Archive for the 'Sabermetrics' Category

Tacking on to Andy's playoff thoughts from earlier today...

Familiarity Breeds Contempt

The 2010 Yankees-Twins ALDS represents just the 8th time in the WS era (1903-2010) that the same two teams faced each other in a postseason series 4 times in 8 seasons... The Dodgers & Yankees played each other in 4 world series from 1946-53, 48-55, and five times (!!!) from 1949-56. The Yankees and Royals faced off in 4 series from 1973-80, and the Braves & Astros had two different 8-year stretches with 4 playoff showdowns in the late nineties/early 2000s (1997-04 and 1998-05). The Red Sox and Angels capped off a 4-series-in-8-years stretch last season, and now the Yankees and Twins have joined that group with ALDS faceoffs in 2003, 2004, 2009, and 2010.

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One of Baseball Prospectus' most famous contributions to Sabermetrics has been PECOTA, the complex, similarity-score-based statistical projection system that might be more well-known than its namesake at this point. PECOTA has always been -- and likely will always be -- a black box, but today Dave Pease lets the reader peek inside for a small glimpse of the system's history and methodology. They say major changes are forthcoming for PECOTA, so it will be interesting to see which new frontiers BP visits as they push the boundaries of player projection algorithms.

It's a move you see all too often in today's cost-conscious baseball world: in order to delay his arbitration timetable and keep him under team control longer, the Giants held star prospect Buster Posey down in the minors at the beginning of the season. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, and in fact many teams would have done the same thing if given the chance. But in the case of Posey, the Giants' choice has probably made the NL West closer than it should have been, and could ultimately cost them the playoffs if San Diego is able to overcome San Francisco's slim half-game lead in the division.

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Patrick Flood's Mets Blog - Exile on 126th Street: WAR problems and the Mets Crazy Horse. / Part 2: the Pitchers

If you are a serious stathead and are curious about the differences between our WAR numbers as produced by Sean Smith and those on Fangraphs.com check out this two part (very extensive) set of posts by Patrick Flood. Very worth your while if you are into this sort of thing and written in an entertaining way as well.

Wanna know why Joe Mauer makes the big bucks? Here's a big hint:

Yesterday, I looked at the best eligible position players not in the Hall of Fame by WAR, and you responded with your votes by choosing Tim Raines as the non-HoFer you felt was most deserving of the honor. Today, I'm going to do the same thing, but for starting pitchers who haven't been enshrined in Cooperstown yet. Here are the top non-HoF pitchers by WAR who started at least 60% of their career games:

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Here's a post concept that's sure to be a lightning rod for discussion: who are the best position players not to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame? Using Baseball-Reference's new Wins Above Replacement data, we can attempt to answer that question. First, the players with the most total career value who aren't in the HoF:

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This post is the seventh in our series of ten new features for our tenth anniversary.

Sabermetricians have always been on the search for the best way to measure wins contributed by players. Baseball Prospectus has WARP, Bill James has win shares and now we are presenting Sean Smith's Wins Above Replacement or WAR data on the site.

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(Note: All of the data in this post was obtained from the new Baseball-Reference Fielding Stats.)

Sometimes a player has a season so magnificent that it becomes truly legendary. A batting example would be Babe Ruth's 1920, when he had more home runs by himself than any other team in the American League. For basestealers, Rickey Henderson's 130-steal 1982 campaign has gone down in history as the most prolific in modern history. And for pitchers, you have Pedro Martinez's 2000, when he posted a 1.74 ERA in a league where the average was 4.91. All of these feats have been justifiably lionized over the years for their brilliance, but where's the love for the greatest fielding performance of the postwar era?

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(Note: All of the data in this post was obtained from the new Baseball-Reference Fielding Stats.)

A month and a half into the 2010 season, the L.A. Dodgers' defense has been one of the biggest disappointments in baseball. Among NL teams, they current rank a distant last in both Fielding +/- and TotalZone Runs Above Average, and they're quite a bit below average in Defensive Efficiency as well:

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