From: mjones@fenway.aix.kingston.ibm.com (Mike Jones)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.baseball
Subject: Re: Lies, Damn Lies, & Statistics (was Re: The Monthly Cecil Fielder Thread
Date: 4 Sep 92 16:24:11 GMT
Reply-To: mjones@donald.aix.kingston.ibm.com
Organization: IBM Corp. Kingston NY

In article <1992Sep03.105123.10657@brtph560.bnr.ca> psycho@brtpa25.bnr.ca (Paul Jezioranski) writes:
>In article <1992Sep3.013519.8911@panix.com>, spira@panix.com (Greg
>"Sarcasm Is A Way Of Life" Spira) writes:
>> In <1992Sep02.204409.2123@brtph560.bnr.ca> psycho@brtpa25.bnr.ca (Paul
>Jezioranski) writes: 
>>  Games played, runs scored, hits, walks, RBI, etc. (i.e.
>> >the basics) give a solid idea of hitting performance.
>> No, they don't.
>> And we can keep it simple by eliminating a lot of these.
>> Leave us with PAs, SLG, OBP and I'll let you eliminate all the rest.
>> Is that simple enough for you?
>Sure. Simply idiotic. An example:
>
>	Rudy Fafoofnik: 680 Plate appearances, 1.000 SLG, 1.000 OBP
>	
>......	but he scored zero runs because he hit 680 two out singles and the guy
>	behind him struck out 680 times.

OGMAFB. Let's ignore, for the moment, that you've chosen an example that
will NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, occur in anything resembling real life (even if
the aliens from the planet Zartron come back and run the season again, like
in 1987). Look, instead, at what Rudy did. How valuable was Rudy? Well, for
starters, look at how stupid his manager was. If he batted every time with
two out, then it's obvious that his manager didn't put that 1.000 OBP
leadoff, which leads one to suspect that he must have been playing for Don
Zimmer. It's not his fault there was two out every time he batted. It's not
his fault that the man behind him struck out. Put Rudy in front of, say,
Cecil Fielder and Mickey Tettleton and watch him score about 200 runs and
each of them get boatloads of RBI.

Now tell me. If we're trying to figure how valuable Rudy is, should we
deduct from his value for the men who made outs in front of him? Should we
deduct for the men who made outs behind him? More to the point, if Rudy
repeats the same statistics the next year but his team has traded for Brett
Butler and Rickey Henderson to hit in front of him and Juan Gonzalez and
Mark McGwire to bat behind him, his RBI and R will balloon. Does this
reflect an increase in *his* value?

>Sure you can draw a "likely" conclusion from just those three stats, but
>you can draw a better conclusion from what the player himself did.
>Singles, doubles, triples, homers, runs scored, walks, at bats, and RBI
>give a better than "likely" conclusion of the player's value to the
>team, and you can calculate your three numbers from these stats. My

Time to play "one of these things is not like the others":
   Singles, doubles, triples, homers, runs scored
   Walks, at bats, RBI.
Answer: Of these things, only Runs and RBI reflect things that you can't do
(in most situations) without the help of a teammate.

>contention is that adding external dependencies (such as who and how
>many were in scoring position, who was pitching, etc) only complicates
>things and leads people to draw errant conclusions like "if Jose was in
>his place, he'd have 5000 RBI". But I guess that's most of the
>attraction of all these stats. 

Exactly. That's why true SDCN's prefer stats that eliminate or control for
as many of those other conditions as possible. RBI are *bad* measures of
individual ability exactly because they're so context dependent. Several
studies have shown that two factors determine a player's RBI totals: his SLG
and the number of men on base when he bats. A player has control over
exactly one of these things. Hint: it's not men on base. 

   Mike Jones  |  AIX/ESA Development  |  mjones@donald.aix.kingston.ibm.com

Facts are swallowed by [an ideology] in much the same way, I guess as the
strange phenomenon by which hamburger eaten by a dog becomes dog, and
hamburger eaten by a human becomes human.
	- Betty Friedan