These three topics may often be very much related, but we’ll take them one at a time in another random Monday entry.

Anyway, I was thinking about writing a stathead primer post or series of sorts, but luckily I thought better of it. My writing ability and sabermetric knowledge are not conducive to that type of thing. That said, I was reading a couple of late and wanted to comment on sacrifice bunts. As an aside, if you’re looking for a sabermetric primer, I would highly recommend Justin Inaz’s (it starts at the bottom).

Anyway, when sac bunts are evaluated by many statheads, they simply look at a run expectancy matrix and conclude that it was a stupid move. I don’t mean all statheads, by the way, but a good portion. So let’s say the Pads sac bunt with a man on first and 0 outs:

run value — man on first, no outs: .953
run value — man on second, one out: .725

.953 - .725 = .228 … see, bunts suck, what a terrible move!

Not so fast. To anyone who has read The Book or is up to date on current sabermetric thinking, this will be nothing new … Anyway, there are so many things that aren’t considered in this simple analysis that it is almost pointless. First of all, those are average situations. We’re not considering the actual hitter, the base runner, the pitcher, the run environment, and on and on. Secondly, that’s run value — not win value. Early in the game, that doesn’t make much of a difference, but late in the game a run may be worth much more. There’s still more. We’re also not considering the possibility of the sac bunt either (1) not working at all or (2) ending up as a hit (or reached base on error).

And there is yet another factor to consider. That’s game theory. Seriously, if you’d like, check out The Book: Playing The Percentages in Baseball – this stuff is covered in depth in there by Tango, MGL, and Dolphin. Anyway, game theory is, as MGL describes it, “the analysis of decision-making in a game or conflict involving two or more participants.” As you may imagine, it’s all over the place in baseball. Say, for instance, that even after considering everything above we conclude that you shouldn’t bunt in some random situation. Well, it’s still proper to occasionally bunt just to keep the defense honest — i.e., to not allow them to play back all the time.

Moral of the story? This is pretty complex stuff. Let’s give Bud Black a little slack when he puts down the old bunt sign. I’ll fully admit to being careless in my analysis in the past and fully botching a couple these things — but it’s time to move on. Sac bunts aren’t the evil that they were made out to be. That doesn’t mean that I’m hoping we lead the league in sacrifices … it just means that with smart management they can be used pretty darn effectively.

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Now for quick a thought on Moneyball. I guess I am rather indifferent towards Kevin Goldstein’s stuff at BP, but I have had some bones to pick with him in the past (not that Kevin or anyone else cares). Anyway, here’s a post he made about Moneyball last night, provoked by Jeremy Brown’s retirement.

Baseball changes quickly, and the lessons from Moneyball, or maybe more accurately, the lessons that the readers often perceive from Moneyball, no longer really apply. In 2006, Oakland selected a high school pitcher with their first draft pick, shocking many of the book’s diehard fans, and if you look at their renewed system after all of the trades, the biggest strength of the system is now a plethora of those high-ceiling young arms that give many of the risk-averse shivers. Moneyball is a dead issue it seems, even to the A’s.

I have to admit to fully not understanding what he’s trying to say here. Sure, the outline written in Moneyball may be “dead.” But the idea of “moneyball” — as in looking for undervalued talent or however you want to define it — is not dead and is probably not going to die anytime soon. Let’s face it, the idea of walks and fat college kids being underrated was probably gone by the time Moneyball was published. As Goldstein mentioned, baseball is an ever changing landscape. Things aren’t going to be undervalued for long, especially when they’re written down in a best selling book.

If you want to say that the book Moneyball is old news — fine, I guess. It has been for a while, although I thought it was a fascinating read at the time. But the idea outlined in the book isn’t going to die. It will change as the baseball landscape changes. Once more, I don’t think this is news to many of you guys, but I’m sometimes surprised what I see written at BP.

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Did I mention Mr. Silver and his PECOTA system are fantastic? Okay, well, I’m glad I did because I’m going to resort to PECOTA now. I was wondering what pitching staffs PECOTA pegged as the top and bottom ones in the National League. Since it’s behind the BP paywall, I’ll only list the top and botton 5 here and I won’t show their actual predicted runs allowed (rather, their park adjusted predicted runs scored using Patriots PF’s).

Top 5
Mets — 679
Dbacks — 733
Cubs — 737
Giants – 744
Padres — 745

Bottom 5
Nats — 891
Marlins — 838
Pirates — 830
Cards — 812
Astros — 798

Technically, I suppose, they aren’t the best, as you’d have to adjust for each team’s schedule.

Anyway, the Mets are clearly at the top and everyone else is pretty bunched up. They have the best pitcher in the league in Santana and after that they have Pedro, Maine, Perez, El Duque, and Mike Pelfrey. In the pen they have Wagner followed by quite a bit of depth. Basically, that’s their strength. Dominance at the top plus depth = pretty damn good staff. Solid fielding won’t hurt either.

The Cubbies have a pretty underrated staff as well, although the back end of their rotation looks pretty scary. Zambrano, Lilly, and Hill fill out the top 3. But 4 and 5 will go to some combination of Jason Marquis, Jon Lieber, Sean Marshall, and Sean Gallagher.

I think you could argue spots 2-5, but the Mets are pretty clearly the best pitching staff in the NL.

The Nationals staff is really awful. I mean, their best pitcher is probably John Patterson, and he’s thrown 70 innings over the last two years. I suppose you could argue for Shawn Hill, a ground ball machine. Either way, it gets super thin after that. John Lannon is projected at -13 VORP. It’s kind of unfortunate as they’ve built a pretty solid offensive ball club (although I wonder how their fielding will be outside of Zimmerman).

Finally, I thought I’d take a look at the projected WAR of Johan Santana, Brandon Webb, and Jake Peavy.

Santana: 6.7
Peavy: 5.8
Webb: 5.6

Santana is the leader in the clubhouse … but we’ve got a season to play.