If you’re looking for a cheat sheet with Alex Patton’s and my updated 4×4 prices, as well Mike Fenger’s 5×5 prices, along with my projections, updated through Thursday, at a price, click this link. You also get Alex’s excellent roto evaluation software, though you probably won’t want to tackle learning the software if your auction is this weekend.
Sabremetrics
Same Pitchers, Different Stats
Same Pitchers Different Stats 2006
This is an excel file about 100K.
We’ve run this chart in the Guide in the past, when we’ve had an open page, and I had a request from a reader that I post it. Here’s what the caption said in the Fantasy Baseball Guide 2005:
ERA and Ratio do a decent job of describing what a pitcher did, but not necessarily everything about how well they did. While putting together the magazine we consistently look at the BB/9, K/9, and HR/9 metrics. These tell us how well a pitcher kept runners off base, got outs without the ball being put into play, and kept the ball in the park. These pitchers are ranked by their relative effectiveness in these three measures last year, from best to worst.
The other two columns show the opponents batting average against a pitcher on balls in play (HR and strikeouts are removed), and for all at bats. We’re less sure what to do with these, though a high AVG-BIP is thought to indicate that the pitcher had some bad luck. Have fun.
Looking at the results, it’s clear that comparisons between starters and relievers don’t have much validity. And with two 100 IP starters near the top of the chart, workload probably plays a part there, too.
Still, if Ben Sheets can stay healthy he clearly has his effectiveness back. He’s not going to be cheap but he could be a bargain.
As Season Approaches, Some Topics Should Be Off Limits
I can’t believe that once or twice I’ve actually defended Murray Chass. I started reading this story in the paper and nodded off before I got to the Bernie Williams rant of obviousness, thereby missing the explosive display of no-nothingism spewed about sabermetric investigation at the end. Such willful ignorance on the part of a reporter (though Seth Mnookin has ably disputed the validity of that label as regards Chass) should be grounds for dismissal.
Unless he’s just trying to be funny, in which case someone should hit the big gong.
Baseball Prospectus Goodie
I stopped my BP subscription a year or so ago, not because I didn’t enjoy the writing of many of the BP guys, and didn’t value their observations, but because it was all getting a little familiar. For free, I’d attend every day, but having to pay made it a little easy to stay away.
I’ve been surprised how few times I’ve felt like I was missing something since. I still read the newsletter and the beginnings of the stories, and I’m still awfully impressed by a lot of the work that goes on at BP, but I end up feeling like I’m already on their page, I don’t need to be hectored about this and that.
But the lede to this story is choice. Or as my friend Fleming Meeks has said, cherce. Jim Baker discovers an orphaned pool of BP stats about teams and their rate of being shut out. What I learned is that the 1981 Blue Jays were shut out 20 percent of the time.
These days that seems pretty much impossible, but things in baseball change. 1981 was the dawn of Rotisserie baseball and baseball’s age of statistics. I have no other point than at this moment I wish I could read the rest of Jim’s story.
HitTracker :: Home run tracking and distance measurement
HitTracker :: Home run tracking and distance measurement
Greg Rybarczyk, an engineer with an interest in the flight of major league baseballs, has created a rather amazing trove of information about last year’s home runs, including his special formula for determining the actual (he calls it “true”) distance a ball would have flown if it didn’t land above grade in the seats or hit a light standard or the glass wall of a right field dining establishment.
This sort of information is very important when we look at other people trying to track the steroid era or the juiced ball era or what have you based on homer distances.
Greg includes his weather and altitude correctors so that other adjustments can be made.
I’m not really sure how much real value this is going to have in its present form, but I hear that he’s hoping to enter this information for all batted balls in 2007. While that will duplicate at least some of the information that Baseball Info Solutions is keeping, it’s hard to argue that we don’t want multiple sources for what is inevitably less-than-objective data.
We’ll leave it to the next generation to figure out how to get all the data keepers interested in sharing.
Marcel 2007
The World’s Greatest Baseball Performance Projection System
Those of us who spend a lot of time making baseball projections have to tip our cap to Marcel the Projection Monkey. Marcel doesn’t spend that much time, even though time doesn’t mean that much to monkeys.
The point of Marcel the Monkey projections is that most of the information a projection system can contain is available in three year weighted numbers, with factors that adjust for age.
Those of us who make better projections (usually) than Marcel have to be humbled by how close he comes to besting us.
The Physics of Ball on Bat
Thanks to James in Kansas City, this link is to a story that mostly recapitulates Robert Adair’s research on how far a ball might be hit by a human. So give props to James and to Robert Adair, but don’t snub the Alaskans who remind us of this question. Could it be true that none of the steroid enhanced sluggers of the past 30 years matched the distance of the besotted Mick?
Ask Rotoman This Week
This week, why there can be more to a trade than the players involved, learning something about 12 offensive categories, using BABIP, Component ERA and Defense Independent Component ERA to find buy-low pitchers. Plus chatter about the Rockies pitchers, Justin Verlander, Stephen Drew and Chris Denorfia. With lovely charts. Really lovely.
Should be: The Indispensible Baseball Musings
DAVID PINTO WROTE: “Update: Jason Marquis is allowed to take a beating for the second time this year. He gives up two hits in the sixth before he comes out of the game. Just to finish his night off, the bullpen allows the runner they inherited from Jason to score. He’s charged with 12 runs. He allowed 14 against the White Sox earlier this season. Almost 30% of the runs Marquis allowed this year came in those two games.”
Pinto has created a baseball news site with fantasy relevance, excellent data tools, and it’s all free. Unless you do the right thing and pony up some cash, if you feel the way I do. I sent money last year and I’m not bragging, it wasn’t really enough. So I’m sending more this year.
Highly recommended.
As for Marquis, he’s killing me. Or Tony LaRussa is. I’d been riding the matchups the last couple of weeks (since the last time he was left in to take a beating) and it’s worked out well, so I didn’t see the spot to dump him. Mercy.
WasWatching.com:
Presents evidence that A-Rod is having a really crumby season when the Yankees are trailing by one or two runs, but it’s only 54 plate appearances. Everybody seems to have an opinion about whether A-Rod is always so bad in the clutch (though it should be noted, as the writer here does, that A-Rod has four hits after the seventh inning that put the Yankees ahead, while Justin Morneau leads the league with five).
Last year A-Rod had a couple of game score situations in which he didn’t hit nearly as well as in all other situations. One of them was down by two runs, but the other was up by two runs. He had a 1.096 OPS when down by one run.
In 2004 he was incredible in down by one run (1.416 OPS), fair when down by two runs (.910 OPS), sucked when down by three or up by two (.701/.556) and not so hot when the team was up by five runs (.724).
My conclusion? I love baseballmusings.com and David Pinto’s amazing database. Unconvincing attempts to impugn A-Rod’s clutchiness? Not so much.