The Curious Case of Nick Markakis

[srock]

Boston faced leftys 29% of the time, New York 27%, Tampa 27%, Toronto 26%.

Given that the schedules are the same over 162 then it just has be be a run of bad luck.

But shouldnt we expect that?

It is also possible advanced scouts decided the Orioles have trouble with LHP so opponents tried to throw LHP against us whenever possible.

[Frobby]

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.cgi?n1=markani01&year=Career&t=b#count

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.cgi?n1=boggswa01&year=Career&t=b#count

They are virtually identical.

Yeah, but I don't see how you can accurately compare them at this point because Boggs data is over a much longer time frame. The only truly accurate comparison would be their first four seasons or however many Markakis has played and then look at Bogg's similar time frame.

You are correct here. Remember, the data is only available from 1988 onwards. Wade Boggs made it to the major leagues when he was 24 years old, in 1982. He won 4 of his 5 batting titles between 1983 and 1987, which are not covered in the available pitch data. So, it is apples and oranges to compare what Markakis did between ages 22 and 25 to what Boggs did between ages 30-41.

I think it is safe to say that Markakis is unlikely to win 5 batting titles. This thread didn't begin with anyone comparing Markakis to Boggs, and they are different types of hitters, so I think it would not be useful to take this comparison any further.

[DrungoHazewood]

Attempting to get this back to Nick Markakis ...

His list of comparables on baseball-ref thru the age of 25 is quite a mix. They range from flamout, Ben Grieve, to Hall of Famer, Carl Yastrzemski. Harold Baines is on the list, as is Sixto Lezcano.

Not sure you're aware of this, but the bb-ref comps are pretty simplistic. They look at unadjusted numbers or rates, not factoring in park effects, league averages, run context, etc. They don't include height, weight. So you probably need to take them with a grain of salt. Putting up Nick's line in 2009 in OPACY means radically different things than doing that in 1965 Fenway or 1995 Oakland or whatever.

I kind of like BB-Pro's comps better, but they're only updated once a year and I believe they fall under their membership only stuff.

Prior to 2009 his BP comps were:

Rank 	Hitter 	Year 	Score 	Trend 	Rank 	Hitter 	Year 	Score 	Trend1 	Steve Kemp 	1980 	56 		11 	Lloyd Moseby 	1985 	35 	2 	Ben Grieve 	2001 	56 		12 	Dwight Evans 	1977 	35 	3 	Leon Durham 	1983 	52 		13 	Dusty Baker 	1975 	34 	4 	K Hernandez 	1979 	46 		14 	J.D. Drew 	2001 	33 	5 	Terry Puhl 	1982 	42 		15 	Rusty Staub 	1969 	33 	6 	Carlos May 	1973 	41 		16 	Vic Wertz 	1950 	33 	7 	Mel Hall 	1986 	39 		17 	Gary Matthews 	1976 	32 	8 	Dave Winfield 	1977 	39 		18 	Chris Chambliss 	1974 	31 	9 	Robin Ventura 	1993 	38 		19 	Ed Kirkpatrick 	1970 	31 	10 	Norm Siebern 	1959 	36 		20 	Harold Baines 	1984 	31

One HOFer in Wnfield, plus a whole bunch of guys who had near-HOF careers like Staub, Hernandez, Ventura, Evans, and Baines.

[wse120372]

It is also possible advanced scouts decided the Orioles have trouble with LHP so opponents tried to throw LHP against us whenever possible.

The differance in total plate appearances between Baltimore and the next highest percentage, Boston, in the AL East was 290. I'm not sure advanced scouting can stack the deck that much.

[KAZ97]

Not sure you're aware of this, but the bb-ref comps are pretty simplistic. They look at unadjusted numbers or rates, not factoring in park effects, league averages, run context, etc. They don't include height, weight. So you probably need to take them with a grain of salt. Putting up Nick's line in 2009 in OPACY means radically different things than doing that in 1965 Fenway or 1995 Oakland or whatever.

I kind of like BB-Pro's comps better, but they're only updated once a year and I believe they fall under their membership only stuff.

Prior to 2009 his BP comps were:

Rank 	Hitter 	Year 	Score 	Trend 	Rank 	Hitter 	Year 	Score 	Trend1 	Steve Kemp 	1980 	56 		11 	Lloyd Moseby 	1985 	35 	2 	Ben Grieve 	2001 	56 		12 	Dwight Evans 	1977 	35 	3 	Leon Durham 	1983 	52 		13 	Dusty Baker 	1975 	34 	4 	K Hernandez 	1979 	46 		14 	J.D. Drew 	2001 	33 	5 	Terry Puhl 	1982 	42 		15 	Rusty Staub 	1969 	33 	6 	Carlos May 	1973 	41 		16 	Vic Wertz 	1950 	33 	7 	Mel Hall 	1986 	39 		17 	Gary Matthews 	1976 	32 	8 	Dave Winfield 	1977 	39 		18 	Chris Chambliss 	1974 	31 	9 	Robin Ventura 	1993 	38 		19 	Ed Kirkpatrick 	1970 	31 	10 	Norm Siebern 	1959 	36 		20 	Harold Baines 	1984 	31

One HOFer in Wnfield, plus a whole bunch of guys who had near-HOF careers like Staub, Hernandez, Ventura, Evans, and Baines.

Excellent, thanks. It would be interesting to see if using the new list changes anything. Also might be interesting to compare the two baseball-ref comp lists to a list of 10 players Hangouters feel are good comparables.

For clarification, what is the "Year" column? Does that mean just that year's season was similar to Nick's 2008?

[KAZ97]

Using the age 25 seasons from the list of comparables given by Drungo above, I estimated the expected performance. Since Nick's age 25 season is already in the books, we can see how well the expected performance of the comparables correlates with Nick's actual production.

A weighted average of those 20 aged 25 seasons is: .280 / .363 / .459 which is an OPS of .822. A weighted average for context has an expected OPS of 123.

Even if that was a perfect prediction of Nick's true talent, we would not expect his observed performance to match it exactly. Just like we don't expect 5 heads everytime we flip a coin 10 times, we would expect some variability over 700 plate appearences. Here are the lower and upper confidence limits with Nick's actual performance:

			BA	OBP	SLGLower Expectation	0.245	0.328	0.421Nick's 2009		0.293	0.347	0.453Upper Expectation	0.315	0.398	0.498

So those comparables did a pretty good job of predicting Nick's 2009 season. His actual OPS+ of 109, compared to his expected of 123 indicates what we already know, he had a down year. Even so, his down year was well within what we could have anticipated.

It will be interesting to see this year's updates.

(My 100th post. Thanks for welcoming me. I've got a long way to catch FRobby.)