2022 Blogmas Day 22 - Ultimate Zone Rating

Thanks to the wonderful book The Last Nine Innings by Charles Euchner1 I had an early introduction to some advanced statistics, at least those that were popular a few years into the 21st century. Among these was Ultimate Zone Rating, a first crack at trying to measure how well a player defends their position. ...

December 22, 2022 · 4 min · 677 words · Mark Richard

2022 Blogmas Day 21 - Fielding Percentage and Range Factor

Leading into the home stretch, let’s discuss some defensive statistics. As a category, these represent recent innovations in baseball, as defense is the most dynamic aspect of the game. Players can change where they are positioned, which affects their ability to get to a ball. As we gather more data — ball speed off the bat and launch angle — we can better analyze defensive ability. But it’s still messy. ...

December 21, 2022 · 5 min · 877 words · Mark Richard

2022 Blogmas Day 20 - Pitcher WAR

We’ve already addressed the concept behind WAR (Wins Above Replacement) in the abstract and for offensive players in particular. Today, we’ll consider how we quantify runs for pitchers and overview calculating their WAR. ...

December 20, 2022 · 4 min · 780 words · Mark Richard

2022 Blogmas Day 19 - Leverage Index

Relief pitchers can enter the game in very different situations, and that should be accounted for when evaluating their performance. Coming in to clean up a 12-0 victory (or defeat) is different than coming in during a close, tense game with a lot on the line. We measure this disparity using Leverage Index (LI). ...

December 19, 2022 · 3 min · 477 words · Mark Richard

2022 Blogmas Day 18 - Fixing ERA+ With a Minus

ERA+ is a funny, messy statistic. Unlike OPS+, it doesn’t tell us how much better a player is than the league: it instead tells us how much worse the league is than the player. This ignores our intuition and causes unnecessary confusion. Furthermore, it makes it harder to use as a tool for direct comparison: someone with a 200 ERA+ is not twice as good as someone with a 150 ERA+, while that would effectively be true with OPS+ (and similar offensive statistics.) ...

December 18, 2022 · 3 min · 525 words · Mark Richard

2022 Blogmas Day 17 - Expected FIP

FIP is a cool, clever, and simple statistic to try and normalize how we work with ERA in a way that simply ignores defensive factors. However, we can ignore, or normalize for, at least one other factor to adjust the comparison. ...

December 17, 2022 · 2 min · 304 words · Mark Richard

2022 Blogmas Day 16 - Pitcher Miscellany

Halfway through our pitching posts, let’s take a step back and learn about some miscellaneous statistics that we’ve either barely touched, or entirely ignored. These are all counting statistics that we use to help determine value and ability. While most are not explicitly used when calculating advanced statistics, they have historical cachet and many fans (including me) still enjoy looking at them. ...

December 16, 2022 · 4 min · 826 words · Mark Richard

2022 Blogmas Day 15 - Fielding Independent Pitching

Remember many days ago when we talked about how pesky it is to have a ball in play? That’s as true for pitchers as it is for hitters. So, some enterprising folks struck out to roughly measure ERA in a way that ignores balls put in play, instead focusing entirely on the Three True Outcomes. Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) is a defense-agnostic statistic to compare against ERA, and in some ways is an ideal “predictor” statistic for ERA. ...

December 15, 2022 · 4 min · 787 words · Mark Richard

2022 Blogmas Day 14 - ERA+

That’s right, the “+” statistics exist in the realm of pitching. Park adjustments and a percentage normalization is a natural extension of ERA, and makes it more meaningful for directly comparing pitchers, even across generations. ...

December 14, 2022 · 3 min · 607 words · Mark Richard

2022 Blogmas Day 13 - Walks and Hits per Inning Pitched

While ERA is a measure of overall pitcher effectiveness, there’s a more nuanced statistic that considers how frequently a pitcher allows runners on base. Walks and Hits per Inning Pitched (WHIP) is easy to calculate, has a cool acronym, and is another factor to consider when measuring how good a pitcher is at keeping hitters from doing their jobs. ...

December 13, 2022 · 3 min · 428 words · Mark Richard