If you picked baseball stats, you and I have something in common, because that's what I've been doing tonight. I thought it would be fun to run the hitters of the All-ABL 2009 team through the Runs Created formula, as well as another top hitter from each team who didn't make the cut, and compare them. Just for fun. Because I'm a nerd.
If you're not familiar with Runs Created, it's a Sabermetric-kinda stat to help judge the true offensive production of a player. If you're not familiar with RC or Sabermetrics, go ahead and click the links above; it explains them better than I could. But in a nutshell, Runs Created is a statistic meant to better judge a player's individual offensive output and isolate him from the performance of his teammates. This is considered to be more accurate than some of the more popular statistics which are flawed for various reasons (for example, RBI is a common measure of offense, but it's heavily influenced by the ability of hitters batting ahead of the player in question).
Before we continue, though, I'd like to clarify that this isn't to second-guess the selections of the people who choose the All-ABL team, for several reasons. First of all, it doesn't account for positional rankings. The best-hitting outfielder may not be better than the second or third place catcher, for example. Second, any statistical analysis has a greater margin of error with a small sample size; if a player plays 40 games in the ABL his stats can be more radically skewed when compared to 140 games in MLB. Third, RC doesn't account for defense at all.
There's probably some other reasons I could think of, but I think the point is clear: this is just to give you a better idea of how productive a player's offense is and to illustrate that you might not get a good idea of their production by simply looking at AVG/RBI/HR/etc.
So, without further ado, here's the ranking. Players in black were All-ABL selections in 2009. Those in red & italics were not.
If you click it, it gets bigger.
Outstanding work as usual.
ReplyDeleteI ran into this stat playing Baseball Mogul but had never actually seen it applied in real life. Sweet post jjack!
ReplyDeleteThanks guys. RC is probably one of the more mainstream of the sabermetric stats. I think you can find it in some newspaper statlines, etc. I like that it rolls all the offensive contributions (average, slugging, on-base %, steals) into one stat so you can compare a slugger to a speedster, for example.
ReplyDeleteI think I may do some more of these types of posts. Probably find a similar state for last year's pitching. It's interesting to me because I'm just learning about a lot of this (more experienced statheads are welcome to chime in) so it gives me a reason to get a better handle on it.
Drew Heid was that good. The best player in the ABL by a lllooonnnggg way. I would actually say that no one has ever put up numbers in the ABL like that (wood bat only)
ReplyDeleteYou're absolutely right, best player with the bat anyway and definitely one of the best overall. Hits for average, he can run & steal, he's developing power, good with the glove, good range in the field, nice work ethic. His ABL numbers aren't a fluke, either, because he put up similar summer-league numbers in the WCL in 08. He's taken to the wood bat well.
ReplyDeleteThe only thing keeping Heid from being a First-10-round draft pick is that he might be approaching his peak. You could probably plug the guy in at AA right now and he would hold his own, that's how good he is. But at his age and build I don't know how projectable he is.
If he makes a career out of baseball I think he'll get his cup of coffee in the Majors but I don't know if he'll ever be an All-Star. That being said, I'm not a scout, I'm a fan, and I'm always pulling for anyone whose worn a Pilots jersey.
Its not his age that scouts are worried about its his size and projectability at the mlb level.
ReplyDeleteHe doesn't project as a corner OF and they worry about his speed at a CF, which is crazy if you have seen him play more then one game.
I agree with everything you've said. Just to clarify, though, my point with the age remark was that if he were a prep star he might still have room to grow. As a college senior, what you see is what you get.
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