THT 2007 Season Preview: I'm published!

I'm delighted to announce that the Hardball Times' 2007 Season Preview book is now for sale! This is a new publication containing novel 3-year projections for all major league ballplayers, as well as "Team in a Box" write-ups by bloggers for each major league team.

I was lucky enough to be asked to write the Reds' preview. It was fun to be a part of the process, and I'm proud of the product. Topics covered in my 3-page preview include (but are not limited to) my takes on Wayne Krivsky and Jerry Narron, picks for overrated and underrated Reds players, and some general predictions for the Reds' 2007 season. ...my section is a bit longer than some of the others', but as you folks know, I have a tendency to get carried away (and what you'll see is AFTER they cut it down!). My comments on the Reds are accompanied by David Gassko and Chris Constancio's projections for all Reds' players--these seem pretty much in-line with my expectations, at least among current major leaguers (Reds' minor leaguers seem a bit underrated to me).

You can buy it as a PDF download for a mere $9, or as a "real" (physical) book for $15.95 through the Hardball Times' website. I don't get a split of the earnings or anything, but I'd really encourage you to check it out if it sounds interesting to you. I've skimmed it and found it to be a nice resource moving forward into the new season--this will be particularly true for those of you with upcoming fantasy league drafts. :)

This blog is one!

Completely slipped my mind, but On Baseball and the Reds turned one year old on Thursday. :) I thought it might be fun to go re-read my initial post:

Hi folks.

Thanks for stopping by my little blog. My goals for this site are pretty modest:

• Provide a place for my Baseball Statistics Quicksheet, a brief compilation of some of the various "new," interesting, and valuable statistics for evaluating batters, pitchers, and fielders. You will find out what the different acronyms mean, how to calculate and interpret them, as well as (most importantly) where to find them on the web. The most frustrating thing I've found about the new statistics is that it can be really difficult to find the actual numbers on players. The quicksheet will be an ongoing project to help with these problems.
  
• Provide a permanent place for my occasional article on baseball statistics. This will range from analysis of individual player performance to perhaps even larger evaluations of player performance.
• Links to new baseball stat articles I see/read. I'm not good about staying current with all the various research, but maybe this site will help me to this end. :)
  
• Occasional posts and commentary surrounding big news in the Reds franchise or its players. Please note that I do not intend for this site to be a news blog site; there are many Reds' blogs that already do a fantastic job of that. But I may occasionally want to bitch or cheer here as well.
• Maybe occasional posts about my exploits in computer baseball games, especially Out of the Park Baseball.

That's it for now. -JinAZ

Heh, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. :)

Truth be told, the blog has been pretty much what I planned it to be, just more active and more popular than I expected. Reading that post did remind me that my baseball statistics quicksheet is hopelessly out of date...and it isn't even linked from the main page! I really did want that to be a major feature of this site. Once I get a few more things off my plate, I'm going to sit down and completely re-write it. There are a lot of new resources these days, and I've learned a great deal since then. ... Honestly, I think the result will be a leaner, better primer on baseball statistics.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who stops by here on occasion--the interactions we have here are some of the most rewarding parts of operating this blog.

Oh yeah--go reds! 3-0. Hamilton watch: 6-12, 2 2B, 1 HR, 1 BB, and 1 K. Not a bad start for the guy. :) Hope he can keep it up as the pitchers start to learn about him.

How should we calculate Zone Rating?

I spent a bit of time this evening looking at the behavior of the new fielding stats we have available at THT. This won't be a comprehensive analysis, as I'm only going to look at short stops (I'm still trying to understand Alex Gonzalez's defense). This is just a means of getting my feet wet with these stats.

I mentioned in my previous post that there are a number of ways to calculate zone rating with reference to plays made outside of a player's zone. The three possibilities were (note: acronyms are from THT's stat pages: BIZ = balls hit into the zone a player is responsible for, Plays = plays made on balls hit into a player's zone, and OOZ = plays made on balls hit outside a players' zone):

• ZR_THT=Plays/BIZ. This approach ignores plays made out of the zone entirely. This is what is done with the ZR reported at THT right now.
• ZR_STATS=[Plays+OOZ]/[BIZ+OOZ]. This is the approach used by Stats Inc.'s version of ZR. It effectively moves any balls a player fields into his zone, and does not differentiate between out of zone balls and balls hit into a player's zone.
  
• ZR_DIAL=[Plays + OOZ]/BIZ. Modification suggested by Chris Dial and MGL. My favorite approach going into this, because it indicates every ball a player fields outside his zone should be worth a ball he missed within his zone. It's "extra credit" for working outside your zone, and gives no expectation that a player should have made the play.

I calculated all three versions of ZR on qualified shortstops from 2006 and compared their estimated ratings of shortstop defense to each other and to David Pinto's Probabilistic Model of Range. Here is the result:
This is a scatterplot matrix. You read it just like a table. All graphs along the top (first) row have ZR_THT plotted on the y-axis, while all graphs along the left-most (first) column have ZR_THT plotted on the x-axis. This is why plots along the diagonal create a perfect line.

A few findings. First, there isn't much difference between the modified ZR calculation purchased by THT and the ZR we've been seeing from Stats, Inc for years now (see row 2, column 1). That doesn't mean it's money wasted, though, because a) the ZR_STATS I'm showing doesn't include their addition of outs for double plays, and b) the in zone/out of zone data that THT has purchased allows us to do much more with the ZR stat than we could before (like write this sort of article).

The second observation is that the modification suggested by Chris Dial that adds out of zone plays to the numerator but not the denominator results in some big jumps up in ZR for some players (row 3, column 1). Here's a closer look at that graph:
Scatterplot of the basic ZR calculation (ZR_THT) and the addition of out of zone plays (ZR_DIAL) to the numerator. Line is the linear regression between the two variables.

Seven players saw their relative defensive ratings improve dramatically when out of zone plays were considered. Bill Hall saw a huge improvement in his rating thanks to his making a gigantic 66 plays out of his zone (one has to wonder if he was positioned correctly). The new Red SS Alex Gonzalez is also among those who saw major improvements in his rating. The biggest loser was Derek Jeter, who made only 28 plays out of his zone...and only 80.5% of plays in his zone.

Ok, so there's a big difference between ZR_THT and ZR_DIAL. Which is the better way to go? To make this determination, I compared these two ratings to David Pinto's PMR. Since both PMR and ZR are both supposed to be overall evaluations of defensive range, they should show a fairly tight relationship. All graphs (scatter plot matrix, row 4, columns 1-3) show a fair bit of scatter reflecting the differences in their calculation, but the fit between Pinto's PMR and ZR_DIAL (R2 = 0.37, P = 0.002) was substantially better than the fit between PMR and ZR_THT (R2 = 0.13, P = 0.08). You don't need the stats to tell you this either--the ZR_DIAL graph shows a visibly tighter relationship. In fact, the slope relating PMR and ZR_THT is not significantly different from zero!

Therefore, based on the relationship with Pinto's PMR, as well as my (and others') intuitive sense of what makes more sense, it seems to me that ZR_DIAL is the most informative version of Zone Rating available. At least for shortstops. ...though I expect this applies to every position around the diamond.

To close, let's look more closely at the relationship between ZR_DIAL and PMR:
The two statistics do agree on a lot of players. Adam Everett (of course) and Bill Hall (I didn't realize he was so good), for example, both seem to have done a brilliant job last season. Derek Jeter, on the other hand, looks positively miserable as a defender. But there are also notable disagreements, one of which involves Alex Gonzalez. Zone Rating absolutely loves Gonzalez, ranking him as the fourth-based shortstop in baseball last season. In contrast, PMR rates him as a middle of the pack kind of guy.

What gives? No idea. David Pinto's site offers some nice graphs comparing predicted vs. actual fielding performance along different vectors, and I've been staring at these for a half-hour now. Gonzalez's performance, as you'd expect from his overall rating, is an almost perfect match of his predicted performance on all vectors. He did seem to do pretty well on line drives, but those represent a fairly small number of outs. He also seemed to do a tiny bit better moving toward the bag than moving into the hole. Nevertheless, I don't see anything that really stands out as explaining why zone rating is so kind to him whereas Pinto's PMR is not. Maybe someone out there will have a better idea...? :)

THT has new fielding stats!

Amongst all the fun news about the first spring training game of the year, I overlooked this important item. At least, it's important to people like me:

The Hardball Times has new fielding stats! As initially mentioned in this article by David Gassko, THT has purchased fielding stats from Baseball Info Solutions, who are also responsible for the Fielding Bible stats that I relied on so heavily last season.

These new stats are not, unfortunately, the +/- system that was featured in the Fielding Bible. Those stats are not available to the public for the 2006 season (I actually inquired with BIS about purchasing them, but they wanted a fairly ridiculous price for them...and would only release them for my own personal use, which I'm sure does not include posting them on this blog).

What these new stats are, however, an improved version of Stats, Inc.'s Zone Rating. ZR has been available to the public for quite a while on sites like ESPN.com, and has been successfully translated by Chris Dial into a runs saved above average statistic. The basic idea behind it is that the field is divided up into zones, and each fielder is responsible for a certain proportion of the field. The statistic is calculated (mostly) as the proportion of all balls hit into that zone that are converted by the fielder into an out.

Nevertheless, it suffers from some drawbacks due to some additional tweaks that were made to the original ZR:

• Double plays were counted twice (I guess because two outs resulted from it?), making the stat particularly probematic for infielders--especially on teams that received a lot of ground balls. This is a major problem that seemed almost unknown among stat circles prior to the publication of the Fielding Bible.
  
• Plays made outside of the zone by a fielder were added to both the numerator and the denominator. To be honest, I don't see this as a major problem. It does "bastardize" the stat a bit (MGL's words), but leaving them out ignores the contribution of a fielder with outstanding range.
  
• There is an argument that these plays should only be added to the numerator, and that may have some merit. Effectively, that modification would be saying that when a player makes 1 out of zone play it makes up for his missing one play in his zone. Seems appropriate. Original way of doing it, putting the out of zone play in both the numerator and denominator, gives the player credit for making the play, but also indicates that he should have made that play by effectively placing it in his zone. This doesn't distinguish between an out of zone play and an in-zone play.

The version of ZR that Hardball Times purchased from BIS is an "improved" version of ZR that removes those extra tweaks. Perhaps even more importantly, however, THT also is posting the raw data on balls hit into the zone, plays made in the zone, and plays made out of zone. This will allow individuals to make their own decisions about how to treat these events.

Spring Training Games Begin

Sorry there hasn't been much activity around here this week--had a number of family issues come up. The pitching review should be out soon--analysis & graphs are pretty much done, just need to write it up. But I have some major projects to finish for work this weekend, so I'm not sure when I'll have time to get it done. Maybe tomorrow.

It's so nice to see spring training begin. I'm going to forgo purchasing MLB Audio this year, in part because I'm hoping for an XM Radio later this month as a birthday present. :) Unfortunately, this has meant that I missed the debut of the Marty and Thom show today. Furthermore, there was no gamecast available that I could find, so about all I can do now is read comments and look at box scores. ::sigh::

Just for fun, let's read too much into the first box score of spring training:

• Granted, the wind was blowing out, and spring training performances don't mean all that much...but the Reds hitters looked ready to play some ball. 5 home runs, 9 runs scored? Fun.
  
• Great to see Adam Dunn off to a good start this year. While everyone always talks about how they're in the best shape of their life in spring training, Dunn really does look like he's lost a lot of excess weight. That can only mean good things. It's great to see him taking conditioning more seriously--I hope that carries over into a strong offensive performance all year. If he can play passable defense, that's a bonus. :)
  
• Josh Hamilton also seems to be doing well in these first few games (including his intrasquad performance yesterday--I count walks as successes, especially for someone who's been out of the game for so long).
  
• Granted, Allan Simpson isn't someone with a long track record of success at the major league level, but it's great to see Hamilton having some early success.
  
• Even a decent spring would probably guarantee him a spot on the roster as long as the Reds carry "only" 11 pitchers or (I can hope) 2 catchers. 11 pitchers seems more likely, especially if Majewski's arm doesn't get back into shape prior to the season opener.
• Joey Votto also had a good day, going 0-1 with a walk and a run scored. I think that the fact that he struggled so badly in Sarasota in '05 means he absolutely should spend at least a half-season in AAA to help him with the adjustment to higher-level pitching, but I'm excited for him to arrive in Cincinnati...if nothing else, he should be a late-season call-up. PECOTA is ridiculous on him this year.
• The only pitcher I'm going to mention is Paul Wilson, who struck out two today. I think Wilson is probably a long-shot to make the rotation out of spring training, but I can see him coming up and helping the team a month or two into the season if things go well for him. The fact that he can still strike a few guys out is encouraging.
  

So if they keep 11 pitchers...

John Fay (and others) reported a comment from Jerry Narron today indicating that they might (emphasis on might) carry 11 pitchers rather than the typical 12. I talked previously about the lack of space on the active roster for position players, and carrying 11 pitchers would seem to be a way to allow someone like Josh Hamilton or Jeff Keppinger to make the team.

But if the Reds will carry 11 pitchers, how does that affect competition? By my reckoning, here's what we're looking at:

Rotation:
1. Harang
2. Arroyo
3. Lohse
4. Milton
5. One of Saarloos/Ramirez/Santos/Belisle/Livingston/Wilson/Bailey

Bullpen:
1. Weathers
2. Coffey
3. Stanton
4. Cormier
5. Bray
6. Majewski

...So while the 5th rotation slot is still up for competition, the bullpen looks locked if the Reds go with 11 pitchers. Of course, recent news about Majewski is not particularly good, and it wouldn't surprise me at all to see him start the season on the disabled list. So I guess that might mean that one of Belisle/Burton/Ligtenberg/Meadows/Shackelford might yet have a shot.

2006 Reds Hitting Review - Addendum

This post makes a few additions/corrections to my 2006 Reds hitting review.

Clutch vs. Choke, Revisited

The goal of this part of the 2006 hitting review was to evaluate how the players' total offensive production, in terms of the total number of singles, homers, etc, they hit, compared to their game situation-specific impact on winning games as measured by Win Probability Added. Last night, as I was trying to fall asleep, I realized that the way I attempted to do that, via a comparison of VORP and WPA was flawed. The reason is that VORP corrects its offense estimates for position, such that players at low-offense positions will receive a higher runs estimate than players at high-offense positions. This is one of the great things about VORP, but in this case, since WPA doesn't make such an adjustment, VORP isn't directly analogous. Some players, like Brandon Phillips, have quite high VORP's due to their position, but their overall offensive production is fairly low compared to players like the similarly VORP'd Adam Dunn.

Therefore, instead of VORP, I'm re-doing this analysis using a simple version of Runs Created, RC = OBP * TB (THT's stats use a more complicated version of RC that includes information about hitting well with runners in scoring position--I didn't want to use that because I wanted any measurements of situation-specific impact in this analysis to be indicated solely by WPA). The only drawback of this approach is that Runs Created doesn't incorporate steals, but as we'll see, that would only worsen the situation for the relevant players.

Comparing Win Probability Added (WPA) to Runs Created gives this figure:
Trend line is the regression line between RC and WPA for Reds' players only. I can't easily get the data to calculate the league-wide regression line.

Observations:

• As before, Edwin Encarnacion and Ken Griffey come out as looking very "clutch." Their WPA totals were far higher than would be predicted by their more classic "scorebook" statistics, which determine Runs Created.
• Rich Aurilia, Dave Ross, and Chris Denorfia also come out looking good in this analysis, though with substantially smaller residuals than we saw with EdE and Griff.
• Brandon Phillips and Austin Kearns still look to have not been very good in terms of converting their production into wins for the Reds, but they are now joined by Ryan Freel, Scott Hatteberg, and Jason LaRue as players who "choked" last season.
  
• I expected to see Hatteberg move down below the line now that he's not getting downplayed by VORP, but I'm honestly surprised that Phillips is still rated as poorly as he is.
• Nevertheless, I had a much warmer recollection of Hatteberg's performance in high-leverage situations than these data indicate. Looking back at my monthly reviews, however, he only had one strong month WPA-wise (July WPA = 0.84; he won my "statistical hitter of the month" award), and this seems to have been negated by poor showings in May (-0.35) and September (-0.56). In other months, he had close to zero net effect on games.
  
• For all the moaning about Adam Dunn's performance in the "clutch," his contribution to wins seems to be right in line with his production. ... Of course, a hit like this won't hurt one's WPA totals...

Walks vs. Strikeouts

What follows could probably be its own post, but I thought it was a nice complement to the bb vs. k-rate analysis I did in the hitting review:

I was doing some reading this evening in the Hardball Times 2007 Annual and ran across an article by Dave Studenmund that reported, in terms of runs scored, the average effect of walks (0.355 runs) and strikeouts (-0.113 runs; for those interested, he also reported these figures for other batted-ball outcomes). Strikeouts are, not surprisingly, the most negative batted-ball outcome. But I was struck by how much larger the relative benefit of a walk could be. Therefore, I thought it might be fun to look at the direct impact of walks and strikeouts on Reds players:

Orange bars indicate total estimated runs contributed by walking, blue bars indicate runs given up by striking out. Black dots represent net gain in runs, calculated as the difference between the two bars.

Observations:

• Despite giving up more than 20 runs via strikeouts over the season--which is very significant, and is worth ~2 wins--Dunn's incredible ability to draw a walk more than compensated for this, resulting in a net 17.8 runs scored via walks and strikeouts.
  
• Hatteberg, of course, was amazing in this regard, with a high walk rate and yet the lowest strikeout totals of any Reds regular last season.
• Freel's walk totals were third on the team last season. In contrast, his strikeout totals were second overall.
  
• Despite having the lowest walk rate of any regular, Aurilia had the fifth highest net k/bb runs total because he doesn't strike out very often.

There's a way in which it's probably not that informative to directly contrast walks with strikeouts as I've done here, especially without reference to the other batted-ball outcomes. Nevertheless, it's a fun exercise, and I think indicates (once again) that while strikeouts are certainly bad things, their negative effect on the outcome of games is often exaggerated. Furthermore, the benefits of taking a walk are still underappreciated, at least by many fans and broadcasters.