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QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 14, 2013 -> 02:58 PM) All outs are not created equally. Any stat that pretends they are is flawed. Pretending that base running mistakes are somehow equal to an infield pop up is just silly. Saying it can't be quantified so therefore it can't be factored isn't good enough either. There is obviously an effect, otherwise it wouldn't be talked about as much as it does when compared to other outs. Common sense tells you that. Why are you assuming that people think all outs have the same value? That's why these stats are based on linear weights. Run values are produced based on the weighted differences in base/out states. For example, if De Aza is caught stealing with 2 outs and a runner on third, it's far more harmful than if he's caught stealing (or picked off) with the bases otherwise empty and no outs. All that stuff is baked in, league adjusted and updated every season based on changes in the run environment. The only thing that isn't here is the "emotional impact' on the rest of the team. It seems like the only people that are against these stats are those who haven't taken the time to understand them.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 14, 2013 -> 02:28 PM) You can't measure it, so throw it out and pretend it doesn't exist? I can't agree with that either. What's the alternative? If we can measure 80% of something and assume that the rest is unpredictable, we have a much more useful picture than "10 mistakes is a lot! No it's not a lot! Yeah but they were big mistakes! No they were medium mistakes! They cost us the whole season because everyone got depressed!" You're essentially choosing to measure nothing at all as an alternative. EDIT: I'm saying nothing at all about pretending things don't exist.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 14, 2013 -> 02:07 PM) Taking human emotion out of the game is just silly. All outs are not created equally. That is a faulty assumption I don't agree with. No one is is claiming that emotion doesn't matter, but (1) you can't measure it, so it's silly to assign some huge, arbitrary value to it based only on intuition. In this case, it's better to leave it out of analysis entirely and accept something as being an incomplete picture rather than throw in a valuation completely out of nowhere for the sake of completeness at the cost of making the entire thing wrong, and (2) I think you are overstating the difference between a big out on the bases and a big out of any kind. Further, I think you are underestimating the ability for professional players to stay focused despite disappointment. Part of the reason they are in the Majors is their ability to perform at a consistently high despite physical and emotional fatigue.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Oct 14, 2013 -> 12:38 PM) I think it's pretty clear that the hangup is about the mental errors with ADA. He's value lies a lot in his speed, which people are hesitant to give him credit for since it's an inherent skill which people view him as having little or nothing to do with. The mental errors are conscious decisions he makes, and so people are going to hold those against him very harshly. But as some have said, you can live with the stupid mistakes because he brings value elsewhere. Whether that value comes from him being an outstanding athlete or the smartest, most intuitive player ever, it doesn't matter. Would you like him to be smarter? Yes, of course. But regardless of how frustrating he may be, you can't base your decision on that Right -- this is the point. It seems like ADA messed up a bunch, and he did, but when you add everything up, he was still among the top few players on our team. He's nothing like a star, but he's one of the last places we need an upgrade just because there are like 6 other worse players that we start.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 14, 2013 -> 12:31 PM) Go back and read the rest of the posts. I don't see anything where you are telling me why the two statistics below provide inaccurate results: http://www.fangraphs.com/library/offense/ubr/ http://www.fangraphs.com/library/offense/wsb/ Are you referring to where you talked about the demoralizing effect of a killed rally? I thought wite pointed out that all kinds of outs kill rallies all the time, and that other types of outs occur drastically more frequently. What if Garcia pops one up because he swung at a bad pitch, that's still a mental error, right? And besides, how can you possibly make a claim as to quantifying an effect like that? It's one thing to suggest that it could be a factor, but entirely another to just decide that its effect is immense enough to make ADA the worst runner in White Sox history despite other evidence to the contrary.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Oct 14, 2013 -> 12:27 PM) But this is another thing I don't understand. Why are baserunning and offensive metrics never "off", but defensive metrics always can be wrong? What makes offensive numbers foolproof, weighted perfectly, but defense you need a sample size of 3 years. Because of the nature of the way defensive plays are recorded, which is on a grid and based on where the player begins and where the player ends up. There are just a lot of contextual exceptions (bad hop, screened by runner, covering second for a steal, etc.) that muddy the data up. That said, the knock on UZR-like stats isnt necessarily that they aren't accurate, it's that UZR scores tend not to be predictive short of three seasons of data. Part of this probably has to do with the factors above, but part of it probably also has to do with the fact that players' defensive performances fluctuate more than we are inclined to expect.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Oct 14, 2013 -> 11:52 AM) I think it was pretty obvious Alejandro De Aza was a stupid baserunner in 2013. Speed was the only thing that made him acceptable by advanced metric standards. If he had average speed, everyone would say he is a bad baserunner. Again this is semantics. BTW, Stone was on Kaplan's show a few weeks ago and stated the White Sox would be looking for someone who understood the game of baseball better than De Aza to play CF next year. Maybe that means De Aza will play LF and/or DH, maybe it means he gone. I do agree about not giving him away, but he was pretty dissappointing running the bases and out in the OF in 2013. I agree with everything you said, but the point is that our ideas of valuation are off-base. ADA made 10ish dumb baserunning mistakes, which is a handful more than he would be expected to make on average. This hurt his value, but his overall contribution remained positive. I understand that those mistakes may have FELT like disasters that outweigh the positives of what he did, but our emotional reaction doesn't affect the actual value. That's why we want to use statistics to quantify this value, so that our biases can't affect it and make us make a mistake. So if you (the collective you, not specifically you) think that a statistic is off, then be all means argue that the statistic is off. But make that argument based on your understanding of the stat and why it won't add up. It's sole purpose is to be there to inform you better than your human brain, which is notoriously flawed for this type of exercise, so that fact that it may have felt like ADA's errors were more costly than his contributions is nothing like evidence against the numbers.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 14, 2013 -> 11:44 AM) Which goes back to my point about the baserunning stat that shows De Aza as being a good base runner as being garbage. If you're going to call an objective measurement of something garbage, you should tell us why it's garbage and how your intuition and selective human memory are more accurate.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Oct 14, 2013 -> 10:23 AM) I was actually referring to picking it up off the ground. He fumbled and kicked more balls this season than I have ever seen anyone do. Guys would get extra bases because if it bounced off a wall, De Aza very rarely would come up with it clean. What I don't understand is he wasn't like this previously, at least to the extent he was bad this year, and despite what Balta will say, it has nothing to do with spring training. I also think stupid baserunning mistakes which take you out of innings demoralize a team. Paulie can't be a better baserunner. If De Aza wouldn't be so dumb on the basepaths, he could improve his worth a decent amount. Gotcha, yeah I thought you were referring to routes. I think there's a weird construct in our minds where we accept that guys can have bad years or bad stretches hitting, but not that they can have similar stretches defensively or on the bases. One year doesn't necessarily reflect a guy's true talent. We know De Aza can be better, so I'd bet that next year he will. But again, he still contributed positively overall, even if he could and should have produced MORE positively. Really there are two things going on here: (1) De Aza deserves some negativity because he made more mistakes running than he should have. Ok, this is true. (2) Despite the mistakes, De Aza was among the best baserunning contributors on our team. Being upset at him for his mistakes doesn't mean he needs to go. There's an emotional thing going on here, and there's there's the subject of next year's roster construction. But they aren't mutually exclusive, we can all agree.

QUOTE (bbilek1 @ Oct 13, 2013 -> 11:37 AM) No, no, no. What do you mean?

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Oct 14, 2013 -> 10:06 AM) Again, the disconnect is the difference in definition. You are saying De Aza was a stupid base runner. That's fine. I'm saying he still provided positive value on the base paths - because he did. When I bring up Konerko, I say he was bad because he was terribly ineffective. He always has been. When a guy who normally hits .270/.350/.450 comes out and hits .250/.300/.425, do you say he sucks and he is one of the worst, or do you say he struggled? Conversely, when a guy who comes out and typically hits .225/.275/.325 comes out and hits .225/.275/.325, do you say he's bad at hitting, or do you say "there's a difference between bring untalented at something and making mistakes?" This ^

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Oct 14, 2013 -> 09:48 AM) You can take more bases than just second on a steal though. How many times did he get from 1st to 3rd or 2nd to home on a single, or how many times did he score from 1st on a double? Those are indications of good baserunners too. Precisely, and that's what the advanced metrics are designed to catch. It's also something that's incredibly difficult to tell from just watching. The fact is that De Aza, after all was said and done, graded out above average as a baserunner this year. You can say he should have graded out much higher without those ~5-6 extra mistakes, but to say he was legendarily bad is totally off base.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Oct 14, 2013 -> 09:21 AM) I'm a De Aza fan, but I agree with this. The guys who insist the advance metrics showing he wasn't as bad as you think will use the fact he did steal 20 bases and used his speed for extra bases more often than the average runner, which may be true, but it doesn't offset the fact that his baserunning and fielding, I have never seen an OF have a tougher time picking up a ball, were horrible. And I agree, he killed several innings with basepath blunders you don't see from 12 year olds. As for Granderson, it appears the Yankees are going to give him a qualifying offer, which IMO, would probably end any chance he plays for the White Sox. I can think of two off the top of my head: Dayan Viciedo and Avisail Garcia. The point isn't that De Aza is awesome, it's the the whole team sucks, and most of the team sucks worse. Those of us who want this team to turn around quickly cannot also be advocating we replace De Aza before we replace Beckham, Flowers, Phegley, Viciedo, and Gillaspie, at least.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 14, 2013 -> 09:07 AM) Between the bad reads and horrible and regular baserunning mistakes, I feel pretty good about those statements, especially the baserunning. He killed more innings that I can remember seeing a Sox player do ever. Like 10? What about all the things he did right? EDIT: Ok, 11.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 13, 2013 -> 07:55 PM) To be fair, if you actually watched him this year, he was one of the worst defenders and baserunners in all of baseball this year. This is just not true at all.

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Oct 11, 2013 -> 02:10 PM) So we're basically just going to stay put? The post title DOES say "realistic"

QUOTE (scs787 @ Oct 11, 2013 -> 11:46 AM) Yikes, that's a 100+ loss team right there and perhaps the worst I've seen. We still have no idea what we have in Garcia, I'm not ready to call him a cleanup hitter. The trade you purpose is just awful since Q alone should get you a major league bat. Yes Peralta committed less errors but he has 0 range so in that regard Lexi>Peralta, he would also be an awful #5 hitter. I 100 losses? That's a substantially improved offense, most likely, adding McCann, Abreu, and Peralta. I'm not saying it's realistic, but I don't know how it makes us worse than 2013.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Oct 11, 2013 -> 11:36 AM) Which is what I posted in post 151 which started all of this. I said stretches and said I wouldn't call his 2011 a "complete aberration" because he still hits like that for long periods of time in each season since. I wasn't talking total season stats. I was talking the level of performance and not just for a week or two here and there. It is still quite prevalent. Yeah we've been arguing semantics for the last 500 pages. We clearly all agree on what you're claiming about Adam Dunn's skillset -- but we disagree on the definition of "aberration."

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Oct 11, 2013 -> 11:24 AM) All hitters have stretches where they struggle. I understand that. And my original point was Dunn still plays at his 2011 level for long stretches, quite often. 2011 was historic how bad it was. I get that, but he still is capable of that type of performance for a good part of the season, which to me says it is not quite a complete aberration when discussing that particular level of play. He still gets there. It is exactly what I originally posted in post #151. Every year, Adam Dunn hits poorly, and hits well. 2011 was the ONLY YEAR where he only hit poorly and did not also hit well. Therefore, Adam Dunn's 2011 was an aberration.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Oct 11, 2013 -> 10:23 AM) 2011 was a sign of decline as well. He still doesn't have a .200 average in a White Sox uniform, the advanced metrics article I read pointed out that his 40 homer 2012 was the second least productive 40 homer season in history. Granted even the least productive 40 homer seasons still provide value. Look at his numbers June 1, 2013, It was like 2011 all over again. And his September was one for the books. Even when people are satisified with Adam Dunn, he is just as bad as he was in 2011 for half the year. He goes bad for months at a time. He had crazy monthly splits. He was either an All Star or a guy that should be selling beer in the stands. The only aberration was that in 2011 it lasted the entire season. The performance that occured then is not a complete aberration. It still occurs just as often as when he is productive. wat

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Oct 11, 2013 -> 09:48 AM) Each of the past 2 seasons, he has been 2011 awful or close to it for 3 months out of 6. So he has been just as awful the last 2 seasons as he was in 2011 half the time. In fact his last 2 seasons look like an aberation if you look at the first 10 or 11. I hope he is the June, July, August of 2013 Adam Dunn next year, but chances are, for at least half of next season, just like in 2012 and 2013, he will perform just like the performance you call a complete aberration. It's a common fallacy to assume that events are evenly distributed. The fact is, Adam Dunn's seasons are not unlike any other players' seasons in that they are composed of hot streaks and cold streaks that end up averaging into his end of the season lines. He may be streakier than average, but pointing out his cold stretches does nothing to explain his 2011. Your argument is evidence that he's declining. His 2011 was a complete meltdown. The fact that his last two seasons have been substantially better than his 2011 is the best argument that 2011 was a "complete aberration." If 2011 was his true talent level, than his season averages would be looking like 2011, regardless of hot and cold streaks. That doesn't mean you have to think he's good, but I'm not sure there's really any rational argument against the notion that his 2011 was an aberration.

QUOTE (RegionSox @ Sep 30, 2013 -> 02:56 PM) If our top prospects are flawed, why would other teams want to trade for them? Wouldn't we just get other flawed prospects back? Flawed does not mean useless. It just means not untouchable.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 10, 2013 -> 04:00 PM) That doesn't seem right at all, he's had at least 4+ seasons since he became arbitration-eligible according to B-R. Even counting the time spent on the DL he was a full free agent in 2011 but signed with the Indians for a decreased amount in 2012. he then got $5 million to rehab and play 0 games in 2012. I don't know if they're somehow allowed to make him the $13 million qualifying offer but I can't imagine they would. That's what I'm saying. They have better info than anyone, and they aren't even offering him a minor league dea despite showing no indication of "giving up on him." He's unemployed.

QUOTE (Lillian @ Oct 10, 2013 -> 03:26 PM) Are these suggestions that Sizemore's knees are shot, based upon anything that has been reported, or is this just speculation? Look, if you guys are correct, and he can't play because he is permanently impaired, then of course it would make no sense. I'm sure that he will be well examined by any team that considers signing him. What I had read is that he was taking his time to be sure that he was completely healthy. I have not seen any reports saying that he will not be able to run well, much less, play center. Who else is out there who could be a stop gap center fielder? I mean someone who can provide solid defense. The best in house guy is probably Jordan Danks. I would hope that longer term, Thompson, or Hawkins will be able to fill that need. If he could play, he'd be under contract with the Indians.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 10, 2013 -> 01:23 PM) Now we have returned to the land of reality in fantasy trade theater. Closer to this land, yes, but why would the Dodgers want Danks?