A new glossary!
Posted: July 31st, 2009 | Filed under: Media | 24 Comments »
A few people have asked me to write up a quick glossary of terms — statistics I like to use, phrases that have become inside jokes and so on — so that new readers can catch up.
Well, I have put that up top. It only has four or five terms in there now, but we’ll catch up. If you would like to add you own term to the glossary, write it up for the comments and I will Wikipedia it in there and give you a brilliant reader credit.
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Might want to put in a thing clarifying that “BR” means brilliant reader…I believe I’ve seen you use that acronym before
I think you only used it once, but you should add in Molinas, as in Jose Guillen runs @ .9 Molinas right now. Joey Gathright runs at about 1000 Molinas right now in AAA.
I assume it’s only a matter of time before Pixifoods and examples of are added.
Pozterisk – A long and rambling aside.*
*A Pozterisk may contain the main point of the post or at least go on long enought that the BR will forget that it was a Pozterisk. Occasionally, a not so BR will not notice a Pozterisk until he gets to the footnote that isn’t really at the foot. He then has to scan the preceding text for the referent. A task that becomes significantly more difficult when the original Pozterisk is in the title of the blog.*
*Or within another Pozterisk.
MannyBManny
Might be nice to give what values are okay/good/great for the stats. I’m not the only one who knows and understands the stats but needs a bit of a cheat sheet for what they actually mean.
OBP, SLG, OPS, etc. are like the metric system for me. I know what they all mean but since I wasn’t raised with them, I always have to convert to english-system equivalents.
09/09/09 is still a relevant term for 1 month and 9 days. Type it in again…you’ve done it so often.
There’s already a section for JoeWords. I think both sections should probably be combined into one.
Joe,
We all know that Circle Me Bert is what people say when they think they’re first. What we don’t know (or at least, I didn’t until google taught me), is what it actually means. Apparently Bert is now a Twins announcer and Twins fans write it on signs, hoping he will “circle” them with his little magic marker. In fact, I saw a sign that said it at Texas Stadium a few weeks ago (when they were playing the twins).
I think any Joe Poz glossary is woefully incomplete without an entry for “Bruce Springsteen.”
Would it require Duane Kuiper’s birthdate?
MannyBManny might be a good addition.
I have long been a fan of the Gloaden Rule …. granted, with him exiled in Florida it doesn’t get the same play it used to. But I still like it.
You should mention that book you’re writing.
What is 1/2 of the Mendoza line? The TPJ line?
E-migo. I have, with great success and plaudits, incorporated it into my everyday life. I even consider Joe, well, if not an E-migo, at least an E-quaintance . . .
As long as you have baseball acronyms up there, how about LOOGY?
You need to explain ‘Circle me Bert’
This is PG-13, but I’ve been referring to the Royals as the SARS (Sweet A** Royals). It still works if they’re playing well, but is more fittingly intended for when they are playing as usual. For example, when watching yet another easy pop up fall onto the outfield grass you may say, “We’re watching another outbreak of SARS.”
Well I guess I’ll be that guy—
“OPS+ – One of my favorite statistics, it is basically OPS (On-base-percentage PLUS Slugging Percentage) measured against league average while taking into ballpark effects into account.”
It isn’t really OPS measured against league average, at least the BB-ref version isn’t. It’s OBP measured against league average, added to SLG mesured against league average, and then 100 subtracted for some reason.
So if a player has .350 OBP vs average .338 and .490 SLG vs average. 438, it is NOT 840 OPS divided by 776 (times 100, which would be 108.) It is 350/338 (103) + 490/438 (112) – 100 = 115.
This is a minor thing that can cause a big difference and is why it’s possible to have a negative OPS+.
Anyway, so yeah. I showed them.
I think you need some kind of generic term for things that are peddled on infomercials. Maybe shamwow* fits.
I think it’s also worth mentioning that Pozterisks are almost always italicized (maybe always, but I don’t want to swear to it).
Finally, and maybe if I spent more time or money on baseball-reference.com I’d be able to do this myself, I think that it would be really helpful to get a ranking of OPS+ by position. For example, if all MLB shortstops have an 88 OPS+, it gives perspective to a great fielder with a 94 OPS+.*
I suspect that there is a way to unify Dewan’s defensive ratings with OPS+ adjusted for position and then adjusted for chances or plate appearances to come up with one number that might actually enable us to effectively compare Ozzie Smith to Jack Clark when considering MVP candidacy. Logically, PA only matter when the batter is up, and defensive chances are a big factor in +/- ratings. So if we can normalize by position (given that just to step onto a major league team – not so fast, you Royals middle infielders – you need to perform reasonably well compared to the offensive and defensive expectations of your position) then we could apply the offensive norms to cross compare with some effectiveness. I fear that all it will really show us is that Mike Piazza and Joe Mauer both were jobbed out of several MVPs, but if that helps future generations of catchers and shortstops to get recognition, then the effort will be worth it. Off the top of my head, I think that multiplying +/- numbers time (1/team’s opposing OBP) and adding that to a player’s normalized by position OPS+ would put us in the right ballpark. Dewan’s +/- seems to run as high as 20 or so, the multiplier is going to be around 3 or so for +60, so a great fielding shortstop who hits pretty well (say, 100 OPS+) will wind up about 172 in overall rating. But I suspect it short changes shortstops and catchers, especially since catchers really need to have CERA included somewhere and I don’t know that Dewan uses it. I probably will need to think about this during my next shower in order to come up with a better unification algorithm.
Finally, in your glossary, you wrote: “(1 full point mine .24)” about the Dewan rankings. Mine should be minus.
Great stuff – between Joe and the BR’s writing these comments, this is quite a community. Very inspiring to see the shared enthusiasm -
While Circle Me Bert may be a Twins fad right now, it historically was a reference to Hollywood Squares. When celebrities like Dom Deluise or Loni Anderson had an answer they knew that would benefit the “O” contestant on HS, they would call out to HS host Bert Convy “Circle me Bert” as they revealed the correct response. So there you have it — a completely useless bit of trivia that may help explain the completely useless posts by a few of JoePo’s brilliant readers.
I thought Peter Marshall was the long-time host of Hollywood Squares, which would pretty much destroy the “Circle Me Best” origin given above.
I agree with post #20 but I don’t think he explained his point very well. Let me illustrate. Suppose a player had OBP 1% better than league average and SLG 1% better than league average. Your glossary definition sounds like he should have an OPS+ of 101 but actually baseball-reference.com computes it to be 102.