It's Time To Stop Using BABIP
by Dan Lewis on Jul 14, 2010 10:10 PM EDT
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PrintHi. I'm Dan. I thought about putting this on Beyond the Boxscore, but I "live" here. This post really isn't about BABIP -- it's about sabermetrics generally, and where we're going wrong. Please read the whole thing before vilifying me. If you still feel like vilifying me afterward, go watch this. It will make you feel better.
A week or so ago, the Mets award winning television team (well, the Gary and Ron parts) started talking sabermetrics -- specifically, BABIP. They tore it a new one, and for the most part, it's because they didn't understand what BABIP meant, or did, or... whatever. It doesn't matter.
What matters is that they talked about BABIP. Which is horrible, because they're going to botch it 100% of the time. And that's our fault, not theirs. It's time to stop using it.
By itself, batting average on balls in play means nothing. It tells us how often a player gets a hit during the at bats when he doesn't homer or strikeout, which in and of itself is worthless. We know better. Gary and Ron know better. BABIP doesn't differentiate between lineouts and popouts. It treats a double in the gap the same as a bloop single. Gary and Ron know it, and they laugh at our geekiness. We don't care how hard a guy hits a ball. We're nerds and the numbers don't tell us that. Literally:
Gary: Conversely, if a pitcher has a particularly low batting average on balls in play, they like to tell you it’s going to rise eventually. Well, to me that doesn’t make any sense. Certain guys hit the ball harder than other guys hit it. Certain pitchers induce more groundballs or more weakly hit balls than others. That’s part of what you’re trying to do. Am I totally off base with that?
Ron: No I totally agree with you, I think that for the average hitter, to have a high average putting balls in play, it’s probably because they do have some lucky hits. But certain hitters, like [David] Wright, hit the ball hard almost all the time.
Of course, we know it too. We measure line drive rates and stuff like that. We have xBABIP! Yeah, go us! And no, we don't differentiate between the bloop single and the gap double -- well, not independent of line drive percentage etc. But that's the whole point. We're trying to measure how lucky the batter has been. We want to know what the batter's expected batting average is.
So let's just say that. Stop with the BABIP. Stop with the esoteric number which only means something in relation to another number (BA) and even then really needs to incorporate other numbers (e.g. LD%) to truly say what we want to say. Let's do this instead.
1) Call it "Expected Batting Average."
Obviously, BABIP isn't a player's expected batting average. BABIP is a tool we use to try and figure out a players xBA (ooh! I acronymifieid it!), but that's OK. Let's figure out the xBA and call it xBA.
2) Explain it in words.
Start with this:
Know what the difference between hitting .250 and .300 is? It's 25 hits. 25 hits in 500 at bats is 50 points, okay? There's 6 months in a season, that's about 25 weeks. That means if you get just one extra flare a week - just one - a gorp... you get a groundball, you get a groundball with eyes... you get a dying quail, just one more dying quail a week... and you're in Yankee Stadium.
That makes a ton of sense. It has to. It's from Bull Durham.
But you know what? Dying quails are fluky. They're luck. Groundballs with eyes, same thing. Flares, gorps, whatever. Luck. That's what Crash is saying there. The difference between a .250 hitter and a .300 hitter is a little bit of luck each week.
Guys who hit the ball hard, they don't need as much luck. Turn those grounders into line drives and those dying quails into warning track doubles and they're hits -- to hell with luck. Luck is for guys like Alex Cora and Gary Matthews Jr. and that guy Rick Evans or something.
We say, screw that. Let's look at each at bat. If a guy hits a frozen rope that's caught, we know that's not his fault. Over time, that'll even out, and he'll get more hits. If a guy strikes out, that's an out every time. Same with a pop up. That won't even out. Homers? Always a hit. Grounders with eyes? Well, that's usually an out, and that'll even out over time to. We look at every single at bat and ask if the guy hit the ball hard enough to "make his own luck." That's xBA.
(And you know what? At the end of the day, that's what BABIP turns into, too. Except that BABIP sucks, because it doesn't actually start there, in either name or by its equation.)
3) Drop the arrogance of specificity. Use ranges when possible.
We're measuring luck. Luck isn't exact. So we'll never be right on the money. You'll never be able to find a season where a significant number of players have an xBA equal to their actual batting average. That makes us look stupid, when in fact, we're just being arrogant -- by being so exact.
We should use ranges. xBA should be the 50% confidence interval, not the midpoint thereof. More made up numbers: If a guy's xBA is .285, it's probably better expressed by saying that it's between .279 and .291, or whatever. It makes that .290 BA not seem "lucky" (it really isn't) but tells us that a .274 is really unlucky. In other words, it does the job -- without the excruciatingly nerdy exactitude we are (wrongly) associated with.
It's our job to communicate this stuff. It's not their job to get smarter (they're not dumb) or to figure it out themselves (they're busy) or that they don't respect us (true, but fixable). The problem is semantic, not logical, and semantic problems can -- and indeed, must -- be fixed by revising our language. It's time to stop using BABIP.
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rec'd
And this is a fantastic point in general, not just about BABIP, so I want to highlight it:
We should use ranges. xBA should be the 50% confidence interval, not the midpoint thereof.
For some reason, despite the caricatures of sabermetricians as stat nerds, “standard deviation” is practically an unknown term in baseball discussions, even now, and even when talking about future-oriented predictive stuff. Talking more seriously about variance — how much is expected, how narrow or wide our range of confidence in a given number is — should be one of our biggest goals for baseball stats in the future.
What stat should I take next?
I’m tempted to take on WAR, b/c the MetsBlog thread is 100% right — it’s semantically poor. But I’m open to suggestions.
well, the set of issues there is different
Like we were talking about in the other thread, WAR isn’t really the name of a single “stat” — it’s more like a single scale on which a bunch of different competing metrics can be compared and evaluated and improved. But I’m pretty sure most people who like WAR know this, even if we forget to mention it as often as we should.
Other good candidates for mid-season discussion might include Pythagorean xW-L and those sim-based postseason odds calculators — both of these are places where it would be smart to talk more about variance and look more at the expected ranges rather than crunching everything down to single numbers.
Though it’s bad timing for a mid-season discussion, the place where I actually think a reminder of this is most needed is with PECOTA and CHONE and the other performance-forecasting systems. It’s really quite dumb for those systems to present their results as single stat lines, since there’s going to be a wide range of confidence in their forecasts depending on the players’ existing track records or lack thereof.
FWIW
My problems with WAR:
1) It’s win-based, when it should be run based. I think it’s easy to explain that a guy like Pagan is worth n runs while a guy like Frenchie is worth n-100, but converting it to “wins” gets into the question of clutchiness and grission.
2) I realize why we combine offense and defense for batters, but I don’t really like the fact that we do. Offense is easier to measure and can be done with more precision. Defense should be a range metric — e.g. Ruben Tejada saves between 20 and 30 runs a year w/his glove.
3) “Replacement” isn’t great. I just don’t like the word… it’s unintentionally arrogant, as if players are replaceable commodities. And I don’t like arrogance. Unfortunately, I don’t have a very good replacement for “replacement”.
well, I can only agree with some of this, but it'd certainly be interesting to see your arguments in more detail in another post
I don’t really get point 1 — why “should” it be runs rather than wins, apart from your personal opinion — or point 3 — what do you see as “arrogant” about the idea of replacement-level? I mean, we all acknowledge that a major-league replacement-level player is still virtually superhuman in many ways compared to an average person.
I think both of the things you’re chafing at in 1 and 3 are motivated by the same desire: the wish to translate everything into marginal wins, which is a powerful motivation behind many of these newer single-number stats. (“Marginal improvement” is a decent substitute for “above replacement-level,” actually — I suspect people stick with AR because it makes for nicer, more readable acronyms rather than for any deeper reason.) There’s a certain cost in the simplicity and explainability of these numbers’ calculation that you lose by moving to a win-based scale, but in exchange you get a very powerful ability to easily estimate team costs and benefits, and to evaluate pitchers and hitters, or hitting and fielding, commensurately.
Point #2 I’m in agreement with; given the state of defensive stats I think we should be a bit more cautious with their contributions to WAR than people often are in the more casual WAR-based discussions. I wish there were a way to, say, tell Fangraphs to give you a WAR comparison that would underweight the defensive side by 25-50%.
by anonymous on Jul 15, 2010 4:57 PM EDT up reply actions 3 recs
Rec'd
Especially on points 1 and 3. Why should the stat be run-based? WAR is just RAR converted. Also, I don’t see the “arrogance” in replacement. It’s a word. People need to stop being offended by everything.
by James Kannengieser on Jul 15, 2010 6:31 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
Also
Once the WAR concept is explained and understood, it ceases to be “semantically” problematic. If a person isn’t willing to read/listen to what WAR is about for a few minutes then I don’t see why they should be catered to.
by James Kannengieser on Jul 15, 2010 6:33 PM EDT up reply actions
i think the idea is more if it were to get wide stream acceptance
it’s much easier to explain the concept of runs to the masses than wins. Because the masses are stupid.
I want Jerry Manuel fired now, not three years from now. That is my stance.- John Peterson
Well, WAR is a smaller number than RAR.
That should make it easier for dummies to grasp.
I’m not going to stop talking about Einstein-Rosen bridges simply because most people don’t understand them. It’s an enormous mistake to dumb down the explanation of sophisticated concepts in the vain hope that people who aren’t terribly bright to begin with are going to grasp them. BA and HRs and RBIs were the currency for a century precisely because they’re easy to understand. OBP and SLG are no more difficult to understand than BA. That’s why they’ve caught on. More than that, people simply won’t be able to follow.
I have a gap in my knowledge
I had read the old Abstracts where Bill James had Runs Created. Would it be safe assume that RAR is essentially an upgrade over RC?
My feeling is that while it’s valid to use WAR or RAR, if you’re trying to explain advanced stats to newbies as I would think RAR could be explained in comparison with RBI. (or plain old runs — I never understood why runs got short shrift. The RBI yin needs its runs scored yang. And RAR covers a player’s value for both. Or am i totally off course here?)
From Fred to Jeff
and O to Jerr
Funny things
Are everywhere
- Dr. Seuss (if he were a Mets fan)
RAR isn't just an upgrade of RC.
But you’re on the right track.
wRC at FanGraphs is Weighted Runs Created. The name is the same on purpose (I assume), but it’s the same thing, just improved.
From that, they take wRC over the average player: wRAA.
If you make the baseline a replacement level player, you’d have wRAR. But the RAR people are talking about here is not that (I think). They’re talking about adding that wRAA to defense and then adjusting for the replacement level at the position.
RAR is basically RC (better formula) but compared to a replacement player instead of absolute runs.
A scrub in full time duty might get 50 RC, while an All-Star in quarter-duty might get 25 RC. Was the scrub more valuable? No, because the AS plus three-quarters of a scrub would have 25+37.5 = 62.5 RC. RAR takes RC and puts in a baseline. The adjusted RC (RAR) for these two guys would be 0 and 12.5
by Sky Kalkman on Jul 16, 2010 11:27 AM EDT up reply actions
Disagree.
And I think our 2010 New York Mets prove my point. The “am I better than a scrub playing part time” argument fails because replacements are generally, for lack of a better term, scrubs. The JV squad is as it is for a reason. A regular starter quasi-scrub may be far more worthy than an injury-prone potential star, and this is the point I make when I dismiss acronym-based stats for just watching the game and seeing who does shit that is good, shit that is bad, and shit that is just plain ugly.
A key to statistics in the social sciences—and baseball stats are far closer to social science stats than purely empirical science—is to always question your input. Always work under the assumption that variables are far more complex than you can control for. I think the problem with sabremetrics is that folks treat it as a science when really judging baseball skill is as much of an art as it is a science. There is no provable, repeatable portion of this. The same guy who can go 0-5 one day can hit for the cycle the next. And predicting team effort by individual effort ignores that runs, or wins for that matter, are predicated on a constellation of factors coming into play at the same time.
by MookieTheCat on Jul 18, 2010 1:50 AM EDT up reply actions
I could see the "more art than science"
when discussing defensive metrics (like UZR or TotalZone) but most offensive stats (like OBP or SLG) are pure math.
Save Jenrry Mejia!
yeah but I think what he means is there hasn't been
research, or at least the type of research that would be required for something to be considered science, to prove how useful they actually are in judging value.
I want Jerry Manuel fired now, not three years from now. That is my stance.- John Peterson
When you write
“to prove how useful they actually are in judging value,” haven’t a large number of convincing studies been run that correlate such as OBP with runs and therefore winning? Or am I misunderstanding you?
I meant more stats like uzr
wOBA etc.
I want Jerry Manuel fired now, not three years from now. That is my stance.- John Peterson
I don't think the idea is them grasping them
I think it’s accepting them. Most NFL fans couldn’t come close to telling you the equation for qb rating, but they accept it. We’re not really talking about making the intricacies of WAR understandable to the masses, just putting it in simple enough terms for them to understand/accept it. And it’s a lot easier to understand that a big run number is good than understand how you go from runs to wins.
I want Jerry Manuel fired now, not three years from now. That is my stance.- John Peterson
This has always weirded me out.
QB Rating is so astronomically flawed, and yet it’s commonly used.
Much simpler, more reliable and easier to understand stuff in baseball is just rejected.
And QB Rating isn't really even easy to apply to anything.
It’s just a score, not an applicable number.
I’m guessing football fans are just less bound to numbers and tradition.
I imagine a big reason it's so acceptable
is despite having one of the most random scales every (really 0-156.2???) Most qbs hang around the 65-75 to 105-110 scale. Which makes it easy for most people to automatically translate to standard education grading scales, so there’s something readily available to them to attach it to to understand what should be considered average/above average/below average. Which isn’t anywhere near the case when you get into the ideas of replacement players and 2 WAR/20 Runs being average, most people’s brains just don’t work in a way where it’s easy for them to accept/understand that. Obviously you could probably pretty easily change the scale of WAR/RAR so it looked more like a grading scale but I think that would pretty much officially be the point where you’re making too many arbitrary changes for no reason other than to appeal to a broader group.
I want Jerry Manuel fired now, not three years from now. That is my stance.- John Peterson
Also,
if you tell people that an all-star is worth around five wins they’ll probably think you’re nuts. Anyone can see that a good player is worth vastly more than that.
For instance
I remember earlier this year when I was defending Dubs, I would bring up how he was worth 1.7WAR. People who were unfamiliar with WAR (pretty much everyone not on AA) would respond like it supported their view that Wright was struggling. Even when I would add perspective, Dubs 1.7WAR compared to Longoria’s 1.9WAR, people still couldn’t see that a really good player having a fine year would only be worth about 2 wins after about 2 months worth of games.
Save Jenrry Mejia!
yeah I know.
that’s kind of my point. QB rating is stupid but because it sounds simple enough most people will blindly accept it as long as ESPN guys say it often enough. the name WAR doesn’t really work that way. It’s a lot more likely to expect casual fans to go from rbi’s/runs to runs create/runs above replacement, though giving it some arbitrary name like runs created would make more sense. Than to expect them to make the jump from runs to wins.
I want Jerry Manuel fired now, not three years from now. That is my stance.- John Peterson
Innumeracy is rampant, and I shouldn't be surprised by ignorance,
but the number of people who support a war in a country they can’t come close to locating on a map, for instance, is… discouraging. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by what people do and do not consider acceptable in the realm of statistics.
WAR is pretty freaking simple though
offense + defense + positional adjustment + above replacement level value + other minor things (baserunning, etc.)
And it’s pretty simple in most cases where the numbers come from. You could probably explain the theoretical backing behind WAR in a couple of paragraphs.
by vivaelpujols on Jul 18, 2010 8:37 PM EDT up reply actions
Really what are the positional adjustments based on
how is replacement level determined. How is the number of wins a replacement level team would win determined. You can’t just say + above replacement level value without explaining where the concept of replacement value even comes from.
I want Jerry Manuel fired now, not three years from now. That is my stance.- John Peterson
The positional adjustments are based on change in defensive performance accross positions
So SS who move to 2B or LF who move to RF. “Above replacement level value” is how much better the average player is above replacement level in terms of runs. Because each of the other components in WAR are compared to average, you need to add the replacement level adjustment to get WAR. That adjustment is based off of looking at the projections of worst players in baseball for each position, as theoretically those players will represent the high end of what you’d expect from a replacement level player.
by vivaelpujols on Jul 18, 2010 9:22 PM EDT up reply actions
yeah but you still haven't explained
where replacement level comes from, how is it determined who the worst are. Saying above replacement level is someone above replacement level doesn’t explain the concept of replacement level, where it comes from, how it was arrived at, why it’s used as a baseline instead of average. And how replacement level can be 0 when there are players who post negative totals.
And change in defensive performance, where do these numbers come from? How do they judge the defensive performance, how do we know what they use to judge the defensive performance is accurate? How big is the sample size what kind of equations. Do they recalculate it every year? Every decade? How many players have actually changed positions, and given that most defensive stats are so new how in the world have near enough changed and posted numbers over significant enough sample sizes, to put together a large enough sample size to base these adjustments on, never mind a large enough to remove from other variables.
It’s only “simple” if the listener is willing to accept these things as facts. YPA, tds, incompletions, interceptions are is simple, replacement level is not. Especially when you get into the fact it’s based off RAR which is based on linear weights, which is in no way simple.
I want Jerry Manuel fired now, not three years from now. That is my stance.- John Peterson
I'm not saying all of the intricacies are simple
I’m saying the concept of WAR is simple:
offense wins above average + defense wins above average + positional difficulty above average (wins) + average wins above replacement level
Not all WAR uses the same numbers, but each of them use the same components, which are basically everything a hitter can do in terms of on field value.
by vivaelpujols on Jul 18, 2010 10:13 PM EDT up reply actions
Yeah but my point is those are foreign concepts
to the average sports fans. And they’re based on EXTREMELY foreign intricacies. The intricacies of YPA, INT, TD, all the crap that goes into QB rating is simple, which is why it’s accepted.
I want Jerry Manuel fired now, not three years from now. That is my stance.- John Peterson
Your not comparing apples to apples
WAR uses boxscore stats and combines them in a specific way, as does QB rating. Your complaint is that the way that stats are used in WAR is complicated, but it’s the same thing with QB rating.
Does anybody actually know how QB rating is calculated exactly, or why the numbers used are given certain weights?
by vivaelpujols on Jul 18, 2010 10:54 PM EDT up reply actions
What does it matter if I'm comparing apples
to giraffes? The point is that the boxscore stuff in the QB rating formula isn’t manipulated at all except given rates, it’s more comparable to FIP. Not WAR. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen a defensive stat in a box score that’s used in WAR.
I want Jerry Manuel fired now, not three years from now. That is my stance.- John Peterson
So,
if UZR is so important, why don’t they show it on the scoreboard?
I'm one of those "I don't care how you killed the cow; just serve me a great steak" guys. If the results are logical and easy to understand, I'm pouring some A1 sauce on that formula and eating it. UZR qualifies. -Bill Simmons
I've always thought, for example
that second base is overrated and third base is underrated in terms of the positional adjustment.
John Olerud, Hall of Famer. Got a nice ring to it.
Do you have any reason why?
The positional adjustments are basically just based on changes in UZR among players who’ve played both second and third base. So I’m not sure why they would be wrong (UZR is inaccurate for individual players, but it should be pretty good in the aggregate).
by vivaelpujols on Jul 18, 2010 10:07 PM EDT up reply actions
I'm pretty sure they're rated even
I want Jerry Manuel fired now, not three years from now. That is my stance.- John Peterson
Oh, yep, you're right.
My mistake, for some reason I thought 2B was 3.5 runs instead of 2.5.
John Olerud, Hall of Famer. Got a nice ring to it.
Funny, as I've always thought 2B was harder
and deserved a higher figure. If for no other reason I would have thought that 2bmen have to be more nimble in order to successfully turn the DP, which suggests smaller players would fare better there, meaning 2bmen would tend to have lower slugging percentages…
Which isn't actually true
for the last ten years they’re offensive numbers have been pretty much equal.
I want Jerry Manuel fired now, not three years from now. That is my stance.- John Peterson
I'm still thinking it all over...
… so my reasons aren’t great.
- For runs v wins, neither is great. Runs suffers from being inconsistent with the runs on the scoreboard. A solo HR, for example, probably is worth more tha one “run” under wRAA (which is used to calculate WAR, right?) but is obviously one “run scored”. Explaining that is impossible.
On the other hand, WAR takes the total output of a player, converts it into fractional “wins”, and sums those fractional wins into one number. That’s a tough sell for a lot of reasons, but the big one is that wins aren’t fractional; they’re whole units. The closest traditional stat we have to a “fractional win” is a “run”… but see above.
I’m leaning toward runs. I’d call it Total Offensive Runs or something, to both distinguish it from “runs [scored]” and RBI, and also because a non-RBI triple which doesn’t result in a run scored can be factored in. Dunno. Honestly, I don’t like that idea either :)
- “Replacement”
It’s not arrogant. I was too quick there.
It’s just not necessary. We could just say “Wins” (except for the problems noted above). Let’s say a replacement-level full-time OF is worth 1.8 wins. We could say Frenchie is worth 0.2 WAR or 2.0 wins. A team full of Frenchies would be worth 16 WAR or 60 wins. Already, wins is better, because immediately it tells us that Frenchie is an average player for a last-place team. WAR is cryptic.
WAR also demands that we imagine a nameless, faceless everyman replacement player, which I submit is more difficult than we assume.
by Dan Lewis on Jul 15, 2010 6:37 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions
I think the name does have some drawbacks
Most of the people who mock sabermetrics generally and WAR specifically probably have no issues discussing quarterback percentage. Yet, fundamentally, it’s the same exact concept. You take a wide swath of statistics, put them together in a formula, and voila! You have a number that gives you an approximate measure of the player’s overall worth.
So what’s the difference? I don’t know how far QB percentage dates, but I think it’s a relatively recent stat (post-merger, I’d guess). That it’s expressed as a percentage probably helps, but I don’t think that’s what makes it more acceptable to the mainstream. I just think people have an odd hangup that WAR is this funny acronym. I think this is a peculiar phenomenon myself, but I think that’s part of it.
Admittedly, baseball stats have a more historic pedigree than football ones, so that might also explain the difference in how QB % and WAR are treated. But it seems that half the battle is people getting over the fact that all these stat names sound so neeeeeerdy or whatever.
by dcmetsfan on Jul 15, 2010 8:34 PM EDT up reply actions 2 recs
"WAR also demands that we imagine a nameless, faceless everyman replacement player"
Using above or below average does the same exact thing. Hell, splitting the world into hemispheres demands we imagine a line running through the middle of the earth. We do this kind of thing all the time, as humans. We carve things up based on intangible distinctions that we can make, for purpose of analysis. If someone really struggles with the idea, you can basically say above-average AAA player. Obviously not a perfect explanation, but it’s certainly close enough for the purposes of a layman.
by yellomellojello on Jul 16, 2010 12:13 AM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
Mario Mendoza.
He’s been a baseball legend for mediocrity for nearly half a century now.
by MookieTheCat on Jul 18, 2010 1:53 AM EDT up reply actions
he should be replaced by jeff francoeur
maybe we can start a frenchy line – obp below .300. although it should really be a barajas line, obp below .260
I like Ike, I hate Jerry
I think you're right, and part of the reason is that we tend not to stop and define
what it is this mythical replacement player does. Does he catch all routine fly balls, or does he miss some of those? Obviously, if he’s a catcher, he must do a fair job of keeping balls from rolling to the backstop, but what else does he do? As a hitter, does he bat .200? .220? Does he ever hit HRs (of course he does, but I’m sure you take my meaning)?
Very well put.
There’s a certain cost in the simplicity and explainability of these numbers’ calculation that you lose by moving to a win-based scale, but in exchange you get a very powerful ability to easily estimate team costs and benefits, and to evaluate pitchers and hitters, or hitting and fielding, commensurately.
Here's the thing.
Everything you want is something different from what WAR is trying to convey. But, it’s also available.
There is RAR. If you want to use RAR, the same sites that have the most prominent versions of WAR have RAR available. But most people using WAR are looking for a best estimate of standings changes. RAR is probably more accurate for estimating the actual change (as in run differential changed, rather than w-l record), but then that’s also where we get our win estimates.
And the same thing goes for No. 2. You’re right, adding UZR to wRC adds something really reliable to something less so. But if all you want to look at is offense, those same sites have that component available. If you’re looking for a full player estimate, though, you have to include defense. Otherwise, you’re ignoring a part of the game.
And I don’t see a single problem with the term replacement. It’s not arrogant, it’s simply a description.
I don't want anything...
I watch games, and I know if a guy is contributing or not. I see a lot of folks here talking about “the masses” and how they don’t get sabremetrics. Really, it’s not that hard of a system to understand. It’s basically high school math applied to baseball, with acronyms to complicate it. What I see as “the masses” are the casual fans who will go to a few games a season, watch on TV if Cake Boss is a repeat, and so on. In 2007 I watched approximately 150 games, on TiVO and live. It hurts me to realize that I wasted nearly 3 full weeks of my life on this effort (based upon 3 hours per game * 150 games / 24 hours in a day / 7 days in a week), but I love the Mets and I love baseball. I didn’t need stats to tell me that when Scott Schoenweis came in it was time to start drinking. I just knew. I also didn’t need anyone to tell me in 2006 that when they were down by a run going into the 9th I should stay up. The application of sabremetrics is silly sometimes, and self-defeating. GKR are anti-sabremetric because they watch a lot of games, but they are also constrained in what they say because of professional obligations and because they share a plane with the team awkward. I would bet their locker room banter is a lot more entertaining than BIlly Wagner.
by MookieTheCat on Jul 18, 2010 2:01 AM EDT up reply actions
Dude, I watch just as many games as you do (and I'm sure there are many others here who do as well)
But how does watching the game interfere at all with sabermetric endeavors? If your opinion correlates to what the numbers say, than congratulations you have a good eye. If they don’t match-up, than either you’re being swayed by some bias you may-or-may-not know you have or are simply underestimating a particular skill-set. What’s the big deal?
The point is: Just because you watch a lot of games, why stop striving for objective analysis that allows not only for cross-league comparisons, but for cross-generation comparisons?
Save Jenrry Mejia!
by Ogre39666 on Jul 18, 2010 5:41 PM EDT up reply actions 2 recs
Right...
I’m not arguing. I’m just saying that the counterpoint to overuse of “baseball thinking” (i.e. Jerry) should not be the overuse of robotic math. The key is balancing whatever cognitive biases may exist and help to correct them with math. I guess I just don’t understand arguments like “the masses will never get sabremetrics,” because I feel like it’s not a hard thing to get if you’re willing to put some time into it. I just don’t think the masses care enough to really understand what the stats mean.
by MookieTheCat on Jul 20, 2010 6:06 PM EDT up reply actions
The masses will never get SABERS
not because advanced metrics are too hard to understand or even that they take too long to understand, but because the masses are too stupid to recognize the need for them.
Save Jenrry Mejia!
I'm sorry, but what?
None of those gripes are problems with the actual construction of the stat or it’s uses, but rather with the aesthetics of it. Sabermetrics ain’t always pretty – it’s made to be functional and non-arbitrary. WAR is functional and non-arbitrary.
by vivaelpujols on Jul 18, 2010 8:34 PM EDT up reply actions
i dont understand why its not WAA
wins above average.
Average is a lot easier to understand than replacement, and there can be literally no argument on what average is – as there is with the idea of replacement.
If a person is + WAA, then they are a better than average major league player, and – WAA and they are below average. No concept can be easier to understand.
by Mike Clemente on Jul 19, 2010 7:46 PM EDT up reply actions
i use to argue the same thing
the only explanation I ever got was that because using average as a baseline would be arbitrary and that replacement level isn’t arbitrary.
I want Jerry Manuel fired now, not three years from now. That is my stance.- John Peterson
The "replacement" part of the WAR equation also means "playing time".
If an “average player” played half a season, he would be worth -1WAA.
Also, the baseline is that replacement level players are fungible and readily available. If a player if performing below average level, you can’t really just go to AAA and get an “average” player there.
In lobby campaign for Chris Carter.
Yeah I always thought it was because the stat was created more for
baseball insiders (like GM’s) and “replacement” made more sense in that context than “average”.
Save Jenrry Mejia!
Listen..
You cannot judge all baseball players by reference to Bill Pecota and Chone Figgins. The only player-specific reference applicable to all major leaguers is the Mendoza line, and Mario Mendoza provides the best stat I can find.
by MookieTheCat on Jul 18, 2010 1:39 AM EDT up reply actions
Um, no.
Read this (it’s even by FOX, GASP!)
Are they perfect? No.
Are there pretty damn good? Yes (particularly when used in conjunction).
Save Jenrry Mejia!
This was just a name joke...
Not anything objective. KInda funny.
by MookieTheCat on Jul 20, 2010 6:08 PM EDT up reply actions
Take on any statistical system that gets into the minutiae of life without having at least 100 variables...
You will not be disappointed.
by MookieTheCat on Jul 18, 2010 1:34 AM EDT up reply actions
Good post
I think this was the best part:
It’s our job to communicate this stuff. It’s not their job to get smarter (they’re not dumb) or to figure it out themselves (they’re busy) or that they don’t respect us (true, but fixable). The problem is semantic, not logical, and semantic problems can — and indeed, must — be fixed by revising our language.
"I want to win now, not 3 years from now. That's my stance." - Kevin Burkhardt
Rec'd
I’m new to the full sabermetrics bandwagon but this makes incredible sense. I just converted a guy who hated baseball into a fan….now comes the tricky part. Turning him against RBIzzzz etc to determine who’s better than who.
I support Jenrry Mejia as a starter. Screw you Jerry Manuel for thinking he's a set-up man.
That shouldn't be that hard then if he's new to baseball.
He’s had less time to have RBI’s, W’s, SV’s, ect. ingrained as “important” in his head.
Save Jenrry Mejia!
It might be a good idea to start
by talking about RBIs wrt RBI opportunities. It’s easy enough to show someone that Player A, who came to the plate with 300 teammates in scoring position and drove in 100 of them hasn’t been as productive a player as B, who came to the plate with 150 teammates in scoring position and drove in only 75 of them.
yeah i used to try and do this with Adam Dunn and Derek Jeter on metsblog
as far as I could tell it had no affect on them. le sigh.
I want Jerry Manuel fired now, not three years from now. That is my stance.- John Peterson
Good post
I think you should cross post this on BABIP, as I’m sure it would be well received.
How I think about BABIP is that it’s just another stat. It’s no different than K/9 really – K/9 measures the amount of strikeouts a pitcher gets per 9 innings, BABIP measures the amount of hits he gives up per balls in play.
The only difference is that BABIP is less stable than K/9, meaning that past BABIP is less predictive of future BABIP than past K/9 is of future K/9 . That implies, along with common sense, that pitchers have less control over BABIP than they do K/9 (and they don’t have 100% control over K/9 either obviously). And so if you wanted to predict how a pitcher would do going forward, you would regress his BABIP a lot more than you would his K/9.
....
I think you should cross post this on BABIP, as I’m sure it would be well received.
That should be BtB. Heh.
by vivaelpujols on Jul 15, 2010 2:29 AM EDT up reply actions
just out of curiosity
is there a direct formula for expected BABIP or good reference for looking it up? just because i feel like i have only seen it as a computer program one can download, and that was really recently
I like Ike
I have no idea.
In fact, I’m woefully ignorant about how most of the stats are calculated. BABIP I can figure out because the acronym tells me. The rest, well, I take it for granted that the people behind it and the amount of peer review this stuff goes under means it makes sense.
xBABIP calculator
is an excel file
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/fantasy/article/simple-xbabip-calculator/
"We're investigating the investigative procedure of the investigation of Tony Bernazard"---Omar Minaya (he really didn't say it but he would"
by firejerrynow on Jul 15, 2010 6:45 AM EDT up reply actions
Jeez I love Fangraphs
They are so easy to use and have everything
thanks
thats what i saw, it just looked like a program and i didnt have time to look more into it
I like Ike
Pitchers don't really display variance in their BABIP the way hitters do
The overwhelming majority of pitchers will fall in the the .280-.320 range. If a pitcher’s BABIP is outside of that, you can pretty much assume he’s lucky/unlucky
Brewers Baseball and other assorted nonsense (mostly the assorted nonsense) at my blog, What's a Tararrel?
they still have a pitchers xBABIP formula
.15*FB%.24*GM%.73*LD%
if a pitcher is really nasty he just might not give up many LD but the groundballs could be finding a way through over a period and make his BABIP look worse than it will continue to be, even if it is within the ‘normal’ range.
I like Ike
Hmph, interesting
My gut feeling is that that gives you some false precision, though, and it also assumes that line drive rate is sustainable, when not giving up many may just be luck-related—do we have data on how soon that stabilizes?
Brewers Baseball and other assorted nonsense (mostly the assorted nonsense) at my blog, What's a Tararrel?
i do not know
you can look into it here
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/expected-babip-for-pitchers/
I like Ike
which pretty much says what you said
I like Ike
xBA v. BABIP
I see your point, but I still think BABIP is more descriptive. BABIP actually tells you what happened, and is thus more desirable. xBA requires a bit more work, and is thus more prone to error; if our assumptions are wrong, we will be giving bad information.
The key problem with BABIP, in my mind, is that you have to treat it differently for batters and pitchers. It is one of the only statistics I can think of off the top of my head that work as such, and I think people who are receptive to sabermetrics ideas can have trouble with that. It also is a key tenet of DIPS-theory, which also just seems counterintuitive to many people at first.
BABIP doesn't tell you anything
It only tells you what happens some of the time, and there’s no good reason why we should care about just that sliver of the game in and of itself. BABIP is a tool used to measure xBA, not a descriptor of meaningful events.
I agree that BABIP is two stats, one for batters and one for pitchers. What’s interesting is how rarely we use BABIP for pitchers — we make the leap directly to FIP, which is what we should be doing. I should have been more clear that the above Fanshot is about BABIP for batters.
PrOPS
Your points are solid, and reminded me of a previous sabermetric effort. Hardball Times had a stat they used to use called PrOPS, which would normalize a player’s AVG/OBP/SLG to his batted ball types, which is basically the same thing as what you’re advocating here. I am, in general, somewhat reluctant on that sort of thing b/c I think it offers the impression of more precision/certainty than we can actually deal in. So, either your ranges are going to be too large to have meaning, or too small to be known to any degree of certainty. Just looking at the raw data allows the fan to make a broader judgment.
However, just practically speaking, I would be willing to eliminate the use of BABIP as a hitting statistic in favor of a derivative statistic along the lines of PrOPS, mostly because of the pitcher/hitter confusion.
Also, personally, when looking at a pitcher, I much prefer to see the BABIP than the FIP. With BABIP, I can compare the pitcher to his previous seasons, and to other pitchers on his own team (to try to get a handle on how good the team’s defense is). FIP doesn’t allow you to do that. Others may disagree, of course, and I certainly see your perspective on that. I also think a good deal of a disagreement there is over what you are actually trying to do. BABIP is more descriptive; an xBA would be more predictive, in theory.
I think prOPS can be called
an offensive form of tRA
"We're investigating the investigative procedure of the investigation of Tony Bernazard"---Omar Minaya (he really didn't say it but he would"
by firejerrynow on Jul 15, 2010 9:10 PM EDT up reply actions
I would be carefull to say it tells us NOTHING
Because I feel confident saying a guy with a .420 BABIP is probably going to see a drop in the near future. Also I would say that a .200 BABIP will go up in the near future, but yeah this is a very well written article. It makes a lot of points that I try to express to people in conversation but usually just wind up confusing them more and waving my hands saying “DONT YOU SEE!!!”
Also just something I was thinking about, I find it kind of silly that a play made into the stands (remember Ike Davis right when he came up?) is counted against your BABIP while a screamer over the left field fence is not. Also this is a really rare instance, but the formula for BABIP doesn’t count inside the park homeruns as far as I know because they are still HRs.
And someone I’ve been thinking about a lot with regards to BABIP this season is Jose Bautista. His career BABIP is .273 (also that’s another point is that a BABIP will normalize more towards career numbers rather than a league average if given a long enough career sample) and his season BABIP is .224 OH NO!!!! (Many detractors would think that a sabermetrics enthusiast would say) JOSE BAUTISTA HAS BEEN SO UNLUCKY, not only will he hit 40 HRs but his batting average will skyrocket over the rest of the season! And of course they would be waiting with a HA at the end of the season when his batting average does not go up, seeing it as irrevocable PROOF that BABIP is useless, but in reality we all know that if a few of those HRs had been doubles instead he would be showing a much higher BABIP. Although I guess this also brings into play some other stats like HR/FB and I don’t want to open up that whole can of worms. So I’ll go back to my main point:
Good post, well done, I read the title expecting a post in all caps saying it’s stupid and we should only keep track of RBIs, but was very pleasantly surprised.
by revans on Jul 15, 2010 9:52 AM EDT reply actions 2 recs
good post
i agree with your general sentiment here but unfortunately i don’t see xBA taking hold anytime soon. BABIP has enjoyed such a (relatively) quick absorption by the MSM in the last 1-2 years as compared to other equally or more important sabermetrics because it’s core concept is extremely simple: it should be .300, above=lucky, below=unlucky; for pitchers, reverse. just about any baseball fan can understand that, they can’t explain why per se but basically they get it and broadcasters/columnists/insiders know they get it so they’ve started to drop the term here and there. and the fact that they can just wrap it all up in under the heading ‘luck’ makes it even more accessible to the common fan, because they understand luck.
xBA, like all (or at least most) sabermetrics makes just as much (if not more) sense but also like most sabermetrics involves at least a couple more steps before you reach the core concept which sadly is too many for the average fan. you truly did an excellent excellent job of making those steps more accessible and clear but it’s not the ability to understand them that’s the problem, it’s the effort that goes in to thinking through the process that they just don’t possess. in short, the average fan doesn’t want to think very hard about baseball; that’s not necessarily right or wrong, it’s just a personal choice that most of us here happened to fall on the other side on. and so if it’s more than a 1 step process, chances are the average fan will tune it out, meaning the MSM will ignore it as unable to improve their coverage.
coincidentally there was an excellent article at BP today by ken funck addressing this same topic of the MSM introducing sabermetric topics into their baseball analysis. i definitely recommend you check it out here.
by Rob Castellano on Jul 15, 2010 11:48 AM EDT reply actions
"it should be .300, above=lucky, below=unlucky; for pitchers, reverse."
The problem is it shouldn’t be that. It’s true for pitchers, who generally have little control over their BABIP (mainly because beyond a certain point, limiting line drives isn’t a controllable skill), but hitters DO have a lot of control over their BABIP, in part because beating out infield hits and hitting line drives are controllable skills, among other reasons. So you can’t look at a hitter with a BABIP of .330 and necessarily say he’s lucky; maybe he is, or maybe he’s a hitter who can sustain a high BABIP, like Jeter (lifetime BABIP of .357), or Ichiro (lifetime BABIP of .358). In fact, absent other information, it’s possible that a BABIP of .330 is actually UNLUCKY for that hitter. The advantage of xBA, then, would be to quantify something like that without having to go on a long tangent about xBABIP and so forth.
Brewers Baseball and other assorted nonsense (mostly the assorted nonsense) at my blog, What's a Tararrel?
by Lefti on Jul 15, 2010 12:17 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
completely agree with both of you
Lefti’s reply illustrated my point. why would gary cohen EVER spit out that whole mouthfull when he could just say “BABIP should be .300” knowing full well that most fans don’t care to question the accuracy of that statement. and as a closet somewhat enlightened baseball fan, cohen can justify saying it because for the league as a whole, it’s basically true, but the problem for all us more enlightened fans is that on a player-by-player basis (like Lefti so eloquently pointed out) that is not always true.
the problem is, if cohen goes into the real details (like you did) and aims for the highest amount of statistical accuracy, he’ll have lost the average fan from the word go either causing them to press mute or change the cannel, both outcomes that SNY would not be pleased with.
by Rob Castellano on Jul 15, 2010 12:41 PM EDT up reply actions
Fair enough, but
as I understand it, xBA, properly implemented, would amount to saying, “He’s hitting .315 right now, but based on the sort of balls he’s been hitting, you’d expect his batting average to be between .271 and .290, so he seems to have been getting lucky.” or something. It doesn’t really show how the sausage is made, but I don’t think it’s any less illuminating that just saying “BABIP should be .300”, and I feel like it wouldn’t be that hard to get fans to accept it. At the very least it should be simple to get out of the way and understandable, and if fans wouldn’t accept it, they probably wouldn’t accept most advanced stuff, anyway.
Brewers Baseball and other assorted nonsense (mostly the assorted nonsense) at my blog, What's a Tararrel?
Exactly
I want Gary to say:
“Given how hard David Wright hits the ball and his strikeout rate, he should be batting somewhere between .280 and .300.”
Or for Ichiro:
“Given his speed and his amazing line drive skill, you’d expect him to hit about .325 to .350.”
right
it’s all just a matter of getting the common fan to swallow that bit under part 2. and like i said, you’ve made it extremely accessible, to the point that gary could spend a half inning and say that and if you have anything resembling an attention span and you’re still not getting it then you’re probably actively resisting advanced metrics (which unfortunately a significant portion of fans do).
by Rob Castellano on Jul 15, 2010 1:12 PM EDT up reply actions
Can't disagree with this.
Skipping all the good stuff, because it’s so obviously good…
I think you’ll be disappointed with how wide the 50% confidence interval will be. I’d guess around 50 points. And a range from .275 to .325 is going to get laughed at by people.
Again, I agree with almost all of that. It’s weird how “BABIP” has become code for a whole philosophy instead of merely a stat.
The other struggle is that too many people think it applies to hitters and pitchers the same.
Thanks
1) The confidence interval could be narrower, doesn’t really make that big of a difference to me honestly. I do wonder, though, if the 50% is about 50 points, if we’re barking up the wrong tree.
2) Expected Batting Average would be a hitting stat.
The last sentence is absolutely why I've started to sour on it.
It’s not the actual problem with the concept, it’s how so many people have taken it and run with it irresponsibly.
I was among them, of course.
Also, would have loved you to post this over at BtB.
And you’re still welcome to do it as a FanPost.
Ouch, my BABIP!
Uh, Disco Hayes’s most celebrated post, about his BABIP, has been deleted from his blog? WTF is that? It used to be here.
I'm still a little confused on how this is supposed to work
Are you saying that for xBA, we simply make an eyeball judgement on whether or not a batted ball should have fallen in for a hit?
xBABIP takes a lot of subjectivity out of there.
"It’s like being in love with an alcoholic. It’s like, you constantly defend her, and people are like, ‘Dude, your alcoholic friend is a mess,’ and you’re like, ‘Nah, you don’t know her like I do."- Jim Breuer
No, I'm not, don't worry.
I’m saying that we should take xBABIP and combine it with the player’s strikeout and homer rates. So if a guy’s xBABIP is .300 in 100 qualifying ABs, and he has 10 homers and 40 strikeouts, he’d have a total of 30+10 hits in 100+10+40 at bats, or an xBA of .267.
I’m also saying that when discussing this, generally, we should explain it in words, not numbers. “Taking a look at how hard hits the ball and how often he strikes out, we expect his BA to be about .260-.275, not the .310 he’s putting up right now.”
by Dan Lewis on Jul 15, 2010 4:35 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
Up until this point
I had a fairly good idea of what you meant and kind of agreed with you. After reading this comment however, I’ve jumped aboard the bandwagon.
Save Jenrry Mejia!
Okay, but doesn't that further the idea of emphasizing BABIP?
Why not regress strikeout rate or homerun rate as well – both of them have luck involved too.
by vivaelpujols on Jul 16, 2010 3:38 AM EDT up reply actions
My two cents
I’ll start by saying, nice work.
My least favorite phrase on earth goes along the lines of “lies, damn lies, and statistics.” I think there’s another one about how “you can make statistics say whatever you want.” And as much as I want to yell at them, at times it is true — now, that’s a problem with the people misusing the statistics, not the stats themselves, but it’s sometimes hard to delineate between the two.
But I don’t think the baby should be thrown out with the bathwater. I like BABIP. But I almost think of it as more of a skill for hitters — at least over large enough sample sizes:
Ichiro was mentioned above, and he’s a fascinating case — he’s been able to maintain a high BABIP, save for one year, 2005, when his BABIP was only .316. I stuck that onto a binomial distribution using his career BABIP as the success probability, and the odds of a .316 BABIP would be less than .00001. Then you look at the rest of his numbers and see 2004 was also the year he had his highest ISO and HR total. All in all, there’s a -.50895 correlation between his ISO and BABIP, looking at it by seasons. David Wright? -.6443.
The annoying thing about the "you can make statistics say whatever you want" thing. . .
. . . is the accusation that you are using statistics to support the claim you feel like making, rather than forming your claim off of the information you find.
Sort of like the Vin Scully post, they’re assuming you of being a drunk man and using the lamp post for support, rather than illumination.
I disagree that it's time to stop using it entirely.
I’ve long agreed it needs to be used more responsibly to paint a picture of what should be happening.
Question
how would you go about figuring out the value of a line drive, and a strikeout?
I assume a regression model would be used.
"We're investigating the investigative procedure of the investigation of Tony Bernazard"---Omar Minaya (he really didn't say it but he would"
Why would you use a regression?
Regression is a crude tool – it’s useful when it’s all you have, but I wouldn’t turn to it as my go-to tool.
The short answer is you look at the change in run expectancy – this is how we’ve been figuring linear weights for decades. It’s simple, it’s easy, and it works.
(Now, for me, the question boils down to – how much of the batted ball data is signal, versus “noise” or bias in the scoring of the batted ball type.)
But xBA wouldn't use run expectancy, right?
It would trying to find how often the type of batted ball becomes a hit, no?
"We're investigating the investigative procedure of the investigation of Tony Bernazard"---Omar Minaya (he really didn't say it but he would"
by firejerrynow on Jul 17, 2010 7:25 AM EDT up reply actions
Hit F/x
I agree that BABIP isn’t perfect, and we don’t have a measure of how hard guys hit the ball. But, we are working on it, and once Hit F/x comes out, we should be able to do a better job with BABIP/xBABIP.
Hit f/x is unlikely to be released to the public in the near future
by vivaelpujols on Jul 18, 2010 8:29 PM EDT up reply actions
I think what he's saying is
not that we’ll be able to use/see Hit F/x, but that Hit F/x’s effects will be able to be felt elsewhere (like BABIP, xBABIP, LD%, GB%, and FB%).
Save Jenrry Mejia!
Isn't the second thing dependent on Hit f/x being released to the public?
by vivaelpujols on Jul 19, 2010 2:09 PM EDT up reply actions
FanGraphs won't have access to the Hit f/x data either
Unless they pay an exorbitant amount.
by vivaelpujols on Jul 20, 2010 6:50 PM EDT up reply actions
The way Zach Sanders wrote his comment it made it sound like
they were planning on having access to it or were in on the creation process.
Save Jenrry Mejia!
As I understand it
The same organization that collects the Pitch f/x data (MLBAM and Sportvision/Bloomberg) has been collecting Hit f/x data using the same cameras for the past year.
However, unlike the Pitch f/x data, the Hit f/x data is not available to scrape off the internet, instead it’s being sold to teams for what is likely a lot more money than FanGraphs can pay.
by vivaelpujols on Jul 21, 2010 1:00 AM EDT up reply actions
shouldn't our excess funds be going towards buying the mets?
I want Jerry Manuel fired now, not three years from now. That is my stance.- John Peterson
amazinavenue.com buys mets!
that would be awesome. no trolls allowed!
I like Ike, I hate Jerry
Not dissimilar to AOL buys Time Warner.
We’re just a few years too late.
In reading this I laughed about one thing...That Pete Rose was not referenced.
You know who should get the credit for the “how many hits are the difference between .260 and .300” argument that Bull Durham was used as a proxy for above? Pete Rose. Once when he was asked why he hustled so hard, he explained that the difference between a .280 hitter and a .300 hitter was 12 hits a year (based, I guess, on a 600 AB season). That comment, if nothing more, is why he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. It also explains why stats are fairly bullshit in close circumstances. BABIP and xBA and NBA and CBA and ABA and MBA and USDA and FDA are all equally meaningless unless situation is brought into the mix. A few bloop singles, or hard hit doubles, or even home runs (see Davis, Isaac, tonight) in meaningless 9ths over the course of a season can create statistics out of nothing.
Of course there is a real and appreciable difference between .230 and .330, but between .280 hitters there are some guys you want on your team and some guys you don’t. Sabremetrics is best applied by one principle: that giving up outs is the worst thing you can do and getting on base is the best. Beyond that it’s all just economics applied to a multivariate circumstance with insufficient variables entered into the equation. As such, it fails.
No
A few bloop singles, or hard hit doubles, or even home runs (see Davis, Isaac, tonight) in meaningless 9ths over the course of a season can create statistics out of nothing.
Well sometimes
But for the most part, players with better statistics are better players, yeah.
by vivaelpujols on Jul 18, 2010 8:30 PM EDT up reply actions
yeah if this was the case
people would think Mike Jacobs didn’t suck.
I want Jerry Manuel fired now, not three years from now. That is my stance.- John Peterson
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