The Main Baseball "Team Performance" Table
The two leftmost columns, headed in white,
the Team and Games played columns, are self-explanatory; we discuss below the others. The "Runs" Columns
For each team, the overall "Runs" heading (light grey) comprises two broad subheadings: Runs Scored (salmon color) by the team on offense, and Runs Yielded (bright green) by the team on defense (those include all runs, earned or not). Each of those subheadings is in turn further subdivided into the categories of Real runs (light red or light green)--meaning what you will find printed in your daily newspapers--and expected runs (dark red or dark green) calculated from the appropriate set of team statistics (batting or pitching); the calculated runs are labelled by the HBH name of the measure used: TOP for runs scored (Total Offensive Productivity) and TPP for runs yielded (Total Pitching Productivity). Just to clarify: there are no adjustments of any sort applied to the team stats used. What we are doing in the Table is applying the "raw" HBH formulae for calculating real-world runs from real-world stats. (That results in a slight anomaly in the nomenclature which you should be aware of: we use, in the Team Table, terms TOP and TPP, but those terms do not mean there just exactly what they mean elsewhere on this site. Elsewhere, those terms refer to measures of player/pitcher performance that have been made independent of those minor data that are not under the control of any player--for batters, sac bunts (ordered by the manager), sac flies (not really controlled), and hit-by-pitch--certainly not controlled, except by a rare few batters; and for pitchers, intentional walks (again, managerially mandated). Here, they include all stats, because we are seeking to judge the performance of the team as a whole and--more important--to see how the team's results compare to the way it has actually played in obtaining those results. That is, we want to see how much luck, good or bad, they are currently experiencing.) There is, of course, another way of looking at the Table. If you have not accepted as yet that baseball analysis really is as reliable as, let's say, nuclear physics in its results, this display gives you a chance to look over just what numbers the analyses do put out. As we keep saying over and over on these pages, this kind of analysis is just as precise as the statement that a tossed coin comes up heads half the time: the results are "true" in the exact same sense, in that the longer the data run--coin tosses or games played--the more accurate the predictions become, ultimately approaching (but, not even in theory, ever quite precisely reaching) perfect accuracy. Putting it yet another way, we know awfully well the precise impact of virtually every stat in baseball on the ultimate bottom line--the scoring of runs and the winning of baseball games. (You can, and should, also look in on the graphic demonstration of accuracy page.) The "Games-Won" Columns
The Actual Wins column (medium blue) is self-explanatory. The other five columns, subsumed under the broad heading Wins Projected From (blue), are what the title implies: they are the number of games won, out of games played so far, that we would normally expect from some given pair of runs-allowed/runs-yielded numbers. Here again, "normally expect" means the same as it does when we say we "normally expect" a tosssed coin to come up heads half of the time. We have calculated and displayed projected wins from two sets of scored/yielded pairs: the team's actual, real-world, in-the-newspapers R/OR results, and also the calculated TOP/TPP values as they appear in the columns to the right. Next to each of those two wins projections, we show, for convenience, the degree by which the team's actual wins record differs from the projection in question; we call that difference the "error," but that is not a very descriptive term in this instance, since nothing is actually "in error" at all. The way we have done the "errors" columns, a positive number (no minus sign in front of it) means the team is over expectations by that many games based on the source runs data (that is, the real or the projected runs); a negative number means that the team is under wins expectations for that source basis. We also added a second TOP/TPP errors column labelled Seasonal, which is the TOP/TPP wins "error" pro-rated out over 162 games; in other words, if the team kept on playing at the same performance level for the rest of the season and had exactly the same level of luck over that period as it has so far, that number is how many games ahead of or behind what the true quality of their play justifies they would actually end up at. The "Error Sizes" TableIn general, for any kind of deviation from expectation you want to know two basic things: how large or small is the average size of the error, and how close to correct is the overall average error. To better visualize those, think of a person shooting a gun at a standard "bull's eye" type of target. The average size of the error will be the averaged distance of each bullet hole from the dead bull's-eye; after all, a bad shot could scatter bullets all over the place, none even near the bull's eye, but if they make, roughly, a large ring around it, he could say, truthfully, "Well, on average I was just about dead on." The size of error measurement shows up misrepresentations like that. On the other hand, a shooter might make a pattern of bullet holes that is very, very tightly spaced, but centered on a point a moderate ways off the bull's eye; he could truthfully say that the average amount by which he missed wasn't very large at all--even though he was consistently biased off the true target. The overall average error measurement shows up that kind of "miss." Here is what the Error Sizes table looks like and means:
In the "error" listings, we show both kinds of error for both the TOP and TPP values, as well as for each of the types of games-won projections. Keep in mind that while all of the work we do is interesting, the brass ring on this carousel is getting games won from the assorted individual offensive and defensive/pitching stats. Thus, the numbers for the TOP/TPP games-won projections are the crucial element; if they are acceptably correct, all the other errors are immaterial except in an academic sense. We will leave it to you to judge--keeping in mind that the error sizes all go down as the season wears on and thus aren't at their true values until the season is over--whether or not modern baseball analysis can tell how many games a team will win from just the usual line of stats as published in the papers. Keep in mind that while the formulae used here include use of a great many baseball stats--the full laundry list is at-bats, walks, hits, total bases, sacrifice bunts and flies, hit batters, stolen bases, and caught-stealings--nearly the same accuracy can be had from only a small subset of that list: at-bats, walks, hits, and total bases. Looking at it another way, we actually need only the batting average, the slugging average, and the on-base percentage for acceptable accuracy in projecting wins percentages. The Manifested-Ability Table
You will note--especially in the earlier part of the season--that some teams are quite a ways off the projected win percentage. As you will by now understand, those error sizes will shrink as the season wears on, but . . . they provide a good leading indicator of what will often happen later in the season. That is, a team whose present win percentage is wildly off at the moment is fairly likely to close up the gap with time; so, a team that "should" be playing .550 ball but is currently under .500 can be tagged as likely to go on a big winning surge at some point, while teams far ahead of their projected win rate will frequently have long losing streaks in store. That kind of prediction is by no means sure. While teams well behind their projection can "catch up" with a win streak--bringing their real percentage up to their projection--they can also "catch up" by starting to play more poorly than they have--which will bring their projection down to their actual accomplishments. But extreme differences do normally even out, so any such big difference thus usually signifies a team whose fortunes are, in one way or another, due for a significant change as the season wears on. |
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Measures calculated by High Boskage House Baseball Operations, using proprietary techniques.
All data soon will be (but is not yet) normalized for park effects and seasonal variations.
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Site Front Page Late Baseball-Site News and Thoughts |
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Daily Baseball Data: |
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Teams: |
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| Overall Team Performance Stats (win projections and more from actual quality of play to date) | ||
| Player Performance Stats, by Team | ||
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Batters: |
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| Batters by Last Name: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | ||
| Batters by Performance (a single all-batters list) | ||
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Batters by Positions Played:
alphabetically: C | 1B | 2B | SS | 3B | LF | CF | RF | DH | SP | RP by batting performance: C | 1B | 2B | SS | 3B | LF | CF | RF | DH | SP | RP |
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Pitchers: |
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| Pitchers by Last Name: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | ||
| Pitchers by Performance (a single all-pitchers list) | ||
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Pitchers by Role:
alphabetically: Starters | Relievers by pitching performance: Starters | Relievers |
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Other Statistical Data: |
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| "Regular" Players, Starting Pitchers, and Relief Pitchers, by Performance | ||
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Team
Defense (and its projected consequences)
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Baseball "White Papers"--meanings and explanations of the things on this site |
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General Background: |
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| For You Rookies: what this site is all about--what it is telling you about baseball, and how, and why | ||
| Some Baseball Analysis Theory: a semi-technical backgrounding on modern baseball analysis | ||
| Baseball Stat Definitions: the standard and the unique statistics we present here, defined | ||
| Baseball Data Normalization: how we correct for what, and why we need to | ||
| The "Quality of Pitching" Measures: why they are the best way to evaluate pitching performance | ||
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"Steroids":
why just about everything you think you know about them is wrong Now a site of its own! steroids-and-baseball.com (the link above gets you there) |
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| "The SillyBall": why baseball before and after 1993 is really two different games | ||
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About Particular Pages Here: |
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| The Team-Performance Table: there is a lot in that Table, and this explains what it all is | ||
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The Team-Defense
Table: how important defense is or isn't in baseball, and how to
correctly evaluate it
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Miscellaneous--but not unimportant |
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| About High Boskage House: who we are and why we might know what we're talking about regarding baseball | ||
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Links To A Select Few
Other Useful Baseball Sites (including those that link to this one)
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The High Boskage House Baseball Shop (which offers more than baseball books--in fact, more than just books) |
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What Makes This "Baseball Shop" Special: |
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| Finding Books About Baseball Topics: we've already done it for you, and our list is updated daily | ||
| Search For Any New Book at Amazon (which is, after all, the cheapest place to buy books new) | ||
| Search For Any Used Book at Abebooks (which is the easiest place on the internet to find any used book) | ||
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Search For Anything at
All at Amazon: nowadays, they're a lot more than just books
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| Baseball Books Available Today: | ||
| A Master Baseball-Books List (plain text your browser can easily "search") | ||
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Baseball Books By Title:
(because so many baseball book titles begin with the word "baseball", those are broken out separately in the title lists below) A | B | "Baseball" | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z | other |
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