Reds Win the World Series thread

Originally posted by no1marauder
And as for "wild swings" even in that small sample you had two instances where the deviation from the Pythgorean prediction from one year to the next exceeded 5% (2011-2012 Reds, 2009-2010 Yankees). I'm guessing that is statistically significant.

Yes, it probably is significant.

I acknowledge the possibility that there are factors that allow teams to outplay their Pythagorean records other than luck. Bullpen? Maybe. Management? Perhaps. Leadership? unlikely.

But I have yet to see any of these factors proven; though if you wanted to do a study you could probably get it published in one of these geeky sabermetrics publications. What has been proven is that there's an excellent correlation between run differential and record and what is obvious to anyone following the game is that luck does have an enormous impact on baseball.

Are you familiar with the famous Voros McCracken study indicating that for pitchers, BABIP (batting average for ball in play) is largely luck?

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=878

Originally posted by sh76
Of course it's means something. The equation itself draws only on run differential, which you downplayed a little earlier and has been shown to predict almost precisely, in the long term, a team's record. That shows that there's an excellent correlation between run differential and wins and losses. If your supposition that run differential is not closely relate ...[text shortened]... like the sample was included in the historical data that was used to generate the equation.

I downplayed run differential as a measure of how good a team is. We have a perfectly good way to measure that; how many games they win. It's hard to imagine why someone would use a secondary measure with little predictive value when we already have a stat that measures the object of the game.

Originally posted by sh76
Yes, it probably is significant.

I acknowledge the possibility that there are factors that allow teams to outplay their Pythagorean records other than luck. Bullpen? Maybe. Management? Perhaps. Leadership? unlikely.

But I have yet to see any of these factors proven; though if you wanted to do a study you could probably get it published in one of these ge r ball in play) is largely luck?

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=878

I am aware of the claim and aware that it is nonsense.

EDIT: Here's an article explaining when BABIP differences aren't due mainly to "luck":

Fantasy owners familiar with the concept will quickly answer that it's a way to determine a hitter or pitcher's luck. That's true, as variances in a player's BABIP from the major league average could represent a certain degree of luck, either good or bad. But the common mistake many owners make is to assume that BABIP is the authority on luck in the game of baseball, and that the farther that a player's number was from that aforementioned major league average, the more or less lucky he had to have been.

That's simply not true.

Before we get to the reason, let's address another important question: Exactly what is the major league average for BABIP?

It varies from season to season, but in 2009, the major league average BABIP was .299. Generally speaking, it's about .300. It can, however, range by as many as five points (occasionally more) in either direction from that.

So, then, why can't it be assumed that a hitter with a .360 BABIP was extraordinarily lucky, while one with a .240 BABIP was especially unlucky, and in the case of a pitcher, that the opposite is true?

Making such an assumption also presumes that every baseball player is identical; that there is no such thing as a strikeout artist or command specialist, ground-ball or fly-ball pitcher, contact or power hitter. There are so many different types of baseball players nowadays, and every type of play has a varying degree of success.

An excellent way of putting it: Joel Pineiro had a .295 BABIP in 2009 and Andy Pettitte had a .297 BABIP, but does that necessarily mean that Pineiro was any luckier than Pettitte? No -- Pineiro generated ground balls on a higher percentage of balls in play than any pitcher in the game (59.0 percent) and line drives at the fourth-lowest rate (15.9 percent). Since a ground ball has a much greater chance of being converted into an out than a line drive, and a fly ball greater than a ground ball, Pineiro's BABIP should have been beneath the major league average. Pettitte, by comparison, allowed the 12th-highest line-drive rate (21.3 percent) and served up ground balls 41.7 percent of the time. His BABIP, actually, might have been a bit driven by good fortune.

It's also not only what type of hitter or pitcher a player is that factors into BABIP. What are some other things that have an impact?

Speed (applies to hitters): Naturally, the quicker the runner, the more likely he'll leg out infield grounders for hits, thereby helping his BABIP. Of the 25 players to amass at least 25 infield hits in 2009, only two had a BABIP beneath the major league average: Kazuo Matsui (28 infield hits, .285 BABIP) and Willy Taveras (28, .277). In addition, of the 14 players to attempt steals on at least 20 percent of their opportunities (data per Baseball-Reference.com), only one had a BABIP beneath the MLB average: Josh Anderson (25.6 percent steals rate, .280 BABIP).

Quality of contact (applies to both): The better wood a hitter gets on the ball, the more likely he's going to "hit 'em where they ain't," as Wee Willie Keeler once said. A high line-drive rate is one way to ensure a high BABIP, and to that end, of the 17 players who hit line drives on at least 22.5 percent of all balls in play, only Josh Willingham (.289) had a BABIP beneath the major league average. In fact, the other 16 all had BABIPs greater than .325. But here's another interesting fact: Inside Edge provides a statistic called "Well Hit Average," which measures the percentage of at-bats in which a hitter made solid contact. Of the top 25 hitters in that stat who also qualified for the batting title, 18 managed better-than-average BABIPs.

Now applying that to pitchers (working primarily with those who qualified for the ERA title in 2009), of the top 25 in "Well Hit Average" allowed, 14 surrendered BABIPs beneath the major league average. In addition, of the 25 pitchers to allow a line-drive rate of 18.0 percent or less, 17 managed beneath-league-average BABIPs.

Defense (applies to pitchers): The quality of a pitcher's defense might have a greater impact on BABIP than any other factor. The reasons are obvious: A shoddy defense means more batted balls drop in for singles, while an elite defense might steal a few plays that might otherwise have dropped in for hits. To illustrate that point, of the 10 pitchers with the lowest BABIP among those who also qualified for the ERA title in 2009, seven played for teams that ranked among the top 10 in the game in terms of Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR), according to FanGraphs. Four of the nine pitchers with the highest BABIP, by comparison, played for teams that ranked in the bottom 10 in UZR.

Does BABIP carry greater importance for either hitters or pitchers, or is it about as relevant a statistic for each?

It's actually a bit more relevant for pitchers than it is for hitters, and it's mainly because pitchers have inherently less control over the outcomes of individual plays than hitters. Once the ball leaves a pitcher's hand, its fate rests in the hands of the hitter, the defense, the weather, the ballpark, etc. A hitter, meanwhile, can use skill to help guide the ball, to a degree, to a specific spot, slightly increasing his chances of success. Look at BABIPs and you'll see the difference -- the highest recorded by a qualified pitcher in 2009 was .335 and the lowest was .254. Turning to hitters, 35 who qualified for the batting title managed a BABIP greater than .335, with David Wright's .394 tops. Three hitters had a lower BABIP than .254, with Ian Kinsler's .241 representing the worst in the game.

OK, so Kinsler is fast, yet he had a miserable BABIP. That means he's bound to hit for a higher average this year, right?

It's a distinct possibility, but that's another frequent mistake in evaluating BABIP numbers. They provide no guarantee of anything; rather they offer a way of identifying batting averages that might have been unrealistically high or low in the season in question. Kinsler's .241 BABIP means bad luck might have been largely responsible for his career-worst .253 batting average, but go back two years before that and he had a .282 BABIP yet batted only 10 points higher. Who's to say that bad luck can't strike him again in 2010, or that his potential for improvement is all that significant? Kinsler might simply be a .270 hitter at his best.

Always remember that any insights you draw from BABIP are guidelines, specifically designed to help you understand the meaning behind things like batting average, ERA and WHIP. They keep you from pitfalls like misinterpreting Kinsler's low batting average as eroding skills, or Wright's ability to maintain a .300-plus batting average if he continues to hit 10 homers and strike out 140 times a year.

What, then, are the fairest conclusions we can draw from BABIP numbers?

The final big gaffe people make -- even people most familiar with BABIP -- is failing to put a player's numbers into perspective. Individual players, over time, build established track records in the category that tend to remain somewhat consistent. Comparing a player's number in the category to those of past seasons might identify outliers -- seasons that vary enough from his career or recent-years' BABIP numbers to indicate the possible presence of good or bad luck.

The other thing fantasy owners can and should do: Break down the player's BABIP by batted ball type. Baseball-Reference.com is an excellent source for this, providing statistics for all players broken down by ground balls, fly balls, line drives and bunts, including BABIPs. Assuming enough of a sample size for a player in any of those groupings, any extreme variance from the major league averages might indicate luck at play. (That is, if there's not another obvious explanation, such as an especially good or bad defense or a spacious or bandbox ballpark.)

Here are those 2009 average BABIPs, but this time broken down by batted ball type:

Ground balls: .237
Fly balls: .138
Line drives: .724
Bunts: .376

Break down BABIPs? Why do I have to do all that work?

Good news: You don't. Didn't think I'd leave you merely with a primer, but no in-depth analysis of 2009 statistics, did you? Here's where you can see a full breakdown of last season's BABIP numbers, including players who were seemingly the luckiest or unluckiest in the category.

In order to help fantasy owners better identify such candidates, I've introduced the concept of expected BABIP to the analysis. It's no new concept, but is one that helps put the player's actual number in the category into perspective. Opinions on the proper formula for expected BABIP vary -- some argue you can just add 10 percent to a player's line-drive rate, which seems arbitrary to me -- but I've found that the best ones calculate the major league average BABIPs by batted ball type, multiplied by the player's batted-ball percentages.

For example: Ground balls times .237, plus fly balls times .138, plus line drives times .724, plus bunts times .376 (GB X .237) + (FB X .138) + (LD X .724) + (BUNT X .376).

That's another handy tool you might consider for reference while mining your way through the challenging task of BABIP analysis.

Before we close, however, remember one important rule: BABIP can never, and should never, be regarded as the driving force behind your draft-day preparations. It's one of many tools that can help you be successful, but it's not the perfect tool, much the way you should never draft a fantasy team solely off a list of contract-year players, pitchers who throw 100 mph or players aged exactly 27 years. These are all factors for your consideration -- not sole decision-makers.

But a valuable, underrated (and too-often misused) f...

Originally posted by no1marauder
I am aware of the claim and aware that it is nonsense.

EDIT: Here's an article explaining when BABIP differences aren't due mainly to "luck":

Fantasy owners familiar with the concept will quickly answer that it's a way to determine a hitter or pitcher's luck. That's true, as variances in a player's BABIP from the major league average could represen ...[text shortened]... errated (and too-often misused) f...

LMAO

You guys are funny.
Do they give extra credit in the batting average if you made a "hard out" instead of a
"soft out"

Do fly outs count more than ground outs?

Do bloop singles count less than line drive singles?

Originally posted by no1marauder
I downplayed run differential as a measure of how good a team is. We have a perfectly good way to measure that; how many games they win. It's hard to imagine why someone would use a secondary measure with little predictive value when we already have a stat that measures the object of the game.

You use secondary numbers to correct for luck and to get a better predictive value. Otherwise, we'd just measure pitchers and goalies and quarterbacks by their wins as well. That's the same reason we have numbers like OW%, Runs Created, UZR, etc. etc.

Originally posted by no1marauder
Joey Votto has a .357 career BABIP. Is he really, really lucky every year or does he he generally hit the ball harder than the average MLer?

As the article you cited said, BABIP is more a function of luck for pitchers than for hitters. This has been assumed by sabermatricians for years. It's largely the same reason the strikeouts are a huge stat for pitchers, but not for hitters: Strikeouts minimize the pitcher's susceptibility to bad luck on balls hit in play, while hitters have more control over the balls put in play.

In any case, nobody every said that a pitcher's BABIP was 100% luck. Mariano Rivera has consistently posted low BABIPs because of his cutter and pitchers like the old Chein Minh Wang, who threw a hard sinker, tend to post lower BABIPs. But as McCraken points out, the enormous variations from year to year by pitchers who post similar K and HR numbers points to a strong luck elements in BABIP.

Originally posted by sh76
You use secondary numbers to correct for luck and to get a better predictive value. Otherwise, we'd just measure pitchers and goalies and quarterbacks by their wins as well. That's the same reason we have numbers like OW%, Runs Created, UZR, etc. etc.

Apples and oranges. Measuring individual players for their individual skills is vastly different from measuring a TEAM for how good the TEAM is.

Originally posted by sh76
As the article you cited said, BABIP is more a function of luck for pitchers than for hitters. This has been assumed by sabermatricians for years. It's largely the same reason the strikeouts are a huge stat for pitchers, but not for hitters: Strikeouts minimize the pitcher's susceptibility to bad luck on balls hit in play, while hitters have more control over t ...[text shortened]... year by pitchers who post similar K and HR numbers points to a strong luck elements in BABIP.

In 2003, Tom Tippett largely debunked McCracken's (though giving McCracken credit for bringing up the issue) claim that differences in pitcher's BABIP was almost entirely "luck". http://web.archive.org/web/20040208104252/http:/www.diamond-mind.com/articles/ipavg2.htm

Excerpts:

More importantly, McCracken asserted that pitchers have almost no control over balls in play. If he's right, we would expect to see essentially random values for the career rates of in-play hits, especially for net in-play hits relative to the team baseline.

But we also found meaningful differences in the number of hits allowed on balls in play. In other words, a large number of pitchers consistently demonstrated the ability to limit the number of those hits. Their influence on these outcomes isn't as great as it is on the defense-independent stats, but it is real, and it is large enough to be important.

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In a sample of 351 pitchers with at least 6000 career balls in play, more than 12% of them posted results that would happen less than 1% of the time by chance. And that understates the case, too, because you get to keep pitching if you're that much better than the league, but you usually don't make it to 6000 balls in play if you're that much worse than the league. If one end of the distribution hadn't been truncated by job losses, approximately 20% of those pitchers would have fallen outside the range that can be explained by chance.

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We could go on and do a lot more pitchers, but I think we've seen enough to make the point that it's not too hard to find examples where these in-play averages appear to be anything but random. In other words, this is highly persuasive evidence that these pitchers did indeed have the ability to prevent hits on balls in play.

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Even if a pitcher has less influence on in-play averages than on walks and strikeouts, that doesn't necessarily mean that in-play outcomes are less important. Nearly three quarters of all plate appearances result in a ball being put in play. Because these plays are much more frequent, small differences in these in-play hit rates can have a bigger impact on scoring than larger differences in walk and strikeout rates.

Originally posted by no1marauder
In 2003, Tom Tippett largely debunked McCracken's (though giving McCracken credit for bringing up the issue) claim that differences in pitcher's BABIP was almost entirely "luck". http://web.archive.org/web/20040208104252/http:/www.diamond-mind.com/articles/ipavg2.htm

Excerpts:

More importantly, McCracken asserted that pitchers have almost no contro ave a bigger impact on scoring than larger differences in walk and strikeout rates.

All that shows is that a pitcher's BABIP is not 100% luck, which of course I conceded earlier. There are meaningful differences between the results and actual results, but there are also unexplainable random results that indicate a luck factor. That was McCraken's point as , AFAIK, the leading sabermatricians still subscribe to that basic point.

Edit: The last line concedes that the pitcher has less control over balls in play than on other outcomes, thereby conceding that luck is a factor.

Originally posted by no1marauder
Apples and oranges. Measuring individual players for their individual skills is vastly different from measuring a TEAM for how good the TEAM is.

A team's performance is made of individual performances. This is especially true in baseball where there is virtually no "teamwork."

Originally posted by shortcircuit
LMAO

You guys are funny.
Do they give extra credit in the batting average if you made a "hard out" instead of a
"soft out"

Do fly outs count more than ground outs?

Do bloop singles count less than line drive singles?

Of course not, but if you're looking to predict the future or to determine who is really a "better" team, you need to isolate the variables that are least susceptible to the influence of luck. This is common sense.

Old style blowhards will tell you that the team that wins is inherently better and that when equal teams play it's the team with more "heart" or "leadership" wins. That is generally baloney. Though it may make some fans or management uncomfortable to admit, luck is an enormous factor in baseball. Looking as stats that correct for luck to the greatest extent possible is the best way to determine which player or team is truly best.

Originally posted by sh76
A team's performance is made of individual performances. This is especially true in baseball where there is virtually no "teamwork."

Then a better "predictor" would be totalling individual WARs. Pythagoreans are just as much an aggregate measure as wins, but are a secondary one. Using them instead of wins to measure how good a team is spurious.

Originally posted by sh76
All that shows is that a pitcher's BABIP is not 100% luck, which of course I conceded earlier. There are meaningful differences between the results and actual results, but there are also unexplainable random results that indicate a luck factor. That was McCraken's point as , AFAIK, the leading sabermatricians still subscribe to that basic point.

Edit: The la ...[text shortened]... ss control over balls in play than on other outcomes, thereby conceding that luck is a factor.

"Luck" is incorrect terminology. ALL results in baseball are generated by human action; there are no random results.

Originally posted by sh76
Of course not, but if you're looking to predict the future or to determine who is really a "better" team, you need to isolate the variables that are least susceptible to the influence of luck. This is common sense.

Old style blowhards will tell you that the team that wins is inherently better and that when equal teams play it's the team with more "heart" or ...[text shortened]... reatest extent possible is the best way to determine which player or team is truly best.

So other teams should hire a black cat to walk across Joey Votto's path so he'll stop being so damn lucky?

Saying that "luck is an enormous factor in baseball" is quite different from showing that it is.