Comments on: UZRs for 2007

By: Adam S

Adam S — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 03:58:00 +0000

Wow, even having moved to RF, Griffey still sucks. Guess his legs are gone. Cincinnati must be purgatory for pitchers. It’s a hitters park and you have an OF of Dunn, Freel, Griffey, and Hamilton, each of whom is -6 so far.

Hmm, Freel and Hamilton are the two worst CF in baseball and Griffey has been the worst the past few years; is it possible there’s a ballpark or pitching staff effect that isn’t being accounted for?

By: vj

vj — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 02:53:08 +0000

Splitting WPA between pitchers and fielders would be highly subjective, like scorring errors. What you probably could do is apply league averages on balls in play and split between pitchers and the fielders making the play on that basis. Or apply run values of batted ball types if you want to refine the split. Whether that’s all that worthwhile is a different question – if RBIs is not a good evaluative tool for context dependency, this applies just as much to WPA.

By: Manzanillos Cup

Manzanillos Cup — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 02:41:06 +0000

I realize that you would have to assign a certain amount of credit for each change in WPA to each defender involved in the play (and maybe even a coach!) – and figuring out how to assign that credit is kind of the Holy Grail anyway.

I was just thinking that when a fielder makes a great OOZ out, all the WPA still goes to the pitcher. It’d be cool to say “that catch was worth x wins.”

By: Chris Miller

Chris Miller — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 02:18:38 +0000

#25, it could work if you could reliably divide responsibility for each play to the fielder and the pitcher. The problem is, on a play by play basis that’d be very hard to do accurately.

By: Sammy

Sammy — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 02:16:30 +0000

23. How would such a thing work? WPA is based on game situations and related to leverage index, neither of which have much to do with defensive ability.

By: Chris Miller

Chris Miller — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 02:13:50 +0000

#23, you’d need to figure out how to properly assign fielding to WPA (vs dinging the pitcher). Also if you gave them a WPA increment for plays made, you’d still need to know which plays they didn’t make and assign those with negative WPA values. If you had that data, you could construct a neutral defensive stat w/o using WPA.

By: Manzanillos Cup

Manzanillos Cup — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 02:08:01 +0000

This may be way out there, but has anyone ever thought about using WPA for a defensive rating?

By: Joe Bag o' Doughnuts

Joe Bag o' Doughnuts — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 02:04:03 +0000

I’m shocked Manny Ramirez is second from last in the list.

By: Mat

Mat — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 02:02:41 +0000

Alfonso Soriano??

Robinson Cano as +2. Really?

Ichiro’s +5 range, but Sizemore is a +12? Really?

Reggie Sanders is hitting .367 so far this season. Kelly Shoppach is hitting .373. Paul Konerko is hitting .229.

This doesn’t make batting average a useless stat. It just means it’s early in the season.

By: bhsmarine

bhsmarine — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 01:54:38 +0000

19- That would be the best, can’t imagine how much work would go into that though.