Wednesday Graph: The Difference Between Two Pablos

Whoops, woke up this morning and thought: Sandoval hit a double, but that's only one extra base, not two. So his POW yesterday was .5 (or 1). When I heard it on the radio they said it was almost a homer though :)

Julien Headley made the stat according to BP. He briefly discusses it in his glossary at: http://juliensbaseballblog.blogspot.com/2006_04_0... Baseball Prospectus picks it up here: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?art... POW seems like a great descriptive stat. Saying Sandoval had 1.00 (by Julien's measure, or 2.00 by the one Jack Moore of fangraphs used at first) is a great way to see what it did. (*Personally, I think the bigger number is more descriptive) I don't know how to tell if the stat is useful myself, and I can't find anything talking about its correlation to future anything. Obviously POW counts speed running the bases, so I'm starting to wonder if it really measure what we want to know about Sandoval. I would like to find someone giving me numbers on how babip influences iso (Also, intuitively I would think how hard you hit influences babip at leas ta little bit.)

Oh, and great examination of Pablo's year at the plate, would not have thought that the two seasons would be so alike for the most part, in terms of swings and the like, excellent analysis.

Really interesting stuff, GA. I hadn't heard of POW until now. Do you have any other links that discuss it? Where did you get your formulas from above?

Just read about POW myself today on fangraphs: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/four-fac... Not really discussion, but talked about his mistake: "As Julien Headley pointed out, I was using an incorrect form of POW. I was using XB/H instead of XB/(AB-K). The latter actually measures XB on balls in play, including HRs. League average is currently .185." So this is yet another way POW is defined. I think the pending divorce, which Schulman acknowledged in a tweet in response to a direct question, must be the reason why Sandoval is not doing well. If you look at his monthly stats, you will see that there is a clear Before and After: he was killing the ball in April, but somewhere around the start of May, he fell into the hole that he has rarely gotten out of since. It would not be a stretch of the imagination to think that he's could have been devastated by this event. And as DrB noted on his site, we all forget sometimes that these ballplayers are human like us, and that the baseball lifestyle makes it hard for them to keep relationships going smoothly or well. Any of us who have gone through a tough breakup should be able to sympathize, like the first poster above noted, with what Pablo might be going through.

I was reading this (http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/historical-four-factors-joe-morgans-peak/) article over at fangraphs where Jack Moore uses a stat called POW in place of ISO to study a batter performance. His explanation is: "The short reason for using POW instead of ISO is that Colin Wyers told me to. The actual reason is that BABIP actually can have a heavy influence on ISO." Does This effect Panda? POW, according to BP is POW=(DB+(2*TP)+(3*HR))/(AB-SO). I figure they mean 3B not TP. According to Moore, it's XB/Hit. The stats are different, go figure. I'll work out both. By Moore's Pow Panda Hit 2009: .683 2010: .455 According to Moore in 2010 the league avg. is .570 For Scale, Pujol's hit for a POW of 1.01 in '09 and .869 in '10 By BP's formula Panda's Respective POW's are: 2009: .264 2010 (to date): .140 I can't find league averages for POW. But for kicks, in 154PA (145AB) in 2008(majors) he had a POW of .160 His 2008 AA POW (in 184PA 175AB) was .239 I don't know how to compare the change in POW to the change in ISO, but By any measure, Panda's power has fallen off.

Both baggs and schulman have hinted at deep marital problems for Panda. I know that would affect my work.