Eminor3rd

Gotta be Buerhle

CLAP! CLAP! CLAP CLAP CLAP! CLAPCLAPCLAPCLAP! TU-LO!

Who gives a s***? They're all gonna play plenty. Opening day is just the first day of the season.

QUOTE (flavum @ Feb 21, 2014 -> 06:26 PM) Rough day for Morel. http://instagram.com/p/krdYE8Rxbs/# :'(

QUOTE (IowaSoxFan @ Feb 21, 2014 -> 04:34 PM) The point that BABIP is uncontrollable tells me how reliable the other stats, like OBP are, if it is artificially inflated, than I know it is likely to regress, also if it is abnormally low, I know that a player is likely to improve. Pitches per at bat tells me what kind of eye that my batters have, how well they can work a count, and helps me to get to a bullpen quicker, where I know it is more likely that my team can score more runs. K/BB indicates the quality of AB's when coupled with P/AB. I can tell if a guy is a flailer or has a legitimately good feel for the strike zone. These are also all environmental independent stats. wOBA and wRC+ are good in concept, though I don't understand how they appropriately weight a performance in the Cell against a performance in Petco to have enough faith in the number to be reliable. A HR in the cell is a fly ball at Petco, but the weighted numbers wont tell me that, it will tell me that the player that hit the ball at the Cell is superior to the one that hit the same ball in San Diego. I have not idea how they could account for that. I understand that they use multipliers and park factors and such, but when you are applying park factor to an out, I would assume that it is then displayed as an out everywhere. Sure your HR at Petco could count as 1.4 HR's in Chicago, but it doesn't work the other way. I think I understand what you're saying now. You want precision for the sake of determining "fit" in terms of a desired player profile. That makes sense. You threw me off that trail when you were talking about the interchangeability of Kershaw and Carlos Gomez but I get it now. Yeah, I'd look outside the WAR family of numbers for type as well. I usually like the Pitch F/X stats for that stuff you mentioned, though, O-swing%, Z-swing%, etc. Pitches per at bat is something that can be demanded by coaches or determined by situation -- I think see how they recognize and treat pitch is a better indicator of "true talent."

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 21, 2014 -> 03:44 PM) When top notch relievers get huge contracts, it moves up the scale for everyone. Yeah, I see what you're saying, it's just that Kimbrel has been literally historic. He's as much ahead of everyone else as Mariano Rivera was -- the type of guy that is the exception to the model.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 21, 2014 -> 03:47 PM) MLB Transactionist ‏@MLBTransactions 17m TORONTO BLUE JAYS: Claimed pitcher Liam Hendriks off waivers from the Baltimore Orioles; designated infielder Brent Morel for assignment. I just want to express how much difficulty I'm having NOT starting a thread titled: "Blue Jays DFA Brent Morel. Next Sox waiver claim?"

QUOTE (IowaSoxFan @ Feb 21, 2014 -> 03:39 PM) Thats crazy, so because WAR is a bad indicator, every stat is bad incator, talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water. There are a ton of numbers to use to indicate and predict performance, WAR is not a strong indicator stat, more of a picture of what happened in a given set of circumstances. The Dodgers should trade Kershaw straight up for Carlos Gomez because they add the same value to the team? Both had an 8.4 WAR, so they should be equally valuable, but that is dumb. If I use WAR as an evaluation tool, I should make that deal, especially given the contracts involved, but common sense says hell no. No. Why would you not consider your team's construction when making such a decision? Why would you not consider team control and cost? QUOTE (IowaSoxFan @ Feb 21, 2014 -> 03:39 PM) If you were building the 2007 team and used WAR from 2006 to build the team, they would be expected to win 90 games, except they lost 90 games. WAR gives me no context as to why or where they regressed. Who expects it to? We re talking about evaluating a player to be added to your team. QUOTE (IowaSoxFan @ Feb 21, 2014 -> 03:39 PM) If I am evaluating hitters I am looking at P/AB, OBP, BABIP, K/BB as indicators as to how a player has performed and using some common sense to evaluate whether those numbers are sustainable or outliers. Those are factors that a batter can control. Defensive stats are pretty clunky to me, there are defensive stats that say players I can see with my eyes aren't good, are good and vice versa. WAR is OK to talk about when saying Willie Mays is better than Mike Trout as it gives you some semblance of a tool to evaluate players over their career, but as a tool to build a team, it is not useful. So you think pitches per at bat is more important than WAR or its components? OBP is captured in wOBA, but is then added proportionately to TB statistics to give you a more complete picture, and then league adjusted into wRC+, which is fed by wRAA. Dozens of studies have shown BABIP to be among the least controllable factors by both hitters and pitchers. Not entirely random, but a poor predictor of itself in all but the most extreme cases. K/BB is less important than OBP. Other than pitches per at bat, all the things you mentioned are captured in WAR components. You don't have use WAR itself unless you're comparing positions, but why on Earth would you not use wRC+, for example?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 21, 2014 -> 03:34 PM) If that is a real question... He made his money in real estate. No, I'm sorry, it should have been green

QUOTE (ScottyDo @ Feb 21, 2014 -> 03:30 PM) Are there any attempts to use velocity of the ball off the bat, or vector somehow? Ball-off-bat speeds are available data, right? I have to imagine they would correlate negatively with offensive production somehow. That's a good question. I've heard people refer to off-the-bat speed, so I assume it's being recorded. Whether or not it's freely available and, if it is, whether someone has done research with it I don't know.

QUOTE (Joxer_Daly @ Feb 21, 2014 -> 03:33 PM) For me it's the time difference that is the killer. I try to watch as many live games as I can, but with the time difference, work and family, etc, the amount of games I'm able to get doesn't really justify the cost. Can't you watch them later though?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 21, 2014 -> 10:59 AM) I agreed a lot with that idea up until the Kimbrell extension. Now I wonder if closers are about to become a lot more valuable? I don't think you can use Kimbrel as a standard for guys like Addison Reed, though. Plus, I thought Dave made a good point that Reed's save totals actually make him less valuable in that he'll get better arbitration raises:

QUOTE (Reddy @ Feb 21, 2014 -> 12:34 PM) lol yall can keep deluding yourselves but there's no way in hell we don't trot out Paulie as our starting 1B (or DH at the minimum) one last time ESPECIALLY since Opening Day is at home. Anyone who thinks otherwise clearly doesn't know who Jerry Reinsdorf is. My other question to that crowd is - why does it matter? "I hope so".... why? Personally I want Paulie to have his Rivera and Jeter season. Of course he won't, but given that we're not competing anyway who cares if he starts the first game of the season? Who IS Jerry Reinsdorf? He's a car salesman, right?

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Feb 21, 2014 -> 01:56 PM) He made it through 2012 and 2013 and now is on the same routine. I think it would be very far-fetched to say if he had been a starter in 2010-2011 he wouldn't have been injured if he goes down at this point. If you want to say his relieving contributed to his discomfort in 2012, that could make some sense, but most pitchers do go through a lot of pain and dead arm periods throughout every season, even if they have been starters their entire lives. Sale is always going to be an injury concern. It probably is the only reason he is even a White Sox. But you never know when. It could be 10 years from now, it could be tomorrow. Even guys with classic deliveries go down. Sure, but that doesn't mean there isn't a way to minimize the risk, which, logically, would be working up to a 200 inning load by gradually increasing through the minors.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Feb 21, 2014 -> 01:03 PM) I know that the pitcher can't control the fielders. However, FIP is being used frequently for pitchers performance. I think that a combination using a GB and line drive percentage maybe along with the others may be able to show more of the pitchers influence on the game rather than only BB, K, and HR which is the only pure control variables. For the runs scored, I know I'm in the minority but I'm less concerned about an individuals performance than how the individual impacts a win or loss. The performance aspect is for arbitration and salaries. A players impact on winning a given game is more what I would be interested in. The only way I can see to start breaking it down is how he impacts scoring runs at bat and prevents runs on defense. WAR doesn't really do it because that really looks at how his performance is better than another player of lesser performance. The runs prevented stat seems to make sense on defense and OPS and OPS+ kind of start it for offense but there are still too many variables not taken into account for it to do too much. That makes intuitive sense, but research has shown no significant year-to-year correlation between LD rates at all. GB rate is less reliable than you'd think, but is more consistent than LD -- the problem is that it cannot be considered an inherently good or bad thing because it doesn't fit into the equation of linear weights. In other words, it is a class of event, but it isn't a final outcome. Therefore, it cannot hold a run value. A GB can become one of several types of hits or outs, and the odds of each event occurring are entirely dependent on defense, chance, and the ability of the hitter -- all context-dependent and infinitely variable.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Feb 21, 2014 -> 12:21 PM) After doing research on many of the stats this is one that bothers me the most, I think. If I understand it correctly (which is highly doubtful) FIP is predicated on the fact that pitchers can only control 3 factors: HR, BB and K. I think there is valid reasons to say that some pitchers can control the number of groundballs and thus control the game a little more. I realize it's not totally in the pitchers control because the fielders need to make plays. However, if the number of groundballs is increased the number of runs scored would decrease. You're mostly right, but there's an important detail missing about the efficacy of the assumption. The reason that FIP is based on those three things is because those are what Voros McCracken found to be statistically reliable predictors of future performance when controlling for other variables, thus implying that they are a product of pitcher "true talent." Isn't because someone just decided that those metrics made sense intuitively, like some people think.

QUOTE (IowaSoxFan @ Feb 21, 2014 -> 11:42 AM) Stats like WAR are a guidepost, I get that, but should not be held as an end all be all of player production. If I am evaluating a player to come to my team, WAR is the last thing I would use as a GM. WAR is more like the preseason top 25 in college football, it is a measuring stick that calculates success in a vacuum but as an evaluation/scouting tool is not very useful. If you make this claim, you are then also claiming the same of every statistic from a player's past. So if you really mean to say, "If I am evaluating a player to come to me team, numbers are the last thing I would use as a GM," then I can see your argument. Otherwise, I don't think it makes sense. All the "noise" you mentioned is precisely what makes context-dependent statistics LESS dependable for evaluating future performance.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Feb 21, 2014 -> 01:39 PM) Are you saying that in your opinion he definitely wouldn't have had these issues had he not relieved? I think it would be far fetched to think any injury from here on out had to do with his being in the bullpen in 2010-2011. I don't think it's far-fetched to assume that major shifts in workout, routine, and conditioning would have a detrimental impact to the health of a pitcher's arm.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Feb 21, 2014 -> 10:00 AM) Yeah, it would be so White Sox to have Konerko and his .900 + OPS start against LHP, relegating Dunn to the bench against the lefties he doesn't hit. The horror. Isn't Nolasco a righty?

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Feb 21, 2014 -> 08:56 AM) That's ok. I think the best place to break a pitcher in is via the pen. When in doubt look to Earl Weaver. Why do you think that? Are you not concerned for his conditioning? Do you remember how bad Sale/Quintana/Santiago all tired out toward the end of the season right after being converted from the pen?

QUOTE (scs787 @ Feb 20, 2014 -> 07:25 PM) Lol, there's a log jam in the OF too. Keep it simple Robin, Dunn vs RHP and PK vs LHP.

QUOTE (IowaSoxFan @ Feb 20, 2014 -> 03:40 PM) From that article, I agree that their level of replacement players is too high, because there are not players that perform on the level that they indicate readily available. It would be nice to see a sample of what a roster of replacement players would statistically look like, understanding the difficulty as some players defense pushes their bat and vice versa, but a median range of performance of what a replacement level player would be expected to produce would help to analyze actual players against it. I understand they have offensive and defensive WAR, but it is inadequate to me if I can not tell in what areas the player is either offensively proficient or deficient. I for one am not a big fan of WAR, and it really comes from my belief that there is no such thing as a replacement level player. I would rather see a +/- of league median statistics. I don't know enough about the mechanics of the replacement calculation to argue for or against it, but to me it doesn't matter too much. What's important is that there is an established denominator of SOME kind. The best part of WAR to me is being able to compare players against the same baseline, whatever that baseline happens to be.

QUOTE (Señor Ding-Dong @ Feb 20, 2014 -> 04:47 PM) The 68 million dollar man.

You can't say a $50m contract is or isn't an albatross without context.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Feb 20, 2014 -> 09:44 AM) Chronologically speaking, the Mets, Cubs, and Phillies fall in line with this too. You could make an argument for the Angels, but I think their primary problem is making poor choices in free agency rather than a payroll problem, but due to the two albatrosses they have in Hamilton and Pujols, they are going to be paying a lot more in the coming years if/when they lock up Trout, and even going year to year with him could get very expensive very quickly. Also, we can't act like ARod's contract with the Yankees right now is something that's easily movable or isn't an albatross of a contract, because it's not and it's very much a terrible contract. I also think the Dodgers could be in a lot of trouble in the next 3-5 years when some of these funds suddenly dry up because they've spent so much in luxury taxes. Not to mention the Astros. The Cubs , Astros, and Mets are both going through extremely tough rebuilds exclusively because of poor long-term contract decisions. The Yankees have been mediocre the past few years thanks to an attempt to avoid the luxury tax threshold, and they are now living the nightmare of the end of ARod, Teixeira, and Sabathia contracts that they bought along with the earlier prime years. With all due respect, Marty, I have no idea how you can look around baseball and say that albatross contracts are rarely a factor in sustained success. 10% of the league is in full disaster recovery rebuild, and at least another 10% are aging contenders with their hands tied. And these are all medium to large markets. It took the Pirates 20 years to build a winning core of players without the luxury of affording an albatross, and the Rays have traded multiple franchise-level players (Price is next) in order to avoid having to extend them. The Twins (Mauer) and Brewers (Braun) are next in line as those guys start to decline.