Stats, stats, and more stats.

I was reading about some of Bill James statistical analysis stuff yesterday, and thought it was only fair to post some interesting things about a few players.

Bill James invented a statistic called Runs Created (RC) which attempts to measure the amount of runs a player created without taking into account the skill of their teammates (a player on a good team has more RBI opportunities than one on a bad team).  What he does is multiply a players total bases (TB) by their on base percentage (OBP). 
The complete formula is: RC=TB*OBP

The Runs created formula can be made much more complicated.  The formula used above expresses a players RC potential if they were playing with teammates as good as them.  In many cases this creates a vastly overestimated RC potential.  A more complicated version, that also took into account steals among other things, was devised in 2002:
RC =(A*B)/C
where: A = H+BB-CS+HBP-GIDP
            B = TB+((.24*(BB-IBB+HBP))+(.62*SB)+((.5*(SH+SF))-(.03*SO)
            C = AB+BB+HBP+SH+SF

I used this formula on two players: Manny Ramirez and Coco Crisp.

Manny: A = 130+83-1+1-4 = 209
            B = 252+((83-8+1)*.24)+(0*.62)+((0+8)*.5)-(92*.03) = 271.48
            C = 301+83+1+0+8 = 393
         RC=144.37.
Compare this to Manny's actual runs produced (RBI+Runs-HR) = 134.  Manny's RC score is about 10 higher than his actual runs produced, a deviation of about 7%. 

Coco: A = 83+22-4+1-4 = 106
           B = 117+((22+1)*.24)+(16*.62)+((3)*.5)-(48*.03) = 132.5
           C = 301+23+1+3+0 = 328
      RC = 42.82

Dividing the RC by the player's total chances and multiplying by 27 gives the total number of runs a team composed entirely of this player can be expected to score per game.  This statistic is known as RC/27.  Manny's RC/27 = 9.92, and  Coco's RC/27 = 3.5.

Despite the fact that Coco is my favorite player, I'm afraid I have to bash him a little bit.  3.5 runs per game.  Coco, that is terrible!  Although I think you have the potential to be a 40 steal/10 CS player in the future, and your defense is terrific, you have some serious holes in your repertoire.

Coco Crisp has excellent potential.  At times he has shown us what a truly remarkable player he can be, diving to his right to make the second-best-play-of-the-year (and the weak), or hitting .362 over 14 games.  But one thing he does too much of is swing. Coco has only been walked 22 times this year in 328 plate appearances.  22 times, once every 15 plate appearances.  Manny has walked 83 times in 398 plate appearences, an average of 5 plate appearances per walk.