Do the Giants win the NL West without Buster?

[sharksrog]

Do the Giants win the NL West without the NL MVP, Buster Posey? Most would say no. Some here have said Buster was worth 15 to 20 wins.

How many wins WAS Buster worth anyway?

Wins Above Replacement say 7.2. Runs Above Replacement say 69 runs, or 6.9 wins. How do we verify if those are reasonable estimates?

Here is a verification that they ARE reasonable.

It has been shown that 10 runs are approximately equal to one run. In other words, if a team scores 10 more runs in a season -- or gives up 10 fewer -- it will on average win one more game.

So how many more runs did the Giants score with Buster Posey than it would have with Eli Whiteside (pretty much a replacement player)?

I have shown here that one OPS point is worth about two runs. My back-of-the envelope formula for runs scored by a team is 450 runs plus one run for every OPS point over .600. Without dragging up the details, that formula has been rather accurate for the Giants and other teams.

So let's look at how much higher the Giants' OPS was with Buster than it would have been with Eli. If we then multiple each extra OPS point by two runs, we'll have a pretty good idea how many more runs the Giants scored with Buster. And if we divide those extra runs by 10, we'll have a pretty good idea of how many extra wins Buster meant.

The Giants had a .724 OPS in 2012. Buster had a tenth of their plate appearances and had an OPS that was 350 points higher than Whiteside's career OPS. That means Buster improved the Giants' OPS by 35 points.

Thirty-five points times two runs per OPS point equals 70 runs, or 7 wins.

Of course this isn't precise, but it appears Buster was worth about 7 more wins to the Giants than playing Eli Whiteside would have been -- very similar to what Wins Above Replacement and Runs Above Replacement also indicated.

The Giants won the NL West by 8 games over the Dodgers. That's one more game than the 7 added by Buster. Does that mean the Giants would have won the NL West by one game?

Maybe, maybe not. How's that for being evasive.

The question is, how many of those seven extra wins would have been lost in games against the Dodgers?

If the answer was none, the Giants would still have won by a game. If the answer was one game, the two teams would have tied. If the answer was two games, the Giants would have lost by a game.

Based on percentages, the odds were that the two teams would have tied. Not sure who then would have pitched the resultant playoff game for the Dodgers, but based on the rotation prior to the Giants' giving the rotation a little rest after clinching, the Giants' starting pitcher for that one-game playoff would have been Tim Lincecum.

A one-game playoff would have been exciting, but aren't we glad the Giants had Buster Posey?

[Islandboagie]

You're just calculating offensive numbers. What about passed balls, wild pitches and game calling? That's why WAR doesn't work, catchers are far more important defensively opposed to other positions, WAR doesn't calculate that. If you were to just stick an average AAA catcher behind the plate for 120 games, you'd get burned alot. I thought we learned this lesson last year.

[sharksrog]

Boagie -- You're just calculating offensive numbers. What about passed balls, wild pitches and game calling? That's why WAR doesn't work, catchers are far more important defensively opposed to other positions, WAR doesn't calculate that.

Rog -- Your statement that WAR doesn't calculate the value of a position is true in some calculations of war; untrue in others. The most detailed of WAR calculations give WAR (or take it away) for defense, base running and position. I just tried to keep it simple.

By the way, I don't offer the above as proof, but as verification. Using three independent methods we come up with a similar value. That tells us there is likely some value in WAR, even if it's not perfect.

Most here hold statistical analysis to perfection, as if the number isn't meaningful unless it is dead-on accurate. If we held scouting to the same test, it wouldn't fare any better than analytics -- and probably worse.

I keep saying that analytics aren't a be-all, end-all and that scouting isn't either. Even when we combine the two we don't achieve anything near perfection. But by combining them, we usually come closer to the truth than with either of them independently.

Boagie -- If you were to just stick an average AAA catcher behind the plate for 120 games, you'd get burned alot. I thought we learned this lesson last year.

Rog -- How did we learn that lesson? IMO you're making this stuff up as you go along. Why do I believe that?

Did the Giants' pitching collapse in 2011 after Buster went down? No. In fact it got slightly better -- even though bats usually wake up later in the season with the hot weather.

Was the Giants' pitching better in 2012 with Buster than it was in 2011 without him? No. While it was good, it wasn't AS good -- even with AT&T playing even more as a pitchers' park than it had in 2011.

Catchers are in AAA not so much because they can't field or call a good game; they are in AAA primarily because they can't hit at the major league level.



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[Islandboagie]

Rog -- Your statement that WAR doesn't calculate the value of a position is true in some calculations of war; untrue in others. The most detailed of WAR calculations give WAR (or take it away) for defense, base running and position. I just tried to keep it simple.

Boagie- It's true in all calculations of WAR. Does a AAA catcher know how to pitch to Matt Kemp? Do they know how to pitch Justin Upton? This lack of experience would add up to more losses, in most situations of a AAA catcher replacing a big leaguer. A catcher has alot more responsibility on the pitching side of things than any other position player. Do they figure that into WAR? That's my question.

Boagie -- If you were to just stick an average AAA catcher behind the plate for 120 games, you'd get burned alot. I thought we learned this lesson last year.

Rog -- How did we learn that lesson? IMO you're making this stuff up as you go along. Why do I believe that?

Did the Giants' pitching collapse in 2011 after Buster went down? No. In fact it got slightly better -- even though bats usually wake up later in the season with the hot weather.

Was the Giants' pitching better in 2012 with Buster than it was in 2011 without him? No. While it was good, it wasn't AS good -- even with AT&T playing even more as a pitchers' park than it had in 2011.

Catchers are in AAA not so much because they can't field or call a good game; they are in AAA primarily because they can't hit at the major league level.

Boagie- Good point, but that's just an assumption. Let's say the average catcher is in fact a young kid who's a decent hitter, but has never caught at the major league level, do you think we only lose 7 more games if he replaces Posey for an entire year? I find that very hard to believe. I think we've been lucky with the way Posey and Sanchez have both made the conversion to catching big league pitching. Sanchez was actually more impressive than Posey considering he started 2011 in San Jose and was our backup catcher on opening day in 2012. It doesn't always go so smoothly.

Not every team has a veteran catcher who's seen time at the big league level sitting at the AAA level like we did last year. The age and experience of Whiteside and Stewart was about the only thing they had going for them in 2011. Whiteside's game calling is good imo, Stewart's wasn't. Unfortunately Whiteside was awful at throwing out runners, and both were bad at allowing passed balls and wild pitches. Both were also bad offensively

[sharksrog]

Boagie -- A catcher has alot more responsibility on the pitching side of things than any other position player. Do they figure that into WAR? That's my question.

Rog -- They don't figure that into WAR. There is really no way to do so. That said, is Hector Sanchez a polished catcher with lots of experience who knows how to work big league hitters? Yet two Giants starters preferred to pitch to him than to the NL MVP.

When we look at Wins Above Replacement and Runs Above Replacement, they are figured differently. Yet they usually give similar results. They're far from perfect, but I do think they give us a more objective method of comparing players.


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[sharksrog]

Boagie -- Whiteside's game calling is good imo, Stewart's wasn't.

Rog -- You've once again done a great job of showing why game calling can't be incorporated accurately into WAR. In 2011, the Giants' ERA with Buster catching was 3.34. With Whiteside, the guy who was a "good" game caller, it was 3.28. With Stewart, who "wasn't" a good game caller, it was 2.70.

Now, believe it or not, I HAVE seen pitch FRAMING quantified for catchers. Like most defensive metrics, we should be careful of its indications. But are you beginning to see how deeply these "stats nerds" are getting into objective evaluations of all phases of the game?

And even a guy like Brian Kenny will tell you that you need to look at ALL the defensive metrics available in order to evaluate a guy defensively.

More stats than we can imagine are out there. It's learning how to use them (and to some extent, how to even FIND them) that is important.

I can tell you, for instance, how important K/BB/HR ratio is in evaluating a minor league hitter. Your challenge is to learn it (pretty easy), how to interpret it (a bit harder, but a lot of fun, really), and then evaluate for yourself how useful you think it is.

But it's not fair to reject something like that out of hand without testing it. And it's certainly not fair to say that because a guy understands and is deeply into analytics, he doesn't understand the game.

Analytics are about being fair and objective. That in itself is an honorable objective.

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