Comments on: 2008 Win Values

By: eponymous coward

eponymous coward — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 06:46:00 +0000

129-

Arky Vaughn, Joe Cronin and Honus Wagner all say “Hi” as well.

By: Tuomas

Tuomas — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 02:13:04 +0000

Was A-Rod really the player who killed the idea that shortstop is supposed to be an offensive black hole? I thought it was Ripken and Yount. Ripken put up a 128 OPS+ in ‘88. Yount, in his last season at short in 1984, put up a 126. Tony Fernandez had a good run in the mid-80s for Toronto. A-Rod is the best offensive shortstop since Banks and one of the best hitters ever, but did he really revolutionize the position?

By: MickieB

MickieB — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 03:01:50 +0000

Wilder83- Very very funny. I agree, let’s all chip in and donate tickets.

By: mfan

mfan — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 01:17:31 +0000

100 – PlanB

I think we’re just talking different languages about the same concept. The price is what you have to pay, the value is what you’d be willing to pay. We don’t assign prices, we assign values and then make purchasing decisions based on our valuation and the price (which is determined in the “market”). I have no qualms about assigning a dollar-based value to players, but if some crazy owner is willing to pay a brazillion dollars for WFB, there is nothing we can do about that. His price is a brazillion dollars regardless of what we want to “assign”. Again, I think you’re confusing price and value… What I think “our goal” is is to properly assign value so that we can look at prices and determine the type of player that looks to be a bargain, based on their value and price. Think of value as the price we’d get in a utopic world where prices actually reflected value. Then, look at the current prices and see where you can find large differences in value and price. That’s where you start to build good, economically sound teams.

By: xeifrank

xeifrank — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 00:52:55 +0000

Couple more questions. You use 5.52 as the replacement level ERA for the American League, what is the replacement level ERA for the National League?

You also mentioned that you threw in a leverage adjustment for Putz. Would you care to explain at what point in the calculation you did this and what that adjustment was? And then do you have a smaller leverage index adjustment for the setup man or anybody else in the bullpen and if so, what is it?
Thanks!

vr, Xeifrank

By: Edgar For Pres

Edgar For Pres — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 23:06:12 +0000

First off I really liked how you did this and it made using WAR very clear.

Where do you get the number that 10.5 runs = 1 win? I’m sure this is an approximation and I’ve seen it around before (this site and others). It seems like it could vary a little depending on the RA value of the team and the scoring environment. If anybody has a link to the “original” research showing this I’d appreciate it.

I would love it if there was some spreadsheet that could automatically do all this. Maybe when we do our annual projections I’ll throw something together unless somebody does it first which would be amazing.

By: joser

joser — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 22:56:43 +0000

Well, Dave and DMZ and the mods act as kind of a Maxwell’s Demon for rationality and open-mindedness, closing the gate against the insensible and obdurate and forcing them to go elsewhere. This migration they may be increasing the entropy of those other forums, making them worse, but they certainly make this one better.

By: tangotiger

tangotiger — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 22:19:47 +0000

I also want to say how incredibly refreshing the rather large number of readers of this site are.

Not only do you come armed with baseball passion, you are also very willing to see things in a different light. In many boards, you get a group of people that are simply disbelieving in looking at things in any other way. That so many readers are like this is pretty cool.

(I didn’t mean to be sappy, nor do I wish to derail this thread. Please read, and go on.)

By: tangotiger

tangotiger — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 22:15:07 +0000

Here’s one simple Markov program:

http://www.tangotiger.net/markov.html

John Beamer had a more extensive one in The 2008 Hardball Times Annual.

By: joser

joser — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 22:14:04 +0000

This discussion of value in terms of roster spots, as an additional dimension to value in $, is really interesting (in fact, it might be interesting to actually graph the teams along those two dimensions). It’s probably worth noting that some spots are more fungible than others — your right fielder and left fielder can be interchangable, but one spot on your bench has to be your backup catcher, and so on. So that’s going to modify the calculation as well (in addition to the whole defensive spectrum adjustment — even if your shortstop is enough of an athlete to play in the outfield, you’re not going to put him there except in an emergency especially if he’s never played that spot since little league). This actually reveals more value in utility players like Bloomquist, who can open up a bench spot for someone else, and relievers who can go long vs LOOGies.