Jake

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jul 17, 2013 -> 06:41 PM) Has anyone ever added up all the teams players WAR and posted standings based on those? It would be interesting to see the difference between WAR standings and actual standings. Current WAR totals by team More details, such as projected rest of season/end of season records based on sabermetrics

I remember reading a Baseball Prospectus article that was basically a walk-through of a potential manager's statistic and when they finally posted who the best managers would be with this stat, they had to juggle some things. After feeling satisfied that the stat had a logical method on paper, it also had to pass the eye test. If a stat TOTALLY turned common knowledge on its head, chances are the stat is wrong. On the other hand, if it simply produces results that are predictable with other statistics or observations, it is likewise not very useful. I think things like WAR, wRC+. UBR, UZR satisfy both things. It doesn't say that players we know are s***ty are good, but it also doesn't simply reproduce things we already know. It will sometimes be unsurprising but at other times it may be surprising.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jul 17, 2013 -> 05:51 PM) And yet Juan Pierre was widely thought of as a very good player using simple statistics and our eyes, until some of the advanced statistics determined he was not...and then more advanced statistics determined that he was. Oh thanks advanced stats! Except "eyes" don't always agree. Adam Dunn is the perfect example. Some people will just never admit that a hitter that strike out 25-30% of the time can be good no matter what else he does. Advanced stats allow us to have a more empirical way to say that Dunn is, in fact, a good hitter. I can hold whatever position I'd like if all of our eyes are acceptable as measurement. Since people don't like arguing over eyes, we have numbers. And when we have numbers, the best numbers are better. Batting average says Dunn sucks. OBP sometimes suggests that Dunn sucks. Yet, he does not suck. We didn't need advanced stats to see that Miguel Cabrera and Mike Trout were great, but WAR told us that Trout was more valuable by quite a measure last year. It also tells us that Miggy is more valuable this year, despite being an absolutely atrocious defender.

QUOTE (Jake @ Jul 17, 2013 -> 05:39 PM) Well, with tablesetters, you might also look at their advanced baserunning stats. This is part of overall player value that is factored into WAR. There are several players that we often think of as good while the only advanced stats that bear out their perceived value is advanced baserunning -- which isn't a bad thing. Juan Pierre, for instance, almost never had a wRC+ in the above average column throughout his career but frequently rated as an excellent player because his fielding was frequently worth 1-2 wins and his baserunning was often worth 2-3 wins above replacement. Meanwhile, his bat was sometimes not even replacement level but he was still a very good player to have on your team. It's amazing how the advanced statistics have come along to evaluate all parts of the game. The biggest work in progress IMO is evaluating catcher defense, though there are some really promising stats coming out in that regard too. The only issue is that they aren't being updated at the rate that other defensive statistics are (I don't believe any numbers for the most sophisticated catcher defense statistics are available yet for this season). An important and sometimes confusing distinction to keep in mind is replacement level vs league average. League average, by its nature is going to be a harder standard than replacement level. There are below league average players that are above replacement level. Likewise, league average is a more easily agreed upon standard than replacement level, which is a (more) hypothetical standard. Glancing at FanGraphs, you can see that while Ellsbury's bat isn't starkly more valuable than Dunn's this season (a bit less than a win), his defense and baserunning add another 1.5+ wins to his value, which is tremendous and means he's having an indubitably better season than Dunn.

QUOTE (hammerhead johnson @ Jul 17, 2013 -> 04:32 PM) That post was in reply to blah blah blah doooooooooonnnn't caaaaaaaaaaare As far as the Ellsbury vs Dunn OPS thing, it's my understanding that you never look at OPS for table-setters. Nobody ever judged Ichiro by OPS, correct? It's basically something you use to evaluate run-producers. Sometimes you get rare freaks that do both (Mike Trout, etc). But I generally agree with everything Eminor is saying in this thread. I love wOBA & wRC. Well, with tablesetters, you might also look at their advanced baserunning stats. This is part of overall player value that is factored into WAR. There are several players that we often think of as good while the only advanced stats that bear out their perceived value is advanced baserunning -- which isn't a bad thing. Juan Pierre, for instance, almost never had a wRC+ in the above average column throughout his career but frequently rated as an excellent player because his fielding was frequently worth 1-2 wins and his baserunning was often worth 2-3 wins above replacement. Meanwhile, his bat was sometimes not even replacement level but he was still a very good player to have on your team. It's amazing how the advanced statistics have come along to evaluate all parts of the game. The biggest work in progress IMO is evaluating catcher defense, though there are some really promising stats coming out in that regard too. The only issue is that they aren't being updated at the rate that other defensive statistics are (I don't believe any numbers for the most sophisticated catcher defense statistics are available yet for this season). An important and sometimes confusing distinction to keep in mind is replacement level vs league average. League average, by its nature is going to be a harder standard than replacement level. There are below league average players that are above replacement level. Likewise, league average is a more easily agreed upon standard than replacement level, which is a (more) hypothetical standard.

I mean, most of my searches are "x player nude"? Wait, wat

QUOTE (chw42 @ Jul 17, 2013 -> 03:51 PM) Not exactly. A guy with a .900 OPS might have a .330 OBP but a .570 SLG. Or he might be .400/.500. There's a big difference between those two hitters. I have to deal with OPS because that's all most websites can show me. So it's just a slight glance for me. If I'm more interested in the player, I go on FanGraphs. Definitely. Most of my web searches are "x player fangraphs"

wRC+ varies year by year. For instance, Dunn's wRC+ would look worse in the steroid era because the league in general was hitting so much more. 3% isn't a lot, but it's also not nothing. We're talking a few runs - which may not sound like much but ultimately could add up to a game of value.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jul 17, 2013 -> 11:36 AM) I trust bucket, but you always take that info for what it's worth. Ramirez could still easily be traded. Anybody on the Sox can be traded at this point. They are shopping everybody. Things can always change in a hot hurry.

The thing to look at with Holmberg is that over 200 innings into AA, he has seen his K/9 rates drop precipitously from at or above 9 at most levels to 6.3 or so in AA. 6.3 K/9 isn't horrible in MLB, but it certainly puts a ceiling on him and if he loses even more strikeouts on his way to the show, he'll have a hard time succeeding. I'm not sure how great of a get he is, especially when we already have lefties with high 80s-low 90s fastballs and modest K rates in our rotation.

Chris might as well play for the Toledo Mudhens. Not on a coast, nobody cares!

QUOTE (Tony82087 @ Jul 16, 2013 -> 11:18 PM) This is what I envision for opening night, aside from any injuries.... Bickell-Toews-Kane Sharp-Pirri-Hossa Saad-Zeus-Shaw Bollig-Kruger-Morrin Keith-Seabrook Hjalmarsson-Leddy Oduya-Rozsival Crawford Khabibulin Ben Smith or a Jimmy Hayes may crack the roster as well. As always with this team, the second line center position is where questions need to be answered. If Pirri can keep up, things will look pretty solid..... It would be very impressive if Pirri can get on the second line right off the bat. I hope he can cut it, that would be a big boost and another victory for Blackhawks player development.

Mo is an all-time great, why make up s*** to give to him? Is this farewell tour and an eventual trip to the HOF not enough?

Eaton, Holmberg, and Owings for Peavy? Done. Want some De Aza too? Fine, take him.

Thanks for all the info bucket. I'm sure you're putting yourself/a relationship at risk by sharing and we all appreciate it.

8th inning reliever gets it, eh? Sounds like bulls***.

This is a bad performance

Fan votes comprise 20 percent of the overall voting. Can they really give it to Mo?

QUOTE (fathom @ Jul 16, 2013 -> 09:05 PM) If this score stays the same, they'll give it to Rivera Sheeeeeeit

QUOTE (flavum @ Jul 16, 2013 -> 08:48 PM) If there's no clear cut offensive pick, maybe Sale gets the MVP. Can't argue with 6 up 6 down. I've been thinking the same thing. I doubt they do it.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Jul 16, 2013 -> 08:25 PM) Wat pith?

QUOTE (Tony82087 @ Jul 16, 2013 -> 05:35 PM) Carcillo to the Kings. Adios. This is third place I've seen it reported and nobody says who we got back. I think that tells you all you need to know about what we thought of Carcillo.

I'd assume that most of us that watched him in relief have seen him hit 101. With that said, who cares if he does it again?

I can't help but think of all the times that I went outside of my parents' house to talk on the phone so as to get privacy. I would always walk around aimlessly because I'm a fidgety person. I wonder how suspicious I looked.

I've always found there to be an interesting balance when thinking about "proper" race relations. While it would be out of line to deal with black friends or whomever else in a particular way because they are black, there is an extent to which it is inappropriate to act colorblind. There are parts of the human experience in the world today that are fundamentally different for (for instance) black people and I can't just treat my black friends like they are seeing and experiencing the world the same way I am. I remember when I was younger, saying the word "black" around a teammate and then I started acting embarrassed like I had just dropped an n-bomb. He just goes, "you know, it's no secret that I'm black. I have mirrors at my house. We don't have to pretend." This is when I first realized that I was being a pretty useless "non-racist" as I was trying to do my best "non-racist" impression around my black friends and, in effect, treating them with kid gloves because they were black. That doesn't mean I should instead pretend that I know what it's like to be black, but I also can't pretend that being black isn't an important part of someone's identity, for better or for worse. This is a fairly recent tension in critical theory, a sort of sub-specialty of mine in academia. There was a huge movement to try to abolish all labels, so to speak. All very well-intended, of course, but some prominent black and feminist scholars noticed something--all the people behind this movement were old white guys (a result of the old segregated hiring schemes in tandem with tenure). Black and feminist scholars, in particular, were thinking "hey, it's easy to renounce all sense of identity when you haven't had other people defining it for you for your entire existence." So, we have this tension between a desire for colorblindness when we simply don't live in a colorblind world. And the core assumption behind colorblindness seems to be that this just lets other people be assimilated in the club of white males rather than an acceptance of cultural variety and history.