http://www.owenkellett.info/2005/08/22/the-case-against-closers-part-2/ Technology news, baseball, track and field, and more! Wed, 01 Feb 2006 00:15:57 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 http://www.owenkellett.info/2005/08/22/the-case-against-closers-part-2/comment-page-1/#comment-78 owenkellett.info » Blog Archive » Papi vs. A-Rod Mon, 03 Oct 2005 01:22:04 +0000 http://www.owenkellett.info/2005/08/22/the-case-against-closers-part-2/#comment-78 [...] Given all of the talk about the AL MVP, I was hoping that I could make my own quantitative, objective comparison of the raw value that both David Ortiz and Alex Rodriguez have contributed to their respective teams this season. Unfortunately, I have failed (Gah!). Actually, my original intent was to calculate the total offensive WPA (Win Probability Added) for both Ortiz and ARod throughout the course of the entire season. I mentioned this statistic in an earlier post about closers and I would also suggest this site as a good starting point if you’re interested in exploring the stat yourself. In short, WPA is a metric designed to quantitatively measure a player’s “value” or significance of his overall contribution to the team’s performance. [...] [...] Given all of the talk about the AL MVP, I was hoping that I could make my own quantitative, objective comparison of the raw value that both David Ortiz and Alex Rodriguez have contributed to their respective teams this season. Unfortunately, I have failed (Gah!). Actually, my original intent was to calculate the total offensive WPA (Win Probability Added) for both Ortiz and ARod throughout the course of the entire season. I mentioned this statistic in an earlier post about closers and I would also suggest this site as a good starting point if you’re interested in exploring the stat yourself. In short, WPA is a metric designed to quantitatively measure a player’s “value” or significance of his overall contribution to the team’s performance. [...]

]]> http://www.owenkellett.info/2005/08/22/the-case-against-closers-part-2/comment-page-1/#comment-48 owenkellett.info » Blog Archive » The Schilling Return Sat, 27 Aug 2005 15:27:08 +0000 http://www.owenkellett.info/2005/08/22/the-case-against-closers-part-2/#comment-48 [...] What? I don’t even understand how this statement makes any sense. First of all, pitchers make the transition from reliever to starter all the time. The fact that any reliever has been in the meaningless “closer” role should not really change his durability, his mentality, or his typical usage as a pitcher in comparison to any other reliever. In fact, later in the article, Jayson mentions that Curt Schilling himself made the transition from reliever to starter midseason 13 years ago! So we can already see that what Schilling is trying to do is actually not even close to unprecedented at all. So why, then, do the stats of this tiny, 4-pitcher sampling of midseason reliever-to-starter switches even matter at all? That’s correct; they don’t. Nevertheless, Jayson spends a third of the article talking about them. [...] [...] What? I don’t even understand how this statement makes any sense. First of all, pitchers make the transition from reliever to starter all the time. The fact that any reliever has been in the meaningless “closer” role should not really change his durability, his mentality, or his typical usage as a pitcher in comparison to any other reliever. In fact, later in the article, Jayson mentions that Curt Schilling himself made the transition from reliever to starter midseason 13 years ago! So we can already see that what Schilling is trying to do is actually not even close to unprecedented at all. So why, then, do the stats of this tiny, 4-pitcher sampling of midseason reliever-to-starter switches even matter at all? That’s correct; they don’t. Nevertheless, Jayson spends a third of the article talking about them. [...]

]]> http://www.owenkellett.info/2005/08/22/the-case-against-closers-part-2/comment-page-1/#comment-43 owenkellett.info » Blog Archive » The Case Against Closers: Part 2 Mon, 22 Aug 2005 19:18:58 +0000 http://www.owenkellett.info/2005/08/22/the-case-against-closers-part-2/#comment-43 [...] In the second segment of my case against closers, I’d like to present a statistic called WPA or Win Probability Added. I first read about WPA in the book Curve Ball by Jim Albert and Jay Bennett. It struck me then as one of the most intriguing and most ingenious methods to quantitatively measure the overall value of a player’s offensive performance to his team. Essentially, it can be described in short as follows: Consider the progression of a baseball game. During any one point in time, the game is always in one distinct state. For example, “the home team is up by 2 runs, it’s the bottom of the 6th, there’s a man on first and second, and there’s 1 out” is one of these distinct states. Using historical data, we can assign a probability of the home team winning the game given this state. (i.e. if the home team has won 70% of the games in which this situation occurs, than the probability of the home team winning is 0.70). In fact, we can assign probabilities like this to all possible game situations. The result is a table that matches game states to probability values. [...] [...] In the second segment of my case against closers, I’d like to present a statistic called WPA or Win Probability Added. I first read about WPA in the book Curve Ball by Jim Albert and Jay Bennett. It struck me then as one of the most intriguing and most ingenious methods to quantitatively measure the overall value of a player’s offensive performance to his team. Essentially, it can be described in short as follows: Consider the progression of a baseball game. During any one point in time, the game is always in one distinct state. For example, “the home team is up by 2 runs, it’s the bottom of the 6th, there’s a man on first and second, and there’s 1 out” is one of these distinct states. Using historical data, we can assign a probability of the home team winning the game given this state. (i.e. if the home team has won 70% of the games in which this situation occurs, than the probability of the home team winning is 0.70). In fact, we can assign probabilities like this to all possible game situations. The result is a table that matches game states to probability values. [...]

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