Beyond the Box Score - A Saber-Slanted Baseball Community

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Dave Cameron on the value of depth, or how to minimize risk while adding wins. Of course, there is the difficulty of knowing whether a player whose production falls in the right-tail of the distribution is relying on luck versus skill, which makes the manager's decision difficult.

The Olympia Olympian has an interview with Mariners' head statistical analyst Tony Blengino. He discusses the free agent market and player valuation.

Tommy Rancel has an interview with new Rays' Director of Pro Scouting Matt Arnold. He discusses, among other things, how his economics background influences his scouting.

San Antonio College's The Ranger has an interview with economics professor and BtB alum Cyril Morong. He discusses what got him interested in sabermetrics. You can, of course, find his blog here.

Sky Andrecheck has a column at Sports Illustrated on why the free agent valuation system is an effective tax on Type A free agents. That'll teach those relievers not to rack up meaningless saves.

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Cubs Trade Aaron Heilman To Diamondbacks; Also Re-Sign John Grabow

by Tommy Rancel on Nov 19, 2009 9:42 PM EST Comment 2 comments

More photos » by Frank Franklin II - AP

The Cubs handed a $7 million dollar contract to John Grabow, who has been worth $5.3 million dollars over his career. They later traded Aaron Heilman to Arizona for a pair of prospects.

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On the eve of Free Agency, the Cubs made a pair of moves involving relief pitchers.

First, the Cubs re-signed LHP John Grabow to a two-year contract reportedly worth $7-7.5 million dollars. If you're asking yourself why they would spend that much money on a player who has accumulated -0.1 WAR over the past three seasons, then you're in the right place.

Grabow is a serviceable relief pitcher, but he is nothing special. His fastball sits in the low 90s, and like a lot of other relievers, he mixes in sliders and change-ups. His change-up has proven to be a plus pitch, but overall he doesn't generate a lot of swings and misses (8.1 swstr% in 2009).

Results wise, Grabow has benefited from a shiny ERA, and that's probably why he got the contract he did. In 2008, he posted an ERA of 2.84 for the Pirates and followed that up with a combined 3.36 for Pittsburgh and Chicago in 2009. Advanced metrics, however, see past the ERA screen and rate Grabow about average. His FIP in 2008 was 4.54 and only slightly better in 2009 at 4.20. That's not terrible, but I'm not giving him $7 million dollars over two seasons to basically be replacement level--especially not the day before the market is flooded with cheaper, and in many cases better, options.

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Zack Greinke and Tim Lincecum by LOWESS

by Tommy Bennett on Nov 19, 2009 6:51 PM EST in Graph of the Day Comment 15 comments

Today it was announced that Tim Lincecum would join Zack Greinke as this year's second Cy Young award winner. Both had excellent seasons. While Greinke likely has the edge due to Lincecum's more favorable league and park, both exhibited no real weakness. Both struck out more than a batter per inning, both walked fewer than three batters per nine innings, and both allowed fewer than a dozen home runs.

After Greinke's furious start, there was some concern that his superlative season might be lost as he bumped slightly in the middle of the season. Lincecum, by comparison, appeared to be more consistent: he had no string of dominance as convincing as Greinke's April, but neither did he have any periods in which he struggled.

I decided to calculate each pitcher's single-game FIP and xFIP (based on batted ball data from FanGraphs) and run it through the R CLI. I then applied a LOWESS regression to each pitcher's season to give an idea of how each pitcher's fortunes changed from month to month. Here they are, by FIP (click to enlarge):

xFIP comparison below the jump.

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Assorted Links

by Tommy Bennett on Nov 19, 2009 5:04 PM EST Comment 0 comments

Jeremy Greenhouse's Visual Scouting Report 1.0: Bay vs. Holliday. The heat is on!

A Wrigley mystery contained in a photo. If you'd like to take a crack at it without seeing the answer, the question is: "of which game was this picture taken?"

Was Zack Greinke's 2009 more like Ben Sheets' 2004 or Mark Prior's 2003? Note that both Prior and Sheets gave up more home runs than everyone's new favorite sabermetrician.

J.C. Bradbury compares methods for evaluating player aging. This is his most even-handed blog piece on the subject to date.

The free agency market officially opens tonight at midnight. Who's ready to overpay a weak class?

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Jim Tracy and Mike Scioscia Win Manager of the Year Awards

by Jeff Zimmerman (TucsonRoyal) on Nov 18, 2009 2:29 PM EST in Awards & Honors Comment 7 comments

More photos » by Julie Jacobson - AP

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Yawn.

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Reward Retrospective - 1985 AL MVP - Right Team, Wrong Player

by Jeff Zimmerman (TucsonRoyal) on Nov 18, 2009 2:08 PM EST in Awards & Honors Comment 13 comments

Beyond the Box Score will be starting a new series, Reward Retrospective, that will look at past awards (MVP, Cy Young, ROY, etc.) that pique our interest and examine them with some of todays metrics. I hope you enjoy these looks back at various players and seasons.

In 1985, I was 10 and never knew that it would be the last time I would see my Royals in the postseason. As a hardcore Brett fan, I wanted to go back and see if he was deserving of the AL MVP in 1985.

Here is a table of top 5 AL MVP vote getters and their basic stats for the '85 season:

Name	Team	Vote Pts	G	AB	R	H	HR	RBI	SB	BA
Don Mattingly	NYY	367	159	652	107	211	35	145	2	0.324
George Brett	KCR	274	155	550	108	184	30	112	9	0.335
Rickey Henderson	NYY	174	143	547	146	172	24	72	80	0.314
Wade Boggs	BOS	159	161	653	107	240	8	78	2	0.368
Eddie Murray	BAL	130	156	583	111	173	31	124	5	0.297

Now here is a comparison using Rally's WAR data (thanks to Sky for the original idea and Justin Bopp for the graphic):

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Assorted Links

by Tommy Bennett on Nov 18, 2009 11:41 AM EST Comment 5 comments

J.C. Bradbury takes on the world! He argues players peak at age 29-30, then Phil Birnbaum replies, then Bradbury fires back armed with graphs, then Colin Wyers gets into it. Bottom line is that this stuff is hard and any attempt to analyze the data will include assumptions that are open to criticism. Stay tuned.

What is the value of inductive reasoning? Would your answer change if I told you you had only one data point? What about if I told you that outsiders (Football or otherwise) have systematic bias as well?

The Last Expo's 2004 is a living reminder that statistical flukes happen all the time. He somehow scored more runs than Ichiro! in the same year that the latter broke the single season hits record.

How to become a trade-rumormonger, or everything you ever wanted to know about Jon Heyman's job but were afraid to ask, by Matt Swartz. Sadly it is behind BPro's pay wall.

My favorite law review note of all time: "The Common Law Origins of the Infield-Fly Rule." For fun, read the footnotes.

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