SABR Geeks, Stats and Playing to the Metric

At times, SABR guys do act like they invented the skill catcher framing ( and other aspects of baseball ) because they can now somehow quantify it or illustrate it via charts, graphs or some other whiz-bang technology.  

Is there a baseball coach in America that doesn't think framing is important? 10 year olds are framing FCOL!! Bad coaches are the only ones it seems who do not understand its importance and unfortunately just like the poor, bad coaches will always be among us.  

Pitchers do, catchers do, umpires do, pitching coaches do, even hitters do, and have for a long time. Long before sabermetrics and data analysis was a gleam in the eye of some wanna-be GM. It's SABR arrogance and self indulgence at its worst as the column below titled Sabermetrics Suck: I am not a Troll  humorously illustrates. 

from SABR:

http://sabr.org/latest/lindbergh-brandon-mccarthy-value-catcher-framing

From SABR member Ben Lindbergh at Baseball Prospectus on May 20, 2013:

Diamondbacks starter Brandon McCarthy is known as one of baseball’s most thoughtful, analytical pitchers; two years ago, he famously embraced advanced statistics and remade himself as a pitcher by perfecting a two-seamer that helped him get groundballs more often. As a result, he’s pretty popular on the internet. I asked him to provide the pitcher’s perspective on the importance of pitch framing and receiving skills.

On how he likes to see a catcher receive his pitches: “You keep the ball where you’re throwing, but it just feels soft. Like you’re just throwing to something that just—as a pitcher, you can see movement, see stabbing, the head is moving a lot, there’s a lot of movement. You know that the umpire can see that. And if the umpire is reacting to that, then you’re probably losing pitches. There isn’t much of that with [Miguel Montero], it’s soft and it’s kind of comfortable receiving as opposed to some catchers it looks like they’re—not scared of the ball, but they’re just very anxious to go get it. And it seems like with them you see more pitches being taken away from them.”

On what a good receiver is worth: "I don’t want to put a concrete number on it, because that’s what people take away from it, and you can kind of become married to that. But I would say it’s pretty worthwhile. I mean, the difference between being in a 1-1 count and a 1-2 count is big. Sometimes you might have two of those situations in a game or three, and sometimes you might have 10 or 11, and if he’s doing something for you that’s earning calls that you might not usually get… You know, it’s hard to say because it’s not really an easy situation, you don’t know if somebody else would have gotten that call, or if it’s the umpire, or if it’s him, but I would say over the course of a season it’s probably worth a lot more than most people would consider.”

from Baseball Prospectus:
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=18896

Later that day, Rays manager Joe Maddon went on 620 WDAE-AM in Tampa with co-hosts Ron Diaz and Ian Beckles, and he and Beckles had this exchange:

Beckles: Hey Joe, a lot of the moves you make throughout the season are going to be questioned, and it doesn’t matter to you—most of them work out. The one, I guess, move that gets questioned more than any others is Jose Molina, as much as he played this year. Explain to us what Jose Molina has, or what he offers, that either [Chris] Gimenez or [Jose] Lobaton doesn’t offer.

Maddon: Well, I could reveal to you a stat that I just got today that I think would really blow some people’s minds up. I don’t know exactly how it’s calculated or formulated, but it was concluded that he saved us 50 runs this year. And that’s highly significant. You could break down—you know, people just notice once well, maybe he does not block a baseball. I agree with that, although when he has to, he has blocked the ball well. Early in the season, he was not throwing well, but by the end of the year, he was one of the best throwers in the American League. Also by the end of the year, he started hitting the ball and impacting it a lot better. But we did not—whatever we get from his bat was always going to be a bonus. It was primarily based on defense. So if you get a catcher that’s saving you 50 runs on an annual basis, that is highly significant. So, again, without—I don’t have all the information in front of me, but that’s a highly significant number. So, at the end of the day, people are going to look at the superficial part of all this, but we can’t do that. We do have to look under the hood, and actually, Jose was very, very prominent in our success this year.

We don’t know for sure whether Maddon was referring to Max’s calculations. The timing certainly suggests that he was, but maybe there’s another explanation–after all, October 5th was two days after the season ended, which is about when Maddon might have received the Rays’ internal end-of-season reports. Maybe Max’ numbers matched up with the Rays’ own evaluations exactly, or closely enough that they felt there was no harm in letting the stat slip when someone else had already put it out there.

Wherever Maddon's stat came from, it's impossible to pinpoint his motivations for repeating it on air. We never really knowwhy teams say what they say. Maddon might not actually believe the 50-run rating. Maybe he just wanted to make Molina feel good, pump up his trade value, or make his pitchers more confident in their batterymate. Maybe he wanted to justify his decision to use Molina as much as he had. Maybe framing is all an illusion and the Rays just wanted to pull the wool farther over everyone else's eyes (I don't think it's that one).

But imagine what it would mean for Molina’s value if his framing really was worth 50 runs. Without factoring in blocking, throwing, or framing, Molina was worth 0.2 WARP. The defensive systems agree that Molina’s good throwing added roughly as many runs as his poor blocking subtracted, so let’s call those a wash. Add 50 runs, or five wins, to his tally, and his total rises to 5.2, which would make him the most valuable Ray and tie him with Adam Jones and Giancarlo Stanton at 12th overall. Only 15 players had at least 5.0 WARP this season, so we’re talking about Jose Molina—chunky, 37-year-old Jose Molina, who started 80 games, made less than half as much money as sub-replacement player Juan Rivera, failed to hit his weight, and made two Tampa Bay radio hosts wonder what he had that Chris Gimenez and Jose Lobaton didn’t—being one of the best 15 players in baseball.

It does only so much good to spew stats about Molina’s special season. This is one of those times when “show” works better than “tell,” so here’s a list of the 10 pitches farthest away from the center of the strike zone (in any direction) that were called strikes with Molina catching.*

We all kind of have to be on our guard how we communicate with each other it seems.  If you can't communicate to someone in a language and context they can understand, the message will not be received and however brilliant your message is, you will have lost. 

The recent Scioscia - DiPoto dust-up illustrates where this generally ends. 

http://espn.go.com/los-angeles/mlb/story/_/id/13178074/los-angeles-angels-manager-mike-scioscia-general-manager-jerry-dipoto-again-odds

Over the weekend, Dipoto, unhappy with the coaching staff's decision to rely more on "feel" than data, according to the report, expressed his frustration during a series of meetings. Dipoto's message was met with a heated rebuttal from at least one coach as well as slugger Albert Pujols, the report stated.

Scioscia it seems wants to use the data while avoiding the tendency to Abuse the data. Players end up trying to play to the metric, the ultimate sin of Moneyball IMO. Too much data, too many idea, too many thoughts from too many sources and you wind up with the embodiment of the Yogi Berra quote "You can't think and hit at the same time". You can definitely think too much and end up in a position of paralysis by (over) analysis. Period! End of story. At some point, you have to set in down and JUST LET 'EM PLAY!! PLAY THE GAME, DON'T PLAY TO THE METRIC>

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Sabermetrics Suck: I Am Not a Troll 

				Sabermetrics Suck: I Am Not a Troll Since I've had a lot of new readers come by the site in recent days, I thought it was appropriate to re-state and clarify the intention behind this site.
				View on sabermetricssuck.bl...	Preview by Yahoo

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

I Am Not a Troll

Since I've had a lot of new readers come by the site in recent days, I thought it was appropriate to re-state and clarify the intention behind this site.

I realize that by naming the site Sabermetrics Suck, it makes it appear that this blog is either an attempt to instigate, or a parody of an anti-sabermetrics traditionalist.

I assure you that it is neither.

Unfortunately, the title "Sabermetrics Are Good When Used in Moderation But Some People Take It Too Far" seemed a bit clunky.  Also, "Sabermetrics Suck" is definitely catchier.

The goal of the site is not to whine about "geeks with calculators sitting in their mother's basement."  I am not complaining that "these newfangled stats have ruined baseball." 

I accept that the battle between traditionalists and saberfans is pretty much over, and the saberfans have won.

It's pretty tough to deny that fact when I look at ESPN.com and see several baseball writers who focus on advanced statistics.  They even include WAR on their statistics page!

So then what is the point of the site?

In my eyes, the empowered sabermetric crowd has become the new arrogant elite.  It feels like many saberfans were held down and mocked by the traditionalists for so long, that now that they've gained acceptance, they carry themselves with a know-it-all attitude.

Prominent saber-minded writers like Rob Neyer and Keith Law certainly aren't helping that reputation.  

Instead of educating and enlightening people to the ways of sabermetrics, they seem to drive people away with their snarky arrogance.

Saberfans portray traditionalists as stubborn, unyielding old fools who refuse to give up antiquated ways of thinking.  Yet from my experience, saberfans can be even more stubborn and refusing to yield.

The best I can tell, this stubbornness comes from the saberfans having "numbers on their side."

"Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything. 14% of people know that."

The typical sabermetric thought process seems to be along these lines:

1. Come up with a hypothesis.
2. Find a statistic that backs up that hypothesis.
3. Convince yourself that the statistic offers irrefutable proof.
4. Refuse to yield.

It's kind of fun to do, actually!  Here's an example:

1. Hypothesize that RBIs are an important measure of a player's offensive production.
2. Check the rosters of every team in baseball, and add up the number of RBIs for each player.
3. Find that the teams with the highest player RBI totals were the highest scoring offenses.
4. Conclude that RBIs are a good measure of offensive production.
5. Refuse to yield.

I'm not advocating abandoning statistical research in baseball.  I think it has indeed provided people with more insight about the game.  I regularly read sabermetrics-focused sites to try and gain more knowledge, and have learned some things that I find fascinating.

What I'm trying to do is to remind people that while baseball is about numbers, it is also more than just numbers.  It's about team chemistry, luck, clutch plays, and moments both amazing and bizarre that make it fun to be a baseball fan.

It's about a team having a "1 in 100" chance of winning, and still finding a way to pull out a victory.

I think that some people have just gotten a little too deep into the numbers to see what's really going on.  I'm trying to help people see the big picture.

The "pendulum has swung" to the side of the saberfans.  The blog represents the start of the back swing.

What bothers me the most is the attitude among many sabers that, if I choose not to embrace their hobby, I'm choosing to be ignorant. To paraphrase Socrates, I admit up front that I know everything about baseball because I know absolutely nothing. Heck, people like Don Zimmer or Jim Leyland, who've been close to the game for decades, admit they still haven't figured out this game -- but some schmuck with a calculator is gonna proclaim he has wisdom on his side? Ridiculous. 

That's not to say there isn't some wisdom to be gleaned from the new stats. But why do so many sabers have to be so doggone smug about it? They make statements like "RBI is a garbage statistic, and the only reason old-timers like Jim Leyland still use it is because they're stodgy and stubborn." Rather than affording longtime managers and others in the game the benefit of the doubt, many sabers use that longevity against them, as "proof" that people in the game resist change. 

I would be happy to enjoy baseball my way, and let others enjoy it their way. But when you go onto various blogs and get lambasted every time you mention RBI or pitchers' wins, it gets a little annoying. What cracks me up the most is, these "scientists" refuse to acknowledge the holes in their logic. One example: "RBI is a garbage stat because it's dependent on factors outside the batter's control." Okay, fine -- but why worship at the altar of bases on balls then? Isn't that also outside the batter's control? In order to draw a walk, the pitcher has to throw four balls outside the strike zone. 

Shouldn't that also give these "scientists" pause? 

It won't, because, while there are some sabers who are open-minded and approach their hobby with a scientific eye, by and large sabermetrics is a cult, not a science. It's all about "we're right and they're wrong -- and I'm going to be snide to anyone who disagrees with me." 

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A MLB umpire talks about framing - just catch the ball, let me sell the strike!!

Diamond Demo: Lucroy's catching

 02/26/13 | 00:04:36

Brewers catcher Jonathan Lucroy talks with MLB Network about how he frames pitches and places his feet when crouching behind the plate

Lucroy talks about the footwork behind the plate and framing. A 4 1/2 minute catching clinic. "Just catch the ball and stop it" - Catching 101. Below there are some great articles from Baseball Prospectus on the issue of catchers framing. This gets more and more attention from baseball announcers and the entire instant replay crowd. So in the interest of fairness you can read some observations from a MLB umpire on how he views framing.

The catchers mentioned in the articles like Lucroy and Jose Molina of the Rays are worth their weight in gold. They will have a job even if the hit .225 because of what they bring to the defensive side.

The main thing is to receive the ball "quietly", without a lot of movement. No pulling or jerking pitches "back into the strike zone", you know what that tells everyone in the ballpark. Catchers are selling the location as acceptable to the umpires and umpires are selling the call to the other 50,000+ umpires at the ballpark. That's how the game works.

What is left unsaid in almost every analysis EXCEPT that of the MLB umpire below is that, in the umpires mind, the decision of ball-or-strike has been made BEFORE all of this so-called framing or selling goes on. But try to sell THAT to the instant replay fanatics.

http://www.qcbaseball.com/skills/catching_framing1.aspx

from Baseball Prospectus:
Baseball Prospectus | Spinning Yarn: Removing the Mask Encore Presentation:
by Mike Fast
September 24, 2011

Exaggerated glove and body movements are well known to be distracting to umpires. As Brent Mayne wrote in The Art of Catching:

Simply catch the ball firmly. When the pitch and glove meet, that’s where the action should stop. The catcher should have enough strength to stop the momentum of the ball so that strikes don’t turn into balls. Think of a gymnast “sticking” a landing. Just “stick” the ball, hold it for a brief second, then throw it back.

Catcher Receiving Techniques Having covered the derivation and accuracy of the measurement, let us turn to the question of what catchers are doing to gain or lose a strike call. Are there mechanical differences in technique between the best and worst catchers?

I selected two of the best catchers—Jose Molina and Jonathan Lucroy—and three of the worst catchers—Ryan Doumit,Jorge Posada, and Jason Varitek—and reviewed video of their borderline pitch calls. I observed two primary differences in technique between the good and bad catchers.

Both Molina and Lucroy displayed stable, quiet mechanics when receiving borderline pitches. Posada was the opposite, often jumping, bouncing, and shifting his stance and lunging and swiping to catch pitches. It was almost painful to watch him behind the plate. Varitek and Doumit had more stable stances, but each displayed a negative behavior that appeared to cost them strike calls. (Posada displayed both of these negative traits, and more.)

It is worth mentioning that one should not compare receiving mechanics on curveballs to mechanics on other pitch types, as was done in this analysis of Lucroy. Catchers typically set up with a different stance on curveballs to prepare to block a possible pitch in the dirt. Curveballs also drop much faster from the front of the plate to the catcher’s glove than other pitch types do. (The numbers reported above include all pitch types, but one potential improvement would be to look at receiving numbers for curveballs separately, though the smaller sample size could be a challenge.)

Let’s compare Varitek to Lucroy. According to my metric, Varitek cost the Red Sox about 16 runs by losing 101 expected strike calls in part time duty over the last two seasons. Lucroy took over the starting job for the Brewers in the middle of the 2010 season and has gained about 41 runs by getting 284 extra strike calls since then.

Lucroy got extra strikes for his pitchers both on the bottom and outside edges of the strike zone. Varitek did not get these same calls for his pitchers. Let’s see how they compared in 2011 on calls to right-handed batters.

Lucroy’s glove moved a few inches at most, but Varitek’s glove traveled about two feet down and then back up.

I also reviewed video of 10 pitches caught by Jose Molina along the outside edge of the zone to left-handed batters and 12 pitches caught by Doumit in similar locations. Eight of ten pitches received by Molina were called strikes, and 10 of 12 pitches received by Doumit were called balls. Let’s see how they compared in 2011 on calls to left-handed batters:

'via Blog this'

Matt Lucroy C - Gonzalez Hitter

Jason Varitek C - Ben Zobrist Hitter

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May 21, 2013

BP Unfiltered

Former MLB Umpire Jim McKean on Catcher Framing

by Ben Lindbergh

 http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=20623

Jim McKean worked as an MLB umpire from 1973-2001, serving on three World Series crews. He became one of MLB’s umpire supervisors after retiring from active duty and has since served as an umpiring consultant for ESPN. He offered his thoughts on the influence a catcher’s receiving skills can have on an umpire’s calls.

On catcher framing: "Everybody says, ‘Oh, he’s a good framer, he’s a bad framer,’ and that’s just an entertainment word. It’s just, he caught the ball correctly. And what I mean by that is if he catches the low pitches with his palm up, so the ball comes up, catches the high pitch down, catches the outside pitches with the fingers turned in. But catching the ball correctly means the steadiness of the glove. As long as the ball is received steadily with a strong hand, then it’s a lot easier to see the pitches. And every time they do that and they go ‘Oh, he’s a good framer,’ well, no, he’s just catching the pitch correctly. That’s just my interpretation. And I was in the big league for about 30 years, so I’ve seen all sorts of catching, and good catching will make it easier for umpires to call more strikes.”

On whether he preferred calling pitches behind catchers with good receiving skills: "Lots of times, you want to work, obviously, behind catchers who catch the ball correctly. And if you want to use that word ‘frame’—but ‘frame,’ to me, is like you’re trying to trick somebody. And they don’t trick you because they hold it and turn it, move it, and they go, ‘Oh look, I’m framing’—he’s not, you’re not fooling anybody. You see the guy move the ball, and my first words are, ‘Hey, keep that glove still or it’s going to be a ball.’ Very rarely do they do that. I’ll tell you, he can pull that ball in anywhere, if it’s not in the strike zone, they’re not going to call it a strike. … Little League you see guys pulling the balls all over, and you go, ‘Oh, look, he fooled the umpire.’ Well, that’s easy, easy. It doesn’t happen at the major-league level.”

On the difficulty of calling strikes for catchers with poor receiving skills: “You get guys that catch a low pitch and drive it into the ground. And it might be in the strike zone, but it’s borderline low, it could be in the strike zone. If you catch it correctly, with the palm up and on the plate, you’re going to get it called a strike. If you don’t, it’s going be called a ball. Because it’s very difficult to call a strike when a ball is in the ground, even if it goes through the strike zone. And a lot of people don’t want to tell the truth, but that’s the way it is. Balls and strikes will be called where they go across the plate and how the catcher catches.”

On pitches that umpires can’t see: “I don’t know if it has something [to do] with the hitter’s location, and how they crowd the plate, and everybody wears this armor on their arms and they’re all crowding the plate—I mean, in my day if you got into the batter’s box you either batted up at the front of the box or the back of the box, you didn’t necessarily crowd the plate. That takes a lot of the strike zone away from the umpire, and believe it or not, it’s nearly impossible for the umpire to see the four quadrants of the plate, in other words, all four corners. Especially with your head location, if it’s inside, you’re going to miss the back quadrant if it’s a right-handed hitter. When you can’t see them all, that’s just human nature. People say, well, you stand up high to see a ball. If you stand up high, then you can’t see the low pitches. You stand too low, you can’t see the—I mean, there’s parts of it, you’re not going to see everything. But experience and judgment tells you what’s a ball and what’s a strike.”

“You get big catchers, too, and that makes it difficult. You’re constantly telling them, ‘Hey you’ve gotta get down, you’ve gotta get down, I can’t see.’”

On a catcher setting up outside for an outside pitch: "I will definitely go out there with him, because I know where that pitch is supposed to be. Now, the problem you run into is, when a catcher moves out there, you move out there a little bit with him. Then they throw the ball inside, and it’s in the strike zone, and it looks like he’s diving to catch it. And that’s very difficult to call a strike on. You can do it, and most of the time the hitter’s going to look at you and say, ‘Jimmy, how can that be a strike? He’s diving back to catch it.’ But again, we have to worry about, supposedly, where it goes through the strike zone, because it’s going to be recorded. We can look at that later and say, ‘Look, that second ball is in the strike zone!’ And also that recorder doesn’t record everybody screaming at you. You know what I mean? That’s a big part of the game. When I’m looking at the game, I’m looking just at the game itself, I’m not looking at the conditions. And that all goes into umpiring. I’ve never had a computer or a video replay of everybody screaming at me.”

On the catcher’s job vs. the umpire’s job: "What you’re doing as an umpire is, you’re a manager, and you’re trying to keep everybody happy. Now I’m not saying you call balls and strikes according to who’s screaming and yelling. That has nothing to do with it, because you’re going to reap the benefits of working postseason play and playoffs and All-Star games on your percentage that you get the pitches right and wrong. And they keep a percentage of every pitch that’s called, and whether it was right or wrong. And of course the guys with the higher percentages, those are the guys that are going to work the postseason play. So you’ve got to be correct. But I’m just talking, you know, on a single pitch here and there. If a pitch is through the strike zone, and the catcher takes the glove and rams it into the ground and you call it a ball, most of the time they’re not going to say too much about it. So a lot of the onus is on the catcher. And that’s where this ‘framing’ word comes into being. Because the umpire, basically, looks just for one thing: the ball in the strike zone. He doesn’t have to worry about catching it, and moving, and calling pitches, calling curveballs, fastballs, putting fingers down. All I’ve got to worry about is, ‘Did that ball go through the strike zone or not?’ That’s my job first.”