Rangers Sign Brandon Webb (p. 10)

[17 Seconds]

323 PAs is not a small sample.

 

thats less than 9% of his career PA, soooooo

[17 Seconds]

marlon byrd career in lf- .284/.335/.434 (.769)

marlon byrd career in cf- .277/.335/.415 (.751)

marlon byrd career in rf- .309/.385/.464 (.849)

 

idiot cubs are bleeding away production by using him in center, right?

[Northside Blues]

323 PAs is not a small sample.

 

If Byrd has another season like 2009 in the third spot - .904 OPS in 85 PAs – his OPS would improve 110 points. You can start to see a trend, maybe, in 323 PAs, but it's not enough of a sample size to make a declarative statement because it can fluctuate a bunch in a minimal number of PAs.

 

You'll generally want at least a full season's worth of PAs to start getting a good, large sample size. Even then, if they're spread out over multiple different seasons (like RISP numbers generally are) you have to look at other factors such as if he just sucked overall in one year or had a breakout year in another or something. It's a lot more telling if you're looking at a full season's worth of PAs in no more than a season or two worth of time.

 

there's a reason he performed poorly in those 323 PAs. It's not very random.

[dew1679666265]

there's a reason he performed poorly in those 323 PAs. It's not very random.

 

It doesn't mean he'll continue to perform poorly if given another 323 PAs. The reason you shouldn't put a lot of stock into small sample sizes isn't because what he did doesn't count, it's because it's simply too fluky and not predictable enough. Small spurts of good or bad performance swing it too largely one way or the other.

 

Did he perform poorly over those 323 PAs? Yes, however that's not enough of a sample size to predict he will continue to perform poorly in the #3 spot.

[MSG T]

323 PAs is not a small sample.

 

Yes, it is. In that number of PA's roughly 25% of players can be +/- 100 points of their actual production. The other 75% of players will be +/- 50 points. That's purely through luck.

 

You need At Least 1000 PAs to start getting a good handle on their real ability.

 

As was alluded to earlier, what if he goes off for a .326/.395/.515/.910 line over his next 323 PA's? Does that mean he's a #3 hitter? Does that mean he was unlucky those first 323 PAs, or was he really lucky the second 323 PA's. You're basing your proclamation on the equivalent of a half season of production. That's nowhere near enough of a sample.

 

Haven't you ever seen a guy that hit really well one half of a season and not so well the other half? There's about 5 Cubs that fell into that last season.

 

Now, if you want to look at his overall career numbers and say that he's not a #3 hitter, then OK, that makes a better argument. That sample covers 3600 PA's. That's a sample size that will give you a fair indication of the quality of hitter he is. It may not tell the whole story (you'd be including PA's from 8 years ago), but it tells a better story.

[erik316wttn]

So has there been an official offer made to Webb yet or not?

[GTAG]

that's my question too... I saw that there was a new page on this thread since I was on yesterday and I thought something was cooking... only to see a discussion about Marlon Byrd... don't do this to me guys... I am pathetically waiting for them to make a move on Webb one way or the other...

[Little Slide Rooter]

that's my question too... I saw that there was a new page on this thread since I was on yesterday and I thought something was cooking... only to see a discussion about Marlon Byrd... don't do this to me guys... I am pathetically waiting for them to make a move on Webb one way or the other...

 

I too have been foolishly checking the Brandon Webb thread for Brandon Webb news.

[MSG T]

that's my question too... I saw that there was a new page on this thread since I was on yesterday and I thought something was cooking... only to see a discussion about Marlon Byrd... don't do this to me guys... I am pathetically waiting for them to make a move on Webb one way or the other...

 

I too have been foolishly checking the Brandon Webb thread for Brandon Webb news.

 

[-X

 

I figured you were paying more attention to the Garza thread to see if you needed to organize that lynching.

[Northside Blues]

323 PAs is not a small sample.

 

Yes, it is. In that number of PA's roughly 25% of players can be +/- 100 points of their actual production. The other 75% of players will be +/- 50 points. That's purely through luck.

 

You need At Least 1000 PAs to start getting a good handle on their real ability.

 

As was alluded to earlier, what if he goes off for a .326/.395/.515/.910 line over his next 323 PA's? Does that mean he's a #3 hitter? Does that mean he was unlucky those first 323 PAs, or was he really lucky the second 323 PA's. You're basing your proclamation on the equivalent of a half season of production. That's nowhere near enough of a sample.

 

You just made that number up. My point isn't that it's predicative. My point is that there is a reason. Randomness isn't it. His true talent level during those 323 PAs was not his career average.

[MSG T]

323 PAs is not a small sample.

 

Yes, it is. In that number of PA's roughly 25% of players can be +/- 100 points of their actual production. The other 75% of players will be +/- 50 points. That's purely through luck.

 

You need At Least 1000 PAs to start getting a good handle on their real ability.

 

As was alluded to earlier, what if he goes off for a .326/.395/.515/.910 line over his next 323 PA's? Does that mean he's a #3 hitter? Does that mean he was unlucky those first 323 PAs, or was he really lucky the second 323 PA's. You're basing your proclamation on the equivalent of a half season of production. That's nowhere near enough of a sample.

 

You just made that number up. My point isn't that it's predicative. My point is that there is a reason. Randomness isn't it. His true talent level during those 323 PAs was not his career average.

 

Yes, randomness is it. That's why he could very easily put up the numbers I listed in his next 323 PAs. If the 323 PAs was his actual ability, those numbers would be very close to his overall career numbers (assuming that's his true ability). In looking at 323 PAs, it's very possible he just isn't good as a three hitter, it's also very possible he was just unlucky in those 323 PAs. The point is, with that few PAs, you just don't know what the reason is.

 

As for your first statement, I didn't make them up, I took what Tom Tango, Andrew Dolphin and Michael Lichtman found in their research for The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball and roughly translated them to 300 PAs (they skip from 200 to 500 PAs). They did the research on random fluctuations and the percentage of players that would fall within one and two standard deviations of their actual talent level. Like I said earlier, they are rough translations, not exact. My point was that a player can perform well under his true ability, due to bad luck, and that will make a huge difference in his numbers in half a seasons PAs.

[Northside Blues]

As for your first statement, I didn't make them up, I took what Tom Tango, Andrew Dolphin and Michael Lichtman found in their research for The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball and roughly translated them to 300 PAs (they skip from 200 to 500 PAs). They did the research on random fluctuations and the percentage of players that would fall within one and two standard deviations of their actual talent level. Like I said earlier, they are rough translations, not exact. My point was that a player can perform well under his true ability, due to bad luck, and that will make a huge difference in his numbers in half a seasons PAs.

 

I don't care what they said. They're simply wrong. There's about a 5% chance that a .282 true talent levels hitter hits .326 in 300 PAs or so. No one's saying that the the 300 PAs is indicative of his future. No one is saying that he hit well there because of his spot in the lineup or that his jockstrap was folded in the perfect manner. I am only saying that for those 300 PAs his true talent level was not .282 or whatever you want to say it is. It's that simple. Was it .326? No. There are more streaks in baseball than anticipated if you just keep true talent and say it's 100% random. The fact is true talent level fluctuates enormously in the short term in the sense of how good the player is AT THAT PRECISE TIME. If you want to think of true talent level as an average of the short term true talent levels, be my guest. I'm merely saying for those 300 PAs he's simply was a better player than he normally is. One way you can test this is to look at a random sample of two months. Take half the PA's. Every other one or however you want to do it. Then look at that ran against the other half. Look at the difference between that and their long term true talent level. There's a relatively high correlation - which is not what you would expect if the short term true talent level was the same as the long term true talent level.

[SouthSideRyan]

Northside, wouldn't you assume a player would have the same approach in the 3 and 4 spots in the batting order? What do you think changes about Marlon Byrd's approach from one spot to the other to explain such a drastic difference in results?

[Northside Blues]

It's not a random sample, for one.

[NonProfitCow]

It's not a random sample, for one.

Awesome

[TruffleShuffle]

There's about a 5% chance that a .282 true talent levels hitter hits .326 in 300 PAs or so.

 

5% chance means that 5 percent of the time, that will happen. you're treating it like it's 0%.

 

I don't care what they said. They're simply wrong.

 

now THIS is awesome.

[Northside Blues]

I am not treating it as zero.

[erik316wttn]

Can a mod please split off this Marlon Byrd/whatever else talk into its own thread so we can get back to talking about Brandon Webb?

[Northside Blues]

It's not a random sample, for one.

Awesome

I don't care what they said. They're simply wrong.

 

now THIS is awesome.

 

Consider this. Let's say we take players the first three months of the season, minimum 200 PAs. We then split up their PA's into two equal sets, randomly. You can do this with a rand function very easily. If you don't want to do that, just alternate them and throw them into two sets that way. I chose the first method. Then in those two sets, calculate OPS. Keep in mind that these two sets have 100-175 PAs max. Then for the players calculate their true talent level the best you can. A simple way is to weight the three previous years, hence why we wanted to look at the first three months of the season. You can also use a projection system to come up with one. Then take the difference between their "true" OPS and their actual OPS's for each set.

 

If it were truly random like you all (and they) say, then we would expect this correlation to be zero, or very close to it. Since doing well (or poor) in one set of 125 PAs shouldn't have anything to do with the other set of 125 PAs. However, when you look at the data you'll find a correlation that's in the .30-.40 range between the differences. Meaning that the two are certainly related and that high fluctuations in short term true talent level exist. It's even more surprising considering that each set is around 150 PAs.

 

Thus, their hypothesis can be thrown out the window and they are simply wrong.

[Little Slide Rooter]

I thought Id post this due to the lack of recent Webb news.

 

Brandon Webb "remains excited" about the Nationals, and the two sides talked during the winter meetings.

 

Remember when every player wanted to play for the Cubs, which coincedently ended when Hendry lost his bottomless money pit?

[Backtobanks]

I thought Id post this due to the lack of recent Webb news.

 

Brandon Webb "remains excited" about the Nationals, and the two sides talked during the winter meetings.

 

Remember when every player wanted to play for the Cubs, which coincedently ended when Hendry lost his bottomless money pit?

 

Do we really want a player that "remains excited" about the Nationals?

[Guest]

It's not a random sample, for one.

Awesome

I don't care what they said. They're simply wrong.

 

now THIS is awesome.

 

Consider this. Let's say we take players the first three months of the season, minimum 200 PAs. We then split up their PA's into two equal sets, randomly. You can do this with a rand function very easily. If you don't want to do that, just alternate them and throw them into two sets that way. I chose the first method. Then in those two sets, calculate OPS. Keep in mind that these two sets have 100-175 PAs max. Then for the players calculate their true talent level the best you can. A simple way is to weight the three previous years, hence why we wanted to look at the first three months of the season. You can also use a projection system to come up with one. Then take the difference between their "true" OPS and their actual OPS's for each set.

 

If it were truly random like you all (and they) say, then we would expect this correlation to be zero, or very close to it. Since doing well (or poor) in one set of 125 PAs shouldn't have anything to do with the other set of 125 PAs. However, when you look at the data you'll find a correlation that's in the .30-.40 range between the differences. Meaning that the two are certainly related and that high fluctuations in short term true talent level exist. It's even more surprising considering that each set is around 150 PAs.

 

Thus, their hypothesis can be thrown out the window and they are simply wrong.

 

So the whole point of this diatribe is simply semantics? I don't understand the point in ranting about how "it's not random" when you aren't saying that there is a specific something causing it, and more importantly, not a repeatable specific something causing it. It's the same thing as the clutch argument. Sure there could be underlying forces at work here, but if they aren't working in repeatable or predictive ways, then who cares if you define them as "luck" or "random" or "fleeting streaks of influenced performance" or whatever?

[Guest]

It's not a random sample, for one.

Awesome

I don't care what they said. They're simply wrong.

 

now THIS is awesome.

 

Consider this. Let's say we take players the first three months of the season, minimum 200 PAs. We then split up their PA's into two equal sets, randomly. You can do this with a rand function very easily. If you don't want to do that, just alternate them and throw them into two sets that way. I chose the first method. Then in those two sets, calculate OPS. Keep in mind that these two sets have 100-175 PAs max. Then for the players calculate their true talent level the best you can. A simple way is to weight the three previous years, hence why we wanted to look at the first three months of the season. You can also use a projection system to come up with one. Then take the difference between their "true" OPS and their actual OPS's for each set.

 

If it were truly random like you all (and they) say, then we would expect this correlation to be zero, or very close to it. Since doing well (or poor) in one set of 125 PAs shouldn't have anything to do with the other set of 125 PAs. However, when you look at the data you'll find a correlation that's in the .30-.40 range between the differences. Meaning that the two are certainly related and that high fluctuations in short term true talent level exist. It's even more surprising considering that each set is around 150 PAs.

 

Thus, their hypothesis can be thrown out the window and they are simply wrong.

How many tests did you perform? If it is a small number of tests, then a correlation of .3 - .4 is really not sufficient evidence to back your hypothesis.

[Tracer Bullet]

if folks really want to get into the discussion of how batting order position relates to performance, please start a new thread in baseball discussions. Or you can just review the pages and pages of discussion from one of the Soriano threads on this topic a few years ago and commence pounding your head on the table like everyone else does when they try to read them.

[jersey cubs fan]

I thought Id post this due to the lack of recent Webb news.

 

Brandon Webb "remains excited" about the Nationals, and the two sides talked during the winter meetings.

 

Remember when every player wanted to play for the Cubs, which coincedently ended when Hendry lost his bottomless money pit?

 

Do we really want a player that "remains excited" about the Nationals?

 

We probably shouldn't want a player that remains excited about the Cubs, but we have to take what we can get.