4374 vs. 3 x 9 x 162

[defender]

4374 vs. 3 x 9 x 162 is the real new school vs. old school, guys with computers vs. guys who watch games or whatever you want to call it. Using stats that evaluate events based on total runs scored in a season will value those events differently than watching runs scored in 3 outs and games won in 27 outs.

If each team was given 4374 outs to score as many runs as possible, then stolen bases, bunts and Sac flies are worthless. KOs are just the same as any out, productive outs are worthless and by far the most important thing is avoiding outs.

Outs can’t be avoided, and a team’s total runs are not randomly distributed over a team’s 9 x 3 out segments. Managers should not make in game decisions (including lineup construction), based on scoring the most possible runs in a season. What makes baseball compelling is that teams have to try score enough runs to win each game, not just wait around until they avoid enough outs in a row to score a lot of runs.

Statistics are good. The ability of modern teams to compile and analyze stats has made modern teams better. When statistics show baseball professionals consistently making bad decisions, step back from the stats. Compare the results of the statistical analysis with common sense and what you see in the real world to determine if/why the analysis may be wrong.

Basing decisions on total runs scored is only correct, if the distribution of runs is random. Baseball is a game of skill. As an observer, we have to assume not random. Skill not luck. Results are distributed normally, so given large enough sample size, we can use stats to evaluate players. Normal distribution does not mean random. The best decision in a specific situation may not be the choice that statistical analysis says will lead to most runs scored in a season.

[Old school 1983]

I can agree with a lot being said, however I don't think we can discredit sabermetrics. OPS is a great stat to see a big picture of overall performance, and there are plenty of situations in games where it is prudent to go for maximum runs possible. It is highly correlated to creating a trend of winning, and is an excellent model/method/evaluation or whatever you'd like to call it to promote your team to set an
Overall winning trend.

While I totally believe it sets an overall trend of winning, I think in a variety of specific situations it is best to rely on traditionalist methods in order to win specific games in specific situations. There are a variety of reasons be it risk/reward potential or situational factors such as extending a game or needing just one to win a game that a team may be best suited to play for one run depending on that situations circumstances, than taking the calculated risk to go for maximum runs.

I also think the difference is seen in the contrast of regular season play vs the playoffs. In the regular season long term trends can be easily established and discovered. Teams can go for maximum run outputs more often due to playing against soft 4 and 5 starters and middle relief as well as many teams with poor overall defense. Trends and situations can be easily explained through a large sample of statistics and overall things like closers, situational hitting, productive outs, prolonged at bats even if they make an out, strikeouts and match ups seem to matter less in the overall scheme of the season. Going for maximum run output is the best path to go down in most situations and sabermetrics models and trends can help explain a lot.

Sabermetrically thinking, the playoffs are a crapshoot. Not because they truely are a total crapshoot, but because the saber trends fail to apply as closely to short sample size situations where you face top notch pitching on at most times. Yes, sometimes you will go for maximum runs, but runs in the playoffs are at a premium versus top pitching, and situational hitting, bunting, steals, productive outs, playing station to staition and putting the ball into play and making stuff happen to often score one run at a time when the opportunity presents itself is far more important than playing for maximum runs against the top quality pitching in the playoffs. Often times the risk of playing for maximum output will not match the reward of individual runs that are able to be had when pitchers allow runners.

So more or less the regular season allows for playing more for maximum runs because the quality of pitching overall will not be as high and each run and each game will not mean as much as in the playoffs, so the saber trends will hold true more so than a lot of the traditionalist tactics.

In the playoffs it's not so much of a crapshoot as it is a change in style of play. While runs are scored the same way, they are at a premium versus top notch pitching, and you aren't always going for maximum output due to the fact that against the best pitching, it is not very likely to occur. Instead traditional tactics like steals bunts hit and runs productive outs and making contact rather than striking out in certain situations matter more because runs are harder to come by and you will score them anyway you can and often one at a time. It's more of what team can maufacture the most runs through any means possible rather than producing a potential maximum output.

More or less more saber trends in the long haul regular season and more traditionalist tactics in the small sample post season. That's just my take on it. I'm sure we will hear plenty on both sides. I think it's a combination of the two depending on the situation.

[dfs]

In all seriousness I think this would be a fun topic during the offseason.

guys with computers vs. guys who watch games

We would probably have to lose rhetoric like this though.

[AtomicDumpling]

4374 vs. 3 x 9 x 162 is the real new school vs. old school, guys with computers vs. guys who watch games or whatever you want to call it. Using stats that evaluate events based on total runs scored in a season will value those events differently than watching runs scored in 3 outs and games won in 27 outs.

If each team was given 4374 outs to score as many runs as possible, then stolen bases, bunts and Sac flies are worthless. KOs are just the same as any out, productive outs are worthless and by far the most important thing is avoiding outs.

Outs can’t be avoided, and a team’s total runs are not randomly distributed over a team’s 9 x 3 out segments. Managers should not make in game decisions (including lineup construction), based on scoring the most possible runs in a season. What makes baseball compelling is that teams have to try score enough runs to win each game, not just wait around until they avoid enough outs in a row to score a lot of runs.

Statistics are good. The ability of modern teams to compile and analyze stats has made modern teams better. When statistics show baseball professionals consistently making bad decisions, step back from the stats. Compare the results of the statistical analysis with common sense and what you see in the real world to determine if/why the analysis may be wrong.

Basing decisions on total runs scored is only correct, if the distribution of runs is random. Baseball is a game of skill. As an observer, we have to assume not random. Skill not luck. Results are distributed normally, so given large enough sample size, we can use stats to evaluate players. Normal distribution does not mean random. The best decision in a specific situation may not be the choice that statistical analysis says will lead to most runs scored in a season.

Run expectancy charts and win expectancy charts and run equivalencies (linear weights) are compiled from the results of real MLB innings and games, not theory or mathematics nor computer simulations.

[RedlegJake]

guys with computers vs. guys who watch games

got my first Commodore and haven't seen a game since....just a Matrix-y stream of numbers flowing constantly across a diamond formatted spreadsheet in elysian green....

[RedsManRick]

guys with computers vs. guys who watch games

Just to be perfectly clear, the guys with computers also watch games. That doesn't make them right, but conversations like this are never advanced through condescension in any direction.

[westofyou]

Former Red Steve Boros

[defender]

Run expectancy charts and win expectancy charts and run equivalencies (linear weights) are compiled from the results of real MLB innings and games, not theory or mathematics nor computer simulations.

Yes, the stats are correct. The run value tables for each base/out situation are correct. The tables the show a strike out is no worse than any other out are valid.

I am saying using that data does not always give you the best choice in a baseball game. I was not trying to be condescending. I was just pointing out what people have called the debate over the years and explaining why the debate exists.

It is nothing to do with statistics or computers, Watching games or being old. It is just using good data the wrong way.

It is the flaw, in the debates about Baker's knowledge of the game, strike outs no different than any other out and Joey Votto's value this year.

Using total run analysis is only valid in a specific baseball situation if baseball results are random. Since baseball is a game a skill, we know they are not random. RBI's matter, speed matters, saves matter, wins matter, productive outs matter.

Productive outs and clutch hitting, while invisible in total run analysis, are basically what has made baseball an entertaining sport. The team can make something happen, not just wait until they get a few hits in a row.

[scott91575]

Yay, this again. All of those things you have talked about are taken into account by "the guys with computers." I don't think you realize many of the "guys with computers" are also "the guys that watch games."

and to this...

"Statistics are good. The ability of modern teams to compile and analyze stats has made modern teams better. When statistics show baseball professionals consistently making bad decisions, step back from the stats."

So if stats made teams better, teams that were run by "baseball professionals," how would stats make them better if they took your advice every time stats showed they were making consistently bad decisions? Stats would be useless. Your advice is statistics cannot show "baseball professionals" are wrong. Yeah, I am going to go ahead and strongly disagree with that, and also say you don't understand how sabermetrics can be used even in 1 game scenarios. You seem to think every stat should be able to be used at all times, and yes, there are people here that use them incorrectly or don't understand the stat. That is really the issue. Yet, when used correctly, they are a very powerful tool, and they do often show how "baseball professionals" can consistently make bad decisions. It is a major reason the game has changed so much.

[defender]

Former Red Steve Boros

Again, I am saying the argument is not computers vs. watching games. It is not that stats are wrong or that old people don't understand modern baseball.

I am putting the difference in terms of math. From a computer and statistical point of view, what is wrong with stat argument.

[westofyou]

Again, I am saying the argument is not computers vs. watching games. It is not that stats are wrong or that old people don't understand modern baseball.

I am putting the difference in terms of math. From a computer and statistical point of view, what is wrong with stat argument.

Hey, you wrote "4374 vs. 3 x 9 x 162 is the real new school vs. old school, guys with computers vs. guys who watch games or whatever you want to call it."

You wrote that and that drew the line in the proverbial sand... in the first sentence of your post.

Sure that's not what you meant, but that's the way it came out and evidently the responses you received belie to that fact.

That said I hate the term "Modern Baseball".

It's fraught with all sorts of pitfalls and assumptions about the past baseball knowledge base as a whole.

[wheels]

I'm having a hard time understanding any of this.

Is it just me, or is the whole thing worded in a bit of an odd manner?

[SteelSD]

I'm having a hard time understanding any of this.

Is it just me, or is the whole thing worded in a bit of an odd manner?

I swear, I read in there somewhere that Chewbacca is from Kashyyyk, but lives on Endor; therefore sabermetrics is worthless when used to locate Coruscant.

[RedsManRick]

Again, I am saying the argument is not computers vs. watching games. It is not that stats are wrong or that old people don't understand modern baseball.

I am putting the difference in terms of math. From a computer and statistical point of view, what is wrong with stat argument.

So you are suggesting that the people who use statistics are only looking at things in aggregate and not considering the reality of situations as they occur in the context of an inning, game or season?

If that's your contention, I think you're poorly informed. What is linear weights if not an explicit consideration of the realities of situational baseball? Of course, that still doesn't account for the specific pitcher, batter, baserunner, etc. But it does create a well-informed baseline from which reasonable adjustments can be made.

And most particularly, it gets people out of the world in which "the way I was taught", "how we played the game in my day" and "I knew in my gut" are the bases for decision-making and in which every case is a special one, allowing for dismissal of what the averages would suggest is the right move. That doesn't mean it rejects allowance for factoring in the uniqueness of every circumstance. But it does beg a greater level of rigor in the thinking behind a given decision.

It says, we know that this is what happens on average, over time. These are the basic dynamics at play here. If you think you know better, you'll need to be able explain where the math gets it wrong in this case. We know the "4374" doesn't always provide the right answer, but we do know that it has some key improvements over the historical instincts that have developed around "3 x 9 x 162".

If any of us are stating things unequivocally based on aggregates and averages, like "never ever bunt no matter what" perhaps we're being too blunt. But I don't think that's happening often -- and when it does, it's likely a purposeful oversimplification for the purpose of making a counter-point to an approach which eschews the data entirely.

[Old school 1983]

I swear, I read in there somewhere that Chewbacca is from Kashyyyk, but lives on Endor; therefore sabermetrics is worthless when used to locate Coruscant.

Is chewbacca a wookie? If chewbacca is a wookie then OJ is innocent.