Can we get to the bottom of the Royals front office's use of sabermetrics (or lack thereof)?

by benfunke on Jul 16, 2009 12:18 PM EDT

The running assumption (at least in my mind) is that the Royals front office doesn't employ any true sabermetric specialists, despite Dayton Moore's suggestion to the contrary. Moore said in the recent interview that he has two analysts on staff, but who are they?

Is one Jin Wong, who had no sabermetric credentials before joining the Royals? Is one Kyle Vena -- batboy, turned clubhouse intern, turned front-office intern?

Can we put out a call to those on the inside to tell us just who, if anyone, is working on sabermetrics for the front office? And if they do have analysts contributing, is the front office in tune with this analysis -- because it sure seems like they aren't? Can Poz or Mellinger or the like just go ask (or maybe they already know)?

We know about and fuss about all the other management positions -- hitting coach, pitching coach, even third base coach -- but we know almost nothing about one of the most important front office positions. Let's find out, and at least then we can know where the team stands and what we as fans are up against.

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The Royals could have Tom Tango and Voros McCracken

And it wouldn’t matter so long as Dayton Moore doesn’t use the information given to him.

Relive Royals History at royalsretro.blogspot.com

by RoyalsRetro on Jul 16, 2009 12:20 PM EDT reply actions 3 recs

rec'd rec'd a million times rec'd

I'm not a sabermetrician, but I do play one at Driveline Mechanics.

Can't get enough of me? Check out my Twitter feed.

by Matt Klaassen on Jul 16, 2009 3:26 PM EDT up reply actions

I believe Kyle

has a law degree from UMKC, works mostly with contracts and arbitration stuff.

Pretty cool story….he went to Blue Valley NW, never played ball

by gilmeche55 on Jul 16, 2009 12:33 PM EDT reply actions

Sounds a lot like me in all honesty - law degree, never played ball

Even went to the same HS. Fun fact – I applied for a position with the Royals as a data entry clerk in college. Didn’t get the job. It could be me having my advice ignored by the general manager.

Relive Royals History at royalsretro.blogspot.com

by RoyalsRetro on Jul 16, 2009 12:37 PM EDT up reply actions

"data entry clerk" = sabormetrickigian

I'm not a sabermetrician, but I do play one at Driveline Mechanics.

Can't get enough of me? Check out my Twitter feed.

by Matt Klaassen on Jul 16, 2009 3:21 PM EDT up reply actions

keeping track of RBI's and HR's, i assume

"The life of a (Royals) fan must be lived forward but can only be understood backward" -- Kierkegaard (more or less)

by benfunke on Jul 16, 2009 5:09 PM EDT up reply actions

...and batting average

If all else fails, stop using all else

by ksuroyals on Jul 17, 2009 12:43 AM EDT up reply actions

The Royals seem to do good in arbitration cases.

Arbitration cases use the secret Elias formula to evaluate players.
Elias formula uses such great stats as Wins and RBI’s in its formula.
The Royals have figured out the Elias formula.
The Royals use the Elias formula to evaluate talent.

Jeff Zimmerman - Protecting the world from RBI's and Wins from my mom's guest house.

by Jeff Zimmerman on Jul 16, 2009 12:45 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs

I knew that name sounded familiar.

I believe he had a couple siblings at BVNW as well.

Royals, NBA, Golden Hurricane, Hawkeyes, Chiefs, and KU basketball, in that order.

by Rowyal on Jul 16, 2009 1:51 PM EDT up reply actions

I wonder if appeasing Glass is part of the problem

There seams to be moves that make no sense, but Dayton can go into his office and say we got this guy that hit 30 HRs (Jacobs and Guillen) or can 95MPH (Farnsworth) to help the team. Dayton’s best move would be to wait til the end of the FA signing period and pick up scraps/releases. If you have extra cash then, everyone is looking to trade their highly paid players and spend the cash on these.

Also, another theory I have is that when Dayton got hired there was no sabs at all with Allard. he told them to get him up to date on stats. The problem is that it took them 2 years to caught up and they are looking a 2005-2006 data for Betancourt, Guillen, Farnsworth, Freel etc.

Jeff Zimmerman - Protecting the world from RBI's and Wins from my mom's guest house.

by Jeff Zimmerman on Jul 16, 2009 12:36 PM EDT reply actions

I think Wong came over before Dayton

I'm not a sabermetrician, but I do play one at Driveline Mechanics.

Can't get enough of me? Check out my Twitter feed.

by Matt Klaassen on Jul 16, 2009 3:26 PM EDT up reply actions

and from some earlier conversation/comments, i remember Wong being our best guess as to who would be involved with the sabermetrics (besides the consultant, Mat Olkin). but i don’t see him being a stats guy, he’s got a background in contracts/finance.

"The life of a (Royals) fan must be lived forward but can only be understood backward" -- Kierkegaard (more or less)

by benfunke on Jul 16, 2009 5:14 PM EDT up reply actions

I guess what bothers the most is that they keep adding OBP sinkholes.

This team can’t score runs and they can’t seem to figure out why that is. It seems like the sabermetric front has really gone the way of valuing players, the front office clearly doesn’t have that figured out.

The OBP problem is what confuses me the most.

If you were thinking, you wouldn't have thought that.

http://sonsofsamhorn.net/index.php?showforum=129

by Warden11 on Jul 16, 2009 12:37 PM EDT reply actions

It looks to me like they only dable in statistical analysis and do so very badly

The only thing worse than a front office doing no statistical analysis is doing a front office doing poor statistical analysis. I think that’s what they are doing. Wong is probably crunching batting average trends and trying to measure “clutch” skills and the like. So basically the Royals are merely dipping their toe into the statistical waters and doing it all wrong.

The immoderate moderator

by Scott McKinney on Jul 16, 2009 1:12 PM EDT reply actions

Trey luvs the personal matchups

Teahen is 8 for 16 against this guy! Woot!

Relive Royals History at royalsretro.blogspot.com

by RoyalsRetro on Jul 16, 2009 1:16 PM EDT up reply actions

You don't think there is anything to personal matchups?

Most of the time I would agree, but sometimes there is just that one guy. You know what’s coming, he can’t fool you. As an example, IIRC, Teahen is really good against Buehrle. Lefty-lefty shouldn’t work out that way, he’s faced him more than 20 times, you’d think it would even out, but it hasn’t. So I do think there are hitters that just get certain pitchers. Most of it is random noise though.

by AxDxMx on Jul 16, 2009 11:47 PM EDT up reply actions

20 PAs isn't a good sample size, either

I'm not a sabermetrician, but I do play one at Driveline Mechanics.

Can't get enough of me? Check out my Twitter feed.

by Matt Klaassen on Jul 16, 2009 11:49 PM EDT up reply actions

No, it's not, but in individual matchups, you aren't going to get hundreds of PAs against a pitcher

And I was wrong. It was 54 PAs off of Buehrle, .440/.481/.640

If it wasn’t 3 in the morning I might try to figure out, how many standard deviations that is away from his career averages against other lefties which is .257/.313/.396 in 755 PAs (Buehrle accounts for over 7% of those PAs and gives up .262/.303/.418 to lefties). Or just figure out the probability of this happening by accident.

Teahen OWNS Buehrle.

Cliff Lee too for that matter (.364/.391/.682 in 46 PAs, Lee gives up .269/.312/.409 to lefties).

So Teahen has just been really lucky against those 2?

I just don’t think some of it can be dismissed so easily. 2 explanations I guess, there is something mechanical about Teahen’s swing that fits these 2 pitchers, or Teahen has some kind of psychological edge (subconscious recognition of tipped pitches, confidence, cheating, etc). I just made myself a little sad with part 2 of the argument there.

by AxDxMx on Jul 17, 2009 4:07 AM EDT up reply actions

In the third chapter of The Book the authors go over inidivuidual matchups and test to see if they have any predictive value (I’m sure this has been done elsewhere). They find that neither 25-30 PAs of one pitcher/hitter owning his opposite numbers has any predictive value, and even 60 highly targeted PAs don’t. PLayers end up regressing to their average expected skills. Their conclusion (and I’m not smart enough to reconstruct it all briefly here) is best summed up with this:

When a particular batter has faced a particular pitcher two hundred or three hundred times, come back and we’ll talk. Maybe.

I'm not a sabermetrician, but I do play one at Driveline Mechanics.

Can't get enough of me? Check out my Twitter feed.

by Matt Klaassen on Jul 17, 2009 10:02 AM EDT up reply actions

Doesn't ever happen obviously

You can’t necessarily prove it one way or the other, but i will defer to The Book. I need to order that and read it.

by AxDxMx on Jul 17, 2009 11:30 PM EDT up reply actions

mmmm.....

“Wong is probably crunching batting average trends and trying to measure ‘clutch’ skills and the like.”

That’s just ridiculous. You can say they’re not keeping pace with the state of the art (almost certainly true), or that they’re not even keeping pace with the run of the mill internet community (sounds crazy on its face, but there’s certainly a case to be made), but you hurt your own credibility when you suggest that professional statisticians are willfully moving in the stupidest possible direction.

by kcdc1 on Jul 16, 2009 4:35 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs

Your 2009 Kansas City Royals: Willfully Moving in the Stupidest Possible Direction (tm)

by Soria's Unibrow on Jul 16, 2009 6:05 PM EDT up reply actions

"but you hurt your own credibility when you suggest that professional statisticians are willfully moving in the stupidest possible direction."

Does it really seem like they are moving in the smartest possible direction though?

If all else fails, stop using all else

by ksuroyals on Jul 17, 2009 12:47 AM EDT up reply actions

Moore does not even understand that he should not say that he does not understand.

He also does not understand value of major leauge players, and does not understand opportunity cost. What I don’t understand is why he is the General Manager when he can not understand economics or statistics.

Go Royals!

by BabyBlues on Jul 16, 2009 2:32 PM EDT reply actions

YOU just don't understand.

Dayton saying that “I don’t even understand the defensive metrics, to tell you the truth” (or however he said it) is BRAGGING. He is bragging and PROUD of saying that.

Fuck This Team. Period.

The General Theory of Royaltivity

by kabrink on Jul 16, 2009 8:10 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs

Mat Olkin

Is still named in this article dated June 1, 2009 as a consultant for both the Royals and the Mariners.

Cf. this fanshot from last November.

I'm not a sabermetrician, but I do play one at Driveline Mechanics.

Can't get enough of me? Check out my Twitter feed.

by Matt Klaassen on Jul 16, 2009 3:25 PM EDT reply actions

well, at least we are aware of the issue 8 months ago.

"The life of a (Royals) fan must be lived forward but can only be understood backward" -- Kierkegaard (more or less)

by benfunke on Jul 16, 2009 5:16 PM EDT up reply actions

'cept

The Mariners undoubtedly dumped that contract when they decided to build their own internal department (including Tango right?). So, when Dayton saw that the Ms dumped Olkin (DM didn’t understand why or bother to investigate the reasons behind it) he decided the Ms must think he sucks and so the Royals dumped him too. But, the Royals didn’t replace him with anything.

Fuck This Team. Period.

The General Theory of Royaltivity

by kabrink on Jul 16, 2009 8:14 PM EDT up reply actions

All I really want is for

Mellinger (at worst) or Poz (at best) to go ask someone in the FO, “OK, so who do you have working on the stats?” and then report it to us. At least then we can research the person’s credentials, critique the judgments that are made, etc the same way we would with a hitting/pitching/baserunning coach (or medical trainer).

I also thought that maybe someone here already had an idea who those people were, but if our mainstays (RR, d_f, Tucson, NYR, etc.) don’t know, then it seems like no fan knows. Though maybe someone with a bit more of an inside connection, Minda or loyal2’sdad?

"The life of a (Royals) fan must be lived forward but can only be understood backward" -- Kierkegaard (more or less)

by benfunke on Jul 16, 2009 5:22 PM EDT reply actions