Comments on: PrOPS at Sports Illustrated

By: Trace Wood

Trace Wood — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 17:00:36 +0000

It might help to remove triples from the speed score equation. Triples are as much as result of a player’s tendency to hit line drives, the ballpark he plays in and, with the unbalanced schedule, the outfield defenses he faces. Or is there another reason that Dmitri Young has more career triples in 1000+ fewer at bats than ARod, or BJ Surhoff more than Eric Davis?

By: JoeArthur

JoeArthur — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 23:51:26 +0000

It's counterintuitive to me that speed should not have a measurable impact on ProPS. When I examine the BIS hit type data on baseball graphs, I see a little less than .07 infield hits per ground ball. Very slow players have a multi year average of .02-.04 infield hits per ground ball; very fast players like Ichiro or Carl Crawford average .11 infield hits per ground ball. I assume .15-.16 ground balls should go through the infield for hits pretty much unrelated to the speed of the batter. Speed might only gain a handful of extra bases turing singles to doubles and doubles to triples and therefore might not enhance isolated power very much, but an extreme ground ball hitter like Ichiro should be gaining 12-15 additional hits each year from extra infield hits due to speed, not luck. That said, Ichiro specifically does seem to have been somewhat lucky overall so far this year - he still has many more singles than I would expect, though fewer doubles and homeruns.

By: Tom G

Tom G — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 23:46:35 +0000

I haven’t used PrOPS for fantasy stuff yet, but I have often thought it would indeed be a good idea. Take a look at your team, see who is performing over and above their expectations and trade them.

By: JC

JC — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 13:24:38 +0000

Thanks Chris,

I did look at speed when I developed the metric. In fact, in it’s early stages, when it was based off one year of data, I used Bill James’s speed scores to help predict PrOPS. However, when I redid PrOPS for the THT Annual, I used 4 years of data, and the speed elements ended up no longer being important. Furthermore, I found no relationship pointing to consistent over/underperformance of players from year to year.

Also, Ichiro is not just lucky. He is an extremely talented player and has been lucky only in the sense that some of his numbers are overstating his already good performance.

By: Chris Wheatley

Chris Wheatley — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 13:11:31 +0000

It’s an interesting stat, but the notion that Suzuki is “lucky” seems counterintuitive since he wracks up well over two hundred hits every year. In other words because of his speed from the plate to first what would be a lucky hit for others is a perfectly ordinary hit for him. In other words he may regress down to his normal .330 average but he is perfectly capable of continuing to hit .365–he has in the past.