Notes from today's AskCoppy event

So you don't deny touching yourself while holding that book?

The only thing out of that book, which made it worth buying, was the revalation about the Indians offering Brett Butler back for Komminsk. Apart from that, it wasn't particurly well-written, it was definitely poorly-edited and then there was the "stathead vs. scouthead" silliness that spilled over from the message board. Plus, he seemed to want to capitalize on Moneyball.

I've only commented on this dozens of times over the last decade, and explained that there's a place for both systems and even outside perspectives (few want to listen to my ideas about utilizing yoga to accelerate recovery times from injuries and extend careers...but whatever...keep doing what you've always did, and you always get what you always got). Yet you've reduced yourself to "you're an idiot," "don't you understand English?" and masturbation refererences. Anybody, who spends half his waking hours at Fangraphs, really shouldn't lob recyled jerkoff clichés against someone else...again, whatever.
 
The only thing out of that book, which made it worth buying, was the revalation about the Indians offering Brett Butler back for Komminsk. Apart from that, it wasn't particurly well-written, it was definitely poorly-edited and then there was the "stathead vs. scouthead" silliness that spilled over from the message board. Plus, he seemed to want to capitalize on Moneyball.

I've only commented on this dozens of times over the last decade, and explained that there's a place for both systems and even outside perspectives (few want to listen to my ideas about utilizing yoga to accelerate recovery times from injuries and extend careers...but whatever...keep doing what you've always did, and you always get what you always got). Yet you've reduced yourself to "you're an idiot," "don't you understand English?" and masturbation refererences. Anybody, who spends half his waking hours at Fangraphs, really shouldn't lob recyled jerkoff clichés against someone else...again, whatever.

I've only reduced myself to that because your posts warrant those responses.
 
I think you will find most statheads are open to change more so than those that don't necessarily care about advanced stats. And you can ignore his bad defense all you want. Still doesn't mean it's not there and not costing the team runs. But if it makes you happier to ignore than then by all means go for it.

Not ignore. Tamp down the measured impact. It just doesn't make that much difference.

There are only a handful of times in any month that a great leftfielder has a chance to make an impact over an average one. The stat is too volatile. So I'll continue to weight oWAR and dWAR differently.
 
Agree that the defensive component of war is over weighted.

Throws the whole measure off. Also I don't think defensive metrics in general are partixularly good. Seems to be a lot of volatility year to year, which there probably shouldn't be.
 
Agree that the defensive component of war is over weighted.

Throws the whole measure off. Also I don't think defensive metrics in general are partixularly good. Seems to be a lot of volatility year to year, which there probably shouldn't be.

Think of the volatility in defensive metrics from year to year as how a hitters BABIP can be volatile in 1/3 of a season. That's about what it amounts to.
 
Not ignore. Tamp down the measured impact. It just doesn't make that much difference.

There are only a handful of times in any month that a great leftfielder has a chance to make an impact over an average one. The stat is too volatile. So I'll continue to weight oWAR and dWAR differently.

You are right that there is generally only a handful of moments a month. But just a few extra hits a months can make an average hitter into a great one.
 
You are right that there is generally only a handful of moments a month. But just a few extra hits a months can make an average hitter into a great one.

You know what the difference is

between hitting .250 and hitting

.300? I got it figured out.



Twenty-five hits a year in 500 at

bats is 50 points. Okay? There's 6

months in a season, that's about 25

weeks -- you get one extra flare a

week -- just one -- a gork, a ground

ball with eyes, a dying quail --

just one more dying quail a week and

you're in Yankee Stadium!
 
You know what the difference is

between hitting .250 and hitting

.300? I got it figured out.



Twenty-five hits a year in 500 at

bats is 50 points. Okay? There's 6

months in a season, that's about 25

weeks -- you get one extra flare a

week -- just one -- a gork, a ground

ball with eyes, a dying quail --

just one more dying quail a week and

you're in Yankee Stadium!

Excellent. Bravo.

I understand what you and thewupk and others are saying, I'm thinking about it. Trying to decide how much is my bias and how much is overweighting the metric.
 
Excellent. Bravo.

I understand what you and thewupk and others are saying, I'm thinking about it. Trying to decide how much is my bias and how much is overweighting the metric.

It's a lot to take in. But the skill level of mlbers are all very high. The skill gap between an all-star and someone trying to be a regular may look large at the mlb level but across all of professional baseball it's not really. Just 5 extra singles a month can turn someone like Adonis from a 260 avg and 730 OPS hitter into a 300+ avg 820 OPS hitter. So while you may think those 5 extra singles a month don't seem like a big deal over time it's a big difference. So a handful of defensive plays a month may not seem like much. But they do add up over the course of a whole year.
 
But team WAR is made up of the individual parts. And yes there are plenty of teams with a higher WAR than their record suggests. Just like run differential records aren't 100% accurate neither is WAR. But WAR records and run differential records correlate highly together. Meaning the more team WAR you have (thus more players with a high WAR) the more you will be outscoring your opponent. Isn't that all you can ask out of your team? To score more runs than you give up? Generally if you do that that consistently you are going to be in a good spot.

That correlation ought to be very, very strong. I'll bet it is significantly stronger for a weighted version of oWAR than it would be for a similarly puffed up version of dWAR.
 
That correlation ought to be very, very strong. I'll bet it is significantly stronger for a weighted version of oWAR than it would be for a similarly puffed up version of dWAR.

Maybe. Of course using baseball ref's WAR is better when testing since it usually actual runs allowed for pitchers instead of FIP based WAR. The Twins were brought up as having a WAR that suggest they shouldn't be the last place team in baseball. And that is true. But their bWAR puts them at 60 wins just as their run differential suggests. Your actual win-loss record won't always line up but if I replace a 0.5 WAR player with a 2 WAR player I would expect the run differential for my team to improve by 15 runs. That usually equates to an additional 1-2 wins.
 
It's a lot to take in. But the skill level of mlbers are all very high. The skill gap between an all-star and someone trying to be a regular may look large at the mlb level but across all of professional baseball it's not really. Just 5 extra singles a month can turn someone like Adonis from a 260 avg and 730 OPS hitter into a 300+ avg 820 OPS hitter. So while you may think those 5 extra singles a month don't seem like a big deal over time it's a big difference. So a handful of defensive plays a month may not seem like much. But they do add up over the course of a whole year.

The problem with that is, the average LFer has about half as many plays on balls than a hitter has at plate apperances.
 
The problem with that is, the average LFer has about half as many plays on balls than a hitter has at plate apperances.

You're right which is a guy like Prado (who I consider to be both a good fielder and good hitter this year) has produced +7.6 runs offensively and +2.7 runs defensively. A good hitter who is average at defense and base running will produce more value than a good fielder who is average at hitting and base running.
 
Think of the volatility in defensive metrics from year to year as how a hitters BABIP can be volatile in 1/3 of a season. That's about what it amounts to.

Yes, but I think putting a ball into play is actually a somewhat random event. I don't know that a player's defensive ability really ought to be, but maybe I'm looking at it wrong. Any event, I think defense is overall much less important than offense -- or at least strong offense is rarer and more valuable. Again, might be looking at it wrong.
 
Yes, but I think putting a ball into play is actually a somewhat random event. I don't know that a player's defensive ability really ought to be, but maybe I'm looking at it wrong. Any event, I think defense is overall much less important than offense -- or at least strong offense is rarer and more valuable. Again, might be looking at it wrong.

The players defensive ability isn't really a random event but the plays they get to make are. For example if by some act of god all of the balls hit to Kemp for a given month are pop fly cans of corn then he's going to look better than he actually is. He wasn't given an opportunity to show how bad he was. And the opposite would be true if it happened to Ender.

You are right that defense overall is less important than offense. As I mentioned above an elite offensive player is way more valuable than an elite defender given the rest of their games are average. Usually 2 to 2.5 times more in most cases.

I think most peoples issues is not realizing there are varying degrees of bad or good and of course the data that UZR and DRS provide about the runs you cost or save. You could cost your team 10 runs (1 war) on defense and be a bad defender. You could also cost your team 20 runs (2 war) and be a bad defender too. Most people would see both players and say they are bad defenders. Still depending on that players offense it could be the difference between an average player and a good player.
 
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