Dick Allen

Updated numbers, looks like Bernstein will have to edit his article (just like last time), and it looks like now the Abreu love is justified: Abreu 150 wRC+ 1.2 WAR Rizzo 143 wRC+ 1.0 WAR

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ May 8, 2014 -> 08:34 AM) If I use an advanced stat, you say it's a bulls*** stat. If I use and "old school" stat, you ignore the argument and make fun of me for not using an advanced stat. lol Since when was career triple slash an "old school advanced stat" anyway? It seems we've reached the part of the argument where you start making s*** up and dodging the actual topic. How about this: show me that George Brett has been a better clutch hitter than a non-clutch hitter. You said it: That's the problem with postseason data, very few guys ever get enough PA to have predictive performances. The few that have had enough don't show significant difference from their career lines. It's true that Swisher has been brutal in the postseason, but if he gets there again, his track record doesn't make it more likely he'll continue to be brutal. I think any reasonable person would conclude that it is crazy to think players who are normally good hitters don't ever choke and guys who are normally average hitters, seem to bear down and step up in certain situations. I don't have to prove Brett was clutch. I never brought him up. Someone just posted his stats with RISP and without. You were the one that said that proved your point. It doesn't.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ May 8, 2014 -> 08:18 AM) It proves he hit worse, but got walked more. If that's your definition of an ultimate clutch hitter, then I guess that's what he was. The George Brett example doesn't prove anything league-wide, but the reams of large-scale studies I referenced and/or linked do, and that wasn't convincing anyone. The George Brett example does prove that just because 15 random people are quoted as saying George Brett was clutch doesn't mean it was actually the case. No. BA with RISP vs. BA vs. runners not is scoring position does not show clutch vs. non clutch. You are assuming every AB with RISP is clutch and zero AB with no runners in scoring position is not. For a guy who needs these advanced stats to show who is better than who, it does seem odd you will take an old school random stat, which really doesn't jive with the argument, and say that shows George Brett really wasn't as clutch as some think. How do you explain Nick Swisher's failure in the playoffs? The guy has almost 200 postseason plate appearances and has been brutal. He's been a pretty good offensive player during his career.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ May 8, 2014 -> 08:06 AM) And there you have it. What does that prove? He gets on base .056 more with runners in scoring postion, yet has a lower batting average and slugging percentage. Seems when there are RISP, George wasn't pitched to very much. And not all AB with RISP are really clutch, and there are some clutch hits when runners are not in scoring position. Like a runner at 1b, when they really can't or won't pitch around him.

QUOTE (IlliniKrush @ May 8, 2014 -> 12:37 AM) Caulfield, you say there's nothing they can do. There is something they can do, and it's really easy - lower prices. We covered this last year, but the tickets prices are insane for a series that has basically no hype around it anymore and 2 rebuilding teams. $79 to sit in the bleachers? When Friday vs Arizona it's $23. LOL. Yes, the cash grab for the Cubs series doesn't work anymore. Especially when they schedule these games during the week when weather can be a factor, and considering the past 6 months, weather is going to keep more away this year IMO until it is warm. There are a lot more people sick of being cold now. There were tons of empties at Wrigley. With Hawk complaining about scheduling, you knew it was going to be a weak number for these games.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ May 7, 2014 -> 09:34 PM) I agree. I have no argument against that. I see it business meetings, I felt it in baseball, I see it in interviews on TV, etc. But in MLB, it doesn't show up in the results. You just don't make the majors unless you can bear down in clutch situations to a certain degree. It turns out that the difference is negligible at that level. If it wasn't, we'd be able to look back at performances historically and identify guys that were better. But they just aren't there. It surprises me too, but it's true. There are good and bad hitters in the major leagues. To say every good hitter is a good clutch hitter IMO is coming to a conclusion clutch hitting really doesn't exist or is so small it is irrelevant because you don't have a tool to accurately measure it.

QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ May 7, 2014 -> 09:33 PM) "It should also be fun to regain BP Crosstown Cup bragging rights" -Nobody Its not the BP Cup anymore. They can't find a sponsor. You would think that would be enough for them to melt it down for scrap.

QUOTE (Andy the Clown @ May 7, 2014 -> 09:14 PM) Hoyt was never THAT fat, was he? He was fatter.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ May 7, 2014 -> 09:13 PM) Ok, well read the studies, tell me why they're bulls***, and I'll take your opinion seriously. It's a fact that past clutch performance does not predict future clutch performance, therefore refuting the existence of the skill at the ML level. http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=2656 Because it is something that is not unique to baseball. It isn't unique to sports. Whatever you do, you know someone you can count on when something is on the line! And people you can go to in a normal situation but you really don't trust. Good hitters can be bad clutch hitters. Normally not very good hitters can be good when the game is on the line. Some guys just really bear down during those times, and some guys fold.

QUOTE (sin city sox fan @ May 7, 2014 -> 09:08 PM) So after we win tonight, does ESPN stick around for the awarding of the Crosstown Cup? The Cubs trophy case will be back to empty.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ May 7, 2014 -> 09:01 PM) Being able to perform under pressure, in clutch situations, is absolutely real. The problem is that the ones who perform substantially worse in clutch situations tend not to make the big leagues. They are naturally culled. Most everyone will agree that there are still some ML hitters that are better clutch performers than others, but that the difference is so small that it is typically negligible. Indeed, the numbers agree. Whenever you see players with substantially better than average numbers in particular situations (playoffs, specific matchups, RISP with 2 out in the 7th inning in July, etc.), they are occurring at sample sizes that are too small to achieve statistical significance. In the instances where player have received enough PA in particular situations to warrant meaningful trends, the numbers always mirror each player's career numbers very closely. Differences are rarely, if ever statistically significant. There may be some exceptions in some specific situations, but if they exist at all, they are very few and far between. It's not that clutch doesn't exist, it's that at the highest level, the best guys aren't enough better at it than the worst guys to make a meaningful difference. Historically, when a guy gets up in any given situation, the most likely outcome mirrors his career rates. I'm calling bulls*** on that.

Lamar Hoyt in for the Cubs.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ May 7, 2014 -> 08:59 PM) Someone on fb just asked when Kerry wood came back. One of the greatest pictures of the Cubs collapse in the 2003 NLCS was the guy leaving the park in a Woods jersey.

3 run double for the mascot.

QUOTE (BigHurt3515 @ May 7, 2014 -> 08:52 PM) Abreu has been awesome today.. Love that he is getting hits that aren't home runs! Frankly I wish all his hits were home runs.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ May 7, 2014 -> 08:51 PM) There's a big difference when your change is 10 MPH off the fastball. He used to throw 90-93 MPH consistently, a lot like Quintana does now. In fact, the MLB.com gun is reading his fastball at as low as 82, or not distinguishing between the change and fastball. He's a lot closer to Jim Parque than Mark Buehrle at this point. One thing's for sure, he definitely has to have pinpoint command to survive in the bigs with this kind of stuff. Or he's got to develop a knockout curveball in the mid 70's, which he's never really mastered. 2014 FB velocity 87.9 2014 CU velocity 79.6 Stop with the fiction.

QUOTE (chitownsportsfan @ May 7, 2014 -> 08:31 PM) God I want to live in your world. "Hey I just hit green on the roulette well everyone that said it wouldn't hit is dumb". All I have to do is fade whatever you say and I will be a baseball genius.

Why is Beckham leading off? God is he bad and Ventura dumb. Just DFA him.

QUOTE (chitownsportsfan @ May 7, 2014 -> 08:16 PM) Yea it's not like the Cubs didn't put up huge numbers against DFA bait Hector Noesi last night. Oh wait. Good answer.

QUOTE (Jake @ May 7, 2014 -> 05:13 PM) First of all, I think it's good that you approach it this way and do it without the "this newfangled stuff is terrible, you nerds are ruining everything." It allows the SABR folks to answer the primary criticism of what they advocate, which is that sometimes sabermetrics seem to be at odds with what is observed (I should say that sometimes sabermetrics do a better job at explaining what it is we see). Obviously, if Abreu finishes with a 110 wRC+ and knocks in 150 RBI, I'm probably going to want to say he was a better run producer than just 10% above average. If he were to do that, though, it would suggest something that these kinds of statistics don't really take into consideration (and for good reason) - it would mean that the hits, walks, and outs that led to 150 RBI happened in a way that was biased towards runs being scored. Generally speaking, the assumption that underlies these statistics is that most of your at-bats are no different than any other at-bats; not on the micro level, but on the macro level. Over time, few people seem especially clutch or especially not clutch. When a guy looks awesome in some aspects of the classic, counting stats and not so great with SABR stats, there might be some reason to believe that this particular player is better or worse in the most pivotal situations than what is statistically typical. For instance, let's take two pitchers. Tom Glavine was criticized by many as a first-ballot HOFer, including myself, for his not-amazing FIP over his career (3.95). It would suggest that his accomplishments were more about longevity than ever being truly dominant. His xFIP (same stat, but assuming league average HR per fly ball) was worse at 4.59. First of all, it's obvious that Glavine didn't luck into not giving up homers to that large of an extent for 19 years. He was just better than we assume at suppressing homers. There's more than that, though. I'll let FanGraphs explain some more: Basically, peripheral stats tend to be better at predicting future performance than counting stats. Furthermore, these "peripherals" are better at saying how well a pitcher truly pitched in a smaller sample. David Purcey threw something like 10-15 innings last year and had a low ERA but he walked a batter per inning and hardly struck anyone out. We know he was just a lucky SOB, especially since his walks weren't clustered in one outlier appearance. Rarely, you get a guy like Glavine who is an exception. Then we have Javier Vasquez, who is the opposite sort of exception. His career FIP was 3.91, better than that POS Glavine! His xFIP was even better, 3.75. His ERA? 4.22 (Glavine's was 3.54). An FIP-based WAR suggests that Javy was a good season or two away from matching Glavine for career WAR. His RA9-WAR for his career was 43.3, though, compared to Glavine's 88. That looks a little better, Glavine being twice the pitcher. It turns out that sabermetricians tend to agree that RA9 (which is based simply on the amount of runs surrendered) is much better for long-term evaluation of pitchers than FIP, which is better for evaluating small samples. We know what was wrong with Javy - his bad outcomes weren't randomly distributed. He liked to cluster all his walks, hits, and homers in the 5th-6th inning. This means he'll give up more runs than the accumulation of walks, hits, homers, strikeouts, etc. would suggest. FWIW, we see this kind of variability much more often with pitchers, who are more difficult to evaluate in ways beyond measuring runs allowed. Batters are easier to measure. We have a clearer idea of what every batting outcome is worth, run-wise. There is just a bunch of research that repeatedly demonstrates that players performing better in clutch or run-producing scenarios than other players do is a fiction - that is, they do it, but it is not because they are better in those situations. It's just random variation. You will never get me to buy the notion there really is no such thing as clutch hitting. Even if you just played in Little League or whatever you do for a living, there is a difference doing something when something is on the line and when it is not. IMO, the problem with the stat is sample size, and I think because of that the saber guys can't accurately measure it, and when that happens, it doesn't exist.it's like saying shooting free throws when the score is 2-2 one minute in the game is the same as shooting 2 free throws down 2 with one second left in an elimination game. Sample size is important in baseball because you can have an awful AB and get a hit, or have great AB and not get the job done.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ May 7, 2014 -> 08:03 PM) Okay so people are saying his stuff looks bad. What, specifically, about what pitches he is throwing are you impresses with? Curious. Got a nice change and getting a lot of swings and misses and soft contact. There has been one ball hit hard in 3 innings.

QUOTE (Soxfest @ May 7, 2014 -> 08:00 PM) Matters when Sox say the have expanded the payroll as far as it can go. 14.25 mil can be spent elsewhere. Who gives a s*** who's paying it. 10 games a year I go to I am paying some of it. They are nowhere near that point.

Danks has given up a hit and a run through 3 innings. He is so awful.

QUOTE (chitownsportsfan @ May 7, 2014 -> 07:58 PM) Is this the real Dick Allen? Sure act like him. Yet another quality post.

QUOTE (Soxfest @ May 7, 2014 -> 07:57 PM) I would take Wood at 3.9 million over Danks 14.25 million rest of year and twice on Sundays. You aren't paying them so what does that matter?