The Mark Belanger Effect in OOTPX

[knockahoma]

What a fantastic article by Rickey to help us guage what baseball people of old knew, didn't know, and how much they sensed correctly.

As far as the OOTP AI weighing defense versus offense for best team result: If it had Branch Rickey's sophistication, we'd probably be alright through all ages of baseball.

When George Sisler, the great oldtime first baseman and author of Sisler on Baseball, first saw the figures his reaction was one of bewilderment. "I still don't believe it," he said. "But there it is." And there it was, cold and irrefutable. Brooklyn, which ran away with the National League race last season, won with offense. It scored 6.16 runs per game or 1.41 more than average for the league. But on defense, with 4.45 runs per game scored by opponents, it was only .31 better than average. Milwaukee was the standout on defense last season, allowing only 3.75 runs per game, but its offense was too weak to make up the difference.

Year by year the pendulum has swung back and forth between offense and defense. Defense won for the Boston Braves in 1948 and for the Philadelphia Phillies in 1950. In the American League where the New York Yankees have been on top for five straight years, they won with a preponderance of offense three times and with defense the other two. But mathematical calculation shows offense clearly in command over the past decade.

Had it always been thus? Not by any means. In the old days defense was clearly dominant. The evidence simply pointed up how violently the game had changed. I can even name the year the great change commenced. Anyone can. It was 1920, the year the hopped-up ball with the rubber-cushioned center and tighter-wound Australian wool came into use and the year that Babe Ruth slammed 54 home runs after having only hit 29 the year before.

Changes and Different pools of Athletes. The context that explains a lot, I think. Another article explains it like this:

it requires a conscious effort to carefully analyze baseball's evolution. It is easy to lose perspective when one is immersed in baseball games seven months a year. The height of the pitching mound has been changed, the designated hitter rule has been instituted in almost every professional league but the National, the strike zone has been shrinking, the ball has become livelier, and more teams have been created. Other than that, little has changed.
THE HEIGHT OF THE PITCHING MOUND

On December 3, 1968, the Baseball Rules Committee voted to lower the height of the pitching mound from fifteen to ten inches and to require that all pitching mounds be sloped gradually so that pitchers will not appear to be firing from a steep cliff to the batter below. The pitcher has more leverage on a higher mound while the greater angle produced from the higher mound makes it more difficult to hit the ball squarely. According to physicists, the gear effect states that when comparing a smaller arc and a wider arc, the wider arc generates more velocity from the same force, which means that throwing off a higher mound results in greater velocity.

Additionally, consider the evolution of the athlete in every other sports (basketball, football, for example). The athletes in all those sports are bigger and faster, more agile, able to do more than those in yester-year. In fact, most football and basketball players from yesteryear couldn't make today's teams. Even many of the stars. That's how much the physicality in sports has changed. Even in 30 years. How many of the undefeated Miami Dolphins of 72 could make it in the NFL today?

I look up Scott Kazmir and discover that he is 20 years old, 6' tall and weighs 170 pounds. In 2004 such an individual has "small physical size." In 1950 such as individual was considered tall.

http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/...no_less/110829

I think if the AI has the sophistication to read something like the WAR stats (i.e., measure runs gained on offense versus runs lost on defense, not just individual against individual, but by INFIELD COMBINATION, or even TEAM COMBINATION), we might be good to go in all eras, or fictional leagues, whatever the desired emphasis by the OOTP player.

[Curtis]

Originally Posted by Vogon Poet

If we divide the above by 4, we get...

0.50*1B+0.75*2B+1.00*3B+1.25*HR+0.25*BB+0.25*HBP

Compare that to a standard linear weights equation:

0.47*1B+0.80*2B+1.02*3B+1.40*HR+0.33*BB+0.33*HBP

Not bad. The single and triple is dead-on, doubles and homers are too low, and walks are way too low. You can get around this by weighting OBP heavier. 1.75*OBP+SLG works pretty well.

OBP+ISO gives you this, on the other hand:

1B+2*2B+3*3B+4*HR+BB+HBP

Dividing by 2 and we get:

0.50*1B+1.00*2B+1.50*3B+2.00*HR+0.50*BB+0.50*HBP

The weighting is all wrong. The walk is treated as equal to a single which is obviously wrong (the walk should be roughly two-thirds of a single). And XBH are way too high.

Try dividing by 3. You get:
0.33*1B+0.67*2B+1.00*3B+1.33*HR+0.33*BB+0.33*HBP

Triples, walks and HBP are dead on, and homers are off by only 5%. Singles and doubles are well off.

All I can tell you is that my formula got me six regular season titles in six years, along with four consecutive WS appearances (one win), while playing against 7-11 other humans and 16-22 computer teams. My system seems to work much better over a long season than it does a short series. I never finished under 110 wins in the regular season, but went only 11-5 in post-season series, and the one WS I won, I really shouldn't've.

(Nomar beat the three time defending champions four times in seven games. In each of those games he alone accounted for more runs than the defending champs, and he either scored or drove in more than half of all runs we scored in the series. In a lot of ways it reminded me of the Pirates/Yankees WS from half a century ago.)

[Left-handed Badger]

Originally Posted by knockahoma

Well, I still have a couple of topic points that might keep us alive. And I do think it's an important discussion to have for OOTP.

Why haven't more teams in history turned to bats at the shortstop position? I know you guys enjoy baseball history, too. It's been interesting delving into it.

I found Bill James talking about a concept he "introduced", but one that seems to have already been practiced through out baseball history. Emphasis mine:



Bill had this interesting conversation on the matter in 05, emphasis mine. Notice Bill's ease when talking about replacing a 2B, or a 1B, but how his brow furrows when the shortstop position opens up:

The Baseball Analysts: Breakfast With Bill James (Part Two)



This is fascinating. It seems James' development of the Defensive spectrum is a direct response to the question so many fans have asked. Why not move Grich, or Schmidt, to shortstop and get some more bats in there?



A humble guy! :

Now, if Bill believed that the "absence of players at the right end of the spectrum", i.e., hitting shortstops, was due to bias in favor of tiny guys who can't hit, he should say so right here. But, that's not his answer.



It's like the ghost of 1974 talking! Why start your young guys off at SS in the minors if you think they'll just wind up at 2B, or 3B?




A look at Honus Wagner and the purported "hitting SS boom" of the early 20th century. Do the shorstops of that era disprove the truths of the Defensive Spectrum? Coming up

The only converted to SS guys I can think of in the last 50 years are Bill Russell (OF) and Eckstein (2B) at least to play regularly. Might be some I missed of course. Still tells you it isnt a "just slap somebody there" position.