Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Baseline matters
Patriot gives a well thought-out, but extremely concise explanation of why ?baselines matter. I really like this one sentence explanation:
Define some floor below which additional playing time is not deemed helpful, or possibly even should be penalized. Use this floor as a reference point and you have now incorporated both quality and quantity. Again, I’ll stress that this is the simplest rationale for using a baseline that I could offer
The part I bolded is really what drives the concept of baselines. Whenever someone talks to you about replacement level, that's the first thing that should come out of your mouth.
Then you have this part:
Baselines don’t matter if you have two players with equal playing time.
Right. This also presupposes that playing time follows talent. But, we know of many players whose playing time is disproportionately lower than their talent level would dictate. Say, Ben Sheets, or other pitchers of his ilk. When Sheets plays, he's a very good pitcher. When he doesn't, well, he's not. How do you balance that out with a league-average pitcher who makes his 30-34 starts every year? You need a common baseline to compare the two.
More recently: you can make the case that Strasburg is as good, or better, than Felix, Verlander, and Kershaw, when these pitchers are on the mound. But, if Stras is leaving the mound one inning before the other three do, then, we need to account for that. And to do that, you need to be able to combine quality with quantity (and not presuppose that quantity is perfectly linked to quality). Baselines help.
And finally, the one part that Patriot didn't tackle was players of different responsibilities, namely pitchers and nonpitchers. Without a baseline, you can't compare them.
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