A lot of great stuff this week online from a baseball stat and sabermetric perspective. I don’t want to take too much time building it up, so I will just get right into the details.

The Great Clutch Project

I mentioned this a few weeks ago, concerning Tom Tango asking fans to join him in a battle in the clutch debate where he will pit his “good” hitters against the fans’ choice for “clutch hitters” to see if there really is a way people can see and perceive clutch. The stats he is using are his Leverage Index scores and wOBA (weighted on base average), so if you are not familiar with those, read up on them. You can find the summary of the project here, and Fangraphs will be running the season tally here for 2008.

Never thought I would see a Ginger/Mary-Anne and clutch/non-clutch analogy used, but I guess nothing should surprise me anymore.

Hardball Times OF Arms

John Walsh of THT reveals his new defensive metric to measure OF arms, something that has always been missing and that is sorely needed in the defense discussion that has escalated in the past few years. You can search by year on their stats page here, and there is a lengthy description of the methodology at this link. The stats for the OF arms goes back to 2004.

Richard Justice’s war with the stat guys

Local sports writer for the Houston Chronicle has the stats world up in arms from his reaction to a post by Mitchel Lichtman on Justice’s blog piece this week about bunting and how it is always a bad idea. Apparently, Justice has long been a target of some bloggers for his inability to look past emotion and personal feelings and look at the numbers. And the blogosphere just can’t get enough of all of this. And all of this from a couple of sentences about how bunting is always bad in the situation with which the Astros were faced.

For the record, I fall somewhere in the middle of what Lichtman and what Keith Law propose (you need to read all the threads to understand where that is). A manager has to make a yes/no decision in that moment, but his job should be to be as prepared as he possibly can with all the available data that will help him make an educated decision. The ones that are too close to call? Well, that’s why a managers are paid the way they are.

Lineup Analysis

This is not a new tool by any means, but something I have been messing around with this week that I recommend. Baseball Musings hosts a page that has a Lineup Analyzer put together by Morong, Arneson, and Armburst that allows you to put in any nine players with their OBP and SLG and it will construct the ideal lineup based on those numbers, and their calculated comparison and analysis of the two.

Here is the page, use it on your favorite team for this year or any year.

While I sort through all of the National League transactions since October and also wait for a few pending AL things to be completed, I thought I would quickly throw out a new round of websites that I recommend whether you just have some time to kill, research to do, or random things you want to look up.

Most of these I have found linked on other sites or through perusing other pages, so I will reference those when applicable.

Baseboogle - Google for baseball? Exactly. Baseboogle is a search engine run by Google that uses a special set of selection criteria and filters searches through a vast list of baseball related websites and documents. My search for simply “clutch” yields more than five pages of links to articles ranging from who is the most clutch, to dismissing clutch hitting, to clutch projects, to “is David Ortiz a clutch hitter?” Also helpful is a list on the right side of the page that lists all of the sites that Baseboogle pulls from when it searches. You can recommend sites to be added so that the directory of pages it searches from becomes more extensive. You can find this site at www.baseboogle.com. I found this site from a post on The Book blog by Tom Tango.
Cot’s Baseball Contracts - I can’t tell you how many times I have wanted exactly this type of information at my fingertips. This site has a page for each team and lists all players, the manager and what contracts they have, what their yearly salary is, what their bonuses are, no-trade clause or not, etc. This is also a great resource for arbitration eligible players, 2008 and 2009 free agents, transaction lists, and other interesting baseball links. Just a great site to look up your favorite team, player, or whatever. You can find it at www.mlbcontracts.blogspot.com/. This site is always used in Pizza Cutter’s sabermetric year in review series for each MLB team currently running on MVN’s Statistically Speaking.

Sabermetric Studies - A useful and well-organized archive of all things having to do with sabermetric analysis. There are pages for each area of discussion and research such as fielding, run estimation, DIPS, clutch hitting, and many more. Each page has multiple links to any study or analysis that has been done on the subject, and the most helpful part is that he mentions which of the articles are available only to those who have subscriptions to respective sites. Also available on this site is a very comprehensive list of sabermetric and other baseball reference sites. This can be found at www.sabermetricstudies.com. This link also came from a Tom Tango post on The Book blog.

Beyond the Box Score - A site much like this one, Beyond the Box Score is a comprehensive look at stats, teams, players, and trends going a little bit deeper than the average analysis. The articles and analysis are always concise, easy to understand, and extremely helpful for understanding teams and their trends. RJ Anderson, the author, also blogs for the Devil Rays and was formerly at Deadspin.com. BTBS also has one of the more extensive blogrolls and link lists that you can find anywhere. You can find this site at www.beyondtheboxscore.com.

There you go, just some more filler for you in your free time desperately counting down the days until baseball season starts again.

If I hear one more person talk or write about how clutch-hitting ability or the perception of clutch hitting is the most debated and written about statistical anomaly in baseball, I might start going a little crazy. So much has been written and discussed on this topic over the past 20 years that it is getting somewhat ridiculous these days. There is the side that believes certain hitters, whether they are typically good or not-so-good hitters, can somehow routinely deliver in the most crucial of circumstances, and then there is the side that believes it is just about perception, and the people who are commonly referred to as “clutch hitters” are only defined as such because they have performed well a few times maybe on the biggest of stages and they stick out in our minds as having this unique ability.

But finally, two different sites are asking people to put their money where their mouths are when it comes to clutchiness (only one involves actual money, but still…).

The famous sabermetric blogger Tom Tango, aka Tangotiger, is challenging readers, clutch advocates, and the like to a simple contest to see if clutch hitting really can be predicted or continued after it is recognized. In this post on his website, Tango challenges the following:

He wants fans/readers/critics or whomever to pick one guy from “their team” who they feel is the most clutch, assuming they believe that sort of thing. The one guy they would want to have come up in the most crucial, pressure-filled situations and then nominate them for their side. Tango will then pick who he thinks is the best hitter from that same team to compare at the end of the season.

Recognizing that some teams will have one player represent both sides (i.e. the Cardinals with Albert Pujols), the thought is that if that happens he will use the next most requested clutch hitter and who he perceives to be the next best hitter on the team. And this will go on down the line until there is a difference in who the readers pick and who Tango picks. Once this is done, you will be comparing 30 “clutch” hitters to 30 good hitters and Tango is predicting that his hitters will come out on top in the clutch situations.

How will he measure it? A while back Tango invented a measurement tool for in-game situations called Leverage Index. Essentially, it takes each moment in a game, a batter’s at-bat or a pitcher’s confrontation with that hitter, and places it in the context of the game. As the game gets closer to the end, the LI goes up for the hitter or pitcher because you have less time to put your team ahead, tie the score, hold the lead, etc. At the beginning of a game when there is no score, there may be an LI of 1.0 or lower per situation. A batter coming up in the 9th with a tie score could have an LI of 10.0 or so. So games that are blowouts by the 8th or 9th inning would have low LI scores for each situation, but tied games that progress into the 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th innings would have increasingly higher LI scores.

Tango proposes that we compare the plate appearances with the 50 highest LI scores for each player that is chosen for the project. So you would end up comparing 1500 plate appearances for the “clutch” side to 1500 plate appearances for the “Tango” side. At the end of the season, he will look at the aggregated lines of the two groups to see which performed better in their most crucial situations.

He believes if the players actually chosen as clutch hitters do perform better in those situations, there will be some sort of statistical significance separating the two groups. Not to spoil the surprise, but he is not expecting that separation to be there.

In a related story inspired by Tango’s challenge, blogger Phil Birnbaum has laid out his own challenge to clutch advocates in this post on his website. His project is a little more risky on his part and actually involves money changing hands. The details look like this:

Birnbaum is not proposing to compare clutch hitters to other good hitters, but rather perceived clutch hitters to proposed choke hitters - those who absolutely fail in pressure situations. He challenges readers to pick any number of clutch and choke hitters; one vs. one, 30 vs. 30, 100 vs. 100, whatever. And he has finally settled on odds for the bet - 2:3. So he is proposing to every bettor whose clutch players out-perform the choke hitters, he will pay them $10, but if your choke hitters out-perform the clutch hitters, you have to pay Birnbaum $15. The reason he does not offer 1:1 odds is because he states that if you accept those odds, you are basically saying whether or not a player is clutch or not is essentially “a coin flip”, and this bet is supposed to attract those who believe clutch hitting exists.

If you accept this bet, you can define the players, you can define the amount of money, you can define the metric used to measure the players (as long as it revolves around batting average, such as BA in close and late, or LIPS), and you can control your sample size. Hitters suggested with obviously different skill levels (someone wanted to use Ortiz vs. Kevin Millar) will be judged on clutch differentials from seasonal numbers and not overall performance in the defined situations.

What he wants to see is if there is anyone out there who believes with a there is at least a 60% probability (hence the 2:3 odds) that you can predict hitters who will perform extraordinarily in the clutch. Some have accepted and some have declined, but there has definitely been some action on this post. You can also make the bet for charity, with the loser paying the amount to the charity of the winner’s choice. Email Phil Birnbaum from his website, http://sabermetricresearch.blogspot.com/, if you want to take part.

As you know, clutch is a very tricky thing. It has been shown to have patterns across seasons but not necessarily across careers, and every new study that comes out seems to contradict or challenge the rest. And you have so many competing ways to measure it, that it all gets lost in the shuffle anyway. Perhaps, at least for 2008, these two projects will use some real-life examples to put some of the issue to rest. Until it all comes up again next year, that is….

From time to time I recommend some sites on here or places to visit in your free time or anything I find interesting having to do with baseball and statistics. Lately, I was made aware of something that is not only interesting and informative, but unequivocally helpful if you are ever looking to do research or do any kind of writing or blogging about baseball stats like on this dumb site.

In something that Rob Neyer wrote a couple of weeks back, he mentioned www.baseball1.com and The Lahman Database. This free database, created by Sean Lahman, is available to any average baseball fan who is interested in the stats and records they have compiled. The database lists every batting and pitching stat you could ever want for every player from 1871-2006. The best thing about it is that it is free to download and use as long as you have Microsoft Access on your computer.

Once downloaded, you are given 21 separate databases, all with a specific area of interest. Some of my favorites are the Hall of Fame database which relates how many votes every eligible player received in every eligible year they had on the HOF ballot, whether they were inducted, and whom it was that inducted them; the Franchise database which lists every team that has ever existed in any of the professional baseball leagues; the salaries database, which reveals the salary of every player for every year since 1985; and the postseason databases, which show all batting and pitching statistics from every postseason series since 1884.

On the baseball1.com site, there is quite a wealth of information as well, so I suggest you take some time to troll around those pages as well (ever wanted to know about the Mexican League Franchise Histories? It’s there). On his site, you will see that there is an option to donate some money to his research and ongoing projects (including this database). Please give a little bit if you can, and help keep this valuable research tool free for any baseball fan who wants it.

Lahman also has a number of football projects as well that you can access through links on his site. Take a look at all of it when you get a chance. And download the database - it will keep you busy for hours.

In my never-ending attempt to fill all of your free time by suggesting more and more unusual baseball stat sites, I have found one that is sure to suck you in for an extended period of time.

If you love homeruns, then www.hittrackeronline.com is the site for you. Never before has so much information about current and past homeruns existed in one place.

This site keeps numbers on every homerun hit this season and each season since 2005. Some of the more interesting things you can find here are the longest and shortest homeruns of the season, who has the longest average distance of their homeruns this year (a surprise to me, by the way - it’s a Dodger as of today), who leads the league in No Doubt homeruns, Just Enough homeruns, and Lucky homeruns. And all of this can be sorted by each team or each league.

You can also get into more detailed information such as the bat speed of all homeruns, the elevated angle of each homerun, and the apex of each homerun. So all of you physics nerds/baseball fans, this is definitely the site for you.

And then, once you are done sorting through all of that, you can switch from Hitters to Pitchers to see who has done all of the same things, given up the most HR, given up the most No Doubt HR, who has given up the longest HRs this year, etc.

Truly, this site is a time-waster to the power of 10. But one that I love.

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Coming in a couple of days: Looking at the debate concerning Adam Everett. Is he currently worth leaving in the lineup, or should he be benched?

While all of you eagerly and impatiently wait for whatever wisdom I will force on you next, I recommend you check out Sports Illustrated’s second annual Ultimate Fantasy Draft, put together by Nate Silver of Baseball Prospectus.

The idea is pretty elementary.  Take every player at every level of professional baseball and completely start over. If you took away contracts, past history, and MLB service time, how would teams build through a draft? All you would have left as determining factors would be age, position, and predictions of future performance. There are some interesting additions and omissions if you compare the list to last year….and some of your best players today are simply left off the top 50 altogether because of their age. Also included is an honorable mention list and a list of dropoffs from 2006.

Interesting water cooler or bar stool conversation, if you ask me.

Up next in this space, an analysis of the 3,000 hit club (and one player who is about to join).

If you are interested in knowing the down and dirty details of your favorite team’s performance this year, I suggest you take a look at a new website, www.madstatter.com. If stats such as scoring distribution, runs for and against, scoring margins, and the like are your thing, then this is the site for you.

For example, in just a few clicks, I can tell you the Astros averaged 4.13 runs per game in April and are only scoring 3.50 runs so far in May. At least that’s better than the Dodgers or White Sox, who are both under 2 runs a game.  Also, the Astros average 6 runs per game on Thursday and Saturday, but no more than 4.25 on any other day of the week. Hmmm, and today they scored 13. Interesting.

Also, check out the scoring distribution page where you can see what scores have come up the most often this season. I wonder why the most runs scored in one game (one team scored 16, another team scored 15) so far this season have both been by visiting teams.

All of this data is sortable and easy to read. You can also capture the html for a graphic of your favorite team for your own website that automatically updates stats like record, winning percentage, runs for, and runs against.

I have also linked it to the blogroll, so check it out when you get a chance. You’ll enjoy it.

My all-time favorite player from yesteryear is Ted Williams. Teddy Ballgame. The Splendid Splinter. And while I can sit here and spout out stats all day long: .406, 521, 1839, no one helped me to understand Ted Williams the man and who he was than an incredible author named David Halberstam.

Pulitzer prize-winning author David Halberstam died today, April 23, 2007, in a car wreck at the age of 73 in the San Francisco area.

Halberstam was world-famous for his coverage of political issues, the Vietnam War, and sports. He was the author of at least 20 books, not including his countless articles, periodicals, and work at papers such as The Tennessean and The New York Times. His books about baseball include Summer of ‘49, October 1964, and The Teammates: A Portrait of Friendship. The Teammates is one of my top five all-time favorite books - it recounts a 60-year friendship between Ted Williams, Johnny Pesky, Bobby Doerr, and Dom Dimaggio; all teammates on the Red Sox. Halberstam rides along as the others take a car ride to go see Williams who is dying at his Florida home. What follows is an epic story about friendship, loyalty and growing old together. While they were united by baseball early in their lives, it was that game that kept them together over the course of happiness, loss, and inevitably, death.

While sportswriting became his passion later in his career, Halberstam became famous for writing definitive accounts of the Kennedy Administration, the 1960’s, and the Vietnam War. The Best and the Brightest is considered the book that changed many American’s minds about the direction of Vietnam and how a victory seemed unlikely and that the best strategy was to leave the country. He would eventually win the Pulitzer at the age of 30 for his reporting on the Vietnam War.

One appropriate line from his bio reads:

“Perhaps no other writer has so faithfully chronicled the profound changes in America in the second half of the 20th Century and the challenges of the 21st Century.”

I strongly urge you read his books. And start with the three on baseball if you so desire. You can purchase them here, here, and here.

I can guarantee you will not be disappointed.

Have you ever read Halberstam? Tell me what you think about him.

One of my favorite places to kill some time when the wife lets me is a site that has been around for a while called Fan Graphs. Fan Graphs is stocked full with stats and projections and blog entries and searchable tools, but the best part about the site is the statistic they utilize called Win Probability. They use Win Probability to track every MLB game live, so you can go see at any point of a given game what the two team’s win and loss probabilities are in real time.

As I type this on April 12, there is one game going on between the Indians and Angels, and it is scoreless in the 4th inning. The Angels have two men on, so their Win Probability, being the away team, is roughly 60%. If they score, their probability will increase and continue to increase as the game goes on if they are in the lead. If they fail to score, the probability will go back down to about 50%.

Another feature shows the players with the highest Win Probability contribution and the players with the lowest for any given game. So basically, you have a statistical list of who helped most and who helped least in the team’s pursuit of a win that day.

Here is an example. Think back to that fateful night on April 2 when the Astros faced the Pirates. The Astros had a 2-1 lead with two outs in the ninth; needless to say, the Astros’ Win Probability was very high. How high? Here is the graph:

As you can see, the Nate McClouth homerun in the 8th only improved the Pirates’ chances of winning to about 20%. When Xavier Nady came up in the 9th inning with two outs, the Astros’ Win Probability stood at about 95%. Interestingly, after the homerun, Houston’s WP still stood at 60% - this statistic factors in game situations like inning, home team, lineup, etc. Of course, when Jason Bay homered, it dropped to about 10%.

Another interesting caveat to all graphs is the Leverage Index at the bottom where they have graphed higher bars on the bar charts for more critical situations in the game.

Here are the highs a lows for Astros’ player’s WPA for that same game:

PLAYER WPA
Roy Oswalt .373
Luke Scott .137
Dan Wheeler .059

Chad Qualls -.403
Carlos Lee -.212
Brad Lidge -.188

So, actually two players contributed more to the loss than Lidge. Qualls, obviously, for giving up the 10th inning homer, and Lee. Remember him going 0-4 and grounding into two double plays?

Again, I urge you to proceed with caution, because this site is highly addictive. As always, if there are any graphs you would like to me to look up for certain games (back through 2002), I would be happy to do it. Just leave me a comment.