Current activities

I finally finished a post at Red Reporter that I've been working on for almost a month (and planning since September). I'm not sure the result is as fabulous as all of that would imply, but it's an investigation of the degree to which the Reds were hurt by playing time shortfalls in it starters compared to simply failing to perform when healthy. Punchline: aside from Volquez (who accounts for 35% of the overall ~7 WAR shortfall), mostly it was simply a failure to perform.

At BtB, I'm managing the Sabermetric Writing Awards. I thought of the basic idea for the awards while working on my baseball class (more on that in a sec). The BtB crew were very enthusiastic about it when I pitched it to them, and in the internal discussion, the idea expanded from ~3 categories to the 7 we are currently running. Nominations are going pretty well, though I think there is a bias toward stuff done over the past few months. Still, I've already seen a bunch of stuff that I had missed, and that's sort of the main point.

The baseball class, which I announced here, starts on Monday. I'm a bit anxious about it, but I think I'm about as well-prepared for it as I can be, and I'm excited to get started. I'm perhaps naively hoping that the students will follow my obsession in player valuation, but we'll see. First thing I'm going to do is have them pick the topics for the semester. It will probably be the case that this class will be the extent of what I can do baseball-wise for at least the first half of the semester. But one of my classes ends at spring break--just as spring training really gets underway--so that should help.

I also wanted to link to my post on the Hall of Fame ballot from December. It's gotten some decent play (Neyer link, for example), and apparently Sky did something similar at ESPN this week. The one guy I left off of my ballot, Dawson, is the guy who got in--but I have no problem with that. What I do have a problem with is all of the deserving individuals who should have gotten in before Dawson.

Reds Season Review

Image via Wikipedia

I completed a "sabermetric" (I still don't like that word, but I've become resigned that I have to use it to be understood) review of the 2009 Cincinnati Reds at Red Reporter. Here are the parts:

• Part 1 - Introduction & Overview
• Part 2 - Hitting
• Part 3 - Fielding & Total Win Value
• Part 4 - Pitching

Did some fun things here:

• The introduction piece has a nice historical angle to it that I really like.
  
• The position-by-position run above average plots in the position player pieces were a nice way of summarizing the overall team performance.
• The hitting info included full baserunning from baseball prospectus pull park corrections, so I think it's the best available right now for Reds players.
  
• The fielding info incorporated fan scouting data in a semi-crude, but still useful way. Again, I think it's the best available for Reds players.
  
• I also really like the introductory graph for the pitcher piece. People can complain about one metric vs. another, but when all three approaches show the same thing, I think it paints a pretty strong picture.

Well, that's enough patting myself on the back for one day. It's exam week and I have to figure out what I'm going to do if school gets snowed out tomorrow.

Barry Larkin for the Hall

I finished a piece last night, running today at Red Reporter, arguing for Barry Larkin's induction into the Hall of Fame. Response has been very positive, with links from BBTF (Repoz) and Rob Neyer, among others. Everyone seems to think that Larkin should get in (as I show, that's clearly supported by the data), but some think he might have some trouble. Hopefully he'll get in before guys like Jeter start appearing on the ballot.

Reds offense

I posted a short article on the Reds' offense at Red Reporter. Excerpt:

As a result, in many cases we like to look at context-neutral offensive stats. There are a number to choose from, but my personal favorite is the one I calculate for Beyond the Boxscore: I estimate runs scored based on linear weights of offensive events (wRC at fangraphs) and baserunning stats from Baseball Prospectus (EqBRR). Based on this measure, after park corrections, through Sunday's games, the Reds trail the Astros 634 runs to 606 runs. Why? Despite their park disadvantage, the Astros rank ahead of the Reds in AVG, OBP, and SLG, as well as baserunning (0 RAA for Astros vs. 9 runs below average for the Reds). The Reds have just been a bit "lucky" in terms of how their offensive events have translated into runs, whereas the Astros have been a tad "unlucky."

The games disparity mentioned above still applies, so you can convert those totals to a rate stat. I prefer wOBA, which has the Reds trailing the Astros 0.319 vs. 0.309 (wOBA uses the same scale as OBP, but properly weights all offensive events--in this case, I'm even including EqBRR baserunning). The Reds rank ahead of only San Francisco by wOBA.

CTrent on Defense

CTrent has a nice article on the Reds' fielding. To my disbelief, he actually quotes me from an e-mail exchange we had:

"Through Wednesday's games, I had the Reds at 49 runs above average in the field," Inaz wrote in an e-mail. "That's an average of two different fielding stats (UZR and a team-level one from Hardball Times), plus catchers. Since 93% of all runs are earned runs, that would mean that we'd add ~46 runs to the Reds' ER if they were an average fielding team, shifting their team ERA from 4.31 to 4.62.

"tRA, which is my personal favorite fielding- and context-independent pitching stat, they have the Reds' actual runs allowed as 73 better than predicted in their model (I'm getting that from the xRR number), which would be ~69 more earned runs than expected. That pushes team ERA from 4.31 to 4.81," Inaz said. "Last one: the Reds' FIP, another fielding-independent pitching stat (this one only looks at k-rate, bb-rate, and hr-rate), puts the Reds expected team ERA at 4.66 compared to their ERA of 4.31. That one matches up well to the first estimate."

Pretty fun to see my crap alongside quotes by Baker, Arroyo, and Rolen, even if I'm clearly the least articulate of the bunch. :)

It's probably pretty obvious, but the e-mail exchange between myself and CTrent led directly to my fielding post at Red Reporter, which comes at this stuff from a slightly different angle.

@RR: Reds can catch the ball

Excerpt:

If one of the front office's major goals heading into this season was to improve the team's fielding, they seem to have succeeded: the Reds are clearly one of the best fielding teams in the league.

How much does it matter? Let's run with a figure of +50 runs this season, which is where I have the Reds in the BtB Power Rankings, and is a rough average of all the other run estimates. Add that to the average of ~40 runs below average that Reds teams have been from 2004-2008 (by bUZR), and you have a total of a 90 run improvement in fielding this year compared to the 2004-2008 teams. In the current NL run environment, that's roughly a 10-win improvement compared to the 2004-2008 teams!

Unfortunately, it doesn't mean they're an improved team, because the offensive dropoff is worse than the fielding gains...