Sabermetric Sox

by Marc Normandin @ Over the Monster on Jun 21, 2005 9:31 AM EDT in News

Hey there everyone, Marc Normandin here. While Randy is out of town he asked me to write a few guest articles, and said they could be about whatever I wanted. I decided since I'm one of the resident statheads for SB Nation, I'll order the Red Sox players by a few saber-stats. Let's start with Secondary Average, one many of you may be familiar with. SecAvg is meant to measure everything except batting average, and it scales along with batting average so that it is easy to understand what is good and what is not. A .300 SecAvg is good the same way a .300 BA hitter is. It also basically tells you how empty a batting average is. The formula I use:

(2B + 2* 3B + 3* HR + BB + SB - CS) / AB

SecAvg

David Ortiz .401
Manny Ramirez .374
Trot Nixon .335
Jason Varitek .330
Mark Bellhorn .303
Bill Mueller .282
Kevin Millar .228
Johnny Damon .227
Edgar Renteria .202

That is among regulars. The benches SecAvg looks like this:

SecAvg Bench

Doug Mirabelli .289
Kevin Youkilis .288
Jay Payton .279
John Olerud .250
Ramon Vazquez .088

Did you know the Red Sox are stealing bases at a 93% success rate as a team?

Let's now list the Red Sox hitters according to Value Over Replacement Player (VORP). The definition, straight from Baseball Prospectus Glossary:

The number of runs contributed beyond what a replacement-level player at the same position would contribute if given the same percentage of team plate appearances. VORP scores do not consider the quality of a player's defense.

Ortiz 29.6
Varitek 28.1
Damon 25.4
Ramirez 17.7
Nixon 15.8
Mueller 12.5
Renteria 10.8
Millar 5.6
Youkilis 4.3
Payton 4.2

VORP also works for pitchers, as we can see here:

Starters VORP

Matt Clement 21.9
Bronson Arroyo 9.1
Tim Wakefield 8.8
David Wells 8.0
Wade Miller 2.5

Relievers VORP

Mike Timlin 16.9
Mike Myers 5.4
Keith Foulke 0.3
Matt Mantei -1.0
John Halama -4.8
Alan Embree -6.1

All I have to say is thank whatever you consider to be holy that we have Matt Clement and Mike Timlin.

Marc Normandin writes for Beyond the Boxscore, Baseball Digest Daily, and Sox on Deck. You can e-mail him with comments, criticism, or suggestions at normandinm@merrimack.edu

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Comments

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I am not a member at Baseball Prospectus, but I have been looking at the VORP on footballoutsiders.com for quite some time now. It would be a lot more useful to me if I could understand how the values are determined. That being said, I doubt we could quantify the real VORP of Captain, as his work behind the plate adds tons of value to certain pitchers, like Clement.

As a stathead, I would love to have your feedback on a stat I have been working on. It is a ton of work to compile so if someone has already done it somewhere, I need to know.

by rebsox on Jun 21, 2005 1:37 PM EDT reply actions

RE: VORP

Well, VORP doesn't include defense in the equation. It is entirely an offensive statistic, so your right that it does not incorporate Varitek's influence behind the plate.

E-mail me said statistic at normandinm@merrimack.edu and I'll check it out.

"I don't set the rosters, I just make fun of the guy who does." - Rob Neyer

by Marc Normandin @ Over the Monster on Jun 21, 2005 1:43 PM EDT up reply actions

We math good

That is so cool!

Tony the Pony

by Tony the pony on Jun 21, 2005 1:49 PM EDT reply actions

embree....

slightly OT, but the statistics here confirm what has been blindingly obvious to anyone watching lately: Embree is worse than useless. Why he has pitched in three straight games, much more than Timlin has, is beyond me.

by poludamas on Jun 21, 2005 1:57 PM EDT reply actions

Embree

Embree has more staying power, keeping his velocity up over multiple innings (whereas Timlin doesn't seem to last more than three or four thirds of an inning). Of course, we've learned that we don't want to see him stay for multiple innings, but that's a different matter.

by phil on Jun 21, 2005 2:20 PM EDT up reply actions