As a lifelong Red Sox fan, playing Amateur GM is a birthright of mine. As a turbo-nerd, looking at numbers and turning them into graphs has always been a hobby. So why not synthesize the two into something different - a graphical analysis of the 2009-10 Red Sox offseason. I’ve stuck to fielders for now, and plotted out every player with 180+ PA in 2009 amongst 6 axes and given each player a percentile rank based upon their performance. Those categories are:
- Contact: Simply the % of contact made on swings. fangraphs.com is especially helpful for info like this.
- Power: Adjusted ISO. I weighed 2b and 3b the same. 3b are usually the product of “Speed” which will show up below. The formula is (TB-H-3B)/AB. This measures the ability to hit for extra bases.
- Patience: BB/PA
- Speed: Speed score. As created by Bill James, and easily found again at fangraphs.com
- Baserunning: Bill James again. This actually measures how good or smart a baserunner is at taking extra bases, i.e. going 1st to 3rd on a single. The important point here is that you can fast as the wind - but run into too many outs and be a bad baserunner.
- Defense: Fielding Runs Above Average. Again fangraphs.com saves the day here.
And before we actually get to the graphs I offer some caveats:
- This graphing system isn’t unique to me or jasonpiques.com. If you really wanted to you could probably easily replicate this information on your own.
- Not all axis’ should be given the same weight. For example, “Patience” is actually more valuable than “Speed,” but for the purposes of keeping the graph clean looking, they look like they are just as important.
- These stats are NOT park adjusted and are based on the 2009 season ONLY.
- Catchers are all weighed as “average” until a better fielding metric is developed.
Finally here you have it, a graphical analysis the major offseason acquisitions.
From Jason Bay to Mike Cameron:
From Mike Lowell to Adrian Beltre:
Julio Lugo, Nick Green, Alex Gonzalez, and Marco Scutaro:
Thoughts?