The Mariners, ISO, and HR/FB Rate
by perfectstrat on Jun 3, 2011 10:30 AM PDT
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PrintNote: Stats in this post are from before last nights ourburst.
Update: The HR/FB% Graph is now park-adjusted.
Everyone knows the saying "chicks dig the long ball." Most people know how true it is, and it probably produced the greatest baseball commercial of all time. There's something about dingers that gets us all going inside. Can you honestly say that your elation would have been the same Tuesday night if Smoak had doubled and scored on a single rather than sent one into the stands?
There's something about that majestic, parabolic flight path ending in the crowd that releases mountains of ecstasy. Grant Brisbee touches on that here, and the Giants' and Mariners' offenses have had a lot in common the last few years. No one's been able to hit home runs, and there hasn't been much production at the plate to speak of. Now, you don't need to be able to hit home runs to score, but it sure helps, and it makes a team a whole lot more fun to watch.
The Mariners inability to hit for any sort of power peaked my intellectual curiosity, and I ended up looking at the team's batted ball profiles. And, wouldn't you know it, I found something interesting.
Have you ever felt like the Mariners don't make strong contact, and make a whole lot weaker contact than the rest of the league? Of course you have. Though what I found may shock you. The Mariners don't play by the same DIPS rules as the rest of the league, at least not when they're batting. With pitchers, we expect to see a rather constant HR/FB% given up. On the batter side, just as with BABIP, hitter HR/FB% is a much more apparent skill. It just so happens that the Mariners are notoriously bad at HR/FB%. Here are some Mariner career HR/FB%, with a minimum 2000 PA:
| HR/FB% | |
| Chone Figgins | 2.80% |
| Jack Wilson | 4.30% |
| Adam Kennedy | 4.90% |
| Ichiro | 6.10% |
That's bad; really really bad. Adam Kennedy's been skirting the line this season, but don't expect him to hit many more home runs. The Mariners just don't have the ability to hit the ball over the wall, even if they get it in the air. Take a look at how they've done over the last six seasons:
Source: Fangraphs
We're at 5.9% (park-adjusted) this season, second to last to the Athletics. For the last six years, we've been below league average, and by quite a bit for the last couple seasons. That "spike" in 2009 is mostly due to Russell Branyan. When Beltre and Sexson left, the team experienced massive drop offs, and balls fell at the warning track. Also, the often-cited league average HR/FB% is said to be around 10.5%, but my calculations say that's extremely outdated. The last time the average HR/FB% was above 10.2% was 2006, and this year it's down to 8.84%. I hope we're adjusting xFIP accordingly.
The Mariners make opposing pitchers, even mediocre ones, look like Cy Young. This is no secret, and an inability to hit the ball over the fence makes games excruciating to watch as we give opposing pitchers a 50% advantage with regards to home runs per fly ball. But what about ISO, isn't that a better judge of power than HR/FB%? Given their low HR/FB%, I expected a lower average ISO, but I was shocked at the similarities I saw.
Source: Fangraphs
The Mariners, obviously, don't have much power (.099 ISO this year), and not hitting the ball over the fence is a big reason for that. They don't make up for it by hitting a lot of doubles either, as they finished worst in doubles last year and haven't placed in the top half the league in the last six years. So not only are the Mariners not getting their fly balls over the wall, they aren't hitting them hard or far enough to miss gloves.
Keep in mind the ISO numbers for the Mariners are not park-adjusted, as I couldn't find a Safeco ISO factor. Regardless, look at how similar the lines of the graphs are. If it looks like I just took the same line from the HR/FB% graph and transplanted it in the ISO graph, this is why:
ISO and HR/FB% have an R-squared of .876, where 1 is a perfect correlation. Granted, that's only six data points, but those are the league average values for the past six years, consisting of over 1 million PAs. It needs more length to be conclusive, but there's a very clear trend, and one that's impossible to ignore.
So hit more dingers, Mariners, just like last night. Getting the ball into the air isn't enough, because given your lack of power it results in an out more times than average. Some of the Mariners problem going deep is their park, but there's a much more apparent problem, and it's no revelation. The Mariners have no punch in their bats.
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You didn't mention adjusting for park. Did you?
Omitting that leaves a hole as Safeco is one of the more slugging-repressive environments in the Majors.
And yes, xFIP coefficients are calculated on a yearly basis.
I did not adjust for park, though I should have mentioned it.
I was unclear on whether or not Fangraphs numbers were already park-adjusted, though now that looks rather silly. Also, I’m not quite sure what factor I should use. The one I’m leaning towards is the four year factor from THT.
I can adjust the two Mariners graphs rather easily once I know the specifics.
"Satisfaction is the enemy of success." SanFranPreps
by perfectstrat on Jun 3, 2011 11:19 AM PDT up reply actions
I could also use Statcorner's, but I'm hesitant to if they're just the current year factors.
I know they’re HR/BIA, but are they just one-year? Also, I’m having difficulty finding an ISO park factor for Safeco.
"Satisfaction is the enemy of success." SanFranPreps
by perfectstrat on Jun 3, 2011 11:34 AM PDT up reply actions
You mean to tell me that the Mariners don't hit as many of their fly balls out of the park as other teams and therefore their power numbers are lower because the frequency of home runs hit and a statistic that measures power are closely correlated?????
Mind blown.
by Dewey N on Jun 3, 2011 4:45 PM PDT reply actions 8 recs
While the post didn't really tell us anything we didn't know already, it was still an interesting and informative post.
I quite enjoyed it… just a little bit of well put together analysis and something to think about, numbers-wise. Well done, perfectstrat.
by nemo1 on Jun 3, 2011 5:57 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
Becuase I will work endlessy for your approval Dewey, I've created another graph for you.
Here is a chart of the Mariners (park-adjusted) wOBA by batted ball type for this year. I hope I continue to blow your mind, as that is the only thing keeping me going in life. As you can see, the Mariners are hitting above the league average rate on grounders, but that doesn’t produce much as grounders are the worst batted ball type for hitters. The M’s struggle with liners as well, being in the bottom 20% of the league in wOBA on line drives. This somewhat validates our hypothesis that Mariner players don’t hit the ball as effectively, even when they supposedly square the ball up. The Mariners also have the third fewest PAs resulting in a line drive, though I’m not sure where they rank in LD%.
Where the Mariners really struggle though is on fly balls, where they hit 40 points below league average. This is likely because of their inability to hit the ball over the wall, as illustrated above. It’s funny how these things are all connected, don’t you agree?
"Satisfaction is the enemy of success." SanFranPreps
I got a 1.7; is that bad?
"Satisfaction is the enemy of success." SanFranPreps
by perfectstrat on Jun 3, 2011 10:35 PM PDT up reply actions
I don't think it's funny at all
It makes perfect sense that all these things are connected. I could’ve told you all of this information without ever checking any numbers
by Dewey N on Jun 4, 2011 7:04 AM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
Did people give you a bunch of shit when you were learning that?
If they did, did you like it?
by Kermit. on Jun 4, 2011 8:45 AM PDT up reply actions 11 recs
Nobody gave me a bunch of shit because I didn't make a longwinded fanpost out of nothing
by Dewey N on Jun 4, 2011 9:05 AM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
This isn't some shitty fanpost carelessly created and devoid of thought
If it’s incorrect or lacking then that is knowledge worth having and within the LL community there might be people interested in learning.
by Kermit. on Jun 4, 2011 9:45 AM PDT up reply actions 16 recs
Sure it isn't some shitty fanpost carelessly created and devoid of thought
But it certainly isn’t very thought provoking. I just don’t see the point in writing so much and saying so little.
Some people just don't have your natural brilliance, Fogel
by Graham MacAree on Jun 4, 2011 10:28 AM PDT up reply actions
If you don't like my fanpost, no one's forcing you to read it.
No, it’s not very thought provoking. Yes, it rather states the obvious. Yes, it confirms things we’ve seen already. But so does stuff like this, and no one seems to be complaining.
Frankly, I can’t tell if you’re responding in character or just being a prick. I’m not some amateur new to this website or sabermetrics. Sure, we knew that the Mariners weren’t a very good home run or power hitting team, but did you know the correlation between HR/FB% and ISO? If so, great for you, but I doubt others did.
I understand that this community has a very high standard of fanposts, and I strive to meet those standards. This isn’t some crap fanpost. It extrapolates on a hypothesis we all had and puts those numbers into graphs illustrating just how bad we’ve been. I’m doing this for my enjoyment, and I hope others enjoy it too. If it doesn’t meet your standards, I don’t really care. If I’m failing to meet the communities standards, please let me know and I’ll be sure to write more posts like this one.
Kindly fuck off.
"Satisfaction is the enemy of success." SanFranPreps
by perfectstrat on Jun 4, 2011 10:32 AM PDT up reply actions 15 recs
I'm sorry I'm just no sure what the point off all this is
And I know I’m not great at explaining such things, but, as ISO is SLG-AVG (no singles involved), it’s not hard to see the biggest component in ISO by far will be homerun totals, since triples are rare, and HRs are worth twice as many bases as doubles. Anything closely related to homerun totals like HR/FB is going to have big effect on ISO. I may have used more tact, but I don’t see how this worthy of a long fanpost.
Logic tells us that the above is true.
I knew that going in. Still, it was interesting (at least to me) to determine the strength of their correlation. While there’s nothing in this fanpost that is earth-shattering or pioneering, there’s a lot of relevant and specific information that is worth sharing with the community.
I doubt many fans knew the league average HR/FB% was down to 8.84% this year. Yes, we’ve seen an offensive decline the past few years and expected to see a corresponding drop in HR/FB%, but do we know how much? Now that we do, is there a reason to keep throwing out the standard 10.5% HR/FB% we’ve seen so much of?
We know that Figgins, Ichiro, etc. don’t hit many home runs, and won’t have high HR/FB rates. But do we know what they are individually? Did we know how the Mariners did relative to the league, and by how much, in HR/FB% and ISO the last six seasons?
There’s value in having numbers reinforce our logic and preconceived notions, and that’s what I did here.
"Satisfaction is the enemy of success." SanFranPreps
by perfectstrat on Jun 4, 2011 11:24 AM PDT up reply actions
x
I doubt many fans knew the league average HR/FB% was down to 8.84% this year.
That’s a much better idea for a topic, and may be interesting granted that the conclusion isn’t the standard Fangraphs “It’s a fluke, and will return to normal levels”
"did you know the correlation between HR/FB% and ISO? If so, great for you, but I doubt others did."
If others didn’t know the correlation between the two, they probably didn’t know the definition of ISO.
ISO = (2B + (3B*2) + (HR*3)) / AB.
I don’t understand how anyone could look at that formula and not see right away that more home runs = higher ISO.
by Dewey N on Jun 4, 2011 10:50 AM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
But Kermit, there is more to making a fanpost than that
We don’t just want fanposts that are very long and have decent grammar and talk about baseball, we want fanposts that add to the discussion in some way. They need to be relevant for them to be worthwhile reads and this particular post is not because it is simply stating a relationship exists between two stats that measure almost the exact same things are like 90% the same.
It needs to be pointed out when posts are not relevant enough, just like it needs to be pointed out when posts have bad grammar or are fueled by ignorant ideas, for the sake of the quality of the site. It could’ve been said in a nicer way, yeah, but you can’t just ignore that it’s irrelevant because we want to be nice either.
by OlSalty on Jun 4, 2011 2:34 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
And is there any way to say it's irrelevant that's not going to hurt the author's feelings a little?
Nobody likes to be told they wrote something that isn’t up to standard, but people need to be corrected for the sake of the site when it’s not, so people’s feelings are gonna get hurt. That’s just how it is, we should probably try to limit how much we hurt their feelings as much as possible by cutting back on the snarky mocking when we are correcting people (and I’m more guilty of that than most), but that does not change the fact this post is not the kind of thing wanted here for the reasons specified and it needed to be said before it continued. It’s not like people are getting banned or can’t improve in the future. We all had to make adjustments to our posting when we came here originally and so do they.
There's a difference
Statistically oriented posts need to be statistically relevant. Uniform posts are fine if they’re adding something new to the uniform discussion. Joke posts about moustaches or whatever should be funny or insightful because that’s their intention. It doesn’t all have to be restricted to certain topics but it does need to be relevant in whatever it is trying to accomplish. Please don’t try to play it off like we are just being fuddy duddies when we are not, there’s a point to this.
by OlSalty on Jun 4, 2011 3:12 PM PDT up reply actions 2 recs
OK, I see your point. But
given that I think perfectstrat’s posts have qualitatively (thinking of the GM efficiency post and this) shown a nice foundation, I think the “site quality” argument is being over stringently applied here. It’s justifiable (IMO) on an individual basis towards posters mashing at their keyboards in place of English, but for fanposts, I think Lookout Landing has much more to gain by being slightly lenient on individual posts like this in exchange for keeping statistics-minded fans/writers enthused to explore and keep practicing their craft without worrying if an individual post doesn’t thread an imaginary needle between evaluating what we’ve commonly assumed to be true, and merely proving the total flippin’ obvious.
The counterpoint, of course, is that if dull posts are ALL someone is writing, then the “site quality” stink eye is an appropriate nudge.
This applies towards general site policy, of course- it was your formulation of “for the sake of the site” that caught my eye. General criticism towards any post as not being interesting I think is totally fair.
Am interested to hear your thoughts.
I agree with both of your posts here.
I realize that this post isn’t perfect. It’s not revolutionary, and it’s not particularly thought provoking. That being said, it provides information about a few things that are relevant and contains some snippets of information that aren’’t obvious or easily researched.
The issue I took with Dewey’s comments were more with the tone he used than the message he was sending. He treated me like I didn’t know what I was doing here, had no clue that HR/FB% and ISO would be strongly correlated, and generally wasn’t very intelligent. I did this research for my personal benefit, and thought that the numbers I came up with were worth sharing. There’s a lot of pertinent information there, but is all of it worth sharing on LL? I now realize the answer is probably not.
That being said, I don’t think the post is the detriment that some are making it out to be. It’s certainly more well thought out and informative than a lot of egregiously ignorant fanposts posted here. While “most fanposts” are not a good baseline, I think it’s rather useless to rail against it like Dewey did. The post took a lot of well-intentioned effort and critical thinking, and to not put a similar amount of effort into critiquing it doesn’t help at all.
Just to be clear, as I want to fully understand the issues with the post, I think what you are trying to say is:
-This fanpost doesn’t add to the discussion. It doesn’t pose a question to the community that can spark any dialogue in the comments.
-This fanpost states the obvious, and even though it uses a lot of nifty graphs and numbers to convey stats about the Mariners, it doesn’t stimulate any reaction or provide any new insights.
Are there any other critiques you can provide, so that I can improve my fanposts in the future?
"Satisfaction is the enemy of success." SanFranPreps
by perfectstrat on Jun 4, 2011 3:34 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
Crap. You covered quite a bit of what I put into my comment below.
I spent about 45 minutes editing that fucker and didn’t read yours before posting.
Those are the big two I think
To be clear, there have been far worse fanposts than this. There are positives to take from it, like it’s formatted well and clear in it’s message, the problem is just that the message itself was not quite abstract enough for this audience. It’s important to know what the audience knows and doesn’t.
I’m not saying every commenter needs to write a scientific paper on biometrics, but I’m going to use an example from the sciences: Whenever a scientist wants to do a study, he/she writes a short paragraph (called an abstract, most people in college will recognize) which explains why the study is relevant and other scientists should read it. This is a good strategy to use before writing a fanpost on LL, sum up what you feel are the major points and insights of the post in a single paragraph and see if it still sounds relevant, it’s much easier to see if you’ve meandered from relevance when the points are concisely made in a shorter form. This will also help people stay on message when writing, to have this abstract outline on hand.
That's fine and I get that but you might be missing my point
It wasn’t about irrelevance or being worthwhile. From my perspective perfectstrat showed due respect to the LL community, indicated by the quality and time spent creating the fanpost. He has a track record of such with his previous posts. In my opinion, with a poster such as perfectstrat criticism and critiques ought to match the care and effort put into the post as well as his record.
The community, or interested members of the community, could easily return that respect and at the same time generate a thoughtful, educational comment thread. One that discusses points raised in your comment, for instance. My initial comment was instigated by this perspective, in this case I believe the community was failing to live up to the required standards. If we demand a certain quality of fanpost, the critique or complaint ought to abide by the same standard. With the tone or level of respect also being commensurate.
by Kermit. on Jun 4, 2011 3:50 PM PDT up reply actions 11 recs
Keep in mind not everyone has a strong foundation in math or statistics.
A post such as this might appear overly simple to many in the LL community, but the exercise in and of itself can be enlightening to someone such as myself. As well as robust comments expressing complaints or offering critique.
Also, there have been any number of shitty fanposts, many hidden before most realize they ever existed. In my opinion shitty fanposts (trying to drive blog traffic, rosterbation, etc.) and the people that create them deserve whatever treatment they get. I cannot emphasize that enough. I hate them, I believe they lead to an overly critical mindset and fuel many problems within the community, such as this subthread. Everything starts to look like a nail.
I don't really want to speak for Dewey but I think Dewey and I share some similar frustrations that lead to this kind of thing
A lot of the regulars are not really happy with the overall community contributions to the site right now and sometimes it leads to lashing out at individuals who happen to be doing whatever has been repeatedly pissing us off for months. To some degree this is unfair: I know sometimes I forget that most of these people haven’t seen what I have seen and don’t realize what a problem it is because they just got here and are doing what comes naturally to them, or haven’t read what I’ve read or know what I know, etc.. But yeah, problem commenting is still problem commenting (as you know and agree with I’m just stating this for others), we have to correct it or it doesn’t get better, we just have to find ways of getting the message across that don’t lead to everyone hating us. I mean, we could do that but then we’re going to get a bunch of trolls who do nothing but try to antagonize us.
by OlSalty on Jun 4, 2011 4:32 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
I'm pissed, so take this as you will
But are you really classing this fanpost a ‘problem commenting’? While it may have an obvious conclusion, it’s not exactly a Smoak pun.
Perfectstrat has made enough quality fanposts and enough effort has been put into this one that it shouldn’t be met with the level of derisive sarcasm Dewey presented it with.
I think I've made it pretty clear this particular post isn't a huge issue so I don't know why you took it that way
The point I was making by saying that is that valid criticisms should not be squelched or undermined by other people in the comments just because they want to maintain a friendly atmosphere here. And some people have been doing just that lately.
Again, we’ve covered that the criticism could’ve been put across in a nicer way in this case, but it’s still valid and honestly people should have a thick enough skin to put up with a little bit of sarcasm. We can’t just ignore that this isn’t very relevant just because perfectstrat posts here all the time. Now I think the issue has been resolved fairly well, and perfectstrat understands the concerns, and improvements can be made. So there’s no need to continue harping on it.
by OlSalty on Jun 4, 2011 9:04 PM PDT up reply actions 2 recs
Are you serious? You do realize you just framed me as some kind of an asshole?
If you think I’m undermining or squelching valid criticism then you are absolutely wrong.
If you think the comments that started me bitching were valid criticism then you’re also wrong. Perfectstrat was being mocked. You know what that looks like to me? A shitty comment from a shitty Youtube comment thread. All I see is mockery designed to highlight the stupidity of perfectstrat. Explain to me how the initial comments are in any way valid criticism.
I don’t care how you personally grade out the level of statistics in this post. If "you" or "we" or "me" want respect then you absolutely have to give it to those that have earned it, and a person doesn’t have to be friendly while doing so. At all.
There’s a big difference between respect and friendly. I absolutely enjoy watching certain regulars thrash the shit out of certain types of commenter, and often think the regulars need a longer leash. But not at the moment. If no difference is being made between commenters that deserve respect and those that don’t, then no. Pick better battles. Be smarter about differentiating between good and bad posters. Get a better grasp of the concept of respect and when to give it. If reguLLars want to claim that LL threads are better or smarter than the internet then meter out the punishment a bit more judiciously.
To clarify, I am not a defender of bad commenters and shitty fanposts nor an advocate of creating a friendly atmosphere.
Way to go with this last comment of yours, you reframed the entire sub thread at the same time casting me as some kind of softy advocating for a friendlier atmosphere. “… some people …”, my ass. Whether intentionally directed at me or not, how the hell you think that looks? I’m not going to tolerate that bullshit, at no point here have I said anything about friendlier. Then ending with the "… but we should just drop it now." type statement. Nice move, one of my favorites.
by Kermit. on Jun 5, 2011 9:02 AM PDT up reply actions 9 recs
That wasn't at all my intention
I wasn’t even really thinking of you when I wrote that actually. I was speaking generally and with other far more prominent examples of it at the front of my mind when I wrote that, but now I see how it appears that I was calling you out for it in this thread. That wasn’t what I was trying to accomplish with that statement at all, and I apologize for offending you as I clearly did.
I only put that ending bit on there because I honestly did not realize what I wrote could be interpreted that way at the time, not because I wanted to deflect responses. I honestly thought the issue would be resolved after that and we could put it to rest. Whoops!
There was a valid criticism in what Dewey said, I can't back away from that point
You can have a problem with the way it was said, but I would’ve said the exact same thing about the relevance of this post if Dewey hadn’t and in fact I was planning to before he posted first. I’m looking at the original comments and while they weren’t totally nice it wasn’t exactly a devastating tear down by our standards either, which is why the whole disrespect thing confuses me.
There was a serious point to be made to the community at large about relevance that needed to happen and this post was as good a place as any to have that talk. It was only partly about perfectstrat at all. Nobody chased him off, they just told him this one fanpost wasn’t so great.. Nobody made any commentary about the other fanposts he makes, or his overall worth to the site. I don’t think there was even an outrageous amount of disrespect in the parts that were not as nice. Honestly, I don’t think it should be this big of a deal, and in my opinion people should have a tougher skin if this amount of teasing is completely outrageous to the point where people are snapping at each other.
That said I don't think you were "squelching" that criticism in your responses, no
You were addressing that it could’ve been nicer, not the point about the relevance which was a separate issue, and I fully realize that. Other people in the thread were trying to excuse the irrelevance of it as inconsequential, and that was what I was trying to address with that comment.
The comments that Dewey posted were a little bit harsh.
by Kirk on Jun 5, 2011 4:40 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
Ohhh alright I guess they were
It wouldn’t bother me if those kinds of things were said to me, but I have built up that thick skin over time and not everybody has. We will try to do better to not be needlessly dickish in the future and in exchange all posters please keep in mind the larger points about content and not undermining moderation that were raised in the thread that I don’t want to rehash again, because those things have been a problem and those discussions were worthwhile.
Still buds? :(
I see why you thought what you thought, and it was my fault for picking a terrible spot to bring up an issue I’ve been meaning to bring up for a while. I know you are a reasonable individual obviously and have a good sense for these things, it seems like I get myself into trouble switching back and forth between big picture LL statements and the person I’m directly responding to thinking I’m talking about them. Not the first time it’s happened, and I’ll try to do better about not doing it in the future, because it’s obviously confusing for everyone when I do. You know me, I would not intentionally accuse you of something like that.
This may or may not sound silly but I need to know whether or not you’re still mad. Hit me up on facebook if you need to talk further about it.
It's fine, I'm glad you said something
Keeping a little quiet and processing my reaction, comments, and tone in this thread. That and trying to sort out some thoughts on community, group interaction, communication and how I’m applying myself here on LL and where I can make some adjustments for the better. I’m not looking for validation with that statement, it’s just a necessary thing. I came on fairly strong and I apologize for that.
Hopefully Dewey, you and everyone understands that I respect you guys, and LL. Absolutely I’ll hit you up on Facebook, and if you have some feedback it would be appreciated
You're fine dude
Nobody has a problem. I think everyone understands that emotions got heated during a frustrating time at LL now and we’ve basically had apologies all around so it’s all good. .You were right, we do need to make sure we get the messages across we want to get across without being unnecessarily mean, especially to people who are a bit more established, because as is evidenced by this thread it creates a major distraction from addressing whatever larger issue caused us to get frustrated in the first place when we have to address the meanness too. There are still situations that call for being mean from time to time, but yeah not over things like this.
I feel like this needs to be highlighted by being turned flashing disco colors and placed in the Spring Cleaning Lookout Landing's Posting Guidelines
There are more diplomatic ways of saying things while still getting an important message across, and I think a lot of members of this community, including myself, are guilty of forgoing that at times.
by JLC on Jun 4, 2011 5:31 PM PDT up reply actions
You mean to tell me that everyone who reads LL should already know everything that LL regulars know because they should spend days reading every insightful post ever written by Jeff and Matthew before attempting a fanshot?
Mind blown.
by d0nkey on Jun 4, 2011 5:33 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
"Before attempting a fanshot"
This is the important distinction. Of course people can’t be expected to know everything we know, but Fanshots are a bit higher on the quality scale than other forms of contribution because they show up on the front page, and can be floated to headline level with 10 simple recs (and we all know how easy it is to get recs these days with thousands of people reading). And there’s only so much room for Fanposts to catch the eye of the reader, so we can’t have a bunch of stuff rehashing individual concepts like this (though it’s understandable that people didn’t know). It’s certainly acceptable to do something like that in a larger effort, like trying to make an easy to understand guide to the principles of different stats can be useful, but for those we want comprehensiveness instead of just making a few individual points about stats being related, so we don’t have too many of those kinds of posts.
The thing is we want people to be a little bit hesitant to write fanposts. We want them to be fairly sure in the knowledge they’ve got a unique perspective on a topic or something before they routinely write these things, or that they have a brand new topic we haven’t discussed before, or something. We want them to be special is the point, so people should probably not just jump right into them if they don’t understand yet what our definition of special is.
I do see your point.
I’m not arguing that this post brought a new and exciting idea or a new perspective on anything. You are giving good advice to perfectstrat and you aren’t being a dick while doing it. Other people were and I didn’t think it called for comments like that. I will also say that he didn’t need to say ‘kindly fuck off’ either. Banter like this rubs people the wrong way and I think we are better than that.
I agree, and I was a little oversensitive. In restrospect, I probably shouldn't have said that.
"Satisfaction is the enemy of success." SanFranPreps
by perfectstrat on Jun 4, 2011 9:45 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
I'll apologize to you for being harsh
The angry tone I directed at you shouldn’t have been directed at you. You clearly did not deserve it, and I’m sorry it came out. I’ve just been in a bad mood every time I look at LL comments because it makes me angry/sad to see the commenting section of my favorite website of the past 4ish years go completely to shit, and this has led to me taking on an asshole-y tone all the time that is hard to turn off.
I stand by my criticism though and if you/others disagree with it, whatever, it’s out there.
by Dewey N on Jun 5, 2011 5:15 PM PDT up reply actions 3 recs
I agree, and there have been some ugly comment sections lately.
I’d also like to extend an apology to you for my overly critical response. It was irrational, unprofessional, and not the type of commenter I want to be. There have been some valid criticisms of the post, and that probably wouldn’t have been addressed if you didn’t comment. I will do my best in the future to address those criticisms and rise to the standard of excellence that LL expects in it’s fanposts.
Let’s both take what we can from this episode and put it behind us.
"Satisfaction is the enemy of success." SanFranPreps
by perfectstrat on Jun 5, 2011 5:21 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
The M's must have knew you were going to post this.
Now they’re all like… “Nuh uh!”
Fans are typically idiots.
by The Typical Idiot Fan on Jun 3, 2011 9:43 PM PDT reply actions
I have never been so happy to see my graphs be falsified before my eyes.
"Satisfaction is the enemy of success." SanFranPreps
by perfectstrat on Jun 3, 2011 10:36 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
Thanks!
I can’t stand looking at bland graphs, so I try to spice them up a little.
"Satisfaction is the enemy of success." SanFranPreps
by perfectstrat on Jun 4, 2011 10:33 AM PDT up reply actions
Maybe it's just because I'm newish to baseball
But I found this post to be useful and educational. I’m Australian, I have been paying attention to baseball now for maybe three years but I’ve only really starting coming across stuff outside of BA, ERA etc since I started reading here regularly, which was towards the end of last season, or maybe more like the off season.
I work, study and train fairly heavily in martial arts so my time to sit down and read through a lot of the non traditional (for want of a better term) statistics to try and make sense of them is severely limited.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that posts like this do absolutely have value, even if they aren’t necessarily helpful to (possibly?) the vast majority of the audience here.
I must admit I’m pretty surprised about the comments here, it’s not what I would have expected, even though this is the internet.
I also found this post to be educational. I'm an American and I've been paying attention to baseball
since 1969. My Grandpa and I used to listen to games together. In the past 5 years I’ve realized that BA, RBIs, ERA, and Wins are not the best indicators of a baseball player’s worth. Some of that I learned here, some was learned at USS Mariner. If this FanPost is considered below the standards of this site, I definitely need to delete this bookmark. It was well written, interesting and informative to me. Maybe only “Mensa-type” baseball fans should post here. I would think that non-Mensa-type Mariners fans would also be welcome here, but if that’s not the case, wow. I’ll move on, or move into lurk mode only, knowing that only the good stuff will be posted here in the future. By good stuff I mean only stuff that veteran Lookout Landing commenters know and understand.
by TrustBaseball on Jun 4, 2011 11:14 PM PDT up reply actions
The views both positive and negative within this thread do not speak to the entirety of LL.
There are ample people, including myself, that are not going to participate in the discussion for either side. Just as people should not expect to be speaking for the entirety of LL in their comments, so too should commenters not assume that the comments they’re reading are indicative of the thoughts of the entire community.
...and now I'm here
by CapSea on Jun 4, 2011 11:54 PM PDT up reply actions 3 recs
I know I'm using the word "we" an awful lot and maybe I should clarify that doesn't mean I think I am the official mouthpiece for all LL commenters or something
I use “we” when I’m generally conveying what I know are Jeff and Matthew’s stated opinions and goals. It wouldn’t accomplish the same thing if it was just in my opinion, and it’s not just my opinion because lots of times we’ve discussed it and I know it’s not. So when I’m trying to help them moderate, I do what I think they want me to do and use “we”. Hopefully that isn’t unfair, I know people don’t like to be spoken for but in this case Jeff and Matthew kind of do because they are too busy to moderate at the level they ideally would want to, as long as people are actually staying on their message I think it’s okay.
I didn't mean to offend anybody by the comment above. I'll still come here to read Jeff and Matthew.
I’ll still read the comments offered by the less informed members of the LL community, who like me often need clarification on the stuff the Jeff and Matthew write. I like this FanPost because while it may be uninformative to some, to me, it was much like The Book. It presented statistical proof that something I believed to be true, or not true, actually was. The Book presented statistical evidence that some of the things we believed to be true about baseball simply weren’t true. Batting order doesn’t really matter, there aren’t really any clutch hitters, etc. If a team doesn’t hit as many of their fly balls out of the park as other teams and therefore their power numbers are lower because the frequency of home runs hit and a statistic that measures power are closely correlated. It just seems to me that this is a useful FanPost. Since Jeff and Matthew can’t be expected to write 24/7 anything that is written that contributes to the knowledge of M’s fans must be good. If you don’t need it, don’t read it.
by TrustBaseball on Jun 5, 2011 12:01 AM PDT up reply actions
^ a good number of typos above, sorry. Hopefully you can figure it out.
I didn’t mean to suggest that all FanPosts are useful, but this one was to at least some readers, based on the comments. Thank you perfectstrat.
by TrustBaseball on Jun 5, 2011 12:16 AM PDT up reply actions
Look, this is all being a tad melodramatic
Of course everyone can’t be expected to know what the reguLLars know. And we really do want people who don’t know as much to post here believe it or not because one of the goals of the site is to teach people.
But in my opinion, it feels like people have stopped asking us questions as much and just started running with the knowledge they have more, and that’s kind of what I think new people to LL should get away from.. I love to answer questions, even if it’s about something that’s already been discussed, what I don’t love is to read a big fanpost on something I could’ve answered easily for someone in a few seconds.
You have this big compendium of baseball knowledge readily available to you in Jeff and Matthew and to a lesser extent in their veteran cronies and the LL community at large but people don’t seem to be taking advantage of it as a way to learn what they don’t know. We are here and online allllll the time, and willing to answer questions. It would be much more efficient to learn that way than to allow all fanposts because regardless of the level of content they might be of use to someone.
No one will ever make fun of you for asking a question. In my opinion, that is the way new commenters should orient their contributions until they’ve got that understanding. Not that they shouldn’t contribute or should go away. Geez.
by OlSalty on Jun 5, 2011 12:45 AM PDT up reply actions 2 recs
I enjoyed the Fanpost...
It was well written and while everyone knows just from watching the Mariners they don’t hit for much power, it also had a few facts that I didn’t know. I don’t see how it’s bringing down the quality of the site just because it isn’t revolutionary or groundbreaking. Also I will never attempt a Fanpost, which is probably for the best.
by SuperDopaLiciousFunkStar on Jun 5, 2011 6:30 AM PDT via mobile reply actions 1 recs
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