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J.C. Bradbury of The Baseball Economist fame and the guy who basically taught me everything I know about Baseball economics, Andrew Zimbalist are having an exchange over J.C.’s book. The amount of respect I have for both these guys far exceeds the amount of respect I have for myself (as many posts here at the blog clearly show), so it’s interesting to see them discuss DIPS in a public way. In this corner, Andrew Zimbalist:

The main argument here is that a pitcher’s ERA from one year to the next is highly variable, but that a pitcher’s walks, strikes and home runs allowed are more stable over time…While there is something compelling to this logic, it seems caution is in order…(I)f all we consider is strikeouts, walks and home runs, what are we saying about sinkerball pitchers who induce groundballs or pitchers who throw fastballs with movement or offspeed pitches that induce weak swings and popups?

We’re saying that whatever those skills yield, whether the pitchers in question is in possession of them or not, they can be effectively represented using the statistics the pitcher’s fielders do not affect (defense independent pitching statistics). The strength of doing so allows us to capably evaluate pitchers independent of the fielders behind him (and it turns out, other highly variable elements like luck and other environmental factors).

J.C.’s response:

I am saying that pitchers have almost no effect on hits on balls in play, and that sinkerball and offspeed pitchers are good because of their strikeouts, walks, and home runs, not because of any effect they have on balls in play…Of course, then I argue that pitcher do appear to have some effect on balls in play, but this impact is captured in those stats.

Ow! Ow! Ow! I just got a pinched nerve from nodding my head.

JC’s book goes through a number of subjects and so it would be difficult for him to be able to give each subject a thorough overview due to space limitations and overall readability of the book. I could go on for hours discussing some esoteric sabermetric field with Mickey Lichtman, but me and Mickey are somewhat peculiar in that way. Most folks and even most baseball fans aren’t THAT interested. I think Zimbalist may miss that there’s much more to the information JC presented, but since JC pretty well footnoted his book, I’m not sure why. It seems many of his critiques centered around JC presenting information without further expanding upon it, so I’m guessing this is the area that’s caused the disagreement.

On a personal note, one of the ways I ego surf nowadays while Christmas or birthday shopping is to drift over to the sports section at the bookstore and count how many different book indexes (indices?) I appear in (it was around four the other day). As Mark Twain once said, “I can live for two months on a good compliment.” I suppose it might be nice to actually have my own book sitting there (or to have Mark Twain quote me), but this will do…

…for now.

(H/T) Pete Toms