The Brewster

I was reading Matt's Kracken feature and thought about trades.

Everyone has their trade "secrets". When I joined this league I had 2-3 prior spells in OOTP leagues but hadn't done an online league really ever. I solo'd a bit and was a beta tester for OOTP 3-5 but lost interest.

In looking to evaluate talent I learned some things from recte and from Joel Odenbach (who owned my team prior to me):

1. Defense wins, period. If you got a guy who hits for a .750 OPS with insane defensive skills vs. a guy who can hit .900 with crap for "D" I"ll take the .750 guy. Matt told me this, Odenbach told me this, Mike Lynch told me this also. It is a shear truth.

2. GB% - Anyone under 50% is really a non-starter for me. Even if he has triple 9s for talent I'm not going to rate him all that highly. You can still succeed as a fly-ball hitter with good ratings but you better have a park and defense that can handle running around grabbing those pop-ups.

3. Intelligence and Work Ethic. Rafael Avila anyone? He had some decent pots when I got him in a deal but was far off in reaching them. He has Very high intelligence and work ethic and it paid off. Still a gamble but I knew the chances were good he'd reach them. IT allowed me to move Barfoot to 1B and move Behnke.

4. The Pruschnok theorem: I know he's aging and his stats don't' show it now, but his stuff just outright sucks but has good control and movement. Look at his numbers when he was younger! Look at his GB%.

5. Eye and "Avoid Ks": Pennebaker is a pretty good hitter but if you don't' have good eye and have a low "K" rating it will affect your offensive numbers. If he had more discipline he'd crush the ball and wear gold plated diapers.

6. Control: This still pisses me off. You lose your control and you're up a creek, doesn't matter if you got stuff and movement.


Just some thoughts to perhaps help even the playing field. I'm not genius at this game, This is the first OOTp league I've stuck around in and it's honestly because I figured out some key items (above) that help me win.

Thanks. I'm learning and found that I completely underestimated defense as a factor, which helps explain my pitching. I've got a lot more to learn it looks like.

I'm not saying I'm right, but I found the above has given more success than failure.

Some of you might find the following interesting. Minimal value at this point of a season, but I'd be willing to bet the numbers will be similar at the end of the season. The percentage is correlation between the team stat and winning percentage:

OPS - 73%
ERA - 70%
Defensive Efficiency - 53%
Zone Rating - 36%

If you look at a standard deviation average (trust me, it's a cool stat) of OPS, ERA and Defensive Efficiency, you get a remarkable 86% correlation with winning percentage. This makes sense, because it is saying that if you prevent runs and score runs, you win games. It includes a defensive measurement, and you would think that would make it stronger. However, OPS and ERA alone carry a 91% correlation with winning.

Effectively, the two defensive measures used, basically the best measures we have available, say that there is little to no correlation between defense and winning. Interestingly, there is only a 79% correlation between defensive efficiency and ERA. That isn't to say defense isn't important. It just isn't more important than offense. Didn't you see Moneyball?

I have definitely learned to immediately hone in on GB%, Work Ethic, and Intelligence. I just haven't put it in practice enough.

As for OPS, I'm kind of torn. If I'm evaluating a player for a specific need in my lineup, OPS can be misleading. If a guy is pure OBP w/ no power or vice versa, OPS could stink...but I may be desperate for a guy who can get on base in front of my 3-4-5 hitters and that's all I need him for.

Defensively, all I can say is that my first two seasons in MBBA I led the league in Def. Eff. That number has nosedived and my runs allowed/overall record have both taken the plunge right along with it. Of course, it's not exactly apples to apples because this is a completely different squad than what I had back then.

Not always an axiom that defense wins. Look at Montreal's defensive stats this year for example.

Well...obviously you have to have a reasonable defense behind a pitcher. However a God-awful defense isn't a death knell either assuming that the eight people behind him are of major league ability, even poor major league ability.

The difference between the best and worst BABIPs in the league this year is only 65 points in less than half a season. .282 to .347, and that .347 figure is really, really high for a BABIP. I'd guess those numbers will both move toward .300 by the end of the season. That's 6.5% more hits. If teams average 9.5 hits or so per game, then that difference would give them 10.1 hits per game. That's not insignificant, but it isn't earth shattering, especially when you break down how many extra base hits that adds. Not a lot. And that is with a big BABIP spread.

The theory behind BABIP, of course, is that pitchers don't control what happens to balls hit in play. That is up to the defense. Of course, this has its limits as balls hit off of someone who can't pitch are almost certain to be hit harder than off someone who can, thus more hits. However, we're assuming a relatively comparable ability level among pitchers who make it to the majors. Thus, BABIP should be fairly even over the course of a career and across multiple pitchers, regardless of ability at the major league level.

So, what moves BABIP up and down is defense. However, as seen above, the differences between a good and bad defense, as far as hits allowed is concerned, is relatively minimal. A pitcher who gives up 200 hits in a season on the best team in the league gives up 213 hits on the worst team in the league. That's not good, but it isn't terrible either. Less than half a hit per start.

Obviously, if you have eight first basemen playing the field, you are likely to have a higher BABIP, but we aren't doing that. The difference between a poor major league shortstop and a great major league shortstop is significant, but it isn't the same as having a first baseman at shortstop.

OPS is an interesting topic, because it is supposed to roughly approximate offensive production. All things being equal, it does that pretty well. However, at the extremes it falls apart. For example, a lineup made of guys with a .200 OBP and a .500 SLG are going to score about 3.1 runs per game, because there just isn't anyone on base when the extra base hits come along. However, a team made up of guys with a .450 OBP and .250 SLG will score about 5.2 runs per game, because even though the hits are weak and there are a lot of walks, each hit is very likely to come with someone on base.

In other words, OPS is a very accurate assessment of run production, but if you have two guys with similar OPS, skew toward the guy with the better OBP.

Both Brad's secrets and Jason's stat analyses have been helpful and interesting to read.