Comments on: All Aboard the Raul Ibanez Bandwagon http://www.baseballdailydigest.com/2009/05/07/all-aboard-the-raul-ibanez-bandwagon/ Covering America's Favorite Pastime Wed, 17 Mar 2010 03:08:12 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Brian Joseph http://www.baseballdailydigest.com/2009/05/07/all-aboard-the-raul-ibanez-bandwagon/comment-page-1/#comment-3629 Brian Joseph Thu, 07 May 2009 22:53:05 +0000 http://www.baseballdailydigest.com/blogs/2009/05/07/all-aboard-the-raul-ibanez-bandwagon/#comment-3629 ksw... what evidence do you have of Ibanez being streaky. In his splits, he typically has a down May but the rest are pretty consistent. Earlier in his career he went hitless for 8 games in '01, 7 games in '00 and 5 games in '95, '98 and '02. Pat the Bat was VERY streaky and typically took June off. He also posted hitless streaks of 5 or more in '07 with 6, in '08 with 5, in '07 with 5 twice, in '00, '03 and '06 with 5 also. I always like Pat Burrell... I thought they should resign him. I don't know if I'm as critical of the Ibanez move especially with what Burrell initially wanted. The economic bottoming out makes this deal look a lot more lopsided than it is but so far, Raul looks like an upgrade.<div class="comment-remix-meta"><a href="#" class="replyto" onclick="replyto('3629','Brian Joseph'); return false;">Reply</a> - <a href="#" class="quote" onclick="quote('3629','Brian Joseph','ksw... what evidence do you have of Ibanez being streaky. In his splits, he typically has a down May but the rest are pretty consistent. Earlier in his career he went hitless for 8 games in \'01, 7 games in \'00 and 5 games in \'95, \'98 and \'02.\r\n\r\nPat the Bat was VERY streaky and typically took June off. He also posted hitless streaks of 5 or more in \'07 with 6, in \'08 with 5, in \'07 with 5 twice, in \'00, \'03 and \'06 with 5 also. \r\n\r\nI always like Pat Burrell... I thought they should resign him. I don\'t know if I\'m as critical of the Ibanez move especially with what Burrell initially wanted. The economic bottoming out makes this deal look a lot more lopsided than it is but so far, Raul looks like an upgrade.'); return false;">Quote</a></div> ksw… what evidence do you have of Ibanez being streaky. In his splits, he typically has a down May but the rest are pretty consistent. Earlier in his career he went hitless for 8 games in ‘01, 7 games in ‘00 and 5 games in ‘95, ‘98 and ‘02.

Pat the Bat was VERY streaky and typically took June off. He also posted hitless streaks of 5 or more in ‘07 with 6, in ‘08 with 5, in ‘07 with 5 twice, in ‘00, ‘03 and ‘06 with 5 also.

I always like Pat Burrell… I thought they should resign him. I don’t know if I’m as critical of the Ibanez move especially with what Burrell initially wanted. The economic bottoming out makes this deal look a lot more lopsided than it is but so far, Raul looks like an upgrade.

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]]> By: Bill Baer http://www.baseballdailydigest.com/2009/05/07/all-aboard-the-raul-ibanez-bandwagon/comment-page-1/#comment-3626 Bill Baer Thu, 07 May 2009 17:19:31 +0000 http://www.baseballdailydigest.com/blogs/2009/05/07/all-aboard-the-raul-ibanez-bandwagon/#comment-3626 bsball, thanks for correcting me with the standard deviations. I probably should have pulled my stats notes out when I was writing that.<div class="comment-remix-meta"><a href="#" class="replyto" onclick="replyto('3626','Bill Baer'); return false;">Reply</a> - <a href="#" class="quote" onclick="quote('3626','Bill Baer','bsball, thanks for correcting me with the standard deviations. I probably should have pulled my stats notes out when I was writing that.'); return false;">Quote</a></div> bsball, thanks for correcting me with the standard deviations. I probably should have pulled my stats notes out when I was writing that.
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]]> By: bsball http://www.baseballdailydigest.com/2009/05/07/all-aboard-the-raul-ibanez-bandwagon/comment-page-1/#comment-3625 bsball Thu, 07 May 2009 16:20:11 +0000 http://www.baseballdailydigest.com/blogs/2009/05/07/all-aboard-the-raul-ibanez-bandwagon/#comment-3625 One more thought on statistics.

My read of your interpretation is that Ibanez’s defensive performance is so far above what you would expect from him that he can’t possibly continue to play this well. The sample is an extreme outlier and that indicates that it’s bad.

I think that’s not quite right. I would say that his performance this year is well within the range that you could expect for 1 month of games given that he’s a -4.45 talent fielder. If you looked at all of his UZRs by month you would expect about 20% of those to be at or above his April 2009 performance. Because there is so much variation when looking at results from short time periods you should put more faith in his 6 years of UZR data than you do in his last month’s performance.

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]]> By: bsball http://www.baseballdailydigest.com/2009/05/07/all-aboard-the-raul-ibanez-bandwagon/comment-page-1/#comment-3624 bsball Thu, 07 May 2009 15:57:08 +0000 http://www.baseballdailydigest.com/blogs/2009/05/07/all-aboard-the-raul-ibanez-bandwagon/#comment-3624 Nice article. Just a comment about using standard deviations. Ibanez's defensive performance to date is not as much of an outlier as you think. You should adjust the standard deviation in your analysis to reflect the sample size. In general the appropriate sample variation is proportional to the square root of the sample size. If the sample size for the 11.5 standard deviation is 150 games then you need to more than double that for a sample size of only 30 games. I think that puts Ibanez's performance at only about 1.4 std dev above his mean. So you would expect him to do this about 20% of the time for 1 month sample sizes, assuming his true talent is -4.45 and 11.5 is the right level of variation.<div class="comment-remix-meta"><a href="#" class="replyto" onclick="replyto('3624','bsball'); return false;">Reply</a> - <a href="#" class="quote" onclick="quote('3624','bsball','Nice article. Just a comment about using standard deviations. Ibanez\'s defensive performance to date is not as much of an outlier as you think. You should adjust the standard deviation in your analysis to reflect the sample size. In general the appropriate sample variation is proportional to the square root of the sample size. If the sample size for the 11.5 standard deviation is 150 games then you need to more than double that for a sample size of only 30 games. I think that puts Ibanez\'s performance at only about 1.4 std dev above his mean. So you would expect him to do this about 20% of the time for 1 month sample sizes, assuming his true talent is -4.45 and 11.5 is the right level of variation.'); return false;">Quote</a></div> Nice article. Just a comment about using standard deviations. Ibanez’s defensive performance to date is not as much of an outlier as you think. You should adjust the standard deviation in your analysis to reflect the sample size. In general the appropriate sample variation is proportional to the square root of the sample size. If the sample size for the 11.5 standard deviation is 150 games then you need to more than double that for a sample size of only 30 games. I think that puts Ibanez’s performance at only about 1.4 std dev above his mean. So you would expect him to do this about 20% of the time for 1 month sample sizes, assuming his true talent is -4.45 and 11.5 is the right level of variation.
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]]> By: kcw131 http://www.baseballdailydigest.com/2009/05/07/all-aboard-the-raul-ibanez-bandwagon/comment-page-1/#comment-3623 kcw131 Thu, 07 May 2009 13:28:23 +0000 http://www.baseballdailydigest.com/blogs/2009/05/07/all-aboard-the-raul-ibanez-bandwagon/#comment-3623 Excellent, excellent article. As a Philadelphian and a longtime Burrell apologist, I have taken a lot of heat from the Ibanez camp since his torrid start, to which I kept repeating, don't judge a three year deal after one month. Ibanez is streaky, and this is a streak. But your article was well-written, unbiased, and provided some real nice research. I'm forwarding it to many of my fellow Phillies fans.<div class="comment-remix-meta"><a href="#" class="replyto" onclick="replyto('3623','kcw131'); return false;">Reply</a> - <a href="#" class="quote" onclick="quote('3623','kcw131','Excellent, excellent article. As a Philadelphian and a longtime Burrell apologist, I have taken a lot of heat from the Ibanez camp since his torrid start, to which I kept repeating, don\'t judge a three year deal after one month. Ibanez is streaky, and this is a streak. But your article was well-written, unbiased, and provided some real nice research. I\'m forwarding it to many of my fellow Phillies fans.'); return false;">Quote</a></div> Excellent, excellent article. As a Philadelphian and a longtime Burrell apologist, I have taken a lot of heat from the Ibanez camp since his torrid start, to which I kept repeating, don’t judge a three year deal after one month. Ibanez is streaky, and this is a streak. But your article was well-written, unbiased, and provided some real nice research. I’m forwarding it to many of my fellow Phillies fans.
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]]> By: Brian Joseph http://www.baseballdailydigest.com/2009/05/07/all-aboard-the-raul-ibanez-bandwagon/comment-page-1/#comment-3622 Brian Joseph Thu, 07 May 2009 09:43:52 +0000 http://www.baseballdailydigest.com/blogs/2009/05/07/all-aboard-the-raul-ibanez-bandwagon/#comment-3622 I think the standing rule in baseball analysis is "my way is better and you're an idiot." And it goes both ways... there's a lot of disrespect in the study of baseball. I'd run down a few examples but I'm saving them for future articles. Dewan's fielding information is better than anything I've seen on fielding and I like it because it is based on Video Scouts reviewing video of every play. It's sort of that hybrid of Sabermetrics and scouting you talk about. I got nailed to the wall when the Phillies signed Ibanez for saying his defense was an upgrade to Burrell but even in my wildest dreams did I expect Raul to be this good in the field. I can't imagine him keeping it up. Next thing you're going to tell me is that Brad Lidge can go an entire season without blowing a save... Yeah right! As for the draft pick, the Phillies gave up a selection that has a 50% chance of making it to the Majors and about a 15% chance of being a major contributor. As for the money, if the move kept the Phillies from signing additional help, I agree... but it's hard to know if that's the case because they'll never admit such. I love the Jeff Francoeur quote... I bet he was irritated to learn that OBP and even OPS has been popping up on ESPN telecasts... the horror! :)<div class="comment-remix-meta"><a href="#" class="replyto" onclick="replyto('3622','Brian Joseph'); return false;">Reply</a> - <a href="#" class="quote" onclick="quote('3622','Brian Joseph','I think the standing rule in baseball analysis is \"my way is better and you\'re an idiot.\" And it goes both ways... there\'s a lot of disrespect in the study of baseball. I\'d run down a few examples but I\'m saving them for future articles.\r\n\r\nDewan\'s fielding information is better than anything I\'ve seen on fielding and I like it because it is based on Video Scouts reviewing video of every play. It\'s sort of that hybrid of Sabermetrics and scouting you talk about. \r\n\r\nI got nailed to the wall when the Phillies signed Ibanez for saying his defense was an upgrade to Burrell but even in my wildest dreams did I expect Raul to be this good in the field. I can\'t imagine him keeping it up. Next thing you\'re going to tell me is that Brad Lidge can go an entire season without blowing a save... Yeah right!\r\n\r\nAs for the draft pick, the Phillies gave up a selection that has a 50% chance of making it to the Majors and about a 15% chance of being a major contributor.\r\n\r\nAs for the money, if the move kept the Phillies from signing additional help, I agree... but it\'s hard to know if that\'s the case because they\'ll never admit such. \r\n\r\nI love the Jeff Francoeur quote... I bet he was irritated to learn that OBP and even OPS has been popping up on ESPN telecasts... the horror! :)'); return false;">Quote</a></div> I think the standing rule in baseball analysis is “my way is better and you’re an idiot.” And it goes both ways… there’s a lot of disrespect in the study of baseball. I’d run down a few examples but I’m saving them for future articles.

Dewan’s fielding information is better than anything I’ve seen on fielding and I like it because it is based on Video Scouts reviewing video of every play. It’s sort of that hybrid of Sabermetrics and scouting you talk about.

I got nailed to the wall when the Phillies signed Ibanez for saying his defense was an upgrade to Burrell but even in my wildest dreams did I expect Raul to be this good in the field. I can’t imagine him keeping it up. Next thing you’re going to tell me is that Brad Lidge can go an entire season without blowing a save… Yeah right!

As for the draft pick, the Phillies gave up a selection that has a 50% chance of making it to the Majors and about a 15% chance of being a major contributor.

As for the money, if the move kept the Phillies from signing additional help, I agree… but it’s hard to know if that’s the case because they’ll never admit such.

I love the Jeff Francoeur quote… I bet he was irritated to learn that OBP and even OPS has been popping up on ESPN telecasts… the horror! :)

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