Snippet from Dayn Perry Article

[MeatampPotatoesMan]

There are many similarities we can take from all of our failed years. That doesn't mean they are necessarily the cause of failure, even though they were present at the time.

 

?

 

If a team has consistently failed and the team has similar characteristics year after year and yet continues to fail, how could the characteristics not factor into causing the failure?

 

You need to link the failure with the characteristic, not imply that the characteristic caused the failure just b/c the characteristic was present at the time of the failure. Do you not see how this logically must be the case?

 

the cubs had blue in their uniform during each of those failures. does that mean that if we change uniform colors that we will all of a sudden succeed? i realize this is ridiculous, but it follows the same criteria of the argument that the dependence on the long ball caused our failures - being present at the time of the failure.

 

we also depended on the long ball during our "success" in 2003 and 2004 (where we just missed the playoffs).

[stitchface]

Yeah, I am not debating his overall importance. I am simply stating that to equate Podsednik with players who "suck" (like Neifi and Macias, for example) is ridiculous. He had a nice first half last year, a bad second.

 

Really? Perez .681 OPS compared to Podsednik's .700 last year seems pretty comparable to me? Pods .671 in 2004 is below Neifi's career .681. Neifi is probably slightly more valuable defensively (certainly if Pods is playing left). Basically, Podsednik has had one good season. I don't see any reason to think his contributions are any more than Neifi's.

 

 

Oh, and I am quite certain quite a few GMs consider VORP when making transactions. They also use PECOTA. And Beane does listen to scouts - case in point how long TLong hung around Oakland.

[MPrior]

at the very least they should be used to complement the old school approach to baseball.

 

You got it right in that specific statement, stick with that. They should be used as a compliment; denying that Podsednik was nothing short of a critical part of a World Series team is pretty crazy IMHO.

 

If Posednik was so critical, why did the White Sox score fewer runs in 2005 than in 2004. I think the White Sox success was more indicative of their phenomenal pitching than anything the offense contributed.

 

I'm not debating if pitching or hitting was more crucial to their championship, I don't want to open that can of worms.

 

I'm not trying to attack here, but this seems a bit silly. Someone (in this case Vance) makes a good point that is contrary to your assertions that Podsednik was critical to the White Sox's success, and instead of responding to it and defending your thus far unsubstantiated position, you skirt the issue and refuse to comment on it. Vance didn't even use any complicated stats to back himself up. I think, if you are going to call people who don't think Podsednik was essential to the White Sox's success crazy, then you better defend that position with something other than blind assertion.

[Diffusion]

Another stat I think isn't used enough is WHIP for pitching.

 

Meh. WHIP is used far too much as it is. The logic that a single is the same as a double, a triple, a home run or a walk, but a walk is not the same as a hit by pitch, and so on, is absolutely farcical. That's not to even mention the relative lack of control a pitcher exhibits over the number of hits he allows beyond his ability to strike batters out and to induce certain types of batted balls making the inclusion of hits in any cursory analysis of a pitcher's effectiveness entirely inappropriate and unreliable.

 

Don't even get me started on OPS, the statistic that'd think 300 pounds and 500 dollars exactly the same as 300 dollars and 500 pounds. The difference, incidentally, is approximately 145 dollars.

[Geech]

As bad as you make it out, OPS correlates pretty well with runscoring. I don't really think you can go wrong with it. The more advanced stats might give you a clearer picture, but they probably won't ever tell you anything dramatically different.

[MeatampPotatoesMan]

OPS is pretty primitive, but it's better than BA and RBI.

[Diffusion]

As bad as you make it out, OPS correlates pretty well with runscoring. I don't really think you can go wrong with it. The more advanced stats might give you a clearer picture, but they probably won't ever tell you anything dramatically different.

 

It correlates lousily compared to similar statistics that compensate for the different scales used to measure on-base and slugging percentages.

[Geech]

The numbers are correlation and root mean square error against runs scored. That seems pretty marginal to me.

 

On-base plus slugging         .922	   25.54
Equivalent Average		      .928       24.13
BaseRuns			             .930      24.38
eXtrapolated Runs (per PA)	 .920  	   24.83
Runs Created (per PA)		   .928	     24.96
Total Average			        .926      25.33

[nilodnayr]

There are many similarities we can take from all of our failed years. That doesn't mean they are necessarily the cause of failure, even though they were present at the time.

 

?

 

If a team has consistently failed and the team has similar characteristics year after year and yet continues to fail, how could the characteristics not factor into causing the failure?

 

Possibly the cubs did not fail because of their homerun production, but despite their homerun production?

[fearthecubs]

at the very least they should be used to complement the old school approach to baseball.

 

You got it right in that specific statement, stick with that. They should be used as a compliment; denying that Podsednik was nothing short of a critical part of a World Series team is pretty crazy IMHO.

 

If Posednik was so critical, why did the White Sox score fewer runs in 2005 than in 2004. I think the White Sox success was more indicative of their phenomenal pitching than anything the offense contributed.

 

I'm not debating if pitching or hitting was more crucial to their championship, I don't want to open that can of worms.

 

I'm not trying to attack here, but this seems a bit silly. Someone (in this case Vance) makes a good point that is contrary to your assertions that Podsednik was critical to the White Sox's success, and instead of responding to it and defending your thus far unsubstantiated position, you skirt the issue and refuse to comment on it. Vance didn't even use any complicated stats to back himself up. I think, if you are going to call people who don't think Podsednik was essential to the White Sox's success crazy, then you better defend that position with something other than blind assertion.

 

If you want me to address it open a new thread.

[Diffusion]

The numbers are correlation and root mean square error against runs scored. That seems pretty marginal to me.

 

On-base plus slugging         .922	   25.54
Equivalent Average		      .928      24.13
BaseRuns			             .930      24.38
eXtrapolated Runs (per PA)	 .920  	 24.83
Runs Created (per PA)		   .928	   24.96
Total Average			        .926      25.33

 

Those numbers are from Baseball Prospectus, and they involve a enormously prohibitively and largely outdated 1871-2003 sample size. The 1955-97 sample size used by Jim Furtado quotes the following numbers...

 

On-base plus slugging         .914	   41.4
Equivalent Runs   		      .974      21.8
BaseRuns			             .970      23.7
eXtrapolated Runs (per PA)	 .975  	 20.9
Runs Created (per PA)		   .964	   25.9

 

Now you start to see what I mean. You're talking about differences of 10% in r squared between OPS and every single other metric you've listed there. That means that OPS explains 10% less of the variation in R/G than the other metrics. That's statistically enormous. And you're talking about OPS having a far, far higher margin of error, in some cases being twice as inaccurate. That's statistically enormous too.

 

There's reason to believe that the climate has continued to shift since 1997, and that even the 1955-97 correlations are out of date, using a prohibitively big sample size, the earlier chunks of which are pretty much irrelevant these days. Primitive studies that I know of (by Dan Agonistes and Cyril Morong) have shown that there's reason to believe that the value of slugging percentage has increased over the few years relative to the value of on-base percentage, and the convergence of the two scales would of course lead to OPS correlating better than previously. However, neither of these studies looked at anything more than a single full year, and in Morong's case it was just short of a full year. Furthermore, Morang made a point of mentioning that on-base percentage was still more important than slugging percentage, and Agonistes' study showed that OPS was still less accurate than every single other run-appropriating statistic.

 

 

Given it's inaccuracy relative to plenty of other measures (and yes, I appreciate that it's better than average and RBI, obviously, but this is the whole "Juan Pierre is better than what we had last year" argument), I see absolutely no good reason for the propagation of OPS as the catch-all statistic of choice. If people that used it went to great pains to point out that it's quick, it's dirty, it's inaccurate, they're only using it because they can't be bothered to find something better, fair enough. But for the most part they don't. As a result there are far too many people around that have just got into the habit of using OPS, largely because other people have got into the habit of using it, that are completely oblivious to its considerable limitations and use it as if it's incontrovertible.

 

I completely understand the desire that a lot of people have to use the basic numbers, numbers they can conceptualise, numbers that people can easily relate to, as opposed to abstracts such as VORP. I have that desire myself, but .AVG/.OBP/.SLG is still the simplest and the best way to present the basic numbers. It takes you maybe a second or two longer to type. It doesn't require you adding numbers up. It tells you a lot more about a player and his game, how patient he is, how powerful he is, how sustainable his numbers are likely to prove. OPS on the other hand tells you absolutely nothing. It's just a number plucked out of the air. .819. Could mean anything. And even if you could decifer a meaning, with OPS' inaccuracy, it'd probably be half-wrong anyway.

[MPrior]

at the very least they should be used to complement the old school approach to baseball.

 

You got it right in that specific statement, stick with that. They should be used as a compliment; denying that Podsednik was nothing short of a critical part of a World Series team is pretty crazy IMHO.

 

If Posednik was so critical, why did the White Sox score fewer runs in 2005 than in 2004. I think the White Sox success was more indicative of their phenomenal pitching than anything the offense contributed.

 

I'm not debating if pitching or hitting was more crucial to their championship, I don't want to open that can of worms.

 

I'm not trying to attack here, but this seems a bit silly. Someone (in this case Vance) makes a good point that is contrary to your assertions that Podsednik was critical to the White Sox's success, and instead of responding to it and defending your thus far unsubstantiated position, you skirt the issue and refuse to comment on it. Vance didn't even use any complicated stats to back himself up. I think, if you are going to call people who don't think Podsednik was essential to the White Sox's success crazy, then you better defend that position with something other than blind assertion.

 

If you want me to address it open a new thread.

 

This is exactly what I'm talking about. You made an assertion, and when people (rightly or wrongly) questioned it, you responded by: first, restating the assertion, still without any evidence; and second, refusing to reply to others' responses to your original assertion. Now, when I ask you to address it, you do the same thing - refuse to address the issue for the ridiculous reason that I haven't started a new thread on it. I remind you, once again, that you made the original assertion which was being questioned, in this thread. You were willing to talk about it earlier in the thread, but not now, when people are questioning your viewpoints. All I want is an explanation of your viewpoint, because as of this moment, I don't understand it. And I don't appreciate being called crazy by someone who refuses to tell me why.

[frostwyrm]

Yeah, I am not debating his overall importance. I am simply stating that to equate Podsednik with players who "suck" (like Neifi and Macias, for example) is ridiculous. He had a nice first half last year, a bad second.

 

Really? Perez .681 OPS compared to Podsednik's .700 last year seems pretty comparable to me? Pods .671 in 2004 is below Neifi's career .681. Neifi is probably slightly more valuable defensively (certainly if Pods is playing left). Basically, Podsednik has had one good season. I don't see any reason to think his contributions are any more than Neifi's.

 

 

Oh, and I am quite certain quite a few GMs consider VORP when making transactions. They also use PECOTA. And Beane does listen to scouts - case in point how long TLong hung around Oakland.

 

Neifi has gotten 57% of his career at bats with the Rockies. Podsednik has gotten 0% of his career at bats with the Rockies.

[fearthecubs]

 

This is exactly what I'm talking about. You made an assertion, and when people (rightly or wrongly) questioned it, you responded by: first, restating the assertion, still without any evidence; and second, refusing to reply to others' responses to your original assertion. Now, when I ask you to address it, you do the same thing - refuse to address the issue for the ridiculous reason that I haven't started a new thread on it. I remind you, once again, that you made the original assertion which was being questioned, in this thread. You were willing to talk about it earlier in the thread, but not now, when people are questioning your viewpoints. All I want is an explanation of your viewpoint, because as of this moment, I don't understand it. And I don't appreciate being called crazy by someone who refuses to tell me why.

 

MSN me or something if you want to banter, it's not what this thread is about. A lot of times I cant respond immediately either, I really do live in China.