The "all information is good" thing makes sense to me but I can't really explain it all that well.

In third grade my wife scraped her elbow. Required a bandaid.

The human head weighs 8 pounds.

Woody shares the same last name as a fictional A-team character.


Based on those three pieces of information, what did uncle milt eat for lunch last Tuesday? Was it any good?

There's a real-life A Team?

if you can find them...

jeff2sf wrote:In third grade my wife scraped her elbow. Required a bandaid.

The human head weighs 8 pounds.

Woody shares the same last name as a fictional A-team character.


Based on those three pieces of information, what did uncle milt eat for lunch last Tuesday? Was it any good?

Corned beef on rye with a nice ale to wash it down. It was superb.

Next?

Actually, a better way to say what I mean is all relevant information is good.

For example, how good is a pitcher who wins 20 games and has an ERA of 2.97?

The answer is, who knows? When did he pitch. Today, a guy like that is pretty awesome. In 1908, not so much.

Is a guy a good fielder? You can simply look at UZR for example and conclude a guy is pretty good. Like Raul Ibanez who looks good in this regard. But if you look further and check all defensive metrics and actually, god forbid, watch the games you'll get much closer to the truth.

The more relevant information you have, the better. And avoiding information because it isn't convenient to your forgone conclusion doesn't help.

I know you know this stuff and you're being a wise guy but it's OK. It's fun.

TenuredVulture wrote:Smitty is right though in saying there is no wrong way to enjoy baseball.

don't make me do a google image search

Bakestar wrote:I respect the hell out of hardcore sabermetricians and think the work is incredibly valuable, but I never got past Trigonometry in high school and I have to admit that, solely through my own ignorance, Matt's SIERA formula looks like R2-D2 puked on the screen.

If you see something like:

ERA = (13*HR + 3*BB - 2*SO)/IP + 3.2

What are your feelings? Is it still vomit-inducing? Is it intriguing? Clear? Confusing?

I can handle that. What's that stand for?

jerseyhoya wrote:I can handle that. What's that stand for?

FIP

And is SIERA better (different) because it goes further in looking into GB/FB rates and such?

jerseyhoya wrote:I can handle that. What's that stand for?

Those are the terms in a pitcher's performance line that has nothing, or almost nothing, to do with his fielders. It's called FIP (fielding-independent pitching).

Zack Greinke:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/18/sport ... .html?_r=3

“That’s pretty much how I pitch, to try to keep my FIP as low as possible,” Greinke said.

Not that I necessarily agree that Greinke appreciates what FIP does or doesn't do. But, it's just cool that he would say FIP.

***

SIERA tries to go further my finding more relationship among those stats, and including a pitcher's GB and FB rates. So, rather than things moving linearly and independently, SIERA proposes something interdependent and non-linear.

The end-result is, possibly, the slightest of improvements. To some people, it's too complex for too little gain. For others it's that complexity that is needed to get any gain.

YMMV.

tangotiger wrote:

Bakestar wrote:I respect the hell out of hardcore sabermetricians and think the work is incredibly valuable, but I never got past Trigonometry in high school and I have to admit that, solely through my own ignorance, Matt's SIERA formula looks like R2-D2 puked on the screen.

If you see something like:

ERA = (13*HR + 3*BB - 2*SO)/IP + 3.2

What are your feelings? Is it still vomit-inducing? Is it intriguing? Clear? Confusing?

I can usually follow through the logic of most of these formulas (I generally got Bs in college algebra classes, but that was back in the 70s). However when I see formulas written like that, I get somewhat bugged that they contain ambiguities. I much prefer they be written like this:

ERA = (((13*HR) + (3*BB) - (2*SO))/IP) + 3.2

Why is ERA, not the best measure of pitching ability, the dependent variable?

TheAAGuy wrote:However when I see formulas written like that, I get somewhat bugged that they contain ambiguities. I much prefer they be written like this:

ERA = (((13*HR) + (3*BB) - (2*SO))/IP) + 3.2

I get that on occasion, your bugaboo. Personally, I get more bugged by the extraneous parens. Really, there is no ambiguity if you follow the multiplication/addition rules from Grade 7 math.

If I learned about WWII in Grade 7, do I need to say which countries were part of the Allied forces, or can I just say Allied forces?

So, feel free to be bugged, but you have to accept that the underlying logic of multiplication before addition was taught and accepted when we were teenagers.

TenuredVulture wrote:Why is ERA, not the best measure of pitching ability, the dependent variable?

Rephrase your question please for my clarity please.

***

ERA is a measure of TEAM defense, with that particular pitcher on the mound. Therefore, it's the number of runs ASSIGNED to a pitcher, regardless of how much, or how little, that pitcher contributed toward the runs.

tangotiger wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:Why is ERA, not the best measure of pitching ability, the dependent variable?

Rephrase your question please.

***

ERA is a measure of TEAM defense, with that particular pitcher on the mound. Therefore, it's the number of runs ASSIGNED to a pitcher, regardless of how much, or how little, that pitcher contributed toward the runs.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding something here. The point of SIERA and FIP is to figure out how good a pitcher is. And the argument here, if I'm following it correctly, is these metrics are evaluated in terms of how well they predict the next season's ERA.

But why would I care so much about next season's ERA? (I mean, I care about the Phillies preventing the other team from scoring runs, so I suppose I care about that, but ultimately, I care about wins. But I really think trying to correlate FIPS with wins would be especially dumb.) Is it simply to satisfy the Joe Morgans of the world?

I think in some ways OSA (Opponents slugging average) or OOBP+OSA would be a better dependent variable than ERA. I think slugging is worth looking at especially because while it's not fielding independent, it might be less dependent than ERA, because it accounts for home runs (but then maybe that's the problem--since home runs are a term on both sides of the equation?)

tangotiger wrote:

TheAAGuy wrote:However when I see formulas written like that, I get somewhat bugged that they contain ambiguities. I much prefer they be written like this:

ERA = (((13*HR) + (3*BB) - (2*SO))/IP) + 3.2

I get that on occasion, your bugaboo. Personally, I get more bugged by the extraneous parens. Really, there is no ambiguity if you follow the multiplication/addition rules from Grade 7 math.

If I learned about WWII in Grade 7, do I need to say which countries were part of the Allied forces, or can I just say Allied forces?

So, feel free to be bugged, but you have to accept that the underlying logic of multiplication before addition was taught and accepted when we were teenagers.

TheAAGuy's method is more in line with computer programming, where you have to be that explicit (with the extra parens et al) to insure the compiler handles it the way you want it to.

TenuredVulture wrote:Maybe I'm misunderstanding something here. The point of SIERA and FIP is to figure out how good a pitcher is. And the argument here, if I'm following it correctly, is these metrics are evaluated in terms of how well they predict the next season's ERA.

Insofar as FIP is concerned, you are misunderstanding.

The way I always describe it is to liken it to OBP: is there anyone that objects to weighting the HR and walk as "1" in the numerator of OBP? No. Because OBP is what it is. Do we care if HR show more persistence year-to-year than doubles (or not)? No. OBP is what it is.

And that's what FIP is: describing a PART of a pitcher's performance (the 25% of the time that a ball is not put in play), and cast it on an ERA scale.

Presenting (reframing?) the argument on that basis, do you have objections?

Phan In Phlorida wrote:TheAAGuy's method is more in line with computer programming, where you have to be that explicit (with the extra parens et al) to insure the compiler handles it the way you want it to.

Seeing that I am a computer programmer, I can assure you I have never added extraneous parens, and I have never had a problem.

A compiler follows rules, explicitly coded rules. And one of those rules is that multiplication precedes addition.

Now, maybe in assembly language, it's different. And (some) calculators simply follow the rule left-to-right.

Otherwise, as I said, it's fine to have the objection, but the objection runs counter to our Grade 7 education.