The Baseball Graphs Blog
Monday, November 29, 2004
Save-Equivalent Innings
Tangotiger invented a statistic called Leveraged Index (or Crucial Innings), which basically rates the relative importance of a pitcher’s innings. Tango developed his Leveraged Index by assessing the potential game impact of each relief pitcher’s appearance using a method called Win Expectancy, which requires play-by-play data.
Bill James attempted to estimate the same thing in Win Shares, but historical play-by-play data doesn’t exist. So Bill created an estimate by weighting the number of save opportunities and holds that each pitcher had. He called them Save-Equivalent Innings.
I’ve actually changed Bill’s formula a bit, because I think the original formula overstated the impact of saves and holds in today’s save-happy environment. The specific formula I use is 1.5 times Saves plus .5 times Holds. This creates Save-Equivalent Innings. I then go ahead and create my own Index via this formula:
(IP + Save-Equivalent Innings)/IP
The formula maxes out at 1.9, which is also consistent with James’ approach and Tango’s general findings. Here are the links to the sortable Save-Equivalent Index listings:
American League
National League
Win Shares Aging Patterns
The Baseball Crank has done some nice follow-up analysis of his Established Win Shares method by looking at how aging affects Win Shares. Very nice job, and it’s interesting that Win Shares follows a fairly typical aging pattern.
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
Free Agent Win Shares
Here's a quick Win Shares look at how each team could potentially be affected by free agency. I basically added up all the Win Shares of each player who isn't on his team's roster at this time, and compared that to the team's total Win Shares. Players not on the roster include those who filed for free agency, as well as those who were traded in season.
Remember, this is not a prediction, but a measure of the relative impact free agency might have on each team, based on last year's contributions. "FAWS" stands for Free Agent Win Shares. In my notes, I may reference WSAR as a way of measuring the true impact of these losses. WSAR stands for Win Shares Above Average.
| Team | Total | FAWS | Percent | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LAD | 279 | 118 | 42.3% | Beltre, Perez, Lima, and the trade of Lo Duca and Mota. Will be partially offset by having Choi and Penny for full year. |
| CHC | 267 | 95 | 35.7% | Alou, Clement, Grudz and Walker. Rusch has already re-upped. Middle of the lineup concerns |
| COL | 204 | 72 | 35.2% | Burnitz, Castilla, Reed; all contributed but all should be replaced for long term. |
| FLO | 249 | 80 | 32.1% | Benitez and Pavano, plus loss of Choi and Penny through trade. |
| HOU | 276 | 84 | 30.6% | Beltran, Kent and Clements big losses; would be nice to get two of three back. |
| ATL | 288 | 85 | 29.6% | Drew, Alfonseca and Wright. Can Atlanta recover from a big talent loss again? |
| BOS | 294 | 80 | 27.1% | Mostly Pedro and Varitek. Not as bad a loss as I would have imagined. |
| STL | 315 | 83 | 26.4% | Womack, Renteria, Kline, Mabry. Womack wouldn't repeat anyway; Renteria only 3.7 WSAR. |
| KC | 174 | 42 | 24.3% | Reflects Beltran trade. Most FA losses actually had negative WSAR's. |
| MIN | 276 | 66 | 23.8% | Radke, Koskie and Guzman losses hurt. Replacing Radke is key. |
| TOR | 201 | 42 | 20.7% | Loss of Delgado and Zaun offset by negative WSARs of Hentgen and others |
| NYY | 303 | 62 | 20.5% | El Duque, Cairo, Sierra, Lieber, Clark, Olerud. Rotation upgrade required. |
| SEA | 189 | 36 | 19.1% | Not really a free agent loss, this reflects trade of Freddy Garcia. |
| NYM | 213 | 41 | 19.0% | Leiter and Bottalico. Leiter may re-up. |
| PHI | 258 | 49 | 18.9% | Polanco and Cormier; two very good ballplayers. |
| TBD | 210 | 36 | 17.1% | Tino Martinez. Zambrano traded; Kazmir could match his Win Shares in first year. |
| OAK | 273 | 45 | 16.6% | Damian Miller and Chris Hammond. Without a catcher, lots of passed balls. |
| ARI | 153 | 25 | 16.3% | Wanted. Baseball Players. Apply within. |
| CHW | 249 | 35 | 14.2% | Valentin and Ordonez, whose loss is offset by half-year on DL. |
| CIN | 228 | 29 | 12.7% | Larkin and Paul Wilson only positive contributors, barely. |
| CLE | 239 | 26 | 10.9% | Postive WSAR of Vizquel and negative WSAR of Jimenez are nearly a wash. |
| TEX | 268 | 28 | 10.5% | Deluccia and Young only positive contributors |
| MON | 201 | 21 | 10.3% | Cabrera actually had negative WSAR while with Expos. |
| ANA | 276 | 24 | 8.7% | Glaus and Percival; both had limited contributions in 2004 due to injuries. |
| SDP | 258 | 18 | 6.9% | David Wells. |
| BAL | 234 | 13 | 5.6% | B.J. Surhoff |
| MIL | 201 | 11 | 5.6% | Addition by subtraction. |
| DET | 216 | 11 | 4.9% | Yan's 7/17 saves in save opportunities keep his Win Shares down. Only player of note. |
| PIT | 216 | 9 | 4.2% | Traded Benson |
| SFG | 273 | 8 | 2.8% | No one of consequence |
| Total | 7281 | 1373 | 18.9% |