Brock Beauchamp
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Everything posted by Brock Beauchamp
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I couldn't find any info on this and a check of Torii Hunter's yearly UZR/150 divided by seasons played output -1.27 (his career UZR/150 is -1.3), so my gut is telling me they're multiplying and averaging (used Hunter because he has a few partial seasons mixed in there, which should return a different number). Hunter has 18188.2 career innings. Divide those by 1350 (150 games times 9) and divide that by his career -14.5 UZR and the return is -0.9, which should be his career UZR/150 if the number was calculated by a career whole. So yeah, UZR/150 blows.
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No, people will still misuse numbers but it's a mostly useless statistic to begin with... Why not replace something kinda crappy with something useful, like UZR/3? UZR/150 is still going to be a problem in career numbers because it's multiplying shoddy data. If something is inaccurate enough to award a 3 when a 1 is deserved, multiplying that data is going to cause discrepancies, even if you divide it and average it out later. At least with UZR, the number is never multiplied so inaccurate data isn't compounded.
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It really is that bad. It's taking noisy data and multiplying it. Nothing useful will be gleaned from that. What would be far more useful is UZR/4000 or UZR/3 (shorter name). The UZR of a player over his past 4000 innings, or roughly three seasons. That would churn out a number that might actually be of use, something UZR/150 can't do without dumb luck and/or coincidence.
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RBI, sure... Wins, eh, I have to admit that I have no real use for them, as they tell so little about what happened to get there. In outlier cases, wins can tell a little about a pitcher but most of the time, they tell so little that I ignore them entirely.
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I vacillated on the Trout/Miggy thing a bit because I don't mind the use of RBI in MVP discussion, as Runs Batted In actually happened and they helped the team win actual, honest-to-god baseball games. But if you asked me which player I wanted on my team, it was 100% Trout because he was a versatile up-the-middle player with a strong bat, good/great defense, and speed.
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Absolutely. I have a hard time not giggling whenever someone brings up wins or RBI. It's so quaint.
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I've taken the opinion that if a player derives a significant portion of their WAR from dWAR, I avoid using the metric entirely. Brian Dozier, 5 WAR player, yes! Alex Gorden, 6 WAR player, eeeesh. Hey, he might be a 6 WAR player, I just have no faith in the metric at that point.
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I remember when I first read about UZR/150 all those years ago. Basically, this. http://giffiles.alphacoders.com/197/197.gif
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Sure, no arguments here. IMO, there's a good chance that UZR/DRS is right about Hunter's 2014 defensive performance.
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But they can't be trusted. UZR also graded Hunter as a -8 in 2006 and a -10 in 2008 when, by all accounts, he was still a good fielder. It would be disingenuous of me to use the metric simply because it matched what I saw on the field in very limited innings.
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While we're on the subject, who is in favor of eliminating UZR/150 entirely? *raises hand eagerly* Talk about doubling down on a bad idea and encouraging people to misuse metrics. UZR/150 makes me shake my head every time I see it. Fangraphs should just get rid of it.
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I sure don't. Hunter could easily put up a positive number in right this season, which would make the situation even more confusing.
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This is where UZR gets pretty sticky for me on a different level than what has previously been discussed. Let's go back to Hunter. His UZR for the past three are 11.2, -4.1, -18.3. Assuming that he played the same innings in every season for the sake of me not having to do more math than is absolutely necessary, those balance out to a -3.7 UZR per season. Hey, that's not too bad... But (there's always a but) Hunter is running on creaky old man legs right now. My personal feeling is that he has started to fall off a cliff. Using three year averages may balance out the statistic but it doesn't tell you with any predictive certainty who Hunter is in April of 2015. By the time you've collected three years of data, the player has moved out of that phase of his career and into a better fielder (not likely) or a worse fielder outside his prime (more likely). So while the data is telling us Torii Hunter is a slightly below average fielder, I don't know if I buy that, either. That's not really UZR's fault, just a weakness of any metric that needs so much data to be accurate that it spans a significant portion of a player's career and may no longer be relevant by the time the data is collated.
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But... Not really. Yes and no. The problem with single season use of any kind is that it's taking a collection of data from each player, assigning that number as fixed (say, +20 runs) and then adding up the results for each position (assuming that one player plays the majority of innings at one position in a single season). So you're really dealing with only seven data points (the seven defensive positions that matter). Most of the time, those will balance each other out but if you have two players who are extreme outliers, the entire team number is broken.
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Fair enough. I guess the majority of my issues come from the metric's misuse.
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It's less subjective if Field f/X is generating the data. Nothing is going to be perfect but the more human elements that can be removed from a metric, the more accurate the metric should be in the long run (and it'll take years to accumulate enough data to really make it accurate).
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I agree, but Hunter's 2012-2013 is the third time he lost 20+ runs from his DRS in a single season. The two previous times, he regained most of the DRS the following season. It's really hard to trust a metric that has that kind of swing from season to season, particularly when people insist on quoting it in single season usage.
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I'm not accusing you of doing any such things, for the record... But that kind of statement is incredibly common, even by some veteran writers around baseball. I'm not sure exactly what I want from UZR. Probably some way for the metric to better use contextual runs saved. If a metric is going to use runs as a measurement, it should find a way to apply those runs into game situations. That should help remove some of the insane outliers and stabilize the metric a bit. For example, if Gutierrez saved a bases loaded double that 90% of center fielders can't reach, he gets 3 runs x .9 (not exactly perfect math, as he also added an out and removed a person from second base, but you get the point). Those were runs he actually saved in a game situation. If people are going to say things like "the Royals defense was X runs better than the Indians in 2014", that would go a long way toward making the number more believable.
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Yep, this. Torii Hunter's DRS in 2012-2014 is the following: 15 (hey, that's really good), -10 (ugh), -18 (hide the children). It's possible, maybe even likely, that Torii Hunter's defense has declined to the point that he's horrible in the outfield. What's equally possible is that DRS is completely off its rocker and Hunter is closer to an average fielder than any of us realize. Yet I've heard the phrase "worst outfielder in baseball" bandied about on this forum at least 100 times in the past three months. Hey, it's possible that Torii is now the worst fielder in baseball. It's also possible - maybe even likely - that he's not because DRS (and UZR, which is generally pretty close to DRS) cannot be trusted at all over a single season, yet we use those metrics all the time over a single season and fold them into other metrics that are also quoted as single-season numbers.
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Alex Meyer's Wild Ride
Brock Beauchamp replied to Nick Nelson's topic in Twins Daily Front Page News
Same here. A side effect of working obscene hours every week and being married to a lawyer who works even more obscene hours. -
Alex Meyer's Wild Ride
Brock Beauchamp replied to Nick Nelson's topic in Twins Daily Front Page News
Uh... I include myself on the side of those "sabr people". It was a simple observation made while slightly intoxicated, nothing more. -
Alex Meyer's Wild Ride
Brock Beauchamp replied to Nick Nelson's topic in Twins Daily Front Page News
It fascinates me to see sabr people laud the walk on offense and dismiss it on defense while dismissing the strikeout on offense and lauding it on defense. They're opposite sides of the same events. If they matter on one side, they also matter on the other. Anyway, random tangent. Carry on, everyone. -
To be clear, I think defensive metrics do the best job they can with the data provided. Most of the time, I think they're probably reasonably accurate over multiple seasons when used in relative terms (eg. the Twins had one of the worst outfields in baseball over the past several years). But there are enough issues with the metrics that I don't trust them enough to assign run values to defense or believe them when they say things about single seasons like "the Royals defense was 140 runs better than the Indians in 2014". I applaud those who work in metrics and all the progress they've made with defensive numbers in the past decade... But it doesn't take much digging into the numbers to see that a lot more work needs to be done.
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Only if you can find a legitimate reason why a guy who was healthy, played in the same ballpark, played roughly the same number of innings, and stole more bases (at a much more successful clip, to boot) suddenly became a mediocre defender after a season as GOAT. And while you're at it, do the same for Torii Hunter and his multiple 20 run defensive swings from season to season. Also Ian Kinsler. Defense is the equivalent of a skill position. People in this thread are basically arguing that it's possible Randy Moss lost a step (and his hands) in one season but regained both the following season with no rhyme or reason for why it happened... But we should trust the numbers because they said it happened. We couldn't observe Randy losing his hands or speed, we just have to rely on the numbers because they said it's true. Defense isn't like hitting or throwing a baseball, both of which are far more nuanced... not to mention that another player has direct input in the result of both. In 2010, nobody said "Franklin can't catch a curve ball" and changed their approach to his defense.
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What you're talkkng about is an acceptable margin of error. A few runs a season. Not 30.
