OT: What we can learn from the Royals

2323

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I've long talked about the 80s representing a different style of play that contrasted what became the steroid era. Thè Royal are the first team to truly redact the steroid era and have successfully exposed flaw in saber metrics along the way. Here is a quick thumbnail of what the Royals have re-taught us:

- it's ok to bunt, especially if you have the players to do it
- productive outs are better than vacuous outs, namely strike outs. This is a big way the Royals are an 80s throwback.
- speed helps defense and doesn't slump...and Lorenzo Cain is boss
- the value of a great bullpen might be > than a #2 starter
- diversity in offense > than scoring the most runs or hitting the most home runs
- in a sport that consists mostly of guys making outs, the Royals are putting on center stage, it's about how you make outs on offense and get outs on defense just as much as it's about avoiding outs (vv saber metrics).
- extrapolating range based on data is faulty. Cain went 8/15 and his defense probably impacted the series more than his offense
 

beckdawg

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I've long talked about the 80s representing a different style of play that contrasted what became the steroid era. Thè Royal are the first team to truly redact the steroid era and have successfully exposed flaw in saber metrics along the way. Here is a quick thumbnail of what the Royals have re-taught us:

- it's ok to bunt, especially if you have the players to do it
- productive outs are better than vacuous outs, namely strike outs. This is a big way the Royals are an 80s throwback.
- speed helps defense and doesn't slump...and Lorenzo Cain is boss
- the value of a great bullpen might be > than a #2 starter
- diversity in offense > than scoring the most runs or hitting the most home runs
- in a sport that consists mostly of guys making outs, the Royals are putting on center stage, it's about how you make outs on offense and get outs on defense just as much as it's about avoiding outs (vv saber metrics).
- extrapolating range based on data is faulty. Cain went 8/15 and his defense probably impacted the series more than his offense

It's not that the royals found a flaw in the 90's/2000's. They never changed. If you read articles about their front office they were often criticized as never having moved on from 80's baseball. So, now that run scoring is reduced more to that style it shouldn't be that much of a surprise that they are performing better.

Also, I don't agree with your apparent view of sabermetrics. They have never said all bunting was bad. The biggest issue was that bunting had a time and a place and it was used far too often. It essentially became a case of win probability. If you have someone on second base and a person good at bunting the metrics say bunting is fine. If a pitcher is up then again it's fine. Additionally, I'm not sure where you get the idea that saber is against defense. In particular, both baseball ref and fangraphs have been attacked because of their placement of defense in WAR. People roundly criticized Barney's "true value" based on his defense and no offense. Heyward often gets similar criticism this year though he did have a better offensive season than Barney. With regard to Cain I'm not sure what you're talking about because he had a 20.4 UZR/150 this year which is astronomically good.

What's funny is I'm data inclined person and I've been saying basically what you have here as things the cubs should be trying to accomplish. I feel like they have built a team with far too many heart of the order hitters and no diversity. Defensively they are pretty suspect as well.

http://www.chicagonow.com/cubs-den/...ubs-may-soon-see-royals-like-results-by-2016/

That article covers the royals well in my opinion.
 

brett05

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My only beef...isn't scoring the most runs always important?
 

beckdawg

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My only beef...isn't scoring the most runs always important?

That's one way of putting it. I'd say run differential is the more important aspect. Sure you can run into sequencing issues where you have huge wins and huge losses but typically if you out score your opponent you're going to win. Simply put, if you have a guy who creates 5 runs and prevents 3 over a 10 game set and compare him to someone who creates 6 and prevents 1 clearly the first guy is more "valuable" despite creating fewer runs. It's why I'm big on a trade for someone like Heyward.
 

brett05

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I missed that. I thought it was to a single game....my bad
 

beckdawg

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I missed that. I thought it was to a single game....my bad

The concept also works on a single game scale but it's harder to save a defensive run on a game to game basis because there are fewer opportunities. Typically speaking, offense is viewed as "more" valuable by stats guys because you have more chances but that's not to say defense isn't important.

Fangarphs just put out an article about the royals which is well written on this topic in particular.
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/defense-needed-the-royals/
 

Shawon0Meter

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Don't we need to see sustained success to really learn anything? We've seen all sorts of stats carry a team for this short amount of time.
 

brett05

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The concept also works on a single game scale but it's harder to save a defensive run on a game to game basis because there are fewer opportunities. Typically speaking, offense is viewed as "more" valuable by stats guys because you have more chances but that's not to say defense isn't important.

Fangarphs just put out an article about the royals which is well written on this topic in particular.
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/defense-needed-the-royals/
If you score the most than you always win the game.
 

SilenceS

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There is more then one way to skin a cat. Its just hard for people to understand that.
 

beckdawg

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There is more then one way to skin a cat. Its just hard for people to understand that.

Honestly, you're better off setting your own trend rather than following someone else's. The very concept of undervalued players comes because the general consensus is that teams value x and pay more for it. It's why OBP has become increasingly expensive on the FA market where it once was a value. Soon it probably will be defense based on the royal's success and then will flow into something new and then we'll be back around again in a decade or two. If there's one thing I do appreciate about this front office it is that they seem to get this. Everyone else talks about building their prospects predominantly through pitching and they go the opposite because they feel it's undervalued. They have found an undervalued market in Feldman types the past several years...etc.
 

2323

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It's not that the royals found a flaw in the 90's/2000's. They never changed. If you read articles about their front office they were often criticized as never having moved on from 80's baseball. So, now that run scoring is reduced more to that style it shouldn't be that much of a surprise that they are performing better.

Also, I don't agree with your apparent view of sabermetrics. They have never said all bunting was bad. The biggest issue was that bunting had a time and a place and it was used far too often. It essentially became a case of win probability. If you have someone on second base and a person good at bunting the metrics say bunting is fine. If a pitcher is up then again it's fine. Additionally, I'm not sure where you get the idea that saber is against defense. In particular, both baseball ref and fangraphs have been attacked because of their placement of defense in WAR. People roundly criticized Barney's "true value" based on his defense and no offense. Heyward often gets similar criticism this year though he did have a better offensive season than Barney. With regard to Cain I'm not sure what you're talking about because he had a 20.4 UZR/150 this year which is astronomically good.

What's funny is I'm data inclined person and I've been saying basically what you have here as things the cubs should be trying to accomplish. I feel like they have built a team with far too many heart of the order hitters and no diversity. Defensively they are pretty suspect as well.

http://www.chicagonow.com/cubs-den/...ubs-may-soon-see-royals-like-results-by-2016/

That article covers the royals well in my opinion.

Tell me if I'm wrong but isn't scoring down even compared to the 80s? There was less reliance on home runs and also less tolerance for strikeouts. Stolen bases and productive outs were more prominent. Baseball has been in no man's land. Home runs have gone down but the strike outs haven't so much. So yeah. You're completely wrong about this
 

2323

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The concept also works on a single game scale but it's harder to save a defensive run on a game to game basis because there are fewer opportunities. Typically speaking, offense is viewed as "more" valuable by stats guys because you have more chances but that's not to say defense isn't important.

Fangarphs just put out an article about the royals which is well written on this topic in particular.
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/defense-needed-the-royals/

How is the defense saving a run being quantified? Another flaw with what your saying, aside from legitimately quantifying this, is that "more difficult" is relative. If the average outfielder is well below the defense Cain provides and your generalization is based on some homogenization driven by an idea of an average player, your point becomes moot. As a generalization, it applies to the average player and not the outliers.
 

beckdawg

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Tell me if I'm wrong but isn't scoring down even compared to the 80s? There was less reliance on home runs and also less tolerance for strikeouts. Stolen bases and productive outs were more prominent. Baseball has been in no man's land. Home runs have gone down but the strike outs haven't so much. So yeah. You're completely wrong about this

You're wrong. See Runs/G column

http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/bat.shtml

Perhaps you can say it's low for even those standards but it's still within range of those seasons.
 

beckdawg

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How is the defense saving a run being quantified? Another flaw with what your saying, aside from legitimately quantifying this, is that "more difficult" is relative. If the average outfielder is well below the defense Cain provides and your generalization is based on some homogenization driven by an idea of an average player, your point becomes moot. As a generalization, it applies to the average player and not the outliers.

I put more in quotes for a reason. The exact value isn't something you can boil down to the n-th degree at this point because they simply haven't focused enough on it. The simple fact of the matter is that comparative to offense, putting numbers to defense is hard. No one in the stats community is saying it's prefect. However, casting them as someone who doesn't notice defense is comical as they are the ones in large part pushing the idea of defense having huge value. It was one of the reasons they pushed for Trout over Miggy in that debate.

As for comparing it to average, how else would you recommend they do it? Batting average is comparative vs an average player or it has little context. If you say someone is a .300 hitter but don't have the context for what league average is then how do you know that is good? What if it's some extreme hitters league like the PCL where high averages are more common? As I said before, measuring defense is hard because how do you quantify what's a good play and what's a routine play? What's routine for Cain may be extraordinary for some terrible fielding outfielder. Is there perhaps some issue with comparing the difference between say the top 2 players? Sure. That's still hard to quantify. But I really think your issues with it are pretty trivial.
 

JP Hochbaum

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Don't we need to see sustained success to really learn anything? We've seen all sorts of stats carry a team for this short amount of time.

Exactly. Last years Cardinal insane batting average with runners in scoring position comes to mind.
 

2323

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I put more in quotes for a reason. The exact value isn't something you can boil down to the n-th degree at this point because they simply haven't focused enough on it. The simple fact of the matter is that comparative to offense, putting numbers to defense is hard. No one in the stats community is saying it's prefect. However, casting them as someone who doesn't notice defense is comical as they are the ones in large part pushing the idea of defense having huge value. It was one of the reasons they pushed for Trout over Miggy in that debate.

As for comparing it to average, how else would you recommend they do it? Batting average is comparative vs an average player or it has little context. If you say someone is a .300 hitter but don't have the context for what league average is then how do you know that is good? What if it's some extreme hitters league like the PCL where high averages are more common? As I said before, measuring defense is hard because how do you quantify what's a good play and what's a routine play? What's routine for Cain may be extraordinary for some terrible fielding outfielder. Is there perhaps some issue with comparing the difference between say the top 2 players? Sure. That's still hard to quantify. But I really think your issues with it are pretty trivial.

What qualifies you as a member of the stats community? Moreover, what qualifies you to speak on everyone's behalf?
 

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