In a book from Bill James I read some of a while back, he mentioned how Biggio had that one year in which he was a phenomal at the little things, but that there really wasn't a stat that calculated one's little things production. I decided to give it a crack since Everett is having a great little things year. Little Things Production=1000*(SB+HBP+0.5*SAC Bunt+0.5*SAC Fly-GIDP-1.5*CS)/TPA SS with 50+TPA and positive little things. Everett 51 Isturis 35 Rollins 22 Furcal 21 Wilson 16 Councel 9 Biggio 1997 93 Pierre 2003 54 (due to his SB#'s, I figured he's probably one of top small ballers today)
I thought Biggio's best season was 98...when he had 50 doubles and 50 steals in the same season. wow. By the way...let's get this guy out of the lineup, immediately. He's killing us out there!!!
Well, James was talking about a year when he did things that people tend not to recognize, unlike 50 doubles/50 steals. Two major things I remember James point out was that Biggio was hit-by-pitch numerous times, which boosted his OBP, and did not ground into a single DP, which saved the Astros many outs.
I'm with ya, meh. Just giving my opinion. Yeah, James is a HUGE Biggio proponent. Basically arguing that the little things don't get enough credit, and that Biggio has done those things as well any player.
"The best active player in baseball at the turn of the decade? Craig Biggio. As only he can, James systematically proves that the Astros second baseman does so many things well other than hit home runs that he has consistently outplayed even Ken Griffey Jr. at his peak. And as only he can, James shows little patience with any detractors: "Craig Biggio is better. The fact that nobody seems to realize this ... well, that's not my problem." http://espn.go.com/mlb/s/2001/1114/1277966.html
i've never seen a player more closely tied to his team's success than craig biggio. never. not in my lifetime. when he got on base and scored, his team won...period. when he didn't, they lost. it was really that simple, and the numbers bore that out.
Bullpens with crappy pitchers won't work no matter what kind of system you put in. Yes, the Sox pen was bad last year. But the countless bullpens that have sucked big time elsewhere certainly never subscribed to the idea of a closer by commitee. Surely you wouldn't say those pens sucked because they HAD closers, right? The whole closer-by-commitee idea tries to get more out of the pen than traditional usage. Of course, since it was only done for one year by one team, you can't really say whether it was effective or not, because there's not much for comparison purposes.
i didnt know williamson, timlin, mendoza, and embree all sucked before last year. you can make a point about embree never being amazing like in 2002, but then you can see that when the pressure is off him like this year he is performing well. they had good talent in their pen so saying they didn't just isn't correct.
No, they weren't bad before. But relief pitchers are notorious for having big discrepancies in their pitching performances from year to year unless you're REALLY GOOD, like a Wagner, Gagne, Dotel, Rivera, etc. There's a reason why the Rangers screw themselves by signing relief pitchers to multi-million, mulit-year contracts, only to see them implode. From what I understand, the commitee idea is only to optimize pitcher usage. That is, put the best pitcher in situation where you least want runs to score. So that you would put a mediocre pitcher with a 3 run lead at the bottom of the 9th, a save-but-not-that-critical situation, while perhaps put in your best pitcher when you're tied in the 8th, hoping he'd go 2 innings. Perhaps it does screw up some psyche. But it's quite hard to tell with one year of experiment. I can't say right now it's a good idea, but I doubt there's enough to say for sure either way.
dont forget that baseball now is testing for steroid use, I would guess that will account for a lot of relief pitchers not being quite so good anymore
Not many Bill James bashers, out there. He's the pioneer of the popular sabermetric movement - but generally, even the old school (idiots ) guys tend to like James, because his love for the *total* game obvious transcends any geeky stat guy obsession. Good to know we've got one of the few people who dislike the guy here. When you have as many ideas as James, some will turn out to not work. Other times, you'll be making the best of a bad situation, as with Boston's closing situation last year. Teams that don't have elite closers... aren't going to suddenly find one, whether it's playing the hot guy... or designating one guy to be "the man" when his merit doesn't really suggest it's appropriate. Pretty obvious, really.
Incidentally, the idea of a "small ball" rating stat is interesting. Here's my issue: The stat, itself, is meaningless except as a ranking tool, since it doesn't seem to have a direct correllation to expected run production. In other words... it's great to see that Everett's great at the small ball stuff... but what exactly does that mean for the team? Ideally, you'd have a formula similar to runs created to analyze the contributions that are derived solely through small ball. This might just be a part of existing formulas, like VORP or Runs Created. So, I suppose neat... but what is it good for?
A small ball stat ideally would be a correction factor to OPS. An empirical function of small-ball corrected OPS vs run scored could tell how much a player's small ball is helping the club score runs.
For instance, Everett's OPS of .681 would have .051 added to show his adjusted OPS to be .732. My stat is raw and would need tweaking before it could be a true correction factor.
Boston went into the season last year trying to use the closer by committee. It's not as if they could not have gone out and got a closer like they did this year when they got Foulke, who is dominant, after they saw it was a complete failure. They got the hitters they wanted last year and they got the bullpen they wanted. When I say they I should really be saying James and not really implying Epstein had some hand in things. Don't get me wrong here...I think James is great because he looks at stuff that is normally overlooked. That is why Boston has the great hitting now. Everything Boston has done since James got there has his signature all over it. Anyhow...back to the topic of the thread...Biggio To say he was simply a smallball type player I think is silly. He was a great player and hitter during that period. The guy hit nearly 150 doubles and nearly 60 hrs in 3 years from 1997-1999. Yes he did many of the little things well but Bagwell was simply better during that 3 year stretch for both of those players. He hit better with no one on base and got on base more often with no one on base and still stole a ton of bases during that stretch too. I dunno...just my opinion.
Yeah, but I think my problem is that it's too arbitrary. Besides, I know that RC and ERP already take into account, at a minimum, sacrfices and SBs. Those formulas, while not perfect, are quite excellent at run prediction. If you want to see how much small ball is a factor in an indivdual's performance, compare a "simple" Runs Created formula to one of the more complex ones (that takes into account stuff like SBs and sacrifices). I sort of think the tools to determine run productivity of small ball already exist - at least to the extent that you're looking at it, in less arbitrary ways. I'm coming off too harsh though, since I do after all think it's an interesting #.
