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Post a Comment On: Steve Sailer: iSteve

"Juan Pierre's bunt double and a new baseball statistic"

11 Comments -

1 – 11 of 11
Blogger M said...

Don't they keep road stats? That should be the best way to neutralize park inequities. (It doesn't neutralize factors that apply to every park but...)

The best road hitter should be the best hitter; a bad road hitter should be a bad hitter in general.

m, should work for fielding and pitching as well

7/3/07, 5:24 AM

Blogger Ben Kennedy said...

Sounds like you want to see Bill James' win shares

7/3/07, 7:33 AM

Anonymous Ian Lewis said...

Even though this idea has not been implemented league-wide yet, it has been around for a while. I can remember people talking about Stan Musial relative to Ted Williams back in the day. And one of the things that Cardinal fans would bring up was the "Player of the Game" sign that was hung on the boards in centerfield.

The joke was that they could have fired the guy who was supposed to change the sign each day (to the appropriate Cardinal) because it was (almost) always Stan the Man.

7/3/07, 7:46 AM

Anonymous Tommy said...

The Cardinals used to post the name of the hero from the previous day's game on the outfield fence. This was back when they played in Sportman's Park, and the name posted was usually Stan Musial's.

7/3/07, 10:47 AM

Anonymous Tommy said...

I should've read Ian's comment before I posted.

7/3/07, 10:49 AM

Anonymous Rex Little said...

Everybody knows that Colorado Rockies hitters aren't as good as their eye-popping statistics suggest because of the mile-high elevation means fly balls travel farther and faster due to less wind drag

Reduced wind drag might help a few balls make it out instead of being caught, but it's not the most important factor. What really helps hitters in Colorado is that the thin air reduces the amount pitches break. There's a technical term for a breaking ball which doesn't break: "batting practice pitch."

7/3/07, 3:24 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

There's another statistic that's closer to this than win shares; I don't know what it's called but it's something like adjusted win probability.

Since baseball has such a large sample set you can check the probability of winning before and after each at bat. If a batter hits a sac fly with a runner on third and no out, what's the expected runs scored with a runner on third and no out versus one out, one run scored and no one on. Runs scored and saved can then be translated into how much they increase the team's chance of winning. After the game you can calculate who influenced the % chance to win by the most.

Do that for a season and you've got a park neutral stat that measured actual contribution to winning by each hitter (and pitcher).

- Steve Johnson

7/3/07, 5:09 PM

Blogger Kai Carver said...

I assume this is a typo (don't know much about baseball):

"guys who just happened to be at the race place at the right time"

If so it's an amusing slip.

7/4/07, 5:08 AM

Anonymous Sideways said...

Also, about the Rockies, their stadium is no longer a home run stadium. The humidor has made the balls too heavy to hit out easily. Runs are still somewhat up because it's so much harder to get movement on a pitch.

7/4/07, 11:52 AM

Anonymous Simon Oliver Lockwood said...

The problem with relying on road statistics is the unbalanced schedule. Some teams will play a disproportionate number of road games in bad hitters' parks.

The case of Alfonso Soriano is one example of the danger in relying too much on road statistics. When the Nationals traded for Soriano, several DC-area baseball blogs (and national analysts) slammed the move because Soriano had had very poor road stats when playing with the Texas Rangers. This analysis failed to take into account that, because the Rangers played in the AL West, over 1/3 of the Rangers' road games were played in three pitchers' parks -- Anaheim, Oakland, and Seattle. Seattle in particular is hardest on right-handed power hitters.

As a result, a lot of people were surprised by Soriano's excellent 2006 season with Washington. RFK is a very tough hitters' park. But as Frank Howard demonstrated in the 60s and Soriano demonstrated last year, if a righty is a dead-pull hitter he can still have a big year there.

As far as the keeping track of the best player in each game, the blog Capitol Punishment does that for the Nationals. Every week he chooses the "Majority Whip" for each game (the last 2 years he picked a Majority Whip for each win and a "Lame Duck" for each loss -- with the prospect of a terrible season for the Nats he decided to accenuate the positive this year.)

7/5/07, 5:24 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

one of the greater sports media injustices of recent years was the almost total neglect of WhiteSox shortstop Juan Uribe by Fox (Tim McCarver, Joe Buck, and their handlers) during the Sox world series win. Typically an enviable series batting average graphic would flash over Uribe and he would then stroke another hit at the plate, all drawing a no comment and an "isn't Joe Crede fabulous" from the announcers. In the field, Uribe made an enormous contribution, producing a number of dazzling defensive plays while gunning down baserunners in routine putouts that felt more like executions (his one error in the series resulted when the ball stuck in his glove during a difficult turn and throw to first from the outfield grass, not a collosal blunder and no runners advanced). The santeria gods were apparently listening when, with two outs left in the series, I said: "I can't believe fox is so skewed and biased they're going to go the entire series without saying anything about Juan Uribe". The series ended with Uribe diving into the left field bleachers to record a flyout, then flashing power and grace in the series ender on a close play slow chopper that might have gone for a base hit. This display actually produced a verbal reaction from the booth. Hey. Hey. Fittingly, though, it was left to Carl Everett (who had an outstanding hitting series but was intentionally neglected by fox) to describe Uribe as the best shortstop in baseball, and then only in the papers.

7/6/07, 1:46 PM

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