What does SOM use to determine ranges?

[bleacher_creature]

[quote:da33da7bb1="bkoron"]It's completely subjective (= idiotic).

The problem with assigning a guy to watch a fielder all year (if that is indeed with Hal does) is the guy doesn't get to watch all the OTHER fielders out there.

Defensive statistics are a mess, no doubt. Range factors have to be adjusted for K propensity of pitching staff, and even LH/RH makeup of the staff. One year when the Senators had all LHS, Ed Yost led the league in range at 3B. The next year, when they had a normal breakdown of RHS and LHS, Yost's range was league average. Did he suddenly get worse? Of course not; he just had fewer balls hit to him.

But Zone Ratings are pretty darn good, and Hal Richman just refuses to use them.

Anybody who pegs his system to the Golden Glove awards is being ridiculous. Remember when Palmeiro won the Gold Glove and he played about 20 games at first base?

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I don't quite get the campaign against Hal Richman.

Do your research bkmoron. Anyone who has played Strat very much knows that they DO use numbers as well. Anyone who knows BASEBALL knows that the NUMBERS LIE when it comes to defensive evaluations.

For example in Seattle, it is becoming commonly understood that SAFECO makes CFs look a little better than they really are. This year it was Jeremy Reed, last year it was Randy Winn, and the before that Mike Cameron.

Now Mike Cameron is good, but because THE BALL HANGS IN THE MARINE AIR AT SEA LEVEL, based on pure numbers SAFECO made Reed and Winn look almost as good as Cameron.

I'm sure everyone has read this:

[color=brown:da33da7bb1]Strat-O-Matic's ratings realistically capture a players strengths and weaknesses in a number of important areas. Of great importance are the categories where statistics are not enough to accurately reflect a player's abilities, such as fielding range, throwing arm and hit-and-run ability.

That's why other games have unrealistic player ratings - certain ratings cannot be derived properly using statistics alone.

For example, sometimes fielders with terrible throwing arms can lead the league in outfield assists. That's because "everybody and their mother" is running on them, so sooner or later they're bound to get some assists. Of course their high assist total belies the fact that they hurt their team countless times by not being able to prevent a runner from scoring or advancing the extra base. Only Strat-O-Matic takes factors like these into account when developing our player ratings. [/color:da33da7bb1]

[bkoron]

What I don't get is how people can so uncritically swallow everything that SOM writes about itself, when it's merely puffery. The ATG game is riddled with inaccuracies, but you might not know or believe that. People rated for positions they didn't play, people not rated for positions they did play, people not even on the teams that SOM says they were on, etc. etc. SOM's clapping itself on the back for its research is just an advertising campaign.

It's like arguing about religion--either you have faith, or you don't.

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[MARCPELLETIER]

BK, we have discussed about the whole issue last year (actually, you were supposed to talk to people at stats inc. about these issues and you never came back on this on the boards), thus I don,t plan to argue here all over again. As a remainder, I will only summarize the issues with zone rating:

--zone ratings don't (or poorly) take into account good positioning on the field (prior to the play), arm strength (for infielders), double-play capabilities, players doing plays outside their zone;
--zone ratings is afflicted with similar problems than RF with regards to playing environments (stadium space, turf, playing day/night, altitude)
--some players experience sudden change in zone ratings when changing team, perhaps reflecting inter-judge variability, perhaps reflecting the change of teammates, perhaps reflecting change of playing environment
--zone rating came up on several occasions with weird results---Jose Valentin being best ss fielder last year (and yet he couldn't find a job due to his poor D---is the whole MLB management that stupid?). Other examples from this year include Cliff Floyd deserving gold glove at lf, Grudzielanek deserving gold glove at 2nd---very suspicious to me.

For an example on how Andruw Jones (usually in the normal zone rating range depite being praised with gold gloves) could get cheated, see http://bradbury.sewanee.edu/wordpress/index.php/2004/07/thoughts-on-zone-rating

[bkoron]

STATS had nothing to say, so I had nothing to say here. As you might imagine, they're currently not too happy with me, so I don't imagine they'll have anything more to say. Maybe I'll try Baseball Info Solutions.

Thank you for the interesting article. It makes a lot of sense. I am now going to the hot tub to think about all this.

I suspect I don't have to remind you that there have been many examples of most or all of the GMs in baseball being wrong about things.

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[bleacher_creature]

[quote:42bffe4cc7]I suspect I don't have to remind you that there have been many examples of most or all of the GMs in baseball being wrong about things. [/quote:42bffe4cc7]

What a crock.

The issue here is scouting reports on defense that are based on what people witness with their own eyes. You can't stick to the point because you don't have a strong position arguing against Strat for using scouting reports for fielders, and followed by semi-accurate (not perfect of course) subjective evaluations.

I don't believe Diamond Mind for example does this.

Example: runners (in real life) stop at 2nd more often when Ichiro is in RF. I have no idea how many assists he has, but the world knows not to run on him, because he has a friggin' cannon.

[bkoron]

I love it when people who haven't done the research decide that being insulting is more fun.

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[bleacher_creature]

[quote:2b757a4d10="bkoron"]I love it when people who haven't done the research decide that being insulting is more fun.

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Please tell us what research you have done, and please enlighten us.

[bkoron]

Oh, just the usual stuff. I ate a copy of www.baseball-reference for breakfast today. Check out Retrosheet all the time. Have three editions of Total Baseball, two editions of the STATS All-Time Major League Handbook, the STATS All-Time Major League Sourcebook, Macmillan Encyclopedia 10th edition, several Negro League encyclopedias and a lot of other books on the Negro Leagues, every word Bill James ever wrote including the original self-published Abstracts (which I bought from Bill), all of SABR's publications from 1976 on, all of STATS's Bill James Handbooks (now published by Baseball Info Solutions), The Biographical Encyclopedia of Baseball, The Ballplayers, about 20 books on 19th Century baseball, a wallful of baseball biographies and autobiographies and another roomful of miscellaneous baseball books. A couple of electronic sabermetric tools like Lee Sinins's Sabermetric Encyclopedia and the Bill James Electric Baseball Encyclopedia for Windows (aka Fanpark Encyclopedia). Several other odds and ends to help me track down SOM's silly inaccuracies.

What do you have?

What research did you have in mind? Asking "What research have you done?" is kinda open-ended; rather than my answer keeping us here all night, maybe you could ask a specific question.

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[bleacher_creature]

Okay. Please name a better basebal SIM, and tell us why.

I looked at STATS Legends game, and I was unimpressed. Especially at that whopper of a price tag.

[bkoron]

It's gonna depend on what you mean by "better," especially when you consider price. You're right about STATS/ESPN's price (btw ESPN will no longer be offering STATS's game). And STATS's game is the descendant of the old non-Internet mail-based Bill James Classic Game, which cost $129/team plus nickling and diming you to death with transaction fees. (STATS never saw a nickel of yours it didn't want. It's funny that Bill James in his books rails against the Elias Bureau for this very sin, and then the business he helped start does the same thing!)

Right now there are three levels of on-line historical baseball sim:

1) WhatIf Sports, which sucks for 13 bucks
2) SOM/TSN, which is pretty good for 25 bucks, and
3) STATS, which is better (IMHO) for 50 bucks.

STATS's games are different because they're career-based, and the other two are season-based. STATS's games are not twice as good as SOM/TSN.

However, there's something coming up that you should check out:

www.SIMnasium.com

This will be available in February, and when that happens it's gonna be a whole new ballgame. The price is not yet determined, but it will be competitive with WhatIf and SOM/TSN.

Its first game will be career-based; there will eventually be a single-season game as well. It will have play-by-play that includes where each ball was hit and to whom. It will even have "suspense mode," where you can watch the game being played instead of just knowing the final score when you log on. The three games a day will be played at three different times, and you'll be able to make changes between each game. You will be able to sort-draft by all sorts of sabermetric stats. You will have many more options, including the ability to create private leagues with all of TSN/SOM's options plus any salary cap you want, different league configurations, weekly income, etc.

In short, it will be state-of-the-art. Sound good?

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