Statheads on Kearns
Baseball Prospectus has a profile of Austin Kearns that starts out strong, but quickly descends into statistical mumbo-jumbo. As we've started to collect more and more information about the game, especially in terms of how batted balls are hit, just categorizing and grouping things seems to have turned into analysis. I'm not smart enough to figure out how to do it better, but I'm not completely sure that much of it is helping anything anyway. What does this mean?
This isn't meant to pick on this particular writer, who has done a number of articles I've enjoyed.
I just think that at a certain point, too many stats isn't necessarily a good thing, especially if they're not making things more clear.
He should have been better than he was in 2005, and even though his 2004 was well below expectations as far as BABIP is concerned, his 13.7 percent line drive rate is abnormally low, and clearly the outlier amongst the group, meaning he most likely should have been better. Let's say that Kearns' line drive rate in 2007 should be 20.4, the average of his five years in the majors; given that, his BABIP should be around .324, which isn't unrealistic considering his past.
It's not hard to see why his 2006 was most in line with his eBABIP; his groundball rate was at its lowest, and he did not pop out weakly all that much either. His high rate of grounders and pop-ups is part of the reason he underperformed his 2005 BABIP so much.
This isn't meant to pick on this particular writer, who has done a number of articles I've enjoyed.
I just think that at a certain point, too many stats isn't necessarily a good thing, especially if they're not making things more clear.
posted by Chris Needham at
9:57 PM
7 Comments:
Was that English? ;-)
By
Cathy, at 3/29/2007 10:42 PM
I enjoy the BABIP at Woo Lae Oak.
By
tadcranky, at 3/29/2007 11:03 PM
You know eBABIP spelled backward is PI Babe. I have now given you as much usable info on Austin Kearns as that article
By
Harper, at 3/30/2007 12:37 AM
Kearns is this big guy who bats cleanup, yet he has about as much power with the bat at Larry Broadway.
By
Anonymous, at 3/30/2007 8:02 AM
Batting Average on Balls In Play is a measurement typically used to spot outlier seasons for players as it is difficult to maintain either a very high or very low number in this. As far as the grounders and pop-ups in 2005, they drove his BABIP to an abnormally low level, so one could tell he would regress to the mean in 2006. They can be convoluted, but if you know what to look for, these stats can not only illuminate past performance in a more lucid way, but also may be able to predict future behavior.
By
Anonymous, at 3/30/2007 9:05 AM
I know what each of those stats mean (I've used them before), and I know what it's trying to say. It's just too wrapped up in jargon and not written clearly enough to actually convey what it's trying to say. That was my unclear point -- which is a bit ironic, right!
You're right in that they CAN describe what's happened in the past, but I'm not sure how true they're predictive. Approaches change, injuries heal, etc.
Besides, if I flip a coin 10 times and it comes up heads 10 times, the odds of heads are still 50/50 on my next flip. Not everything has to regress.
And, in general, I think that the more variables we look at, the less meaningful any single one of them is.
I'm rambling again.
By
Chris Needham, at 3/30/2007 9:11 AM
If you throw enough BS against a wall, some of it is going to stick.
By
Anonymous, at 3/30/2007 11:56 AM
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