July 13, 2006
Using WPA
Dave Studeman at The Hardball Times finds some uses for WPA in evaluating teams. I do like his Pythagorean Breakouts, although I'm not sure we can't get there simply by looking at batting splits and opposition batting splits.
The Team Leverage Index is also somewhat interesting, since it tells us what teams play a lot of close games. Studes notes that the Indians and the Cubs must play a lot of boring games since their LI is small. I think you'd find the great teams also play boring games, as the truly great teams tend to win games by large margins. I have little doubt the 1998 Yankees would be at the bottom of the list.
Posted by David Pinto at
07:22 AM
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Thanks, David. You can partly get there by looking at batting splits, but you can't get all the way, IMO. That is, you can't do it to an exact precision and there are a lot of gray situations. WPA takes you all the way.