Lies, Damn Lies, and Sabremetrics

But I don’t recall anyone ever saying, "Oh, and by the way, I work in the Pirates’ player acquisition department and here’s why we traded for "x."

Because the day I start working in the Pirates front office is likely the day I have to stop posting here!

He’s almost certainly the only guy with a FIP lower than his ERA, a low winning % (.526), and a K rate above 25% that sabre thinks of as an inferior player compared to traditionalists, (not to mention his 80+WAR). His career ERA-/FIP- is 90/84, around the same as many lesser known guys, (your Andy Pettitte’s/Chris Carpenters types). It’s interesting that traditionalists haven’t hammered him for his bad record and mediocre ERA (by greatness standards at least, being less than 15% better than average in your time doesn’t normally cut it) and managed to see him as an all time great the way WAR sees him (though longevity is a big reason career WAR likes him). They just I think took it a little too far and put him in the same breathe as Walter Johnson and Cy Young which is not surprising considering his physical talent.

Que

don’t even know what a FIP or a BABIP is and that WAR, what is it good for?

although I do kinda like WHIP (and OPS) as a way of separating the wheat from the chaff. Most of all, I believe the action on the field creates the statistics, not the other way around. Another way of saying the stats have little or no predictive value in a given situation. The game starts again with every pitch.

What’s the math to show me whether I should get the pulled pork with pierogi topping from Manny’s or the gyro from the Stargell food court? Why does a Primanti brothers sandwich taste better on the Strip than in the ballpark? Which will make me more content, a footlong from under the bleachers or two regular dogs from near the rotunda? Somebody should be working on EAT (everytime, always terrific) and xEAT, YUM (your ultimate meal) and xYUM. These new statistics would really enhance my PNC experience. C’mon all you certified standard deviation gurus, help an old man out.

However, I have a couple disagreements:

-First, I don’t think many people are actually saying that sabermetrics are the only ways to evaluate players. In fact, I think regular stats are just as good as sabermetrics for evaluating what’s happened in the past. I don’t necessarily think a player with a .240 BABIP and a .210 average has had a better year than someone with a .420 BABIP and a .330 average. I just think that BABIP (and other sabermetric indicators) are better predictors of the future than conventional stats. That’s because they take process into account more intricately than regular numbers, and a better process usually leads to better results in the future.

-Most people don’t try to invalidate a past good season because of a poor sabermetric profile. They just think it’s less likely to happen again. Case in point: Trevor Cahill from 2010 to 2011. Nobody said he wasn’t very productive in 2010; saber-heads just said he got a little luckier than he likely will in the future. So his stats jumped and then regressed. His 2010 still stands up as a wonderful season.

In my opinion, you’re making a straw man argument. Most sabermetricians don’t make the case that past seasons become garbage if they weren’t backed by a good underlying profile. They just think it’s unlikely to happen again, and in the vast majority of cases, they’re correct.

I’m not really sure how, if you really think about, things like wins and ERA are superior indicators of a player’s ability as opposed to something like Ks/BF, BB/BF, GB %, etc.

I wouldnt have known ronny cedeno was anygood hopefully he will have a down year so I can go back to my stance that hes only top ten in the gym tan laundry metrics

It’s a shame you had to put this in, but you did.

NOTE: This Fanpost is NOT intended to insult, harass, demean, demonize, or otherwise persecute any other member or group of members. Nor am I trying to argue that Sabremetrics are useless, just that they’re not essential for a good discussion about baseball. Nor have are they the sole stats that can/should be used for a good discussion.

Because there are people here that do INTEND to insult, demean, etc.,

of the least sabermetric-y sabermetric guys on the site. I believe RBIs can be a valuable stat which would make most sabermatricians’ heads explode. I don’t completely discount W-L record. Without going into too much depth, counting stats like RBIs can be valuable because it is an actual tally of runs on the board that the batter is responsible for. While it may be due to an unusually high number of opportunities, the batter in question did still capitalize on enough of those opportunities to drive in X-number of runs. There is also something to the fact that some players/athletes/whatever, do whatever it takes to win. Sometimes they win ugly, sometimes they win when they shouldn’t but they find a way to win. Stats can’t always account for things like this.

Having said that (I know, it was blasphemous for somebody who believes in sabermetrics), most of the time these counting stats are only relevant in close cases. In other words, I’ll only use numbers like those as a tiebreaker of sorts. When a player gets way too much or way too little credit, the “old-school” stats shouldn’t be used to try and make a point. It’s absurd to argue that Kevin Correia had a good year last year just because of his win totals. It’s also not realistic to say that Joe Carter deserved his MVP consideration in 1990 just because he had 115 RBI (his OPS was .681).

Not to ramble on too much further but I think both sides of the saber-old school debate can be obnoxious at times. When somebody points out that a guy’s wOBA is low so you should discount his 30 HRs and 90 RBI, I have a hard time totally buying it. Productino is production and for that season (at least) his production was solid. What I would do is red flag the guy as a major regression candidate because his peripheral numbers suggest it would be tough for him to replicate that impressive production. At the same time, few things annoy me more than when somebody insists that WAR (for example) doesn’t mean anything and they know that a guy is a star solely based on RBI or win totals.

Over the holidays I was in a Half Price Books and found the Revised edition of the Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract for IIRC $12.99 (plus 20% off, it was a sale). It came out about 10 years ago, still good reading. In it, James ranks the top 100 players of all time at each position, and I was fairly amazed that the Godfather of Sabermetrics used mainly win-loss, old-school ERA, batting average, HRs, RBIs and steals in describing their accomplishments. He also used Win Shares, which as I understand it takes a player’s output and puts it in context with the league output of the time and arrives at a simple number he uses to show why, say, a guy who hit .260 with 12 HRs and 68 RBIs in 1968 would have produced more value than a guy who hit .310 with 25 HRs and 99 RBIs in 1999 (I’m just making up these numbers for examples). There are very few (if any) advanced sabermetric formulas and numbers here. (There are also loads of anecdotes about the players that would make the book worth $10 even if it didn’t have a single number in it.)

I suggest it as just good reading for everyone, stat-heads to Trogluddites.

should always be treated as part of the overall mosaic when analyzing a player, past or present. It should not be treated as the end all, factors like intangibles, clutch play and winning shouldn’t be discounted. I think we can get into trouble when one statistic is the only method used in judging a player.

A while back, someone on another blog(forget which one), tried to make the faulty argument Manny Sanguillen was overrated due to his on base percentage. As we all know, Sanguillen was the definition of a bad ball hitter, it’s just how he played the game. It was revealing the blogger never saw Sanguillen play or else he wouldn’t have make such a false statement. While Johnny Bench was the best catcher in the game during that time period, Sanguillen was an excellent player, as a three time all-star. It’s amazing someone could only use one stat and make a false assumption of that nature. It’s like saying Willie Stargell was overrated because he struck out frequently.

Of course, being a bad ball hitter can be advantageous. We remember Game 2 of the ’79 Series, when Sanguillen got behind in the count 0-2, and then reached out on a pitch out of the strike zone for a game-winning hit.

experienced the 1960 World Series. Downtown Pittsburgh must have been a madhouse after Game 7.

but this is some of the best reading on BD in quite a while.

My 2 円 worth.