When the Truth is Found...To Be Lies...
by John Sickels on Aug 28, 2010 10:30 AM EDT
Email
Print
When the truth is found....to be....lies
And all of the joy within you dies
Is there anything about baseball that you thought was an absolute truth, but which you later found out was a lie, a distortion, or a misunderstanding?
When I was a younger analyst, a few times I thought I'd found a statistical key to player evaluation, but it turned out to be no more or less effective than any other method, just one part of the whole rather than a Holy Grail. A few times I've thought I'd discovered a scouting method that traditionalists had ignored, but it turns out that they either didn't, or that the method wasn't always reliable.
This is a big part of the reason why I try to publically evaluate my work from time to time, to make sure I'm not missing something or misleading myself, and to try to improve what I do. Sometimes this results in a bit of epistemological despair (can we ever really know anything?), but I'm not a nihilist and while I don't think truth can ever be completely known about many topics, we can get very close. Shaving off the edges of the unknowns is the goal I guess.
So, is there something about baseball that you thought you knew, but that turned out to be wrong? I'm not thinking so much of something about a specific player and more about the game itself, but if there is a specific player example you want to discuss, go ahead.
21 comments
|
0 recs |
Do you like this story?
Comments
Like most everyone, I once thought that AVG/HR/RBI was really all that mattered (or most of what mattered, anyway).
Though I was never as tricked by pitcher wins, but I think that’s because I always saw bad pitchers who somehow had good records. I knew from watching that the guy who was 14-10 with a mid-5s ERA wasn’t actually good. Even if I didn’t know why W-L was bad, I knew something wasn’t right.
But that AVG/HR/RBI thing…yeah… I was all about that.
www.zekeishungry.com
by thejd44 on Aug 28, 2010 10:56 AM EDT reply actions
Wins
Everyone says wins isn’t a good way to judge pitchers and while I agree somewhat, but I always think that good pitchers find a way to get the W no matter what and that it can almost be a skill, but very rarely.
great question
I used to think walks were a big deal for minor league hitters. I thought that walks suggested a polished approach and that they were useful for projecting performance at higher levels. I now tend to think that walks in the minors are mostly useful for projecting walks at higher levels, but that they don’t do all that much for projecting performance in other ways.
Now I use a sliding scale between walks and strikeouts. In the lower minors, I want to see a low number of strikeouts, and don’t care that much about walks at all. In the higher minors, I progressively care less about strikeouts, and more about walks. I tend to be VERY wary of players who have especially high walks totals at any level of the minors though . . .they’re there to learn how to hit, not how to take a pitch. Very high walk totals suggest a player might not be learning what he needs to be learning.
It’s my belief that most of the things that make a hitter productive at the highest levels at age 25 can be projected from minor league contact rate in the late teens/early twenties and, perhaps more importantly, successful contact rate (the relationship between a low number of strikeouts and a high batting average).
sounds familar
:) love our late night gchats lol.
Come check out Bullpen Banter!
Follow Bullpen Banter on Twitter
Follow me on Twitter
Remember: baseball guys... baseball...
yeah
Yeah, i totally agree with this. Walks are important, but it is the relationship between walks and strikeouts and plate appearances that’s the key here, not just the raw walks.
by John Sickels on Aug 28, 2010 3:53 PM EDT up reply actions
+1
Having good contact skill is just as important as having good plate discipline.
I like baseball.
I write for Beyond the Box Score and The Hardball Times Fantasy
by Satchel Price on Aug 28, 2010 9:05 PM EDT up reply actions
Regarding the second paragraph
So you view drawing too many walks as a negative?
That seems pretty bizarre to me. What if the player is also hitting for both average and power, while not striking out much? Would you value him more highly if he drew less walks and simply had a lower OBP/BABIP?
While I agree completely that you can’t zero in on walks (it’s one component in prospect performance, and many others must be taken into consideration), I can’t agree with the idea that more walks is a bad thing.
I believe what he's
getting at is if a guy is walking a ton, especially in the low minors, that he’s may not be the hitter his numbers suggest. As he goes up levels, he’s going to get challenged with more strikes and may not be able to make the contact or show the power he did at the lower level being in hitters counts all the time. If I’m wrong, feel free to correct me.
"This has got to hurt"
It can be Orem
If the hitter is passively hitting, which is leading to walks, yes.
Come check out Bullpen Banter!
Follow Bullpen Banter on Twitter
Follow me on Twitter
Remember: baseball guys... baseball...
Then you grade him down...
…not because of the walks, but because he’s striking out more/hitting for lower average/hitting for less power. You’re criticizing the areas of his game which are actually suffering; drawing a walk is not, in and of itself, ever a bad thing.
I didn't say anything about those other things
Come check out Bullpen Banter!
Follow Bullpen Banter on Twitter
Follow me on Twitter
Remember: baseball guys... baseball...
not totally
I don’t view walks as a negative. I just view them as more the icing on an already tasty cake, if you will, rather than a key ingredient in the batter. The very best hitting prospects can do it all obviously, with high average, good power, a solid number of walks, and a relatively low strikeout total. But very few prospects have the complete package, which means we have to figure out which attributes are most important and assign them proper value. I will say that I’m skeptical of high walk totals in the lower minors, particularly if (in descending order of importance to me) A) the player isn’t hitting for a high average B) the player has a large number of strikeouts C) the player is older than his competition.
I’m not saying that statistics explain everything, and I’m sure you know that I’m a big fan of the scouting component in prospect analysis. Statistics can tell many stories, and not all of them are true.
VORP
I loved the vorp stat. I used it for practically everything in my early stats days. Not that it was that bad, but since it’s been replaces by so many other stats that do a better job I think it qualifies.
check out VEB on facebook...just search groups for Viva El Birdos
by Dttl89 on Aug 28, 2010 3:19 PM EDT via mobile reply actions
I think this is a great lesson
I try to make sure that I am never dependent on just one statistic when trying to rate or understand a player, especially if the stat claims to be all-encompassing (VORP, WAR, etc). Virtually every number has some impact, can give you some bit of insight towards a player, it’s a mattter of which number you put weight on.
I’m not sure what I’ve been wrong about from an overall perspective (wrong about players is another story) since the days before I began to look beyond things like wins, Avg, gold gloves, etc.
There are several things I may be wrong about right now (off the top of the head):
I may overrate OBP
I prefer Dewan’s +/- over UZR any day and every day
I think catching defense matters quite a bit, even if it seems unquantifiable (or at least the numbers show it doesn’t seem to matter)
I may be too dogmatic about SB% and not using sac bunts.
I’m sure there’s a ton of other stuff I’m still learning about, but that’s fine, because I enjoy learning and debating this stuff, and I’d rather be wrong than ignorant.
by Burlin White on Aug 29, 2010 12:54 PM EDT up reply actions
Numbers aren't everything
Over the last several years as I’ve become familiar with all of the sabremetric advances and used them, argued about them, etc. the realization I’ve come to over the last two years or so is that the numbers only tell a small part of the story, especially concerning prospects. Now that I think this way, I see more and more comments here that reinforce that belief, as poster after poster overreacts to small samples of flawed numbers-based evaluations of prospects in A ball.
Freude schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium, Freude!
+1
This is why I first started reading John back in his ESPN days. He openly explained that he viewed stats AND the eye as important in a player. At the time, you were hearing how the A’s were going to be able to quantify a player by numbers and take over the draft, or how the true scout would be able to pick a future star just by looking at him in the batter’s box. Either extreme is not good, and a balance between the two is important. Youtube and baseball-reference has made prospecting the right way for the average Joe much, much easier in the last few years.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.
by biggentleben on Aug 30, 2010 7:44 AM EDT up reply actions
I regret to inform you
that you epistemological despair is completely justified, John. lol
RBI
I used to think Joe Carter was the man when I was younger and watching the mid80’s Indians, heck, I still did when he was driving in runs for the Blue Jays. Little did I know ……
"God, I'm from Cleveland. When is it going to be our time?"
Comments For This Post Are Closed
Secondary Sidebar
User Tools
FanPosts
Community blog posts and discussion.
Recommended FanPosts
Recent FanPosts
