Groundballs are great because they, obviously, never go for homeruns…

Not most of the time, no.

But USSM has some fanastic primers on defense and evaluating pitching talent. Great reads.

It looks like your links got messed up:

Fangraphs
The Hardball Times
Baseball Reference
The Baseball Cube
Baseball Think Factory

And I wanted to add:

First Inning

Basically, like FIP, DICE estimates a pitcher’s ERA using only three outcomes: BB (and HPB), HR and K. DICE is suppose to be better than ERA because it’s not dependent on defense or luck (like if hits are allowed consecutively or not).

An OPS+ of 100 means that you are exactly a league average hitter. But remember, OPS+ doesn’t adjust for position, only whether or not you are a league average hitter.

So for example, if a hitter has an OPS+ of 150, it means that he’s 50% better than your league average hitter.

FIP – Fielding Independent Pitching: About the same as DICE above, the formula is FIP=(13HR + 3BB – 2K/IP)+3.20. The +3.2 is in there so the final number approximates ERA.

BABIP – Batting Average on Balls In Play: Just what it says. A player’s batting average when home runs and strikeouts are taken out of the equation. This stat is mostly used to see how “lucky” a player is. League average is pretty stable around .300. An individual’s BABIP is highly dependent on the type of contact they make, and a players xBABIP (expected BABIP) can be approximated by: LD% + .12, or more accurately by (GB%.24+FB%.15+LD%*.73). If a player is significantly over/underperforming their xBABIP, they have likely been lucky/unlucky on their balls in play, respectively.

Another note: Often in statistical discussions, when players are drastically over/underperforming their career averages, someone will undoubtedly say that they will “regress to the mean.” Really, more accurately, the player will likely regress TOWARD their career mean, but statistics have no memory, and to get TO the mean, the player would have to under/overperform their career averages by the same amount for the same amount of time.

For example, if a player is hitting 50 points above their career average halfway through the season, to reach their career average, they would have to hit 50 points BELOW their career average for the rest of the season. It is more likely they will preform at their average for the rest of the season, resulting in a season total 25 points above their career average.

RZR is the proportion of balls hit into a fielder’s zone that he successfully converted into an out. From this article, it is further described as:

The central idea is to evaluate the fielding of individual players by analyzing only those zones in which the average fielder at that player’s position fields at least 50% of balls for outs. This method allows you to split the playing field between fielders and assign responsibility for many batted balls.

An important part of RZR is the Out of Zone (OOZ) plays, which is what it sounds like: the number of plays made by a fielder outside of his defined zone.

RZR, in conjunction with OOZ, gives a decent idea of how much range a player has. To quote the linked article again:

Revised Zone Rating is only a measure of fielding range. There are other things to consider when judging fielders, such as the ability to turn the double play, handle bunts, throw out runners, back up plays, etc.

In regards to your second question, I’m not sure, sorry.

I keed, I keed….

RZR is nice because it’s so readily available at all times.

What I think the best way to deal with defensive stats overall, though, is to look at as wide a range of them as you can and identify trends. Of course, the problem there is that some of the best ones (Dewan’s +/-, Dial’s Defensive Runs Saved, MGL’s UZR, etc.) aren’t available on a day to day basis.

Dial’s got AL values for starters up and should have NL values up soon though, which is nice.

To get a good rough estimate of a player’s range, I suggest looking at the player’s RZR and OOZ. But if you’re looking for the more accurate information, I suggest looking at Chris Dial’s work (which is just working with ZR to find runs saved, etc.) and John Dewan’s Fielding Bible. I also like Chone Smith’s tweaked zone rating, which is pretty easy to calculate on your own. Mitchel Lichtman’s work is liked by a lot of people . . .IIRC, he was hired by the Cardinals and doesn’t post his ratings anymore. But his work is essentially the same as Dewan’s.

Actually, I have some questions of my own. How does Dial figure out “average opportunities” and “AvgZROps”? I think he mentions that comes from years of data, but if someone knows how he does it, that’d be great.

Also, how does Baseball Prospectus figure out their RATE and RATE 2 metrics?

Learn to reply to the post you’re referring to jackass.

Question on EQA: When looking at player cards, do you usually look at the adjusted-for-all-time section or the adjusted-for-season section? That always throws me.

It looks like the seasonal-adjusted lines are usually lower, meaning that today’s environment is more difficult than the all-time environment. In other words, a guy who’s average all-time with a .260 EQA might actually be below average for today’s environment (.252 EQA or something).

Any thoughts on that, anyone?