Q:  Are RE24 and REW important?  If so, how important?

A.  Dr. Naka points out that the Mariners almost look to be using RE24 and REW as key factors in their roster decisions -- if not overtly, than intuitively.

If you're not familiar with RE24, Dr. Naka explains it for us.

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I hadn't noticed that RE24 and REW were being published now. 

And it had never really occurred to me that if you take the "fun" stat WPA, and edit out the inning-and-score weighting ... that you'd have something that had more-generally-useful information.

I look at WPA mostly for info-tainment, but hey now, take out the "clutch hitting" component and ::he stops short:: that RE24 stat could have a lot of uses, mate.

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WPA would still interest from the standpoint of "hard runs."  A guy who had a higher WPA score than REW score would have produced more "when it mattered."

A guy with a lower WPA score and higher REW score would have been a "theoretically" better hitter.

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Bill James keeps track of "ghost runs" -- what a great term -- meaning you advanced a runner who scored, but got no RBI, or a fielder's choice took your place and that guy scored. 

We don't measure the offensive action between 1st-and-3rd very well, and RE24 is one stat that targets that activity, among other things that RE24 captures.

I mean, if it's important to hit a single with a guy on 2B and score him, why wouldn't it be almost as important to hit a single with a guy on 1B, and move him to 3B?   ... SLG measures this, of course, indirectly, but RE24 measures it more directly.

I like WPA, but you can almost see where it is a "polluted" stat compared to RE24.  WPA is to RE24 ... as ... RBI is to SLG, sort of.   WPA gets lots of attention.  Why wouldn't RE24 get more?   Does anybody here pay more attention to RBI than to SLG?

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The Mariners on Dr. N's list, who are leaving the team, could of course be leaving it for any number of reasons (such as being lousy).

But it's also quite possible that, intuitively, sharp baseball minds could be processing the M's dismal RE24 failures as part of their decisions.  What is the "tipping point" for considering an Adrian Beltre re-sign?  Perhaps Zduriencik's processing of Beltre's empty base hits in 2009 weighs in.   (SSI is well aware that Adrian is likely to return to stardom in the NL.)

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Would indeed be interesting to ask the Mariners whether there is any coincidence about the two lists, failures at RE24, REW and players who are leaving the M's.

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Q.  Any surprises on the M's in 2009?

A.  You can find the M's results here.   Fangraphs > teams > win prob > sort by RE24.   The numbers are above league average, not above replacement level.

Fascinating to compare y'alls hero Franklin Gutierrez to Jose Lopez -- and to compare Ken Griffey Jr. to Lopez, for that matter.

Even more enlightening is to review Ichiro's placement relative to the MLB leaders --  Ichiro was +27 over average, but Pujols was +80!

There's only so much damage you can do when leading off and never having any runners in front of you.   Maybe Crawford #1 and Ichiro #3, huh.

Cheers,

Dr D