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QUOTE (Jake @ May 23, 2014 -> 09:01 AM) Something to think about re: college pitcher pitch counts - they throw every 7th day, the majority of the time. We've seen durability from Japanese pitchers who threw a lot of pitches on a similarly long-rested schedule But there's the theory that damage is done when pitchers are "under stress," right? So under that line of thinking, you'd rather someone pitch more frequently and never get tired than having someone pitch into the red zone and then rest a lot.

QUOTE (Jake @ May 23, 2014 -> 10:03 AM) Earlier this year, FanGraphs looked at O-Swing% and compared it to the same basic thing, excepted they added an arbitrary amount to the strike zone size to see if there were a bunch of hitters who only swung at near-miss pitches. Except for just a handful of guys, you basically saw that if guys swing at some non-strikes, they swing at all of them. Yeah, I remember that. That was a Jeff Sullivan article, right? I'll have to try to find that again.

QUOTE (The Ultimate Champion @ May 23, 2014 -> 09:39 AM) Ok as simply as possible. You're talking about measuring an event (outside zone swings) and recording it as generally a bad thing/undesirable result, completely ignoring that it in some situations it may be a very, very good thing and doing so selectively may be an indication of excellent strikezone judgement and plate discipline in a hitter. I think that's dumb. I think the key point is if a pitch is outside the zone, are you going to be able to leverage that take into a better pitch to hit later? Most of the time, I think the answer is yes. So it's not that Alexei can't hit stuff out of the zone, but he's going to hit better on pitches in the zone, and if he takes a pitch that is ultimately a ball instead of "expanding his zone," he's taken a step to forcing a better pitch to hit later in the at bat. The exceptions exist though. Like Abreu: probably won't see a much better pitch than a belt high fastball 2 inches outside, so if that's the best he's going to get, and it's close enough to his hot zone that he can do some real damage to it (not simply make contact), there is a case the expanding the zone is the best thing to do.

QUOTE (The Ultimate Champion @ May 23, 2014 -> 07:43 AM) I see that but with all the machines tracking things now I think some kind of hot zone type stat would work better to account for context. IE Michael Young IIRC used to always murder Buehrle in Texas on the outside fastball, he'd reach out and hit the ball well outside of the zone and lace it down the line just because Mark wasn't getting in on him enough. The pitch sequence and batter strengths in general combine with the umpires judgement on the day (tight, wide, idiotic, etc.) to create an intelligent strikezone that doesn't necessarily match the zone on paper. IE that low and away change in the zone, just let it go by if you're not ready for it because 1 K isn't as bad as a DP. But that high fastball when you're geared up for it in a hitter's count with men on? Alexei can hit that thing out just fine, has done so many times over. I do worry about this stuff a little bit, especially with guys like Abreu, whose wheelhouse appears to be close to the outside edge of the academic zone. When I see a 40% O-Swing, how much of that is him biting on a low and in slider and how much is him just drilling a ball just off the black which is really like 2 inches away from his ideal location? Abreu is obviously an exception to the general population, but still. I like measurements that don't have exceptions, lol.

Anyone choosing in the top 10 is going to very seriously scout all players projected to be in the top ten. I don't think this is indicative of anything.

I talked s*** to my Yankee co-workers all day, and Sale backed me up. That was the most fun I had watching a game at a bar in a long time.

QUOTE (The Ultimate Champion @ May 23, 2014 -> 07:37 AM) Or Leury Garcia's brother, that works too. Seriously though, it's the perfect fit. Texas would need to wait X amount until the draft is done then pay X in cash for Morales (and probably have a small bidding war vs. 1-2 other teams) and still, whoever gets Morales is probably going to have to send him to extended and then some MiLB assignment for a while. Dunn OTOH costs a whole lot less than the draft pick is worth & the Sox can just eat the whole thing for a better prospect. You guys were right, I admit it. I'm still not happy we had to f*** over our OFers to put this guy on the roster but when Avi went down Dunn actually became useful. Maybe we'll get something out of this guy now. Do they have the nuts to do it to the fanbase this early in the season though? I mean, the team is .500 and it isn't even June. Tough pill to swallow for ticket sales.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ May 23, 2014 -> 06:52 AM) The Sabre man just gave you proof that player A is better than player B by virtue of the .3 difference in WAR, there's no denying 7 > 6.7. It's just as laughable as TWTW though. 7.0 WAR is better than 6.7 WAR in the same way that 150 RBI is better than 145 RBI. There's no question the guy that hit 150 did more, but is he definitely a better hitter because of it? The reality is that you'd consider them essentially in the same class as "elite RBI men." This is exactly how you'd categorize the 6.7 and 7.0 WAR guys, as "roughly 7 win players."

QUOTE (Dunt @ May 22, 2014 -> 12:43 PM) Sale is gonna be a bad f*ckin dude tonight. He's been on the shelf for way longer than he wanted and he is ready to mow down some Yankees. I hope so. I've been talking s*** around the office all day

QUOTE (oneofthemikes @ May 22, 2014 -> 01:59 PM) I think that Baseball America is your best bet. Better coverage IMO. I see what you did there. QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ May 22, 2014 -> 02:23 PM) I spent a good 1-2 minutes trying to figure out what you meant, rereading my own posts, and I got nothing from it. Ha. Lol, sorry.

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ May 22, 2014 -> 11:30 AM) I think you quoted the wrong person. I should start a habit of quoting you in posts that have nothing to do with what I'm saying

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 22, 2014 -> 12:01 PM) No. Without modern pitch tracking it's literally impossible to come up with that metric because prior to that there was no record of whether or not a pitch was out of the zone if a guy swung. QUOTE (Dick Allen @ May 22, 2014 -> 12:02 PM) That's pretty funny. What was Mickey Mantle's career O Swing %? Yeah, I know it's not something we had so much data on until recently, but what is advanced about it? We got new technology, not some kind of awakening. WHOA IT'S ALMOST LIKE WHEN HE SWINGS AT BAD PITCHES, WORSE THINGS HAPPEN!

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ May 22, 2014 -> 11:54 AM) would you consider O swing % an advanced metric? For a guy who says you didn't like Viciedo and it had nothing to do with sabermetrics, it is funny you have mentioned his O swing % as something that showed he was what he was. In fact, earlier this season, you mentioned the same metric or maybe a similar one, and then said he may be turning a corner. So if your Viciedo hate has nothing to do with sabermetrics, why use sabermetrics to try to tell us he sucks ? There is a guy that sits next to me in the stands that tells him he sucks every time he comes to the plate. I doubt it has anything to do with O swing %. No, I guess I don't consider O Swing% an advanced metric. It's just someone counting the number of times a guy swings at pitches out of the zone. Has that not been something obviously relevant for like 70+ years?

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ May 22, 2014 -> 10:29 AM) Well, people misuse advanced metrics just like people misuse traditional stats. The biggest misuse of advanced metrics is accepting them as an absolute, as in saying somebody with a 7.0 WAR in a season was clearly better than somebody with a 6.7 WAR. I disagree with this. I think the biggest misuse of advanced metrics is misapplying them. Their accuracy is what makes them good in the first place -- but with accuracy comes precision, and with precision comes a reduction in breadth. As long as people like Dick Allen run around trumpeting blanket misuse like "well if WAR is right then why can't I add WAR up and get team wins?" and "WELL if DIPS makes sense how come Gavin Floyd has a better xFIP than Mark Buerhle?", the perception that there are two bizarro, mutually exclusive versions of baseball reality warring with one another will continue to thrive. I think part of the problem is branding/naming. The word "wins," for example, has at least three distinct meanings among mainstream stats, new and old. It isn't difficult to see why this stuff can be very unclear to those who haven't spent a decent amount of time reading up on all of it. QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ May 22, 2014 -> 10:29 AM) While the advanced metrics are much better, they still don't have a perfectly linear correlation to wins (or even runs). They are still approximations of value, albeit much better ones. As for projection systems, they all are based on normal distributions which expect 2/3 of the results to vary by as much as a full standard deviation. If you get way beyond a full standard deviation, then yes, it is justified to suggest luck might be involved. It also helps to look at what is driving the variance. An extremely high BABIP is more likely signaling luck (Flowers), whereas an increased walk rate is more likely to suggest genuine improvement from the player (Viciedo). Yeah, I think this has a lot to do with a general misunderstanding of linear weights and the corresponding difference between context-neutral and context-dependent statistics. These stats simply don't measure the same thing, and cannot be used interchangeably. When a sabr-y guy cries about RBIs, it's because he has a statistic that answers the current question better than RBIs, not because he has a better version of the RBI. QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ May 22, 2014 -> 10:29 AM) Also, I don't think anybody is putting a lot of stock in advanced metrics when it comes to scouting. You are scouting college and high school players and there is no accepted way to translate their stats the way we can translate major league, and to a lesser extent minor league stats. Now, scouts who have a foundation in advanced metrics will be looking for different things when scouting than "traditional" scouts, and as such will likely have a higher success rate, but there is still a very large error rate in scouting. Regardless of your evaluation method you are never going to hit on every draft pick. Indeed. All of our most advanced offensive metrics are useful only because they have a clear and distinct frame of reference. When you're talking about varying levels of competition, you can throw frame of reference out the window. If sabermetrics has contributed to scouting, it's because it has helped identify and quantify the most valuable contributions that can be made at the ML level, thus allowing scouts to prioritize certain types of skills or tools. As for measuring and predicting development though, there's not much there.

I didn't like Viciedo, and I'm still not convinced he's going to remain good, and it has nothing to do with sabermetrics. It has everything to do with "approach." Is that Hawk enough for you? lol Marty is babbling like a toddler that knows words but not sentences. Holy s***, lol. Are you drunk this early, Marty?

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ May 22, 2014 -> 10:08 AM) Thanks. They're pretty close, but if the Marlins made Stanton available, I wouldn't be like "NO, I WILL NOT DEAL MARCUS SEMIEN OR MATT DAVIDSON AS THE LAST PIECE OF THE TRADE BECAUSE THEY'RE TOO AWESOME." I know lol

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ May 22, 2014 -> 10:02 AM) No one is untradable, but Semien and Davidson are untradeable.

QUOTE (southside hitman @ May 22, 2014 -> 10:59 AM) If you are talking about Trey Michalczewski, he was supposedly a tough sign. We had to go overslot to get him. Gotcha. Thanks

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ May 22, 2014 -> 10:47 AM) I'm saying it because the two teams who could take him before us are Houston and Miami, which would leave the Sox with the choices of either Rodon or Aiken, which would be awesome. I've seen several mocks calling for Gillaspie to go in the 20's or 30's

QUOTE (bmags @ May 22, 2014 -> 09:40 AM) Why don't we wait until Davidson forces our hand. I don't see the point of making room when he is striking out 35% of the time. People are so excited right now to get rid of any good pieces before we have good pieces to replace them. I thought we wanted to compete next year or the year after, not 2020. This. We don't need to give up on anyone right now. As it is, Davidson's best case scenario is a September callup if he's earned it. We can figure out what do do with Connor over the offseason at the earliest.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ May 22, 2014 -> 09:52 AM) I have an answer for all of life's problems. Except when I don't. Then I just eat Funyuns. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRdsq4v5s4A

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ May 22, 2014 -> 09:51 AM) OU: 129.5 pitches I'm taking way, way, way over That's such an easy over.

Didn't Montgomery have surgery of some kind?

Do we know why he fell?

QUOTE (Dunt @ May 22, 2014 -> 10:08 AM) Question for the masses: I want to subscribe to either Baseball America or Baseball Prospectus and am wondering which you guys prefer for prospect information? I enjoy both the Effectively Wild and Baseball America podcasts quite a bit and can't decide which I'd rather give my money to. I subscribe to BP and am content. It's just one of those things that's so cheap you just do it. I'd been considering subscribing to BA, but then I realized that someone dumps a bunch of them by the door at our office each month. So I've just started picking up those. I would probably prefer BA except for two things: Jason Parks and Doug Thorburn.