Grittiness, quantified

With a hat tip to BoofBonser26, here's a study that "tangibilizes the intangible" and quantifies all-time player grittiness. Notables in the top-10 include Craig Biggio, Jason Kendall, Brett Butler, Chuck Knoblach, and Omar Vizquel. Flat-out brilliant work.

Reds Outfield Arms - Concerns about Griffey

John Walsh has released his annual report on outfielder arms. With the exception of the Fans' scouting report data, all of the fielding ratings that I've discussed on this blog of late look solely at the ability of outfielders to catch fly balls. That's typically the most important component of outfielding, but preventing baserunners from advancing via either "kills" or "holds" can also be an important factor in a fielder's performance, which is what makes Walsh's arm ratings so valuable.

Only three Reds actually made his cut-off and appeared in his article (I'm surprised Hamilton didn't, but...):
Dunn -4 runs
Freel +2 runs
Griffey -6.5 runs

Remember, part of these "arm" ratings is how fast an outfielder can get to a ball; someone can have a canon, but if they can't get to a ball fast enough, runners will take the extra base anyway. That's probably part of why Dunn and Griffey do so poorly.

How does this affect total value estimates of these players? Let's see:

Player	Offense (RAR)	Fielding (RAA)	Throwing (RAA)	PosAdj (RAA)	Total
Dunn	51.3	-11.6	-4.0	-3.3	32.4
Freel	-0.2	1.0	2.0	1.5	4.3
Griffey	36.4	-7.1	-6.5	-3.2	19.6

Freel didn't play enough--or hit well enough--for his nice throwing rating to give him much of a bump. And Dunn's offense still carried his value, though his total fielding "performance," including position adjustment and throwing, cut his value by ~35%.

Griffey, on the other hand, got hit really hard, and is now rated as essentially equivalent in 2007 value to Alex Gonzalez according to my numbers (see other Reds in this post). This is consistent with a value estimate by MGL earlier this offseason. He projected Griffey, after factoring in offense, fielding, throwing, baserunning (advancement, not just steals), and aging, to be at or below replacement level. I'm not willing to go that far--both my fielding and Walsh's throwing numbers are a bit more generous to Griffey than MGL's. But I am very concerned about how much value Griffey really is adding to the team out in right field at this point.

Data for the masses, by the masses ii

Several folks have posted valuable stat resources around the 'net lately, and I thought I'd quickly link to them tonight:

• Tom Tango has continued his investigations of positional adjustments using 5 years of UZR data. It's largely confirming the spectrum he's been using up until now, which I profiled here. This spectrum was the source of a lot of debate when I talked about it, so if you're interested in this research, this is your chance...
  
• Chone Smith has a great little site here that has (currently) two primary features.
  
• First are his TotalZone fielding ratings for all players, 2005-2007. TotalZone is a very interesting fielding system based strictly on Retrosheet data. If you've been reading Dan Fox's recent forays into creating a fielding stat, Chone followed much the same approach about a year ago when he put together his system. At some point, I'll probably run some comparisons between TotalZone, Dan Fox's SFR, and the other various systems like I did here.
  
• Second are his CHONE projections for 2007. CHONE is a high quality projection system that is probably on par with ZiPS and perhaps PECOTA. Last year, it was roughly as good as PECOTA at projecting pitchers.
• Speaking of ZiPS, Dan Szymborski posted his '08 Reds projections last week.
• And Tom Tango posted '08 Marcels last month. Besides having the most clever name of any projection system, they are also the simplest projection system available. The system uses a weighted 3-year mean of MLB data, a simple aging curve, and regression to the mean. And that's it. The amazing thing is that this extremely simple system routinely performs almost as well as the vastly more sophisticated PECOTA, and often beats out "lesser" systems annual roundups. Anyway, at this point, all we need are the '08 PECOTAs to have the full gambit of projections, and those can't be far off.
• Update: The Hardball Times now includes Marcels on their player pages.
  
• Dave Studeman has updated his historical win shares database with 2007 data on his personal site. This is a tremendous resource containing all MLB players, past and present, and it seems to have flown under a lot of folks' radar screens. Win Shares aren't perfect, but you can do a lot worse in terms of comprehensive measures of player value.
• Speaking of Dave, his recent article at The Hardball Times used WPA stats and Tom Tango's With or Without You defensive numbers to demonstrate that Davey Concepcion does clearly belong in the Hall of Fame. But you guys knew that already.
  
• Retrosheet released 1956 and 2007 play by play data last month. Still missing 1999 play by play data, but aside from that, their database is incredible.. or will be, once I figure out how to handle it.
  
• Finally, this isn't stat related, but Jay Bruce has a blog! Hat tip to Red Hot Mama.

Looks like the Reds acquired some minor talent today. I'll try to do profiles on these guys (welcome back, Jim Brower), plus some analysis of Edinson Volquez and Danny Herrera sometime this weekend. But my blog motivations have been fighting with Guitar Hero III and MLB Power Pros for my evening attention these last few nights, so we'll see. :)

Dave Stieb and an historical Reds baseball proposal

So every once in a while (and probably not often enough), I realize exactly how clueless I really am.

Today, Tom Tango pointed out that David Stieb may have been the best pitcher of the '80's. And I'd never even heard of him. Not recognizing how good he was is one thing. But I'm absolutely embarrassed that I'd never even heard of the guy. I did know of his principle competitors--Blyleven, Welch, Hough, Valenzuela, Morris... But Stieb? I got nothing.

...which brings me to my next point, and something I was thinking about over the holidays. Given how absolutely clueless I am about anything that happened in baseball before 1990 (and, one can argue, before my post-strike "return" to baseball fandom in ~'98 or so), I'd like to start doing a bit of historical stats work around here from time to time. So at some point this season, I'm planning to take a look back at all 13 of the division/league/world series champion Reds teams. I'm probably also going to include the '94 and '99 teams, for a total of 15 articles. I'll probably work backwards, but who knows? Might be fun to start at the beginning with the 1882 American Association Champion team too. :)

Anyway, my main goal will be to apply player value estimates to those teams and see who shakes out as the top contributers. I'm sure that there will be some surprises in terms of how players rank on these teams, especially when we work in fielding. I'm going to try to avoid doing position-by-position commentary to keep the articles from getting too big...but everything I do tends to get too long anyway, ya know?

Here are some initial thoughts about methods:

• For offense, I'm going to use a base runs model that is optimized for +-10 years around each team (or as many years within +-one decade of that team as possible). I'll then calculate custom league linear weights for MLB in the season in question and use those to estimate player runs created.
  
• For pitching, I'll probably have to use a different base runs model (again, +-10 years) depending on what stats are available over at baseball reference. This is especially true for the pre-play index teams, where I won't have plate appearance data for pitchers.
  
• For defense, I'll use the best data I can find. For more recent teams, that'll probably be either ZR or (best case) UZR. For teams prior to 1980, I'll probably have to use BPro's RAA....though I might look into doing something like Sean Smith's TotalZone or Dan Fox's SFR (don't hold your breath though). For really old teams, I may have to just assign approximate run values to errors or something. We'll see.
  
• I'll include appropriate park factors, probably using U.S. Patriot's 1901-2004 5-year regressed park factors.
  
• I'm going to need to figure out a way to estimate leverage index based on performance or something for my pitching valuations to have any merit. We'll see on that--Tango did offer some suggestions recently. My guess is that this will be the weakest methodological point about my series.
  
• I'm thinking that I'll use runs above average throughout the analyses, rather than runs above replacement. The reason is that I'm very skeptical that replacement level has stayed anywhere close to the same level it is today (~73% of league average for hitters).
  

Anyway, should be fun. Hopefully someone out there will find it interesting, but if nothing else I'll get to learn a lot about some of the old Reds teams. :)

As a warning, I have no idea about the timeframe on any of this, as I've got a ton of stuff on my plate this semester...writing up my dissertation, applying to jobs, teaching my first lecture course as an adjunct faculty at a community college, etc. But it's something I'd like to do, and probably wouldn't be too time consuming if I can automate a lot of stuff in Excel.

Reds trade Hamilton for Volquez & Herrera -- Initial Impressions

Checking in from Cincinnati on my mom's computer, and just saw the trade.

Initial thoughts:

First, Hamilton's going to hit the crap out of the ball in Texas.

As for the Reds' return on him, Volquez looks like a pretty exciting arm. Granted, he's got control issues, but I'm sure Krivsky et al. think they can fix that. But here we have a guy who's already pitched a few innings in the big leagues, just turning 25, and can throw the ball a million miles an hour. He's the sort of guy who could step in and over the next year or two become a dominant starter. Sure, he might not. But this kind of pitcher is exactly the sort of pitcher that smart ballclubs go after. Between he, Bailey, and Cueto, you have to think that at least one of them will pan out to be a quality guy. And it's not unreasonable to hope that two of them will. That, plus another modest splash from someone like Maloney, Wood, Watsin, or whoever, and the Reds have a great shot at a very, very good young rotation in the coming years.

Herrera is kind of a surprise to me, because Doug's reports indicate that he's pretty small and throws a trick pitch (screwball/change). ... Sounds like Guevara (the guy we lost in the Rule 5 draft), and that's the sort of pitcher that Krivsky doesn't seem to value much. But hey, he's another warm body, and I'm never against the Reds acquiring young pitchers with good performance histories.

Anyway, I'll take a closer look at these guys when I get back. But my initial impressions are that this is a pretty reasonable trade--Hamilton's an outstanding talent, and the safe guess (given that he's a position player) is that he'll outperform both of the Reds' new pitchers. But at the same time, he's not without substantial risk (injury and drug abuse histories), and the Reds are getting a young pitcher with good upside who is probably major league ready. Oh, and another pitcher with good minor league numbers. This addresses a need of the Reds, they're dealing from a position at which they have depth, and it has the potential for a great payoff. So initially, as much as I hate to lose Hamilton--especially a year before Griffey and Dunn may walk--I pretty positive about this trade.

Happy Holidays

My family and I are packing up and heading home for the holidays tomorrow night--red eye to Cincinnati with a 19-month old. Ugh. We're desperately hoping she sleeps...because if not...oh, man, I don't even want to think about it.

Anyway, I'm not taking the laptop home, so contact via email, this blog, etc, will be shaky at best until the New Year. Though I may try to chime in briefly if Wayne makes a deal of some sort. I'm hoping for an incentive-heavy contract to Mark Prior or Kris Benson right now. But hey, a Bedard trade could be neat, as long as the price is right. :)

So, in case I don't get another chance, have a great holiday and be safe, everybody! See you next year...I have to say, I have a good feeling about 2008...

...

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Was David Ross Just the Victim of Bad Luck?

I posted this over at Red Reporter a few days ago, but I thought I'd repost it here for safe keeping and because I think it's an interesting take on a player I've dissed a bit lately. If you're interested, you can also read its complementary article, Is Jason LaRue Just the Victim of Bad Luck, from the '06 season. That, and a glance at LaRue's 2007 stats, should remove any trace of credibility I have with respect to these sorts of claims. :) But it also explains some of the methodology I use to evaluate luck in hitters.

Anyway, here you go:

I've been thinking some about Ross lately, and he's an interesting case.

Compared to 2006, while his ground ball % was up slightly last year (bad), his line drive percentage was actually up substantially, and his strikeout rate was down.

He didn't walk nearly as much (pressing?), and his home run per fly ball rate (a stat subject to random fluctuations) was down quite a bit. But one of the biggest differences between '06 and '07 is that his BABIP was unusually low (0.226) for a guy with an 18.5% LD rate (eBABIP = 0.305).

If you give me a guy who increases his line drive percentage from 16.8% to 18.5% while at the same time cutting down on his strikeouts, I'd most certainly predict that he'd have a higher batting average the following year. That didn't happen with Ross. And his BABIP indicates to me that the reason for his struggles last year had more to do with bad luck than a change in skill.

FWIW, PrOPS agrees with me, giving him an expected OPS based on his batted ball stats of 0.808, quite a step up from his true OPS of 0.670. PrOPS matched up to his actual OPS quite well in 2006 (0.967 v. 0.932), so it's not the case that it always massively overestimates Ross's performance.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that Ross is going to revert to his 0.900+ OPS form next year. But a high 0.700's/low 0.800's OPS is not out the question, and that's acceptable production from a defensive-oriented catcher.

...

Thing is, I said almost the exact same thing about LaRue's performance in 2006. And that didn't turn out so well. So I dunno, maybe I'm wrong about Ross too. But everything I see about his batted ball stats indicates that he was hitting the ball much better than his batting line would suggest.