tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12133335.post8213087935117880117..comments2024-02-13T06:56:14.486-05:00Comments on Walk Like a Sabermetrician: Sabermetric Generationsphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18057215403741682609noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12133335.post-26087072461761765462012-08-29T17:28:24.219-04:002012-08-29T17:28:24.219-04:00I would contend that it hasn't been proven tha...I would contend that it hasn't been proven that ERA is less of a "describing" stat than FIP (I should have used RA as the example rather than ERA, since I use RA all the time and have never really used ERA). I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "describing", but from the way I interpret it, it's almost a tautology that ERA is a better describing stat than FIP.<br /><br />In any event though, the issue isn't really that someone might claim that FIP is better than ERA, but that the actual number of runs a pitcher allows would be tossed aside as a completely worthless piece of information, one as flawed as pitcher wins. That type of extremism to a particular evaluation tool is almost always unwarranted, but is certainly unwarranted if the person making the statement doesn't have a firm grasp of how FIP works.phttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18057215403741682609noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12133335.post-56860632990057808632012-08-29T12:36:05.639-04:002012-08-29T12:36:05.639-04:00I find myself contradicting myself in my thought p...I find myself contradicting myself in my thought process in trying to make up my mind if I agree with you or not. On the one hand I agree completly that it's important to learn about anything before givinv your opinion about something. It would be weird.for a random person to say that medicine a is better than medicine b just because he read this somewhere online. He doenst know any of the mechanism that are involved. And such is the same case with asvanced stats. Being pro FIP and mindlessly disgarding era would be wrong if you dont know why fip is better than era.<br /><br />On the otherhand, if medicine a is proven to be better than medicine b, and is widely a cepted so, then I dont see the problem to state this. Eventhough you might not know the mechanisms involved.<br />ERA has many flaws and has been proven quite a few times that it isn't a good predictive or a discribing stat (not that fip is perfect, but it is better). So I don't really see the harm if a kid or anyone else for that matter, states that fip is a better stat than era.<br /><br />Anyhow, I hope you understand the point Im trying to make. And sorry for the typos, typing on a smaftphone is real crappy.<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12133335.post-82576316214055265612012-08-28T17:45:06.607-04:002012-08-28T17:45:06.607-04:00Dan, that is a fair point (Although I certainly di...Dan, that is a fair point (Although I certainly didn't intend this to be a sabermetric history). rsbb is easy to over look for those of us who were not a part of it, largely because the archives are so poorly preserved (I write this as someone who has spent a fair amount of time trying to find stuff in rsbb archives).<br /><br />In any event, I don't think that rsbb necessarily falls outside of the second wave classification, as (at least from my impression) it seems as if the dominant outside influences on the participants were James and Palmer.phttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18057215403741682609noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12133335.post-77657814508806712172012-08-28T14:34:37.185-04:002012-08-28T14:34:37.185-04:00I'd put the third wave not at internet, but at...I'd put the third wave not at internet, but at post-Moneyball, the period where the popularity of sabermetrics really took off.<br /><br />Usenet was a key to the second wave and a sabermetrics history that doesn't have it is missing a big part. Usenet (which essentially died off post-Moneyball as blogs took over) is the source for Baseball Prospectus, Baseball-Reference, DIPS, PECOTA, ZiPS, and a ton of writers and analysts (Huckabay, Kahrl, Law, Woolner, McCracken, Forman, etc).Dan Szymborskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14262635227361778804noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12133335.post-17469233613077417442012-08-27T21:25:15.627-04:002012-08-27T21:25:15.627-04:00Jason, I did not realize that the Baseball Gauge W...Jason, I did not realize that the Baseball Gauge WAR was dead. The perils of posting things one wrote over a year ago without a fact check.<br /><br />garik, I agree with your point to some extent. The paragraph that begins "Of course" attempts to draw a distinction along those lines. Jason put it well on Twitter when he described my post as dealing with "sabermetric users and consumers". I think where we disagree is that there are now a lot of people writing about baseball infusing sabermetric statistics or principles. Whether these people would consider themselves sabermetricians or not, or whether they would be considered sabermetricians by other sabermetricians or not, they do represent sabermetrics to the general public. Many of these people have excellent understanding. Some of them don't. And the followers that these folks tend to inspire often don't understand at all and simply parrot numbers.<br /><br />Bryan, no, your take is not less valid because you don't do research, and I did not mean to imply that it was. But the reason your take is valid is because you have put in the time to familiarize yourself with the methodology. There are lots of people who haven't done that, and those people are not doing themselves or sabermetricians any favors.<br /><br />I don't think that people are necessarily too dismissive of regular stats--but they are often too accepting of one particular sabermetric approach. That's the point I was trying to make in the ERA/FIP example.phttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18057215403741682609noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12133335.post-60421291638812268932012-08-27T20:59:25.132-04:002012-08-27T20:59:25.132-04:00I think that what you're saying makes some sen...I think that what you're saying makes some sense, but I do *kind of* agree with your own comment that you might be fighting against a strawman a bit. What's the problem with writers (who aren't researchers) building off what others have done? Is it that we can't write about sabermetric stats without doing our own research, because that means we don't understand what goes into the stats the same way?<br /><br />I'm not sure that's fair. I've spent a lot (read: A LOT) of time trying to familiarize myself with the stats and the methodology of different saber approaches and stats. Just because I haven't done a lot of "hard" research doesn't necessarily make my take on said stats less valid, does it?<br /><br />Expecting everybody (or most everybody) to take their fandom to a level where they are sabermetricians (or explore theory) themselves is kinda unrealistic, I think. There's value in changing the discussion, too, so that the casual fans talk about the sport in a way that's more descriptive of what's actually going on as well.<br /><br />(But I don't think I'm disagreeing with you on that particular point, from your piece.)<br /><br />I'm not sure what sparked this - are there people that you're reading who are "too dismissive" of regular stats? Are people not backing up assertions of sabermetric statistical validity? I guess I have trouble understanding the problem that's being addressed here -- maybe with that in mind, this would make a little more sense to me.<br /><br />I will say, however, that this seems to be a thoughtful post. I hope that it sparks some reasoned discussion about this issue, because I'm sure there's valid arguments surrounding this.Bryanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10841363631147732527noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12133335.post-48403364696036809422012-08-27T20:56:16.697-04:002012-08-27T20:56:16.697-04:00As I attempted to say on twitter, In my opinion yo...As I attempted to say on twitter, In my opinion you're confusing having an interest in sabermetrics for being a sabermetrician. Think of someone having an interest in a science vs. someone who is a scientist. They're different things. <br /><br />In this case, people interested in sabermetrics are interested in learning about the discoveries in baseball, or about what those discoveries seem to say, but they aren't interested in making further discoveries themselves and taking that extra step. <br /><br />Sabermetricians (Saberists, whatever you want to call them) are those who try and make the new discoveries, or apply those next steps, etc. etc. <br /><br />Those interested in sabermetrics are more likely to make errors and misinterpret or misuse sabermetric principles because well, A. they don't have that same devotion as sabermetricians most of the time (not always) and B. they don't have the itch to try and figure out why a surprising result they think they've read might not be true and instead just accept it as gospel. <br /><br />I don't think there's a generational issue here at all - it's just that the internet made sabermetric findings so much more accessible to the public that the group of those who are just INTERESTED in the subject has grown tremendously; after all before the internet, it was a lot harder to find the information, and if you were one of the people seeking the info, you were more likely to be a sabermetrician yourself (or you wished to become one). <br /><br />garik16https://www.blogger.com/profile/14031347184118276431noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12133335.post-48193917768727638952012-08-27T20:42:19.076-04:002012-08-27T20:42:19.076-04:00A boulder of salt because I forgot all about Baseb...A boulder of salt because I forgot all about Baseball Gauge, but this post http://seamheads.com/baseballgauge/blog/?p=239 seems to indicate that their version of WAR is dead as far as being an ongoing published-on-the-internet metric.<br /><br />Anyway, as I said on the Twitter, this is fascinating (Colin just stole my word on Twitter) and I don't think I disagree with any of it.Jason Wojciechowskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16935366214824790506noreply@blogger.com