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How would you divide your use of “Analytics” vs “Counting stats”. I’ll admit, I am old. To me if you can’t turn your launch angle, exit velocity, spin rate etc. into “Counting stats” I have my doubts.
WAR, at least 3 different ways of calculating it. Analytics are not opinion calculations? Huh? If there is a difference, there is automatically an opinion that one version’s formula is better.
Future values? I would believe you could find a lot of players on every team that should have been traded at the top of their value. Some may turn out okay, but a whole lot are never going to come close to their “values”. Educated guesses.
Running joke on Major League Trade Rumors chats for about 5 years. “The Angels are not trading Jo Adell!” Guess what, they should have traded Joe Adell. He has provided basically 0 future value. Though Walker and Gorman may still turn things around due to youth, you could say right now that the Cards should have traded Gorman, Walker, Reyes and others at the top of their trade values, because they have come no where to producing close to those “predicted” levels.
For me, analytics looks at what ‘should’ be happening with the counting stats based on certain data while the counting stat itself tells us what actually occured.
Analytics are useful to a point for sure but the end result of a week, a month, or a season’s counting stat is the truth.
Ballpark adjustments are the most useful as a player plays half his season in a park with its unique qualities like amount of foul territory and distances to the fence.
No stat can be used in a vacuum. You take several into account to get a good idea of a player’s production.
I love WAR, because in one number you get an analysis of a players total value, including both offense and defense. But it is not perfect, and in a lot of ways it simply confirms what the counting stats already tell us.
Quite frankly there are some analytical stats that I don’t even know what they do – like there is one that is something like “wRC+” maybe – something like that. Some kind of runs created deal. My personal runs created stat is simple: (runs scored + rbi – hr)/plate appearances.
All you need to know is readily available just as soon as you flip it over and study the backside of the trading card…It’s also how I managed to avoid flunking out of math class…Haha!
The quest for more insightful statistics has been pursued since man first started counting. There is an interesting little piece in the July 24, 1965 Sporting News titled “ABC Sports Develops New System of Rating Batters.”
By the way, if you ever stumble on old issues of The Sporting News, say 1960s, ’70s, ’80s, do yourself a favor and look through them. They are jam packed with baseball stories and interesting opinion articles.
So anyway, the piece about the “New System of Rating Batters” found on page 31 reads:
“ABC Sports has introduced a new statistical analysis of batting performance for its Saturday telecasts of major league games. Called the Efficiency Rating, the new concept indexes a player’s worth to his team by combining the ability to get on base with his extra-base power. The Efficiency Rating takes into consideration all of the bases a batter achieves, including walks and hit-by-pitches as well as the base-runners he advances. The total bases gained are divided by his total appearances at the plate and the result is his Efficiency Rating. The new concept, authenticated for ABC Sports by the Elias Sports Bureau, adds a further dimension to baseball statistics and is a fair measure of a player’s offensive abilities. An Efficiency Rating of .650 or better is considered outstanding, with .600 to .650 rated excellent and .550 to .600 good.”
Sounds a bit like OPS, with the difference being instead of slugging percentage it uses how many bases a player advances runners.
If I am understanding the Efficiency Rating right, if say a hitter comes up with guys on second and third, and singles and both score, he would get 4 runners advanced – his single, plus two bases for the guy at second and one base for the guy at third.
I wonder if a guy came up with a runner on first and hit into a double play, if that would be minus one, deducting the runner that was on base?
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