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Monday, December 18, 2006

Running Birds


Matt Phillip over at Fungoes wrote a nice piece on the Cardinals running game over the years based on EqSBR data that I sent him. Take a peek.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I made this comment over at THT. Interested in your thoughts.

"I like Dan Fox's work a lot, but this method definitely overstates the cost of SBAs in general (as I think he would agree). First, I'm pretty sure a player/team is debited for each pickoff, but doesn't get credit when an errant PO throw allows a runner to advance. I think you have to credit runners with the value of that advancement if you're going to punish them for getting caught -- if they hadn't drawn the throw, the error couldn't have happened.

More importantly, a significant number of CS are blown hit and runs, which are different from pure SBAs. So this is picking up some of the cost of blown H&Rs (CS), but not capturing the benefit of successful H&Rs in terms of extra bases gained and GDPs avoided. (The Cardinals, for example, had the 12th best DP/GB ratio last year -- admittedly a crude measure of avoiding DPs). To get a better measure of the impact of SBAs, we would need to omit the CS (and SBs) in cases where the batter swung at the pitch. Or, find a way to add the positive value of successful H&Rs.

How these adjustments would impact the rating of Encarnacion specifically, I have no idea...."

Dan Agonistes said...

I certainly agree with your comment in both regards. I don't take into consideration errant throws but should (that's been on my list).

Hit and runs are more difficult to determine although I suppose one could look at stolen base attempts where the hitter swung on the pitch and then take some percentage of those. Thanks