Rox Talk

WAR - What is it good for? - Part 2

So last time we delved into batting wins above replacement. A convoluted system starting with a batter's wOBA and ending with runs above replacement which subsequently is reduced to wins. In the NY Times article, it stated that Zack Greinke's desire was to have a WAR value of 10. If he had done it (he achieved a WAR of 9.4), he would have been the first to do so. To put his achievement in perspective, the highest offensive WAR ever achieved by a Rox is 7.9. An even more stunning comparison is to note that the 2004 Rox team's pitching staff eked out a whooping WAR of 6.5 (that team had a record of just 68 - 94 and this year's KC record was 65 - 97 so if every team should win approximately 48.5 games based on just AAAA replacement player's performance then Greinke single handily had almost 9.5 of KC's other 16.5 wins above replacement!).

So where does the madness begin? With another esoteric statistic called Fielding Independent Pitching or FIP. The FIP calculates a pitcher’s responsibility for the runs he allows based on the three factors that a pitcher has demonstrable control over which is walks, strikeouts, and homeruns. The FIP is used because it provides a context neutral formula to a pitcher's performance similar to that of the batter's. In this way the WAR for a pitcher can be compared directly to the batter. The FIP also takes out the contribution of the fielders behind the pitcher both good or bad. Using FIP has some detractors. Another stat called tRA has some believers but it is suggested that at this point, using FIP is as good as anything else out there (or at least comparable). Once FIP is established, some hocus pocus entails using differences in replacement level for each league and role (AL is harder to pitch in then the NL), run environments (a pitcher due to his ability limits the numbers of runs scored per game), the dynamic runs-to-wins conversion, and park factors (Coors Field vs. Petco). Finally a runs above replacement is generated and once again converted to WAR.

So the spreadsheet below shows the top FIPs in Rox history (min 50 innings pitched) and the top WARs.

FIP leaders tend to be your dominant relief pitchers. Ubaldo 2009 campaign is the first starter but it is also the highest WAR in Rox pitching history. 2009 was a monster year for Rox pitchers. Four of highest WARs since 2002 were from this year's staff. Rox won 92 games, there WAR total for a team was 90.3 and so the Rox had approximately 42 wins above a replacement level team. Almost 45% of the team's wins above replacement could be attributed to last year's starters. With Ubaldo, Cook, Hammel, de la Rosa (?), and Francis (?) back next year I can say with some certainty that as the pitching goes so goes the Rox!

Next I will check out what all this WAR means from a team perspective...

Geoffrey Norman - Two for the Summit

Outside magazine (I believe) had either an excerpt or perhaps an accompanying article detailing the author's adventure. Having a desire to possibly climb the highest peak outside of the Himalayans I thought it would be a good read. Well time flies and I finally read the book. It was good but very little of the book was about Aconcagua. In fact the majority of it was rock climbing and the Grand Tetons. The Aconcagua portion was kind of an afterthought but it was interesting to read. Sounds like a tough mountain mainly because of the amount of work a climber is required to do such as cooking and setting up your tent. Can't imagine climbing all day then having to do all the housekeeping stuff.


Climbing is an exploration of yourself and the consequent deep relationships with your partners. At its most fundamental level, it's not about conquering a particular mountain or achieving a specific goal...climbing is a journey with lots of wonderful experiences.

--Alex Lowe

Random Haiku

Random haiku that came to me on our star spangled superhero...Captain America

A Star Spangled Shield

The unique soldier serum

Our freedom's symbol

Admantium shield

The super soldier serum

Our U.S. Captain

And Greyhounds...

Majestically thin

Flash in a blink of an eye

Really just lazy

And Jazz

Saxophone simmers

Bass thumps, piano prances

America's song

Haiku Wednesday

Yarn

Single strand begins

A knitting transformation

That weaves my sweater

Things Wrong with our Country

On my soapbox again. So I read this article (see link) and it got me thinking...which is worse the fact that someone actually writes this or that a certain segment of the population actually thinks there is truth to it? All I can say is this is no way to run a country.

I freely admit that I lean to the Democrat side of thinking but I also can appreciate the way Reagan ran the country back in 80s. Now in the 80s I was "coming of age" and frankly politics really didn't affect me. At that age you simply made fun of politicians. As I aged, I appreciated Clinton's intelligence and desire to balance the budget. This made sense and to think a Democrat wanted to balance a budget...then we had the Bush and Gore debacle. Politics suddenly became a dividing issue, an us versus them mentality. Compromising and providing an adequate second voice suddenly became outdated. The minority party simply laid low for two years and hoped that policies backfired and that they would then become the majority again. This seesaw battle has only given us failed policies (Guantanamo Bay, Iraq/Afghanistan, and Death Spiral of a Federal Budget to name a few).

Which brings me to the the article above...how is it then that the best interest of this country is when one party simply sits back and lets the other party do what it wants while laying the seeds of dissent with the hope of whatever policies are set forth, fail so that in the next election cycle they can tout their dissent for ultimate political gain. Anyone want to place bets on who controls Congress in 2010? Does 1994 Contract with America ring any bells?

What happened to making your interest in this country number one when it comes to making decisions. Why has our two party system failed so utterly in the last 20 years? For a democracy to work we need cooperation and compromise. We need the Republicans (and Democrats) to bring forth opposing ideals. Ideals with validity that are designed to make this country better. Politicians then need to debate and compromise and write bills that find common support. Something each party can walk away with and say this is a win for us. Instead we simply have no minority ideal, no dueling plan, just a group of dissenters with nothing to say but "NO". Compromise is now seen as weak and siding with the enemy. I mean the Republicans have recently announced a ten point checklist for candidates hoping to gain funds...you can bet siding with the "enemy" is a big no - no! The daily news cycle wants black and white, a winner and loser and therefore any middle of the road politician is run out the door filling our democrat institutions with extremist politicians that have lost touch with their constituencies and simply become "yes" man to the political machine that welcomes their staunch support to parties views that get the most bang for the buck.

Where is compassion? Desire to make our country great? How is that we have become so hateful of others with different views. Deep down I don't think we truly hate each other that much. Red vs Blue is just a construct, a media tool. In the end I think the world is going through a profound change...America's are scared. Our time as a great country is waning, we no longer control our destiny. This fear is being used for political gain and might. It is much easier to lead with fear then to try and establish that we have lost our way and to find it again might require effort. In this day and age that is what I see, the Democrats latching on to hope that each individual can make a difference while the Republicans latch on to fear and negativity.

In the end it is a sad day for our country. Obama promised hope and yet that hope is slipping away. Where is that leadership we saw in the election cycle...the positive, the inspiring words, the desire to do good. If things don't change hope will simply fade as a failed idea. Why have we become so distressed...why don't we want to make the hard choices? Because it is simply easier to mock our opponents and not be part of the solution. Who wants to be responsible?

Without a middle ground our country will simply polarize itself into oblivion. Hard decisions won't be made because right or wrong it becomes part of your record. Easier just to do nothing and blame the opposing party for your woes rather than setting forth your own ideals. We have become the "not-me" generation...what a pathetic path especially in respect to our forefathers who sacrificed so much to provide for us the foundation that we sit upon today. Politicians today should be shamed for what they represent. Not only are you failing your country but you are failing our children who will be left with a hollowed out core of a Constitution...we can only hope they see through our petty policies and make a difference otherwise we all fail.

Rox Talk

WAR - What is it good for? - Part 1

There has been a big seismic shift in the world of baseball this week. With Greinke and Lincecum's Cy Young award wins this past week, the world of statistics has firmly kicked the old baseball school purist in the groin. To think that a 15 game winner would lose out to a 19 game winner back in the day would be pure heresy. As the NY Times put it, the pool of voters are changing which is causing a shift away from traditional voters to a different and more statistical attuned group. This is probably similar to the front offices in baseball that are getting away from the scout centric view and moving more into a numbers only view of players. First there was Moneyball and Billy Beane and then the Red Sox hiring of Bill James a number of years ago with Epstein bringing with him a new look front office which may (or not) have been the reason for the Red Sox burying the curse in 2004. However you cut it baseball is moving in a new direction.

So what about this WAR? It stands for Wins Above Replacement. It is a complex formula (to say the least) that attempts to quantify a player's worth in comparison to that cheap triple A call up. In addition the WAR is calculated different for offensive players and pitchers (see Part 2). For offensive players it is calculated by providing a "number" for batting (using wOBA, wRAA, and then a park adjustment factor), fielding (using UZR with no factor involving outfield arm skills and all catchers are rated at 0), a positional adjustment (good shortstop is harder to find then a good left fielder), and a replacement factor (that deals with how many plate appearances and awards players who play everyday). These four factors are then added which provides a runs above replacement value. This number basically gives the runs a player would provide over a replacement player. Remember a replacement player is that AAAA player who is playing for the league minimum. Once this number is determined it is then divided by 10 (again a determined number which indicates a 10 run change in a team's runs scored/runs against suggests that one win is 10 runs). Thus the player's runs above replacement level is divided by 10 to provide the almighty WAR.

Now if you want to get even more advance you can factor in how much teams payed for free agents last year and by determining their WAR over the years you can determine a going rate for a win. Therefore one can valve what a player with a 5 WAR is in comparison to a 2 WAR player. Again this ain't your father's statistics. These numbers are becoming so esoteric that one wonders if we lose sight of the diamond? One can view this page to see 2009 wOBA for our Rox as well as WAR.

Basically Tulo led the team with 0.393 (over 0.400 is considered a superstar and over 0.370 is all star caliber). He was followed by Helton, Hawpe, CarGo, and Smith (and why wasn't Smith an everyday starter?). The spreadsheet below provides the top 50 wOBA in Rox history. Larry Walker was superman...wonder if he will even get a look see with the Hall of Fame?

Also in the spreadsheet above is the top 50 WAR in Rox history (note: data only exists back to 2002). As you may recall I am not a huge fan of Matt Holliday but boy for two years he was worth every penny and more for what he did on the field for the Rox. It will be interesting what he does this off season.

Richard Feynman - The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

Feynman was a brilliant man. Funny how Nobel Prize winners become a voice for their scientific generation. Einstein was similar back in the day and I think Feynman probably took over this role. It is special to have these scientists because they are able to communicate to the masses. Most scientist are incapable of spreading the word of what they do let alone try to communicate much beyond what they typically study. In the rare instances the scientist can not only communicate his work but move beyond that and become a voice for profound thought. So of the quotes I liked are below.

Page 24, "I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong."

Page 145, "The atoms come into my brain, dance a dance, then go out; always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday."

Page 152, "The argument that the same risk was flown before without failure is often accepted as an argument for the safety of accepting it again."

Page 169, "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."

Page 202, "maybe solving equations is experience you need to gain understanding-but until you do understand, you're just solving equations."

For me his brilliance was during the Columbia investigation. When all was said and done, what will be remembered from the report was him dunking an o-ring into a glass of ice water and showing the effects. Simple and sweet just like his physics classes...oh if it could only be that simple for the rest of us!

Hardy Boys - The Ghost at Skeleton Rock

My son had to do a book report on this book and we have a policy in the family to help out our kids by reading the book they choose. Well these aren't the Hardy Boys I remember...ha! Actually they are still Frank and Joe and I probably read this book when I was young. I even tried to read them all when I was younger but the similar plot points over time just got a bit boring...so I moved on to Tom Swift!

Anyway for a 6th grader I have to admit trying to summarize the plot points in this book was rather tough. Plot points seemed to have been stuck in after the fact just so that the book either met the magic page limit or a ghost editor wanted to make sure to confuse even the Hardy Boys. It made no sense and trying to summarize it in few paragraphs...yeah right. Unbelievable how all over the map this book takes you. Not only that, it might has well be a choose your own adventure book because the plot is so convoluted that I might think Franklin Dixon was a pen name for a bad Faulkner. And to think there were well over 80 of these books published back in the day.

Haiku Wednesday

Thanks

A time to gather
Share in a feast, but give thought
Hunger still exists

Spice of the Day - Turmeric

Turmeric is a very potent colored spice. Used in Indian recipes, mainly curries, I am always amazed how brilliantly colored it is. A deep orange, the spice comes from a root which is then dried and then finally grounded up.

The plant is part of the ginger family. The active ingredient is curcumin. The ingredient is supposedly used to help with stomach problems but is also a main ingredient in leading radiator stop leak sealant mixtures!

Rox Talk

Link dump kind of week...hey this is the off season...simpler than doing my own calcs ;-)

Brad Hawpe...who knew he was such a terrible right fielder? I always thought he had at least a good arm (guess 2006 really stuck in my head). Time for him to move on. Mr DH

On to some positive things...the Rox were the best base running team in the league last year. The statistic is based on base running metrics developed by former Colorado resident Dan Fox. Dan has since moved on to the Pirates helping in their IT department and player development (as an aside we published this together back in 2007). Fowler's development and a full year of Cargo and EY should only increase possible mayhem on the bases next year.

OK here is another infamous Coors debacle...pre-humidor. Since 1954 there have been two games with 5 blown saves...guess where?

Song Memory - Kid Fears

In honor of Chabon's short, Radio Silence which was first published in Details Magazine, I am going to track songs I hear on the radio and the deep seated memory it conjures. My first song I heard that stirred a memory was Indigo Girls song Kid Fears. The album came out in February 1989. I was a freshman at the Academy and was having a not so enjoyable first year of college. Anyway I had received a mix tape from a girl I used to drive to high school with. She was still a Junior in High School and of course when I received the tape I had no way listening to it because at the time I had no Walkman (as a freshman at the Academy you have no "privileges", no TV, no music...note back then there was no such thing as an mp3! and to think CDs were just coming out!). Anyway you were allowed to leave as you has a certain amount of passes off the base so one Saturday I borrowed a car from one of the seniors and had a day out. Fortunately the car had a tape deck and I was finally able to listen to the music. In High School I was mix tape monster. I had ton of tapes and used to listen to them all the time! To have to go cold turkey on music for almost a year of my life was just torture! Anyway to drive and listen to tunes was just a cathartic experience. That day I choose to drive to Rocky Mountain Park and Trail Ridge road. Driving around and listening to the tape and Kid Fears was one of the songs. At the time I had no ideal who the Indigo Girls were although they were in Athens band so that is why my High School friend sent it along. The song does feature Michael Stipe at the end. It is has a nice ring to it and when I hear it, it immediately sweeps me to the mountain vistas on Trail Ridge road.

Astronaut James Voss

I attended a CU Alumni Engineering event tonight at the Science and Nature center in town. The speaker was former astronaut James Voss, who is now a professor in the CU Aerospace department. A veteran of five missions, he has spent over 200 days in space, which included a stint on the International Space Station. Very nice guy, enjoyed his little talk. Got to speak with him privately after the event (if you must know meeting and talking with an astronaut is like meeting a movie star for me!). I am such a geek ;-) I asked him about sleeping in space, asked him how living in Star City was, asked him if he and his fellow cosmonaut used to talk about space secrets? Sleeping is great he said. Thought there would be a huge market for older people to retire to space has he never slept better (think no pressure points!), enjoyed his time in Russia even though they were still sorting things out back in the 90s. And finally he and is fellow cosmonaut did talk about each others space program. Guess there was a mission to the Salyut one time and the thing had been totally turned off so the ship gets there to dock and nothing is on. Everything was iced...go figure. Gotta love those Soviets...

When I returned home I wikipedia'd him and discovered two of his missions were top secret military missions. I remember those days when the DoD just took over a mission. Wow that is an easy way to get two missions in the books. I wonder what they did back in the day to make it secret? He also did a lot of stuff in support of the space station...guess that was a pretty good gig.

Good stuff...

Haiku Wednesday

Film Two hour distraction Celluloid magic carpet Sweep us off our feet

Rox Talk

Minor League Effects (?)

OK for the most part the Rox have decided to become the NL version of the Minnesota Twins. That is, develop your minor league system, field the majority of your big league squad with that talent, and when they become free agents trade them away for more minor league stock. A decent model to follow since there will always be big money teams eager to throw big dollars at proven commodities while sending along unproven minor leaguers. So if this is the case and you have a loaded (or competitive?) minor league system, then shouldn't eventually your major league team see spikes in their winning percentage? If your loaded AA wins the Texas League championship, then shouldn't that same talent be fielded and face similar players in the big leagues, eventually? Of course if your AA team stinks perhaps you have no big league talent and thus they never reach the big leagues but then you would still have an age gap for a few years against those teams...Then of course there are those teams that develop talent but not enough at the right time and end of trading it away (think of the Pirates trades over the last few years, had they developed together who knows...)

So figure each year there are 8 playoff spots. Pencil in the big spenders...the Yanks, Red Sox, Angels, Mets, Cardinals, Cubs, Giants (?), and Dodgers as perennial playoff teams that take five or six of those spots. That leaves just two or three teams from the non-big spenders teams that have a chance to get to the dance. Now let's assume that those remaining 22 teams, about 8 are just plain poorly managed by the front office (i.e., Nats, Baltimore, Royals, and Reds for instance) and don't have a clear plan on how to win now or in the future so that leaves about 14 teams with some clue. Now if those 14 teams follow the model of raising good talent from within and having a competitive minor league system then don't you think that looking at the minor league records and tracking the success among those other teams would suggest that as this talent matures you should be competitive among those non big spenders and thus get that hand me down playoff spot? The graph above attempts to show some sort of correlation to a minor league record and major league output. Does minor league winning percentage in past lead to major league success in the future? All minor league percentage includes rookie ball and short season records and the A, A+, AA, AAA is the records of just the big 4 minor league clubs.

There does seem to be about a 3 - 4 year difference between a peak in the minors to a peak in the big leagues. The biggest example would be 2003 peak in the minors to the 2007 big league record. The 2003 had Holliday and Hawpe and a young Jimenez. If we assume that the 2007 big league squad overachieved then the next peak was in 2005 which again had Holliday, Hawpe, Jimenez, and added Tulo and then you have 2009 winning record.

Since 2003 - 2004, the Rox minor league system has consistently faired well. Depth in the minors can't be bad. Obvious alot of talent moves in and out of the minors...some of this talent succeeds, some fails, some remain in limbo, some are fast movers, others take time to develop. I think another problem is you need talent to mature together (think Pittsburgh) and for this success to continue then talent must come in waves. If you think Holliday, Hawpe, Atkins were Group 1, then this was followed by Tulo, Iannetta, Smith and then followed by Fowler and Young. As older talent moves on then good talent exists to take there place. I doubt whether one can truly quantify a correlation but for non big spenders it feels good to think that young talent will eventually mature and sneak into the playoff picture once in a while (and even win!).

Haruki Murakami - Dance Dance Dance

This is the third work of fiction that I have read from Murakami. I liked his short story collection and then with this other book...I can't even remember what is was about (obviously must have been either mentally on vacation or the book just didn't grab me!) I just can't remember if I liked it or not! I have also read his book about running. So with this new book I really didn't know what to expect. It is definitely a curious meandering of a story. Kind of reminded me of Japanese version of Twin Peaks. I thoroughly enjoyed the novel. I liked how the writer in the book paid homage to himself. You know it is funny since the book is written by a Japanese author and takes place in Japan; when I form my visual image of the characters I think of them as Caucasian...is that weird? Would love to have met Mei but again I visualized her as totally like Swedish or something. Is something lost in translation (?) also I hated the references to Dunkin Donuts...I don't think they exist in Japan (?). Again not to repeat myself on this one but I would seriously like to be able to read Japanese and be able to read it in its native language.

One interesting thing is to go to the Japan wikipedia and do a translation from Japanese to English and you get this tidbit about the translated English version,

"English translation of this work, underage drinking and smoking scenes, the English-speaking people in the cultural areas difficult to understand, and describe various of Boy George has been cut from various reasons. "

And finally the book in Japanese characters...kind of beautiful
ダンス・ダンス・ダンス

Haiku Wednesday

Veterans

An oath to defend
Can willingly give their lives
They deserve our thanks

Magazine Stories

Wired - November 2009

Clive Thompson's Flight of Fancy column:

Clive's piece stresses the fact that a little day dreaming might actually be good for productivity. A 2007 study showed that minds drift away from our tasks one-third of the time. Daydreaming can be useful because when the mind drifts the temporal lobe, which processes long term memories become busy thus when you daydream your brain could be doing data storage work...writing to your hard drive! Also a wandering mind utilizes the prefrontal cortex which is involved in problem solving. Thus allowing your mind to wander from one problem to something else might help to highlight a solution to your original problem(?). In the end Clive stresses the possible importance of allowing this drift for increased productivity...heck considering how I work I do this anyway ;-)

Henri Poincaré once said that the willingness to embrace pseudo-science flourished because people "know how cruel the truth often is, and we wonder whether illusion is not more consoling."

Scientific America

Read some articles on the creation of the universe which made me wonder...

- Could we not be a universe created by someone's particle accelerator?

- If the universe expands and we are looking back into history with more powerful telescopes then why can we still look? doesn't it just disappear?

- And another thing why dinosaurs? In the evolutionary cycle why did we go towards these mammoth creatures?

New Yorker

Cocksure by Malcolm Gladwell

An interesting article about the fall of Bear Stearns (click here to see an even more over the top article in Rolling Stones). Malcolm restates the standard thoughts about the financial crisis that could have either been a structural failure meaning regulations didn't work or incompetence meaning investors had no clue in what they were doing with derivatives. Malcolm reviews his possible third reason which was more psychological.

"As novices, we don't trust our judgement. Then we have some success, and begin to feel a little surer of ourselves. Finally , we get to the top of our game and succumb to the trap of thinking that there's nothing we can't master. As we get older and more experienced, we overestimate the accuracy of our judgements, especially when the task before us is difficult and when we're involved with something of great personal importance."

Wall Streeet is a confidence game. Winners know how to bluff. And who bluffs the best? The person who, instead of pretending to be stronger than he is, actually believes himself to be stronger than he is. Malcolm rounds out his story with the tale of Bridge playing...indicating that although Bridge is similar to Wall Street is not quite the same because it is limited in scope with a definite winner and loser depending on how you play by the rules. Wall Street on the other hand is open ended and overconfidence can only take you so far before others see through the B.S.

Good article although in the big scheme of things it is amazing how confident we all need to be to keep this country's engine churning...how a very few egotistical maniacs control our well being...

Michael Chabon - Manhood for Amateurs

The opening page starts with this quote,

"Anything worth doing is worth doing badly."

Gotta love Chabon. His work has always enthralled me...this collection of true stories just made me laugh. It is very infrequently that I read a book and actually chuckle out loud. This one hit the spot in multiple occasions. To me the Legoland Station and The Wilderness of Childhood were right on. I disagree with his thought on buying a set and it being too rigid for children. I mean I loved following directions, building the set, playing with it as designed, then allowing entropy to take hold and have it slowly melt in to the rest of my legos. Months later some piece from that set would serve as a new centerpiece of some new finagled mashup that I made. Ultimately Chabon does get there with his essay saying essentially that is what happens with his kids creations but he was so harsh on the original model concept.

The Wilderness of Childhood served as a basis for my essay about risk aversion. Essentially when I grew up I had a huge (at least for me) forest right next to my house. Probably everyday I would venture into them. At first cautiously, then gradually with more confidence. I would venture further into them with less abandoned. Funny thing was there was this pseudo junk yard at the very end of it had that mysterious dog or you heard tales of being shot at. Well I never had the courage to venture too far into the junk yard, always staying at it fringes peering into the space wondering what could jump out and get me. Overtime in my mind a mental image of every nook and cranny in the forest became embedded in my mind and I would always know where I was. I truly believe the reason I have such a good sense of direction today was that I learn the ability to navigate those woods by looking for certain things and having that innate ability to always know where I was. Kids today have none of that. There are very few "voids" to travel and play in. Essentially they don't gain any confidence in their own abilities to manage their world. Going back to the Lego example we are managing their experiences to such an extent that their ability to "figure it out" becomes limiting. Yikes!

Being a fellow baseball lover, I loved this quote, "what's important was that baseball, after all these years of artificial turf and expansion and the DH and drugs and free agency and thousand dollar bubblegum cards, is still a gift given by fathers to sons."

Big Barda...who knew..

And finally in the short on Radio Silence he mentioned how certain songs can dredge up long forgotten memories of certain events. It is so true...in high school I used to listen to my Walkman continuously especially before track meets. Today when I hear a song, that was in vogue during that meet, it takes me back like a time machine and I can remember sights, sounds, smells...unbelievable

An in the end Chabon says, "life as a husband and father, those pursuits are no favorite subject to endless setbacks and the the stark exposure of shortcoming, weaknesses,and insufficiency - in particular in the raising of children." So true...