THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Friday, December 21, 2012

kwERA

Glenn gives us some kwERA results.

kwERA is one of those little metrics that I love because it tries to do as little as possible, be as transparent as possible, and yet, stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the sabermetr-icky stats.  It’s a gateway metric even more appealing than FIP, as it shocks you that you can just rely on a pitcher’s strikeout (K) rate and his walk (W) rate to come up with a metric that mirrors future ERA as good as anything else you can think of.

I should note that the idea for kwERA came from GuyM, who I’m guessing was probably influenced by FIP, which was based on DIPS (Voros), which might have been subconsciously inspired by DER (Bill James). 

My role for kwERA was really to test Guy’s theory on how to combine SO and BB (as it turns out, 1 to 1), and to determine how reliable it is (as it turns out, quite high).  Back then, we were having a discussing on K/BB as a ratio and K-BB as a differential (per PA), and the differential is really the only way to look at combining the two.

Anyway, Glenn’s done a tremendous job in exploring the issue even more, and really has added plenty of research for people to sift through and be convinced by.  What I liked about what Glenn has done is that he simply followed the evidence, rather than try to prove (twist or bend the data) whatever he wanted to prove from the outset.

kwERA actually made an appearance in the THT annual this year, which is nice to see.

Game Theory: Pitch Selection Model

Matt has presented a five-part series on a model for pitch selection (that’s part 5, and the first 4 parts are linked in his article).

It’s a very “heavy” set of articles, and you would need to set aside at least an hour to go through them all, especially if you are trying to follow the math.

One of the thing Matt notes is that you have to establish how a pitch “looks”.  While he used fastball/curveball in his illustration, I think it would make more sense to compare fastball to changeup.  That is, one of the variables that Matt requires is how often does a pitcher throw a changeup, yet the batter thinks it’s a fastball (and vice-versa).  That is, pitch recognition.  Then you also have pitch frequency expectation, so that a batter might be looking for fastball a certain percentage of the time.

MGL devoted a chapter in The Book on Game Theory, and I have no doubt that if you pair him with Matt, they could write an entire book, or course in school, on the subject.

Anyway, I don’t have any other comment on Matt’s five-part series because I haven’t sat down to read through it as diligently as it requires, though with the holidays approaching, it seems like it’s a terrific read.

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Oh, and a shout-out to Matt on his terrific piece in the THT Annual.  He’s done great research in the annuals, and if you don’t read those pieces, you are missing out on some good stuff.

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Soccer jerseys, based on MLB uniforms

I think the Bluejays win it among the five tested.

Hitter performance based on the identity of his team’s pitcher

James looks into the idea that a batter performs better knowing he’s got a great pitcher on the mound that day.  He doesn’t find anything like that, though he does find the possibility that hitters perform a tad worse.  He didn’t control for park, weather, or opposing team’s pitcher, which we hope would cancel out given his sample size.  Anyway, a good look on an old problem.

It’s also what we expected (little to no impact), otherwise we would have seen that we couldn’t estimate a pitcher’s career W/L record based only on his ERA (which we can, given a large enough sample).

Where to bat your best (and worst) batter

Just some terrific work from Xeifrank in this five part series.  I’m linking to the fifth, but you can get to the other 4 in the sidebar.

You can see that in some cases (Miguel Cabrera) you want him to bat #4, but in other cases (Pujols, in the other articles) you want him to bat #3.  He shows like I do that the pitcher should bat in the 8th spot.

Really, there’s a treasure trove of information there for those who have never written a baseball simulator.

Raines’ best game, with last at bat called by Vin Scully

This was his first game of the season, following NO spring training (he was held out by collusion).  Vin Scully sets up what he’s done up to that point in the game, and the bases are loaded in the top of the 10th at Shea.  And I love the graphic showing he was 3 for 20 against Orosco.  Enjoy it!

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Strike Zone: actual v book

All the images are blocked at the office, but it looks like Matt is comparing strike zones based on the called strikes.

Fehr speaks

Here are the highlights, and here is the interview.

How many years does it take to sign Trout for 100MM$?

Passan makes his case, by looking at a few cases, with possibly Ryan Braun as the best match:

...the record for a player with one year of service time is Ryan Braun’s eight-year, $45 million deal following the 2007 season.

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Braun’s contract is interesting.  Because they brought him up late, the Brewers actually get nearly 7 years, with only three arb years.  For those three arb years, they paid him 18.5MM$, whereas had they let him go year-to-year, he’d probably make a Ryan Howard case, or at least Prince Fielder case.  Fielder basically went year-to-year, and he got 33.5MM$ for his 3 arb years.  Ryan Howard got the big arb award of 10MM$, then signed 3/54 for his other arb years, bringing him to 64MM$ and 4 arb years.  Braun basically signed at a 50% discount.

Anyway, if Trout goes year-to-year: his two slave years are at a total of 1MM$, his three arb years have to be paid out at 10, 15, 20 (total of 45MM$), and his first five free agency years would come at a total of 150MM$.  That’s a total of 196MM$.  At a Braun-kind of discount, that’s 100MM$.  That’s 10 years.

In other words, it doesn’t make sense for Trout to sign for 100MM$.  The whole point of the discount is to get guaranteed money, and do you really need to guarantee 100MM$, if you can guarantee 50MM$?  Especially if that second 50MM$ comes at such a huge discount?

So, we now go back to see how many years does it take for Trout to sign for 50MM$.  He’d have to give up 2 years of free agency, and sign for 7 years.  Year-to-year, that’s 106MM$, and so, he’d sign for 50MM$.

How much should the NHL give to the players?

I was struck by the following information:

Indeed, according to the The U.S. Professional Sports Market & Franchise Value Report 2011, average franchise values in the first decade of this millennium increased 141% for the NFL (from $423 million to $1 billion), 101% for MLB ($233M to $491M), 78% for the NBA ($207M to $369M) and 54% for the NHL ($148M to $228M). This over a decade that witnessed a once-in-four-generations recession.

I have no idea what the company is (not Forbes), but you gotta figure whatever biases exist won’t be systematic toward or against one sport.  They also provide year-by-year valuations.  If we focus from 2006-2010, the total increase in valuations are as follows:

2006	2010	change	League
180	228	27%	NHL
353	369	5%	NBA
376	491	31%	MLB
898	1022	14%	NFL

Valuations increase in NBA has been almost nothing, but NHL has jumped since the last CBA to MLB-level increases.

I’ve said in the past that MLB GM’s are getting smarter, giving out less money per revenue to players.  The less players get, the more the franchise is worth.  NHL righted their model by dropping the share of revenue from 74% to 54%-57%.  That was a huge drop in share, and so, teams became more profitable, and so, they were worth more.

Did it swing too much?  Let’s look at multiple of valuation per dollar revenue:

Revenue	Worth	Multiple	League
98	228	 2.33 	NHL
127	369	 2.91 	NBA
210	491	 2.34 	MLB
265	1022	 3.86 	NFL

Interestingly, MLB and NHL are in about the same boat, they’ve gained in valuation in similar rate, and their multiple of worth per revenue is the same.  And yet, in pales in comparsion to the NBA, which barely has more revenue than NHL (really?!  I’m very surprised), anyway, 30% more in revenue, and yet each team is worth 60% more.

And the three non-NFL leagues combined are worth about the same as just the NFL, even though they have 64% more revenues.  Obviously, NFL is the model they aspire to.

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Empathy or isolation?

Dirk Hayhurst is asking how should those afflicted the least handle those afflicted the most?

David Chase finally explains Sopranos ending

He said he’d never explain it, but he finally did:

To me the question is not whether Tony lived or died, and that’s all that people wanted to know: “Well, did he live or did he die? You didn’t finish the show. You didn’t answer the question.” That’s preposterous. There was something else I was saying that was more important than whether Tony Soprano lived or died. About the fragility of all of it. ... All I wanted to do was present the idea of how short life is and how precious it is. The only way I felt I could do that was to rip it away.

Monday, December 17, 2012

Two faces of NHL, as seen by Larry Brooks

How many faces have thee, let Larry count the ways:

1.

Here is the league that just over a week ago was doing everything in its power to keep Don Fehr out of the bargaining process, and is now going to court to ensure he continues to represent the players in the bargaining process.

2.

For weeks now, the NHL has sent its messengers to deliver the message the NHLPA is not truly united behind Fehr and union leadership; that the players, left to their own decision-making process, would rush to accept whatever the league at the time had on the table.

Or, in another word, “Vote!�

Yet there in Paragraph 54 of the complaint is the NHL citing numerous examples of players articulating support for Fehr and the PA leadership which the league posits, “... do not suggest that the NHL players are unhappy with their Union representation [or] wish to oust current NHLPA leadership…â€?

3.

Paragraph 102 is a good one. For months the NHL has been telling anyone who would listen that up to 18 of its franchises lose money, with many of those franchises in need of life support. For months the league has been instructing us not to confuse revenue with profits.

Fair enough.

But then these are the league’s own words right there in Paragraph 102: “The system of common employment rules [the CBA] instituted in 2005 improved the financial stability of the entire NHL, including most of its clubs…â€?

Most of its clubs?

Really?

Hmm.

4.

What to make of the thought process behind Paragraph 62?

The combination of restrictions proposed by the NHL leading into and throughout the lockout is designed to limit the impact of free agency and funnel players toward teams they might not consider given a full plate of options.

Yet there is the NHL in Paragraph 62 suggesting every player in the league become a free agent if the NHLPA were permitted to disclaim or decertify.

“[Existing] contracts ...[would be] void and unenforcable by law,� in the league’s own words.

Goodbye Columbus!

Second Amendment

Please limit your discussion to these particular points.  I know you have something else to say.  This thread isn’t for you.

I have four questions with regard to The Second Amendment:

1. Why does it exist, or how did it come about?

2. What encompasses “arms”?

3. How do other countries handle these rights (specifically: Canada, Great Britain, Germany, Russia)?

4. How does one person’s right to bear arms impact someone else’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (directly or indirectly; positively or negatively)?

NHL v NHLPA, Canada v USA

I’d like to know if Proskauer Rose has sister firms in Canada, because as Tyler notes:

In other words, it seems to me that while Canadian labour boards effectively saying “You guys have decided to operate under the jurisdiction of the NLRB and we’re not getting involved� is one thing, it’s a bit of a different thing for a Canadian court to say “You guys decided to operate under the jurisdiction of the NLRB and, even though you’ve stopped doing that, we’re still not going to get involved in what is now a dispute between [Canadian] Taylor Hall and the Edmonton Oilers.� If I was the NHLPA, considering a response to this, one of the areas that I’d be considering is the extent to which American courts have jurisdiction over the Canadian aspects of the dispute, which are far more significant than in the case of the NBA which has only one team in Canada and likely no cases of Canadian residents making contracts with Canadian teams.

Crowd v Actual

Fangraphs does a great job getting Crowdsourced results, and now we have plenty of players to compare to the actual results.

The one player that the Crowd was most high on, but the GMs were not, was Brandon McCarthy.  Obviously his horrific injury may have not been discounted enough by the Crowd.  On the flip side, the Crowd clearly missed the mark on how high the ceiling was on the big deals, missing big on Greinke, Hamilton, and Sanchez.  The Crowd had the three pegged for a total of 14.5 years and 17.6MM$ per year.  They actually signed for 16 years and 22MM$ per year.  So, they missed the top-end players by over 25%.

Overall, for the 28 listed players, the Crowd expected 72 years, and they actually got…. 72 years!  But the cost per year was expected at 10.6MM$, but they actually came in at 11.8MM$ (11% higher).

Knockout the big 3, and the actual and forecasted were both 8.9MM$ per year.

Fehr/Fehr balance

This was written a few months back, but it’s a nice profile of Steve Fehr, with comments from both sides (Manfred on the management side and Orza / Fehr on the union side).  I wonder what Bill Daly is going to say in a few years.

“For me, it’s been an extraordinary thing,� Don Fehr said, “because when you are involved in bargaining, it really helps to have somebody who, first of all, is knowledgeable, is observant, knows how the game is played … [but who] knows you inside out and backwards, and perhaps, most importantly, is capable of telling you, probably more often than you want to hear, that you are full of shit.�

According to Manfred, the role Steve Fehr took in the 2002 baseball labor negotiations, when MLB and the players reached a deal just before the players went on strike, was “the most important thing he has done.� Prior to that negotiation, MLB and the MLBPA were unable to reach a labor agreement without a strike or a lockout eight times, going back to 1972.

Manfred noted that MLB and the MLBPA have been able to negotiate two CBAs without a work stoppage since that agreement. Without going into details of those 2002 negotiations, Manfred said Fehr was instrumental in getting a deal done and called him “a calming force� in labor negotiations in general.

Orza agreed with that characterization.

“In the 2002 negotiations, when things got pretty tough and we were close to having some problems that might have resulted in a major fight, Steve stayed pretty calm, cool and collected,� Orza said.

For his part, Steve Fehr would not say specifically what he did during those 2002 talks other than to stay focused on the issues at hand.

Cabrera 2011 > Cabrera 2012

A wonderful sabermetric look, without getting all sabermetr-icky.  Great job from Kincaid.

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Do we need jousting in football?

The train-wreck of the play may be exciting, but, if you balance the excitement against the health, it does seem disproportionate.

It’s odd though that it’s the owners, and not the players, that are dictating the rules here.

Bleg: Music Sheet for SpongeBob’s Don’t Be Jerk, It’s Christmas

Thank you!