Stolen Goods: Comparing The Forecasting Systems (2007-2010)

Tom Tango, courtesy of Brian Cartwright's tedious annual projection cataloging, just analyzed the various popular projections systems out there for accuracy in various capacities (best at forecasting overall, best at forecasting rookies, etc.). The results are quite interesting. CHONE, my forecaster of choice over the past few seasons, faired the best overall, while Oliver came in a close second, while also being the best system for forecasting rookie hitters. PECOTA was the weakest overall, thanks to its horrible 2009 showing, but was on par with ZiPS otherwise (yet another great reason not to pay for PECOTA -- ZiPS is free).

With CHONE defunct now (Sean Smith, the creator, works for a major league front office these days), Oliver would seem to reign supreme as the best available forecaster on the market. Though all of these systems are generally interchangeable overall, Oliver does the best at forecasting young players based on minor league production, which gives it a clear advantage over the rest of the systems. As Tango notes, players with higher sample sizes of major league production tend to have the most similar projections between systems.

You can purchase access to Oliver via THT Forecasts for $14.95 for the entire 2011 season. I personally use Oliver and can attest to its awesomeness, but if you do not believe me, just click the link to Tom Tango's blog (above) and read about its accuracy for yourself.

Stolen Goods: Success and Failure Rates of Top MLB Prospects

Royals Review has a great article up cataloging the success rates of the top 100 prospects from Baseball America from 1990-2003. The whole article is worth a full read and incredibly interesting, but here are the highlights of the results:




Truly great stuff. Always good to reaffirm the notion that the attrition rates on pitchers are much higher (i.e., invest in position players).

Stolen Goods: Position Eligibility for 2011

Looking for next year's classy of Wiggies (multi-positional eligible players, named after super utilityman Ty Wiggington)? Courtesy of Razzball, here is a list of multi-positional players and their respective fantasy eligbilities for 2010:

CATCHERS

Ryan Doumit C (100), OF (18)
Jake Fox C (19), OF (13), 1B (10)
Buster Posey C (76), 1B (30)
Victor Martinez C (110), 1B (14)

1ST BASEMEN

Michael Cuddyer 1B (84), OF (67), 3B (14)
Aubrey Huff 1B (100), OF (63)
Garrett Jones 1B (112), OF (49)
Xavier Nady 1B (52), OF (28)
Mike Napoli 1B (70), C (66)
Luke Scott 1B (19), OF (14)
Ty Wigginton 1B (98), 2B (40), 3B (22)

2ND BASEMEN

Mike Aviles 2B (87), SS (13)
Clint Barmes 2B (88), SS (47)
Ronnie Belliard 2B (20), 3B (16), 1B (10)
Andres Blanco 2B (40), SS (16)
Reid Brignac 2B (68), SS (50)
Mike Fontenot 2B (49), 3B (19)
Alberto Gonzalez 2B (38), 3B (27), SS (16)
Cristian Guzman 2B (63), SS (20)
Jonathan Herrera 2B (57), 3B (16)
Omar Infante 2B (65), 3B (29), OF (21), SS (19)
Howie Kendrick 2B (143), 1B (15)
Adam Kennedy 2B (86), 1B (51)
Jeff Keppinger 2B (126), SS (12)
Jed Lowrie 2B (28), SS (23)
Julio Lugo 2B (59), SS (26)
John McDonald 2B (23), SS (19), 3B (19)
Augie Ojeda 2B (15), 3B (12)
Martin Prado 2B (98), 3B (43)
Sean Rodriguez 2B (92), OF (21)
Adam Rosales 2B (47), SS (14)
Skip Schumaker 2B (123), OF (17)
Ruben Tejada 2B (50), SS (28)
Ryan Theriot 2B (119), SS (29)
Matt Tolbert 2B (20), 3B (14)
Eric Young Jr. 2B (35), OF (10)

SHORTSTOPS

Geoff Blum SS (18), 3B (14), 1B (14)
Jamey Carroll SS (69), 2B (48), 3B (11)
Alexi Casilla SS (30), 2B (24)
Juan Castro SS (33), 3B (11)
Craig Counsell SS (42), 3B (20)
Bobby Crosby SS (22), 2B (16), 3B (10)
Jason Donald SS (47), 2B (41)
Tyler Greene SS (22), 2B (15), 3B (11)
Jerry Hairston SS (62), 2B (47), OF (12)
Paul Janish SS (62), 3B (11)
Ramon Santiago SS (85), 2B (25)
Marco Scutaro SS (132), 2B (16)
Juan Uribe SS (103), 3B (26), 2B (24)
Wilson Valdez SS (59), 2B (42)
Danny Worth SS (24), 2B (12)

3RD BASEMEN

Tony Abreu 3B (20), SS (15), 2B (12)
Jeff Baker 3B (33), 2B (26)
Miguel Cairo 3B (37), 1B (14)
Alberto Callaspo 3B (130), 2B (12)
Jorge Cantu 3B (81), 1B (40)
Pedro Feliz 3B (102), 1B (15)
Brendan Harris 3B (27), SS (11)
Maicer Izturis 3B (28), 2B (22)
Felipe Lopez 3B (58), 2B (24), SS (24)
Andy Marte 3B (45), 1B (32)
Melvin Mora 3B (63), 1B (25), 2B (19)
Jayson Nix 3B (56), 2B (28)
Eduardo Nunez 3B (15), SS (11)
Ramiro Pena 3B (48), SS (23)
Jhonny Peralta 3B (100), SS (46)
Placido Polanco 3B (123), 2B (12)
Nick Punto 3B (48), SS (31), 2B (12)
Kevin Russo 3B (16), OF (11)
Pablo Sandoval 3B (143), 1B (11)
Mark Teahen 3B (52), OF (10)
Miguel Tejada 3B (97), SS (58)
Omar Vizquel 3B (83), 2B (19)
Brandon Wood 3B (56), SS (22)

OUTFIELDERS

Jose Bautista OF (113), 3B (48)
Willie Bloomquist OF (35), 3B (11)
Bill Hall OF (65), 2B (51)
Eric Hinske OF (50), 1B (32)
Don Kelly OF (74), 1B (28), 3B (15)
Carlos Lee OF (133), 1B (20)
Adam Lind OF (16), 1B (11)
Mike McCoy OF (15), 2B (14)
Mike Morse OF (72), 1B (19)
Eric Patterson OF (65), 2B (14)
Ryan Raburn OF (91), 2B (18)
Juan Rivera OF (105), 1B (13)
Ryan Ryal OF (36), 1B (24)
Matt Tuiasosopo OF (14), 3B (12)
Delwyn Young OF (21), 2B (10)
Ben Zobrist OF (110), 2B (55), 1B (14)

Stolen Goods: The Stats We Target

An article by a colleague of mine, Paul Singman (of Yahoo Friends and Family league fame), recently came to my attention. This article maps out 2008 ADP against 2007 production by stat, using the standard hitting categories.

According to the data, home runs and steals are the most significant when it comes to determining ADP. Of more interest, however, is the distribution of stats and their ADP relevance. Which stats are most undervalued by ADP? Which stats are you most able to accrue late in the game? Check it out, cool stuff.

Stolen Goods: How far will $11 get you at Taco Bell

How far will $11 get you at Taco Bell? It's not baseball (or sports) related, but it is on a baseball blog. Too bad the article does not use food WAR (calories over replacement meal), which is an awesome stat to say the least.

Definitely worth a read.

Stolen Goods: The wOBA Calculator

Fresh off the press at The Hardball Times is a wOBA Calculator. Now you can nerd up any bar, any party, any time, with any set of numbers! Rejoice!

Stolen Goods: How To Calculate Platoon Splits

Read about it at Royals Review. Too sleepy to summarize. This post is honestly more of a bookmark for personal future reference.

Carry on.

Stolen Goods: "Marlins execs funneled cash to themselves"

In another edition of "You Know What Really Grinds My Gears?," Yahoo Sportswriter Jeff Passan shows even further how corrupt the Jeff Loria ownership situation is (and sheds further light on how bad owners are abusing the fans to line their pockets).

I feel this article is so important, so crucial, so revealing, that it will be reproduced here in full and become the first non-sabermetrics post with the "Stolen Goods" tag. Without further adieu, Yahoo's best sports article ever:

Marlins execs funneled cash to themselves
By Jeff Passan

Florida Marlins president David Samson has perfected the art of doublespeak. Even after the mushroom cloud settled over the disclosure of financial statements that showed he and Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria are indeed duplicitous, Samson couldn’t help himself. Lies are simply part of how the Marlins do business.

The latest came during Samson’s weekly radio appearance on The Dan LeBatard Show in Miami, during which he addressed Deadspin’s publication of the Marlins’ balance sheet. What Samson said was so provably false that it was akin to a 3-year-old trying to hide his peas under a pile of mashed potatoes.

“Jeffrey Loria did not put a dollar in his pocket,” Samson said.

So programmed is that statement in Samson’s head, he keeps repeating it, like a robot with a shorted circuit. He’s right. Jeffrey Loria did not put a dollar in his pocket.

He put millions.

On Page 34 of the documents, under the heading Note Y, is a transaction called “Management Fee.” A corporation named Double Play Company is listed as the Marlins’ managing general partner. The partner is paid a yearly sum. For the two years the documents cover, the fees were $2.6 million and $2.8 million. In 2009, the documents say, the fee was raised to $3.2 million.

Records from the Florida Division of Corporations show Double Play’s CEO is Jeffrey Loria. Its president is David Samson.

Of the six teams whose documents were leaked, only the Marlins have a management fee listed in their operating expenses.

Earlier in the balance sheet, under Note L, is a one-paragraph section called “Related Party Promissory Note.” It explains that the managing general partner made a number of loans to the team at 1.5 percent to 1.75 percent above the London Interbank Offered Rate – a particularly high interest rate for the current lending climate, according to two accountants who reviewed the Marlins’ financials. Over the past two years, the loans have paid Double Play $1.83 million and $1.19 million, respectively.

While the financial records of Double Play are unavailable because it is a private company, at least $8.42 million went to the managing general partner in the past two years. Though the documents do not show that Loria has taken a direct distribution of money as owner, it is undeniable that he plundered the team’s coffers as it received nearly $500 million in public funding for a new stadium and more than $75 million in revenue sharing from MLB.

Samson did not reply to a request for comment.

The ugliness of the ballpark debt was apparent long before the documents surfaced. To help fund the $634 million stadium complex, Miami-Dade County commissioners voted to secure more than $400 million in loans, most of which are loaded with balloon payments. The worst is a $91 million loan that will take $1.2 billion to pay off. By 2049, the county will have spent $2.4 billion to cover its portion of the stadium.

The anti-Marlins groundswell in South Florida continued Thursday when Miami mayor Tomas Regalado asked the city attorney to look into renegotiating a $100 million parking-facility contract for the stadium complex. Political backlash was a given after the Marlins’ refusal to release their financial records during the push for the new stadium.

For years, the Marlins cried poverty. Loria threatened to move the team from Florida. Despite several sources claiming the Marlins raked in money — Forbes’ annual valuations for the Marlins have proven extremely close to reality, and Miami-area accountant Jorge Costales has written incisively about Marlins finances — the county commissioners voted in December 2007 to pay for more than three-quarters of the stadium due open in 2012.

Samson claimed on LeBatard’s show that the tax dollars will come from tourism money devoted to sports and convention complexes. That is only half-true. To free the tourism-tax dollars, the county shifted general-use monies from property taxes to pay other debt. Take from one hand, give to the other and buy an owner worth hundreds of millions of dollars a new toy from which he reaps damn near every cent, all with the money of hardworking citizens.

This was avoidable, of course, had the county commissioners refused to approve a deal until they saw the Marlins’ financial statements. The management fee was an obvious red flag. How could Loria and Samson say they didn’t have enough money for a stadium when they were paying themselves? The loan was another red flag. Such revelations almost certainly would have given the commissioners pause about offering the breadth of public financing they did.

Loria refused transparency. He is an excellent businessman, and he knew the repercussions. In the end, the Marlins hoodwinked local politicians so caught up in the excitement of keeping the team in Miami, they forgot with whom they were dealing. When hundreds of millions of dollars are involved in anything, people are going to lie, and Loria and Samson made statement after misleading statement and got away with it.

“I never go back to regret what I do because I make decisions based on the information provided to me, my conscience and what is best for those I represent,” said Rebeca Sosa, one of the nine county commissioners who voted for the stadium funding against four opponents — including Regalado, now the mayor. “The situation and information I have today in my hand is different than the one I had before.

“I still support the Marlins stadium.”

How Sosa, or any commissioner who voted yes, could stand by a potential $2.4 billion of debt with a clear conscience is difficult to fathom. The Marlins are up to their old tricks, still pussyfooting their way around the facts. All those years the team had the lowest payroll in baseball, Samson claimed money went to hidden costs in running a ballclub. One of them, he told Sun-Sentinel columnist Dave Hyde, was marketing.

“Eight figures,” Samson said. He told The Miami Herald it was among the most in baseball.

In 2008, the Marlins spent $9.8 million on marketing, according to their balance sheet. The Tampa Bay Rays spent $23 million, the Pittsburgh Pirates $17.1 million, the Texas Rangers $16 million and the Los Angeles Angels $10 million. The only team to budget less among the six whose financials were leaked was the Seattle Mariners, whom the Marlins outspent by $11,000.

This isn’t a white lie here, a fib there. It is systemic. Marlins mislead, public follows. The balance sheet was a gift to Miami-Dade County taxpayers who deserve – and have deserved since the “yes” vote – to know how the team they were endowing is run.

The poor, poor Marlins had an operating profit of $48.9 million in 2008 and 2009, including $11.1 million last year, when they increased payroll and started paying off their stadium debt. Loria has already doubled his money on the Marlins – he bought the team for $158.5 million, including a $38.5 million interest-free loan, and it’s now worth $317 million, according to Forbes’ valuations – and the revenue streams from the new stadium should only increase that figure. A county hemorrhaging jobs funneled tax money to fund a stadium for a team with a reckless disregard for its community’s welfare.

The politicians can pursue recourse, and the fans can bellow, and it doesn’t change the reality that a $91 million loan to the county will take 39 years and $1.2 billion to pay off, and that Jeffrey Loria still owns the Florida Marlins with David Samson as his president, and that the retractable-roof stadium, the one that’s 40 percent done, was built on lies that never seem to end.

Stolen Goods: When Do Pitchers Peak?

Great article by Tom Tango over at his "The Book" website.

Answer: Mid-to-late 20's.

Reaffirming My Love Of Dan Haren (Stolen Goods)

Last year, I called Dan Haren incredibly consistent and cited a little bit of pitch FX data.

Today, Mike Fast of The Hardball Times quantified how consistent Dan Haren is on a macro-graphing scale. Worth reading if you want to know just how consistent and accurate with a baseball Dan Haren is.

Stolen Goods: wOBA Against Leaders

One of my favorite, most under-utilized statistics is wOBA against for pitchers: a figure which measures how often a pitcher puts a batter on base and the quality of the contact made against said pitcher. Colleague JT Jordan over at the Hardball Times listed the top/bottom pitchers in terms of wOBA against. Somewhat unsurprisingly, Latos, Johnson, Wainwright and Ubaldo lead the NL, while Nolasco, Haren, Harang and WayRod are letting senior circuit hitters get to them the most. Read the article to find the full top/bottom 10 starters in the AL/NL.

wOBA against is just another tool to help explain why a pitcher is over/under performing his peripherals and measure the quality of his success. Bravado for highlighting the statistic, JT. I don't care if a certain blogmate, who will go unnamed, hates the damned stat.

Stolen Goods: Updating Sample Size! Sample Size! Sample Size!

Courtesy of Derek Carty of The Hardball Times, here is an elaborate update to an older GOI post cataloging the requisite PA thresholds for hitters before certain statistics become statistically significant:

HITTERS

• Strikeout rate/Contact rate: 150 PA
• LD%: 150 PA
• Walk rate: 200 PA
• GB%: 200 PA
• GB/FB: 200 PA
• FB%: 250 PA
• Home run rate: 300 PA
• HR/FB: 300 PA
• BABIP: Doesn't reach a 0.50 r-squared at 650 or below.
• Batting average: Doesn't reach a 0.50 r-squared at 650 or below.
  

PITCHERS

• K/PA: 150 BF
• GB%: 150 BF
• LD%: 150 BF
• FB%: 200 BF
• GB/FB: 200 BF
• K/BB: 500 BF
• IF FB%: 500 BF
• BB/PA: 550 BF
• BABIP: Doesn't reach a 0.50 r-squared at 650 or below.
• HR/FB: Doesn't reach a 0.50 r-squared at 650 or below.

Enjoy.

Stolen Goods: Why You Can't Subtract FIP from ERA

While perusing through some old sabermetrics articles on The Hardball Times, I came across this article by Colin Wyers explaining why the ERA-FIP ("E-F") stat is not particularly a scientific measure of regression (See graph, below).



Neither FIP, tERA or xFIP has quite the same range or slope as ERA. As Wyers explains:

"This doesn't mean that FIP is useless, of course - it should do a good job of putting pitchers in the right ordinal ranking - the best pitchers will generally have the lowest FIPs and the worst will have the highest, at least within the limits of sample size. But what it will do is distort the distance between the best and worst pitchers."

Quite the interesting read, I recommend checking it out.

Stolen Goods: Comparing Draft Picks And Prospects

In a piece that is less than a year old, Sky Kaulkman of Beyond The Boxscore analyzed the value prospects versus draft picks. Of most interest to me was the exponential disparity between the top 10 draft picks of the first round and the bottom 10 (pictured below).



As Kaulkman observes:

"the top picks are extremely valuable, and expected value drops quickly after the first ten or so picks, so that the value of a 16th-30th pick is closer in value to the 500th pick than the first pick."

For those interested in how much of a "bargain" prospects are for teams, generally, Victor Wang broke it down as follows:

16th-30th Surplus Value: $5.2M (late first round)
31st-45th Surplus Value: $2.6M (supplemental)
46th-60th Surplus Value: $0.8M (early second round)

The article is most certainly worth a full read (at the very least a glance), but if you want the short in simple answer, Kaulkman concludes that "while free agent compensation picks aren't worth giving away, a package of decent prospects will almost always be more valuable."

Stolen Goods: Updated Expected Strikeouts Based On Pitch Result

Last year, DRays Bay released a formula which predicts (and confirms) strikeout rates of pitchers (and I suppose it could also apply to hitters).

The relevant formula:
K%=(ClStr%*.9)+(Foul%*.5)+(InPly%*-.9)+(InZSwStr%*1.1)+(OZSwStr%*1.5)

I'll update this post when I find a publicly available data source from which to obtain the necessary stats to input into the formula.

Stolen Goods: Knuckleball Sabermetrics 101

The Hardball Times has a dated, but still relevant and intriguing article about the rare breed of pitch known as the knuckleball. Unsurprisingly, the success of a knuckleball thrown is directly related to its variability in movement. As the data shows, the more movement, the more whiffs, while less movement is directly related to more extra base hits.

What is most interesting about the article, however, is something that Fangraphs brought my attention to: the X-Y plane clustering of knuckleballs versus other pitches. Below is a chart comparing the movement of C.C. Sabathia's 3-pitch mix to that of Tim Wakefield. Notice anything particularly variable, amorphous and indistinct about Wakefield's knuckleball as compared to even his own fastball and curveball?



Read the whole article; its very enlightening and reaffirming.

Stolen Goods: Poor Umpiring

The Hardball Times has an article up which statistically proves what baseball fans have been thinking for over 100 years: umpires suck. According to THT's analysis of balls and strikes called, "the 3-0 zone is nearly 50 percent larger than the 0-2 zone." In THT's article (and below) is a plot of the strike zone data; there you can see the stark difference in overall strikeout zone size between the 3-0 count to the 0-2 count. To the right is THT's chart which plots a batter's runs created against the various count situations and strike zone breadths.

Definitely worth checking this article out if you have the time.

Stolen Goods: Fastball Velocity and Pitcher Performance

Baseball Time in Arlington, like Fangraphs before them, performed an useful and insightful statistical analysis of the relationship between fastball velocity and other pitching metrics such as strikeouts, walk rates and home run rates. The data shows an interesting correlation between fastball velocity and various other aspects of a pitchers game.

The average findings from the data are represented in the following chart:

- - -	> 92.5 mph	90 - 92.5 mph	87.5 - 90.0 mph	< 87.5 mph
Avg. ERA	3.72	3.90	4.53	4.34
Avg. FIP	3.54	4.08	4.52	4.47
Avg. K/9	8.36	6.89	5.96	5.67
Avg. BB/9	2.89	2.96	2.78	2.72
Avg. HR/9	0.81	0.96	1.17	1.10
# Pitchers	19	47	24	17

Cool stuff all around. Worth checking out.

Stolen Goods: Fantasyland The Movie

Fantasyland is a great novel from 2006 about fantasy baseball which details Sam Walker's experience as a rookie amongst a field of "seasoned experts" in one of fantasy baseball's highest profile leagues -- that which is known as Tout Wars. For more a little more about the book, you can read SexyRexy's old blurb about the book.

Anywho, a documentary based upon the premise of the book (aptly titled Fantasyland) was recently produced (partially by Terminator: Salvation director McG of all people) and released. There is no word on when the DVD will come out, but it is available to view online for free (I've embedded the film for viewing, via Hulu, below). It's a fairly interesting and worthwhile watch, though I found the book significantly more fascinated because it detailed the genesis of the game of fantasy baseball and its historical impact on the actual game.

The movie stars a Jed Latkin, a financial trader and fantasy baseball enthusiast, who is given entry into the elusive Tout Wars league in 2008 to, like Sam Walker before him (who is also in the movie), test the hypothesis of how successful an "amateur" could fair against the experts and lead authorities of fantasy baseball. Jed mostly does what Sam did before him, including making team T-Shirts for the players on his fantasy team, and breaks little new ground. Readers of the book will know what to expect, but those never before exposed to Fantasyland will be an awe of just how far fantasy baseball players are willing to go to win.

All in all, the film presents an interesting portrait about the world of and players of fantasy baseball worth indulging, even if you have read the book. The film is not dull at any moment and Jed's persona is charmingly quirky.

3 stars out of 4.



(Hat tip to SexyRexy for finding this movie)

___________________________

EDIT: I do have one gripe with the film. When I first saw it, I felt as though many scenes were dramatically contrived and beyond the scope of unbelievable-but-true realism from Walker's novel. Upon my second viewing, my suspicions have been confirmed, to some extent. Look at the following still (below) from a scene that supposedly occurred just before the start of the 2008 baseball season (click to enlarge):


Notice two things. First, there is an advertisement for 2009 MLB.TV on the MLB.com website. Why would MLB.TV be advertising for the 2009 season before the 2008 season has even begun? Secondly, Marcus Thames' actual 2008 stats are listed on his player page: .241 BA, 25 HR, 56 RBI. Additionally, at an earlier point from this scene, Latkins is looking over a stat sheet for Justin Verlander which lists Verlander's actual 2008 statistics. I understand that movies are filmed anachronistically for editing and logistical purposes, but the purely outlandish nature of some scenes and these continuity errors make me question the reality of certain scenes such as when Latkins spontaneously shows up to Ron Shandler's house to try and make a trade.

Nonetheless, still worth a viewing.

Stolen Goods: Disabled List Trends & Team Information

Jeff Zimmerman of Beyond The Boxscore has a great piece up comparing cumulative injury histories by team from 2002 to 2009. Care to guess which team has had the most/least number of injuries over the past seven years? Answers below (charts are from the link):