BtB Power Ranking Season Reviews

Earlier this week, I completed my season-by-season reviews of all MLB teams. Fun exercise. Here they are:

AL East

AL Central

AL West

NL East

NL Central

NL West

Here's what I wrote about the Reds:

I root for laundry of this color. It was a rough season, but after dwelling in the basement for much of August and early September, a hot-hot-hot streak at the end of the year got them up to 26th place in the rankings and 4th place in the division over the last few weeks. cW% was substantially lower than true W%: 0.441 vs. 0.481. The reason was a slight underestimate of runs scored, and a slight overestimate of runs allowed, plus the fact that even straight-up Pythagoras had the Reds as a bit lucky. This was quite possibly the best fielding team in the National League, but their pitching was just a tad below average. And that, coupled with an offense that flirted with the 0.300 wOBA line for most of the year, spelled disaster. So, for the 9th consecutive season, Reds fans are wondering if next year will be the year they finally win more than they lose again.

And here are the final 2009 Beyond the Box Score Power Rankings. I really enjoyed doing that series this year, even if occasionally was a bit contentious (:cough: Giants :cough:). Very well received, and might go even further next season if we can keep it going. Just need to figure out some strength of schedule adjustments.

Now that I'm done with that series for a while, I have some Reds work I'm planning. Look for a recap of the 2009 season at Red Reporter sometime next week if all goes well. I also have a minor league study about half written up at BtB. Stay tuned...

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.

Regarding Mudgate: I will read from a prepared statement

I did it. It's all my fault. Yes, the attendant rubbed the balls correctly and thoroughly. But I cleaned them. With soap. And a Snuggie.

I deeply regret my actions and apologise to my family, friends, and the baseball community. I will accept any consequences that MLB/Dave Duncan/Tony La Russa deem appropriate.

This concludes my statement. On the advice of my lawyer, I will not be taking questions.

Thank you.
Justin

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...

Me, elsewhere

Yesterday, I updated my power rankings for Beyond the Boxscore...and for the first time in weeks, the Reds do not rank last! The reason? I've (finally) added catcher fielding to the dataset. Ryan Hanigan and crew have done a great job behind the plate this year, at least based on SB, WP, and Error data, and that was enough to springboard the Reds above the badly-slumping Pirates. So...."Yay, we're not in last place anymore!"

Also, yesterday was my debut as a contributer at Red Reporter. I posted a very short profile on Lonny Frey, a Reds Hall of Famer who passed away last Sunday. Excerpt:

Frey was purchased from the Chicago Cubs prior to his
age-27 season in 1938. Previously at shortstop, he would go on to play almost exclusively at second base for the next seven seasons. He really blossomed in 1939 when he gave up switch-hitting and focused entirely on hitting form the left side. He put up two consecutive 6+ WAR seasons and helping lead the team to two consecutive World Series. He then followed with three consecutive 4 WAR seasons--all told, his time with the Reds was easily the best stretch of the three-time All Star's career.

Being an independent blogger since 2006, I've had plenty of opportunities and offers to move to or join other blogs over years. And I've always declined, as I was content writing here. I could do what I wanted, set my own schedule, and not worry about any feeling of commitment and such. And given the uncertainty about my job future from 2006-2008, I didn't want to make any promises that I couldn't keep.

But I think what has happened over the past year and a half is that life has become so busy that I really just don't have time to run my own blog anymore...and so, my twice-monthly posting activity has resulted in very little traffic. And even worse, there's been very little interaction compared to how things used to be when I could post more often. I think I've finally come to grips with that at the same time that my personal and professional life has become substantially more stable (very busy, but stable!). Furthermore, contributing over at Beyond the Boxscore has helped me realize what I'm missing--interaction, mostly, and the feeling of not having to wait for a link in order for someone to read my stuff.

As a result of all of that, I finally decided to approach Slyde about joining on with his crew. I've collaborated with Slyde on a number of projects over the years, many of which have unfortunately never seen the light of day. But I'm very happy that he agreed to let me join up on very relaxed terms--the frequency of my posting over there is unlikely to be much better than it has been over here.

Basement Dwellers isn't going away, though. The Reds WAR position review series, for example, is going to continue to be posted here. And I'll continue to link to my stuff on the other sites as a way of tracking what I'm up to, as well as post the occasional short piece that isn't appropriate for other sites. But the majority of my Reds stuff will likely be posted at Red Reporter moving forward, while more general baseball work will continue to be posted at Beyond the Boxscore.

So, this isn't goodbye, but it does mark a change in how the site will be used for the immediate future. I do want to thank everyone who has contributed the 200,000+ page views and 150,000+ unique visits to this site since 2006. I've had a great time here and I hope you've enjoyed it too. See you at RR and BtB. :)