Baseball Metrics - what do you rely on?

[Ryu In My House]

Like all of you I love baseball, but I am older (52) so I still rely on a lot of old metrics to measure baseball success like ERA and OPS. I post this because I think a lot of us older fans, and newer fans, and maybe casual fans, would like to know how to dive deeper into baseball metrics.

 

So my questions are:

 

1. What metrics do you use and rely upon consistently? For my, I live my fWAR and OPS. And yes, ERA (don't judge). But I understand that xFIP may be a way better measure of how a pitcher's performance. Anyway, please give your feedback.

 

2. What websites/tools/resources do you use to view players' statistics, contract details, trade worth, etc.? I used Fangraphs almost exclusively, but I use MLB for scouting reports. I know some folks on here post trade scenarios to determine if they are realistic. What do you use?

 

3. Players in the minors - what do you use to determine their value and chances for future success? Once again I use Fangraphs to scout for FV (future value), where ~ indicates a player who has a good chance to a least make it as a bench player. But what else is out there?

 

I hope some of you can post your tips and information here. I think a lot of us fans who want to enjoy baseball even more could use this knowledge.

[Deadpool]

I'm a big fan of wRC+ for hitters, and FIP for pitchers (and fWAR as an overall)

 

I don't dig in nearly as much as many here, but I find those are good stats to give me a general idea of the value a player has created.

[BlueRocky]

https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/ has great tools if you want to dive deeper into baseball metrics.

They have everything from spin rates, pitch movements, pitch usage, live tracking exit velocities, launch angles, barrel %, hotspots, etc

 

1. Aside from the ones above: wOBA, line drive rates, whiff rates, walk rates, contact metrics, sprint speeds

 

2. Are we talking about fantasy baseball tools?

 

3. I try to dive deeper into players, metrics and stats only tell part of the story. A lot of the game is mentally driven. It's all a lotto, but certain teams have an edge in player development which increases a prospect's chance to succeed. Scouting tools is important and that's what most people do, but when you invest in the players themselves and not their stats its easier to root for guys that go through growing pains. None of the players drafted are finished products, there's really no telling how far they'll go. All these projection systems and models are not perfect, that's why there are breakouts every year where players way exceed expectations or fail to meet their hype. Injuries also play a huge factor in a player's career projections, and it's next to impossible to tell if a 18-21 year old kid will stay healthy for the next 10 years.

Edited July 12, 2021 by BlueRocky

[AdamGreenwood]

Like all of you I love baseball, but I am older (52) so I still rely on a lot of old metrics to measure baseball success like ERA and OPS. I post this because I think a lot of us older fans, and newer fans, and maybe casual fans, would like to know how to dive deeper into baseball metrics.

 

So my questions are:

 

1. What metrics do you use and rely upon consistently? For my, I live my fWAR and OPS. And yes, ERA (don't judge). But I understand that xFIP may be a way better measure of how a pitcher's performance. Anyway, please give your feedback.

 

2. What websites/tools/resources do you use to view players' statistics, contract details, trade worth, etc.? I used Fangraphs almost exclusively, but I use MLB for scouting reports. I know some folks on here post trade scenarios to determine if they are realistic. What do you use?

 

3. Players in the minors - what do you use to determine their value and chances for future success? Once again I use Fangraphs to scout for FV (future value), where ~ indicates a player who has a good chance to a least make it as a bench player. But what else is out there?

 

I hope some of you can post your tips and information here. I think a lot of us fans who want to enjoy baseball even more could use this knowledge.

 

For minor league pitchers, I do my own formula, based on:

 

K/9

K/BB

IP per game

Age for level

Max fastball velocity

Player height

 

For hitters, I look at:

 

K rate

HR rate

BB rate

Age for level

Defensive scouting reports

 

I have not done as well with hitters. It's a lot less predictable and hitters can routinely change their approaches.

[Laika]

https://www.bluejaysmessageboard.com/threads/5025-Sabermetrics-Introduction-and-Discussion

[Laika]

For minor league pitchers, I do my own formula, based on:

 

K/9

K/BB

IP per game

Age for level

Max fastball velocity

Player height

 

For hitters, I look at:

 

K rate

HR rate

BB rate

Age for level

Defensive scouting reports

 

I have not done as well with hitters. It's a lot less predictable and hitters can routinely change their approaches.

 

It's a bit ironic, and a point a lot of people don't appreciate. People who are in, I dunno, year 3 of their sabermetrics journey often want to see their team go all in on position prospects because pitchers blow up all the time and "TINSTAAPP" and all that jazz. BUT pitchers are just easier to scout. Way easier to scout.

 

So even though the attrition/injury rates are way higher for pitching, it's easier to identify the good ones. These points cancel each other out at least to some degree.

[Laika]

Greenwood's list of minor league stats to look it is pretty solid, BTW. That's kind of all you need and catches everything that actually correlates with future success. I don't really look at HR rate for hitters but I do look at ISO and BABIP.

 

If you look at those stats in concert with scouting report info (use Fangraphs or BA) then you are at least looking at all the right info for minor leaguers.

[Spanky99]

https://www.bluejaysmessageboard.com/threads/5025-Sabermetrics-Introduction-and-Discussion

 

Use this Ryu, best information on this forum. ^^^^

 

It's a sticky at the top of the page.

[Laika]

1. What metrics do you use and rely upon consistently?

 

For holistic hitting performance wOBA and OPS are both fine. Both correlate well with runs scored. I prefer wOBA because it is created from the run values of the events that happened, whereas OPS is just a random combination of OBP and SLG.

wRC+ is preferable to both, though, because it is park adjusted. wOBA is not! And neither is OPS, of course. So you can weed out things like the Coors effect by looking at wRC+.

Another advantage of wOBA over OPS is you can compare wOBA directly to xwOBA, which is their expected wOBA based on the fancy statcast stuff like hard hit rate and batted ball profile. So wOBA gets a leg up in utility in the era of statcast and baseballsavant.

So for holistic hitting performance (i.e., "how good has this guy been?") I am mostly looking at wOBA and wRC+.

If I went to go a bit "under the hood" I will look at xwOBA, BABIP, K and BB rates, barrel rate, maximum EV and average EV, launch angle, and batted ball percentages (GB%, etc.) These all help answer the questions of "how indicative of actual talent is this player's past performance?" and "how good should we expect this guy to be going forward?".

 

For hitters, all you need to really look at after wOBA/wRC+ are their BsR and UZR on Fangraphs. Layer in the positional adjustment and all of that stuff together = fWAR. Note that "Def" displayed on the Fangraphs dashboard is UZR + the positional adjustment. I don't really look at baseball reference WAR for hitters, ever.

[Laika]

1. What metrics do you use and rely upon consistently?

 

Looking into pitching performance can be a bit trickier (or at least seem a bit trickier) because of all the different ERA estimators out there. You have ERA, FIP, xFIP, SIERA, DRA, TIPS, and many others.

 

None of these are straight up better than the others. Some of them are better in certain circumstances, though. The key is to understand what they do and when you might want to look at one thing rather than another.

 

Over a very large sample size (many years) all you really care about is ERA. Yes, ERA. Run prevention is the whole point. The problem with ERA is that it can be influenced heavily by things outside of a pitcher's control, so there are better things to look at as you shrink the sample size. For a season, or maybe two seasons, it's probably better to look at FIP. If you think a pitcher had a bizarre (lucky or unlucky) HR rate against them, use xFIP instead. When comparing ERA to FIP or xFIP, you'll want to glance at BABIP and LOB% as well, so you can get the whole luck picture.

 

In VERY small sample sizes OR when you are trying to figure out if there has been some sort of skill change, you need to get more granular. Velocity, velocity trends, pitch mix, spin rates, horizontal/vertical movement, whiff rates, called strike rates, and even video of pitching mechanics can all be worth exploring.

[Laika]

2. What websites/tools/resources do you use to view players' statistics, contract details, trade worth, etc.?

 

For prospect trade values, the table in this article is helpful: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/an-update-to-prospect-valuation/

 

I think Baseball Reference is the best site to see MLB contracts.

 

For MLB player values, here is the framework:

- One WAR is worth about $9M. Some might say $8M. It doesn't really matter what figure you use as long as you're consistent.

- Value is the difference between WAR and contractual cost. A 2 WAR player making $18M will help a team on the field but won't be worth anything in trade.

- Trade value is the difference between projected WAR and contractual cost. This is why elite prospects are worth so much - they project for elite performance and they make almost nothing for the first ~4 years of their career.

- How do you project WAR past the one year provided by projection systems? Well, some systems actually project multiple years of WAR if you know how to find the information. ZiPS does this, although it is not made completely public and the author only releases pieces of that information here and there.

- Most players peak between 26 and 28. Most start to decline at like, age 29. If you are projecting future WAR on long term contracts, one very easy/crude way to factor in decline is to just shave off 0.5 WAR each year from age 29 onwards. And you can do the opposite and project slight improvements towards age 26, too.

- Most players who sign free agent contracts should be expected to worth nothing in trade going forward. The ones who overperform (improve, or avoid declining) will have some trade value. The ones who underperform will have negative value.

[Dick_Pole]

I grew up on the baseball card stats and that's what I get excited about. I'm not looking to get into baseball as a career, nor am I in any pools nor am I currently betting on baseball. So why not just enjoy being an uneducated fan? I can leverage the nerds of this board to assess if a player is good or not, for instance, upcoming prospects or a Jays trade. The mid-tier stuff like wRC+ and xFIP are easy enough to understand. Stuff like exit velocity or launch angle, sorry just can't get excited about that. Just need to fake it enough to fit in with the culture of the board then fap over W-L records on my own time.

[Benito]

I grew up on the baseball card stats and that's what I get excited about. I'm not looking to get into baseball as a career, nor am I in any pools nor am I currently betting on baseball. So why not just be an uneducated fan? I can leverage the nerds of this board to assess if a player is good or not, for instance, upcoming prospects or a Jays trade. The mid-tier stuff like wRC+ and xFIP are easy enough to understand. Stuff like exit velocity or launch angle, sorry just can't get excited about that.

 

Haha. This is the reason this board is my primary go to for following the Jays.

[BigCecil]

I grew up on the baseball card stats and that's what I get excited about. I'm not looking to get into baseball as a career, nor am I in any pools nor am I currently betting on baseball. So why not just enjoy being an uneducated fan? I can leverage the nerds of this board to assess if a player is good or not, for instance, upcoming prospects or a Jays trade. The mid-tier stuff like wRC+ and xFIP are easy enough to understand. Stuff like exit velocity or launch angle, sorry just can't get excited about that. Just need to fake it enough to fit in with the culture of the board then fap over W-L records on my own time.

 

LOL. Truth bombs. Feel same. Avoided fantasy ball. I have enough obsessions. I’ve learned some basic tools on board. Love wRC+. Have lost pretty much all faith in the old stats I used to worship at the alter of.

[Ryu In My House]

So, wRC+ is sort of a "metric" measure, in that 100 is average. Like IQ

 

160 is amazing and 60 is Danny Jansen?

 

Whoa, Vladdy is at 189 - holy s***. That's video game stuff.

[BlueRocky]

So, wRC+ is sort of a "metric" measure, in that 100 is average. Like IQ

 

160 is amazing and 60 is Danny Jansen?

 

Whoa, Vladdy is at 189 - holy s***. That's video game stuff.

 

Vladdy’s season is in prime Willie Mays territory right now or mid-20s Manny Ramirez.

[Dick_Pole]

LOL. Truth bombs. Feel same. Avoided fantasy ball. I have enough obsessions. IÂ’ve learned some basic tools on board. Love wRC+. Have lost pretty much all faith in the old stats I used to worship at the alter of.

 

I went through a phase of watching old baseball clips from the 70's and 80's especially before the season started last year. There's just something so pure about the simplistic analysis and commentary. Even the graphics and the s***** quality of the video. Maybe some people would lose their minds over it.

 

I personally think the old school stats are derided a bit too much. For instance if you looked at Halladay's W-L record and had nothing else to go on then compared it to the Jays overall W-L during his tenure with the team, you'd know he was a damn fine pitcher for a very long time. WAR or WPA might be the only other stats to tell you that story. None of the rate stats would tell you about his dominance both in quantity and quality. Even strikeouts have begun to lose their meaning because every pitcher is friggin Nolan Ryan now.

[max silver]

Like all of you I love baseball, but I am older (52) so I still rely on a lot of old metrics to measure baseball success like ERA and OPS. I post this because I think a lot of us older fans, and newer fans, and maybe casual fans, would like to know how to dive deeper into baseball metrics.

 

So my questions are:

 

1. What metrics do you use and rely upon consistently? For my, I live my fWAR and OPS. And yes, ERA (don't judge). But I understand that xFIP may be a way better measure of how a pitcher's performance. Anyway, please give your feedback.

 

2. What websites/tools/resources do you use to view players' statistics, contract details, trade worth, etc.? I used Fangraphs almost exclusively, but I use MLB for scouting reports. I know some folks on here post trade scenarios to determine if they are realistic. What do you use?

 

3. Players in the minors - what do you use to determine their value and chances for future success? Once again I use Fangraphs to scout for FV (future value), where ~ indicates a player who has a good chance to a least make it as a bench player. But what else is out there?

 

I hope some of you can post your tips and information here. I think a lot of us fans who want to enjoy baseball even more could use this knowledge.

 

1. I really like some of the Statcast based metrics which have become available recently. Both xWOBA and xERA are very handy tools to use for evaluating player performance. These tools are able to remove defence from the equation similar to metrics like FIP, but also incorporate batted ball data into the final result. One good example of the utility of these tools is apparent with a player like Marco Estrada. During his Blue Jays tenure he ran low ERA's, but high FIP values. He was able to induce a lot of lazy fly balls and popups, and a metric like xERA very closely mirrors his ERA results, working as a means to validate the ERA values he garnered as being legitimate and not a fluke.

 

XWOBA is useful for attempting to determine which players have been lucky and conversely those who have been unlucky. Using BABIP alone isn't sufficient as it doesn't directly take quality of contact into account. Players like Santiago Espinal and Reese McGuire have both produced much higher actual WOBA results compared to xWOBA, which suggests they may have been a bit lucky to have the success they have enjoyed up to this point. At the opposite end of the spectrum Rowdy Tellez and Danny Jansen have both dramatically underperformed with much lower actual WOBA compared to xWOBA. This may suggest they have experienced quite a bit of bad luck.

 

XERA and xWOBA can be found at https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/ and fangraphs as well. Baseball savant contains a treasure trove of information. You can find detailed breakdowns for individual players for how they compare in various batted ball metrics against the rest of baseball, player sprint speeds, defensive information incorporating outs above average as well as other information.

 

https://www.mlb.com/glossary/statcast/expected-woba

 

Expected Weighted On-base Average (xwOBA) is formulated using exit velocity, launch angle and, on certain types of batted balls, Sprint Speed.

 

In the same way that each batted ball is assigned an expected batting average, every batted ball is given a single, double, triple and home run probability based on the results of comparable batted balls

 

https://www.mlb.com/glossary/statcast/expected-era

 

Expected ERA, or xERA, is a simple 1:1 translation of Expected Weighted On-Base Average (xwOBA), converted to the ERA scale. xwOBA takes into account the amount of contact (strikeouts, walks, hit by pitch) and the quality of that contact (exit velocity and launch angle), in an attempt to credit the pitcher or hitter for the moment of contact, not for what might happen to that contact thanks to other factors like ballpark, weather, or defense.

 

2. My favorite website for calculating player values is https://www.baseballtradevalues.com/. This site breaks down every MLB player and each team's notable prospects into a dollar value. Salary and years of control are included in the final values. You can use this site to work out potential trade scenarios which is pretty fun to do.

 

3. For prospect values I like https://www.mlb.com/pipeline. This site has a ton of prospect lists, and gives full scouting grades to each team's top 30 prospects. Compared to Fangraphs the grades are definitely more on the generous side, but you get detailed writeups as well as the grades for each prospect's tools.

[Brownie19]

I went through a phase of watching old baseball clips from the 70's and 80's especially before the season started last year. There's just something so pure about the simplistic analysis and commentary. Even the graphics and the s***** quality of the video. Maybe some people would lose their minds over it.

 

I personally think the old school stats are derided a bit too much. For instance if you looked at Halladay's W-L record and had nothing else to go on then compared it to the Jays overall W-L during his tenure with the team, you'd know he was a damn fine pitcher for a very long time. WAR or WPA might be the only other stats to tell you that story. None of the rate stats would tell you about his dominance both in quantity and quality. Even strikeouts have begun to lose their meaning because every pitcher is friggin Nolan Ryan now.

 

C'mon man - for every Doc Halladay W/L record, there is a King Felix or Jacob deGrom W/L record that doesn't tell you anything about how dominant and amazing they are/were. You must be trolling.

[Dick_Pole]

C'mon man - for every Doc Halladay W/L record, there is a King Felix or Jacob deGrom W/L record that doesn't tell you anything about how dominant and amazing they are/were. You must be trolling.

 

Jacob deGrom career W-L: 77-53 .592

Mets 2014-2021 W-L: 562-557 .502

Mets 2014-2021 excluding deGrom W-L: 485-504 .490

 

Mets add 10 basis points to their chances of winning over the past 7+ seasons by having this one particular pitcher on the mound. You can pretty clearly infer that deGrom is a superior pitcher here. Now do you really want me to do that with Seattle for 2005 to 2019 to prove my point?

[Brownie19]

Jacob deGrom career W-L: 77-53 .592

Mets 2014-2021 W-L: 562-557 .502

Mets 2014-2021 excluding deGrom W-L: 485-504 .490

 

Mets add 10 basis points to their chances of winning over the past 7+ seasons by having this one particular pitcher on the mound. You can pretty clearly infer that deGrom is a superior pitcher here. Now do you really want me to do that with Seattle for 2005 to 2019 to prove my point?

 

holy f*** - nevermind Dick.

[Laika]

Jacob deGrom career W-L: 77-53 .592

Mets 2014-2021 W-L: 562-557 .502

Mets 2014-2021 excluding deGrom W-L: 485-504 .490

 

Mets add 10 basis points to their chances of winning over the past 7+ seasons by having this one particular pitcher on the mound. You can pretty clearly infer that deGrom is a superior pitcher here. Now do you really want me to do that with Seattle for 2005 to 2019 to prove my point?

 

I mean, you're doing significantly more work at this point than just looking at WAR.

 

And this is not how people traditionally used pitcher wins. They just counted them. You would rarely see arguments made like "yeah he only won 15 games but his team was bad". It was more like, if you don't win 20 you're not in Cy contention. The only people who dug into things and looked at run support etc. were the future saberists, probably. And nowadays even the people who don't love advanced stats can't help but view wins and losses through a more modern lens.

 

I also need to comment on this line "None of the rate stats would tell you about his dominance both in quantity and quality" just to say why the f*** would rate stats tell you about the quantity of his performance???

[RobinThicc]

Rbi

[Spanky99]

holy f*** - nevermind Dick.

 

lol

[BigCecil]

I went through a phase of watching old baseball clips from the 70's and 80's especially before the season started last year. There's just something so pure about the simplistic analysis and commentary. Even the graphics and the s***** quality of the video. Maybe some people would lose their minds over it.

 

I personally think the old school stats are derided a bit too much. For instance if you looked at Halladay's W-L record and had nothing else to go on then compared it to the Jays overall W-L during his tenure with the team, you'd know he was a damn fine pitcher for a very long time. WAR or WPA might be the only other stats to tell you that story. None of the rate stats would tell you about his dominance both in quantity and quality. Even strikeouts have begun to lose their meaning because every pitcher is friggin Nolan Ryan now.

 

Well the 1972 Phillies won a grand total of 59 games and Carlton "won" 27 of those.

 

I put very little stock in pitching W-L records these days but i still find that a eternally shocking and impressive stat for him.

[Spanky99]

Well the 1972 Phillies won a grand total of 59 games and Carlton "won" 27 of those.

 

I put very little stock in pitching W-L records these days but i still find that a eternally shocking and impressive stat for him.

 

Damn... I was a casual fan when so young, but holy s***... 11.1 fWAR does a lot of talking! He was awesome! That really is remarkable.

[BigCecil]

Well the 1972 Phillies won a grand total of 59 games and Carlton "won" 27 of those.

 

I put very little stock in pitching W-L records these days but i still find that a eternally shocking and impressive stat for him.

 

Damn... I was a casual fan when so young, but holy s***... 11.1 fWAR does a lot of talking! He was awesome! That really is remarkable.

 

I was 7 or 8 that season in 72. I remember in 1981 playoffs the Expos getting to Lefty just enough, and beating the Phillies twice. Steve Rogers gave up one run over two starts. Was such an exciting time as Canadian ball fan.

 

Even as a kid I remember that wicked down and in slider Carlton threw to RHH and how many bats swung over the top.

[Dick_Pole]

Well the 1972 Phillies won a grand total of 59 games and Carlton "won" 27 of those.

 

I put very little stock in pitching W-L records these days but i still find that a eternally shocking and impressive stat for him.

 

Haha yup, that's one of the first things that comes to my mind too.

[Dick_Pole]

I mean, you're doing significantly more work at this point than just looking at WAR.

 

And this is not how people traditionally used pitcher wins. They just counted them. You would rarely see arguments made like "yeah he only won 15 games but his team was bad". It was more like, if you don't win 20 you're not in Cy contention. The only people who dug into things and looked at run support etc. were the future saberists, probably. And nowadays even the people who don't love advanced stats can't help but view wins and losses through a more modern lens.

 

I also need to comment on this line "None of the rate stats would tell you about his dominance both in quantity and quality" just to say why the f*** would rate stats tell you about the quantity of his performance???

 

Understood, but I do. In this fictional scenario where I had access to only to one stat, W-L record using my method would suffice.

 

I mean, let's say you were talking to someone who was a complete newb to baseball and had no time to explain all the stats but wanted to explain how Roy Halladay was a good pitcher. Saying he had a W-L record of 203-105 for mostly .500 teams gets the point across. Or Hernandez or deGrom being winning pitchers for mostly trash teams.

 

Not sure about your last line, that's my whole point.

[Dick_Pole]

A little bit off-topic but I think the decline in respect for the pitcher win has correlated to the rise of stupid s*** in the game I don't like. Like the opener and starting pitchers being taken out after the 5th. In favour of an army of completely interchangeable K an inning relievers with no real long term future in the game because they can't do anything beyond max effort for 20 pitches. I miss the 80's when decent pitchers could get up to 20 CGs a year and even the 5th starter would sprinkle a couple here and there. Now a baseball team's annual roster resembles something like an NFL team. Yuck.

 

Give me stupid, exciting baseball with lots of stolen bases, lots of starting pitchers going deep, a decline in the three outcome trend, a BP where I could actually name the 5-7 guys there and lots of pitchers chasing 20 wins a season.