DFS Edge: Interview with SABR President Vince Gennaro
From Todd Zola at DFSEdge.com on September 10, 2013, with mention of SABR President Vince Gennaro:
A few weeks back, I had the pleasure of attending an annual charity event in Boston entitled Saberseminar with the theme Sabermetrics, Scouting and the Science of Baseball. The weekend’s worth of presentations benefitted The Jimmy Fund and featured some of baseball’s top coaches, statisticians, scouts, doctors and scientists.
Though many of the sessions were SABR-conference worthy, the tenor was quite informal which added to the enjoyment.
One of the more traditional talks was presented by SABR President Vince Gennaro. The topic was Evaluating Pitcher Similarity. As a daily fantasy baseball player, I found the talk fascinating with some definite implication to daily fantasy baseball. As such, I asked Mr. Gennaro if he would answer a few questions pertaining to his research and he cordially obliged.
There are several studies that demonstrate a hitter’s history versus a pitcher is non-predictive but yet we hear of MLB managers making lineup decisions based on the data as well as broadcasters frequently referencing the numbers. At the recent Saberseminar in Boston, you presented some work that may be applicable to batter versus pitcher match-ups. Can you share the Cliff Note’s version with us?
I’ve always believed the career batter-pitcher matchup history is among the poorest uses of stats in baseball. In my opinion, it’s closer to baseball trivia than to baseball analytics. I’ve approached this important issue–one which GMs and managers face every day–from the standpoint of creating a predictive model that is grounded in the reality of the game. The framework that I am still fine-tuning is based on my hypothesis that how a batter and pitcher perform against each other at any point in time is a function of 5 major factors …
Read the full article here: http://dfsedge.com/view-basement-vince-gennaro/
Originally published: September 12, 2013. Last Updated: September 12, 2013.