unless they pitch really well or their team scores a lot of runs).

And if he hasn’t solved the problem he’s going to hurt you.

As for Nick Bierbrodt: He was horrible in Arizona thus far. He’s really young and the Devil Rays stink. He’s only worth a shot if you cannot lose any points in ERA and Ratio, and even then you’re grasping. However bright his future is, it isn’t likely to come this year.

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