BTB: AL Central Hitters wOBA

Only 3 White Sox players are above the AL Central average. The Indians and Royals have 6 players that are above the AL Central average. The Tigers have five. Minnesota is worse than the Sox; only one.

Other White Sox links: J.J. comes up with an awesome nickname for Adam Dunn: Canonyero and looks on ex-Sox Brandon McCarthy’s success in Oakland, James looks at Jake Peavy’s return, the Sox search for a #2 hitter and replacing some of the Sox problematic players, and Jim looks at the sophomore struggles of Chris Sale.

A wOBA+ primer at THT

JT Jordan:

There have been a number of wOBA primers circulating around the Internet recently to help answer this question. I love primers, and I love reading people’s explanations of the more advanced statistics. These primers on wOBA are accessible to the most casual of fans. They answer the “what,” and occasionally the “why,” but not the “how.” This is important. We can’t trust a statistic unless we really know what goes in to it, and how it compares to other statistics that attempt to accomplish the same goal. …

colin’s excellent wOBA primer

colintj:

Why begin with wOBA?  I use it a lot, for one, so this will hopefully lead to readers understanding what I’m going on about.  But, second, it’s not really that complicated.  wOBA, essentially, is runs/PA.  The rate at which the batter produced runs for his team.  What else matters?  Runs are the bottom line in baseball.

But before we get to wOBA, it’s worth justifying the necessity of a new stat.  So let’s look at what folks have typically used to evaluate hitters.  I’m going to ignore runs and RBI, but Scott covered them too. …

The Sabermetrics Library @ saberlibrary.com has links to several sabermetric concept primers.