Breaking Blue: Toronto Blue Jays Blog is live

[theblujay]

The value of Draft Picks:

 

http://www.breakingblue.ca/2014/03/12/the-value-of-draft-picks/

 

Awesome, definitely higher than I would have thought. Now I don't mind losing Santana

[Laika]

I know using 30 as the average age for the first year of FA is just a quick heuristic that you used (understandable that you would too given the grossness in figuring out service time stuff for each player) but did you find that 30 was in fact the average age?

 

Even if you did, I think there's a slight problem with that. The players who reach free agency earlier are, by in large, the better prospects. So having a few of their prime years in the sample might skew things significantly.

 

I apologize if you answered these questions in the article as I skimmed it really quick. That was just an initial thought from reading about a paragraph and looking at the results.

 

Cool/important article topic though.

 

Using first 6 years WAR might be a cleaner way to look at it.

 

With an age 30 cutoff, you'll get guys who break in early and accumulate more than 6 years, and you'll get guys who break in later and have less than 6 MLB years before age 30. It might all even out, but it might not. Like you say, the better prospects might be getting 7, 8 years on average here, and the worse prospects might be getting just 5 years. So that would change the magnitude of the relationship here - making the more valuable picks even more valuable, and the less valuable picks even less so.

[Nox]

Using first 6 years WAR might be a cleaner way to look at it.

 

Using service time is for sure the "right" way to do it but it would be really really time consuming to do it based of public data sources. I actually don't even think you could get historical service time per year per player from public sources. Even Cots (which I'm assuming is being fed an MLB data stream by some front office source) only has current service time figures for guys.

 

So from a pure feasibility standpoint I don't blame JFas for trying to do this with a rule of thumb approach. I just wonder if the results are a bit too skewed to be useful because of the aforementioned case. (It may in fact be fine...I don't know).

[Laika]

Using service time is for sure the "right" way to do it but it would be really really time consuming to do it based of public data sources. I actually don't even think you could get historical service time per year per player from public sources. Even Cots (which I'm assuming is being fed an MLB data stream by some front office source) only has current service time figures for guys.

 

So from a pure feasibility standpoint I don't blame JFas for trying to do this with a rule of thumb approach. I just wonder if the results are a bit too skewed to be useful because of the aforementioned case. (It may in fact be fine...I don't know).

 

I don't have any experience working with and manipulating data for stuff like this, but yeah, I imagine "sum seasons where age < 30" is a hell of a lot simpler than trying to actually sum the first 6 service time years. You can't really do first 6 season because lots (most) players have a partial year or two in there that doesn't = a full service time year. Even if first 6 or first 6.5 seasons would work theoretically, it's not as easy to pull as less than 30.

[Nox]

I don't have any experience working with and manipulating data for stuff like this, but yeah, I imagine "sum seasons where age < 30" is a hell of a lot simpler than trying to actually sum the first 6 service time years. You can't really do first 6 season because lots (most) players have a partial year or two in there that doesn't = a full service time year. Even if first 6 or first 6.5 seasons would work theoretically, it's not as easy to pull as less than 30.

 

Exactly.

[Nox]

Yes it was simply for ease. And it wasn't by any means exact. The discount rate was just a rough estimate as well, same with the $/WAR through arb. I don't really have the data to go by service time. A rough estimate with some large error bars.

 

How intense of an effort would it be to change the cutoff to 29? (This is mostly out of curiosity and not really even a suggestion for increased accuracy or anything like that)

[Nox]

Overall WAR decreases by a factor of 0.86.

 

Weird tidbit: Raw data for pick 5 actually increased from 6.9 to 8.6 when shaving of the age 29 year.

 

Probably just an artifact of overfitting.

 

Thanks though! 0.86 seems reasonable. I'm guessing the truth lies somewhere between that and 1.

[Nox]

There was an error in Braun's lookup for the 29 data, that's been fixed lol It looked up the wrong Ryan Braun

 

Ah yes, this guy.

 

http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=5648&position=P

[NorthOf49]

It's always a fun trick to throw that guy out in auction drafts and have people bid him up before they notice the discrepancy.

[GD]

2014 TIPS and xxFIP Leaderboards!!

 

http://www.breakingblue.ca/2014/04/03/2014-tips-and-xxfip-leaderboard/

 

I will update frequently when I have the time!

 

Make sure to make your docs public.

[Laika]

Just a fluke, but I love this.

 

Mark Buehrle career FIP = 4.17

2014 TIPS after one fantastic 0.77 FIP start = 4.13

[Laika]

It's not even that crazy, really, considering that 4 games could equal 500, 600+ pitches. So four games might sound like a small sample, but when you think about it like 500+ events, is it really that small?

[Abomination]

It's not even that crazy, really, considering that 4 games could equal 500, 600+ pitches. So four games might sound like a small sample, but when you think about it like 500+ events, is it really that small?

 

Wouldn't umpire bias potentially dominate the results (unless JFaS adjusted on past umpire numbers)? The number of pitches may not be a small sample size, but the number of games with different umpires is.

[Laika]

Wouldn't umpire bias potentially dominate the results (unless JFaS adjusted on past umpire numbers)? The number of pitches may not be a small sample size, but the number of games with different umpires is.

 

Ump crews rotate home plate though. Even if they get the same crew for 8 games, pretty sure they'd see 4 different home plate umps 2x. So I don't think the ump bias would be large. With four umps you'd think some of the tendencies would cancel out.

 

Could definitely be a factor though!

[Gen.Disarray]

Is every single ball called a strike credited to the catcher? There must be some amount of just botched calls, where the catcher had little or nothing to do with it right?

[Gen.Disarray]

Could you tell me what is the total percent of balls called strikes and vice versa? Is framing more effective on the edges than it is up or down in the zone? Probably a stupid question but, I'm just curious.

[Laika]

Bird Seed for 13/04/14

 

http://www.breakingblue.ca/2014/04/13/bird-seed-foreign-substances-early-jays-stats-frenchy-is-dumb-etc/

 

Scattered thoughts on early season Jays stats, foreign substances, closer carousels, Jeff Francoeur being dum

[GD]

Bird Seed for 13/04/14

 

http://www.breakingblue.ca/2014/04/13/bird-seed-foreign-substances-early-jays-stats-frenchy-is-dumb-etc/

 

Scattered thoughts on early season Jays stats, foreign substances, closer carousels, Jeff Francoeur being dum

 

Sorry I haven't really been able to do these lately. s***** time of the year.

[Sorrow]

Out of curiosity did you guys close down the blog?

[GD]

Out of curiosity did you guys close down the blog?

 

No, we're just rather busy. I'm still covering transactions that are of importance. If a trade goes down, I'll cover it, and I wrote about the Stroman promotion. And I'm sure JFaS and NJH and BTS will get around to writing something when they have a moment.

[NorthOf49]

No, we're just rather busy. I'm still covering transactions that are of importance. If a trade goes down, I'll cover it, and I wrote about the Stroman promotion. And I'm sure JFaS and NJH and BTS will get around to writing something when they have a moment.

It doesn't seem to exist at present on the internet though.

[GD]

It doesn't seem to exist at present on the internet though.

 

... You seem to be correct. Nothing in the blog subforum about closing the blog. Maybe just maintenance or something.

[admin]

Switching the blog to the new server, but there are some f***ing issues that are out of my control and I'm f***ing annoyed. It was still on the old server, which was live up until a couple days ago. Driving me insane dealing with this right now.

[GD]

Thanks for putting up with server ******** for us Ju1ced.

[Boxcar]

<3 u juiced

 

- #1 fan

[GD]

Any updates?

[GD]

The site is back up!

[Orgfiller]

Do you guys mind if I link the "Welcome to Breaking Blue and Sabermetrics" page on today's GDT?

[GD]

Do you guys mind if I link the "Welcome to Breaking Blue and Sabermetrics" page on today's GDT?

 

That'd be great lol

[GD]

http://www.breakingblue.ca/2014/08/04/recapping-an-insane-trade-deadline/

 

Recapping the trade deadline! If any of you guys use RSS feeds, let me know if it showed up in yours, namely KingKat. It didn't in mine *gulp*