NOTE: This email, dated June 8, 2011, was recovered of a flash drive found lying in the parking lot of a Raleigh, NC fast food restaurant.  There was damage to the drive, and the final portion of the email was unrecoverable.

Sir,

I’ve conducted the study you requested regarding Enrique Ortega’s performance.

In considering a player’s value to his team, both offense and defense must be accounted for.  Some players are worth more on defense, while others perform better at the dish.  To get the most accurate presentation of a player’s true value, we must find out how many runs they are worth.  Runs win ball games, and the “W” is what it’s all about.

This study aims to compare his performance versus his peers in the Imperial League.  If you are considering a replacement for him, who would it be?  How well would he perform, compared to Ortega?

It’s important to find out the value of replacement level talent at SS across the Imperial League before considering any changes.

For each team, I’ve identified the player who has acquired the most innings played at the short stop position.  For all other players logging innings there, only those who have played most of their innings at short stop are considered.  Data used was from all games played through June 6^th.

Below are the results I’ve calculated using formulae from the Linear Weights methodology.  This metric attempts to represent a player’s offensive and defensive value in terms of runs above the average player.  These are known as Batting Runs Above Average (BRAA) and Fielding Runs Above Average (FRAA).

Using the replacement pool in the same formulas above, and comparing them to our prime candidates, yields their run value above replacement.

For the purpose of this study, the candidates are as follows:

Starters:

Replacement-level:

I’ll go into a bit more detail below, regarding offense and defense, but I’ve linked the above terms for your convenience.

At any rate, I hope this helps you to find what you are looking for.

Regards,
Iván Quezada
Scouting Director – Charleston Statesmen

Offense
The Batting Runs metric is broken down into two parts: Batting Runs resulting from Plate Appearences (PA) and Base-Stealing Runs.

Below you’ll find a chart of our starters (those with the most innings logged at SS for each Imperial League team) sorted by Batting Runs Above Average (BRAA) (the runs above the average contribution of every player in our study, both prime and replacement).  This is the “no frills” linear weights formula referenced above.  TBR is total batting runs, to this point.

Next, we convert the players’ Total Batting Runs per PA, and compare that to the replacement level Runs per PA.  This number will yield our Batting Runs Above Replacement (BRAR).

The reason we find replacement level Runs per PA is because we’d like to see how a replacement level would have fared if they had literally replaced our starters.

Replacement level players are creating .07 Batting Runs per PA.  This was subtracted from the starters’ rates, to yield BRAR.

For the sake of your inbox, stolen bases were compared in the same manner, and conveniently added to the BRAR calculated above.

The final results comparing all starters to replacement level are as follows:

A couple of things to note before we move on to defense:

Offense, in general, is very poor at the short stop position within the Imperial League.

These are relatively small sample sizes, so this is in no way to be used for predictions.  The goal of this study was to evaluate performance to date.

One can expect N. Kichida to drastically improve as the season continues to unfold.

The Trendsetter’s primary starter at the position, Tom Sherriff, has only logged 19 PA due to injury.

Kien-lung Hsiao was chosen for the replacement pool because Mario Sánchez logged more innings.  Hsiao is currently slotted at the DH spot (the easiest position for any team to fill) and it is assumed Hsiao would replace an injured Sánchez in the Underground lineup.

There are already a number of players in the replacement pool that have been optioned to the minor leagues.

George Riley is a stud.

Defense
I’d like to think the offensive portion of this study was pretty straight forward.  This is not the case for evaluating defense.

With the limited defensive statistics kept by the OSA, it’s truly a daunting task to effectively evaluate a player’s true defensive value.  Range Factor is unreliable at best, because it does not take into account the amount of balls in play each team typically yields.  Players on teams with high strikeout totals (pitching) are penalized.

The Fielding Runs metric attempts to accomplish this feat.  Essentially, it accounts for all plays made by every short stop in the league (not just prime and replacement) to get a feel for the rate of balls fielded at the position as a whole.

Next, each individual fielder (the prime players in this study) is compared to that rate.  Each player is adjusted to his team’s balls in play rate (PO-K), and then adjusted for his playing time at the position as a ratio of total innings played by his team.

Sound simple enough?

On to the results.

First, fielding runs were calculated for our starters (based on the entire league stats at SS).

The figure below illustrates Fielding Runs Above Average (FRAA) and lists the innings logged by each player.

Next, in treating our replacement pool as one lump player, and using League PO – League K to determine the overall rate, we’ve determined that they produce at a rate below average of 2.22 runs.

This -2.22 runs below average is then added to the starters’ FRAA to determine FRAR (below).

Wins Above Replacement (WARP)
Upon determining a player’s runs contributed on offense and defense, we can add the two together to determine his total run value above replacement (BRAR + FRAR).

Once we have the player’s total runs, we must adjust for each team’s park factors.  Taken from PEBA StatsLab, we multiply the player’s total runs by (1/teamPFr).

Lastly, we can use the player’s pRAR (park-adjusted Runs Above Replacement) to find out how many Wins Above Replacement he is worth to us.  The player’s pRAR is divided by 9.7 (10*sqrt(runs per inning – .97)).

Final results for Imperial League short-stops are as follows:

With the season a hair over a third of the way completed, things are starting to shape up.  If players kept the same production levels (which is unlikely), you could theoretically multiply each player’s WARP by 3, to predict their total win value at season’s end.

For reference, a 10 WARP season is considered Royal Raker worthy, while 15 WARP would be a season for the ages.

Verdict: Friend

While Ortega ranks below replacement level at the plate, he more than makes up for it with his glove.  His WARP of .26 thus far suggests he’s a shade above replacement level, yet not far behind the rest of the field.

It’s evident he’s one of the top defenders at the position, so I would monitor his offense accordingly.  I don’t think he’ll end up with a .170 BA, but don’t expect anything near the .250 mark either.

Shi-ping Joo would most likely serve as a slight upgrade, but I don’t feel the risk in his development is worth the differential at this point.

<          Run some numbers on Enrique Ortega’s performance.  OSA is reporting a -7.3 Raleigh, and
<
<          Surely the defending champs could do better, no?
<
<                                             Jon Constantine
<                                             GM -Charleston Statesmen