WPA Allstar Teams

by Just Rope Ball on Jul 3, 2007 4:42 PM EDT Comment 10 comments

Inspired by todays main post, I was curious who the allstars were based on WPA. The selection process is bogus but there is no need to argue about it. I just took the player with the highest WPA as of today according to fangraphs. Granted the choice could change with one player getting hot and the other ice cold, but oh well, thats what I did.

The first is the WPA allstar, the second is the actual starter with their WPA if they are not the leader.

NL Roster

C - Martin (1.53
1B - Pujols (3.16) - Fielder (2.67)
2B - Utley (2.24)
3B - Ramirez (2.57) - Wright (1.06)
SS - Tulowitzki (2.65) - Reyes (0.90)
OF - Bonds (3.72)
OF - Holliday (2.35) - Beltran (-0.12)
OF - Hawpe (2.03) - Griffey (1.34)
(If you need a true CF then Rowand (1.64))

AL Roster

C - Martinez (2.79) - Rodriguez (-0.83)
1B - Morneau (1.34) - Ortiz (1.20)
2B - Polanco (1.96)
3B - Rodriguez (3.62)
SS - Jeter (2.81)
OF - Guerrero (3.87)
OF - Ordonez (3.71)
OF - Sizemore (2.34) - Ichiro (1.75)

Poll

Do you like the fans voting?

Yes, it a game for the fans.

8 votes

No, most fans have no clue.

11 votes

Maybe, if they changed the system.

9 votes

I have a belly button!!

11 votes

39 votes | Poll has closed

0 recs | Comment 10 comments

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Comments

WPA is a funny stat...

... and i'm not sure I buy its methodology, but i appreciate the post.

actually, the voters got it mostly right, except in obvious cases. IMO, Fielder deserves it over Pujols, based on his outrageous power numbers and the fact that his team is in first place. A-Ram is obviously better than Wright, but Wright is the Great White Hope in NYC, and is good enough that i can understand why he got in. It would be silly to expect Tulowitski to win the vote. I'm fine with Griffey getting in as a legend, esp. with the numbers he's put up, but there's no excuse for Holliday not starting in place of Beltran.

same with V. Martinez and Morneau (how can Ortiz get elected at a position he doesn't even play?). other than that, the voters got it mostly right. it's hard to quibble with Ichiro's election, even if it comes at the expense of Sizemore, who is still young and a relative unknown.

by kindred on Jul 3, 2007 5:40 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

what about it do you not buy?

just askin'

Future Redbirds

by erik on Jul 3, 2007 6:27 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I have a few problems

with it. But mainly how people use it. I think it's a fun narrative and an interesting novelty stat (although that may be a little harsher than I intend). It's cool if you understand what it's telling you.

Because it gives the average LI of the situation, it devalues a bunch of runs after the fact. In a 5-4 game, it's tough to say that any of the winning team's five runs are less valuable than the others. WPA will give a ton of credit to the walk-off two-run shot and not to the solo homer in the first. That's because WPA can't see into the future, so to speak. It can only give you the average LI taken from all the data. That's not even to consider that it treats Barry Bonds and Brendan Ryan exactly the same.

If you were to hit two two-run homers in a game, and your team wins 4-1, you would be much better off, from a WPA standpoint, if you had struck out in that first AB. Same can be said if, instead of a walk-off, you hit the two-run homer (that makes it 2-1 - you skipped the first one, because you are a WPA fiend) in the top of the ninth, and the home team hits their own two-run homer in the bottom of the inning to win the game.

You can also accumulate tons of WPA in losing efforts, and while I understand why this is, are you really saying how much a player has contributed to wins, as some people use the stat? No, of course not. It doesn't even tell if a run crossed the plate!

It's not predictive, and obviously it takes context into account. So it's not a great way to compare players in a talent sense at all.

Reliever usage or other in-game evaluation, fine. Searching for clutch? Be my guest. That's about it for me though.

by plh903 on Jul 4, 2007 3:48 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I think its

a very good way to look at talent. Just look at who is at the top of the WPA leaderboards every year; its always pujols, ortiz, bonds, a-rod. (when he plays 140+ games). Those are the best players in the game, not just the most "clutch" so its got to be doing somethign right.

by PGeorge on Jul 5, 2007 10:58 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

That's because

WPA/LI is basically wOBA. It's like RBI, usually the better players are up there, but is it really a great way to draw a cogent comparison? I mean, it is a counting stat for doing good things, so of course the better players are going to be at the top. But that's not all it does.

Do we really need the context though to make talent evaluations? No, I think it does more harm than good.

The most precise version (what correlates best with RC or OPS) of WPA removes the context (WPA/LI) -- kind of the whole point -- otherwise it is mainly good for in-game evaluation.

WPA can't look into the future to tell you who won. It can't tell you that the solo shot in the first was the turning point in a one-run game. It can only tell you what's crucial RIGHT THEN.

I'll use VORP or whatever to compare offensive players.

by plh903 on Jul 5, 2007 11:29 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

In 2005

Albert Pujols created more runs than he did in 2006. He got half the accumulated WPA. He had tons of big hits in close and late situations last year, I totally understand why this is. But he created 130 runs in 2005, that at the end of the day gave us a pythag record with just short of a hundred wins.

It would just depend on whether he did that at the beginning of a game, or several times at the end of a close one for it to fluctuate like that. Nevermind if we won all those games by one run that he made runs happen in the 1-3 innings.

by plh903 on Jul 5, 2007 11:40 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Those

"amazing mets" aren't too amazing when it comes to WPA it seems.

On with the youth movement!

by aet15 on Jul 4, 2007 1:55 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Interesting that fan voting matched pretty well

I like fan voting but think the 25 votes per person is stupid and is the major contributor to stuffing the balot by New Yorkers. Voting by sportswriters and coaches is always worse evidence MVP, Gold Gloves, and HOF.

Fan for Life. Go Cards.

by Birds on the Bat on Jul 4, 2007 9:01 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

So long as you have internet voting

you're going to have to have something like the 25 vote rule. Otherwise, you'll just have people registering endless email accounts.

Really, though, I kind of wish that you just had the fan voting at the ballparks again.

by Valatan on Jul 4, 2007 10:40 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Maybe that's why!!

Looking at these lineups, maybe this is why the NL can't win an ASG, they don't vote in the best (by WPA) players!

Just kiddin', previous years list would surely show great variability but I just noted that (again, by WPA) AL voters got 5 of 8 correct while NL voters only got 3 of 8.

by ArkansasTravs on Jul 4, 2007 12:01 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs