Wednesday Royals Links: Sickels Loses His Verve, Royal Reflections Considers Shutting Down, Roster Talk

and think this guy is wrong…but I’m getting worried about the direction, just a tad. To grow off of an equation, or datum, that datum has to be in a known exact place. If you extrapolate and combine two equations that do not correctly value the player, how can you expect to get a more accurate look. It’s like saying you want a house at coordinates (5,15) and you have one system that will get you 4 to 6 in the x direction, a tool that will get you able to turn 85 to 95 degrees and then another system that will measure out between 13 and 20 in the y direction. You could end up in a WIDE variety of areas, with the variance growing with each step added.

Some of these statistics have to have HUGE standard deviations (especially defensive statistics). Yet I never here anyone talk about the validity of statistics through variance. You hear sample size a lot, in that someone with a small sample size’s advanced metrics cannot be looked into with much success. However, it is equally true (if not more so) that a player’s statistics with high std dev. can produce no conclusive results. (unless you believe the statistic to be absolutely correct, and therefore you can observe the actual player to be the one with a high std dev on his play)

Lots of stats are becoming the average of the average minus this average scaled to compare with the average player knowing that a certain percentage of plays should be in your zone. The certain parks/leagues are weighted to look more like the average. I think too much “fudging” is done. Isn’t the K going to look a lot more like a pitchers park this year because of our awful offense and a phenomenal pitcher?

And how volitle are these statistics? What would a scorekeepers error vs. hit do to a fielding metric, if anything. What would an in-zone/out of zone decision on a flyball do to an outfielders metric? If this is a highly volitile statistic, it should have less credibility.

And Brian Greene were able to turn it into a sharply produced NOVA special.

Now if we only knew the question.

and I understand your point. I was just putting out there that being aware of the different metrics (off/def/pitch) is important — not necessarily b/c you believe every last one of them or because you can use them (since in many cases you don’t have the data), but because they can provide insight about different ways to look at players’ strengths and weaknesses. For instance, how do you value someone’s arm vs someone’s range? I don’t know, but that’s the kind of question that evolving metrics may help elucidate and could be useful to a coach/scout.

Used as a forecasting method? Because of the wide variety of competition “effectiveness” is going to vary widely. Therefore scouting combines can break down players to hopefully objective raw numbers.

Wouldn’t pitch f/x be awesome on players eligible for the MLB draft? Get all the top guys together like the NFL scouting combine and have them pitch while being monitored.

I never know if Chrissy’s outfit of the day has been recently updated or not, it’s always spring

..to sweeten the deal.

X amount of money per venue, Already had a certain number of venues ready to go….ect.