The One Where I Call Attention To A Fun Article, Rather Than Commenting (Much) On The A's

But I also saw someone calling Passan out on a couple points because he kind of struck out on his analysis of BABIP and something to do with Dickey and the knuckleball, I believe.

Here, check out the last two points: http://blogs.thescore.com/mlb/2011/08/26/ten-stray-thoughts-on-a-friday-28/

Get it off!

is the numbers site I visit frequently and routinely.

I refer to Fangraphs occasionally, but I like BR much better.

him succeeding with his K/9 down to 9 something and his BB/9 up to around 7. For him to be good, he’s got to be something like 11:5. This year’s a definite step backwards for him.

But pitch-type linear weights are highly suspect and ball-in-play data (for the popups tidbits) has all the usual problems, which knocks out about 15 of the 25 factoids he shares. There is still some fun stuff there, though.

Not to self-promote (ok, totally to self-promote), I wrote about Passan’s misuse of the pitch-type data and whether he or Fangraphs was more to blame for the mistakes here http://beaneball.org/1243.html. Passan actually linked to the piece on Twitter, which was pretty awesome of him, though he also told me that us statnerds should stop being so dogmatic. I was perhaps harsher on Passan’s journalistic integrity than I needed to be.

Let me go through this item by item.

1. The hardest thrower in the game is a middle reliever, and it’s not Aroldis Chapman.

No. He says it himself in the very next paragraph: Chapman’s velocity is down from last year’s by 2 mph, and even this year, it’s 0.1 mph below Henry’s. So…Chapman throws harder, but he’s just having a down year THIS year. And not only that, but there’s absolutely no difference between 97.9 and 98.0. Guess what the precision error of PITCHf/x velocity is? More than 0.1 mph. 97.9 equals 98.0.

4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 20

You can’t use pitch type linear weights like that! This whole part reads like a guy who just discovered that stat, without knowing how to properly use it. First off, it all depends on the MLBAM pitch classifications. Which are full of errors. Secondly, it includes things like batted ball luck and the defense. Example: Player A hits a fastball on the ground, and it squeezes between the 1Bman and the 2Bman for a hit. Player A, next time up, hits a curveball on the ground, which is fielded. According to pitch type linear weights, he’s awesome at hitting fastballs, and crappy at hitting curveballs. This works both ways, for hitters and pitchers. A pitcher throwing in front of a bad defense will all of a sudden, by this metric, look like his pitches suck.

14. Todd Helton is ripping line drives at a rate we haven’t seen in years.

Nope. The Colorado official scorer is giving him line drives at a rate we haven’t seen in years. BIG difference. There’s no official designation of what a line drive is and isn’t. It’s totally up to the official scorer. If the Colorado one has a different definition than, say, the Oakland one? Oh well.

23. The best defensive player in baseball for the second straight year is … Brett Gardner?

Gardner led baseball with plus 25.7 UZR last season. This year he’s at 18.3, and how Gardner saves more runs in left field than any of the great shortstops or center fielders casts skepticism on any system, including DRS, which has Gardner and Angels standout center fielder Peter Bourjos atop the league with 20 runs saved. Gardner has snagged more balls out of his zone (91) than every player but Justin Upton and Austin Jackson.

Ack! Gardner saves more runs in left field than any great SS or CF because…wait for this…left fielders are really, really shitty. So compared to the average left fielder? He’s awesome. Because he’s basically a CF playing LF. Shortstops, on the other hand, are generally awesome. So the baseline is very high. “Casts skepticism on any system”? Come on now. Think about this stuff.

Fangraphs had an article about how to measure power, which looked at using linear weights in the wOBA formula instead of ISO as a measure of power. The new metric is called wXB/AB (weighted extra bases per at bat). I took a look at the spreadsheet in the article. Unsurprisingly, the A’s top performer (qualified batters only) is Willingham, who is #33 in all of baseball, followed by Suzuki (88), DeJesus (96), Matsui (102).

Just for fun (SSS alert), I calculated wXB/AB for our mid-season acquisitions/call-ups, looking at numbers with the A’s only. Sizemore would be tied with Corey Hart for 50th in all of baseball, Weeks would be tied with Matsui. Brandon Allen, in his short stint with the A’s, is 2nd, behind Jose Bautista.