Date: Mon, 18 Aug 1997 18:36:25 -0500 Reply-To: Discussion of Texas Rangers Major League Baseball Team <RANGERS@TAMU.EDU> Sender: Discussion of Texas Rangers Major League Baseball Team <RANGERS@TAMU.EDU> From: Beau Sharbrough <beau@CONNECT.NET> Subject: Runs vs RBIs
Hello to the group,
The discussion that has been generated by GaryP's Contender assessments is good for baseball. Sometimes I forget that there are people who are trying to enjoy the game and haven't read Bill James. I'd like to suggest a few simple statistics for you to try to find and follow, and see if they help you enjoy the sport.
OFFENSE
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RUNS CREATED. There are lots of ways to measure this statistic. It's an effort to understand how runs are made, and that's not quite perfect yet. Such a measure also requires you to measure the contribution that an individual makes to runs, and that's not perfect, either.
RC1. The easiest way to calculate this stat is to take RUNS+RBI-HR. It's a very approximate measure and batting order skews the numbers in favor of the 3-6 slots. If you perform this function for the Rangers, you'll see that the leaders are Gonzalez and Greer, over 120 thru yesterday. Newson has 34, and Goodwin has 89. Newson has only batted about 150 times, and Goodwin has batted 450 times. Any stat that uses AGGREGATE numbers gives people who play a lot a statistical edge of people who don't, so there are other ways to compare performances.
RC2. OPS is OnBase Percentage (Hits + Walks)/(AtBats + Walks) + Slugging Percentage (Total Bases / AtBats). I like this stat as a rough measure of run production. Anyone over 750 is doing pretty good, and some players will end up over 1000 at the end of a year some years.
RC3 - RCx. Some people do some other things to these numbers to factor in Stolen bases (most figures take caught stealing into consideration too), Park factors, and League Normalization. I like every single one of these numbers. If you take whatever measure you like, and normalize it over your league for the year, a player who is average gets a 1000 rating.
One warning about comparing offensive stats: You can get to the point where the numbers seem to have their own meanings. This is not baseball. You can't tell whether people are pitching around a person, or whether he spent a month going for low and away breaking balls, by looking at any of the standard measures. Will Clark and Juan Gonzalez have about the same number of at bats (387/390), and have scored about the same number of runs. Their BA is way apart (331/287) and the RBIs are way off the other way (51/97). They have about the same number of extra base hits, but Clark has 10 more doubles, and Gonzales has 16 more homers, and total bases come out 195/218.
Ok, I think that these are really small differences. In almost 400 trips to the plate, Gonzales has 16 less hits. I know that baseball is a marathon where the victory goes to the consistent, but here i think that our tools are measuring a difference that isn't very important. I think that the extra hit every week that Clark has had hasn't meant much to his team. I think that the extra base that Juan has hit for three games isn't such a big difference either. Take 8 balls over 4-1/2 months and have them fall for this guy and go straight at someone for that guy and the differences will average out.
The message here is patience. I think that if you look at numbers over a four year period or longer, you can get a good reflection of the relative talents of a player. Anything less can be the wind and the sun.
One last gripe: you can't get these numbers in the local paper. Used to be, the Tuesday DaMN would publish walks and you could calculate stats yourself. No more. But that's a great way to segue to pitching stats.
PITCHING STATS
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Here is a wasteland. ERA and Victories are two of the worst ways to measure a pitcher's effectiveness. The ways that they decide who "wins" the game means that a guy like Wetteland gets a victory every time that he fails and the team comes thru for him. And ERA's are skewed in favor of the guys who come into innings with some outs already. almost every team has higher starter's ERAs than reliever's ERAs and that's because reliever's get to pitch a lot of one and two out innings.
It would be really nice if we could see pitching stats just like batting stats: Batting average, On base percentage, slugging percentage. I would love to the the OPS for pitchers, but I've never been able to find the numbers to calculate it. It would be refreshing to have one set of numbers, though, for offense and defense. We'd be looking at batting average or runs instead of two different statistical universes for people who are just changing sides.
DEFENSIVE STATS
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There are no good defensive stats for fans to use. We can count errors,
fielding percentages, etc. They would probably make the bad guys look
bad and the good guys look good, too. My belief is that if Benji Gil
gets to two balls a game that Elster doesn't get to, and if he kicks one
ball a game that Elster wouldn't kick, that puts us 162 outs ahead, not
162 errors behind. There's more to it, errors demoralize pitchers and
sometimes pressure the other players like Palmer to try too hard and
they throw the ball away. In general, the difference in range and
consistency aren't measured well enough to make meaningful statistical
comparisons between defensive performers.
Park factors make a difference here, too. If you play on grass vs turf, the inventory of skills you need to be good isn't the same. If you play left field in Fenway, it's not like left field in tBiA.
SUMMARY
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Baseball is a numbers game. The best teams win 3 out of 5, and the
worst teams win 2 out of 5. That means that the difference in the best
and worst teams is what they do one day a week (in a regular work
week). The difference in the average teams and the great teams is what
they do one day every two weeks. In ten games, so many things can
happen that are difficult to measure, but influence the outcomes of
games. Teams like the Rangers on this current 7-3 streak on the road
break all of the rules. Sometimes things just go your way. I marvel
that the Braves can win with the offense they've got, but their pitching
is something to see, day in and day out. They must have good defense or
those pitchers wouldn't be getting that much credit on ESPN.
Thanks again to GaryP for stimulating such a lively discussion, and for helping to bring a different perspective about the game to Rangers fans.
And shame on anybody who takes a baseballs fan's opinions about the game and suggests that they represent personal flaws. There will always be Cubs and Yankees fans around, if you really want to find someone with a mental disorder and criticize them.
Later, the doubleheader is already going....