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by Tommy Bennett on Nov 13, 2009 10:11 AM EST

The high inside fastball is most effective when thrown after another fastball, and other interesting findings from Nick. I wonder about his conclusion comment that pitchers are worried about throwing a ball on 3-0. Isn't that the best strategy sometimes?

The Super-Two tiebreaker is service time in the previous season, or why Mike Fontenot is much luckier than Adam Jones and Micah Owings.

"Sabermetrics" is now in Merriam-Webster's dictionary. Note that they nailed the etymology.

Eric Seidman previews the new Baseball Prospectus statistics page. Why the default sort is by OPS rather than EqA (or even wOBA) I have no idea, but the splits and manager stats are welcome. Update: the people shall have their EqA in the near future!

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For some reason my THT article is off the site

It should be back up soon.

by vivaelpujols on Nov 13, 2009 10:56 AM EST reply actions

Seconded

I love your columns too, but I love these as a quick way to find interesting things.
-j

I write at:
Beyond the Boxscore | Red Reporter | Basement-Dwellers.com | Twitter: @jinazreds

by JinAZ on Nov 13, 2009 8:53 PM EST up reply actions

Sentences that make no sense to me:

Additionally, we are going to get EqA up there instead of OPS. Calculating EqA for Splits is tough but we’re working on it.

Really? It is? (I don’t think it’s THAT tough – if I can code it in half an hour, and I can, I see no reason they can’t.) And if it is, why not switch to a wOBA-like framework instead? Now, he could be talking about doing full Davenport Translations for all splits, but that strikes me as unnecessary at best.

(And I personally would rather see BP put some effort into fixing their existing stats, rather than making new ones. But I’ve become resigned on that account.)

I has a blog. | Ask a sabermagician!

by cwyers on Nov 13, 2009 12:35 PM EST reply actions

I think part of it may be the incentives

Their revenue just isn’t driven by statistics any more. Part of that is the highly quality of the freely available alternatives, and part of is a decline in comparative advantage. For better or worse, their best statistics stay proprietary to protect profits, which leaves the searchable ones below par.

by Tommy Bennett on Nov 13, 2009 12:57 PM EST up reply actions

Sad but true. Open Source Sabermetrics is bound to happen at some point.

The only stats that won’t be available are ones which require some additional observation outside the normal realm of official statistics (UZR). Even the other stuff, like James’ projections, are easy* to replicate once the method is established.

*by easy I mean easy for math geniuses.

See Data Differently.
beyondtheboxscore.com | Twitter: @ justinbopp

by Justin Bopp on Nov 13, 2009 1:32 PM EST up reply actions

I don't see how this describes the current situation at BPro.

There are some proprietary measures (like FRAA and PECOTA), but those do not form the majority of what they do there. (And in the instance of PECOTA, it’s far more of an open book than the James projections or CHONE or ZiPS, in my opinion.)

But look at the issues with, say, VORP. There is very little proprietary advantage to VORP – the metric was spelled out by Woolner on USENET ages ago, and the key part of it (MLVr) was invented by someone who never worked for BPro. It’s worse than EqA, a functional equivelent with a better (and also publicly published) methodology. Both are to some extent inferior to empiric linear weights, which are publicly available and NOT used by BPro at all.

VORP could be improved immensely by simply using EqA instead of MLVr. They, in fact, already publish such a thing seperately as RARP – they’ve already done all the work. There is simply no reason to persist in this sort of error.

I has a blog. | Ask a sabermagician!

by cwyers on Nov 13, 2009 1:40 PM EST up reply actions

It does puzzle me why they have all those values in the first place?

Why inclue VORP and RARP at all? They don’t even really show anything differently (both are offensive measures), and as many have pointed out before, VORP is just wrong. I don’t get why it’s still there.

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by SFiercex4 on Nov 13, 2009 8:05 PM EST up reply actions

That wasn't really my conclusion Tommy

I was just using that as an example of how pitchers have poor control.

My conclusion, I guess, is that the high fastball is a good pitch to throw if can locate it well. Speed doesn’t really matter – neither does movement, although I didn’t show it.

by vivaelpujols on Nov 13, 2009 4:38 PM EST reply actions