Before Moneyball became a cultural catchphrase, sabermetrics was employed only by the geekiest of baseball fans. Post-Moneyball, you may be wondering if advanced metrics is overkill for the youth game and if not, to what extent is using sabermetrics in youth baseball helpful to your team and the youth game in general.
In this episode, I chat with Sam Miller, the editor-in-chief of Baseball Prospectus, one of the most widely respected sabermetric web sites, to tackle these intriguing issues and much more.
[Side note: this interview was recorded in early October when the MLB playoffs were still going, and when Grantland, which was referenced in this episode, was still in existence.]
In this episode, you'll learn:
- how Sam views Fangraphs
- Sam's estimated percentage of baseball fans who are interested in sabermetrics
- what Sam's favorite hitting and pitching stats are, and why
- whether the small sample size of the youth baseball season renders sabermetrics useless in youth baseball
- different ways in which you can improve your team—and your players' IQ
- where to draw the line in data analysis for youth baseball
- how to make stats even more useful to youth baseball than what current sabermetrics offer
- what to do with errors in youth baseball
- how to rank your pitchers
- what to do in lieu of MLB's PitchFX
- how to account for unusual offensive plays
- what to do with baserunning plays
- non-sabermetric things to teach catchers
- Sam's template for youth batting lineups
- how to evaluate the value of a youth baseball coach
- what you can track if you aren't the type who is inclined to crunch numbers
Links, resources and metrics mentioned in this episode:
- Baseball Prospectus
- Fangraphs
- Rob's 2012 Bleacher Report column on pitching sabermetrics
- Rob's 2012 Bleacher Report column on fielding sabermetrics
Weighted On Base Average formula:
where:
NIBB = non-intentional walk
HBP = hit by pitch
1B = single
RBOE = reach base on error
2B = double
3B = triple
HR = home run
PA = plate appearances (or, at-bats + sacrifice flies + HBP + walks)For greater reflection of outcomes, you may want to add this to the above numerator:
(0.75*OOH) + (0.75*OOE) - (1.2*GIDP)
where:
OOH = out on what should have been a hit (e.g., hit to RF but thrown out at 1B)
OOE = out on error (where batter didn't run hard to 1B and was out even though fielder made error)
GIDP = ground into double play (bump "1.2" to a higher value if your league's offensive environment is low-scoring)
Runs Created formula (I chose the more complicated formula but Wikipedia has some simpler formulas as well):
where:
H = hits
BB = walks
CS = caught stealing
HBP = hit by pitch
GIDP = ground into double play
TB = total bases
IBB = intentional walk
SH = sacrifice bunt
SF = sacrifice fly
SB = stolen base
AB = at-bats
Personally, I would also include double plays on fly balls in GIDP.
OPS formula:
OPS = OBP + SLG
where OBP = on-base percentage and SLG = slugging percentage. Breaking down even further:
where:
H = hits
BB = walks
HBP = hit by pitch
AB = at-bats
SF = sacrifice fly
TB = total bases
Note: one of the weaknesses of OPS is that it weights OBP and SLG equally, whereas sabermetricians tend to value OBP more. Sabermetricians like OPS+ better since it also factors park effects and compares to the league-average OBP and league-average SLG. It is difficult to obtain league-average info in youth baseball, so OPS+ can be ignored by nearly all youth baseball coaches.
Fielding Independent Pitching formula:
FIP = ((13*HR+3*BB-2*K)/IP) + 3.2
where 3.2 is a constant used to make the calculation resemble ERA (earned run average). Since there are normally not outfield fences in youth baseball for home runs, I would consider any seriously booming shot that no outfielder could have caught to be a home run. You can decide for yourself what constitutes a home run as long as the standard is consistent.
Strikeout percentage formula:
where K is strikeouts. See note below about "batters faced".
Walk percentage formula:
BB % = NIBB/batters faced
where NIBB is non-intentional walks. See note below about "batters faced".
Note: for purposes of "batters faced", if a relief pitcher comes in the middle of an at-bat, that relief pitcher is always responsible for that batter faced unless the batter is walked and the count when the reliever enters the game is 2-0, 2-1, 3-0, 3-1 or 3-2.
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