SLOB, how has it been used in the past?

[Second Base Coach]

I know that SLOB is SLugging percentage times On-Base Percentage.

I think I have a new way of using this number.

I would like to know from the readers of this forum how the SLOB stat has been used in the past.

I may or may not have a discovery to share with you.

So please let me know if some sports writer or stat guru has used SLOB in the past, and HOW they used it.

More later from me... and thanks in advance for your help.

[RuthMayBond]

I would like to know from the readers of this forum how the SLOB has been used in the past.


I believe John Kruk was used as a first baseman

[Second Base Coach]

His TV weight is larger than his playing weight, that is for sure.

Use of SLOB anyone?

What I found is really cool, but maybe not original.

[Patriot]

I'm not sure what you're looking for, but SLOB approximates runs/at bat. If you ignore HB and SF, SLOB*AB is (H+W)*TB/(AB+W)...Bill James' basic Runs Created formula.

[Second Base Coach]

Runs Created.... Correct!

Let me run this by you then:

I was looking at league totals over at Baseball Ref, and if you multiply a league's OBP by its SLG and then multiply by at-bats, you get REAL close, within three percent in eight of the ten seasons I tried at random.

Years during and before the federal league were a little more off than that, and the leagues scored more than the estimates.

My guess the margain of error goes up the better a team runs the bases... steals and such, getting closer to home without the help of a hit, turning singles into doubles by stealing a base without moving the SLG or OBP meter.

Question One: Any merit to the running the bases idea?
Question Two: Why is Runs Created bashed so much here? Meaning, why is Runs Created considered terrible for individual players when it appears to work very well across entire leagues?

BTW: The numbers for the American League last year were within one percent of the acutal total... using the rounded rate stats. Very creepy if you don't know exactly what will happen.

Thanks for the reply.

[mikefast]

Runs Created is not considered terrible. If people were handing out grades to run estimators, Runs Created would probably get an A- or B+ or something like that. But why use an A- stat when an A stat is available?

Win Shares gets bashed because Bill James set the replacement level for it sooooo low. But I have not heard anyone bashing Runs Created. It's pretty good. There are just things that are a little better.

[Second Base Coach]

Which things (stats) did you have in mind?

There is a lot of information out there about Runs Created.

However, which of those stats which you consider to be better have a lot of play on the web, meaning... I can find historical data on players which include that stat?

Don't get me wrong. A lack of information on the web does not mean it is a worse metric, I am just looking for information about them.

Thank you in advance for your reply.

[Patriot]

The biggest factor that causes the RC formula (and any run estimator designed for modern baseball) to stop working as you go back into the deadball era is errors. With errors so much more common, you have a bunch of extra baserunners that the formula does not account for (in fact, it thinks they are just outs, since errors are included in AB-H). But a different style of baserunning would be a factor as well, just not as large in magnitude.

RC is considered poor for individual players because it weights the events poorly. This is not that big of an issue on a macro level (for normal major league teams and leagues, which have a much smaller range of performance than do individuals. No team ever has a .400 OBA or a .600 SLG or draws 120 walks/player, etc.), but when you apply it to players with extreme profiles, it causes serious distortions. Additionally, it is a model of team run scoring. Thus, when you apply it to an individual player, it is estimating how many runs a team with his stats would score, which is a different question than how many runs he would add to a team as 1/9 of their lineup.

The only "better" total run estimator with freely available historical totals on the internet is EqR from Baseball Prospectus. B-R also lists Batting Runs, but those are baselined to an average player, which we know you don't like.

[RuthMayBond]

Runs Created is not considered terrible. If people were handing out grades to run estimators, Runs Created would probably get an A- or B+ or something like that. But why use an A- stat when an A stat is available?

But I have not heard anyone bashing Runs Created. Paging Matt, Tango . . .

[StillFlash]

Yes, I recognized it a long time ago as RC/AB.

I use it as a quick estimate of productivity, to sort players in my database.

While I agree with Patriot's comments, I adopted it a long time ago, before I was aware of some of the newer formulas, as something that I thought was superior to OPS (Why add them? What does it represent?). On Base times Slugging can be shown to be RC/AB, and can be used in further calculations.

BTW, I call it OTS, not SLOB.

[Second Base Coach]

I remember reading James... in one of his books... as he wrote about the frequency of errors going down over time, and how they used to monkey up the numbers because they add baserunners without adding hits or walks. Thanks for the reminder.

More later as I find time to work on something on my end....