Lookout Landing

I heart scatterplots

Pythag Wins vs DER/OPS+ look the same?

Edgar for Pres - May 29, 2008 reply

Unsure.

Unfortunately, there was no simple way to compile this data and it took me two hours just to do these four years.

I’d be surprised if there was any major difference though.

Oh that sucks

Don’t you have some sort of THT super database? Too bad.

Edgar for Pres - May 29, 2008 reply

oh right, now you remind me.

I’ve never really made use of it. I should peek into that.

BABIP is listed at B-Ref

but only on a team by team basis AFAIK

and, for the curious

team DER for this period is at baseball prospectus, and no, no subscription needed.

to preempt others

LATE!

BP

I would have used BABIP but there’s no good site that lists it conveniently.

Last Fan Of Jose Lopez - May 29, 2008 reply

Do you have to subscribe to see this information?

I don't give BP my money.

Link

Last Fan Of Jose Lopez - May 29, 2008 reply

Pretty numbers

Thanks

The only reason I had a subscrtion was because I finished third in the Predictarion.

Heh

So here’s something I wasn’t expecting

In St.Louis’ run from 2000-06

The only time they missed the playoffs was in 2003 when their DER was ~average (probably due to Edmonds’ injuries, the rotation carousel of suck at 2nd, and the ghost of Tino Martinez forcing Pujols to play the OF). Every other year their defense was anywhere from good to outstanding. They lead the league in DER in 2004 when they won 105 games. It’s funny, I never considered the 2004 team anything special defensively.

Oh, and not so surprising, the 2001 Mariners have one of the best DERs in the last 10 years—but (surprising) the 2003 Mariners were even better., And somehow, even though they sucked, the 2004 Mariners placed 5th???

Yeah the 01 and 03 Ms were unbelieveably good at defense

Something like 200 runs better than the 08 Ms. Jeff and I figured it out a few weeks ago. It was sadness.

Holy shit

I don’t want to even quantify that in terms cost of defense and cost of ”#1” pitchers… and how many #1s it’d take to make up the difference.

ok, so going with BABIP

2008: .312
2001: .262

so a 50 point difference. The average team has ~4500 balls in play over a season (it’s actually a bit more). 4500 * .05 = 225 plays = 180 runs

.312 seemes like it'd be no good.

How many runs is a model 2007 Bedard worth?

Over what?

Whatever slop we'd throw out otherwise.

30-40 runs

So a good outfielder and a good firstbaseman...

a defensively average LF and 1B would be worth

~40 runs to this team.

Gosh that Bedard trade doesn't seem so keen

This is why I never pick starting pitchers first

in my Strato league.

no politics.

If that was deliberate then I applaud you

That was as far as I was going to go.

I'm a bit surprised the R^2 is so low for DER

I wonder how much of the ‘low’ correlation is due to teams like the Yankees that got past a bad DER with a $200m payroll (before figuring out it was cheaper just to not suck at defense).

What’s the correlation with, say, Ks? I keep thinking that skeptics will claim that defense is just a function of pitching. Maybe DER controlled for K rate or something?

You know what would be handy here?

Historical THT +/-.

There is something ringing in my ears

Oh wait. No its just Jeff begging for defensive stats again.

Edgar for Pres - May 29, 2008 reply

No shit.

Can you get snapshots using internet archive or something? Someone should have this.

I could be wrong but I think they only started using it last year anyway

Yeah

That's right

but I’d still like to see it. Besides, once they bought the PBP data, you’d think they could calculate it for previous seasons. Don’t let Matthew get away with this.

the +/- I believe is licensed from John Dewan

not built in-house and if so, limits what we can do at THT. BIS data is expensive and we don’t make any money.

Last Fan Of Jose Lopez - May 29, 2008 reply

Wouldn't DER be affected by the parks as well? Because a park like Petco is obviously bigger

than something like the Great American Ballpark, so there would be more ground to cover and more balls in play, because homeruns would turn into long doubles or triples. Or is the difference negligible?

It would be effected by the pitchers too

Say you had a so-so infield, but a staff of FB pitchers and three centerfielders. Wouldn’t that make the team’s defense look better than it really is?

According to DER, yes.

You could give up all fly balls, have a world-beating DER and a shitty HR rate. That’s what’s so cool about THT’s +/-. It corrects for pitching staff tendencies.