Eminor3rd

I don't think anyone disagrees that you'd rather not give players huge money, long-term contracts because of all the risk involved. That said, individual teams don;t get to set the market -- this is simply the price of admission. These contracts get signed where supply meets demand.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jul 19, 2013 -> 09:05 AM) I think this might actually be one of the best fits out there. I agree and have been saying this for weeks. I'm bracing myself to be disappointed by the return, though. Polanco I think is untouchable in this type of deal, and Heredia scares me based on what I've heard BP guys report over the past year or so. That being said, I think we'd have to be satisfied if either Hanson or Glasnow is the centerpiece.

QUOTE (SoxPride18 @ Jul 18, 2013 -> 11:54 PM) Rios and Alexei for Polonco, Hanson, Kingham and Herrera? Does that seem like a steep price? Yeah, that's too much, I think, unless the Sox pay all of the salary.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/2013-trade-value-20-16/

QUOTE (greg775 @ Jul 18, 2013 -> 02:52 PM) Good post, but I can't see him getting $10 million a season anytime in the future. You can blame age, but I'd blame production. Re. Dunn. It's the annual advanced stats people vs. normal stat people. When he goes 1-for-30 or strikes out 3-4 times in a game, I think that contributes to lineup lethargia and overall team s***tiness. Maybe he does have some value, but I think most people who do not follow advanced stats closely would disagree violently. To many people, Dunn is a lineup wrecker because of his Ks and long stretches of awful-ness. Greg, he isn't a superstar nor is he a lineup wrecker. He is a player very good at some things, very bad at others, and it all adds up to 10% above league average offensively, with no defensive value. He is a roughly average DH. That is his value. Overpaid or underpaid, he is not anything extreme.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jul 18, 2013 -> 01:41 PM) As I said in the minor league forum, this now make 4 1B's in Charlotte: Wilkins, McDade, L Anderson and now Ishikawa. Anderson has been terrible and is probably gone. One of the others may go as well, though they may be hoarding extra 1B types knowing they MIGHT trade PK or Dunn. Still though, 4 is silly, you can't get them playing time. 3 is even silly, IMO. This also gives you an idea that the org probably doesn't see Dan Black as a future major leaguer, for those who have asked on that before. Yeah, I cant imagine Anderson sticks around now.

QUOTE (CaliSoxFanViaSWside @ Jul 18, 2013 -> 01:05 PM) Just by following this conversation , I'd venture to guess most of the Sox WAR is on the pitching side whereas Clevelands is evenly distributed, so any value the Sox have in pitching WAR is negated by lack of hitting WAR . So teams can have even WAR's but a team where it is more evenly distributed between offense and pitching probably has a better record. Is this assumption correct and a better way to explain it than trying to explain how Wins Above Replacement does not translate to actual wins and losses to the layman ? Dick Allen is right -- a win is a win is a win. Whether it's pitching or hitting or defense, the inputs that go into the stat are all broken down to runs saved or runs earned, which obviously have equal value. The reason it doesn't add up to actual wins is really just what I was trying to explain before about the stat assigning value to events based on their average outcomes versus their actual outcomes. But, again, the stat was NOT designed to add up to actual wins, so it isn't a surprise that it doesn't. It's really all about trying to compare players on an equal playing field. Is Peter Bourjos (all defense) having a better year than David Ortiz (all offense)? Is Adrian Beltre (clean up in a stacked lineup) really playing better than Ryan Braun (cleanup in a garbage lineup)? It essentially tries to serve as en equalizer of context and play-style by measuring all of a players contributions by the amount of runs they typically produce. Dick Allen -- you're right that it isn't perfect, but I still think you're looking for the stat to do more than it is supposed to do. It's very useful for a lot of things, but matching team records isn't it. It's sort of like how people get caught up on pitcher wins. When someone says "who cares about everything else, nothing matters more than a win," you can't really argue. The problem is that pitchers wins are NOT the same stat as team wins, they just have the same name. That's true, also, of wins above replacement. The win we're talking about is really defined as "produced ten runs above replacement," and we call it a win because of pythag, but it isn't the same stat as what shows up on the standings. A tangent on the "imperfection" of WAR-like stats: the product is onyl as good as the inputs. So, if they aren't right, it's not so much about the idea of them as it is about the data that goes in. Currently, the LEAST reliable components of these stats are centered on (1) evaluating catcher defense. The errors and throws are easy, but what about pitch framing and game calling? All studies so far can't find the differences showing up in the results, and no one is willing to accept that it doesn't matter, so we assume there's more there that we haven't figured out how to measure, (2) factoring leverage into RP evaluation. SPs gain a ton of value by soaking up innings, but and RP inning is not often the same as a SP inning in terms of value because RP innings often occur in more important game situations. Leverage index is currently factored in, but how much weight it's given is up to debate, and (3) positional defense. UZR makes perfect sense in all but extreme shift situations, but the numbers tend to fluctuate more than people expect them to, which leads many to distrust them.

Yeah, stopgap. Hopefully it means a pending Dunn trade, hopefully it doesn't mean Konerko is cooked.

QUOTE (flavum @ Jul 18, 2013 -> 07:35 AM) Maybe Konerko is retiring in 11 days. Or Dunn is about to be traded?

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jul 17, 2013 -> 09:10 PM) But these aren't projections, this is actual WAR accumulated this season. Cleveland is 14 games ahead of the White Sox, yet their total WAR is identical.To suggest they are even in performance but that much better based on managing or luck doesn't make sense. Just like all stats, basic and most advanced, it is flawed. Perhaps very flawed. I take it to mean not all exactly equal WAR players are exactly equal. Some must be far better than others. Going further with the coin flip analogy: If you flip a coin ten times, you would PROJECT 5 heads and 5 tails, meaning of all possible individual outcomes, it is the most likely. However, it is actually far more likely that the true outcome will be something other than 5H+5T, but not specifically anything else -- no individual combination is more likely to occur. Does that make sense?

QUOTE (GreenSox @ Jul 17, 2013 -> 10:01 PM) I certainly think issues such as lazy defense, bad base running and poor managing has contributed to half of our misery this year. I don't know the extent to which WAR measures those factors. The team isn't very good, but the starting pitching is good, the front of the bullpen was too prior to Crain's injury. Certainly not a horrendous team as it has played, although a below average team. It mostly doesn't -- team WAR is just the sum or individual player WAR. So anything that happens that has to do with how the players interact with one another or how different streaks or sequences of events occur will NOT be reflected. These are the factors that make reality reality and so it cannot be predicted entirely by a mathematical formula.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jul 17, 2013 -> 09:10 PM) But these aren't projections, this is actual WAR accumulated this season. Cleveland is 14 games ahead of the White Sox, yet their total WAR is identical.To suggest they are even in performance but that much better based on managing or luck doesn't make sense. Just like all stats, basic and most advanced, it is flawed. Perhaps very flawed. I take it to mean not all exactly equal WAR players are exactly equal. Some must be far better than others. I don't think you understood the beginning part of Jake's post. The reason it is off is because there is nothing like a normal distribution of events in real life. Also, it is a fallacy to assume that because someone will regress, they will regress completely to the original projection or true talent -- just that they will regress TOWARD it. Past events, whether likely or not, are in the bank, so to speak, there's no law that says it all has to even out. That's the gambler's fallacy. It's like if a coin flip is 50/50 and you flip 5 heads in a row, its not more likely that the next 5 will be tails -- it's 50/50 every time. Again, take a look at those articles. Especially the second one.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jul 17, 2013 -> 07:14 PM) So the Sox team WAR is the same as Cleveland's. the Angels team WAR is ome of the best in baseball. There is reason to doubt WAR as a useful, accurate tool. I like to use it, but ii really is not consistent with the standings, and I know nothing is going to be perfect, but it is significantly off in many cases. Again -- it comes down to using a stat to answer the question it was meant to answer. All linear weights-based metrics, including WAR, are designed to make a descriptive, context-neutral evaluation of performance so as to be able to compare such performances across different situations (players, leagues, eras, strategies, etc.) It is essentially using math to find an ultimate common denominator. What WAR does is tell you how many wins would be created by a performance in an entirely average chain of events. This never actually occurs, but it's useful because now we can make comparisons. Projections seek to do the same thing -- describe the average outcome. What those standings say is this: "Here is what actually happened and here is what the player's performances should have produced on average . It essentially is what happened versus what the teams "earned." Then, they take it one step further and say "if the players continue to play as they have, their results should regress toward what their performance 'earns,' and they should end up closer to this " If you think these projections are claiming to be a crystal ball, you are mistaken, and you should read these articles (one of them involving the White Sox even!) by old Dave Cameron: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/of-projecti...nd-predictions/ http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-differe...nd-projections/ Anyone who has watched or played sports knows that the winner is often not the most deserving or most talented -- that is, I believe, at the very core of what makes sports interesting -- and these types of standings strive to give us a deeper look at team performance by not just showing us the winners, but also showing us who has "played the best." It's interesting information for fans like all of us, who tend to spend a ton of time picking apart every aspect of our team and its plight.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 17, 2013 -> 06:28 PM) And why is that? Because that is the way that these stats were biased. Change the importance of a piece of the puzzle, and their values could change drastically. "Biased" is the wrong word though. Run values that are attached to both offensive and defensive metrics are based on large sample correlations of historical data. No one is arbitrarily "deciding" what things are worth -- they are studying how events impact the game and weighting them mathematically.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jul 17, 2013 -> 05:48 PM) Yeah, I appreciate what you always bring to the table. Although I'm not sure wrc+/woba can provide the entire context...there has to be some value to the fact that baseball games are decided by who scores the most runs and Adam Dunn is capable of producing them extremely well in short bursts. There is a context that can be provided in simpler ways than just isn't with some of these more advanced metrics (at least not to my knowledge). Yeah, sequencing is an interesting matter. To my knowledge, most attempts at judging the value of consistency vs. streakiness have been inconclusive, though I do specifically remember someone creating a stat called BACON (Batting Consistency) that was supposed to measure who had their hits distributed most evenly. If I recall correctly, Ichiro was the champion there. Ahh, yes: http://www.plunkeveryone.com/?p=95

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jul 17, 2013 -> 04:15 PM) Which they obviously did not...but we can, god forbid, look at how many RBI and home runs each one has! I have nothing against advanced stats, in fact, I am entirely in favor of them. Sometimes I think we are a bit quick to throw out some of the older stats in favor of the new shiny ones. The fact that Dunn has been as consistent as he has in his career goes to the fact that he is going to hit 40ish home runs and knock in 90-100 ish runs regardless of how much control he has over how many people get on base or don't get on base each year. Relative to other middle of the order hitters, those are fairly favorable numbers. In fact, so much so, that not many of those hitters are going to be available on the market. Obviously Dunn comes with some warts and everyone knows what those are - we don't need wrc+ to tell us that. I applaud the use of wrc+ to determine just how much those warts affect his value, but it doesn't mean I have to live by them. When the stakes are this high and the games become fewer and fewer, there is something to the fact that Adam Dunn has hit 430 home runs in his career and I can put him at the plate or I can put Jacoby Ellsbury at the plate. In my opinion, there is a value to that that cannot be precisely quantified, but it can be quantified by the fact that this is the type of hitter Adam Dunn is, because he has been incredibly consistent in doing so over his career, and I don't need to overcomplicate it by trying to put a precise value upon him which factors in 94 different things. Yes, all this is true. I don't think the old numbers should be thrown out, so to speak, they just need to be used to answer the questions they are suited to answer (OPS needs to be thrown out though, in my opinion, because it doesn't answer the one thing it's supposed to answer). The whole reason I brought this up is because we seem to be coming back to "Adam Dunn sucks he hits .200!" vs. "Yeah but he hits 40 homers so it's worth it!" which is a very valid and important debate -- is the power worth the low average? And there's a family of stats designed to help us answer that very question that I don't think people are using. Batting average answers some questions perfectly, I just don't think it answers THIS question perfectly. Fortunately, wRC+/wOBA does.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 17, 2013 -> 03:56 PM) And so Ellsbury's offense has been worth 1/3 of a win more than Dunn's offense so far this season? Correct. Or, more precisely, the things that Ellsbury has done on offense would typically result in one third more win. The critical difference in this number and actual wins is the presence of context. So obviously it's possible that most of Ellsbury's hits came in crucial situations (bases loaded, bottom of the 9th, etc.) and resulted in many more wins, or vice versa for Adam Dunn, but in order to control for game situation and let us compare players on an even field, each event is given a run value based on what it produces on average. For example, a HR can obviously be worth anywhere between one run and four runs, but this year, it's been worth 2.081 runs on average, so both players get credit for 2.081 runs for every homerun they hit. So when I say Ells has contributed 10.5 runs above average, those runs are assuming all of his contributions produced average results.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 17, 2013 -> 03:13 PM) This number just doesn't mean anything to me. I don't know what "league average run production" is off the top of my head and I don't know how it scales. Ok, another way of looking at it is wRAA, which is essentially wRC without the scaling. It's measured in runs Dunn = 7.1 Ells = 10.5 So the sum of Dunn's offensive contributions would create, on average, roughly 7 more runs than a league average player. Ellsbury is a touch over 10. To put THAT in context, historically, teams tend to get one win for every 10 runs they score ABOVE the amount of runs they give up. So, ignoring defense in this case, Ellsbury's contributions are worth about one additional win COMPARED to average. Does that make sense?

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Jul 17, 2013 -> 02:45 PM) OK, one formula I just looked up included reaching on error in the formula, but excluded intentional walks. I'm not getting that. I'm not aware of any formula that includes reaching on error. For what it's worth, I usually reference FanGraphs because they use Tango's formulas: wOBA = (0.691×uBB + 0.722×HBP + 0.884×1B + 1.257×2B + 1.593×3B + 2.058×HR) / (AB + BB – IBB + SF + HBP) Also, here are all of the historical component run values by year: http://www.fangraphs.com/guts.aspx?type=cn

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 17, 2013 -> 02:56 PM) How big of a difference is 3 points in wRC+? Is that a small difference or a big difference? It seems very small. 3% of league average.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jul 17, 2013 -> 02:37 PM) All stats are flawed by OPS is extremely flawed. I use it because it's simple, widely reported, and gives a base guideline. I also take into consideration the differences in value between two similar OPS's, Taking just what guys do at the plate into consideration here - Adam Dunn has a .791 OPS, Jacoby Ellsbury .790. Logic says that Dunn should have created more runs in general - a microscopic measure, but more nonetheless - yet Ellsbury has been signficantly more valuable simply with a bat in his hands because Ellsbury has been on base about 40 more times than Dunn (don't have the exact number but it's good enough). Right, Ellsbury is sitting on 113 wRC+ versus Dunn's 110, and the difference is in the run values of the types of events involved. If you jsut look at OPS, you'd have to argue about whether or not you think Dunn's power is more valuable than Ellsbury's on base ability, and you'd never agree because it would be subjective. But linear weights stats just tell you straight out, based on which of them produce, on average, more runs.

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Jul 17, 2013 -> 02:33 PM) What is the universe from which the weights are created? All of MLB history? The last 10 years? The last year? There's still some subjectivity there in deciding that part of it, but I agree that wOBA is better than most. Typically the stats are adjusted every season. If I remember correctly from THE BOOK, the formula was created using historical data, but the probability weights can be altered to fit any sample size.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jul 17, 2013 -> 02:30 PM) How many players have a bad avg. bad obp bad OPS but are good with the advanced and vice versa? I would say the answer is very few, and it would be those who add extraordinary amounts of value on defense and on the basepaths QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jul 17, 2013 -> 02:30 PM) What should it matter if Adam Dunn was worth 1.8 wins in 2012 or 1.4? What matters is his next AB. You're totally right, but these numbers we're talking about don't attempt to do that just like BA and OPS don't attempt to do that. It's totally fair to want to be able to use a stat to predict the future, but that doesn't have anything to do with wOBA being a more precise and accurate measure of value than OPS, because those are all descriptive statistics.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jul 17, 2013 -> 02:29 PM) Well that's odd, because there's a team out there that's a game back from a playoff spot and 4.5 back from the division lead that has splits of .197/.261/.382/.643 from their DH slot this year, and I know OPS is only for cave men but there's enough of a reference point here and that it says "they suck even if they played against a 12 man defense so I am going to post the OPS because suck it!" Of course, I am talking about the Orioles. Indeed. The Orioles are an example of a team that could get a ton of value from Adam Dunn if the Sox picked up some of that salary. The Rays could, too, but you;d have to assume that you;d need to pick up nearly all of the salary, and anyway they might still get nervous because of the whole Pat Burrell thing, lol.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 17, 2013 -> 02:21 PM) I don't buy that today's advanced stats have settled anything. I'd bet money in five or ten years, there will be another generation of new stats to replace the current crop and fix all of the biases and bugs in the one's today. At the end of the day, all of the numbers are going to have some level of bias built in, if for no other reason, than what does the person who created them feel is important. In baseball, there is no one right answer for that question. All of these numbers tell a story. But that's the very nature of knowledge! In ten years, we may discover something about quantum physics that makes Newton's laws obsolete, but that doesn't change the fact that Newton's laws are currently the best and most useful set of axioms with which to explain and predict physical reality. Numbers aren't biased themselves, but use of them certainly can be. You're right that they all tell a different story and have different uses. What I'm trying to say is this: 1. wOBA/wRC+ are precisely the correct numbers to answer the questions about net offensive value that people are asking about Adam Dunn. 2. OPS attempts to do the same thing, but is way worse at it. Like there isn't a situation where OPS would be a better measure of anything than wOBA/wRC+. I think batting average, for example, is a more useful stat because at least there isn;t a clearly better analog that tells you the exact same thing as batting average.