When the Truth is Found...To Be Lies...

by John Sickels on Aug 28, 2025 10:30 AM EDT Comment 29 comments

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.

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"but I'm not a nihilist"

Well that’s good because I hear that can be exhausting.

by ThomasG on Aug 28, 2025 10:54 AM EDT reply actions

Love the reference!

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by thejd44 on Aug 28, 2025 10:54 AM EDT up reply actions

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.

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by thejd44 on Aug 28, 2025 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.

by Pelferized on Aug 28, 2025 11:18 AM EDT up reply actions

Getting the W

How can you find a way to get a win if you give up 1 run and your team doesnt score? I dont know how you can “find a way” in that situation unless of course they play in the NL and hit a HR themselves.

by tarheels1 on Aug 28, 2025 11:58 AM EDT up reply actions

Don't give up a run.

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by Nate Rose on Aug 28, 2025 3:27 PM EDT up reply actions

that won't give you a win

if your team doesn’t score

by wt on Aug 28, 2025 5:01 PM EDT up reply actions

Wins do not define a great a pitcher, but great pitching in the long runs ends up with wins.

At the micro level wins are meaningless. Looking at game to game stats wins do not mean much. Even on the season, is 10 wins (considered mediocre season) really is not too far off from 15 (a very good season)?

But I agree that great pitchers find a way to win. 39 pitchers are HOF eligible with 250+ wins, and 32 are in the HOF, while the other 7 managed to have extremely long productive careers. Baseball is a game of averages, and in the long run, a pitcher will get the wins he does not deserve balancing out with the non-wins where he did deserve a win

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by mrmetaa on Aug 28, 2025 5:59 PM EDT up reply actions

great post

by mrkupe on Aug 28, 2025 6:48 PM EDT up reply actions

+.75

In the long run, and accounting for the pitcher’s era, it’s a fair baseline indicator of quality. You can’t say that pitcher A, with a .620 percentage, is necessarily better than pitcher B, who’s at .580, but you can say both of them were pretty good on balance.

Here are the top 10 active leaders in winning percentage: Hudson, Halladay, Santana, Sabathia, Oswalt, Pettitte, Carpenter, Lee, Beckett, Verlander. Is that how I would rank the top 10 pitchers in baseball? No. Are those guys reasonable candidates for a top 10 list? Yes.

But here’s a good reason to be wary: No. 11 is Freddy Garcia.

by whichthat on Aug 29, 2025 11:48 AM EDT up reply actions

garcia

Even Garcia isn’t a “bad” pitcher though. In fact, he’s actually been quite good. ERA+ of 109 over 12 years in the major leagues, although he’s been banged up as he’s entered his mid 30s.

Also, using active leaders to figure out who the best pitchers in baseball at present is almost certain to be misleading. A couple of years ago it would have included guys like Randy Johnson and Greg Maddux, neither of whom would have been confused for one of the best pitchers in baseball during the twilight of their careers. Basically, you confirmed what others have said: winning percentage is useful for looking at players over a relatively long period of time, and not so useful for getting a snapshot.

by mrkupe on Aug 29, 2025 4:22 PM EDT up reply actions

The more extreme example of that is games

In a one-day or one-year sample, the person who played the most games is almost wholly meaningless. Over a career, though, Bill James showed that playing in a lot of games is normally a very good sign of being an excellent player. The 10 players with the most games in their career are Pete Rose, Yaz, Hank Aaron, Rickey Henderson, Ty Cobb, Eddie Murray, Stan Musial, Cal Ripken, Willie Mays, and Barry Bonds. They certainly aren’t the ten best players in history, but with the exception of Murray and maybe Yaz, I can’t imagine any of them missing a top-40 list. (And considering Murray and Yaz had OPS+ of 129 over their careers, it’s not quite like we’re dealing with mediocre players there either. All cards on the table, though, this stat, like all others, has an exception. Rusty Staub somehow managed to be #12 on the list).

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by OldProspects on Aug 29, 2025 6:46 PM EDT up reply actions

Obviously not every time there’s is something a pitcher can do and you gave the ONE circumstance when it is out of his control, but how often does a team get shutout a year? The odds are each individual pitcher isn’t going to face that many shutouts against him, but there are those games from great pitchers where they’re team will score 4 runs and you can ell they don’t have their must stuff yet they manage to only give up 2 or 3 runs and keep their team in it.

Wins may not define a great pitcher, but there is a reason 300 wins is so precious because you don’t win games by accident (at least not that much) and like in any sport their are certain people who are just winners and win more than others consistently.

by Pelferized on Aug 28, 2025 6:20 PM EDT up reply actions

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).

by mrkupe on Aug 28, 2025 2:44 PM EDT reply actions

sounds familar

:) love our late night gchats lol.

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by JDSussman on Aug 28, 2025 3:06 PM EDT up reply actions

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, 2025 3:53 PM EDT up reply actions

+1

Having good contact skill is just as important as having good plate discipline.

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by Satchel Price on Aug 28, 2025 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.

by OremLK on Aug 29, 2025 12:28 PM EDT up reply actions

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.

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by Da.aron on Aug 29, 2025 1:13 PM EDT up reply actions

It can be Orem

If the hitter is passively hitting, which is leading to walks, yes.

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by JDSussman on Aug 29, 2025 1:42 PM EDT up reply actions

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.

by OremLK on Aug 29, 2025 2:18 PM EDT up reply actions

I didn't say anything about those other things

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by JDSussman on Aug 29, 2025 3:05 PM EDT up reply actions

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.

by mrkupe on Aug 29, 2025 4:33 PM EDT up reply actions

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.

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by Dttl89 on Aug 28, 2025 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, 2025 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.

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by t ball on Aug 29, 2025 3:27 PM EDT reply actions

+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.

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by biggentleben on Aug 30, 2025 7:44 AM EDT up reply actions

I regret to inform you

that you epistemological despair is completely justified, John. lol

by blackoutyears on Aug 30, 2025 12:39 PM EDT reply actions

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 ……

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by BStal11 on Aug 30, 2025 2:31 PM EDT reply actions