rluzinski

So, EqA is basically the linear weight values of baseball events per PA? I've never bothered to learn BP stats. To be honest, they seem kinda married to their own, outdated metrics. For instance, their defensive metrics are showing their age. Better ones use PBP data now (unless they do now, too). That and the whole having to pay to play.

I know he plays deep, but can you find out how he was ranked before he injured himself? I haven't bought the book, unfortunetely. Someone here must have, however. Jenkins has ALWAYS played deep, however, so I wasn't suprised by that stat. Would be interesting to see it broken down by time of year, though.

I think you need to be really careful when you look at Capuano. Look at his last 6 starts compared to the rest of his year and I think he gives a bit of a false indicator because they overworked him late. That's probably a fair point, but how much did it effect his overall numbers? Towards the end of the season, his K rate actually improved, while his walk rate turned horrible. He also gave up a lot of HRs his last few stats, mainly because he was giving up a higher percentage of fly balls. Given Capuano's pick off move, I suspect he's always going to have a LOB% above what is to be expected. It will probably come down some, but that's definitely an X-factor in his favor. Hard to argue with that either. It's easy enough to calculate his LOB%, negating pickoffs, to see if it's reasonable then. EDIT: I updated my asessment of him, based on your comments. Appreciate it.

Instead of clogging up the WOAH SOLVDD thread with my stat junk, I'll just start a new thread... PITCHERS Metric Toolbox: FIP: Fielding Independent Pitching tries cut out the effects of defense and luck from a pitcher?s ERA. Equation is: http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a345/rluzinski/FIP_equation.gif xFIP: Similar to FIP except HR is normalized using the pitcher?s FB rate and adjusted for home park. BABIP: Batting Average of Balls in Play; The number of batted balls that safely falls in for a hit (not including home runs). Much of the variance in a pitcher?s BABIP is a result of the defense behind him and luck. LOB% : Percentage of batters a pitcher leaves on base. ExLOB% : Expected LOB%, based on xFIP. The exact equation is: http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a345/rluzinski/exLOB_equation.gif Derrick Turnbow Prediction: ERA of 3.25 in 2006 [b]2005 Stats:[/b] ERA: 1.74 FIP: 3.18 xFIP: 3.40 BABIP: .259 LOB%: 88.1% ExLOB%: 74.8% Notes: Turnbow's BABIP was a little low (compared to team BABIP of about .300) but his nice slider might be the reason why. His LOB% from 2005 is unsustainable, however. He Would have had about a 3.0 ERA with his expected LOB%. Dave Bush Prediction: Will be a solid #4/#5 pitcher Bush has a slightly below average K rate but, like Sheets, has a very low walk rate. Out of the 344 active pitchers with at least 200 innings pitched, Bush has the 16th lowest walk rate, at 2.08 BB/9. For comparison, Sheets is ranked 9th at 2.0 BB/9. [b]2005 Stats:[/b] ERA: 4.49 FIP: 4.79 xFIP: 4.71 Notes: Last year?s FIP has an NL equivalent of about 4.40. Has a 4.15 ERA in 2 seasons in the American league (NL equivalent of 3.75). Only 26, so has a lot of time to improve. Chris Capuano Prediction: ERA of 4.25 in 2006 [b]2005 Stats:[/b] ERA: 3.99 FIP: 4.65 xFIP: 4.69 LOB%: 77.3% exLOB%: 70.5% Notes:Capuano improved his HR rate from 2004 (to league average) but his K/BB was actually worse. Furthermore his 18-12 record last year was primarily a result of great run support and good luck. Capuano had the 8th highest LOB% among qualified pitchers but did have his pickoffs to help raise that number. Adjusting for his pickoffs, Capuano's LOB% becomes 72.9%. That's still 2.5% above league average, which translates into about 6 extra earned runs and an ERA of 4.23. That's about where I see him for 2006, along with a .500 win/loss record. In Capuano's defense, he trailed off towards the end of the year, and a heavy workload may have been the culrit. While his K rate increased (scroll down a bit), so did his walk and HR rate (primarily because he was giving up more fly balls). 219 innings may have simply been 40 innings too many him last year. With a healthy Sheets, Capuano may see his innings reduced, which might allow his numbers stay strong through September. EDIT: Updated information based on comments. Thanks. HITTERS Metric Toolbox: prOPS: Predicted OPS tries to cut through the luck of a batter?s OPS; Uses 6 main factors: K/PA, BB/PA, HBP/PA, HR/AB, GB/FB, LD% Bill Hall Prediction: .800 OPS 2005 Stats OPS: .837 prOPS : .753 Notes: As I?ve pointed out before, Hall had the 4th highest prOPS over performance in 05? and the 13th highest since 02?. Most if the difference was from the 60 point difference between his SLG and prSLG Why be optimistic about Hall at all? Hall?s approach looked much improved in 2005. He seemed more patient and selective at the plate. This seems to be supported by his pitches/PA numbers: [b]Year Pitches/PA[/b] 2004: 3.80 2005: 4.16 3.8 pitches/PA is above average; 4.16 is crazy patient. He also reduced his strikeouts while increasing his walk rate slightly. Furthermore, at only 26 years and with last year being the first time Hall has had any consistent playing time in majors, it would be unfair to not have some optimism for Hall Geoff Jenkins Prediction: Will continue to be valuable defensively ? ?Fielding Bible? by John Dewan has Geoff Jenkins ranked as the best RFer in the NL last year, in terms of recoding more outs than expected. ? Dave Pinto of Baseballmusings.com created a defensive metric called PMR. Jenkins saved 6 runs over average last year, according to it. ? One of the highest hold% in last 3 years. ? Has thrown out 5 runners at home in the last 3 years. Again, he was one of the best in the league at doing so. J.J Hardy Prediction: Will have a break out year OPS: .711 prOPS: .748 Second Half: Normally its statistical folly to ignore bad parts of a player?s season, but Hardy is a different matter. After being benched for 4 games in late May, Hardy completely changed his approach at the plate. He decided to be more aggressive, like he was in the minors. The change was dramatic: http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a345/rluzinski/hardy_splits.gif Before May 24th, he had an excellent contact rate and walk rate, but his power was non-existent. After changing his approach, his contact and walk rate lowered but his power numbers increased dramatically. These changes can be further illustrated by tracking his BIP types as the year progressed (complements of fangraphs.com) http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7391/569/400/balltypelegend.0.jpg http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7391/569/400/hardyballtypes.jpg The increase in power was no fluke. More flyballs and more line drives equal more power. While Hardy had to concede less contact with his more aggressive approach, he more than made up for it in just about every other area. If Hardy can continue in 2006 where he left off in 2005, he's going to have a phenomenal year.

can i sned you my email and you can send it to me?? Shoulda gone to the open house... you could have had 10 if you wanted http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

Can't we just play NL only or something?

Couldn't you also say that luck may have played a part in that, as well? He was making so much contact and got so few hits, and that luck turning around, coupled with his more pull-happy approach, turned him into Derek Jeter for the second half? No doubt luck played a part. Was are only talking about 100 AB pre-hardy breakout. Still, it's obvious the difference in the quality of contact and the numbers back that up.

but J.J.'s numbers went through the roof when he started striking out more. I'm not saying the strikeouts helped, I think it was just a byproduct of being more aggresive and trying to drive the ball, instead of dinking and dunking the ball around the infield. I'm going to talk about that a bit in the next WOAHH SOLVD.

I'm sorry but Weeks just looks silly on defense.

Wow, Schroeder is talking about what leadership is... and I'm agreeing with him.

The flyball and groundball thing is interesting. FB pitchers have lower BABIP but since HRs are pretty much a function of FBs, GB pitchers have the benefit of giving up less HRs.

If you are interested in a Carlos Lee bobblehead doll, email me with your address: rluzinski@hotmail.com

I'm in.

Pitchers DO control BABIP to an extent. It's just that team defense and dumb luck do a lot more. As a result, it's usually just more reliable to use team or league BABIP.

Hardball Times does. They call it GPA.

Russ, don't make typos when dealing with graphs and the like, as it makes the rest of us feel like we're taking crazy pills and can't understand the graph. I know you just did it to confuse me. Sorry, I make mistakes like that all the time. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

Do you mean "walks and strikeouts" or do you mean actually counting strikes? Strikeouts http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif Had too much cheap beer last night. I'm not a huge fan of WHIP, no. Like end says, it depends if you want a record of how a pitcher did or want to predict what he WILL do.

I'm a huge fan of xFIPS (hardballtimes.com has it). It looks only at walks and strikes and estimates a pitcher's ERA from it. A lot of pitcher stats vary significantly (HRs and BABIP (batting average of balls in play)). Walks and Ks are pretty solid. I like to use fangraphs.com to look at a pitcher's stats. it really helps to see how their stats change from year to year. HR rate jumps all over the place.

I'm a cheap bastard so I always drink cheap beer. Natural Light has been the drink of choice lately. the wife got confused and bought natural ice. Tastes horrible but you'd be suprised the difference between 4.2% and 5.9& alcohol.

The relative value of OBP and SLG was talked in this thread a bit: LINK

Hardball Times has a nice glossary: LINK The "TB" stat is wrong, as has been mentioned before. As for gauging OPS, to find the average stats for each position in 2005, go HERE. To get a sense of good and bad OPS's, just use the sortable ESPN stats. For Qualified players in 2005: Best OPS Worst OPS Best OBP A bad OBP is .310 or less

Actually that is bad statisitcs. GIDP assumes a man is on first. Better teams have more men on base hence more opportunities for GIDP. You beat me to it.

You can't have a chance to ground out if you don't make contact, so therefore I think making contact is better than striking out. What you quoted and what you responded to aren't the same thing at all. There continues to be a huge amount of confusion over what's even being argued. These arguments always start with a comment along these lines: "Yeh, he hits for average and power, but he strikes out too much." The inevitable reponse is, "He can strike out all he wants if he's going to keep maching the ball." The logic is simply that if you conpare two players and each have a .300/.350/.500 line but one has 50 more Ks, the difference is marginal. The K hater then responds with,"But if he didn't strikeout as much he'd be a better player." While true, there's two problems with that notion: A. One can never simply trade strikeouts without losing something else, be it walks, power or both. Ask Hardy. B. If that player could theoretically K less and it theoretically raised his stats, hen the two players wouldn't be equal anyway! The argument from the "Ks don't matter" camp is that a strikeout is the same as any other OUT. That's it. Arguing about what might happen if a player who strikes out alot tried to make more contact is a completely seperate issue.

You can define contact rate a number of ways. I choose to use (AB-K)/PA, although most would probably do it as a function of total AB. Anyway, doing it my way there was a positive correlation between BA and contact rate but it was very weak.

If Rivera made the roster, Ned would need to put him 7th. If he's hitting 8th, the power does him no good at all when he's getting pitched around. If his power causes pitchers to put him on base for free, I wouldn't see that as a waste at all. I'd rather start an inning off with Clark as opposed to the pitcher.