The SF Giants/White Sox won the World Series with low OBP Numbers. NHL Equivalent?

[Badger Mayhew*]

In 2010 the Giants, ranked 19th in regular season OBP, won the World Series against the Rangers. The Rangers were 6th in regular season OBP.

In 2005, the White Sox and Astros both had terrible OBP numbers. Yet they faced off against each other in the World Series.

Fenwick is a much less proven statistic than OBP, and therefore I think it's very likely that certain teams will be able to succeed despite putting up low numbers.

The Nashville Predators often put up poor Fenwick numbers and make the playoffs regardless. In the period from 2010-2012 they were ranked 24th in Team Fenwick yet made it to the semi-finals in both seasons.

Carlyle teams also seem to make the playoffs despite poor Fenwick numbers. Although exiting in the quarterfinals both times, the 10/11 Ducks and 12/13 Leafs were 29th and 30th in Fenwick respectively.

Just thought this would be an interesting topic to discuss.

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[getzforfighting*]

Texans? you mean the rangers right?

and I would be convinced to see both the Giants and White Sox ERA's and OPP. AVG to be ranked decently in both regular season and in playoffs.

ERA and OPP AVG is the other half of baseball

 

[Bear of Bad News]

Short answer - over the course of one season, teams can have results that are not indicative of a general trend or theory.

And offense is only half of the equation, so one would expect any offensive metric to be less than 50% predictive.

Regarding the 2010 Giants, is your number before or after park effects? Their park factor was a 97 (suggesting a 3% decrease in offensive statistics).

 

[Badger Mayhew*]

Texans? you mean the rangers right?

and I would be convinced to see both the Giants and White Sox ERA's and OPP. AVG to be ranked decently in both regular season and in playoffs.

ERA and OPP AVG is the other half of baseball

ERA was low (ranked highly) for both teams. 05 White Sox were 5th in regular season ERA and the 10 Giants were 1st.

I agree that ERA (and OPP) are the other half of baseball, just as stats like Sv% are the other half of hockey. What's interesting is that a lot of proponents of Corsi/Fenwick often hand-wave goaltending as "random". You certainly don't see that in baseball with ERA/OPP.

 

[Strong Island]

ERA was low (ranked highly) for both teams. 05 White Sox were 5th in regular season ERA and the 10 Giants were 1st.

I agree that ERA (and OPP) are the other half of baseball, just as stats like Sv% are the other half of hockey. What's interesting is that a lot of proponents of Corsi/Fenwick often hand-wave goaltending as "random". You certainly don't see that in baseball with ERA/OPP.

Yes you do. ERA fluctuates substantially depending on park factors, defense, quality of competition, and league (NL vs. AL).

 

[Hammer Time]

ERA was low (ranked highly) for both teams. 05 White Sox were 5th in regular season ERA and the 10 Giants were 1st.

I agree that ERA (and OPP) are the other half of baseball, just as stats like Sv% are the other half of hockey. What's interesting is that a lot of proponents of Corsi/Fenwick often hand-wave goaltending as "random". You certainly don't see that in baseball with ERA/OPP.

I've often heard the case that shooting percentage is mostly* random. But save percentage is something that most analysts recognize is sustainable over time. If you have Henrik Lundqvist, you should expect a significantly higher PDO in the long run than if you have Steve Mason.

Re: Nashville. Pekka Rinne has the 5th highest save percentage in the league since 2010 who have played at least 100 games (behind Thomas, Lundqvist, Smith, and Quick), and special teams have helped too (Nashville had the #1 PP in the league in 2011-12).

Fenwick isn't exactly comparable to OBP, because it's a holistic stat which encompasses both getting shot attempts and preventing opponent shot attempts, not an offense-only metric.

* I think there are teams (such as Pittsburgh) that can consistently produce above-average shooting percentages due to having an excess of talented players who can create higher quality shots than average. But on most teams, the high-quality-shot stars are balanced out by low-quality-shot 3rd and 4th liners.

 

[Cunneen]

I've often heard the case that shooting percentage is mostly* random. But save percentage is something that most analysts recognize is sustainable over time. If you have Henrik Lundqvist, you should expect a significantly higher PDO in the long run than if you have Steve Mason.

Re: Nashville. Pekka Rinne has the 5th highest save percentage in the league since 2010 who have played at least 100 games (behind Thomas, Lundqvist, Smith, and Quick), and special teams have helped too (Nashville had the #1 PP in the league in 2011-12).

Fenwick isn't exactly comparable to OBP, because it's a holistic stat which encompasses both getting shot attempts and preventing opponent shot attempts, not an offense-only metric.

* I think there are teams (such as Pittsburgh) that can consistently produce above-average shooting percentages due to having an excess of talented players who can create higher quality shots than average. But on most teams, the high-quality-shot stars are balanced out by low-quality-shot 3rd and 4th liners.

There is a lot of variance in year-to-year save percentage for NHL goaltenders. It takes us about 5000 even strength shots to tell the true talent level of a goaltender. One season is far less than 5000 EV shots, so over one season a goalie can have unusually high or unusually low SV% numbers (see Bobrovski this season).

For the most part, team SH% is random. There is a bit of control, but much of the variance we see in team SH% is driven by luck/randomness. See http://objectivenhl.blogspot.com/2011/05/even.html or http://objectivenhl.blogspot.com/2009/02/even-strength-shooting-percentage.html . We need to regress Team SH% about 2/3 of the way towards the mean for a full season.

Your point is correct, even highly skilled teams like the Penguins, who have individuals who can sustain high SH%, the other 10-15 guys on the team who aren't as skilled shooters are what make team SH% mostly driven by randomness.