Request for help on a Statistics Project!

by Zeus12888 on Sep 8, 2009 3:56 PM EDT Comment 5 comments

Hey guys,

Im taking Stats 101 in college right now, and have been tasked with completing a project on statistics. Our professor said we can do a topic in sports, so I was wondering if any of you guys could help me come up with a good question that merited statistical analysis.

Some thoughts I had included:

Is it better to pitch to Albert Pujols with the bases loaded, or walk him?
Does total payroll correlate with winning percentage?
Are you more likely to make an out if you take the first pitch?

Any ideas you guys have would be much appreciated (they don't have to be unique), and if you guys could point me towards a place where I could find some of these statistics, it would also be a big help. Thanks so much, and I promise to share the results of my project when I'm done!

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Any of those three I'm sure would be fine...

The second one is probably the easiest; all you need is the payroll and team data in the baseball databank. The others will require ALOT of digging through baseball-reference or building yourself a nice sized chuck of the retrosheet database…

The first one has a really easy answer; I think MGL or Tango did that with Bonds in his roided-up super-human years, and even in his case, you should pitch to him… From 2000-4, Posada is the only player I can find with 70+ ABs with the bases loaded and more than 1 RBI per AB [1.05]. While that would seem like a walk is better, there were still 0.69 outs per PA in his plate appearances.

So pitching to him still gave up a run each time on average, but also some outs. If an out is worth -0.3 runs, then the net value was still just 0.84 runs.

Going alittle lower on the ABs, there is Phil Nevin with 1.19 RBI/AB and 0.60 outs; which figures in at 1.01 runs.

Shawn Green comes out at 1.008 runs in 59 AB
Jason Giambi 0.96 in 62 AB
Sammy Sosa 0.92 in 50 AB
…

So there are guys who appear to be atleast close to a wash [in tiny, tiny samples]. Granted, depending on matchups, some might get pushed over [IE, maybe a player hits really well vs righties, and the opposition only has righties left, maybe then the gap gets wide enough to justify the bases loaded IIB…]

by erosen on Sep 8, 2009 5:24 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Same time period…
Bonds vs righties, 27 AB, net 1.24 runs per AB [0.39 vs lefties]
Nevin vs righties, 50 AB, 1.16 [0.58 vs lefties]
Green vs lefties, 30 AB, 1.05 [0.96 vs righties]
Giambi vs righties, 37 AB, 1.05 [0.82 vs lefties]
Posada vs righties, 59 AB, 1.01 [0.42 vs lefties]

by erosen on Sep 8, 2009 5:29 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Hey dude

baseball-reference.com is a great place to look around.

Also, fangraphs leader boards and stuff have the awesome option to export all the data to excel (on top of all the numbers on the right side). If you plan on moving it to SPSS it will probably need some cleaning up and stuff but its a great way to quickly get a bunch of numbers into your hands.

The Rockies need some oldschool purple/white striped high socks. The team’s problem is it’s lack of swagger. I feel strongly that these socks will provide the swagger necessary to tap the potential that are the Rockies.

by Resolution on Sep 8, 2009 7:04 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Also,

here’s a fanpost I made a month or so ago (go shameless self-promotion!). It’s pretty simple correlation stuff but maybe it can give you some inspiration or a starting point or something. All of the data was from fangraphs.

Good luck!

by Resolution on Sep 8, 2009 7:10 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs