Stat Geeky! Sabermetrics & the Astros

This post is a repository of the major articles published by The Crawfish Boxes in recent years on the subject of sabermetrics, or advanced statistical analysis in baseball.

Sabermetrics 101

These articles introduce some common sabermetric topics and stats to the initiate who many not be familiar with them.

10 best stats & more – clack lists and describes the ten best statistics to examine when stepping into enlightenment away from the limited world of ERA and Batting Average.

Free samples! – CRPerry13 explains the fluctuations of BABIP, how it affects things in short samples, and when to draw conclusions.

Defense for Dummies – CRPerry13 presents the basics of sabermetric defensive concepts…with pictures!

Slugging for Dummies – CRPerry13 presents Isolated Power…with pictures!

Hitting

Sabermetric articles related to hitting baseballs.

Hitters luck – clack discusses x-BABIP as related to hitters

Do walks without power translate to the majors? – clack presents original analysis investigating if players with high walk rates but little power can succeed in the major leagues.

Strikeouts and lineup building – Strikeouts are on the rise.  CRPerry13 shows how the Astros have turned a weakness into a strength.

Not being bad – a new market inefficiency? - Timmy Kennedy points out that the key to greatness is having a great (and deep) bench.

The Astros are the antithesis of the Royals – Timmy Kennedy says that while the Royals get it done through contact and running, the Astros get it done with power.

Pitching

Sabermetric articles related to throwing baseballs

Hard & soft contact – clack analyzes Fangraphs’ hard and soft contact percentages to find correlations with other pitching statistics.

Looking for weak contact – clack looks at batter power output per pitcher to determine how effective a pitcher is at inducing weak contact.

The Astros ground game – clack presents the advantages to inducing ground balls.

Pitchers in small samples – clack discusses TIPS, a pitching metric that works well with small samples of innings.

Astros’ change-ups – clack discusses how the effectiveness of a change-up is directly related to the difference in velocity with the fastball.

BABIP and Astros pitchers – clack discusses x-BABIP as related to pitchers

Retire K/BB ratio – CRPerry13 explains why K-BB% is better than K/BB%

Occam’s Razor, predicting ERA, and the Astros – CRPerry13 talks about pFIP.

Defense

Sabermetric articles about catching baseballs

Making sense of the Astros’ team defense – clack discusses the differences between DRS and UZR and how extreme defensive shifting confuses the statistics

Sabermetrics and the shift – clack discusses the effectiveness of defensive positional shifting.

New info on Astros catcher defense and depth – CRPerry13 introduces Baseball Prospectus’ revamped FRAA stat for catchers, and what it means for the Astros.

Ausmus’ and Conger’s elite skill – CRPerry13 discusses pitch framing, and how Brad Ausmus was literally the best ever.

Astros’ defensive range – CRPerry13 explains defensive range

Other

Sabermetric articles that defy categorization

Managerial meddling index – clack looks at how managers can screw up or help their team’s winning chances

Risky Business: The MLB Draft, Part 1 – CRPerry13 looks backwards to see whether High Schoolers or College players are more likely to reach the major leagues when drafted in the first round.

Risky Business: The MLB Draft, Part 2 – CRPerry13 continues his series by determining whether College or High School players are more likely to stick once they reach the majors, and whether or not they’ll stink in The Show.

Risky Business: The MLB Draft, Part 3 – CRPerry13 concludes his series by applying his findings to the 2013 draft.

If cluster luck didn’t exist – Timmy Kennedy says “teams can score more, or less, runs than they are actually capable due to timing.”