Sabermetrics are a bunch of malarkey . . .

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by Jestre

Once again you are describing VORP as a tool to measure future production!!!! THAT IS WHAT WE ARE SAYING!!!!!

No. No. No. You just don't get it. VORP tells you who performed best at each position.

It is a predictive stat only in the same way that BA, OBP, SLG, and OPS are.

[BoofBonser26]

Originally Posted by Jestre

Once again you are describing VORP as a tool to measure future production!!!! THAT IS WHAT WE ARE SAYING!!!!!

No, he is not. He is saying (if I may invent an example), "Gee, A-Rod had a higher VORP than Casey Blake. We should probably get A-Rod, since he clearly was the better player last year."

[BoofBonser26]

Originally Posted by Anisoptera

I feel like I stepped into Bizarro World reading this thread.

So did I, when I first got here. But it quickly became "Fun Land" as I realized I could get most of my day's laughs from hanging around.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by BoofBonser26

No, it's not. Do you really simply want to say the guy with more RBIs was better without considering that stat is largely controlled by his team-mates? Really, until we get over this, we can't advance our understanding very far.

And that's pretty much the point of this thread. We either use better stats, like VORP, to gain a better understanding of the game or we can use our grandfather's stats and be stuck in the past.

(I suddenly had a flash of John Kerry saying "...education. If you make the most of it; you study hard; you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart; you can do well. If you don't, you could get stuck in Iraq.")

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by BoofBonser26

No, he is not. He is saying (if I may invent an example), "Gee, A-Rod had a higher VORP than Casey Blake. We should probably get A-Rod, since he clearly was the better player last year."

Yes, that's part of it, but we can use VORP to say:

1. A-Rod had a higher VORP than Casey Blake, so he clearly was the better player last year.

OR

2. A-Rod had a higher VORP than Casey Blake, so we should probably get A-Rod instead of Blake, since A-Rod was clearly was the better player last year and is likely to perform better next year.

We could have done this with, say, OPS as well, but we should use VORP for this because it's a much better measure of relative value to other players (and, of course, to replacement players).

[Russ]

Who has the most up-to-date formula for VORP?

[toxicavenger74]

Originally Posted by Jestre

This is precisely what we anti-VORP'ers have been trying to get across to the "eggheads" this entire thread. VORP is not a good tool to measure what a players contribution 'WAS' to his team over a past period. Only what his individual value was independant of team value and team contribution. In the real world the team with the most runs wins, not the highest VORP.

If people who use VORP are eggheads then people who use RBI's as a primary tool of measurment are Joe Morgan's.

"Does he use use VORP and Sabermetrics to analyze and make decisions"
"No, he Joe Morgan's it"

[BoofBonser26]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

Yes, that's part of it, but we can use VORP to say:

1. A-Rod had a higher VORP than Casey Blake, so he clearly was the better player last year.

OR

2. A-Rod had a higher VORP than Casey Blake, so we should probably get A-Rod instead of Blake, since A-Rod was clearly was the better player last year and is likely to perform better next year.

We could have done this with, say, OPS as well, but we should use VORP for this because it's a much better measure of relative value to other players (and, of course, to replacement players).

Bingo.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by Russ

Who has the most up-to-date formula for VORP?

Keith Woolner.

Badum-CHING!

[Russ]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

Keith Woolner.

Badum-CHING!

no really

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by toxicavenger74

If people who use VORP are eggheads then people who use RBI's as a primary tool of measurment are Joe Morgan's.

I would never insult them like that (or that badly); they're just stuck in the past. The world changes, and so do stats, and some people hate change and others feel threatened by it. But when you are in a competitive situation you have no choice but to keep learning new and better skills and new and better methods to keep up or you'll get left behind.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by Russ

no really

Really. I would bet $20 that he's tuned it a bit since he joined the Indians.

[The Wolf]

But this is all public:

http://www.stathead.com/bbeng/woolner/vorpdescnew.htm

http://www.stathead.com/bbeng/woolner/vorp.htm

http://www.stathead.com/articles/woolner/mlvdesc.htm

[The Wolf]

"2. A-Rod had a higher VORP than Casey Blake, so we should probably get A-Rod instead of Blake, since A-Rod was clearly was the better player last year and is likely to perform better next year."

When I posted that, I left out aging concerns and injury concerns (and, of course, contract concerns). You can use VORP, influenced by your knowledge of the aging curve and player injury procilivites, to predict who will likely provide better value at each position next year. Then, of course, you have to look at the money. Combining those things and you will be doing essentially everything that you can do...well, except for praying for luck.

[Russ]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

Really. I would bet $20 that he's tuned it a bit since he joined the Indians.

Right. I don't trust formulas I can't see.

[RonCo]

Geez.

VORP is not predictive. VORP is a measure of current or previous accomplishments. VORP does have a tendency to be repreatable from year-to-year, hence has some value if you want to make predictions about a guy in future years. But while it can be used to project (like any other stat), it is not intended to project future value.

VORP has several flaws, but it's a better tool than RBI for analyzing a player's actual performance relative to another player's actual performance because--for one of many reasons--a player's RBI opportunities can be so different (a guy who collects 95 RBI with 150 RISP is probably a more valuable hitter than a guy who collects 135 with 300 RISP, for example).

Please stop calling VORP a predictive tool.

[Gastric ReFlux]

I'm really disappointed you guys aren't looking at the single most important metric -- batting average.

[Russ]

Originally Posted by RonCo

Geez.

VORP is not predictive. VORP is a measure of current or previous accomplishments. VORP does have a tendency to be repreatable from year-to-year, hence has some value if you want to make predictions about a guy in future years. But while it can be used to project (like any other stat), it is not intended to project future value.

VORP has several flaws, but it's a better tool than RBI for analyzing a player's actual performance relative to another player's actual performance because--for one of many reasons--a player's RBI opportunities can be so different (a guy who collects 95 RBI with 150 RISP is probably a more valuable hitter than a guy who collects 135 with 300 RISP, for example).

Please stop calling VORP a predictive tool.

I agree. VORP is a measure of past performance. It is meant to be no more predictable than if a player hit 30 home runs last year he'll probably his close to that this year.

VORP>RBI. But RBI has a place. RBI is not a good indicator of who the best hitter was last year, but it's not without its uses. The problem occurs when people use RBI as a major argument in MVP awards, contract negotiations, etc.

Regardless, VORP is basically OPS run through a bunch of equations to adjust for era and park factors and playing time compared to 80% of the league average. It is by no means the holy grail.

[RonCo]

Yep.

VORP is VORP. That's all. It's not a holy grail, it's one way to analyze a player's production. The thread started with why you would use it over a guy with more RBI to determine MVP, and the answer is "because it's a better indicator of value as measured by contribution to wins" than RBI. VORP's advantage over OPS is that it's baselined on whatever you want to define replacement level as, hence giving you a very quick read on how much better a player was than other freely available talent. Among VORPs downside is that it doesn't include any fielding influence. It's also positional.

There is no 1 perfect number that means all things.

[Russ]

I think PECOTA is pretty genius. That and WPA are in my mind the two best things that have come out in the last ten years or so. It seems like the rest, like VORP, are just new ways to express not getting out and hitting XBH. It pretty much tells me nothing that's not already on the back of a baseball card if you know how to look at it.