THE SCHAEFER METS PLAYER OF THE YEAR 2005

[Benjamin Grimm]

I've been mentally pronouncing it as if it started with an L, but I recently discovered that it's actually an uppercase i.

[Zvon]

Congrads David Wright!

Thanks for doin this Yancy, and dont even think about not doing it next year(if you want to go to the trouble).

And as far as I am concerned, yourDAman, and any guidelines or rules you set down I will follow. This is your gig, and you make the calls on it.
If you want input Im sure you'll get it.

Not only the tracking and math figuring involved, but your graphic display work is appreciated and is one of the major ingredients that has made this board a frequent must visit for me.

Please continue this next year and thanks again.

[Guest d'Kong76]

Nice presentation, Yance.

[dgwphotography]

Edgy DC wrote: What does that name mean anyway? Is it a type of lens?

It's not a type of lens - it's a nickname I have - it's not an english word.

[Guest d'Kong76]

Nor a human word, I'm guessing.

[Theoldmole]

Romulan?

[dgwphotography]

Yes, it is human, and no, it's not Romulan.

[Guest Rockin' Doc]

Great job with the Schaeffer POTG polls Yancy. It was a fine new feature to have added to the CPF.

I look forward to another year of polling in 2006.

[nymr83]

congratulations to Wright on an honor he is unlikely to find out about and even less likely to care about.

i liked the idea, though i stopped voting halfway through after falling behind and deciding i didnt care to catch up.
last year's polling method was simpler but lacked the ability to award the 2nd best player in a given game. i liked this better.
obviously we could, and may very well, spend the whole offseason debating a method for POTG for next year, but under the assumption that this will be the method here's the few minor changes i'd like to see:

1. ballot must must must add up to ten points or they will be discarded.

2. at first i liked the idea of only allowing 1/2 or 1/4 points as fractions, the only thing that changed my mind is if some stats-freak decided to make a spreadsheet to plug the box score into and determine his points through mathematical formulas rather than more prejudiced personal choices (i have to think that for alot of people here David Wright's or Mike Piazza's 2 for 4 buys them more points than Kaz Matsui or Miguel Cairo's 2 for 4, even if unconsciously)

a few potential problems with this system:

i still feel pitchers get the short end of the stick here overall.
the system rewards long-term mediocrity over short-term greatness...are people ok with this? i suppose this is back to the HOF argument but i for one favor quality. i think that starting 15 games and pitching great is much more helpful to a team than starting 30 games and pitching just above average. why? because a replacement level player can still start those other 15 games and the combined efforts will be better than the guy who started 30 in alot of cases.

GREAT JOB by our resident fantastic four fan....its clobberin time!

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

Obviously the more voters who take to the spirit of this thing, the better. AS Yogi said, you can observe a lot just by watching and the combined eyes of a lot of us I think would paint a fairly accurate picture when it's all over.

Through the year I felt my voting got more sophisticated and that's when I got into fractions: I didn;t want any accomplishments to go unrewarded. I also found myself trying to reward the big moments in a game: The first run or lead run I tended to overreward. I also felt more CAHNfident when I scored the game fresh in my mind.

I also thought about applying a multiple of some kind -- perhaps something as small as the team's winning percentage -- afterward to games won as a means of cutting down guys who score big because of a lack of competition in games the team plays poorly in.

Longevity counts for something. Whether a guy accumulates points on merit or not is not in our hands.

[Edgy MD]

I would start by rating the starting pitcher's effort independently, on a scale of 1 to 6. I'd then go and rate everybody's effort relative to him, starting with the relief pitchers, then the batters.

I'd always throw the catcher a bone, giving him one defensive point for every 19 earned by the pitchers. This was almost always a miniscule nod.

Usually I'd rate these guys with round numbers, but sometimes it would add up to eight points, sometimes to 15.

I'd then adjust all the scores to make them add up to ten. If I had 14.25 points awarded, I'd divide everybody's score by 1.425. If I had 8.75 points awarded, I'd divide them all by 0.875.

[nymr83]

Johnny Dickshot wrote: I also thought about applying a multiple of some kind -- perhaps something as small as the team's winning percentage -- afterward to games won as a means of cutting down guys who score big because of a lack of competition in games the team plays poorly in. Longevity counts for something. Whether a guy accumulates points on merit or not is not in our hands.

these are two issues on which i know reasonable people can and will disagree.

is your output still as meaningful if the team loses?
my answer has to be yes, and the best example is a starting pitcher who leaves for a pinch hitter without having allowed a run in a 0-0 game. whether they win or lose it doesnt change the contribution that he made. on the other end of this spectrum i can see not wanting to reward the guy who homers in a losing cause to turn the 10-1 loss into a 10-2 loss.
so i'd be all for playing around with multiples after the fact simply for our amusement...but i'd hate to do it the first time around and then not have data that didnt distinuguish btwn win/loss.

as far as longevity goes..
replacement level players are assumed to be readily available. when a player's production, in limited time, combined with a replacement level player's production in the remaining time, is better than the production of another player in full time i have to consider the 1st player more valuable.

examples? Seo (13th) was imo more important than zambrano and possibly benson (i dont have benson's numbers in front of me so i won't commit to that position.) Mientkiewicz, Cairo, and Matsui, by virtue of themselves being below "replacement level" can not possibly me more valuable than anyone who made a positive contribution to the mets in 2005 (Jacobs being a prime example.)

one more thing- i still think there is an inherent bias against starting pitchers in this methodology. The Mets were alot more successful at preventing runs than they were at scoring them, yet pitchers appear at positions 3, 6, 8, 9, 12, & 13 while hitters occupy slots 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 10, & 11 (i used the top 13 because we can reasonably expect the 8 starting players and 5 starting pitchers to be the 13 most important players, but i wouldnt object to using the top 10 or 15 or whatever in this conversation.)

[Elster88]

Mientkiewicz, Cairo, and Matsui, by virtue of themselves being below "replacement level" can not possibly me more valuable than anyone who made a positive contribution to the mets in 2005 (Jacobs being a prime example.)

This is, IMHO, a terrible way to look at things. Was Cairo's year long contribution less valuable to the team than Jacobs' 1.5 months? Of course not.

[Edgy MD]

Were Mientkiewicz, Cairo, and Matsui all indeed below replacement level? By what measure?

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

It's not up to us who gets the opportunity to play, just to reward the contributors when they do.

If a stiff gets in there for a whole year they will generate some points but if the scorers are getting it right, less than a comparable non-stiff given the same PT.

Quick and dirty, if we were to go back and assign a rate (schaefer points per AB) it looks like:

Jacobs .27 SP/AB
Diaz .18 SP/AB
Cairo .11 SP/AB

Which I think would be cool as an ancillary Schaefer statistic (I propose calling it, "The Refreshment Index").

I'm afraid if we did the same thing to pitchers per IP the starters would then get crushed by relievers however.

[Benjamin Grimm]

Maybe instead of per at bat or per inning, you could do it per game. After all, Schaefer points are accumlated game by game, not at bat by at bat. That also would smooth over the problem with starting pitchers vs. relievers.


My one suggestion for refining the Schaefer rules for next year would be to allow fewer than 10 points in a loss. Make 10 mandatory in a win, but establish a minimum of 5 points in a loss.

Any game the Mets win it should be pretty easy to get to 10 points. If the Mets win 17-15, all the points might go to the hitters. In a 3-0 win, it might tilt more towards the pitchers.

Here's an extreme example, though. The Mets win 1-0 on a complete game shutout by Benson. The Mets get only one baserunner themselves: a solo homer by Victor Diaz. In that case, I'd go Benson 6, Diaz 4. Four points is a lot for a single swing of the bat, but as I said, it's the most extreme example.

If the Mets lose 17-15, there are still hitters to reward, so we should be able to get to 10. If the Mets lose 2-0, there are pitchers who have earned points. The problem is when the Mets lose 12-0, and everybody pretty much sucked. In games like this, somebody might get 2 points for a lone single, in the effort to stretch to 10 points. If we were only stretching to 5 there would be fewer points earned for mediocrity. Sure, this would have cost Wright, Floyd, and Reyes some points, but I'd bet that it would have removed proportionately more points from guys like Mientkiewicz and Cairo.

It's something to think about for next year, anyway.

[nymr83]

Elster88 wrote: This is, IMHO, a terrible way to look at things. Was Cairo's year long contribution less valuable to the team than Jacobs' 1.5 months? Of course not. of course it was. jacobs gave the mets a good chance to win when he played, cairo didn't. it isn't jacobs' fault that he didnt play more or that his platoon mates sucked ass. yancy- good idea, though i'd think we need ard cap on a loss too, say 8 the problem with 5-10 is we'll be valualing some losses way more than others, and i thought the idea was to value all games the same. dickshot- good idea, i like rate statitistics better than raw counting stats anyway, so a per game deal is definetaly something i like. Were Mientkiewicz, Cairo, and Matsui all indeed below replacement level? By what measure? that chart that was posted on mets OPS by position compared to the league seemed to make this obvious to me, i would be happy to go through the numbers tonight when i get home if you wish to argue this point however.

[Guest sharpie]

This doesn't take into account defense which it should. If Cairo made some spectacular play to save a run or runs I'd throw him a point or two.

I like the system as-is. That being said, I did a much better job rating when I actually saw the game than if I just looked at the box scores.

[Edgy MD]

Is it possible to easily extract what the standings were in PotG wins?

[Guest Rotblatt]

From Baseball Prospectus, Value Over Replacement Player:

Mientkiewicz: 4.8
Matsui: 2.7
Cairo: -1.7

So Cairo was the only one worse than replacement level, according to VORP. They were all clearly well below AVERAGE, but that's not quite the same thing.

Jabob's VORP was 16.5, so if you buy into VORP, Jacobs was more valuable to our success (such as it was) this year than all the guys above combined.

Here's BP's definition:

Value Over Replacement Player. The number of runs contributed beyond what a replacement-level player at the same position would contribute if given the same percentage of team plate appearances. VORP scores do not consider the quality of a player's defense.

[Edgy MD]

Considering the players' defense would likely truncate the spread of those three.

Thanks for finding that. I think we toss around "replacement player" a lot around here without appreciating what we're saying.

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

Jabob's VORP was 16.5, so if you buy into VORP, Jacobs was more valuable to our success (such as it was) this year than all the guys above combined.


Yeah but only during the time he was here. Like I said, Schaefer really can't be both the judge of who played and who should have played more at the same time, except when using the Refreshment Index.

If someone wants to total that up (by game as YSG suggested) that'd be kool. I'm too bizzy again today.

[nymr83]

Mientkiewicz: 4.8
Matsui: 2.7
Cairo: -1.7

ok, so i'll revise my statement, they are all below or marginally above relacement level. ok, defense isn't taken into account so mintky is probably a bit more valuable than this and the 2 blackholes at 2b a bit rse.

[Elster88]

of course it was. jacobs gave the mets a good chance to win when he played, cairo didn't. it isn't jacobs' fault that he didnt play more or that his platoon mates sucked ass.

By this rationale, you should give Jacobs the same rating as someone who played exactly the same as he did but over the entire year. And that obviously wouldn't work. As far as I understand, the goal for the player rankings is not to rate how well someone played (or whether he gave them "a good chance to win"), but to rate his contribution over the entire year.

So Matsui and Cairo get points for playing the whole year, but lose some for playing at an average or above average level.

Jacobs gets points for playing at an above average level, but loses some for only playing for a short timespan.

[Elster88]

of course it was. jacobs gave the mets a good chance to win when he played, cairo didn't. it isn't jacobs' fault that he didnt play more or that his platoon mates sucked ass.

By this rationale, you should give Jacobs the same rating as someone who played exactly the same as he did but over the entire year. And that obviously wouldn't work. As far as I understand, the goal for the player rankings is not to rate how well someone played (or whether he gave them "a good chance to win"), but to rate his contribution over the entire year.

So Matsui and Cairo get points for playing the whole year, but lose some for playing at an average or below average level.

Jacobs gets points for playing at an above average level, but loses some for only playing for a short timespan.

[nymr83]

By this rationale, you should give Jacobs the same rating as someone who played exactly the same as he did but over the entire year. And that obviously wouldn't work.

nope. quality > quantity doesn't mean quality + quantity = quality.

So Matsui and Cairo get points for playing the whole year, but lose some for playing at an average or below average level. Jacobs gets points for playing at an above average level, but loses some for only playing for a short timespan.

untrue. jacobs cant get pts in games he didnt play, but until we start allowing negative pts for all the times castro took an 0-4 the system will heavily bias quantity over quality, which i dont like.

[Guest SwitchHitter]

Nymr83 wrote: i liked the idea, though i stopped voting halfway through after falling behind and deciding i didnt care to catch up.

Hey, I voted something like three times (after asking if Astros fans could vote) and it worked out. You could've just skipped some and gotten back into it.

[Edgy MD]

ok, so i'll revise my statement, they are all below or marginally above relacement level. ok, defense isn't taken into account so mintky is probably a bit more valuable than this and the 2 blackholes at 2b a bit rse.

No, because players capable of playing second --- even poorly --- are scarcer. They wouldn't be worse.

[nymr83]

why would we discriminate against astros fans?
yankee and brave fans may not vote.

[Guest SwitchHitter]

Nymr83 wrote: why would we discriminate against astros fans?

That's easy. Because we don't watch all the Mets games.

Nymr83 wrote: yankee and brave fans may not vote.

LOL, I'm with you on that. I know about triple happieness--is there double happiness during the play-offs?