The Grandal will come out tomorrow, you can bet your bottom dollar

[Heads22]

No matter if it is a torn achilles or acid reflux, this team needs the All Star break badly. Anyone going on the 10 day IL starting today would only miss five games and would be back for the first game after the break, so I'm cool with if we decide to throw anyone like Yoan that could use the time off on the list.

[ChiSox59]

34 minutes ago, CaliSoxFanViaSWside said:

His power is very important to this team as is his OBP . If we think the Sox offense has been sputtering but has survived because of next man up working Grandal is a huge loss.

Now Collins isn't a terrible replacement . After all he has power and a good eye and an increase in PT might be good for him but I would imagine I won't be venturing into too many game threads because it will be hard to look at the 100's of posts blaming him for pitches that aren't called strikes, pitcher's pitching bad, how he calls a terrible game and how he sucks at framing. You'd think Collins had a 666 on his skull.

I mean, Collins can't really catch the guys with nasty stuff.  He loses a ton of strike calls.  I think the heat is mostly warranted.  He has improved a ton as a catcher, but still is a pretty poor framer/receiver.  

[Dick Allen]

Trout was 6-8 weeks. Hopefully Grandal is not as long, but if it is, he should be back for the homestretch.

[ptatc]

2 minutes ago, Dick Allen said:

Trout was 6-8 weeks. Hopefully Grandal is not as long, but if it is, he should be back for the homestretch.

That's about the average for most significant muscle injuries, unless there is a tendon rupture which this team seems to be good at.

[JoeCredeYes]

If Yaz is out long term the Sox should acquire the best defensive catcher they can, and make the deal for Gallo.  You can't really replace Yaz outside of a handful of C's in the league that franchises aren't letting go, but you can come extremely close to replacing his offensive production with a very similar stat line that also fills your RF hole.  

[Heads22]

1 minute ago, ptatc said:

That's about the average for most significant muscle injuries, unless there is a tendon rupture which this team seems to be good at.

You may not have a good answer to this, but how much of this years rash of injuries, throughout the league, could be attributed to the messed up nature of last year?

[Kyyle23]

The law of averages means that the Sox will have no injuries for the next 715 days I believe 

[ptatc]

1 minute ago, Heads22 said:

You may not have a good answer to this, but how much of this years rash of injuries, throughout the league, could be attributed to the messed up nature of last year?

That's been a working hypothesis of mine for the past month or so. Prior to the season my answer would have been that it didn't make a difference and the rest may help the position players. However, the league wide massive increase in muscle injuries has changed my thoughts on it. While it's by no means a sure bet, that is one of the significant difference between this year and past years injury rates.

[Vulture]

16 minutes ago, ChiSox59 said:

I mean, Collins can't really catch the guys with nasty stuff.  He loses a ton of strike calls.  I think the heat is mostly warranted.  He has improved a ton as a catcher, but still is a pretty poor framer/receiver.  

There’s something like 90 umpires in MLB, all of whom call different strike zones and are prone to different mistakes. That is enough umpires that the sets of umpires each catcher would see over course of the season would be statistically significant enough to render pitch framing stats virtually invalid imo. You can’t just presume because one catcher was behind the plate when a ball was called a strike a certain number of times that the catcher was the cause of it. Maybe the backup catcher randomly got a highly disproportionate amount of games with umpires who call strikes as balls more often. Beyond that, giving catchers credit for umpires making mistakes is just ludicrous on the face of it. How do you determine whether a catcher tricked an ump or if the umpire just spaced out and blew the call? You can’t. And with the disparity in umpires calling games, as I argue above I don’t think it’s valid looking at trends since the data sets of umpiring stats would vary to such a degree from catcher to catcher

Edited July 6, 2021 by Vulture

[Balta1701]

2 minutes ago, Vulture said:

There’s something like 90 umpires in MLB, all of whom call different strike zones and are prone to different mistakes. That is enough umpires that the sets of umpires each catcher would see over course of the season would be statistically significant enough to render pitch framing stats virtually invalid imo. You can’t just presume because one catcher was behind the plate when a ball was called a strike a certain number of times that the catcher was the cause of it. Maybe the backup catcher randomly got a highly disproportionate amount of games with umpires who call strikes as balls more often.

then over the period of multiple seasons everyone's framing numbers should average out close to zero, which isn't the case at all.

[CaliSoxFanViaSWside]

18 minutes ago, JoeCredeYes said:

If Yaz is out long term the Sox should acquire the best defensive catcher they can, and make the deal for Gallo.  You can't really replace Yaz outside of a handful of C's in the league that franchises aren't letting go, but you can come extremely close to replacing his offensive production with a very similar stat line that also fills your RF hole.  

A good plan for sure but that means you'd have to find a taker for Eaton or just cut him loose or Lamb , Hamilton . I think the Sox were hopeful that among the OFers they have that RF was OK if they didn't want to eat up too much minor league depth in trades. After all 2nd base and the bullpen were really the priority .

But if Grandal is injured for a significant amount of time they need a lot more HR's and walks now more than ever . Gallo and Escobar not just Escobar becomes more of a necessity. But if you now have to address RF, the bullpen and 2nd base it's very hard to imagine the Sox doing all that.

 

Edited July 6, 2021 by CaliSoxFanViaSWside

[Vulture]

3 minutes ago, Balta1701 said:

then over the period of multiple seasons everyone's framing numbers should average out close to zero, which isn't the case at all.

Is your argument that every missed call is due to catcher framing?

[Balta1701]

1 minute ago, Vulture said:

Is your argument that every missed call is due to catcher framing?

lol no. The argument is that getting one extra strike for your pitchers per game out of more than a hundred pitches thrown...makes a big difference over a season. If there were no differences between catchers, and it was all "umpires, situations, pitchers, etc." like you just alleged, then over a season you're talking about a guy catching 10,000+ balls if he catches 100 games, Over a couple seasons, tens of thousands of pitches. If there was no difference between players framing, then the numbers would average out for everey catcher to about the same given how big the sample sizes are.

[ChiSox59]

5 minutes ago, Vulture said:

Is your argument that every missed call is due to catcher framing?

Do you watch Collins catch?  Do you see the number of times each game he catches a pitch that is easily in the K zone but due to the way Collins catches it, it is called a ball?  This is not same fan vendetta against Collins.  It is quite obvious when watching the games.  If the pitcher misses their spot, he jabs at the ball rendering a strike call very unlikely as he pushes the ball away from the zone with his glove.  

Edited July 6, 2021 by ChiSox59

[Vulture]

9 minutes ago, ChiSox59 said:

Do you watch Collins catch?  Do you see the number of times each game he catches a pitch that is easily in the K zone but due to the way Collins catches it, it is called a ball?  This is not same fan vendetta against Collins.  It is quite obvious when watching the games.  If the pitcher misses their spot, he jabs at the ball rendering a strike call very unlikely as he pushes the ball away from the zone with his glove.  

Yeah I just watched Grandal make a number of poorly framed pitches the other day as well. Ive even seen poorly framed pitches called as strikes and well framed pitches called balls. Framing clearly is not the only factor that effects whether strike calls are missed, so pretending like it is isn’t going to result in a good metric. Theoretically framing should have no impact on the calling of strikes anyway since the ump is calling the pitch based on location of the pitch as it passes the plate.

Edited July 6, 2021 by Vulture

[Look at Ray Ray Run]

21 minutes ago, Vulture said:

There’s something like 90 umpires in MLB, all of whom call different strike zones and are prone to different mistakes. That is enough umpires that the sets of umpires each catcher would see over course of the season would be statistically significant enough to render pitch framing stats virtually invalid imo. You can’t just presume because one catcher was behind the plate when a ball was called a strike a certain number of times that the catcher was the cause of it. Maybe the backup catcher randomly got a highly disproportionate amount of games with umpires who call strikes as balls more often. Beyond that, giving catchers credit for umpires making mistakes is just ludicrous on the face of it. How do you determine whether a catcher tricked an ump or if the umpire just spaced out and blew the call? You can’t. And with the disparity in umpires calling games, as I argue above I don’t think it’s valid looking at trends since the data sets of umpiring stats would vary to such a degree from catcher to catcher

Yet framing is pretty consistent year to year. 

[Jack Parkman]

30 minutes ago, ptatc said:

That's been a working hypothesis of mine for the past month or so. Prior to the season my answer would have been that it didn't make a difference and the rest may help the position players. However, the league wide massive increase in muscle injuries has changed my thoughts on it. While it's by no means a sure bet, that is one of the significant difference between this year and past years injury rates.

Question: Even so, do you think that there could be something wrong that the Sox training staff is doing? Could people get fired or is the severity of the injuries the Sox are suffering just bad luck? Wondering if some people might get fired this winter. 

Edited July 6, 2021 by Jack Parkman

[Vulture]

23 minutes ago, Balta1701 said:

lol no. The argument is that getting one extra strike for your pitchers per game out of more than a hundred pitches thrown...makes a big difference over a season. If there were no differences between catchers, and it was all "umpires, situations, pitchers, etc." like you just alleged, then over a season you're talking about a guy catching 10,000+ balls if he catches 100 games, Over a couple seasons, tens of thousands of pitches. If there was no difference between players framing, then the numbers would average out for everey catcher to about the same given how big the sample sizes are.

Yeah but correlation doesn’t equate to causation. My argument isn’t that there is no difference between catchers. It is that framing stats aren’t valid. Considering there are a number of other variables that could result in a missed call, crediting the missed call to the catcher can’t possibly be sound. Variance between umpires and pitchers would have just as much effect on rates as catchers. Now we know for sure that Collins set of pitchers is much different than Grandals. Maybe the variance of both the set of pitchers and umpires renders the comparison invalid. Is there anything in the stat that says it doesn’t? No, and that is a fact.

If we none the less presume that tracking an unsound measurement over years would somehow wash this out, then you’d have to admit that comparing Grandal’s and Collins’ framing stats would still be unsound since we don’t have years of framing stats for Collins.

Edited July 6, 2021 by Vulture

[ptatc]

2 minutes ago, Jack Parkman said:

Question: Even so, do you think that there could be something wrong that the Sox training staff is doing? Could people get fired or is the severity of the injuries the Sox are suffering just bad luck? Wondering if some people might get fired this winter. 

I wouldn't think so. It's not only the Sox, its the whole league. The severity seems to be worse with Jimenez and Madrigal rupturing the tendons off the bone but I'm not sure you can control for that. I think both Engel and Grandal came back too soon. It may show the reasons why if someone gets fired or not.

[2Deep]

It is awfully quiet on the YAZ injury front

[southsider2k5]

42 minutes ago, ptatc said:

That's been a working hypothesis of mine for the past month or so. Prior to the season my answer would have been that it didn't make a difference and the rest may help the position players. However, the league wide massive increase in muscle injuries has changed my thoughts on it. While it's by no means a sure bet, that is one of the significant difference between this year and past years injury rates.

As time passes and this gets studied more, please keep us up to date as more academic work is done here.  I would love to hear what the theories end up being over time and how accurate you feel they are.

[Boopa1219]

The most valuable player on the team.

The one dude who couldn't get hurt.

[ptatc]

8 minutes ago, southsider2k5 said:

As time passes and this gets studied more, please keep us up to date as more academic work is done here.  I would love to hear what the theories end up being over time and how accurate you feel they are.

Will do. However, it is getting a lot of attention so I imagine it will be out in the media quite a bit.

[Baron]

1 hour ago, CaliSoxFanViaSWside said:

I didn't say he was good at the things I mentioned. I just said I don't like seeing all the people parroting the things you usually say when most people have no idea if Collins is actually as lousy as so many say he is. It's easier to be a sheep than it is to do actual research with an open mind or give him the benefit of the doubt on things people may not understand such as game calling. I mean if Rodon and Gio like throwing to him there has to be a reason. I know Grandal has his share of defensive critics too about this game calling/passed ball, but at some point you have to think there are a lot of benches in baseball calling pitches and pitchers have the ultimate say by nodding or shaking their heads and executing the pitches.

But him being bad at pitch framing directly refutes all the other excuses you make. If he's bad at pitch framing good chance that's the reason for alot of the missed calls. Like I said earlier and I've been trying to dig through Sox Twitter. But a month ago 70 percent of the umps missed calls were during games he caught in. That's not a coincidence if he has horrible pitch framing. 

Look at his fielding value just halfway through this season. 

Edited July 6, 2021 by Baron

[Vulture]

19 minutes ago, ptatc said:

I wouldn't think so. It's not only the Sox, its the whole league. The severity seems to be worse with Jimenez and Madrigal rupturing the tendons off the bone but I'm not sure you can control for that. I think both Engel and Grandal came back too soon. It may show the reasons why if someone gets fired or not.

If the majority of engineers designed bridges that collapse, I still wouldn’t hire an engineer who designs bridges that collapse. Injuries up league wide but Sox seem to be among the league leaders. Is it a coincidence the guys like Engel, Robert and Grandal for example, are also the guys built like tanks, like they’re doing max reps all day. You can’t make a tendon stronger. At some point there is too much muscle for the tendon to handle. Performing whip like movements repeatedly at max muscle mass is going to result in increased injuries to tissues. One of the reasons you don’t typically see quarterbacks and tennis players built like linebackers i’d think. I dont think there’s much of a mystery here as people are making out. I could be wrong but to me it seems obvious. 

Edited July 6, 2021 by Vulture