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Post by taftreign on Nov 26, 2013 17:05:05 GMT -5
Not top 10 prospect related but it is Baseball Prospectus related. Not sure where it best fit otherwise. Still I thought this article was an interesting read. www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=22309I like the idea of valuing the core of a roster. I do see some flaws in this early conceptualization as inherent in the Red Sox ranking. If the idea is to judge long term franchise value, which it does for the most part, there has to be a component that considers valuing young major league ready prospects. Clearly Boston was hurt by the impending free agents but not compensated for the expected value of their in house replacements more than what they have already contributed to the season the year prior on a limited time basis. Thoughts?
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steveofbradenton
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Watching Spring Training, the FCL, and the Florida State League
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Post by steveofbradenton on Nov 26, 2013 20:06:55 GMT -5
That was a great read. Shocking to see where the Sox are ranked, but with that criteria, not surprising. I'm sure with Bogey, Middlebrooks, and Bradley contributing, hopefully, a lot next season, our ranking would improve dramatically. His added emphasis on having a couple of pitchers being part of the ranking will hopefully be handled by guys like Buchholtz and Doubront. Young, multiple year controlled talent.....I like seeing a team scrutinized in that way. No surprise who is at the top.
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Post by docman on Nov 26, 2013 22:02:21 GMT -5
No surprise who is at the bottom, either. That's what I didn't like about Theo. He tried doing things the Yankee way instead of being patient with the kids. The Sox still have to thank the Dodgers for getting them out of that mess.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Nov 26, 2013 22:43:01 GMT -5
Not a huge fan of this analysis for a one-year sample. For example, for the Sox, somehow the only guys who register as "core" players are Pedroia (yup), Victorino (I can see this), and Nava (kind of ludicrous to me given that he wasn't even a full-time starter). Meanwhile, Buchholz isn't a "core" player because he was hurt, Ellsbury isn't a "core" player because his team control happens to be up, and for reasons I can't figure out, Lester isn't a "core" player. In other words, the system penalizes a team for having a "core" group that came up a few seasons ago and hasn't relinquished its spots to younger players yet.
Show me a multi-year sample, and maybe this would tell us something.
Also, as for the Cubs, they're low on this because they sucked this year and fielded a bunch of guys to keep seats warm for their insane crop of minor leaguers.
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Post by patrmac04 on Nov 27, 2013 1:06:50 GMT -5
I sensed that the author wanted this new stat he invented to be able to prove something and was pushing for it, but it didn't come across that way. I feel where he is shooting for, but it is not getting there. He stated that this was a way to quantify a core of a team and he did so. Much like any theory it has it's holes.
One flaw I could see is that he didn't differentiate between home grown prospects and free agents. He gave the same weight to a player you were paying 30 mil for as 500k and ignored the business side. Budgets certainly play a role in keeping a core together for a cash strapped team like Tampa.
Of course, I had my own view of the stats and had my own take away. This might be useful if incorporated the strength of a minor league system as well as budget to predict success or sustainability. Since it does not, what it shows me is that the data is off it's intended mark.
If it shows anything, it is that he might have quantified that the Sox actually did win a World Series while statistically in a bridge year.
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Post by Oregon Norm on Nov 27, 2013 1:19:38 GMT -5
At the end of next season, it's well within the realm of possibility that the Sox are fielding Vazquez, Middlebrooks, Bogaerts, one or more of Hassan/Brentz and Bradley, and winning a few games to boot. That's to go along with what will be one, perhaps two young starters, say Workman and Ranaudo (or fill in your favorite here) on the roster. Don't know about the core, but that's a hell of a periphery.
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Post by James Dunne on Nov 27, 2013 10:07:21 GMT -5
That's more theory than analysis. He basically invents a methodology (one that isn't totally clear or intuitive), sees which players fit within it... and then what? Does a team with a better "core" have a better chance of winning long-term? By this method the 2004 Red Sox wouldn't have had much of a core beyond Manny Ramirez and I guess Curt Schilling, but they won the World Series, 95 games the next year, and the 2007 World Series. The 2008 Yankees wouldn't have had a core beyond Robinson Cano, but that was part of why they won the next year - they had the money to pick up Sabathia and Teixeira. It also doesn't really seem to have much to do with how good a team does at developing its own players - like Chris mentioned, Buchholz and Lester aren't mentioned, and neither are Doubront and Tazawa.
I don't mean to sound homerish here either. Any method that says the Brewers have a better core than the Royals has missed.
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Post by greatscottcooper on Nov 27, 2013 10:53:00 GMT -5
One of my biggest problems with this analysis is it does not distinguish team control between a rookie and a free agent. To me, that is severely miscalculating a teams ability to make future moves to improve it's roster. Correct me if I'm wrong but are they basically saying that a 3 WAR player who is a rookie is weighed the same as a 3 WAR player who just signed a 17/M per year deal for 5-6 years? Because at the end of the day the team who has a rookie who provides that type of value can use that 16.5 million dollars on other positions. So yes, maybe Jacoby Ellsbury can't be counted on in this methodology because he is a free agent (fair enough) and likely destined to sign elsewhere (again fair enough) but even if JBJ has half the WAR that Ellsbury does the team still has the ability to spend that money elsewhere to improve the roster. To be fair however, if Players like JBJ, and Xander Bogaerts look like studs at the end of next year we very likely could shoot up those rankings. I understand that prospects can go bust and perhaps its a bit irresponsible to just assume you have a strong young core because you have a strong young farm.....but you can't just discredit that as well.
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Post by brianthetaoist on Nov 27, 2013 13:11:57 GMT -5
So, to sum up, it's good to have the bulk of your contributions come from young players you have control over for a long time at a reasonable salary.
That article's a lot of methodology to say something so obvious.
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danr
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Post by danr on Nov 27, 2013 14:01:02 GMT -5
I didn't find this piece to be very useful. Maybe the problem is his definition of "core." Maybe it is because there seems little correlation between team performance over time and the core rankings. Without a correlation, this analysis really has no meaning.
The most obvious examples of the problem with this analysis are the Red Sox and the Yankees.
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Post by wcsoxfan on Nov 27, 2013 14:10:44 GMT -5
When I clicked on this thread I thought I was going to learn a new ab-workout routine. Very disappointed.
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Post by okin15 on Nov 27, 2013 16:55:37 GMT -5
The question he doesn't ask is "what does a good core do for you?" Is he trying to say a good core means winning now? Or winning later? The first answer is obviously "not necessarily, see Sox, Red.
The second answer could very well be "NO!" Just look at the Yanks from a few years back, or the Sox from last 2011 and tell me how many "core wins" they had. I think he is defining core wrong, discounting old age too lightly, and ignoring previous tenure to the detriment of the definition of core (see first point).
In the end, his stat tells us nothing about the core of a team, how a team played, or how it is likely to play going forward... sooooo... that's basically not helpful.
ADD: his conclusion does give you one advantage of knowing about a team's core, but really, you could have known that just by looking at a 40-man roster page for 60 seconds.
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Post by James Dunne on Nov 27, 2013 17:38:12 GMT -5
Good point on the 2011 Sox. Under his methodology, they would've done extremely well. Pedroia, Ellsbury, Gonzalez, Lester, Beckett, and Buchholz would have all been considered core players.
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Post by moonstone2 on Nov 28, 2013 14:11:09 GMT -5
I know what you guys are thinking. It's that jerk again . Didn't we get rid of him? I have lurked for a while and read some very interesting commentary. However this is the first thread in which I have felt the need to comment. I did read the article and found it very interesting. I do think that the concepts discussed in the article are being misinterpreted in this thread. Basically a team can drive future victories in three different ways. #1 Acquiring talent from other organizations through free agency and trades. #2 Integrating talent to the major league team from the farm system. #3 The performance of core players. Of those three buckets the third is in my opinion the most important. The other two buckets require the team acquiring far more risk. Trades require either squeezing your farm system, or trading one of your core players. Free agency, often requires an evaluation superior to that of every other major league team based upon imperfect information. I think we can all agree that the most desirable players are young players coming off of strong seasons and under team control for a long time. Therefor having more of these players is certainly more desirable than having less of them. I also think that the comparison between the Cardinals and the Sox in the article leads to conclusions with which most would agree. The Red Sox won in 2013 based upon the improved value of several core players, and hitting on most of their free agents. To return to the World Series the Red Sox will have to successfully acquire two new players and replace two very key players with rookies. The Cardinals on the other hand, just had to sign one free agent and will depend on the continued production of some very good players most of which are at or below their peaks. I don't think it's a stretch to say that because of this, the Cardinals are a good bet to win more games over the next few years than the Red Sox are. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the Red Sox take a step back over the next couple of years as they integrate minor league players and find less success in the free agent market. Of course core wins isn't a perfect predictor of winning. The Red Sox have a very smart staff, more resources than most teams, and a strong cadre of minor league players in the pipeline. Further as mentioned, core players aren't risk less. They can get injured and/or have poor seasons. I do think that 2013 core wins will end up correlating pretty well with winning percentages over the next few years and have the highest Rsquared of the three variables mentioned. I think of core wins as the base of a house. You can build a great house on a poor foundation, and a terrible house on a great foundation, however you are more likely to build a great house with a great foundation. A Happy Thanksgiving to all.
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Post by rjp313jr on Nov 28, 2013 16:14:35 GMT -5
Moon, welcome back to posting. Your greater point is fine, but those 3 things are not the only things that derive wins. According to this methodology, Buchholz and Doubront aren't core players. Neither is Lester who I get isn't signed longterm, but is part of the team and has been for a while.
The methodology used has little impact on what happens next year so regardless if you are correct about the Cardinals vs Red Sox the reasoning has little to nothing to do with the Core value this article is trying so hard to make meaning of. Most of the same players who won the WS will still be on next years team.
One can only assume the "core" he speaks of is supposed to have more of an impact years from now. The issue with this is it can't be used as any type of predictor unless it's in conjunction with a lot of other factors. Such as payroll flexibility, farm system impact, noncore players potential to develop to core players (ie workman, Bogaerts, WMB, JBjr, taz and doubront)
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Post by moonstone2 on Nov 28, 2013 19:52:12 GMT -5
According to the article a core player is defined as any player who contributed positive value to the team in 2013. By that definition, all three players were indeed core players. They just didn't contribute as many core wins to the team as other players.
To the overall point I think you are getting at, yes, a team can obviously drive wins through the improvement of players already under control coming off of down seasons. It's just a dicier proposition than a young player coming off a strong major league season. To illustrate the point, which player would you rather have in your organization today? Justin Verlander, who is coming off of a very strong full season, or Clay Buccholtz who is coming off of a strong half season. I think most would prefer Verlander.
Let's say we were to build a model to predict winning percentages over the next three to five seasons. There is no one factor that would explain most or all of the variance in the outcomes. As I mentioned, payroll flexibility and the state of the farm system would certainly be factors in that model. But I don't think you could argue that they would be bigger factors than core wins.
If you are so inclined and have some time on your hands you can back test this. Calculate core wins for the 30 teams three and five years ago and then calculate each team's winning percentage over that time. I would bet that you Core Wins would come up as a statistically significant variable and would have a decent Rsquared. Maybe even the largest Rsquared of any variable that you could try.
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Post by rjp313jr on Nov 29, 2013 1:01:10 GMT -5
The Red Sox had 0 core pitchers so you're misinterpreting the definition of core.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Nov 29, 2013 1:41:12 GMT -5
According to the article a core player is defined as any player who contributed positive value to the team in 2013. Strike one. Might want to re-read the article.
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Post by moonstone2 on Nov 29, 2013 16:50:14 GMT -5
The Red Sox had 0 core pitchers so you're misinterpreting the definition of core. I think I am mixing up core contributors and core players. All players with positive WAR are core contributors, but only players with five or more Core Wins are considered Core Players. It's worth noting that had FWAR been used as opposed to BP WAR both Doubront and Buccholz would have been Core Players had FWAR been used with over seven core wins a piece. Lester of course would not be and neither would Nava with 4 Core Wins. The real question is if a team's rank in Core Roster Strength in a given year is a statistically significant variable in predicting a five year winning percentage. My belief is that it is, and that it would also have the highest p value of any set of possible variables. It would take some work but it's an answerable question. RJP would you mind helping me gather the data?
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Post by rjp313jr on Nov 29, 2013 18:36:08 GMT -5
What would you be looking to gather? I think we'd need to agree on what he's defining as a core player/contributor. It's more then just WAR, there is age and service time so when going back to gather said data it needs to be closely defined.
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Post by moonstone2 on Nov 29, 2013 21:58:50 GMT -5
What would you be looking to gather? I think we'd need to agree on what he's defining as a core player/contributor. It's more then just WAR, there is age and service time so when going back to gather said data it needs to be closely defined. We would need to calculate each team's core roster strength ranking from the 2008 season and see if that was a statistically significant factor in predicting team performance for the 2009-2013 season. To do that you need the following. FWAR for each player who has a WAR greater than 0 in 2008. Each players baseball age (age on 7/15/2008) Seasons of team control as of 4/1/08. Adjusted Winning Percentage for 2009-2013. Example, Albert Pujols had an FWAR of 8.6 in 2008, was 28 years old on 7/15/2008, and had 4 seasons of team control left as of 4/1/08. So his Core Wins were (8.6)*(4/2)*(27/28)=16.6 Core Wins he was a Core Player that year.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Nov 30, 2013 4:16:51 GMT -5
The first big flaw in this study is that it uses WARP for pitchers. Using fWAR would be better, but still bad.
Folks, an important heads-up: WARP and fWAR for pitchers are complete and utter shit. They are based on strong DIPS theory, which is wrong. No, you can't take a pitcher's BABIP at face value because it is hugely influenced by other factors. But assuming instead that all pitchers have league-average BABIP is beyond stupid.
B-ref goes to an extensive process to estimate a pitcher's true value based on known defensive support and park factors. We don't regress anything else that varies from year-to-year towards the mean when calculating WAR, so there's no argument for regressing BABIP towards the mean once you've adjusted for team defense and park factors. Adjusting it all the way to the mean? Oh, please.
We can calculate a pitcher's "actual WAR," which is to say a descriptive WAR that includes all of his luck (including the bad luck of excessive errors made behind him, which b-Ref attempts to adjust for), by taking WPA and adding .0095 * IP to convert from an average-centered metric to one based on replacement level. Here is a table showing Clay Buchholz's actual descriptive WAR (a), bWAR, fWAR, and WARP ("P").
Year a b f P 2007 0.8 1.0 0.8 0.3 2008 -1.8 -1.2 0.8 0.2 2009 1.7 2.0 1.1 1.0 2010 4.8 5.6 3.5 1.8 2011 1.9 1.9 1.1 0.8 2012 2.5 0.9 1.5 -0.1 2013 3.9 4.3 3.2 1.8 Tot 13.8 14.5 12.0 5.8 You can see that WARP is just ludicrous, based as it is on BP's currently deeply flawed FRA ("fair ERA").
Compared to that, fWAR doesn't look bad, but its total absolute error over the years is 7.1 wins, versus 4.0 for bWAR, and it misses Clay's actual luck-included total win value by 1.8 wins, versus 0.7 for bWAR. It's conceptually indefensible and not nearly as good as its rival for predicting Clay's actual value: normalized to Clay's average 130 IP per season, since 2009 it's been low by 0.9, 1.0, 1.2, 0.7, and 0.8 wins. I believe there's a definition of insanity that fits that.
Even missing half the season, Clay was a 9 Core Win Pitcher according to WPA, and a 10 Win pitcher by bWAR. That adds a core player, a core pitcher, and a net 4 core wins in the category that compares that to WARP.
BP's lousy defensive metrics rob Pedroia of 5 Core Wins. Add that and the above, and the Sox are 4, 1, and 27 in his three columns, not far off from the Rays 4, 1, 35.
A second flaw is in the way it tries to factor in the number of high-core-win players, by simply counting the number with 5 or more. If your theory is that having many high core-win players is important, then you do something like raise the core wins to some power, so that they are no longer counted linearly. Simply counting how many cross an arbitrary threshold makes no good sense.
Nor do I see a reason for including the difference between core wins and overall WARP. That seems to be a workaround to fix the previous flaw, only it probably ends up doing some double-counting.
I think the guy's basic ideas are good. They might be summarized as follows:
1) We should look at each player's WAR and make an adjustment for years of team control. 2) Because young players are cheaper and are generally improving rather than declining, we should make an age adjustment. 3) Once we make these two adjustments, it's likely that WAR is not valued linearly, so we should make a final adjustment that reflects that. 4) WAR from pitchers may well be a better predictor of long-term success than WAR from position players, so they ought to be considered separately in any model.
And the hypothesis is that this will help predict a team's long-term success. And we need to wonder whether we need to make this relative to its financial resources.
So the right way to do this would be to start with a team's long-term success as your dependent variable, that is, the thing you are trying to predict. I would then proceed with the (almost certainly incorrect) assumption that financial resources are not a factor, which is to say, they are already included because clubs like the Sox and Yankees have bought more of their core. So we're ignoring the ability of those teams to keep on replenishing the core with new free agents.
I'd gather my data by averaging bWAR and fWAR for position players, and using bWAR for pitchers.
I'd then try to find the correct factors for weighting team control years and age, and for the non-linearity of WAR. I would do that separately for pitchers and position players; you might find that they have different age or control factors or different degrees of non-linearity, not just that one should be weighted more than the other.
The goal is to derive the best possible model for predicting success in the next 5 years. What's "success"? I'd try all of regular season W/L, Pyth W/L, and second-order W/L as calculated by BP (hey, they do some things right!). It would be really interesting to see which one produced the best model -- and maybe the very best model would use some weighted combination. (Until we have WAR values that are correctly adjusted for strength of schedule, you probably want to leave that out of team success, alas.)
The resulting best model will almost certainly have the rich teams tending to outperform the poor ones. Now all you have to do is find the financial formula that best predicts that error. You'd probably start with just payroll, and then look at the remaining errors to see if there's a pattern.
Once you have the factor that accurately adjusts for financial resources, you have a very useful and informative model, and you may have just solved the long-standing non-linearity problem of WAR (one 6.0 WAR player is worth more than two 3.0 WAR players, because he fills up one less roster space).
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Post by moonstone2 on Nov 30, 2013 9:35:49 GMT -5
So far in this thread I don't see a lot of disagreement with the basic idea of the article. Having good young players, especially pitchers, under team control for a long time is likely a positive indicator of future team success. The player with the highest number of core wins in the majors in 2013 was Mike Trout. If most of us were to start a team tomorrow, and could pick any one player who would it be? I think Mike Trout.
I would also agree with the premise that already having a core in place is a far less risky endeavor than having to constantly replenish your core with free agents, and/or minor league players.
The question than becomes if having a strong core is a stronger leading indicator than financial resources, and/or the quality of the farm system. Additionally there is the question of how we objectively define a strong core.
I'd start with third order winning percentage rank over a five year period from 2009-2013 as my dependent variable. I'd then like to know if Core Roster strength as calculated by Judge is a statistically significant independent variable. You give some reasons why it might not be, but I'd like to see for myself. Eric can you do that since you likely already have a lot of this stuff in excel? If you need some help filling in the years under control, which I think you'd have to do manually, I can do that.
As to the conclusion of the article that has everyone in a tither. It's certainly true that the Red Sox are going to have to replace nearly 17 FWAR through the integration of minor league players and/or signing free agents. They only had one player under the age of 27 who contributed more than 1 FWAR.
If the Sox sign Hart and trade for Hannigan, will Bogarts, Bradley, Hannigan, and Hart give you 17 WAR? I don't think that's realistic.
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Post by p23w on Nov 30, 2013 14:34:38 GMT -5
I'll sit back and let Cherrington and his staff (with input from Farrell) decide what the core is and who the players will/should be. As a RS advocate i realized a long time ago that the fan has very little input into the roster. It's in the hands of professionals, WHO btw just experienced a true "lightening in a bottle" season and are now burdened with raised expectations. If Cherrington/Farrell and the team pull off a repeat of 2013, I will forego any and all criticism of this organization and relegate myself to bobble head status.
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Post by moonstone2 on Nov 30, 2013 16:01:57 GMT -5
I think part of my point is that this maybe very difficult to do and if the Red Sox can't do that in 2014 that's not necessarily a reason to criticize the management team. Last year the Red Sox hit on every free agent including a few risky ones. That's not going to happen every year.
The original idea of the Punto trade was to blow up the core and start fresh by integrating guys from the farm system. That didn't work out so well last year, but they will be starting to do that in 2014. If they have to take a step back or two while while they integrate young players that's fine by me.
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