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Saturday, October 30, 2010

Sullivan: On The Importance Of Playoff Experience

Michael the Backward Kay just swallowed a ketchup-filled jelly banana!

262 innings have been thrown this month by pitchers with previous playoff experience prior to 2010. Those 262 innings have been thrown over 30 starts and 92 relief appearances. Over those 262 innings, the pitchers have a combined 3.78 ERA, with an 8.3 strikeout rate and a 2.7 walk rate.

252.2 innings have been thrown this month by pitchers without any previous playoff experience prior to 2010. Those 252.2 innings have been thrown over 28 starts and 93 relief appearances. Over those 252.2 innings, the pitchers have a combined 3.10 ERA, with an 8.9 strikeout rate and a 3.1 walk rate.

There have been 1,145 at bats this month by players with previous playoff experience prior to 2010. Over those 1,145 at bats, the players have hit .221, with a .281 OBP and a .359 slugging percentage.

There have been 783 at bats this month by players without any previous playoff experience prior to 2010. Over those 783 at bats, the players have hit .248, with a .310 OBP and a .382 slugging percentage.

...Playoff experience. It’s probably nice to know how to handle the media. It doesn’t seem to matter on the field.

Repoz Posted: October 30, 2010 at 11:19 AM | 14 comment(s) Login to Bookmark
Tags: history, sabermetrics, special topics

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1. TomH Posted: October 30, 2010 at 12:43 PM (#3679821)

Similar findings to research I published thru SABR re: World Series starting pitchers who appeared in more than one W.S. They performed much BETTER in their first W.S. than in their subsequent ones.

2. John DiFool2 Posted: October 30, 2010 at 01:18 PM (#3679832)

Bias towards younger players?

3. michaelplank Posted: October 30, 2010 at 01:43 PM (#3679836)

Some sort of selection bias and/or failure to control for inherent skill level is apparent here.

4. Bob Dernier Cri

Posted: October 30, 2010 at 02:04 PM (#3679847)

One thing that makes this exercise harder to conceptualize, I'd think, is that by the time a player reaches the World Series nowadays, he's had at least seven games of playoff experience, likely more – IOW more than some guys used to get in entire careers. True, that experience was only a week or two previous, but by the time the season drags into November these days all the players are grizzled postseason vets.

5. kubiwan Posted: October 30, 2010 at 02:08 PM (#3679849)

Some sort of selection bias and/or failure to control for inherent skill level is apparent here.

6. Pasta-diving Jeter (jmac66) Posted: October 30, 2010 at 02:21 PM (#3679860)

This would change the media's narrative quite a bit.

no, it wouldn't--you think they'd let facts interfere with a good meme?

7. The Pequod Posted: October 30, 2010 at 02:27 PM (#3679863)

Isn't failure to control for "skill level" the entire point of the study? Or in other words, in forecasting a player's playoff performance, you should look at how good a player they are, not your level of prior experience.

That's not the way I thought about it. I was thinking about the fact that players with lots of postseason experience are probably more likely to be good players. To be more thorough, you'd need to compare players to their regular season performance levels.

8. Swedish Chef Posted: October 30, 2010 at 02:36 PM (#3679867)

Isn't failure to control for "skill level" the entire point of the study?

Then it is looking at the wrong thing, if there is a selection bias there (ie that a sucky player with postseason experience is more likely to make the roster), then there can still be an effect that is hidden by that bias.

9. Don Malcolm

Posted: October 30, 2010 at 02:38 PM (#3679869)

From TFA:

This isn't the best way to conduct this kind of analysis. Ideally, one would compare the experienced players to themselves and the inexperienced players to themselves by looking at their regular season and playoff stats. We'd then see how well each group carried its collective performance over into October. But doing that would take way more work, while this only took half an hour. And I think we can safely assume that the inexperienced pool of players isn't so much better than the experienced pool of players that the numbers above actually favor the latter over the former.

10. The importance of being Ernest Riles Posted: October 30, 2010 at 02:55 PM (#3679880)

But doing that would take way more work, while this only took half an hour.

dang, i should have used that in the conclusion to my thesis.

11. Jolly Old St. Neck Wound, Moral Idiot

Posted: October 30, 2010 at 03:39 PM (#3679897)

But doing that would take way more work, while this only took half an hour.

dang, i should have used that in the conclusion to my thesis.

Me, I could have attached that note onto my B.A. diploma from Duke.

12. Pasta-diving Jeter (jmac66) Posted: October 30, 2010 at 04:02 PM (#3679906)

But doing that would take way more work, while this only took half an hour.
dang, i should have used that in the conclusion to my thesis.

when I was in college, my roommate was desperately trying to finish a paper and he wanted to include a factoid he had read somewhere, but for the life of him, he couldn't remember WHERE he read it, so, he ended up including the factoid in his paper with the intro ""It said in this book that I read once..."

13. TomH Posted: October 30, 2010 at 06:45 PM (#3679960)

which is why my study (http://www.philbirnbaum.com/, Nov 2002 issue of BTN) compared players with themselves. It found greater than .60 weighted ERA difference in favor of the W.S. newbies versus themselves as W.S. vets; but the sample size still allowed that this might possibly be chance. Still, it sure don't look true that experience helped the starting pitcher.

14. Davo Malvolio Posted: October 30, 2010 at 07:37 PM (#3679978)

But how long did your study take, Tom?

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Saturday, October 30, 2010

Sullivan: On The Importance Of Playoff Experience

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