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Monday, May 10, 2010

Jered Weaver versus King Felix is not even close

Posted by Pat Andriola
Rich Lederer decided to compare the careers of Felix Hernandez and Jered Weaver, two pitchers whom he claims have much closer numbers than analysts like Dave Cameron are giving credit for. Maybe they are, but I think this line is unforgivable:

Based on age, velocity, and batted ball info, maybe Hernandez projects as a better pitcher than Weaver. But the reality is that Felix has not outpitched Jered to this point. Or, if he has, the difference between the two has been miniscule [sic].

I mean, huh? Hernandez does not only project to be a better pitcher, he far and away has been the better pitcher, and it's not very close!

Felix Hernandez xFIP 2005-2010:

2005: 2.76
2006: 3.34
2007: 3.34
2008: 3.87
2009: 3.42
2010: 3.87

Jered Weaver xFIP 2005-2010:

2005: N/A
2006: 4.30
2007: 4.76
2008: 4.28
2009: 4.48
2010: 3.22

If somebody wants to compare their SIERA's, I'm pretty sure Felix will win in a landslide as well. I mean, Weaver is absolutely owned by Felix despite being older in every year pitched (small sample size for 2010, of course). I don't think it's possible to rule out Weaver becoming a #1 starter, but with his track record, age, and skill set, it's very, very unlikely. I find it completely disingenuous that Rich is using Win-Loss, WHIP, H/9 (!?!?), and ERA when there are so many better stats.

In fact, the graphic he puts at the top of the page (see below here) is so, so deceptive. This is exactly the type of maneuver that is made to make two players look much more similar than they are. Let's see why:



Okay, so Felix has a lot more innings pitched. Better for him. He has more wins, but who cares. He has a lower ERA, but that also is murky. He has a better ERA+, but that is just derivative of ERA. His WHIP is much worse, but that's probably due partly to the next stat, H/9, which is a silly stat completely dependent on defense. Felix gives up less homers, but this also deals greatly with luck/Safeco. He walks more people, but strikes them outs much more as well. Oh, and then the SO/BB to cap it off, which is completely redundant.

Look, Felix has been hands down the better pitcher so far, at a younger age, and will continue to be. I like picking on #6org as much as the next guy, but give me a break.

Update:

Taken from a comment from the article:


FELIX HERNANDEZ                  JERED WEAVER             DIFFERENCE (JW-FH)
YR AGE IP    FIP  xFIP WAR  AGE IP    FIP  xFIP WAR  AGE IP    FIP   xFIP  WAR
05 19   84.1 2.85 2.76 2.6  23                       +4  -84.1             -2.6
06 20  191.0 3.91 3.34 3.8  24  123.0 3.90 4.30 2.6  +4  -68.0 -0.01 +0.96 -1.2
07 21  190.1 3.75 3.34 4.1  25  161.0 4.06 4.76 3.1  +4  -29.1 +0.31 +1.42 -1.0
08 22  200.2 3.80 3.87 3.9  26  176.2 3.90 4.28 3.4  +4  -24.0 +0.10 +0.41 -0.5
09 23  238.2 3.09 3.42 6.9  27  211.0 4.04 4.48 3.9  +4  -27.2 +0.95 +1.06 -3.0
10 24   44.0 4.52 3.87 0.3  28   44.0 3.11 3.22 1.1  +4    0.0 -1.41 -0.65 +0.8


And taken from the comments section here:

SIERA
2006: Felix 3.28 Weaver 3.78
2007: Felix 3.10 Weaver 4.34
2008: Felix 3.84 Weaver 3.89
2009: Felix 3.39 Weaver 4.10
2010: Felix 3.83 Weaver 2.78



Pat Andriola is a student at Tufts University currently working for Bloomberg Sports. You can contact him at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or follow him on Twitter @tuftspat.

Comments

Colin Wyers said...

Why xFIP? Why ignore Weaver’s lower HR/FB rate?

Posted 05/10  at  04:01 PM
Pat Andriola said...

Colin, a lot has to do with this:

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/how-well-can-we-predict-era/

I like to regress homerun rates. Here are the FIP numbers even if you believe Weaver has the ability to limit his HR/FB to a lower-than-average rate:

Jered Weaver:

2005: N/A
2006: 3.90
2007: 4.06
2008: 3.90
2009: 4.04
2010: 3.11

Felix Hernandez:

2005: 2.85
2006: 3.91
2007: 3.75
2008: 3.80
2009: 3.09
2010: 4.52

It’s closer, as I said, but you simply cannot argue a minuscule difference. FIP-based WAR, which Fangraphs uses, has Felix worth 7.5 WAR more than Weaver over his career so far.

Posted 05/10  at  04:09 PM
Some guy said...

This article is why people hate stats nerds.

Try to be less of a indignant douche next time.

Posted 05/10  at  04:30 PM
TheTeeto said...

What a terrible argument.  You only use xFIP as your retort?  You argue that the numbers aren’t really that close, when they really are?  The simple argument here is age—Felix put up his numbers in the bigs when most players are in the minors.  There’s a big difference between a pitcher at 23-27 than there is from 20-24.  That’s all you had to say…

Posted 05/10  at  04:45 PM
Colin Wyers said...

If we prorate Fangraphs WAR out over 180 IP, we get:

Felix: 4.1
Weaver: 3.5

That’s a difference of about .6 wins a season (ish - 180 IP is just a “back-of-the-envelope” number).

Is that significant? How do you define “significant?” I think given what we know about the accuracy of our ability to estimate runs from components and wins from runs, a half-win difference over a season is within measurement error.

Posted 05/10  at  04:57 PM
Pat Andriola said...

TheTeeto,

That’s just not true. In terms of xFIP they are not close at all, and considering we have FIP-based WAR which takes into account innings pitched we can see that Felix has been worth 7.5 more WAR over his career.

For even more context, Baseball Projection’s numbers:

Jered Weaver career WAR: 14.6
Felix Hernandez career WAR: 18.2

That’s ~3.6 WAR, almost a full good season’s worth, between them.

Posted 05/10  at  04:57 PM
Pat Andriola said...

Colin,

Should we prorate it to ~180? Why not give Felix credit for pitching well over a longer period of time?

Again, I still think xFIP is a better indicator, and would like to know SIERA numbers.

I think .6 wins per season (which is about what I got from Baseball Projection’s numbers), while conservative, is still enough to say that Felix has been the better pitcher (age taken into account to), or at least that the difference is more than miniscule.

Posted 05/10  at  05:02 PM
elwin said...

SIERA
2006: Felix 3.28 Weaver 3.78
2007: Felix 3.10 Weaver 4.34
2008: Felix 3.84 Weaver 3.89
2009: Felix 3.39 Weaver 4.10
2010: Felix 3.83 Weaver 2.78

Posted 05/10  at  07:41 PM
TheTeeto said...

Pat Andriola said…
TheTeeto,
That’s just not true…

What’s not true?  Did you even read my post?  My point was the entire argument is ridiculous because Weaver is almost 4 years older.  Comparing the two is silly and pointless.

Posted 05/10  at  08:03 PM
Pat Andriola said...

TheTeeto,

I took your “what a terrible argument” to be in reference to mine based on what came after. That’s all.

Posted 05/10  at  08:13 PM
Mitch Brannon said...

I agree with the article in general, however isn’t saying H/9 is “a silly stat completely dependent on defense” a little simplistic? Surely the pitcher has at least something to do with the frequency and velocity at which his pitches come off of bats. You might have done better using “largely” instead of “completely.”

I think what Some Guy may have inelegantly tried to say is while your argument has merits, you probably could have made it without coming across as attacking Rich Lederer. Lederer’s point seems to have been that while Felix is the better pitcher, it isn’t all that much better than most of us (including me) would have guessed at first blush.

Posted 05/10  at  11:24 PM
Pat Andriola said...

Mitch,

Yes, “largely” is a better word.

In terms of re: being kind of a dick, I certainly didn’t mean to come off that way (may be stressed a little by final exams) and admire Rich’s work for sure; however, this was just a pretty unscientific and I think slightly sleezy way to compare the two pitchers.

Posted 05/10  at  11:26 PM
Mitch Brannon said...

You’re right, he used some silly stats and you did well to note the double-counting. As a stats guy who deals with government types, I’m sensitive to how easy it is to come off as sounding smug or defensive, even if you’re not.

Posted 05/10  at  11:42 PM
Nick Steiner said...

I agree with Colin.  The only reason xFIP was more predictive than FIP in the study Colin wrote was that he used single season sample sizes.  Weaver has over 700 career innings pitched in a home ballpark with a very close to neutral HR park factor

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/blog_article/hr-fb-park-factors/

So I see no reason to regress his HR/FB all the way back to league average.  xFIP is seriously only useful in a small sample size, once you get to 5-6 seasons it doesn’t have much value. 

Weaver’s career FIP is .35 points higher, and the two’s career ERA+, which adjusts for Safeco are identical.  Once you get to 700 innings or more, even FIP starts to become a little dubious compared to ERA given all of the things that FIP doesn’t account for. 

I agree that Felix has been better and will likely be better in the future, but the two have been very, very close so far in their careers.

Posted 05/11  at  12:02 AM
Nick Steiner said...

I think the ERA+ argument is the strongest for Weaver vs. Felix.  The ONLY reason we use FIP as an evaluative tool is that ERA has stuff outside the pitchers control which are distributed both randomly and with bias.  But ERA also includes MANY inside the pitchers control that FIP does not account for. 

Over 700+ innings, the randomness of ERA should start to fade away and the only things remaining are the biases.  Park factors are one bias, but ERA+ strips that away (or at least it should).  The other bias is defense.

According to FanGraphs, the Mariner’s have averaged +12.3 UZR since 2005 while the Angels have averaged +7.1 UZR during that same timespan. 

So you have two pitchers whose ERA’s, when park adjusted, are identical and whose team defenses have been within 5 runs per year of eachother.  In that case I so no reason why ERA should be disregarded, especially in favor of something as crude as xFIP.

Posted 05/11  at  12:21 AM
Colin Wyers said...

There are other biases in ERA that persist over time, the greatest being the bias in unearned runs. (Ground ball pitchers will have more unearned - and thus fewer earned - runs than a similarly talented FB pitcher, over an arbitrarily large sample.)

But what xFIP does is it regresses several pitching skills 100% to the mean. Over a small sample, this is probably indistinguishable from proper regression - this makes it a better projection then observed results.

Over the samples involved, though, there’s no reason for us to prefer xFIP over more expressive measures of past pitching performance.

Posted 05/11  at  12:38 AM
Nick Steiner said...

Yes forgot about that one.  But the ground ball bias in ERA is one that actually works against Felix right?  He’s a ground ball pitcher so his RA will be higher than his ERA relative to the league.

Weaver has a career 3.84 RA, while Felix has a 3.89 RA!  So Weaver has allowed fewer runs than Felix despite pitching in a decidedly more hitter friendly ball park with defenses of basically equal quality.  Rich’s comparison looks spot on to me right now. 

Right about xFIP.  I can live with the stat in a small sample size because it’s simple and does a good job, but in a large sample size it really has very little use compared to other stats.

Posted 05/11  at  01:05 AM
Colin Wyers said...

And for this:

For even more context, Baseball Projection’s numbers:

Jered Weaver career WAR: 14.6
Felix Hernandez career WAR: 18.2

That’s ~3.6 WAR, almost a full good season’s worth, between them.

Yes, it’s a full good season’s worth - 2005, in fact, where Hernandez had 2.9 WAR. Weaver made his debut in 2006. From that point on, there’s .7 rWAR between them.

I think that’s a damn sight different than “not even close.”

Posted 05/11  at  01:27 AM
Pat Andriola said...

Yes, but as I said, I prefer Fangraphs’ WAR, which is at ~7.5.

In terms of Baseball Projections’ numbers, that would be closer than “not even close,” but also not at Lederer’s “minuscule difference.” Somewhere in between.

Posted 05/11  at  01:30 AM
Nick Steiner said...

Pat, can you explain why you think FIP (FanGraphs WAR) is better than Run Average (Baseball Projection WAR) over the sample sizes involved? 

I’ve already shown that there is not a defensive bias involved, and because Baseball Projection WAR is park adjusted, there is no park bias.  That leaves the difference between FanGraphs WAR and BP WAR a combination of pitcher skill (controlling timing, controlling quality of balls in play, holding runners, etc.) and random variation. I would think that over 700 - 900 innings the amount of skill captured is more prevalent than the amount of random variation.

Posted 05/11  at  01:46 AM
Pat Andriola said...

Nick, I could very well be wrong, but what about th serious differences in SIERA posted above, which should take into account a lot of the things we’re talking about.

Posted 05/11  at  01:57 AM
Nick Steiner said...

SIERA regresses HR/FB 100% giving it the same problem as xFIP.  Given that’s where a lot of Weaver’s value comes from, it’s going to systematically underrate him.

Posted 05/11  at  02:01 AM
MangoLiger said...

I think what we’re glossing over here is that Felix has gotten much better over the last five years and Weaver has been more level (with some improvement), so of course when you average everything out it looks about the same. The implicit assumption being that “true talent” was static that whole time (from age 19 to 24 !), so we can just average away the 7 WAR season as noise. That assumption is absurd, and if you abandon it, you have to weight recent performance more heavily, which effectively also reduces your sample size, but also blows up any comparison between the two players. If we were comparing careers, fine. But up until last year Felix wasn’t really considered a better right-now pitcher than Weaver, it was all about potential. The premise some people seem to be working with is that Felix had been considered to be performing as a stud ace all along, and that, frankly, is a straw man.

Posted 05/11  at  02:08 AM
Sean Smith said...

Felix may project better, but for actual performance so far Weaver has been very close - 0.7 WAR over 4 years since Weaver’s debut.

As for projection, it’s too much of an unknown anyway.  Pitcher projections are nowhere near as reliable as hitter projections.  A big reason is that nobody knows how to project health.  Two of Felix’s advantages - doing this at a younger age and throwing more innings per year - may actually make him a bigger risk for future injury.

Posted 05/11  at  11:15 AM
MangoLiger said...

I guess what I’m saying is that these results shouldn’t come as a shock to those of us who think that Felix is clearly the better pitcher. It’s just a reminder that, while he had a bright future, he wasn’t clearly the better pitcher until very very recently.

Note that you can get the same results with Zack Greinke, who has an almost identical career ERA to Weaver. People talk about small sample size a lot, but large sample size can be a problem too—if you are trying to measure a non-stationary signal.

Posted 05/11  at  11:46 AM
Colin Wyers said...

Using CHONE’s ERA projections:

Felix: 3.38
Weaver: 4.10

That’s a difference of 0.72 runs. Sounds pretty cut and dried, dunnit?

But it isn’t. For ‘07, the RMSE between CHONE and observed was 1.084. (I should be using more recent figures, but I can’t find those readily and for the purposes of illustration it doesn’t matter. Actually to be pedantic each projection has several factors that influence it’s error and that should be accounted for, but for simple illustration that REALLY doesn’t matter.)

When the difference between two players’ forecasts is smaller than the estimated error for either forecast - that isn’t clearly better. I don’t even know if I’d want to say that one is better than the other. The uncertainty is simply too large.

Posted 05/11  at  12:14 PM
MangoLiger said...

“Clearly better” was my subjective opinion. Let’s try this: Felix is better than Weaver with a 74.672% probability (assuming a normal distribution).

Are you claiming that a pitcher needs a CHONE-projected ERA of 3.016 to be considered better than Jered Weaver? Because there are no starting pitchers that meet that criteria.

Posted 05/11  at  01:13 PM
Sean Smith said...

Those ERA projections include the efforts of the defense behind them.  Most people seem to think Seattle’s defense is better.  The ERAn - neutral context for each are 3.44 for Hernandez, 3.93 for Weaver.  Still an edge for Hernandez, but a bit closer.  The main reasons for his advantege is that Felix’s best year is also his most recent, and his groundball percentage.

Hernandez projects better than Weaver.  I don’t think anyone has suggested otherwise, but the difference in their actual performance to date has been much smaller than the 0.50 gap in projected ERA.

As for last season, anyone have a guess what the flyballing Weaver’s ERA would have been last year if he had Gutierrez and Ichiro catching flyballs for him instead of Hunter and Abreu?

Posted 05/11  at  01:46 PM
jrdo410 said...

Felix was just traded for Weaver - which fans are pumped and which are pooping their pants?  Thats about as much analysis as you need.

Posted 05/11  at  04:17 PM
Voxx said...

It’s hardly that cut and dried, jrodo. That factors in age and contract, which shouldn’t be heavily taken into account in this discussion. 

The two pitchers are honestly a lot closer than most give them credit for.  Is Felix better? Yes. But while xFip is a good stat for smaller sample sizes, I do believe ERA and, especially, ERA+ are superior stats when looking at sample sizes as large as 4-5 seasons. 

However, there’s one large caveat to be had here.  Felix has pitched better in the last year, despite them being fairly similar when their entire careers are taken into account.  When you combine that, and the age differential, it’s logical to state that Felix projects better down the road. 

But… saying Felix vs. Weaver ‘is not even close’ when referencing their past performance, is borderline unforgivable.  Sound familiar?

Posted 05/12  at  03:42 AM
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