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Colin Wyers

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Everything posted by Colin Wyers

  1. Colin Wyers
    Assuming they haven't changed anything in VORP since the last time Woolner wrote about it, and I'm remembering correctly, the replacement level for a shortstop in VORP in the 2008 NL should be .221/.267/.323. UPDATE: And I don't think that's right. I've tried looking in Baseball Between The Numbers for an explanation and one doesn't seem to be forthcoming. This is one of only about 30 reasons I get frustrated dealing with BP's metrics.
  2. Colin Wyers
    Yeah, no kidding, right? The way I figure marginal wins, 7-8 wins gives you Albert Pujols. So I have no idea what scale he's on.
  3. Colin Wyers
    What's VORP? I'm guessing it's a combination of stats, but which ones? Thanks. VORP stands for "value over replacement player," and is the number of runs a player is expected to contribute on offense above a hypothetical replacement player at his position - like, say, a waiver-wire pickup, or a minor-league non-prospect, or a free agent available for the league minimum. (Yes, sometimes you get a guy off the trashheap and he does what Jim Edmonds did for us last season. Replacement level is the average of that - actual replacements will play above or below that rate from time to time.) As for how those runs are estimated, it's using OBP and SLG. The full formula's a bit complex, but it's based on basic Runs Created, which is: OBP * SLG * AB Essentially, VORP estimates the run scoring of a typical team with the player in question, and then with his replacment, and then the player is credited with the difference. And so long as I'm on the subject - VORP underrates players with high walk rates. It also overrates DHes. There are some other issues as well.
  4. Colin Wyers
    By my numbers, right now the Cubs are probably a true 88 or so win team. The Cubs probability of getting in the post season with 88 wins is probably 50%, maybe a little higher given the sad state of our division. If the Greene was just a slight upgrade (say 3 wins) over Theriot those 3 wins, probably increase the chances of us getting into the playoffs by 30-40%. The playoff revenue generated by the higher probability is likely to offset the 6 million extra spent....not to mention the 30-40% higher chance of getting into the playoffs...and possibly DOUBLING or TRIPLING our chances of getting a world series win. All for a six million. Excuse me, but what? I mean, I'm the founder and co-chair of the Anybody But Ryan Theriot For Shortstop Foundation And Charity Car Wash, but... what? Three marginal wins between Greene and Theriot? Are you... what? 88 wins? 30%-40% increase in playoff odds? Where in the bleeding hell is your replacement level baseline set, the .150 Baseball Prospectus uses for WARP? ...what?
  5. Colin Wyers
    Except for Soriano, the NTCs the Cubs have given out have been to players who were knowingly signing below-market-value deals to stay in Chicago. You don't get Lee or Ramirez to walk away from extra millions/years without giving them protection like that.
  6. Colin Wyers
    No offense to Dallas, but did anyone else hear this? I find it rather hard to believe that Towers would say that. I just missed the Towers interview, but I saw someone on BCB say the same thing. They said it would be in their podcast section, but it's not yet.
  7. Colin Wyers
    http://www.braves-nation.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13039&page=71 What utter garbage. WHIP, ERA and... plate appearances per extra-base hit? Why don't you just throw win percentage in there, too. Or uniform color. Nonsense. Oh, and if I had PI I'd test this, but I'm almost entirely convinced that he just "normalized" Peavy's 2007 season to Turner Field using Baseball-Reference.com. Trash, trash, trash. Did I say that clearly enough? Nonsense. All of us are dumber for having read it. Please remove it from the Internet before it kills again.
  8. Colin Wyers
    Mike Fontenot has looked good in every defensive metric I've seen this year, and was the only Cub to show up on the plus side in Dewan's Fielding Bible leaderboard. Rally's defensive projections (which include Fan Scouting Report data) have him as essentially average at second. He's younger than DeRosa, so it wouldn't be the craziest thing in the world to expect him to be at least equal to him defensively.
  9. Colin Wyers
    I think the Cubs are going to go out and add one more outfielder this offseason, a power hitter sort to play right field. If that happens, the Cubs will probably employ some mix of Fukudome, Johnson and Pie in center field next season. The Cubs are stuck with both Dome and Pie - neither can be sent to the minors - and have to do something with them. That would make Edmonds expendable to the organization.
  10. Colin Wyers
    I don't see how this follows. Whether or not Wood at three years is a good idea is dependant largely on how well you expect Wood to perform, what you can replace him with and what you can do with that money otherwise. (If anything, bad contracts make it less feasible to retain Wood, because you have less salary flexibility.) As for the closer role - I think I saw someone refer to it as "useless" or somesuch. It's overrated, but far from useless. I think that's a case of the pendulum swinging too far in a reaction against conventional wisdom.
  11. Colin Wyers
    And a lot of noise is simply noise. Way too much time and energy is wasted trying to assign meaning to randomness. And, sure, for players in the flat part of the aging curve, with a lot of MLB PAs, a simple three-year average is pretty close to their Marcels projection. For players in the steeper part of the aging curves, players without a lot of playing time, etc., though, they'll be different. And using aging adjustments and regression to the mean is very important for players it greatly effects. Beyond that, either I don't grok what you're talking about or you're Lyndon LaRouching it. Are you talking about something like PECOTA percentiles? (They've never been tested, incidently.) It's real easy to talk about a proposed alternative that doesn't really exist. Yes, these are median projections. I think that's the most useful when comparing two players, unless you have some sort of evidence that certain players (or certain types of players) are more/less likely to vary greatly from their median forecasts, for reasons that aren't simply captured by the reliability score of the forecast.
  12. Colin Wyers
    As regards Zambrano, I fail to see what your problem is here - I have Z forecast for a .279 BABIP, compared to an average forecast of .296 for the league. This isn't a DIPS/FIP system where BABIP is regressed 100% to the mean. In that regard, you're arguing against a strict DIPS-ERA (or FIP-ERA) approach; I know of no forecasting system that follows a strict DIPS approach like that. Your larger point is that the spread of performance in the league is larger than the spread of talent produced by projection systems. That's true, because by definition sample data is more extreme than true-talent level - that's the "noise" we're filtering out by using regression-based projection systems. For players with a lot of PAs/IPs, the signal outweighs the noise - that's how Zambrano gets a much lower BABIP than the league norm in his projection, even after we regress.
  13. Colin Wyers
    They use video scouts to grade out every play in Dewan's +/- system. You have to either subscribe to Bill James Online or buy the Fielding Bible (which should be in print in a few months.)
  14. Colin Wyers
    marcel has got to be one of the worst, though. it's not impressive at all to say your system is accurate when you just predict everyone in the league is going to be mediocre. it's the crazy stuff (on both ends) that makes a projection system interesting. marcel is not interesting. That's only true if the "crazy stuff" is adding value above and beyond the safe, boring stuff the Marcels is giving you. If it isn't, then it's just noise masking the signal. I'm not trying to dispute the idea that there are better projection systems than Marcel. But they're not THAT much better. As far as being useless, Meph - take Theriot's Marcel projection, versus his 2008 season line. Which is more instructive going forward? I don't know what it is that you think is more useful. Certainly regression-to-the-mean based projection systems (as well as the sim-score based PECOTA) did a better job of seeing where the Rays were headed than anyone else did.
  15. Colin Wyers
    They're Baseball Reference ID codes, if you want to know what to look up. cedenro01 is Roger Cedeno, and 02 is Ronny, IIRC. As for the pitcher numbers - they are what they are. "ERAs" are BaseRuns per Nine adjusted to match up on the ERA scale. If I was making my own projection system, there's several things I'd do differently - I'd probably regress H a bit more heavily and K, BB etc. a bit less, among other things. These are just basic Marcels, and if you'll notice, the R scores (for reliability) are all lower for pitchers than hitters, which is why you see pitchers regressing to the mean more (or "balooning up," as one poster put it.) As far as thoughts, I don't really have any - like I said, this is just a "clean room" reimplementation of Tango's Marcels projection system, and everything's pretty much out in the open as far as the methods he uses.
  16. Colin Wyers
    Hill is supposed to pitch tonight in Iowa. (His start last night was rained out.) That might give us a beter idea of how close he is to a callup.
  17. Colin Wyers
    I'd rather have Theriot 2nd, Fukudome 5th, and Edmonds 7th than Fukudome 2nd, Edmonds 5th, and Theriot 8th. I consider the dropoff from Edmonds moving up more significant than any benefit that moving Fukudome up causes. The elephant in the room here is, how long will the team keep batting their best hitter sixth?
  18. Colin Wyers
    That's probably the "shape" of the lineup (as far as lefty-righty balance) that Lou has been coveting so far this season.
  19. Colin Wyers
    Lineups aren't out until an hour before gametime. Word over at BCB though is that Theriot is leading off, Fukudome is batting 2nd, Soriano has the day off, and Hoffpauir is in LF. I was just going off what was said on the Sun-Times' Twitter account (probably Wittenmyer, maybe DeLuca). It's generally the quickest source I've found for lineup info. Huff-P is batting fifth, incidently. I'd bet on six through eight being the same as yesterday, but that's just a hunch on my part.
  20. Colin Wyers
    I thought for sure this was going to be yet another Edmonds thread.
  21. Colin Wyers
    Hardball Times tracks reliever levredge and win probability added, and it's not pretty. Wood is coming dangerously close to costing this team wins if he hasn't already done so. is this a good time to bring up the term "sample size"? It's always a good time to bring up sample size. But I don't think it's correct to argue that Wood has pitched especially well so far this season. The discussion then becomes how meaningful that is. The big difference is strikeouts - 1.3 K/IP for Marmol, .94 K/IP for Wood. Marmol's walk rate is much higher as well, though.
  22. Colin Wyers
    Hardball Times tracks reliever levredge and win probability added, and it's not pretty. Wood is coming dangerously close to costing this team wins if he hasn't already done so. (Also, can we NOT use Chad Fox when the game is on the line? Thanks.)
  23. Colin Wyers
    It's just a ritual here. Every time Marmol pitches, everybody screams ZOMG HE IS BEING OVERUSED HIS ARM WILL FALL OFF ZOMG ZOMG. It's pretty amusing. If this isn't a situation you use Chad Fox in, what situation DO you use him in? The bigger issue is that, ever since Marmol became "the setup man," Lou seems to view him as limited to the eighth or ninth inning, rather than using him as a fireman WHENEVER the game is on the line, regardless of the inning.
  24. Colin Wyers
    I know at least one user around here seems to be gifted with video - I think it's AramisFan - and I'm looking for video of Ryan Theriot hitting from this season and (hopefully) last season. Only thing is, I need the video to show Theriot as he hits the bag at first. Doesn't really matter if it's a hit or an out. Any help here would be greatly appreciated.
  25. Colin Wyers
    range factor? seriously? So you think his defense is satisfactory for a CF? Not to mention in comparison to Pie. That doesn't mean that range factor is a worthwhile stat. Any non-play-by-play defensive stat is exceedingly limited in usefulness for measuring defense over a single season or less. (Yes, that includes FRAR.) I finally got around to figuring defensive +/- for all the Cubs (actually everyone in baseball, but that was incidental) using THT's RZR stats. Johnson's been just a shade below average defensively in center field; Pie has been exceptionally good defensively. You can check all of it out over at GROTA.
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