Unlikely Similarities: Rice, Canseco and ... Nomar?

by Jeff Zimmerman on Oct 19, 2010 1:18 PM EDT in History & Hall of Fame

Similarity Scores Redone Using WAR Values

Baseball Reference has a section where it using a Bill James formula to look for players that similar to a player called Similarity Scores. It works well for offense stats, but doesn't take into account defensive stats. I decided to use the WAR values from Baseball Projection to find find players with similar scores. Using a version of RMSE on each individual component values, I took the difference of each value, squared the differences and then summed these squared differences together.

I ran the numbers for a few position players (here's where I looked at a few Royals). Aside from the the 10 most similar players, I added a few others, including: Edmonds, Piazza, and Whitaker.

Jim Rice

	Name	Birth Year	Difference	Total WAR
	Rice Jim	1953	0	42
1	Cepeda Orlando	1937	134	47
2	Canseco Jose	1964	157	42
3	Downing Brian	1950	159	49
4	Sisler George	1893	167	50
5	Perez Tony	1942	170	51
6	Powell Boog	1941	180	40
7	Slaughter Enos	1916	182	54
8	Wheat Zack	1888	186	58
9	Ryan Jimmy	1863	187	45
10	Ordonez Magglio	1974	187	35
11	Mattingly Don	1961	189	40
12	Garvey Steve	1948	190	36
13	Colavito Rocky	1933	196	46
14	Hrbek Kent	1960	201	35
16	Cooper Cecil	1949	202	35

Jim Edmonds

Ranking	Name	Birth Year	Difference	Total WAR
	Edmonds Jim	1970	0	67
1	Childs Cupid	1867	171	47
2	Baker Frank	1886	175	64
3	Smith Reggie	1945	187	63
4	Medwick Joe	1911	200	56
5	Beckley Jake	1867	207	62
6	Cash Norm	1934	221	53
7	Minoso Minnie	1925	228	53
8	Abreu Bobby	1974	229	57
9	Averill Earl	1902	230	45
10	Hines Paul	1855	231	42
12	Walker Larry	1966	240	67
15	Kent Jeff	1968	243	59
23	Lynn Fred	1952	257	47
26	Colavito Rocky	1933	264	46

Mike Piazza

	Name	Birth Year	Difference	Total WAR
	Piazza Mike	1968	0	59
1	Johnson Bob	1905	204	53
2	Guerrero Vladimir	1975	233	57
3	Thompson Sam	1860	234	47
4	Belle Albert	1966	234	37
5	Berkman Lance	1976	235	45
6	Tiernan Mike	1867	237	46
7	Kelley Joe	1871	238	56
8	O'Rourke Jim	1850	242	54
9	Alou Moises	1966	246	38
10	Kiner Ralph	1922	251	46
11	Jackson Joe	1889	253	63
12	Clark Jack	1955	255	55
14	Helton Todd	1973	260	58
16	Delgado Carlos	1972	273	44
17	Clark Will	1964	274	58

Lou Whitaker

	Name	Birth Year	Difference	Total WAR
	Whitaker Lou	1957	0	70
1	Ashburn Richie	1927	159	58
2	Bando Sal	1944	173	61
3	Sandberg Ryne	1959	182	62
4	Frisch Frankie	1898	188	75
5	Boyer Ken	1931	193	58
6	Randolph Willie	1954	200	61
7	Grich Bobby	1949	203	68
8	Herman Billy	1909	213	56
9	Alomar Roberto	1968	221	64
10	Trammell Alan	1958	224	67
13	Phillips Tony	1959	229	48
14	Beltran Carlos	1977	230	55
17	Santo Ron	1940	238	66
21	Evans Darrell	1947	244	57

Nomar Garciaparra

	Name	Birth Year	Difference	Total WAR
	Garciaparra Nomar	1973	0	43
1	Groh Heinie	1889	60	46
2	Sutton Ezra	1850	109	38
3	Lankford Ray	1967	114	38
4	Bresnahan Roger	1879	117	42
5	Nash Billy	1865	121	36
6	Doerr Bobby	1918	125	48
7	Clift Harlond	1912	125	35
8	Stephens Vern	1920	127	44
9	Schang Wally	1889	128	44
10	McGann Dan	1871	134	36
11	Glaus Troy	1976	136	34
15	Campanella Roy	1921	142	36
26	Beltran Carlos	1977	159	55
27	Mora Melvin	1972	163	27
29	Caminiti Ken	1963	163	33

How do these compare with your expectations?

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Comments

What I'd like to see is

their career WAR arcs compared and divided among relevant components. Then we can see how similar they really are.

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by Justin Bopp on Oct 19, 2010 1:30 PM EDT reply actions

Hey, Tango likes it:

http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/article/sim_scores_war_style/

Good work, Jeff.

by Justin Bopp on Oct 19, 2010 4:25 PM EDT reply actions

What did you with regards to positional differences?

Add them onto defense, ignore them, or do the same analysis for them?

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by SFiercex4 on Oct 19, 2010 5:50 PM EDT reply actions

Everyone is added together

The players I have looked at do get group by position somewhat. I used the individual defensive stats,so diffences in ifDP tend to group IF together and ARM groups outfielders together. Also Pos Adj puts players in similar groups. I initially had all defense lumped and all IFers and C lumped together because of similar Pos Adj. Going to the individual components helped to separate players better.

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by Jeff Zimmerman on Oct 19, 2010 8:54 PM EDT up reply actions