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RBOA 2004
Publication Date: September 21, 2004
The Pitchers' Turn
You know, there's a rhythm to this stuff, and it ain't helped by babies and hurricanes. I'm just sayin'.
This week, as I continue my annual series on smarter stats for performance analysis, it's the pitchers' turn. Last time, with the hitters, I was able to describe some new adjustments I can now make to the AOPS in order to take advantage of our knowledge of how competition levels and park factors affect performance. In theory, those same adjustments could be made to the RBOA, my favorite pitching analysis stat, but I'm just not quite to a point where I can make a practical attempt to do so.
The base calculation for RBOA is, for each of a pitcher's starts, to calculate how many runs his opponents would score on average in the number of innings he pitches against them. In theory, you could change the question to be, "How many runs would they score against an average team in this park in this number of innings?" The problems with the first adjustment is this: How do we know how much to adjust for the difference in their schedule and an average schedule in terms of run-scoring? We have some second-hand proof that using SoS as a multiplier works for AOPS, but I've done no such proof for this at the team level, and the issue is further complicated since you wouldn't really want to look at generic SoS but at some sort of measure of average runs allowed by their opponents, which is going to quickly lead to a rabbit hole of computation.
On the park factor side of things, the reasons are purely pragmatic -- with the current data that I have, I don't have a way to match each start to which park it took place in. I'll keep that in mind as I collect next year's stats, and I'll get started on the computations needed to adjust for competition level, but that will be the work of several months of spare time, so this year you get the unadjusted version again. The good news is that the unadjusted version is still an awfully useful metric, and I'll try to do a little hand analysis at the top to see how the proposed changes will affect things.
Enough of That, Get on to the Pitchers
Here are the top 50 in RBOA for the 2004 season:
1 Jason Windsor Cal State Fullerton 70.08 2 Jered Weaver Long Beach State 66.63 3 J. P. Howell Texas 56.92 4 Cesar Ramos Long Beach State 53.43 5 Jonathan Ellis The Citadel 53.26 6 Vern Sterry North Carolina State 52.61 7 Greg Bunn East Carolina 52.36 8 Ricky Romero Cal State Fullerton 51.07 9 Sam LeCure Texas 48.94 10 Wade Townsend Rice 46.93 11 Philip Humber Rice 46.13 12 Wade LeBlanc Alabama 45.50 13 Thomas Diamond New Orleans 45.23 14 Stacen Gant George Mason 43.07 15 Jeremy Sowers Vanderbilt 40.54 16 Justin Hoyman Florida 40.29 17 Michael Rogers North Carolina State 40.11 18 Brett Smith UC Irvine 39.94 19 Joe Koshansky Virginia 39.69 20 Matt Campbell South Carolina 39.65 21 Justin Orenduff Virginia Commonwealth 39.15 22 Matt Fox Central Florida 39.14 23 Mike Pelfrey Wichita State 39.03 24 Garrett Broshuis Missouri 38.93 25 Jason Urquidez Arizona State 38.79 26 Cesar Carrillo Miami, Florida 38.74 27 Matt Scherer LeMoyne 38.45 28 Zach Kimball North Carolina-Wilmington 38.42 29 Ryan Ford Eastern Michigan 38.24 30 Andy Sonnanstine Kent State 37.99 31 Ryan Mullins Vanderbilt 37.90 32 Andrew Kown Georgia Tech 37.34 33 Ian Kennedy Southern California 37.07 34 Mark Holliman Mississippi 37.03 35 Casey Janssen UCLA 36.23 36 Kevin Ardoin Louisiana-Lafayette 36.11 37 Michael Gardner Texas-Arlington 34.74 38 Derek Tharpe Tennessee 34.72 39 Steve Grasley Creighton 34.47 40 John Williams Middle Tennessee State 33.78 41 Joe Piekarz Northern Illinois 33.21 42 Charley Boyce Arkansas 33.17 43 Andrew Dobies Virginia 32.90 44 Shawn Phillips Delaware State 32.80 45 Lance Broadway Dallas Baptist 32.27 46 Zach Jackson Texas A&M 32.18 47 Mark Roberts Oklahoma 31.97 48 Tom Robbins Texas State 31.74 49 Jermaine Shack Mississippi Valley State 31.30 50 Sean Ruthven Georgia 31.07
Now, there are a few results here that surprise me. I would have figured Weaver lapped the field back in March, so Windsor passing him surprises me. On the other hand, this is a counting stat, so the extra two weeks of starts may have helped there. Ellis and Sterry finishing so high surprises me, although Sterry had a great summer to back it up. Finally, Townsend, Humber, and Sowers finishing so low is a surprise. Let's look at these one at a time and see what we find.
First of all, Windsor did manage one more start than Weaver, 18 to 17, so their average RBOA per start was almost identical. That's still a surprise, so let's look at their seasons. First off, Windsor:
RBOA Opponent 4.69 Cal Poly 4.46 Cal State Northridge -1.33 Fresno State 0.56 Houston 5.13 Long Beach State -1.71 Long Beach State 5.74 Minnesota 5.74 Minnesota 5.24 Oklahoma 3.08 Pacific 4.21 Pepperdine 7.03 South Carolina -0.43 Texas 4.27 Texas 6.32 Tulane 5.61 UC Irvine 3.35 UC Riverside 8.11 UC Santa Barbara
And now Weaver:
RBOA Opponent 5.37 Arizona 3.88 Arizona 3.63 Baylor 4.76 Brigham Young 0.20 Cal Poly 4.68 Cal State Fullerton 6.23 Cal State Fullerton 2.02 Cal State Northridge 4.64 California 3.67 Houston -0.95 Miami, Florida 3.76 Southern California 5.40 Stanford 5.61 UC Irvine 5.35 UC Riverside 2.91 UC Santa Barbara 5.48 UCLA
There's not a huge difference in level of competition, although Weaver's opponents did average a point or so of ISR higher. The park factor adjustment would favor Windsor -- Fullerton is a moderate hitter's park, while Long Beach is one of the more extreme pitcher's park around. That may in fact be a concern for the Angels, since it could mean that Weaver's overall value is overstated. In short, I don't see any sign that any adjustment would actually make Weaver more valuable than Windsor over the full course of this season.
The last two sets of surprises, though, will need to be taken together to get the full effect, since it turns out that they definitely call for some sort of competition adjustment. For the five pitchers I identified above, here's the average ISR of their opponents:
Ellis 99.4 Sterry 107.6 Townsend 108.1 Humber 105.6 Sowers 112.0
Ellis saved his runs against Western Carolina and Wofford. Sterry appears to have been legitimate, while one of Rice's problems (which they've already solved) may have been the continuing deterioration of the rest of the WAC. Sowers got put through a tougher test, although his numbers are still a bit easier than the two Big West guys at the top of the list.
Sowers' numbers actually show another interesting point:
RBOA Opponent 1.11 Alabama -1.69 Arkansas -6.02 Baylor 4.29 Cincinnati 1.62 Florida 6.41 George Mason 6.33 Georgia 7.12 Georgia 4.87 Kentucky 5.21 Louisiana State 5.21 Maryland 3.51 Mississippi State 1.77 Mississippi 5.03 South Carolina 0.19 Southern Illinois 0.27 Tennessee -4.68 Texas
He actually lost over 10 points in his two terrible starts against Baylor and Texas. Since you can only lose a game once, those games may be overstated in importance by the RBOA.
News
We're one step closer to moving the season back more.
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