Advanced baseball stats

[lefty96]

The purpose of this weekly post are to give stats that aren't available via HailState's stat book. I assume that anyone interested in this level of detail would also want to look at the official stat listings to gain their own perspective.

That's cool, I was just looking at it and thinking - and being your typical lazy person, had no motivation to look anywhere else.

[The Croom Diaries]

That's cool, I was just looking at it and thinking - and being your typical lazy person, had no motivation to look anywhere else.

Ha, well I'm lazy too. And it takes about an hour each week to look through all the game notes to find RISP and inherited runners, then enter the data and publish the post...that's more time than I spend on any post and this one is by far our least read each week...but I know that's because it's not a mainstream topic. It would probably take about 2 minutes to add that data but I really just don't want to clutter the post too much.

[dickiedawg]

You think a .005 difference in Batting Average is the same as .009 difference in Fielding Percentage?

We're making errors around 2/3 as often as league average. If we were getting out 2/3 as often as league average, we'd be hitting .522.

(Yes, Croom Diaries is right that our official scorer is pretty generous with Hits. But I'm not convinced other official scorers are any stricter)

[lefty96]

You think a .005 difference in Batting Average is the same as .009 difference in Fielding Percentage?

We're making errors around 2/3 as often as league average. If we were getting out 2/3 as often as league average, we'd be hitting .522.

(Yes, Croom Diaries is right that our official scorer is pretty generous with Hits. But I'm not convinced other official scorers are any stricter)

No, I was just pointing out that first does not always equal clearly better than average. Pretty much my entire point in every post in here is that everything needs to be kept in context. That's all I'm getting at.

[Maroons]

all of them have strengths and weaknesses but the one pitching stat that , to me, best tells how good the pitcher is , is WHIP.

WHIP is a nice stat, but even that one is somewhat flawed due to different players and teams' defensive abilities.

[lefty96]

Ha, well I'm lazy too. And it takes about an hour each week to look through all the game notes to find RISP and inherited runners, then enter the data and publish the post...that's more time than I spend on any post and this one is by far our least read each week...but I know that's because it's not a mainstream topic. It would probably take about 2 minutes to add that data but I really just don't want to clutter the post too much.

I certainly wouldn't want to attempt to gather that myself. I'm auditing a class in sabermetrics in the summer, I can't decide if I should be excited or just worried how dull it could end up being. More sql and R work - hurray?

[dawgs]

FIP is a worthless stat.

no it's not. it's harder to quantify in the moment unless you are sticking numbers as they happen into the formula, but it's pretty indicative of which players are likely to see their more easily measurable performance (era, whip, etc) improve or regress moving forward. there's obviously some guys that almost always outperform their FIP (ross mitchell, matt cain did it for years for the giants - though it caught up to him last year), and others that seem to always underperform their FIP (ricky nolasco is one that jumps out in MLB). so you do need to look at other contexts (i.e. the type of contact being made, whether their defenses emphasized defensive shifts - this is one reason the rays pitchers almost always outperform their FIPs), but it's generally a pretty solid rule of thumb for guesstimating future performance.

[dawgs]

I certainly wouldn't want to attempt to gather that myself. I'm auditing a class in sabermetrics in the summer, I can't decide if I should be excited or just worried how dull it could end up being. More sql and R work - hurray?

i think it would be pretty awesome, though i wonder how much ground they'd cover that you couldn't get from reading everything on fangraphs.

[KB21]

We just got beat in the national championship by a team with a really, really bad batting average. Not going to put much on stats. Nothing more than a talking point one way or another.

That's because batting average is a horrible indicator of actual hitting and offensive ability of a baseball team.

[lefty96]

i think it would be pretty awesome, though i wonder how much ground they'd cover that you couldn't get from reading everything on fangraphs.

https://www.edx.org/course/bux/bux-s...trics-101-1558

[dawgs]

That's because batting average is a horrible indicator of actual hitting and offensive ability of a baseball team.

that and if you are going to be as relatively weak on offense as they were, you have to have an elite pitching staff. they had an elite staff AND the CWS is played in a stadium that absolutely nullifies any hitting advantages, so pitchers can groove strikes all game and, if they have a good defensive team behind them, feel confident that they wouldn't get burned with extra base hits. accounting for the park, our hitting advantage was muted, and they had the better pitching staff.

[Esmerelda Villalobos]

You guys use whatever dumbass formula you want. Ill take the guy sitting at 8th in fip.

You guys take the 7 ahead of him. He would out pitch all 7, probably in consecutive days.

Greatest pitcher ever at msu is 8th best on team. Good to know. That tells you how worthless these stats are.

[dawgs]

Look who is missing the point!

We already said you can combine the eye test (type of contact) with metrics like FIP to get a true view of a guy. Also, pitching as a reliever only 1-2 IP at a time can skew things since guys tend to get more Ks pitching in shortened windows than over a full 5+ IP start (or long relief appearance).

[messageboardsuperhero]

I read this yesterday and thought about Mitchell, the piece about Burke Badenhop. . .
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/sunda...-red-sox-rays/

I will add on Mitchell that he has the lowest babip listed and has a defense behind him that is just above average compared to the SEC - that gives good context for the traditional view of babip.

Huh? We lead the SEC in fielding %. Before the Sunday game against Vandy, there was a stat floating around that we were fielding about .995 in our last 12-15 games. I don't know how much the Sunday game affected that, but it's still a very impressive number. Also, all of our fielders (infield and outfield) have good range, and I'd go as far to say that some of them have outstanding range.

Bottom line- we've easily been the best defense in the conference since making Heck our SS. We've also led the entire country in double plays turned since 2012. Don't sell us short defensively.

ETA: And that defense is a pretty big reason why pitchers like Brown and Mitchell are so successful here. I'm sure they'd still be good pitchers on other teams, but our defense makes them that much better.

[messageboardsuperhero]

We have a nice defense no doubt, but in all honestly if our official scorer knew the difference between a hit and an error we'd have 8-10 more errors this year.

Very true, but other team's scorers are just like ours in that regard.

[lefty96]

Huh? We lead the SEC in fielding %. Before the Sunday game against Vandy, there was a stat floating around that we were fielding about .995 in our last 12-15 games. I don't know how much the Sunday game affected that, but it's still a very impressive number. Also, all of our fielders (infield and outfield) have good range, and I'd go as far to say that some of them have outstanding range.

Bottom line- we've easily been the best defense in the conference since making Heck our SS. We've also led the entire country in double plays turned since 2012. Don't sell us short defensively.

ETA: And that defense is a pretty big reason why pitchers like Brown and Mitchell are so successful here. I'm sure they'd still be good pitchers on other teams, but our defense makes them that much better.

I would think that a .984 fielding % v/s the league avg of .974 isn't a huge gap from first to middle of the pack. If that's an incorrect conclusion, then I'm just wrong. The rest, I agree w/ you.

[messageboardsuperhero]

I would think that a .984 fielding % v/s the league avg of .974 isn't a huge gap from first to middle of the pack. If that's an incorrect conclusion, then I'm just wrong. The rest, I agree w/ you.

That's a pretty big difference, especially in the college game- where defense is at a premium and routine groundballs aren't automatic outs like they are in MLB. And considering how much we pitch to contact, that just puts more pressure on our defense to make plays.

I just thought it was a little ridiculous to call what is probably the best defense in the conference "just above league average." Also remember (as someone else pointed out) that a .010 difference in fielding % is a much bigger difference than a .010 difference in other stats.

[lefty96]

I just thought it was a little ridiculous to call what is probably the best defense in the conference "just above league average." Also remember (as someone else pointed out) that a .010 difference in fielding % is a much bigger difference than a .010 difference in other stats.

Okay, looking at our numbers, we've had 1015 chances and recorded 693 put outs, 306 assists and 16 errors for a fielding % of .984. If we work backwards, if our fielding % was .974 that would be an additional 11 errors over 26 games, far worse sure, I get your point and should have done the math before I typed. I'm still not prepared to say that Mitchell is successful only b/c of our defense or that he is lucky, but I understand the correlation between his numbers and our fielding %.

[curmudgeon]

Awesome job. Why don't you do these for our softball team?

[messageboardsuperhero]

Okay, looking at our numbers, we've had 1015 chances and recorded 693 put outs, 306 assists and 16 errors for a fielding % of .984. If we work backwards, if our fielding % was .974 that would be an additional 11 errors over 26 games, far worse sure, I get your point and should have done the math before I typed. I'm still not prepared to say that Mitchell is successful only b/c of our defense or that he is lucky, but I understand the correlation between his numbers and our fielding %.

When did I claim that Ross Mitchell was only successful because of our defense or luck? I said he'd be a good pitcher on any other team, but when the best defense in the league is playing behind a contact pitcher, the defense in going to make the pitcher just that much better.

And that defense is a pretty big reason why pitchers like Brown and Mitchell are so successful here. I'm sure they'd still be good pitchers on other teams, but our defense makes them that much better.

Hell, he and Preston Brown be the first ones to tell you that our defense helps them out a lot.