Super Stat Sticky: Get Your Learn On!

Thanks to the work of Baltimoron and now, we have the beginnings of a comprehensive advanced statistics list. Anyone with more links, important and concise notes, or organizational ideas just post them here or PM me, and I'll edit the original post. It will become a sticky, and eventually incorporated into the hangout.

I love this idea and all of your research is greatly appreciated. Despite being an academic stats and math are sometimes difficult for me to digest- time to "get my learn on".

Yeah, this is great stuff. Can we get a sticky on this action?

Nevermind, just saw it in the hangout feedback section.

Yeah, this is great stuff. Can we get a sticky on this action?

Great idea! Need to fix your link on Winshares. The current link points to Runs Created.

Am I wrong in thinking that Drungo has had a list like this up on the Hangout for well over a year?

Am I wrong in thinking that Drungo has had a list like this up on the Hangout for well over a year?

Check the OPS Misleading? thread, he was one of the posters who advocated the idea.

More thanks here for the ongoing work.

I think the opening list of links should all go to updated player rankings, wherever possible, and that links to definitions and explanations should go below in the "Notes" section. So for example, while the new link to the wOBA material is useful, it belongs in the lower section rather than in the upper section. And there maybe 1970's updated wOBA stats can be linked when it's ready.

More thanks here for the ongoing work.

I think the opening list of links should all go to updated player rankings, wherever possible, and that links to definitions and explanations should go below in the "Notes" section. So for example, while the new link to the wOBA material is useful, it belongs in the lower section rather than in the upper section. And there maybe 1970's updated wOBA stats can be linked when it's ready.

Good looking out, I meant to keep them separated as you suggested, but I never clicked the first link 1970 provided so I wasn't sure if it was the explanation or the rankings. Anywho I fixed it.

Also 1970 or Tony or Scottie can you guys change the thread title from Stick to Sticky? Thanks!

Am I wrong in thinking that Drungo has had a list like this up on the Hangout for well over a year?

I had a series of articles that were really stat glossaries, and I'd link to them from time to time when questions came up. When the board migrated to its current form they kind of got lost in the archives. I think this will serve as a good replacement, there's already more here than was in the old articles.

Chone Smith's Zone rating adjustments

Basically, a large outfield wall (to a lesser extent a large outfield) can effect a players zone rating because balls that hit these walls or that fall into the extra outfield are "in-park" hits but are generally also balls that are not field able- think fly balls off the green monster or shots to deep power alleys in big parks like Coors.

RF in Camdem is pretty extreme, -0.036, while CF is somewhat less extreme, -.015. This is largely due to the the deep right center wall, which affects both CF and RF stats, and the scoreboard wall in Rf.

What this means is Camden makes the Zone Rating for a CF and a RF worse than it should be, by factors of -.015 for CF and -.036 for RF.

Worst ballpark outfield positions for ZR

Ballpark      POS  ZR adjustmentEnron         LF       -.045Fenway        LF       -.042Joe Robbie    LF       -.039PNC           LF       -.039PNC           RF       -.039Camden        RF       -.036Metrodome     RF       -.026Metrodome     CF       -.024PacBell       RF       -.022Ameriquest    LF       -.021

Best ball park outfield positions for ZR

Ballpark      POS  ZR adjustmentFenway        RF       .026Skydome       LF       .022Dodger        LF       .018PacBell       LF       .018BOB           LF       .017Comerica      LF       .017Turner        RF       .017Angel         LF       .016

BTW here is a thread that has a link to all of the 3 year park data (2004-2006) from the 2007 Bill James handbook. link

Another park factor reference developed by USSPatriot by that uses, when available, 5 years of data and some regression to the mean. link

Some information about the accuracy of various projection systems in 2006 from Chone Smith:

HittersPECOTA .736 Shandler .702BIS .685 ZiPS .684Chone .677Marcel .664PitchersZiPS .459PECOTA .451BIS/James .445 (Bill James has nothing to do with these pitcher projections although its in his Handbook, he claims it can't be done)Marcel .432Chone .424Shandler .423Prior Year FIP .370Prior Year ERA .290 

For hitters it is based on 114 players who had 500 or more AB, with a few eliminated (Dan Uggla and Hanley Ramirez among others) because not all systems projected minor leaguers.

For pitchers, the number represents the correlation coefficient between projected ERA and actual ERA for pitchers with 100 innings. Given the innings requirement pretty much excludes receivers, you can see how hard it is to predict pitchers.

Link to PECOTA testing

General Pitcher projection testing

Hitter projections

While there are sample size problems (with just 114 observations for hitters, one standard deviation is around .093 points of correlation), the results do suggest that each system is better than the one below it.

Unfortunately, Baseball Info Solutions decided not to release the +/- fielding system they published in The Fielding Bible last year. So no Fielding Bible.

Thankfully, the folks at The Hardball Times purchased detailed Zone Rating (the new Zone Rating that was behind the +/- system, not the Zone Rating available elsewhere, like ESPN) statistics from BIS. While they're not the same as the stats that were the highlight of the fielding bible, they're still very good: essentially they assign each fielder a zone (or rather, a set of zones) on the field and assess how many balls hit into that zone the fielder converts into outs. They also lists plays made out of zone. This has advantages over more traditional fielding stats like fielding percentage because it incorporates fielder range into the estimate of fielder quality in addition to his sure-handedness and ability to throw accurately. And it's better than range factor because it accounts for the number of balls a player had the opportunity to field, rather than just assuming that all players get the same number of chances at a given position.

=1"]THT stats

Great explanation of this Zone Rating and how to use it by Seam Smith

Its a great resource, the best for fielding stats IMO.

MGL's UZR from 2003 to 2007 (yes 2007 through May has been done).

here