SaberCard 2.0: A Baseball Card for Stat Geeks
by adarowski on Jun 9, 2010 11:01 AM EDT
in Visuals Above Replacement
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PrintGraph of the Day
Last week, I introduced the concept of a SaberCard—a concept of what an ideal baseball card might look like to us stat geeks. You guys left a ton of comments (great ones!), and with a ton of help from Sky, Justin, and my pal cmuzyka I got cracking on SaberCard 2.0.
In yesterday's post about the #5 to #10 best players of the next five years, a "beta" of SaberCard 2.0 was introduced (it was a Ryan Zimmerman card). Today, I have the "official" SaberCard 2.0 design. As always, I'm very open to feedback and look forward to bringing this to 3.0.
Today I give you Dustin Pedroia's SaberCard:
After the jump, you can see the front and back as separate images, as well as the final Ryan Zimmerman card.
Pedroia front and back (image on front by Keith Allison on Flickr):
Zimmerman front and back (image on front by dbking on Flickr):
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Wow.
I want to see this printed… wouldn’t that be awesome? I guess the only thing to think about now is how to handle pitchers.
The Top 50 projection data didn't have RAA
But the existing data on Fangraphs and BaseballProjection would do the trick. So, I guess it all depends on if projections are going to be a permanent part of it (and if we could then extract the RAA from the projection data).
On Twitter: @baseballtwit
I'd personally really shy away from projections
Projection systems are, well, somewhat arbitrary, in that there are so many different ways to go about them and no particular projection system is proven to be better than any other. WAR, RAR, even UZR have significantly more grounding. I feel like to take up half a card with projections that ONE GUY said is kind of silly (what about the tens of other projection systems out there?).
Also, really, REALLY want rate based numbers.
Awesome work on the blurb and layout.
I completely agree with this
I don’t want projections at all, let alone so many.
I also like the line of rate stats. We should know what kind of player the guy is, in a sabr-y way.
"There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want" -Bill Watterson
Rate stats WOULD be pretty awesome
If you cut the projections you’d have extra room and it might look cool to have a visual woba representation in a separate line than the WAR one for each year… or something like that.
I like the rate stats idea
To be “timely” with our Top 50 series, I wanted to run with the projections. The projections didn’t have rate data, so that’s really the only reason they were left out.
So, a couple directions would be either to refine projections to have rates or to simply use previous seasons. Either way, I’d also love to get rates in there.
On Twitter: @baseballtwit
Love it, love it, love it.
I think it’s great to use the projection systems, so long as you’re upfront about what system you use.
Blogger and Editor, Rational Pastime Blog
I actually cannot find details on his projection system.
What’s the methodology?
Steve wrote it up here:
I see. I would still caution against it.
There’s been no proof as to the accuracy of the projections, and the choice of this projection methodology over any other method is still arbitrary.
It's all about keeping with the theme.
I mean, the cards aren’t being printed. Just concepts at this point. I used Steve’s projections because they were timely with our other series.
It’s the debut of two things at once—the SaberCard and the BtB Top 50. Both are in their infancy and will be refined. I’m happy to see them grow together. :)
On Twitter: @baseballtwit
My thoughts
I like this back design MUCH better. Taking the picture off will dramatically increase readibility (and ease of designing cards).
Given your caveat about the Top 50 timing I don’t want to make too much of the overlap but (1) projections seem like a bad idea to me, especially given the lack of stat lines / diamond view / other information about how the player gets their RAA and (2) the set should go a lot more than 50 cards deep.
On the RAA, is there a reason you picked -20 to 80 as your scale? I like the fixed scale, and I assume there is, just curious as to what the reason is.
Another suggestion for info to add: current year salary/status/contract information. Would be the other important part of determining whether the player has value.
"There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want" -Bill Watterson
Thanks, nevermoor
Removing projections will give us room for a lot more, such as rate stats and the contract stuff. I really like that idea. As saber geeks, we’re all super into contracts, so that’s a great idea to add.
I’ve kept -20 to 80 as the scale because the guys I’ve selected so far seem to fall within that. I mean, Pujols fit. So I’d only need to tweak if I (a) added some horrid defenders (though Hanley had a pretty bad year in there and I did his with this scale) and (b) if I opted to go old school with a Bonds or Ruth. They’d require more than 80, for sure.
It’s a balancing act. I don’t want to make the majority of the cards look empty, so I’m kinda keeping it as is until I need to change it.
Thanks for the feedback!
On Twitter: @baseballtwit
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