rluzinski

You would suggest using real-time postseason odds as well then? Yes. That's what i was trying to suggest, although I see I didn't make that clear. What if a player adds .25 WPA, but the team loses and drops 4%? Like WPA, he would still get credited with whatever percent gain a win would have raised his team's playoff odds. What we'd almost need is a kind of LI designed for the importance of each game, rather than each AB. I am suggesting weighing WPA by the change in playoff odds per win or loss. I thought coolstandings.com used to give that, although I couldn't find it with a quick glance. In addition to +WPA, You'd subtract any negative WPA ABs as well, proportional to how much a loss drop's the team's odds. For example, a team enters a game and if they win they get +4% PPA, and if they lose they are expected to get -6%. So the "LI" for the game is the spread of 10%. If a player nets a .25 WPA in the game, he gets .25 times the spread of 10%, for .25 PPA, regardless if they win or lose. The concept of LI is supposed to adjust for opportunity, so I don't think that's exactly analogous (definitely not an expert on the subject, however). Regardless, the MVP is the exact opposite of caring about adjusting for opportunity. The best batter in the league has no chance to win the MVP on a 60 win team, so clearly it's very dependent on things outside of the control of the batter. If coolstandings does provide the delta playoff odds, fangraphs provides WPA by PA. It would just be matter of combining the two.

We need a graph of team payroll vs winning%, so people appreciate just how much cold hard cash plays into the equation.

These kind of lists always seem to be centered around expectations vs. results. Is that true of this as well?

It would be kind of neat to just use a player's WPA for each game, weighted by how much that win changed their playoff odds. Say a player hit a home run in a game that increased the odds of winning by 25% and that game raised his teams chances of making the post season by 4%, He'd get .01 PPA. I assume that's the way you'd like to do it if it was easy to automate?

How much is Oswalt even worth in a trade? He might be a 3.75 ERA at this point in his career and is under contract for: 2010: $15 2011: $16 2012: $16 (option with $2 buyout) He's getting paid about what he's worth to an average team. It would still take some talent to motivate the Astros to trade him, of course. But if it took McGahee, Hardy and $15 mil to get him, I don't think that's a move worth making. Melvin is going to have to do much better to make the Brewers into a legit contender in 2010

I would be surprised if the Braves didn't pick up Hudson's option. I would also be surprised if Hudson didn't void the option and test free agency. But he'll be 34 and a significant injury risk though, so perhaps 2/$25 would do it. Looper's money could pay 20% of it, I guess. My point is, Looper isn't even average but $5 mil get's you nothing in this league. Chump change. That's almost utility infielder type money. I hope they have a better option than Looper at $5.5 mil but I'm not sure they will. Either way, I don't think it's going to determine whether the Brewers can get their hands on a sub 4 ER starting pitcher.

The Brewers should pool there money together for someone who at least has a chance to be good, like Tim Hudson. Hudson has only made 5 starts this year, yet is still worth more WAR than each of Looper, Bush, and Suppan. What kind of contract do you think he's going to get?

Berkman, 2009: Marcel Projection: .289/.392/.523/.915 Actual: .270/.397/.504/.900 Looks to me that he did what was expected. The reality is, Ed Wade constructed a team that projected to be below average and they are below average. They've been outscored by 90 runs, so they are kind of lucky to be only 9 games under. I don't think Cooper is a good manager but he never had a realistic chance.

If Melvin tells Macha that Gamel is his starting thirdbasmen, then he will be. I don't think Macha has to leave to make it so. A forth option is to move Gamel to a starting corner OF spot. There's a real chance that's going to happen anyway. I would be more comfortable with that option if McGehee would be better defensively, though. He's been pretty bad this year but doesn't he have the reputation of being a good defender? Offensively, if all we knew about McGehee was his stats from this year, we'd project him to be somewhere between his current stats and a league average hitter. We certainly wouldn't expect him to repeat his 2009. I don't know what the right choice is but if McGehee isn't starting somewhere next year (with the Brewers or someone else), Melvin probably didn't utilize his full value.

Well that explains why Macha didn't know about Gamel's splits against LHP in the minors. Oh, wait..... Macha is guilty of that AND thinking either split tells us anything valuable.

Money Good Personel Moves LaRussa How would you weight these, in terms of credit for a good run? Here's my wag: Money: 10 Personel: 10 LaRussa: 1 He's barely worth mentioning,in comparison.

They are run well and have more money to spend than anyone in the division but the clueless Cubs. It doesn't hurt that they have the best player in the league signed at well below market. I think team salary is not being mentioned nearly enough here, however. They've had a salary over $80 mil for something like 7-8 years.

I mentioned it would be nice if they could incorporate qualitative data (such as game context) to come up with a more meaningful metric. Again, game context is irrelevant if we are trying to estimate a defenders true defensive skill (his ability to convert balls in play into outs). It's very meaningful metric when you appreciate that.

If Patterson was a good hitter and struck out a lot, I wouldn't care how many times he K'd in the leadoff spot. Strikeouts matter in so far as how to affects a player's projection. though. Patterson has consistently had an above average K rate his whole career. That's fine if you are doing other things well to compensate for it. Patterson also has a below average walk rate and average power. I just don't get why the Brewers are wasting their time with him, much less batting HIM LEAD OFF. It's an embarrassment.

wOBA on Fangraphs includes SB and CS. I hate that there is multiple versions of the same stat and they have the same name. Tango is the inventor of wOBA, so I feel compelled to defer to his version. I'm not a big fan of using an average value of a SB and CS anyway. The only reason we can use the context neutral run values of the batting events is because there is little correlation between game situation and batting event (players don't really show a skill to hit a single when they want, vs. a HR. Maybe SF but it's pretty weak I think.). A SB attempt is completely up to the hitter, though. And depending on the attempt, it can either be a no brainer to try and steal or completely stupid. For instance, here are the run values of a SB and CS with a runner at 2B and 2 out: SB: .05 runs CS: -.34 runs The break even point for justifying an attempt is about 88%. And if you have a power hitter up, the breakeven point is even higher. Now, should Braun really get credit for a half a run for stealing 3B with 2 outs and Fielder up? And for the later half of the game, we are more concerned about WP anyway. I think it's better to calculate the value of base running separately, which is how I see a lot of analysts do it these days. Serious question... why are BB weighted differently than HBP? HBP's occur in mostly random situations. Even walks recorded as NIBB aren't COMPLETELY random. I believe that's what is slightly pulling down their value. I'm wondering why wOBA includes RBOE when it doesn't have much to do with the batter's ability. There is a significant variance between different player's RBOE error rates, suggesting it is a skill to some degree. I'm also wondering why IBBs aren't included. That's a very good question. Here is a very interesting discussion on the topic (start with post #21): http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/rob_neyer_touts_woba/#21 Basically, they treat it as a neutral event (why would the manager call for it, otherwise). It neither counts in the numerator or denominator.

What really saddens me is the fact that Corey Patterson is taking up a 40-man spot while Heether is on the verge of heading out the door. Makes no sense to me. Patterson getting even one start at leadoff for the Brewers is embarrassing, IMO.

Maybe gaffes that actually cost teams the W should be weighted heavier in the almighty UZR stat. While I agree that Escobar's current UZR is meaningless, the above comment strongly suggests that you don't understand what UZR is trying to measure in the first place. UZR isn't trying to measure the influence a particular player's defense has had on his team winning or losing over a certain period. It's trying to estimate the true defensive talent of that player. Game context is irrelevant. As far as I'm concerned, there's no quantitative data on Escobar's defense, that would help us estimate his true defensive talent. I think X would actually agree with that. As a result, I am relying exclusively on scouting information. If he's expected to be an above average defender by the people who's seen him play, that's our best guess. It would take a couple of years of a low UZR before I would feel compelled to significantly alter that opinion. Of course, Hardy has already set the bar very high for defense, so I'm not prepared to just assume that Escobar should be expected to translate a higher percentage of balls into outs.

I agree with your opinion about Escobar's bat. I just don't think you are adjusting for position. The average SS doesn't even sniff a .800 OPS. Since 2006, here's their approximate line: .270/.330/.405/.745 Escobar could hit below that and his (projected) above average defense could still make him an average SS overall. And an average SS is still worth a lot on the open market. Not sure what we should expect from Escobar offensively next year. .320/.400/.720 maybe. At league min and with good to great defense, that's not bad. Of course, he shouldn't lead off but I'm sure the Brewers won't be able to resist...

This question is impossible to answer without knowing what the Brewers could get for trading either player. The value of a player equals his expected performance minus salary. While Hardy still projects to be the superior player right now, he's also getting paid more and is only Brewer property for 2 more years. Let's say the following represents the value for each player (making up numbers): Year...... Escobar / Hardy 2010..... $9mil (ave SS getting min) / $9mil (1 win above ave getting $5 mil) 2011..... $10mil / $9mil 2012..... $11mil/ $0 2013..... $8mil (1 win above ave getting paid 40% of his free agent value) 2014..... $5 mil (paid 60%) 2013..... $3 mil (80%) Using these ficticious numbers, Escobar is worth $46 mil in a trade, Hardy, $18 mil. If you can only get $30 mil of talent in return for Escobar, you'd almost be forced to get whatever you can for Hardy and keep Escobar.

wOBA doesn't take into account SB or CS (unless I'm misunderstanding you): wOBA = (0.72xNIBB + 0.75xHBP + 0.90x1B + 0.92xRBOE + 1.24x2B + 1.56x3B + 1.95xHR) / PA I don't know why people think there are some hidden value of a certain batting event that no one has ever thought about. The weights above are the average value of every batting event. sometimes walks advance a runner and sometimes it doesn't. I know, preaching to the choir.

I think everyone in the media should write a lot of articles and blog posts about how terrible it is for a player to be upset about having to wait another year to be a free agent. maybe see mean things about him on sports radio. The fans will eat that up!

I think that dollar amunt is absurd, since only FA's see it...pre-arby and even arby eligible guys get far less. It's a metric that attempts to gauge the value of free agent production, based on what teams have been willing to spend for it in the past. The disconnect here is that teams would use a projection to determine expected future production. 5 months of production is going to have a lot more variance, so you are going to naturally see very large numbers at times. And there's a lot of uncertainly in those defensive metrics, so one year's worth of data isn't worth much on its own. I've heard the creator of UZR say that 3 years of UXR is about equal to 1 year of hitting stats, so that has to be kept in mind. Of course, Hardy's UZR the last four years has been +6, +15, +8 and +8, so I don't think that +8 from last year is especially inflated. Is tango's method (which fangraphs mostly corpied) perfect? I can't imagine. I think it's on the right track, however and I think it still has a lot of value. Most of the criticism I see being offered up here is based on a misunderstanding of how it works and what it's trying to do. The truth is, it's a worthless number, because half the teams have a payroll far less than what it would cost to put together a playoff team. I think we could both agree that constructing a playoff team with all free agents would be an expensive proposition. If it can't be calculated easily, it's worthless anyway. Al, people aren't exactly using slide rules and trig tables these days. If it's simple enough that a guy can code it to automatically update on his website every day, it's probably not too all that hard to calculate. And nothing about it is a black box, as far as I know. It's all out there for people to read about for free, if they cared enough to.

All thirty teams can't have a winning record. All thirty teams can't make the playoffs. It's a zero sum game. You could have the 30 best GMs ever assembled in the history of baseball and about 15 of them won't even have a winning record. There's just so much that has to go into objective GM evaluation than win/loss record and playoff appearances. Melvin assembled a team that projected to be about an 83 win team for 2009. It was never projected to be a playoff team and I don't see anything that Melvin obviously could have done in the off season to the add 7 wins to have made the Brewers into a legitimate playoff team going into 2009. That's a huge upgrade. Even if you cheat with 20/20 hinsite (which many fans are quiet fond of doing) it's very difficult to figure out where to get that 7 wins from. Of course, the team that projected to have 83 wins is closer to finishing with 78-79 wins. Even though much of that was caused by injury, I think that's the one area Melvin deserves a significant amount of blame. #6, 7 and 8 options for the starting rotation has just been terrible. I don't think Melvin is one of the best GMs ever but I'm not convinced that if replaced, the Brewers would have a great chance of finding an upgrade. Very similar to the whole Yost situation. Even if we think Melvin is just average, it's going to be very tough to pluck an above average GM out of thin air. It's very easy to envision Melvin being replaced by an inferior GM.

It's not win shares and if you want to criticise it, shouldn't you familiarize youself with tit's methodology first? There's plenty about the methodology that can be argued against. Go to fangraphs.com and learn about it. Make an honest effort to objectively evaluate it. And don't go into it looking to simply validate what you think you already know. Otherwise, it's a waste of time.

Cam has had an above average walk rate his entire career. I guess that means pitchers recognized his awesomeness long ago and have been pitching around him for years? I know it was commonly accepted 25 years ago that a walk represented a failure by the pitcher but educated baseball fans should know it's a lot more complicated than that. Cam is a patient hitter, who's willing to get deep into counts. It results in a lot of walks, K's and pitches that he can drive. It isn't pretty but it works. And as long as his defense is still above average (even if it isn't gold-glove caliber anymore), he has a lot of value. Will it be in the Brewers best interest to retain him next year? Without knowing all the variables, it's impossible to say. It's possible, though.