A sincere thanks Jeff for your inclusive approach. Yes, if you are a good communicator, and you are, you don't need to lose part of your audience or lecture them in presenting a point. However, you might want to know that it was only after reading Thirteen's comments (about Stats and their context) on your post "Tall, Thin..." that YOUR point hit home! I guess I needed his perspective. As an aside, perhaps the most interesting back and forths on this site for me have been between Gordon Gross and Sandy: the 'eye' versus stats, qualitative vs. quantitative analysis, a calculated attitude versus a 'carpe diem' attitude. It provides me a fuller perspective. Quantitative and qualitative analysis perform due diligence on one another, lending context and minimizing bias. A good baseball organization, I believe, needs a good marriage of quantitative and qualitative analysis, just as a Steve Jobs (a creative) needed a good CFO. Likewise, I believe my own life benefits from this marriage, and this site as well. So thanks again Jeff for fostering the divergent perspectives while insisting on a respectful tone.
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A Lookout Landing author asks,
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Seriously, though: one of my few SSI pet peeves is that the conversation is always in terms of OPS and OPS+, which to my mind are pretty clearly inferior to wOBA and wRC+...
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Which is a happy accident, because I have a pet peeve here too. ;- ) The above is a fair question, and it's coming from a good guy. Let's discuss.
In this USSM article, anchored in the left sidebar, the blog author tells his readers which stats they will be using. He specifies the correct and acceptable "tools" for "serious analysis." We notice that a USSM reader who refers to ERA, much less RBI or W or L, is going to wish he hadn't. Obviously a person using ERA+ and OPS+ is not a serious analyst, right?
The article concludes:
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In this age of wonderful information, there's just no reason to use ERA and WHIP for serious analysis of a pitcher's ability. We have better tools at our disposal. We’re doing ourselves an injustice if we continue to lean on inferior information.
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When you take this attitude you have, without realizing it, informed your audience that --- > the only people welcome to the discussion are your own fellow grad students.
Undergrads -- much less the uneducated, unwashed masses -- are allowed to listen quietly and stare in admiration, but they are NOT welcome to interrupt the discussion.
James shares my own disgust with this culture of jargon. At Bill James Online, there is a constant tension between Bill and the readers who would like to push his website into a Hardball Times-style jungle of technical jargon. He doesn't put up with it. He finds that he can "seriously analyze" baseball and retain a layman's vocabulary.
For example, BJOL encourages the "word" RBI, but discourages the "word" wRC+. As Bill says, "RBI" is a "word" understood by the entire audience. WAR is not. He insists that people type out Wins Above Replacement without using the acronym. And why does he do that?
There are (very intelligent) readers at SSI who simply don't care enough about baseball to invest in a saber education. I don't look at these readers as being inferior to me; I look at them as having a (slightly) different set of life interests. After all, Bat571 doesn't sneer at me for being a civilian, does he? I never met Admiral Rickenbauer. Does that make me vaguely less intelligent than Bat571? It means I've chosen a different life.
That's the way with me and European soccer. I love the sport, and would be willing to chat about Arsenal in the forums. The thing is, a man who is not English (or at least European), and who is not 100% as soccer-literate as the forum admins, that man is an annoyance to them. He is totally unwelcome in the discussion. If he does speak up, he'll be told not to.
At Fangraphs, a baseball fan who is not a specialist in the literature? That man is unwelcome and he is an annoyance.
That is not the case at SSI. Fans of differing levels of baseball erudition are genuinely welcome here. Our vocabulary, and that at BJOL, is designed to remain friendly to readers of different saber strata. It ain't because the specialized stats are over our heads; it's because "ERA" is a word, and "xFIP" is a set of tire spikes lying in the road of information exchange.
Bill James' quality of analysis is not less because he refuses to speak in technical jargon. I learned, about 25 years ago, that truly brilliant men don't need jargon. James is an example. He can explain profound things using a layman's vocabulary. That, friends, is intelligence.
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Geoff Baker is like James, and Gordon, and Spectator, in this regard. Baker understands xFIP as well as you do. But what he also understands is that there are people who are not interested in specialized jargon.
The current authors at Lookout Landing, as well as ex-author Jeff Sullivan, have always given an friendly and inclusive impression. In fact I would suggest that this is a big part of what has made Sullivan so beloved. He is more than "inclusive"; he is genuinely friendly towards fans of different backgrounds. The current LL staff seems to be following on.
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The difference between OPS+ and wRC+ isn't usually enough to affect a conclusion. You want to know whether the Mariners are hitting better these days? And by how much? OPS+ will do Just. Fine. Thanks.
True, there are times when the subtle difference in precision --- > is important. Where the precision affects a conclusion, we (and Bill) flip over to the stats used by the grad students. When we do, we take a moment and explain to the "lay" :- / audience what the stats are. 5% of the audience finds it a bit of a chore to explain that xFIP is ERA with the defense and HR rate "normalized." But 95% of the audience is relieved that we do so.
We might not have even realized it, when we have become more exclusive than we intended to be. When we do realize it, it's a good time to re-boot our standards for inclusion. If you are a reader who does not understand ERA+, much less XFIP, don't hesitate to say so. We all like the Mariners.
Best,
Jeff
Comments
for not making too much fun of an old fuddy-duddy like me, who while not resisting the SABR revolution, is certainly not well-versed in it. I'm not that frequent a commentor, since by the time I figure out what I want to say, type it, proofread it (multiple times) and get it ready to post someone else has made the point better than I can. I started following baseball 50 years ago, when all there really was was W-L, ERA, RBI & AVG, and I still sometimes get hung up on what my eyes tell me when I see a player in the field. You don't need advanced stats to tell you that when a player just looks uncomfortable at the plate his stats aren't going to be good. I've taken it upon myself to learn what the acronyms mean, but just because I know what a word means doesn't mean I can use it in a sentence with ease. I appreciate your forebearance
Thanks for noting that Anyroad.
But note also that this is exactly what Thirteen did - he provided a "glossary" type post, explaining wOBA and the way it approaches run expectancy. He did so using plain English that a non-math student could easily understand.
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In the Shout Box, Logan complains :- ) that he shouldn't be derided as speaking from the grad student lounge because he's only 18.
Once again he misses the point. Terry, Bat and I are a lot more scared of 15-year-olds than we are of 22-year-olds. So is NORAD.
:- ) Thirteen's awesome, isn't he?
45-to-60 year-olds who are trying to act like they're 15 (my missile is bigger than your missile!). Good Post!
One of ADM Rickover's rules in correspondence - any term is explained the first time it's used in a letter or memo. Any acronym is spelled out and explained. Never assume your reader knows your jargon. Can be overdone, but a good rule for general writing.
My math skills are good enough to understand all the SABR stuff, but unless the discussion is about a specific player whose performance is anomalous to one measure or another (say Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) to Earned Run Average (ERA)), it usually adds little to the discussion. I'd personally rather discuss how Ackley's balance or demeanor looks, because they have, in my opinion, greater predictive value than his OPS. The OPS of a lineup says something for how things may go. The OPS of an individual tells me little about how the game may go tonight. As Boston's owner recently said - we underestimate chemistry in this game. And we underestimate the importance of awareness of physical and emotional balance, personal confidence, personal determination, personal resilience, and both problem-solving and emotional intelligence - in short, those things that make talented athletes into all-stars in baseball.
Just some thoughts of a "dry brain in a dry season" - although I'm trying to keep the irrigation going so you guys will have French fries this winter.
I've made several references to balance and demeanor with no supporting statistical basis and have been fairly well received. After all, I didn't need UZR to tell me that Willie McCovey in left field was not a good thing for a fly ball pitcher. You could tell that just by looking. A lot of statistics will tell you what has happened in the past ("the back of the baseball card"), and it has a use. It is predictive in a long-term sense, but if you want to know what's happening right this minute one must use the standard Mark I eyeball.
Bat, this is a bit off-topic here, but would you have a recommendation for a good biography of the Admiral? I realize reading your posts referencing him that my bookshelves are heavily biased toward ground commanders and ground operations or air command and air operations. Dad was Army (well, Army Air Corp), so I guess that's to be expected. I don't really have anything naval that's post-WWII, unless you want to count the Inchon landing.
You can tell there are a lot of us geezers on this site because we talk so much about the Willie McCoveys Johnny Benches, 70's Dodgers, Dale Murphys. The history a big part of baseball, and it really helps make this site special. It was certainly a big part of Bill James's genius, always putting the knowledge he offered in a historical context.
Five books give at least some coverage of his life and works -
The Atomic Submarine and Admiral Rickover by Clay Blair is excellent, but only up to the Nautilus era. Blair was the TIME magazine reporter that led the fight to get Rickover promoted after he was passed over shortly after the Nautilus went into service.
Rickover by Polmar and Allen is accurate for the most part, but journalistic in its pro-Lehman, anti-Rickover coverage of the early days of the Reagan administration. (Fall from Grace by Greg Vistica takes that story to its Tailhook conclusion).
Rickover and the Nuclear Navy by Francis Duncan is actually volume 2 of the offical history of the AEC/ERDA/DOE nuclear programs. Excellent but dry.
Rickover : The Struggle for Excellence (also) by Francis Duncan is the "official, authorized" bio with NR's and Mrs. Rickover's co-operation. Excellent but also somewhat dry
The Rickover Effect : How One Man Made a Difference by Theodore Rockwell is a memoir of the early days (until the late 60s) when the author was a key Rickover aide, with a final chapter on how the "effect" was carried forward. Very readable.
If you want to know what Rickover "meant", Rockwell's is by far the best one. If you want to know about his life and influences, Blair's and Duncan's bio are better. If you read Polmar's, realize that he is trying to be sensational and taking sides on matters that are unclear (Rickover's age is one issue that he plays up - was his appointment to the Naval Academy strictly correct? - no one can say for sure).
Anyone reading this far should try and find a copy of Ted Rockwell's book - then you might understand why the Nuclear Navy and the Navy in general was so successful from the 60's to the 90's. Then read Greg Vistica's book and see what happened to the Navy from there. I'll just note that the Navy has designed and placed in service no truly new combat ship or aircraft designs with the exception of the Virginia-class SSNs since the Reagan adminstration. The Gerald Ford carrier will be the first new carrier design since the JOHNSON administration. Yes, Rickover drove the NIMITZ design and the OHIO and LOS ANGELES submarine designs so that they were THAT good, and the F-18 is an excellent aircraft (my brother-in-law was the lead Marine test pilot for it), but Vistica shows how things lost their way for a long time. In my view, they are only now getting back to where they should be.
Again, thoughts of an old guy about something he cares deeply about (I can trace my family's Naval/maritime heritage back to Andrew Barton in the days of Henry VIII) .
I don't put much stock in the more refined baseball statistics. This is not for lack of familiarity or technical impediments; I came of age in the 80's reading Bill James and I use calculus in my job on a daily basis. My primary concern is not audience either, than I certainly see the importance of this argument. My concern is that advanced analytics has been polishing functional ideas for years, adding another epi-cycle to the Ptolemaic model of runs created, but leaving the big issues alone. Why make a big deal of a 5% better correlation between wRC+ and runs scored than OPS+ and runs scored, when the error in park corrections at 15%?
As a case in point, early this Justin Smoak had a good game (something like a double and a walk in 4 plate appearances). Obviously his OPS went up, but his wRC+ went down because of a readjustment in park factors.
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The real problem with emphasizing subtle corrections to well established ideas is that it breeds complacency, orthodoxy, and hubris. Go read the comments at fangraphs.com if you think I am exaggerating.
Along with Dr. K's telling points... Malcontent on the "Tall, Thin" page pointed out several other factors. How about park adjustment Safeco RH vs park adjustment Safeco LH? How about quality of competition? And finishes aptly,
The point is, weighted systems don't take a bunch of factors into account, and a system that pays attention to some outside factors while ignoring others is nearly as likely to err as a system that doesn't pay attention to outside factors at all. - See more at: http://seattlesportsinsider.com/article/tall-thin-talent-pyramids#sthash...
Spectator points out that we adjust for BABIP ... but not for batted ball velocity. His point about OBP being an I/O stat was interesting.
We can always volley back, "well, we might as well do the best we can with wRC+ vs OPS+" but it is precisely Dr. K's sense of proportion that sabertistas seem to lack. They have the idea that with wOBA's 5% gain in precision, we are creating near-perfect measurements of players.
Much better to fly up to 30,000 feet and remember that although Raul Ibanez' OPS+ is 146, that is only a VERY rough estimate of his performance level for tomorrow night's ballgame. Refining it to 140 (wRC+) doesn't mean that we've triangulated his ability to a 139-141 range :- )
It was many years ago that I got fatigued with the whole convention of ---- > taking James' RC/27, etc stats and refining them by 1% and then 1% more and then 1% more (EqA and then wOBA and then whatever your website wants to claim as its Critical Metric). It was the discovery of the RC/27 idea itself that mattered.
Let's get on to other core discoveries that matter, rather than appropriating James' ideas, putting nail polish on them and making a cottage industry of them...