| Voros McCracken | |
|---|---|
| Born | August 17, 1971 Chicago, Illinois |
| Residence | Phoenix, Arizona |
| Nationality | American |
| Other names | Robert "Vörös" McCracken |
| Occupation | Sports statistician, sabermetrician |
| Known for | Defense independent pitching statistics |
| Website | |
| http://vorosmccracken.com/ | |
Robert "Vörös" McCracken (born 17 August 1971 in Chicago, Illinois; now residing in Phoenix, Arizona) is a prominent sabermetrician. Vörös is a nickname from his Hungarian heritage, meaning "red," specifically "blood red." He is most widely recognized for his pioneering work on Defense Independent Pitching Statistics (DIPS).
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McCracken first publicly disclosed his ideas about DIPS on November 18, 1999 on the rec.sports.baseball newsgroup on Usenet[3], with this announcement and request for advice: "I've been working on a pitching evaluation tool and thought I'd post it here to get some feedback. I call it "Defensive Independent Pitching" and what it does is evaluate a pitcher base[d] strictly on the statistics his defense has no ability to affect. . . ."
McCracken's findings implied that major league pitchers had little control over the outcome of balls put into play against them. Specifically, McCracken found that the percentage of balls put into play against a particular pitcher that fell for hits did not correlate well across seasons. This implied that elements beyond the pitcher's control, including his defense, ballpark effects, the weather, and most importantly, randomness, had significant effects upon his performance. This theory flew in the face of conventional wisdom, but has been confirmed (at least in its simplest form) by many researchers.
His subsequent publication of "Pitchers and Defense: How Much Control Do Hurlers Have?" on the Baseball Prospectus website on January 23, 2001[4][5] sparked immediate intense and broad interest among baseball researchers. The very next day, ESPN baseball writer-analyst Rob Neyer in his widely read ESPN.com column touted McCracken's surprising discovery.[6] After explaining McCracken's findings, including reporting some of his own calculations from the previous years' pitching statistics and describing the aspects of DIPS that were most original, Neyer concluded: "And it seems to me that anyone who wants to project pitcher performance should read McCracken's article, because it'll blow your mind." In his book The Numbers Game, Alan Schwarz writes that McCracken told him “all hell broke loose” after Neyer's column appeared.[1] McCracken received nearly 2,000 emails in the next couple of days and thousands more in the ensuing months.
In his next column on January 26, Neyer began: "I received an immense amount of mail regarding Wednesday's column, including a pair of messages from 'celebrity sabermetricians' Craig Wright and Bill James." In this long column Neyer printed Wright's entire letter which cited a slightly different study he had done on the same topic and wrote, "I agree that this type of hit rate is not as heavily influenced by the pitcher as is commonly believed, but at the same time I am distinctly uncomfortable with McCracken's conclusion: 'There is little if any difference among major-league pitchers in their ability to prevent hits on balls hit in the field of play.'" Wright went on to conclude "... some [pitchers] emphasize pitches that are tough to hit sharply enough to get your share of hits on balls in play. I don't think the latter is a primary way for pitchers to distinguish themselves from others, but I do believe it is a more significant factor for some groups than others." He specifically cited two groups, knuckleball pitchers and flyball pitchers, as examples of those who tend to allow fewer hits on balls in the field of play.[2] Subsequent independent research by Phil Birnbaum, Clifford Blau, and Tom Tippett confirmed Wright's findings, but Wright still praises McCracken as "... the guy who really got people to understand that most folks overestimate the pitcher's ability to influence the number of hits that result from balls batted into the field of play."[3]
James, too, expressed some skepticism but recognized the potential value of McCracken's findings if further research bore them out. He argued that "the research really should be done, for several reasons. First, if McCracken turns out to be correct, this has important consequences, even allowing us, to a certain extent, to predict movements in pitcher's records. . . ."
Although he maintained some reservations about how McCracken's findings were being interpreted by others, James became a convert. In his New Historical Baseball Abstract (2001), James acknowledged that McCracken was correct, that the results were significant, and that James himself felt "stupid for not having realized it 30 years ago."[4]
McCracken continued to refine his new statistic, including addressing the issue of knuckleballers in his DIPS 2.0 in 2002. He published DIPS statistical results as well as extensions and improvements to his initial formulas in other forums, including Baseball Primer (now called Baseball Think Factory) [7] [8] [9].
A year and a half after the publication of his "Pitchers and Defense" article, McCracken's discovery earned him a consulting position with the Boston Red Sox. An important consequence of this was that by early 2003, he ceased publishing revisions of his formulas or updated results. He announced this step with excitement on his website on February 18, 2003[10] and McCracken continued to work for the Red Sox through June 2005.
What further changes McCracken may have made to DIPS since then have not been made public. However, other baseball researchers have continued to evaluate and to propose refinements to the measure.[5] And McCracken continued to think about how to measure performance in a variety of organized sports, such as international football (American soccer).[6]