chw42

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Sep 10, 2011 -> 07:38 PM) Moneyball is all about SABRmetrics. the SABRmetric way of puting teams together was wildly successful during the steroid era, wonder if there is any correlation? No, Moneyball was about Michael Lewis giving Billy Beane and the Oakland front office a complete hand job. Sabermetrics existed long before Billy Beane and heavy steroid use. Research about Markov models of baseball lineups existed in the late 80s and there were numerous books written on similar research. People just think Moneyball made sabermetrics because it was the first time they heard about it.

QUOTE (JorgeFabregas @ Sep 10, 2011 -> 07:19 PM) He let Dunn face a lefty with 2 on in the bottom of the ninth. The pinch hit Viciedo for De Aza. Haha wow...

QUOTE (MHizzle85 @ Sep 10, 2011 -> 05:39 PM) Curtis Granderson says whaddup? Ellsbury's wOBA is .007 lower and plays a much better center field. The difference in their run production is a mere 3 runs. I think I'd give Ellsbury the nod if it was between those two.

Flowers has been horrid since A.J. came back.

QUOTE (Elgin Slim @ Sep 10, 2011 -> 07:13 PM) He was f***ing around with a fishing pole in the dugout, acting like he didn't give two s***s about managing. ...Is he trying to get fired?

I didn't catch the game...but what exactly did Ozzie do this time?

Jacoby Ellsbury now leads all of baseball in fWAR. I was considering him for MVP before, but now I think he has a decent shot to win it. After all, he plays on a good team and Bautista plays on a mediocre one.

QUOTE (Leonard Zelig @ Sep 10, 2011 -> 09:08 AM) What is it that you think I don't understand? I simply stated a fact. Your comment on Quentin, on the other hand, is complete conjecture as you have no way of knowing how he would have performed if he had not been injured. The entire idea of qualifying is flawed when you're comparing OBP. Because "qualifying" means 3.1 ABs per game. On Base Percentage does not only depend on At Bats, it also depends on walks, hit by pitches, sacrifice hits, and sacrifice flies. Quentin has 3.3 PAs per game the White Sox have played, so technically, if the idea of qualification is 3.1 PAs per game, then he would easily qualify. And technically it should be that way.

Just so you know guys, sabermetrics loved Juan Pierre at one point in his career. But oh no, it's definitely jumping the shark!

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Sep 10, 2011 -> 02:01 AM) That would require being objective about this organization, so no. Is that what you meant?

QUOTE (greg775 @ Sep 10, 2011 -> 01:53 AM) April, April, April. So sick of hearing about one month. If it wasn't for April, this team would still be in the race. Have you ever considered this?

QUOTE (Leonard Zelig @ Sep 10, 2011 -> 01:21 AM) Pierre is 2nd on the Sox in OBP among qualifiers. Quentin would be second if he didn't get hurt. Even then, he's getting 2.9 AB per game instead of 3.1 for qualifiers. The ultimate point is this. Pierre makes a ton of outs and when he doesn't, he usually hits singles. I don't see how this is so hard to understand.

Get your chance to boo AND be Adam Dunn! Introducing...be the DH night. One lucky fan gets to see if he can outhit Adam Dunn!

QUOTE (Lemon_44 @ Sep 9, 2011 -> 07:21 PM) The bottom line is Juan Pierre did his job this year and is not the reason the Sox have been bad. He's not great, he's not terrible. He went out and did exactly what was expected of him. I don't know wht it has to be one way or the other. I haven't seen anyone clamoring for him to be back next year ,as it's pretty much a foregone conclusin that he won't be. If De Aza hits in the mid .280's next year, everyone will be satistfied. BUt let's see him do it first. I think its funny people are quick to rundowm Pierre, yet the bum Brian Anderson had people defending him on here for years. Like I said, you have to go far down the list of reasons for failure on this year's Sox team before you come to JP. This is sad, but other than Konerko, who has had a better offensive year for the Sox. Quentin is really the only one that can be considered, possibly AJ, but doubtful. We know it's not Rios, Dunn, Beckham, Morel, Alexei. Lillibridge has been overall pretty good but has limited at bats. I expected more than replacement level production and horrid defense in April. I'm fine if Pierre did what he did last season (Play good defense, steal bases, have an okay OBP). But his defense and base running ability are nowhere near his production from last season.

QUOTE (Greg Hibbard @ Sep 9, 2011 -> 07:19 PM) when I say "hitter" - I mean "hitter" in terms of getting hits, not getting on base. The rest of your post is quite good, chw42, and I'll respond to it after the game. Getting on base is part of hitting though. In fact, some people would say getting on base is the hitter's only objective i.e. avoiding outs. Pierre sucks at that.

QUOTE (Greg Hibbard @ Sep 9, 2011 -> 04:45 PM) I'd agree, but I also believe OPS is a statistic that ultimately weights SLG too highly in comparison with OBP, and that using OPS is especially problematic with traditional leadoff hitters. As J4L said, this is why we have wOBA. wOBA actually gives hitters who can't hit for power a fair judgement. Take Brett Gardner for instance. Gardner had a .762 OPS last season, but he had a .383 OBP and a .379 SLG. As you said, OPS weighs these equally, which is a mathematical fallacy (they share different denominators) and also counts for singles twice. wOBA gives a linear weighted value to every single event and is then divided by PAs. This is mathematically sound and most importantly, gives more detailed values to events. So for instance, a walk is not weighted as a 1, it's weighted as .7 (values change every year) and singles are weighted .9, doubles are 1.2, etc. Now back to Gardner, even though his .762 OPS wasn't bad last season, it is definitely mediocre. On the flip side, Brett Gardner had a .358 wOBA last season, good for a wRC+ of 121. Gardner's OPS+ was a 105. That's a 16% difference. You can apply this test to Juan Pierre as well. Last season, Pierre had a .312 wOBA good for a wRC+ of 88. His OPS+ was 79, a 9% difference. wOBA also penalizes guys who hit nothing but home runs but never walk. Basically it comes down to OBP when you talk about wOBA and Pierre's OBP has always been lacking due to his pretty bad walk rate. Getting on base creates runs and Pierre's not good at that. He can steal all the bases he wants, but he can't steal first.

QUOTE (Greg Hibbard @ Sep 9, 2011 -> 03:51 PM) It's responses like this that make threads like this utterly ridiculous. I never said anything like this. I believe Pierre is an above average hitter, whose speed makes him a decent asset if the middle of the lineup is working properly. I don't believe he merits the continuous bashing he receives by the same five people who resort to childish tactics to make their points. Dude...seriously? If you give Juan Pierre a double for every time he singles and steals a base (without penalizing him for the caught stealings), he'd still be a below average hitter. An average hitter in the majors has a wOBA of around .320 this season. Juan Pierre has a .301 wOBA this season, that's 17% below league average given U.S. Cellular Field park adjustments. In fact, Juan Pierre's wOBA has eclipsed .320 only once in the past 6 seasons. You know what else is sad about this...? wOBA takes stolen bases into account. Better yet, let's look at batting runs (based off of wOBA) + BSR (base running runs) for Pierre since 2005 to get a better glimpse of how productive Pierre is as an offensive player. The first number is his batting runs, second is base running. 2005: -7 + 3.1 = -4.1 2006: -11.7 + 4.4 = -7.3 2007: -6.7 + 7.6 = 0.9 2008: -7.2 + 1.2 = -6 2009: 4.5 + 2.7 = 7.2 2010: -8.4 + 6.8 = -1.6 2011: -10.2 + 3.7 = -6.5 Total Batting + Base Running Runs = -17.4 runs Average Batting + Base Running Runs per 700 PA = -2.8 runs I'm trying to be fair here by including base running. Technically, that doesn't count as hitting. It's an offensive contribution, but the statement "Juan Pierre is an above average hitter" is completely wrong and the statement "Juan Pierre is an above average offensive player" is slightly less wrong, but wrong nonetheless.

QUOTE (Greg Hibbard @ Sep 9, 2011 -> 01:20 PM) Can you tell me where in OPS a player's ability to go from first to third on a single to right field is denoted? Or a player's ability to go home on a double from first? It's an extra base that a high-OPS, slower player doesn't get, yet it's not picked up in that stat. Could you honestly argue that Pierre's intangible speed which earns him an extra base in every running situation against a much slower player is picked up by a stat like OPS? This is exactly why using OPS to measure Juan Pierre's total skill is a totally misguided venture. You don't look at Paul Konerko's stolen bases, and yet you want to measure Juan Pierre's power. There's stats for that... Pierre's been worth +3.7 runs in the running game this season (+6.8 last year, which says he is indeed declining for those who fail to believe it...). They calculate this based on whether or not the player takes an extra base when he can. If he does, he is awarded. If he does not, he is penalized depending on the situation. But even when you put this into context with everything else he has done (offensively and defensively), he is a replacement level player. If you think he hasn't been a negative defender this year (I don't know how you can really say that with a straight face given how bad he was in April), then he's slightly above replacement level. In other words, Juan Pierre is not a good baseball player no matter how you try to bend things.

QUOTE (Greg Hibbard @ Sep 9, 2011 -> 11:28 AM) Juan is also 11th overall in the AL in hits. Not that that means he's anything but total s***, of course. *Facepalm. Can you tell me where he ranks in OBP and OPS? Or hell, where's at in terms of batting average? His hits are some of the most empty in all of baseball. He's also getting a ton of PAs since he's a leadoff hitter. But no, let's look at a stat that doesn't take a plethora of things into context. Pierre's a replacement level player who only started to hit when we were already in the s***. His fielding in April also cost the Sox games. There's no use to defend him, you're fighting a losing battle.

QUOTE (Greg Hibbard @ Sep 9, 2011 -> 12:39 PM) Let's start with this: Juan had something to do with us starting 7-4 instead of 9-2, which I felt was no big deal. The rest of the team had a ton to do with the subsequent 4-18 stretch. People would like to believe the two games that made us 7-4 instead of 9-2 caused the downward spiral that led to our utter doom. I think it has a lot more to do with the 4-18 stretch that Juan Pierre's defense had little or nothing to do with. 9-2 and 7-4 are quite different for a team's momentum in April.

Gentlemens I present to you...

QUOTE (Papa Tru @ Sep 9, 2011 -> 01:55 AM) Man, don't let that nerd chw42 throw some bulls*** saber crap that no one gives a s*** about at you and just shrug it off.. .308/.343/.364/.707 second half line for the talentless Juan Pierre, not too bad especially when you look at some of the other scrubs we have on this team this year.. You're using some of the same bulls*** saber crap I was using. A .343 OBP for a leadoff hitter is barely medicore. A .707 OPS is not good. I don't know what you're trying to get at. Comparing him to the likes of Adam Dunn and Alex Rios proves my point. It's like trying to say you're better than the disabled kid in your class.

QUOTE (JoeCoolMan24 @ Sep 9, 2011 -> 12:40 AM) Juan Pierre is only knows half the rules of Double Dutch. Juan Pierre could have had sex in high school, but he preferred to just kiss them. Juan Pierre doesn't need a happy ending, he's content with a passionate kiss.

QUOTE (MattZakrowski @ Sep 9, 2011 -> 12:15 AM) This prediction is dated and wrong! In related news Last Friday night Paul Konerko hit some shots Adam Dunn struck out a lot Think we lost but I forgot Last Friday night You can put it on the board It's too bad that we can't score This team makes me really bored Last Friday night Buehrle was on the mark Viciedo caused a spark Alex Rios sucks a lot Last Friday Night I don't know what game I saw Please make the suckage stop BOOOOOOO-OH-OH This Friday night Watch them suck again... This Friday night Oh not this s*** again...

This is terrible. The guy still ran the bases afterwards though. The legend continues.