Mid-March is a great time of year for several reasons, but it’s not necessarily a good time for analysis. A regular commenter asked me how I analyze the spring numbers. The simple answer is no. There are several reasons for this. The most important reason is that the sample size is too small. Sometimes I quote numbers, but they don’t really mean anything.
The second problem is that we don’t know what level of competition these guys are facing. We can get excited about the emergence of a young player until we realize that he is primarily facing other young players. Obviously, this is doubly true for veterans. Finally, when we look at veterans we have to consider that sometimes they are working on something specific that may not translate into performance. Pitchers can work on a specific pitch or hitters can try to hit the ball in the opposite direction.
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With all of this in mind, I wanted to take the opportunity to answer another question that came up. Someone asked about the source of many of these numbers. An analyst is only as good as his tools and I need to be honest in admitting that others have done the heavy lifting for the most part. My job is to take those numbers and use them to analyze the players and their performance. However, like theologians and the Bible, we are better off when more people understand the underlying sources and their strengths and weaknesses.
Baseball-reference.com
one could call baseball-reference.com the official online baseball encyclopedia. The strength lies in the large amount of information and the ease of finding what you are looking for. It is distinguished from Fangraphs.com including things like rankings in certain categories on each player’s page, including a section of when they led the league in certain categories or finished in the top ten. This was huge for me when I was calculating award voting and deserved MVP points.
It should be noted that B-ref uses its own WAR formula which we normally call BWAR. It is primarily based on his fielding metric, which correlates fairly closely to defensive runs saved (Fielding Bible). It doesn’t have the richness of field metrics that Fangraphs and other sources have. However, it is an absolutely fantastic resource if you want to get quick information on players, from conventional data to more sabermetric data.
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Fangraphs.com
Fangraphs.com It’s my favorite site and probably the most trusted resource. The advantage of Fangraphs over Baseball-reference is that it includes more minor league information and that was helpful when breaking down hitter and pitcher numbers from the past few weeks. They also include international numbers. Baseball-reference also has this information, but it takes a few extra clicks to get there. When I want this information I quickly go to Fangraphs.
Obviously, the graphic part of the name is key. They include a lot more of what I would call process data than a baseball reference. So what exactly is process data? In short, it includes things like pitch velocity, spin rate, and hitters’ exit velocity. So if you want to know what a pitcher’s average curveball velocity is or what a hitter’s chase rate, contact rate, or hard-hit rate is, Fangraphs is the quickest resource to get that information.
I should point out that they have access to leaderboards. Both Fangraphs and Baseball Reference have paid services that allow you to customize those leaderboards for your own research. Personally, I don’t currently do that because the free versions give me everything I want, but people who want to do an even more detailed analysis should check them out.
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baseball wise
Baseballsavant.com It is another resource that more and more analysts use. Notably, it includes some of the same information as Fangraphs, but uses more tables and graphs to display the information more graphically. That includes things like heat maps for hitters and pitch tracking for pitchers along with movement, velocity and spin.
These numbers are especially useful when analyzing individual performances early in the season. Hitters and pitchers may look great or horrible because of the numbers, but the underlying information may not match up. Seeing it graphically is great for visual geeks who want to see what the numbers say. The site also includes more underlying numbers that may explain why the field numbers and base numbers say what they do.
As I said before, an analyst is only as good as his tools. The objective of this space is not only to analyze but to educate about how the analysis is carried out. I may be the analytics guy around here, but I’m also a teacher at heart. So, if you’ve ever had a question that left you scratching your head, this is the space for you. Feel free to jump into the comments with a particular question. As we get closer to the actual season, we’ll start going fast and furious towards the actual numbers flying our way. Until then, enjoy the last days of spring baseball while you can.