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Post a Comment On: Steve Sailer: iSteve

"The (hopefully) ultimate post on Trout v. Cabrera: alternative universes v. what actually happened"

22 Comments -

1 – 22 of 22
Anonymous Anonymous said...

(The Tigers’ designated hitter spot was filled by Delmon Young, who is a complete oaf.)

"Oaf" means foolish, not fat. Which did you mean?

11/22/12, 1:12 AM

Anonymous cmcoct said...

"Oaf" is the right term for Delmon Young.

From his early-season arrest in NY for drunkenly shouting anti-semitic slurs in the wee hours, to his four month slump when the Tigers were trying to catch the White Sox, to his grand finale: the worst throw in baseball history from left field during the World Series - a 20 footer straight into the ground that rolled 50 feet wide of third base. That throw would have been an embarrassment for any adult male, let alone a MLB player.

Of course, his MLB brother, Dmitri Young, was partially nuts for a few teams, so HBD fans should point out the genetic implications here.

11/22/12, 5:17 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Personally, I'm not very interested in this MLB stuff, but the guy being named Trout reminds me of Kilgore Trout.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone

11/22/12, 5:53 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Trout was better, therefore more valuable. You said it.

Don't waste your time coming up with better defenses of the guys whom you know are wrong. What's next, coming up with a spirited defense of the values of a diverse student body in higher education?

11/22/12, 6:24 AM

Blogger sunbeam said...

I've never been much of a baseball fan, but I'm not getting this hullabaloo about Sabremetrics.

Okay, I get the gist of the story, "sexy rebels" (cough), stick it to the man and upend the system in the name of truth. It's a meme, and you can sell a book, and make a movie, which is the important thing after all.

But these guys think WAY too small.

A couple of years ago I read some articles about software that got oodles of data about chemical reactions. The program spit out equations describing chemical reactions that appeared to be correct, that the experimenters had no idea what to do with exactly.

Similar software (if not the same; I'm not spending all morning reading this) derived Newton's Laws of Motion from experimental data.

Here is a link to where I think I read of this first:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/newtonai/

The title of the page, from 2009, is "Computer Program Self-Discovers Laws of Physics."

I urge you to read this, it's quite fascinating the implications are pretty far reaching.

Hell, you've got 100 and some change worth of years of data to put into it, shove it in and see what it kicks out.

The Gatekeepers of this probably would do it for shits and giggles, plus it would probably get them at least a minor article in a mainstream media and an attaboy from their SWPL peers.

Actually the software is freely available (at least the source code), so if you are comfortable with Open Source and knew stats it shouldn't be too much trouble to whip one up.

There is another way related to computing in which these guys think too small. With computers you can crunch a lot more data. You can crunch it for ALL CASES, and I mean every one, every last at bat Reggie Jackson or anyone else ever made in any situation, ever.

You can put in humidity, temperature, time of year, time of day, runners on base, who was managing for each side, who the paricular pitcher was. If the data existed you could track which pitch the pitcher made against each batter.

These guys seem to me like they are going a little further than the guys that went before, but don't seem to realize they could go a heck of a lot farther without too much trouble.

If I owned a major league club, I think I would keep a lot more records than just the normal stats teams keep. I'd keep which pitch was thrown, the velocity, etc.

Actually I think I'd hire a couple of starving grad student to whip me up a machine vision system to id the pitches and give me lots more data than a radar gun gives. Nothing really stops me from getting accelerations, release points, release velocity, arc, decay of velocity, rotation numbers, etc.

Something similar could give me real bat speed, and the arc the batter uses.

So in essence, these guys, including Nate Silver (how did this guy get to be famous?) need to listen to that Daft Punk song, "Better, Faster, Stronger, Harder."

11/22/12, 6:49 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oaf means an a$$hole, just like his brother Dmitri.

Walks? Similarly, look at David Ortiz's walk totals with and without Manny Ramirez. How can you take seriously a statistic that depends a whole lot on who is hitting behind you.

11/22/12, 7:24 AM

Anonymous countenance said...

Steve, from how you describe them, sabermetricians seem to be the same kind of dorks as are people who fan over alternate history. Of course, alternate history is snake oil because there are just way too many variables in real history to say for sure that this is how things would have turned out changing only one past variable.

11/22/12, 7:27 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

When will the world ever stop discriminating against whites?

When, when when?

11/22/12, 7:58 AM

Anonymous Piraeus said...

You're wrong about WAR. It is not predictive, it is descriptive.

11/22/12, 9:10 AM

Anonymous Anon87 said...

I would have thought that Trout could bridge the gap between the Holy War of Stats vs. Scouts. But the arbitrary allure of winning 3 statistical categories was preferred by the "old school" writers, who as always make up their reasons for voting after they decided who to pick. They are paid to get people to read their articles after all, so a unanimous vote for Trout is boring and won't keep you employed when you can cause ESPN-bait "controversy".

Here is the actual criteria as defined by the BBWAA:

Dear Voter:

There is no clear-cut definition of what Most Valuable means. It is up to the individual voter to decide who was the Most Valuable Player in each league to his team. The MVP need not come from a division winner or other playoff qualifier.

The rules of the voting remain the same as they were written on the first ballot in 1931:

1. Actual value of a player to his team, that is, strength of offense and defense.

2. Number of games played.

3. General character, disposition, loyalty and effort.

4. Former winners are eligible.

5. Members of the committee may vote for more than one member of a team.

You are also urged to give serious consideration to all your selections, from 1 to 10. A 10th-place vote can influence the outcome of an election. You must fill in all 10 places on your ballot. Only regular-season performances are to be taken into consideration.

Keep in mind that all players are eligible for MVP, including pitchers and designated hitters.


1. Trout (defense especially)
2. Cabrera
3. Trout (going by character, based upon Cabrera's issues with the bottle)
4. Push
5. Push

I'd weight the first the most, considering this has most to do with actually playing baseball, and actually happened on Earth in 2012 not in a parallel universe. I have a hard time putting value in the opinion of anyone who chose Cabrera. If the Triple Crown is so impressive, I'm sure I can find 3 stats of Trout's that have occurred less often than leading AVG/HR/RBI, if ever. "First 20 year old to have X number of this and Y number of that and leads the league with Z". I wouldn't base my MVP vote on that though.

Maybe we just like to argue, like everyone does over politics. And speaking of.....Happy Thanksgiving! Keep it clean at the dinner table.

11/22/12, 9:32 AM

Blogger Maguro said...

The main reason Cabrera had a lot more RBIs this year is that Austin Jackson, the Tigers leadoff hitter, got on base a lot more and provided Cabrera with lot more RBI opprtunities that he cashed in at about the same rate he slways has.

In 2011, Tiger leadoff hitters had a .311 OBP and scored 101 runs. In 2012, Tiger leadoff hitters had a .364 OBP and scored 123 runs. This alone accounts for most of the 35 RBI difference between Cabrera's 2011 and 2012 campaigns.

This points to the problem with RBIs in general - you're giving an individual credit for what amounts to a team performance. Basically, the voters gave Cabrera the MVP because Austin Jackson got a lot better at hitting.

11/22/12, 9:32 AM

Blogger Maguro said...

I've always found it interesting that RBIs have such an unbelievable amount sportswriter mystique compared to runs scored when they're really two sides of the same coin. No one rides a big runs scored total to the MVP award.

11/22/12, 10:20 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

There is a sabermetric statistic that measures how much a player contributed to their team within the confines of a season. It's called win probability added (WPA).

It measures the difference in historical win probability between static states. Let's pretend that the visiting team down a run to start the 8th inning wins 33% of the time, and the visiting team down a run with one out in the eighth with none on wins 30% of the time. If a batter on the aforementioned visiting team struck out to lead off the eighth, they'd be assigned -0.03 WPA for that at bat.

Here are the 2012 leaders.

Trout still comes out on top with an MLB best 5.32 WPA. Cabrera was fifth (4.82) and not even the best player on his team as judged by WPA, with Prince Fielder finishing third (4.93).

WPA isn't the end all be all, but it's a better measure of what you're trying to get at than RBI.

11/22/12, 10:51 AM

Anonymous Jack said...

I don't follow baseball that much, but I do recall the Tigers were in the World Series, and the Angels weren't. Isn't this as good an argument as any?

11/22/12, 9:11 PM

Anonymous josh said...

Steve,

If you like "what actually happened" stats, Fan Graphs has a great one. If you've ever watched Poker on TV you remember how the odds of winning a hand change after each new card is revealed. A similar stat for baseball calculates the odds of a team winning before and after a players at bat (based on the historical winning percentage for say, home team down by two with two outs and a runner on second in the eight inning). Add up the difference between the before and after for every at bat and you will have a seasons worth expected wins added above average. This is an offensive stat only, but it accounts more directly for clutchness than RBI. A bottom of the ninth three run homer when down two is worth more than a three run homer with a five run lead in the 5th.

Interestingly both Trout and Prince Fielder out "Win Probablity added" Cabrera.

http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=3&season=2012&month=0&season1=2012&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0

11/23/12, 4:13 AM

Anonymous Anon87 said...

Jack,

The Tigers won 88 games. The Angels won..............89 games. Cabrera shouldn't get credit for playing in a worse division.

11/23/12, 6:31 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jack,
No, that is a stupid reason. First, it's a regular season award voted on before the playoffs. Second, the Angels won more teams in more difficult division than the Tigers, so it's debatable they were even the better team.

Both had great offensive seasons, with Trout slightly better at grtting on base and slightly worse in slugging (a gap that goes away if you look at ballpark effects). Trout was an elite defender at a premium position, an elite base runner, while Cabrera was bottom of the barrel. It's not really a discussion if there's no triple crown, as the Keith Law tweet notes.

11/23/12, 6:34 AM

OpenID rwcg said...

It's been hilarious watching the self-anointed saberkidz complain how dumb it is to slave an award to transparent counting statistics like 'home runs' and 'RBI' by advocating that we...instead slave these awards to an opaque black-box statistic that virtually no one stirring up this ginned-up 'controversy' is capable of replicating!

Yes, that's so much 'smarter'.

Make no mistake, Trout had a very nice Rickey Henderson-like year. By my count this 'WAR' stat gave him some 4-5 'wins' for achievements related to his running speed. It's okay to be a skeptic of this. Or at least, it should be.

My vote goes to Cabrera.

11/23/12, 6:54 AM

Anonymous SomeRandomGuy said...

@Anon87,

How can you knock Cabrera for his defense and actually say Trout was more valuable?

It may be no question which one is the better defender, but this is like getting Adam Dunn and then complaining he strikes out too much.

Defense isn't a part of Cabrera's skill set, unlike Trout, yet he still managed to play a passable 3rd base for a team in NEED of a third basemen without complaint or diva-ish behavior. After getting hit in the face in spring training, he could have easily gone to management and demanded the big star treatment of putting him at 1st and having Fielder DH; instead, he worked awfully hard to give them the best defense possible.

Trout, other the other hand, for all his defensive skills (and again, he really seems to be a true five-tool Mickey Mantle type player) was a BONUS to an Angels team that already had a player who could not only play center field at a very high level; but was often used as a defensive replacement in center late in games.

He may be a world-class defender; but for this year, for his team, his defensive value has been highly overstated or shouldn't be some sort of factor in this race.

As for Mr.Sailer- I think this is one of the better defenses of Miguel Cabrera I've read; what it comes down to, for me, is that statistically, you have two players who are too close to be almost indistinguishable. Unless there are metrics used to isolate, for example, say, walks and the factor of Prince Fielder hitting behind Cabrera or Trout hitting in the 7th,8th,leadoff spots....you got yourself a virtual tie with the sabermetrics guys crapping themselves over the fact that people aren't totally convinced that they've "done the math" (even though I sometimes get the impression that they don't all know how "the math" applies to certain situations; ) while you have some "old school guys" who are so obstinate that they refuse to even consider anyone who is associated with sabermetrics, as if their egos can't take that their narration heavy eyes aren't the only way of doing things.

I don't know which one is more obnoxious; but this is really becoming a tedious argument.

11/23/12, 8:37 AM

Blogger Steve Sailer said...

"There is a sabermetric statistic that measures how much a player contributed to their team within the confines of a season. It's called win probability added (WPA)."

Thanks.

It's interesting that that history-oriented stat doesn't show up in these debates, however, compared to the science-oriented WAR.

11/23/12, 12:42 PM

Anonymous Anon87 said...

SomeRandomGuy

Hey, I love Adam Dunn. I think he's unfairly been the whipping boy for various factions through the years, he's the poster boy Three True Outcome guy, and it seems he has a genuine sense of humor (not the fake look-at-me humor of Brian Wilson), but his defense is terrible and I can't overlook that. Even if "he worked awfully hard" to give his team the best defense possible, like you say Cabrera did. It doesn't change the fact that they both stink with the glove.

I don't put a ton of stock in the latest defensive metrics, so it may be possible Cabrera is being treated harshly be UZR, WAR, etc. etc. but it's obvious he brings nowhere near the VALUE that Trout does defensively. Are you actually saying Trout is a world class defender but that shouldn't be a factor in this race? Defensive is specifically called out when making a MVP vote! You can't just hand wave away the huge advantage Trout has defensively or with baserunning. Trout and Cabrera are not too close to be indistinguisable; Trout has more value. Stats and scouts agree to that, but somehow sportswriters and apparently many others don't.

Brian Kenny on MVP vote

11/23/12, 5:39 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sometimes what is important cannot be counted whereas what is unimportant can.

In other words there is a reason
~Mister October~ was not Mister September and the Broncos got the better pick with Tebow over the Raiders taking Russell.

1/1/14, 12:55 AM

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