brewjihad

According to McCalvy, you won't get that first start announced: he'll be pitching in relief. http://brewersbeat.mlblog...signed_to_t-rats_wi.html Generally I'd be against it, but I understand the reasoning of wanting to keep him focused if there's a chance he will pitch each day.

Your first post basically describes tRA. It's on the player pages here, and here's the main explanation.

Watch the interview. Colleen Dominguez is throwing him loaded questions. It's awful, and almost embarrassing that an interviewer would use tactics like that. She brings up hate mail, he says that he did get some, and then she asks three times if he suspects that some was from people within the Cubs organization. Then they got the "prisoner in home" quote and ran with it. Bradley is a crazy dude, but this is just a terrible interview. I think he did well for the questions he was asked.

The calculation at Fangraphs uses just FIP. You find the difference between an average inning and the pitcher's inning in FIP, divide by 9 to scale it to 1 inning, and then multiply it by the number of innings pitched to compare it to the average. The methodology makes plenty of sense, and there can really only be two objections to it: - Using FIP over straight ERA, tERA, or a hybrid. FIP looks to be the best to me as of now because ERA is so heavily influenced by other factors over 1 year, and though tERA is the most sound stat, batted ball classification isn't at the point yet where I would trust it as an indicator over FIP. - Replacement level. 80% of league average comes out to around a 5.50 ERA that is used for replacement level starters. You can argue that it's low, but a fifth starter in the majors doesn't beat that mark by very much. And FIP is much more clustered to the average than ERA, causing fewer outliers.

80% of league average is the mark in the pros. If you want to create a stat the values the amount of runs a player produces of above a replacement level player (more like WAR without defense, just wRAA) you need to figure out how many over 80% of the league average each player was worth. Good luck. The replacement level player is a concept that's somewhat limited to the pros, but comparing to average in runs could be useful.

Inglett was the one who hit the grand slam off of David Riske in the most ridiculous baseball game I have ever seen. http://mlb.mlb.com/news/a...p;fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb Edit: That said Dillard before. Riske gave up the homer to Inglett.

Russ, I think you and I have a very similar perspective on evaluating players in terms of runs produced above a replacement-level player. I think we can agree on evaluation methods and still somewhat disagree about Wolf vs. Harden. Based on Wolf's past performance, including a 4-ish FIP in the last few years, I'd project him for around 180 innings and a 4.20 ERA. I'd put Harden somewhere around 130 and 3.8. Wolf's probably slightly more valuable in this scenario, but again we can't completely ignore the fact that Harden's injury past makes him somewhat of a risk to even put up 80 innings in a given year. Normally I'd be all over that gamble, but I completely understand why Melvin did what he did here. If his main addition to the pitching staff is Harden and there's what, a 30% chance he finishes with less than 100 innings, he might be on his way out as GM. I don't know what to make of Harden. With an injury risk guy like Sheets, your upside is 220 innings and your downside is the same as Harden's. With Harden, your upside is probably 150 and your downside is nothing.

I think most of us here don't let 3 starts-- or even year to year fluctuations in a team stat like ERA-- change our evaluation of Suppan as a pitcher. His FIPs from the last two years have been 5.50 and 5.70. That doesn't really have value when a replacement-level FIP is generally considered to be around 5.5. Maybe Suppan has some ability to beat his FIP by a little bit, but Al, I think your point about pitching and bottom rotation starters is correct but I personally think that your evaluation of Suppan isn't.

The irony here is, this is exactly why you don't offer a guy arby if you can't afford him. The nerds on the various sites act like teams never get stuck with a guy, yet it can easily occur. ATL probably wasn't too far from having to cut him before the guarantee date in March (and pay him 1/6th of his salary) or hope he stays healthy and deal him in the season. You're using the fact that the worst-case scenario did happen-- he accepted, and they still were easily able to dump him-- to support your view that the Brewers shouldn't have done the same with one of their free agents? The Braves risked the chance that he would accept, he did, and they traded him for basically nothing. Not exactly sure how this is an example of "irony". Sincerely, a nerd on another site.

Nice call bk. I don't know why they wouldn't have taken someone, it's not like Luis Cruz on the 40-man should prevent a high-upside, no risk pitcher from being added at little cost on the chance that he does stick. Makes the Hawkins deal make a bit less sense, but pretty much any Rule V pick is a good one.

Logan, if you're referring to 804sox's post, I think what he's saying is that he doesn't think Salome will stick at catcher and that he would be an average to below average 1b, so he's not as good of a prospect as Lucroy who he thinks will stick at catcher.

Keep in mind that the projections and website are entirely the product of Sean. It's not some big organization that can find errors like that. He has a lot on his plate.

Do they give MLB possible draftees an intelligence test, like the NFL and Wondersomething or other? Maybe they should, as Jeffress and Brewer would have likely sucked at them, and raised numerous red flags. Wow. Really? You think you can use the fact that he has struggled in his career and that he apparently talked to a reporter about a career switch to say he isn't intelligent? This is a lot like your argument that Parra is not intellegent because of his lack of control. I think you should look for some more evidence before labeling people you have never met as intellegent or unintellegent. And grouping Jeffress and Brewer isn't just strange, its kinda.... offensive.

Anyone else bothered by this? http://www.freep.com/article/20091106/SPORTS02/91106058/1050/rss15

I guess the point I was making is if a system is used to show a players value by attaching a $ figure to it and it doesn't match up with what that player actually got paid it appears to me that something is wrong. Either with the owners and GM's or fangrpahs. The owners are playing for projected performance. It wouldn't be right if the numbers did match up, because you're comparing salary to actual value in salary. That very well may be the case at least in some instances. Then again if fangrpahs did field a team it may be a AAA level team with a Yankee payroll. The fact they rate players like JJ Hardy as being worth $21 million seems to me to suggest the latter but that is just me. This is where the measure is misunderstood. Pre-arby and arby players are paid less than they would be worth on the free agent market. Market value for Hardy on a 1-year free agent deal putting up the year he did was about $20 million.

Ok on the money thing. What they have done each season is add up the total WAR of players on the free agent market and add up the total dollars paid to those players in that year. They divide that to figure out the average amount paid for 1 win above replacement level. Kapler was 1.2 wins above replacement level, and on average, teams pay $5.2 million for that kind of production. If people don't like the dollar figure, they should just ignore it. I've heard the argument that the dollar figure should just be looked at as ranking and for comparison and not as literal dollars, but that's not a good idea because the amount a baseball team pays for a win is different each year. So a 2002 3 WAR season is worth less than a 2008 3 WAR season. I've also seen people complain about the fact that about $5 mil per win is too much, but they're completely ignoring players in the first 6 years of service and only looking at how much free agents are worth with this column. And you also have to include the fact that players sacrifice money for long-term certainty, so the dollar number is like a 1-year deal fair value for the player last year.

I don't have a problem understanding this. Please stop insinuating that I do. By mocking the compilation of stats by saying this, you are making it seem like you don't understand it: I simply am not in tune with having to multiply by 2.5, put to the power of the wind/continental divide, doubled and then taken as the reciprocal On to this: It doesn't match. I will give you credit for the work, but you are losing points for having a different answer. Middle school math is a science, and there is always a single answer. This is why I claim they are using figures that are not publicized. Unlike how people keep incorrectly stating I think the methodology is proprietary, its what goes into the actual calculation that remains a mystery. Otherwise, we would all get the same numbers, right? I guess close isn't good enough for me to say you are dead on. If you go through my post and compare the numbers, the only discrepancy is in the offensive runs above average column. It's a 2-run difference, and I honestly don't know what would cause it. The conversion from wOBA to batting runs is difference from league average / 1.15 * plate appearances. I don't know why you're saying the numbers aren't publicized, every number in the WAR calculation is on the player's page. If you are above average and have had 600 PAs, you get 20 bonus points. Is that right? Again, you're showing that you don't quite understand exactly what we're measuring. Defense and offense are both compared to a league average player. If you added the offense, defense, and position adjustment the final measure would be WAA, wins above average, but there's 2 problems with that. First of all, a player that gets 100 plate appearances and hits well enough to be +3 runs on offense and average on defense is much less valuable than a player who gets 600 plate appearances and hits -5 runs below average and plays average defense. Secondly, average players are not available for free, and replacement level players are. Comparing a player's production to replacement level provides better context for his performance. So think of it this way: an exactly average hitter with a wOBA of .333 and defense+adjustment of exactly average who accumalted 600 plate appearances would be 0 wins above average. But he's 2 wins or 20 runs better than a replacement level player. If he's 10 runs below average total, he's still a 1-win player. If he's 4 wins above average, he's a 6-win player. If that same initial hitter-- .333 wOBA, average defense-- only got 300 plate appearances, he'd get +10 runs, so he's a 1-win player too. This is why WAR is cumulative and allows you to compare every player to each other.

I simply am not in tune with having to multiply by 2.5, put to the power of the wind/continental divide, doubled and then taken as the reciprocal to end up at the conclusion that Nyjer Morgan is more valuable than Ryan Braun. Its comical to me. What if you just divide the difference between wOBA and .333 by 1.15, multiply by plate appearances, then add that to defense, position, and +20 runs per 600 plate appearances. That's what the WAR formula is. It's not too complicated, it's like a middle school math formula. I would think the point is that the numbers should be the same. I'm showing you that Fangraphs doesn't have a magical WAR machine that spits out the values. I can do it entirely by hand.

Calculating how many wins above replacement level a player is isn't nearly as complicated as some of you might think. If you can tell me a player's wOBA (I hope everyone knows what wOBA is, if you don't it gives the average amount of runs produced per event, like homer, single, out, walk, etc compared to an average situation), UZR (which maybe isn't a very good indicator of how good of a defender a player is, but is a good indicator of how good of a defender the player was in the past year), amount of plate appearances, and position, it's not too hard to figure out their WAR. Heck, if you hate UZR for some reason, you can use any measure of how many runs above/below average the defender was compared to his positional peers. I'll do it by hand here quick to show that it's pretty simple. Mike Cameron is my example. I only used fangraphs to check the UZR and wOBA, I didn't look at the value section to show you I can do it by hand. If you really wanted me to I could do wOBA by hand if I knew the following things: PAs, HRs, 3B, 2B, 1B, BB. wOBA: .346 Plate Appearances: 628 UZR: 9.9 Position: CF, so adjustment of 2.5 for a full season Okay, so to convert wOBA to runs you subtract league average from Cam's wOBA. Average is .333 so we end up with .013. Divide that by 1.15 and multiply by plate appearances. That's ((.346-.333)/1.15 * 628) I get 7.1 runs above average. Add the UZR+Adjustment, which I'll give 2.5 assuming close to a full season of pt in center. So, finally, the replacement level adjustment. All of the measures so far compare to average, so we want to add a bonus for taking time that could've been played by a replacement level player. A replacement level is 20 runs below average over 600 plate appearances. Because it's cumulative, a player who racks up 600 PAs gets 20 runs. So an exactly average player in every other measure gets +20, which is defined as about average (a 2-win player). For Cam, he's over 20, He gets the 20 runs for 600 then I divided 28/600 and multiplied that by 20 again, which comes out to only about .9. So he gets 20.9 above replacement level. So to sum that up: 7.1 + 2.5 + 9.9 + 20.9 = 40.4 runs above a replacement level player. That converts to about 4.04 wins. Now I checked fangraphs, and their value says 43.0 runs above replacement, and 4.3 wins. So I was pretty close. Looks like the hitting is 2 runs different, don't know what would cause that. But the point is made. *(The positional adjustments were made by Tango and were formed by comparing players who moved positions over the years. This accounts for the fact that better defenders play center field than, say, left, so the average defender is better and provides more value.) *(Also, about defense. People tend to think that defense stats aren't reliable because you might see a -10, then a +5, and then a -5, and it doesn't seem like a stat that volatile could be reliable. It's a trick, kinda. First, you need to think of a full season of defense as about 200 plate appearances of offense. Then, remember that it's compared to average. So in comparison you could have a hitter with 3 sections of 200 PAs with wOBAs of .320, .360, and .340. Convert that to runs compared to average and it's about -5, +5, and +1. The way defensive stats are presented, as , makes them seem less reliable.)

Over 200 at bats, average fluctuates just as much as UZR-- and if you accept that based on opportunities it takes 3 years for accurate defensive data, you're looking at about 200 "at-bats" worth of defensive stats. Further, you're comparing to an average. So the average batting average is .260. If a guy hits .240, .280, and .260 over the first, second, and third set of 200 at-bats he's an average hitter for the season. Think of defense that way-- if a guy is -5, +5, 0 over three years, he's probably about average.

Realize though that Fangraphs WAR does not have a way of evaluating catcher defense. If you think Mauer is a +10 defensive catcher then he's #1. All catchers are just considered average.

FTJ the part you're missing about Lopez's "recent contract history" is that he was under team control all 3 of those years. He had to accept arbitration. The Cardinals didn't offer him arbitration last season, but those other three years are really irrelevant to your argument as he had no choice.

I do not agree with that either. It should be, "Relative to his position, JJ Hardy was the most valuable player on the team last year". I am a big stats guy so I love the fact you are using them, but you have to make sure you know they they mean. This isn't the 1st time I told you that either. I see where the argument is here. Playing Prince Fielder in centerfield and Braun on the mound would not make them worse at baseball, but they would be less valuable. In the same way, WAR depends on playing time. There are factors out of the control of the player. A player could be better than another and get injured and be less valuable. In the end, though, if you're going to determine value, you need to look at the position the player is capable of playing. Hardy played short 8 runs above average, and gets a 6 run bonus for playing there. In theory if he played third he would be higher above the average with a smaller positional bonus. I want to clear up the idea that we're just comparing him to shortstops, though. It's a metric that is totally unbiased. Hardy was worth more runs above a replacement player than Fielder or Braun were last year, and that makes him more valuable. You don't need the "relative to his position" clause in the sentence above.

I still don't think this thread totally understands the WAR concept. In reality, we are saying that Hardy was much more valuable than Fielder and about 2 wins more valuable than Braun last year. The wins can be compared from player to player. Braun and Fielder both contributed about 10 more runs hitting-wise than Hardy, but Hardy has the edge by about 25 runs on defense-- +8 compared to an average SS and 6 because short is tougher to play than left or first. Braun and Fielder both had negative defensive value because they were below average at their position and their positions were easier than shortstop. The "hitting runs" is in fact not being compared to position. It's compared to league average, all using wOBA, league average wOBA is .333. Hardy was more valuable than Braun or Fielder last year, and it wasn't particularly close. That's the beauty of WAR-- putting it into runs and wins means you can compare players across positions to decide who was better.

Using the baseball musings lineup analyzer, though it's not a perfect tool, it's pretty easy to see the contrast: 1.000 OBP leading off, .200/.350 hitters in the rest of the lineup: 3.736 runs per game Pujols hitting 3rd, .200/.350 hitters in the rest of the lineup: 2.530 runs per game If you're straight up comparing 2 hitters, just use their wOBA-- it's so easy to find at fangraphs. OPS is a nice quick measure that correlates pretty well to runs, but is it really that "sabermetric"? I wonder what Harold would think if you actually explained wOBA to him.