Average and School

by R.J. Anderson on Jan 9, 2009 1:16 PM EST

I've been thinking more about this average average thing, and I've reached a conclusion: academia kills the way we think of baseball value. In school, the best grade was an A+, or 100%. 90% was great, 80% good, 70% fine, and 60% was acceptable. Anything below 60% was failing and unacceptable.

In baseball, sometimes that same mindset interferes with reality. Gabe Gross isn't 60% of Albert Pujols, or 50%, or even 30%. Try 20%. Yet Albert Pujols is the best player in the game, and Gabe Gross is an average ballplayer. Yeah, you read that right: last year Gross was worth 20% of what Pujols provided, yet Gross is an average player. If Albert Pujols was the genius in school who skipped a few grades and still aces his tests, that makes Gross the kid who sits in the back making jokes about giant freaking spiders and gets a 20% on each test. Their futures would look like this:

Pujols - valedictorian - Harvard - Oxford - Nobel Prize - discovers cure for cancer and AIDS while goofing off in his lab.

Gross - flunks out - sells drugs - arrested - dies in jail at the hands of a giant freaking dude named "Spider".

For Gabe to "graduate" at their current rates, Pujols would have to make 300% on every test.

The first time I noticed that I was shocked. How can a player be worth only 20% of another, yet still be valuable? It is because baseball's talent is not equal, and not a pie graph, but rather a reverse pyramid. There are more replacement level players than fringe players. More average players than above average players. Less superstars than anything, yet they get most of the attention and fan desire.

Being a superstar in baseball requires an otherworldly amount of talent, but being an average player still requires being one of the best players in the world.

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I wonder if someday the market will

begin paying superstars in a non-linear fashion. Getting 5+ wins out of a single position has value in roster construction beyond just the 5 wins, imo.

PS – Albert is amazing.

Nice Robot

by azruavatar on Jan 9, 2009 1:23 PM EST reply actions

It has value, yes.

But only once you’ve filled every position with someone significantly above replacement level. No reason to pay more for a 5 WAR guy when you can pay for two 2.5 WAR guys and play them both without benching anyone with any value.

Beyond the Boxscore // Calling BJ Upton lazy is lazy.

by Sky Kalkman on Jan 9, 2009 1:41 PM EST up reply actions

I disagree with the last part of your statement.

Baseball talent is pyramidal in nature. There’s a lot more 1 WAR guys than there are 7 WAR guys. If I can get 5 WAR from one position, the implication that it’s directly equivalent to 2.5 WAR from 2 positions is correct in terms of wins but it misses the roster construction aspect. 1 WAR players are easily found every offseason and, at times, undervalued in their contracts and likely to take short term deals. If you can get 5 WAR from a single position, you should be able to fill that second position with something slightly better than 0 WAR but maybe not league average.

Nice Robot

by azruavatar on Jan 9, 2009 2:08 PM EST up reply actions

Another way of looking at it.

Absolute zero in baseball skill would come from you or me. That’s 0% on a test.

Replacement-level in baseball would be 60% on a test. These guys can actually play baseball pretty well, just not in comparison to major leaguers. Getting a 60% on a trig test is pretty decent for our population as a whole, just not when you’re taking trig.

Average would be, well, it depends. 75% or a C, by definition, but probably more like 80 to 85% in some classes.

Stars in baseball would be 130% on the test, as the difference between them and average is 2-3 times the difference between average and replacement level.

Barry Bonds’ 2004 season would be infinity.

Beyond the Boxscore // Calling BJ Upton lazy is lazy.

by Sky Kalkman on Jan 9, 2009 1:43 PM EST reply actions

Barry Bonds’ 2004 season would be infinity.

But he had the answer key. Or something.

by Daniel Berlyn on Jan 9, 2009 8:26 PM EST up reply actions

I've been thinking along these lines, too

think about WAR like grade point average (except in a non-grade inflationary grade environment)

it isn’t perfect, but

0 = F = Replacement level

1 = D = Above replacement level, but still not very good

2 = C = Average — not showing off, not falling behind

3 = B = Above Average maybe not the head of the class, but good — you can get a long way with a bunch of Bs (at least in the old days)

4 = A very good

OK, so it breaks down at the top, but really, there aren’t that many 5+ WAR players in baseball — I realize fangraphs has different numbers, but according to Justin, anyway, the Rays only had one position player — Longoria, over 4, and yet they made the world series. Fangraphs says there were only 8 5+ WAR position players in the AL this season.

Good article, R. J.

Bringing you more-or-less replacement level analysis and commentary since sometime in 2008.

by Matt Klaassen on Jan 9, 2009 2:22 PM EST reply actions

We could call D "fringe".

by R.J. Anderson on Jan 9, 2009 4:14 PM EST up reply actions

Wasn't Gabe Gross looked on as quite a good trade when it happened?

by ol Pete on Jan 9, 2009 5:43 PM EST reply actions

He's just an example of an average player.

I’m not commenting on the trade.

by R.J. Anderson on Jan 9, 2009 6:21 PM EST up reply actions

Grade inflation

Having given grades for a living (once upon a time, I taught some undergrad level psych classes), there’s always a problem, both in baseball and in the classroom. There are some students who get a “solid A” and then there are students who do the kind of work that makes you say “I need another letter above A to fully communicate what this is.” It seems a shame to give them “only” an A. That’s Pujols.

Then there’s the issue of giving someone an F (or even a D), which is the hardest thing that there is to do in teaching. Anyone can learn to give a lecture. It takes a killer instinct to look someone in the eye (or at least the report card) and say you’re a failure. So we avoid saying that about anyone. So everyone gets a B or a C. The result is that we get ideas about Gabe Gross that while he’s not Pujols, he’s at least a respectable distance away. He’s not. It doesn’t make him a failure as a human being or even as a baseball player, just that he’ll never be anywhere near Pujolsian.

http://mvn.com/mlb-stats

by pizzacutter on Jan 9, 2009 6:15 PM EST reply actions