Clay Davenport - Baseball Analysis and Sabermetrics

Baseball Analysis and Sabermetrics

Davenport is known for creating the Pythagenport Formula, (designed to find the best exponent for the Pythagoras winning percentage equation), for inventing the statistic Equivalent Average (EqA) (now called "True Average" or "TAv"), and for the "Davenport Translations" or DT's. The DT's are estimated Major League equivalent performance statistics based on player statistics from minor league and international baseball. DT's were first published by Davenport on the rec.sports.baseball Usenet site in 1995, before Baseball Prospectus was founded.

The DT's are also used to standardize the records of players who played in different eras and playing conditions, not only in different leagues and levels of baseball. This allows comparison, for example, of the number of home runs hit by Babe Ruth and modern players, to estimate how many each would have hit in a season or a lifetime if they had all played under the same playing conditions (parks, leagues, levels of competition, and eras).

Davenport introduced the DT's to the on-line baseball research community in 1995 as follows:

Hello. My name is Clay Davenport, and these are my Translations of the 1994 baseball season.

While these Translations look like player stats, they are NOT the players' actual statistics. The Translations are an attempt to show how well the player would have performed in a standard league (the American League of 1992), knowing how well he played in his actual league. We know that some leagues are tougher than others; that's why we have the majors, AAA, AA, and so on. We know that some leagues are easier to hit in; we know that some parks favor the pitchers; and we know that these effects are not constant from one year to the next. We can estimate how big a difference each of those makes and correct for them, and that is what the Translations try to do. How well they work I shall leave for you to judge.