2007 ROY debate

[burrolover]

You wrote the article. Of course you agree with it.

[mletto157]

Who are you referring to?

[burrolover]

He's the guy that started the topic.

[RockCoCougars]

I would say if this is what you believe than you should learn more about statistics. There are statistics that measure everything. Just take a look at Ennder's post earlier in this exact thread, he lists statictics for both "Late & Close" and "High Leverage Situations." If you are ignoring these, than sure... you may not get an accurate measure of a players performance, both in general and in "clutch situations."

 

I actually like Late & Close and High Leverage stats (Cameron's are terrible by the way). How do they factor into WAR, UZR or whatever?

 

It's pretty hard to score a lot without players on base, don't you think? In all actuality we're talking about evaluating a specific player on offense, not the whole team and nothing to do with defense. That being known, what do you think an offensive player is trying to do when he's at bat? I would venture to guess if you said, "trying not to make an out" you would be correct. Well, the best stat to look at for this is OBP, because it is basically telling you how often a player did not make an out.

 

Agreed. But I'm not a big fan of weighing OBP as heavily as sabermetrics do. A walk just isn't as valuable as a hit, and rarely drives in a run. Like I said in my post, I would put more of the walk on the pitcher than on the particular hitter's acumen.

 

Pitchers almost never want to put a guy on base. Because even some of the worst hitters in the game still get a hit 1/5 to 1/4 of the time. If you have no outs, than that's three players with those chances to get a hit. That means more often than not, one of the next 3 gets a hit.

 

I disagree. As much as I think that Cameron is overrated, if I have two outs, a guy on base and I see Jason Kendall in the on-deck circle, I'm not giving Cameron anything good to hit. I'll try to get him to go fishing for my pitch, but I'm not grooving a fastball 3-1.

 

If this were true... since all the players on the Brewers face the same pitchers on any given day, shouldn't they all have basically the same walk rate? But they don't... Also why did Rickie Weeks have a high walk rate? I'm certain pitchers were not trying to pitch around him to get to Braun and Prince...

 

I hear your point. It's obvious that some hitters have more plate discipline than others. Everybody is pitched differently. It's obvious a guy like Corey Hart is exploited due to his horrible plate discipline. Like I said, that will be reflected in poor 'traditional' stats, and the guy will end up playing his way out of the league.

 

Wins in general are not a lucky stat. It's when looking at the win/loss record of a specific pitcher that it gets pretty dicey. Wins tell you almost nothing about how good a pitcher pitched. Wins are a team stat, not an individual one. When trying to evaluate a specific player you should not use a team stat. If you looked at is this way, Ben Sheets would have been a bad pitcher because he had a bad win/loss record. Also Braden Looper would have been the best pitcher on the Brewers last year because he had the best win/loss record. There's a reason that both of these are no where near true.

 

I completely agree. That said, some sabermaticians completely discount wins which I think is foolish. In my opinion, the three most important stats for a pitcher are WHIP, strikeouts to walks, and strikeouts per 9 innings.

 

 

Anyway, I'm done arguing this, but the main reason that I'm against sabermetrics is using stats to support foolish ideas like the fact that Tulo should have been ROY over Braun. I think that is crazy. Braun didn't start playing until Memorial Day weekend and still put up one of the best rookie seasons ever.

[Ennder]

Agreed. But I'm not a big fan of weighing OBP as heavily as sabermetrics do. A walk just isn't as valuable as a hit, and rarely drives in a run. Like I said in my post, I would put more of the walk on the pitcher than on the particular hitter's acumen.

 

They don't say a hit is as valuable as a walk, a hit also provides SLG while a BB doesn't. If anything OPS undervalues OBP and overvalues SLG so some sorted of weighted stat is better.

 

I actually like Late & Close and High Leverage stats (Cameron's are terrible by the way). How do they factor into WAR, UZR or whatever?

 

It isn't. WAR is hardly a perfect stat. They do factor into WPA/LI which are called situational wins and Cameron was only slightly above 0 in those so it agrees that his value offensively wasn't that high last year. The problem with the stat is it doesn't show much yearly correlation so it is hard to think it is some significant skill and not just variance most of the time.

 

Just to comment on another post in here, park factors are pretty much garbage. Different players are affected differently by different parks. Juan Pierre does not gain the same value from Coors that Matt Holliday did. Petco actually helps a slap hitter like Tony Gwynn Jr. while it completely destroys a gap power hitter. Manny Ramirez is helped more by Dodger stadium than he was by Fenway even though park factors will say the opposite. They need a lot more work before they are really useful.

[TooLiveBrew]

Juan Pierre does not gain the same value from Coors that Matt Holliday did.

 

I recall reading something that found the biggest impact Coors has on offense is the extra singles since the outfield is big & the OFs have to play deeper. If I'm remembering that correctly, then I would guess Pierre benefits pretty well from getting extra singles.

[Ennder]

Juan Pierre does not gain the same value from Coors that Matt Holliday did.

 

I recall reading something that found the biggest impact Coors has on offense is the extra singles since the outfield is big & the OFs have to play deeper. If I'm remembering that correctly, then I would guess Pierre benefits pretty well from getting extra singles.

Depends on the era of Coors. It used to really help HR big time back when Pierre played there but it also really helped singles hitters because the infield grass played so fast. Now they have the humidor and they keep the infield grass longer so it slows balls down more so it probably favors a line drive hitter finding holes in the OF over a pure power guy or a groundball guy. The general point stands though, it isn't helping every type of player the same.

[rluzinski]

There are a few valid concerns mixed in there (park factors are not perfect by any means, for instance) but most of the criticisms show a lack of understanding of the sabermetric principles involved. If I felt the person was open to new ideas, I would be happy to provide evidence. No amount of evidence can counter dogma, though.