The Ultimate Champion

"In Thursday’s edition of his Insider-only blog, ESPN’s Buster Olney opines that the Reds should give serious thought to trading ace Johnny Cueto this offseason. Cueto has a no-brainer $10MM club option for 2015, making him a highly affordable and elite talent — an appealing alternative to clubs in win-now mode that don’t want to commit long-term dollars to Max Scherzer, Jon Lester or James Shields. The Reds will see Cueto, Mat Latos and Mike Leake hit free agency following the 2015 season, with Aroldis Chapman set to do the same the following year. Those losses, coupled with the rising salary of Joey Votto, give the Reds incentive to create some flexibility and add prospect depth. Olney wonders if the Reds could look to pair Cueto with Brandon Phillips in an effort to free themselves of the $36MM remaining on the second baseman’s deal. Of course, even if a team were to take on Phillips, they’d still likely need to surrender notable prospect value." That's on MLBTR's page. I know it's probably too good to be true & not sure we'd have or would be willing to give up the pieces, but a #2 RHP is a need & the Reds have 3 that would fit the bill. They also want to dump Phillips (we have a hole at 2B) and want to shed salary (we have payroll room). So slurpee slurpe fap time? Maybe? I'll take Cueto especially....

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 19, 2014 -> 01:49 PM) So his extension was for 3 years? Hopefully this year plus 2 more rather than this year plus 3 more.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Sep 19, 2014 -> 01:20 PM) Aren't prospect rankings basically projections? The White Sox have reports on every player. Apparently they liked Davidson a lot. In the end, it is the result that matters. If Matt Davidson doesn't help the White Sox, trading for him was a mistake. It won't be Hahn's last mistake. If it is, he will go down as the greatest GM in history. The hope was the Sox got a middle of the order bat who could hold his own defensively and would be called up as soon as his super 2 chances were at zero. The reality is they have a poor fielding strike out machine (contact was always a red flag) who couldn't make enough contact against mediocre AAA pitching to hit .200. Yes he still will only be 24, but it looks like he has a long ways to go to get anywhere near what a lot of people thought he was when he was acquired. The results do matter but only after enough time has passed. Baseball isn't an easy game to predict but if a GM has, say, 5 years to work with and generally makes sound decisions during those 5 years, the chances are he is going to make his team better in some way. Now if you have a really cheap owner or something or have people above you holding you back in certain areas that is one thing, but if you have enough freedom to work then that process should result in something positive. If however it seems like sound decisions are being made but after a certain reasonable period of time the results just aren't there, then you need to re-evaluate everything from the top down. But Hahn obviously is not there yet & his good moves outweigh his bad ones. Actually as an aside his best moves were the Abreu signing who KW scouted, Q's extension who KW signed, Sale's extension who KW drafted, and the Peavy extension and then trade who of course KW also acquired. So really there was this huge focus on KW and all these "mistakes" and so forth and yet all Hahn's best moves are ones KW was in large part responsible for. The Eaton trade is probably next, followed by the Connor-Soptic trade, and both of those moves have probably helped more than losing Reed has hurt.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Sep 19, 2014 -> 12:59 PM) If that is the case, Brock for Brogolio if you look at their previous numbers, wasn't a bad trade for the Cubs. And if that is the case, no one should ever complain about Jeff Keppinger being a bad signing even though Hahn himself said he f***ed up that one. If all trades and signings should be judged at the moment they are made, especially if they include prospects, to me that is silly. I don't care if Matt Davidson was ranked 1 or 1000 by BA or any of the others, and neither does Hahn. It is what the White Sox think of him that matters. And if he turns out to not be the prospect BA or BP or Keith Law make him out to be, that really is inapplicable, because the White Sox shouldn't and don't rely on their scouting reports to acquire players. A GM needs to be able to project. Hahn looks like he is capable of this, but this one blew up in his face. I don't want to pile on or anything but project based on what? Meaningless minor league numbers? You can look at what he can and cannot do physically, you scout him, you go over the video, and you take the numbers with a grain of salt. You can't project anything really until there's a history there. It's like projecting what a player in Low-A would do if you immediately bumped him up to AAA and had him face a bunch of competition he's never faced in his life. Except it's worse because there really is no jump like AA/AAA to MLB. All you can do is look at whether your GM seems to be 1) identifying what the real problems are and 2) making sound decisions to address those areas at the time. If we tried to evaluate him in any other way we'd be foolish because he's not a psychic, and if we expected him to accurately project MiLB players into MLB players then we'd have to expect him to use tools that nobody else seems to possess either.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Sep 19, 2014 -> 09:51 AM) If you fired a GM for a bad trade, it would be the job with the most turnover . Hahn stole Eaton . I just can't understand why people still say it was the right move when it clearly is apparent Davidson isn't what was advertised. He still has 30 HR potential but it is rather unlikely. If Hahn traded him for a closer making close to minimum now I doubt anyone still saying last year's trade was right would say trading him for a closer now would be wrong. He wasn't what he was supposed to be. That is obvious. He really wasn't a top 100 prospect. He was a high K prospect with a longer swing. We have lots of guys like this on the farm. Trayce Thompson, I call him Joe Borchard, Jr. When's he going to make it? Probably never. It's hard to bet on guys like this but some do make it. Crede made it. We all thought Fields was going to make it for a time. If Davidson didn't have any major flaws then he'd have never come for the price of Reed. We may not have been able to acquire him at all. The DBacks acquired Martin Prado to block him, I doubt they would have done that had they thought him to be a better bet. Re: Hahn the thought process behind the move was sound & that's how you're supposed to evaluate a GM. Hahn didn't know whether Davidson would or would not take steps forward, but he did know of the flaws. Much of the talk was about Davidson's D but Hahn said he felt there was a good amount of potential there. So if Hahn thought Davidson would be able to become an average defensive 3B or better then he probably thought that even with Davidson's flaws his power would make up for contact issues during his first 6 years when he'd likely bet at his best physically. So Hahn took a bet that he really had to take somewhere. He also bet on Eaton staying healthy, and that's no sure thing either. He won one and lost another, but the thought process was sound both times. He needed youth and he got some. Also that Jacobs kid we got from Thornton who went with Hector to bring back Eaton, he was another high K guy with a longer swing wasn't he? Obviously AZ isn't adverse to taking on prospects like this. Most prospects don't make it anyway but ones like Jacobs and Davidson, when they do then they can become starters. You just ahve to play the odds. I doubt Hahn is all that shocked about Davidson's flaws getting the better of him though, this happens to multiple players every year in a farm system.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Sep 19, 2014 -> 08:55 AM) It would be an interesting stat. But you'd also have to control for quality of defense and quality of opposition somehow. Yeah it would be a stat IMO you'd use more like WAR or something, as a starting point, and then you'd dig deeper from there. A lot of the major stats are really just starting points of the discussion IMO and then you would want to look at things situationally and so forth and get video on things. For us as fans we don't have time or access for all the really deep analysis and all that but for a Major League organization that, even when they make relatively "small" player personnel decisions such as bringing in a veteran bench bat or signing a middle reliever, are literally talking about margins of error that cost millions of dollars. Eric Surkamp is at least as capable if not more so than Scott Downs is right here in 2014, and the difference there is what almost $4M or $3.5M or something? You can't win 'em all but any time you'd want to make a major decision you'd want to look into it as much as possible & pay the right people to analyze everything.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Sep 19, 2014 -> 08:43 AM) I think if we ever get access to batted ball MPH's - how hard guys hit balls off of pitchers on average and on what pitches - it's going to totally revolutionize how we evaluate pitchers. You look at a guy like Belisario's peripheral statistics and see his ERA of 5.43 and you kind of wonder how that's possible - solid K numbers, fantastic ground ball rate, good control, not prone to giving up a homer, an inability to strand runners (which is and isn't skill...some luck, some lack of pitching), and a higher BABIP than normal - and you think to yourself "well why has he been so bad?" I think some of it has to do with dumb luck (seeing-eye singles and duck farts) and some of it has to do with the fact that opponents hit the ball really hard against him. If and when we ever get access to that (in future situations), we could hopefully help figure out which is luck and which is not. A ground ball rate that high is good, but if you hit a ground ball 100 MPH into the holes on either side of the infield, there are not many guys who can get to those. Strong contact, as opposed to weak contact, will allow more hits and runs. I thin it will also allow us to see why some guys who consistently outperform FIP and xFIP - Mark Buehrle and Tim Hudson - will be properly credited with the numbers they do as I think that will be worked into the equation. That to me, more than anything, will help us determine the true quality of a pitcher. There's a lot of potential there I think, as you say. BABIP is my most hated stat and what you say would jab a knife right into the heart of that. Guys who mentally are off all year, high contact guys or guys who still make contact close to career rates but who are "unlucky" I hate that stuff. Being in front of everything slow and behind everything harder to the tun of hard-hit balls right to the 2B and lots of weak little grounders to SS - there's nothing involving luck there. The pitchers are actually probably doing less to get the same hitters out consistently, and the scouting report doesn't have to change much because they keep rolling over/Alex Riosing the ball the again and again. Having stats related to speed of the ball off the bat, point of contact, bat position at point of contact, that's a f***ing gold mine. I made a thread a while ago about barreling the ball up, I just have a suspicious/guess that if you had the ability to view point of contact as a range in a zone you'd call the barrel, I think you'd probably find statistically that some of the best hitters (guys who consistently make strong contact and hit the ball hard, especially to all fields) have an innate, unteachable skill that allows them to keep the bat barrell in a closer proximity to the ball than everyone else, and I think that you'd probably find trends where these guys keep these abilities even as their physical bodies age and as they lose skills. If you could isolate point of contact only, i.e. keep out all non-contact scenarios and ignore the number of PA/AB when looking at it, and view a stat as an integer + or - from 0 where 0 was perfect point of contact and + goes toward the end of the bat and - moves toward the handle, then I think you would have a pretty damn good idea who in the minor you would NEVER trade as well as what hitters you really would not mind giving 7-10 year contracts to (remembering the value of insurance in the worst conditions). And I think mr. wite that if we had a stat/way of measuring like what you are talking about and a stat/way of measuring like I am talking about, you know what else we'd be able to do? We'd probably be able to figure out who can and cannot bunt. The bunt is one of the best defense killers in the game, maybe the best one. It's like a grenade but you can only benefit from it if you throw the thing far enough away from you and close enough to your target. You can hurt your own team with a bunt as much as you can help it and hurt the opposition, but that doesn't mean it isn't a terrific tool for the right players to use in the right situations. But people are scared of it/don't want to see it because their players all suck balls at doing it. But say you found a hitter who couldn't barrel the ball up at an elite level, routinely caught it more toward the end of the bat, and you had the ability to monitor things like speed of the ball off the bat, etc. This is someone who in the minors spends 20+% of his PA bunting the baseball, especially if he's speedy and left-handed, and you don't call him up until he masters it. Now maybe you have a real weapon, and even if the infielders come in every time, then the extra bat control would likely make him far more capable of shooting the ball past the fielder for a hit. And with runners going that's a 2-base play and who knows, maybe you get them to make an error on the throw. Re: Belisario though he just can't keep the f***ing ball down. I highly doubt Coop is telling him "leave all your sinkers up in the zone today, Bella." Farmio and Hawk both always talk about a sinkerballer having two pitches, a sinker and a stinker. Belisario has everything you want, velocity, late movement, 2-plan break, but he leaves the goddamn baseball up every single time out there. All the hitter has to do is stick the bat out there, not over swing, and Belisario provides the velocity for him. Just putting a decent swing on one of his middle of the plate, thigh-high sinkers can get the ball to bounce off the OF wall. He's basically Maikel Cleto, only he's got a sinker instead a few mph slower, and he's in the strikezone more than out of it. Overall just as erratic and ineffective as he is talented.

I was thinking earlier today while I was taking a s*** about how a good way to quantify a teams pitching performance might be to compare total batters faced to total outs recorded in the full season, and then just comparing that figure to the league averages. You need to face a minimum of batters anyway, but how many extra PA are we allowing beyond what is necessary and how does this compare to the league average? Then just go down the list, each pitcher gets a ratio of batters faced to outs recorded, each number is compared to league averages, and we base our decisions (i.e. the Danks decision) on this. Rather than money. Anyway stats are great in theory. But you want as many useful ones as possible and you want them to be as unique as possible so you can find different opportunities in them and so on.

I agree, I even said that WAR has a lot of very practical uses. But it and others are also overused a lot, and used inappropriately a lot, and some of these other stats really aren't any better than the ones currently being shat upon (which themselves are actually useful, like BA). Ideally you want access to a lot of different and unique stats which are valuable because they tell a very small but specific part of the overall story. The more things you can try to quantify and define, the more possible puzzle pieces you have to work with. At the end of the day you want to piece together the big picture. That is how you make the best decisions. But focusing on one puzzle piece and trying to replicate it in as many places as possible doesn't add detail, and it doesn't make the larger picture even possible.

I don't care what the numbers look like at all, in order for Wilkins to be on the 25-man roster next season out of ST he is going to have to show the abilities of a Major League ballplayer. Right now he looks like a guy who hit 30HRs mashing 87mph fastballs on hitters counts or something. He looks like the second coming of Brad Eldred, Casey Daigle, etc. Lots of guys with no ability to hit any MLB pitching put up numbers in AAA. Sadly it looks like Wilkins is just another one of them. Also I know there is at least a shot he gets better but it looks like it's mental and a lack of ability. Yeah small sample size, but it looks like he's already trying to get started early and he still can't hit the fastball. I have no issue with him or anyone else competing for a role in ST, the more competition the merrier, but he'll need to look like a completely different player to get on the team. Who knows maybe he can but if you're penciling him in anywhere it's probably as Ravelo's BU in Charlotte ATM.

Probably the main goal or at least one of the main goals of a statistic is to act as a separator and help you define the differences between two different players, two different situations, etc. and on a larger scale you try to tell the differences between multiple players and multiple situations. Having a ton of very valuable statistics used in their proper context allows you to do this. The more good numbers you have, the more separators you have, the more you can tell players apart and the easier it is to specialize them in roles or at least try to maximize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. If you take AVG, OBP & SLG as an example, you take AVG first (how often in the most general terms will this guy get a hit) then you (or at least I) compare AVG to OBP to see how many walks the guy takes. OBP alone doesn't seem to tell you much, but with AVG you get the sense of how much his hitting is contributing to his OBP. Then SLG you compare with the AVG & OBP for context, i.e. you get a sense of ISO just by looking at the numbers at first glance. You can compare these three numbers together, and ideally any given player is doing well enough in at least 2 of them. You can take AVG + OBP out of most guys, AVG + SLG out of most guys, and OBP + SLG out of most guys. You probably have an internal ability to place each of these numbers into an historical and maybe also a current season's context, and as a result, without having to look at the league leaderboard, you have a very good if only general idea whether this player would rank more towards the bottom, middle, or to of the league in any of these categories. And that's all fine, there is nothing wrong with that. AVG + OBP + SLG all together give the fan/observer a very general indication of the strengths and weaknesses of the hitter and pretty much tell him how to look at the player in the AB (i.e. look out for the hit, watch for the walk, this guy can hit a HR, etc.). Now if you take those AVG, OBP and SLG numbers and use them to come up with one stat that tries to tell how productive a player is, instead of having "more" information, or "more complete" information, you actually have *less* information. You have even less context than before and you don't know *why* one player has a rating that says he is "better" or "more productive" than another. Similarly, take AVG away from OBP and SLG and you get a picture that is hazier, not clearer by any means. The super stats are great for rankings, list making, etc. I think WAR is a terrific stat when it comes to comparing contributions of players in a draft year vs. the league. I's a great stat to combine with salary figures to attempt to find cost vs. production in a way that makes each player comparable. It's a great way to quickly add up the values of a position (say compare MLB SS) for the purposes of making a list of which guys you might look into trading for, etc. There are ways to use WAR that make it very valuable or at least useful. It is great for predicting/forecasting a certain very general individual player performance level OR that player's worth in FA dollars. The fact that the stat is a composite of multiple important stats probably makes it easy to account for margin of error, i.e. player performance increases and regressions. But the value of WAR in predicting what is going to happen on the baseball field .... it has no value there. Nor does it have any value when you try to use it to justify replacements, upgrades, etc. like you can't just say "if we replace our 2.5 WAR LF with this 3.2 WAR player we are a better team." WAR doesn't factor in the fit of the player onto the new team even though it does factor in the benefits the player received from his current or last team. WAR doesnt tell you *why* Player X is better than Player Y, it just says that he is. WAR doesn't tell where the differences in abilities are between 2 different players and as such it doesn't tell you how you should most effectively use them in terms of playing time, batting order, position, etc. nor does WAR tell you what you have to do to effectively replace the guy who got hurt or the FA who left for another team. WAR says you lost X value, so replace that value or acquire a greater value. That is of no help to anyone. The simplest stats (again) are fine for lists and finding out "who is better" in the mind of a fan who doesn't know the game. They also are great for video games and probably stuff like gambling, fantasy baseball, etc. They also fit in well with the baseball card collector/memorabilia collector mindset, i.e. who is the best player now and whose merchandise/cards are most valuable and so on. Most baseball fans probably use stats in this environment most of the time, they want lists in the newspaper, lists online, they want to know what the All-Star voting should look like in terms of production only, etc. They don't tell you a whole lot about the game though, and in that respect, while they are better numbers than just say batting average alone or wins for a pitcher, they're not all too valuable and somewhat arbitrary in the sense that the component parts of the stats can be weighted however you want them to be weighted depending on what you think deserves to be emphasized most. So in that sense the stats have kind of come full circle in a way, i.e. much of the time they are being used ignorantly in much the same way pitcher wins have always been used ignorantly. Basically the turd is polished & there is lipstick on the pig.

QUOTE (chitownsportsfan @ Sep 18, 2014 -> 03:29 PM) Wilkins looks like a guy that sits dead red fastball in AAA but can't recognize or hit a breaking ball or changeup to save his life. Maybe in AAA without advanced scouts and guys that don't have the best command he just sits on fastballs. He does this but he can't catch up to the fastball, that's the main issue. There are enough FB thrown in the Majors for a guy like Wilkins to be a good bench option/PH if he could hit them but from the ABs I've seen of him he gets overpowered over the plate at 92-94 and that's not going to work ever.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Sep 18, 2014 -> 03:44 PM) I'm bolding all the same old strawman claims always hear that don't have anything to do with what I'm talking about and that imply that I represent some sort of soulless group of computer nerds trying to ruin baseball with robots. If you actually want to know or learn something, you need to draw a conclusion of some kind. You need brevity for that because a conclusion IS brevity. If you ask a question, you want an accurate answer. If that question is "what percentage of times does a guy come up to bat and get a hit," then AVG is it. If it's anything closer to "how valuable is this guy at the plate", AVG is an afterthrought when compared to OBP and SLG. If you don't want to know anything and enjoy the mysticism of the game being as unpredictable as possible, then why look at any results at all? I'm tired of this false narrative that anyone who wants to use data to understand what is happening on the field is some sort of tasteless socialist nerd. If you don't give a s***, just ignore it all. We're talking about the utility of the most general and freely cited offensive stats as the refer to the ability to hit, there's no threat of someone making some bulls*** claim that team makeup and situational hitting are useless. No one ever argues that. The people that are arguing that are imaginary people you made up in your head. Why can't we talk about ways to measure hitting without devolving into another "us vs. them" argument about how it's impossible to measure the total value of a player? The bolded part... I am saying that you can't answer that question, you can't even ask that question, dealing with only a stat or two. Also, outside of fantasy baseball applications (I think maybe this is where I miss the point in most of these stats arguments, because I see that as being useless) I can't see any real world baseball situation where any serious question is ever answered so simply, unless it is just an awards scenario. I.E. WAR and all that stuff is great for making a list to decide who the most productive overall player is at a position so that you can laud him for it. But I don't see how anyone would ever want to use such simple measures to try to organize anything that really matters. I don't see how these stats help you make out lineups or determine pitch sequences or set defenses or anything. You need a ton of numbers to ever do anything important/make an important decision. I guess it doesn't really matter in the end, we're all just fans, but that's what bothers me, when people try to argue how much better this one single stat is than some other single stat is. In a vacuum sure, the XBH is better than the single and the HR is the greatest possible outcome of a PA for a hitter, and OBP is important because you want people on base when these things happen. But if everything is about the "scoring opportunity" then I'm not sure why something like the chances of getting a hit is seen as less relevant. Both seek to water down the value of a single which is the easiest thing to do for a hitter in terms of things he has control over (pitches in his strikezone). There are only 3 outs in an inning and so a lot of scoring has to occur with 2 outs, when generally only a hit or defensive miscue is going to result in a run. I don't see why OPB in a vacuum is important and SLG in a vacuum is important while average also in a vacuum is not nearly as important. s***, why do the fans boo when the pitcher walks Abreu with RISP? Because the next guy probably sucks in comparison and isn't getting the hit. We want the hit, not the walk. One other thign too.... I know you're smart enough to know how the game works at a larger level and wouldn't try to minimize thigns like situational hitting and stuff. So then what is really the point of taking all these very simple stats way out of context and using them to attempt to come to a "conclusion" as you say? What kind of conclusion can someone come to using these stats, and being so brief? Seriously what value does it have, not trying to be a dick either you're one of my favorite posters, I just seriously do not get any of this stuff and why it is supposed to matter so much/be so valuable. You pick like any spot in the offense in the batting order and the defense in the field and there's like porbably 10-20 or so numbers you're going to want to look at to really answer any kind of meaningful question. Otherwise it would be hard to qualify the answer as a "conclusion" and not an "assumption" or a "guess." Also it's always us vs. them until you come over to my side.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Sep 18, 2014 -> 01:06 PM) So it's not that OBP replaces AVG, it's just that it's a more useful overall stat in a world where you need more than one stat anyway -- but that you also want to be able to cite as few as possible. Everyone craves brevity, and you just don't NEED AVG, so a lot of people don't want to get caught up with it. There's a whole lot here in these few words that I would disagree with but I'm picking one sentence and bolding out the worst parts. Baseball is an extremely complex game. Go ahead and name another sport with more variables and that is more finite. Go ahead because I can't think of one. As far as I know, among the major sports, baseball is the most complex, finite, and interdependent game out there. Everyone wants brevity? No, just people who want the game to be simpler want brevity. The stuff about batting average adding little and SLG contextualizing OBP.... sure if all you want to do is make lists and hand out awards you can operate that way. If you want to understand and appreciate the game of baseball you need a whole s***load more than a couple of stats. And you definitely DO need batting average anyway, if you need OBP and SLG. What ultimately contextualizes BA, OBP and SLG is team makeup, situation as a whole including inning, outs and men on base, as well as player capabilities like speed. Sometimes a hit is as good as a walk, other times a hit is better, sometimes a HR or bases-clearing double wins you the game, other times it doesn't really affect the score. At the end of the day you want stats to help you make difficult decisions. If I trade my #6 hitting RH SS putting up the following numbers and replace him with a lesser defensive but still quality option who hits for more power and is LH but doesn't have the speed, contact ability or arm strength am I going to be a better team? Can I still hit him sixth in MY batting order? That's what you need to know. None of those stats in isolation tell you anything, in this case they just make you dumber.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 18, 2014 -> 12:03 PM) I think OBP is a bit hollow as well. It really doesn't account for what is sacrificed to get on base. Take a guy like Abreu. If he laid off of the pitch off of the corner, he'd have an insane OBP. But he'd also sacrifice some batting average, as he hits the hell out of that pitch, and a ton of RBI's. Is that worth it? Just because a pitch is in the strike zone, doesn't mean that a batter can hit it, and just because a pitch is out of the zone, doesn't mean the hitter doesn't have a better swing for it. Another one that comes to mind it Thomas. I really feel like in his first 6-8 years, if he would have expanded his zone a bit more, he could have really added to his average and RBI numbers, as crazy as that sounds. He had a great swing the other way, and could probably have hit that same pitch that Abreu does six inches off of the corner, very effectively. 5 stars for you too. This is absolutely true. Pitchers are stupid when they are facing Abreu. They need to realize, his plate coverage is AWESOME. LOL. He can pull his hands in, he can take the pitch well off the outside corner and take it out opposite field, he can really do whatever he wants *so long* as you give him what he is looking for. The scouting report say "X" and Abreu steps in, watches the first pitch, maybe fouls off the second, then Abreu says "OK I see what they are trying to do to me" and so he looks 6" off the outside corner and either slider low (just prepare to take it, and if the guy has an excellent slider just assume he's not going to use the FB out there) or it will be FB high. So Abreu looks FB high 6" off the plate and now someone 8 rows back in RF has a souvenir. "Strikezone" for Abreu is throwing him what he isn't looking for. There's an example I saw earlier this year, he was looking FB off the corner again like he does all the time, and up, because he can hit the thing a mile. The pitcher threw the fastball center cut, right there down the middle, thigh high. Abreu wasn't looking for that pitch, but he was waiting back so he was able to adjust and hit it straight up the middle hard for a single. This was Kluber's outing vs. Abreu (he gave Dunn center cut which Dunn always looks for & Dunn hit it out later). But was the center cut FB to Abreu really a bad pitch? Not really, a bad pitch to Abreu there would have been 6" off the corner and up, then it would have been a gopher ball. But because it was in the middle all he could do was get a single, and if there's no one all then a single is the same as a walk really. But a good pitch to Abreu in that spot would have been a little more inside, also a FB, and even though in other situations the inside FB is a pitch Abreu can hit out, in that spot it probably would have resulted in an out. Anyway 5 stars for you too! Also about Abreu & OBP, one thing the OBP stat doesn't factor in is speed. A small guy with good baserunning skills and very good speed can do more on the bases than Abreu. Abreu has improved as a baserunner (he made some mental mistakes early) but no matter what he'll never have great speed. The OBP Abreu offers requires more bases totaled via hit to score him than someone else, and also, he's more of a threat for a DP. So OBP on Abreu, even as a high total, isn't necessarily as productive as a lower OBP for a player who can easily take 2 bases for every 1 base hit on average, and who is a threat to stel and stay out of the DP.

QUOTE (Pants Rowland @ Sep 18, 2014 -> 11:18 AM) One thing I think people might be underestimating is the banning of amphetamines along with other controlled substances. They were an acceptaed part of the game for a long time and really helped keep player energy levels to handle the grind of a 162 game season. I personally think along with the ban on greenies should have been a return to the 154 game season. Take those remaining 8 days to: (i) start the season in April, (ii) give 4 more off days later in the season, and (iii) get the wildcard playin game and start of divisional playoffs going a bit earlier. Right now the pitchers have experienced a huge competitive advantage over hitters that are in the field every game. The grind has to be a lot tougher on them than even a bullpen pitcher. I think this is an awesome post. I will vote your profile 5 stars. Not sure about the 154 game season though, but the point about the relievers and the greenies... I've never thought of that before but I'd be shocked if you were wrong.

QUOTE (shysocks @ Sep 18, 2014 -> 11:19 AM) Mauer is a bad example if you're trying to make a case for how important the hit tool is, because since he came into the league the only guy with as many plate appearances as him and a higher OBP is Pujols. His greatness is not tied to his batting average alone. I think we all can agree that you want a variety of hitters in the lineup and that a team full of Dunn's is no good. Here's what it boils down to though: Take the 10th best batting average in baseball this season (Posey, .310). We can't look at a .310 hitter's average alone and know he's a useful presence in the lineup. Then take a guy with the 10th best OBP (Abreu, .382). We can say with much greater certainty that guy is helping you. Great hitters are dangerous enough to where pitchers try to miss off the plate, down, up, etc. not over the heart of the plate. Great hitters are also generally smart hitters, and part of their greatness comes from the fact that they zero in on what they want to do (pitches and location) before they even step into the box. They pay attention to patterns and histories. Also, if you are playing the Sox, the greatest attention you are going to pay to any hitter is Abreu when you go over the scouting report. Every pitcher on the roster has it is his mind "don't make a mistake to this guy." Every pitcher also knows that a BB to Abreu is less likely to lead to a demotion to AAA than a BB to Leury Garcia would. So a lot of the OBP stuff comes from a hitter establishing how great he is. Even with Dunn, not a great hitter but the power is frightening that you'd still see some guys trying to go around him/stay away from him even when Dunn was in his really s***ty periods. You just have to take everything into consideration. IMO the biggest problem with ANY stat EVER is people just using one stat to try to define everything. It doesn't matter if it is a very simple and basic stat like errors committed, batting average, wins for a pitcher, etc. or something very complex like WAR, RC or whatever. You need as many tools as you have available to make a decision. Your eyes are always going to be the best, and video is the greatest tool ever, but you do need stats to fill gaps for you when you need to make a decision/what to make an observation but can't look at hours of tape. So they are useful (stas are) but only really to a point, and no one single stat is going to tell you how much a player truly helps his team because it pretty much ignores the team. And really... you can have all kinds of cumulative stats to tell you that Sale and Abreu are great... so what? Everyone already knows that. Pick any number of statistics, watch video on these guys, it's obvious they are great. RC+ on Abreu is basically saying "water is indeed wet."

QUOTE (Jerksticks @ Sep 18, 2014 -> 10:17 AM) I agree. It's the haughtiness of it all though. I think they are both wonderful statistics. Joe Mauer in his prime was a thorn in our side because he spanked game-changing hits more often than one could stomach, not simply because he got on base. Batting average drives OBP the way it drives in runs. Guys that hit are dangerous. Not to beat a dead horse or anything but in one of those Dunn lover threads there was a link posted about what an oddity he has been given how little the defense has had to make any play when he's been at the plate. Also most of those plays that had to be made were just routine ones anyway. Players like Mauer with great contact ability and bat control, with approaches to spray the ball everywhere, are really tough because they force you to position your defense, pitch to your positioning, then defend those positions once the ball is in play. It's a whole lot more difficult than setting up the same shift over and over, using the same patterns over and over, etc. Players like Dunn (especially in his prime) have a place in a lineup because a lineup needs balance, but if you could have more of one thing than any other IMO you'd want a balanced lefty-righty order full of guys with bat control and contact ability who can "hit it where they ain't" as Hawk would say. Of course you still need pop and so forth, as well as OBP, and so you can't put Mark Kotsays all over the field. But Viciedo at least has the raw tools to be like that and hit the ball wherever, and at least Tyler Flowers tries to do this stuff even though he lacks a lot of tools (had a great near-double last night off Yordano, a terrific approach in that AB).

Yeah it's hard to credit the player for the defender making a mistake. But an unintentional walk resulting from poor control by the pitcher early is the AB is kind of the same thing, as is rewarding the batter with a hit when it's only a non-error on the scorecards. I.E. the fielder sucks and he takes a bad route/misjudges the ball on a relatively easy play, but because he doesn't get there in time it goes as a hit. I think an unweighted "total positive outcomes" type of stat would be great as a means of considering stats on players you've never seen before. Like, hits + walks + HBP + reached on errors + sacrifices + making an out while advancing a runner to 3B with 0 or 1 outs + SB / PA - CS. Put it in BA type of form where you can say something like "this guy has a positive outcome average of .495" or something like that. I would think that could be useful especially when looking at a player with underwhelming offensive stats and looking at where you might want to bat him (like 2nd or 8th/9th specifically). You could subtract BA and OBP from it and compare it to SLG looking for the all-or-nothing types, you could use it to compare lead-off hitters, etc. Also I think that a hitter's highest measured speed from home plate to 1B following contact should be a basic offensive stat. That could be very useful in gameplanning & also if you're in a league with a lot of guys who get down the line rather quickly you probably don't want an arm like Sanchez's at 2B. Also it might put an added value on 3B and SS arms in the same situations.

I ain't f***in around, seriously, we need a forum for the Sale trade rumors. You don't have to be a psychic to see those things coming. The offseason is almost here.

QUOTE (StRoostifer @ Sep 18, 2014 -> 12:00 AM) I can always count on you for the interesting posts. I like the idea. Hell, maybe offer free pills to posters with reasonable trade proposals. Just for s***s and giggles. Do you think the Dodgers top 4 of Seager, Urias, Pederson and Holmes would come close? I'm f***ing serious man, I think it's a great idea. Look, I made a prototype.

QUOTE (StRoostifer @ Sep 17, 2014 -> 10:31 PM) Lol, I remember TUC had this debate last winter, tho I forget the thread. Trading Sale for the world sounds tantalizing and all but in the end I doubt seriously any GM would or could give up true value for Sale. The haul it would take to get Sale would be so huge that the other teams fan base would likely want their GM's head on a silver platter. Sale's age, skill and contract probably make him so valuable that's its difficult to put an accurate value on him. I wouldn't have a clue as to where to begin much less try to figure out which team could be a legit trade partner. Honestly, I'm not attached to any Sox player and am willing to trade any player including Sale for the right price but with Sale, what the f*** is the right price and who would pay it? I could easily get on board with the idea of trading Sale but without knowing those two things, forget it. We're going to go through this all again over the offseason. IIRC last offseason I proposed the creation of a "Trade Sale" forum which would be used to make money for the site. Funnel the MLB.com & MLBTR posters over into that forum (keep them off this part of the forum) and post a bunch of banner ads in there for like penis enlargement pills & mail order brides & insurance stuff & legal ads (need to make sure you have your will striaght and everything insured before you bring over that Russian bride) and then we could have the Sale trade thread links in that forum all small in this tiny font with the banner ads all big, so that way when the MLB.com & MLBTR posters tried to post in the threads they'd just click on the dick pills and stuff, and then money would be made for the site. Smart huh? See I thought this was a great idea & it's one of the reasons I should be a mod with Ban/kill power. But IIRC the mods just glossed over my posts like they always do

GMing is really an art of of performance and salary forecasting. "Ceilings" and "floors" are important because you reed to know what ranges to make your forecasts in. Sale is a known quantity. His performance ceiling he has already reached - UNLESS you feel he actually has room to improve. He's arguably not even at his ceiling yet. Performance floor on him is what? If he's healthy at all he's going to be a top-3 or 5 LHSP in the league even in a down year for him. Cost ceiling? Look at Kershaw's deal, and go with that or higher, not necessarily in years but as an annual salary, because as a general rule the contracts just go up year after year, and the gap between stars and superstars widens further. Sale right now on the FA market gets what, at an annual salary around Kershaw probably even if fewer years, and in 2 years or so? What does he get then? Sale's cost ceiling has already been set by his contract. It's .... it's actually unfair how little he is being paid. Cost floor is what? Again, assuming he is physically healthy, the cost floor is still a steal even at his performance floor. Really the question on Sale is what it has always been, health, durability, and it's all based on a fear of "poor mechanics" and so in that respect the entire foundation of the fear really isn't as much a science as it is a guesstimate. There's really no reason in the world to believe Sale is definitely, 100% going to get hurt during the life of his contract while some other guy who is more conventional is going to stay healthy. That is a market inefficiency in itself right, that we are capitalizing on? Why use the same market inefficiency that we are taking advantage of as a reason to trade of a player who represents one of the single greatest values in baseball? How does that make any sense? So Sale is pretty much absolute best case scenario. If you trade him, what are you getting? Again, GMing is an art of forecasting. When you are forecasting Sale from a cost standpoint and a performance standpoint, you are ending up with dollar figures and baseball statistics that make you a very happy man. And what's really great about it is that the player you are forecasting is very young, already elite, in his prime with a lot of those years to come or so it seems AND you have a track record of performance *behind* those future forecasts which is what those forecasts are based on in the first place. There is actually *substance* there. Compare this to a prospect, an unsigned player on a MiLB contract. First off, worried about Sale's health are you? Sale is in the Majors and has been healthy in the Majors. None of these guys have that record of health yet, no matter how much cleaner you think their mechanics are. Secondly, the cost ceiling and floors are undefined unless you really stick your neck out there because generally there needs to be some actual MLB performance before those figures get out. But the performance ceilings and floors, what are they based on? Scouting opinions? Gut feelings? Do you just "know" this kid is going to be great? Are they baseless computer projections? General trends? Are the based on bulls*** MiLB stats against vastly inferior competition? Whatever they are based on, basically they are based on nothing. They are predictions, that's it. There is no track record, there is no substance. It's a shot in the dark. How many lottery tickets is your house worth? Trading Sale for a bunch of prospects would be like if you had all this stock in a strong, healthy company in no real threat of danger and selling it all and then taking that cash and using it to fund a bunch of small startups led by bright people with some great ideas. Oh, these guys have this product that is so great and yadda yadda yadda its going to revolutionize that industry. No it won't. You're probably not going to get rich, even though theoretically you could. Taking the fruit of one very safe and sound asset which itself was the product of a series of smart decisions and then trading it away for a bunch of more exciting hit-or-miss opportunities isn't the wisest thing to do at least not unless you have like 6 Sales laying around and you only need 5 of them and one is basically redundant. Well unfortunately we don't have that problem and so fair value for Sale would mean actual, forecastable MLB value in terms of statistics etc. and at a massive cost savings. We'll give you Sale and then you give us a s***load of already very good young and proven MLB players at great cost certainty OR you give us a Sale-like young star, and then add in whatever else is necessary to make up for the disparity in contract cost vs. performance value. Right. Not happening. No team is going to make themselves worse to get better. Neither should we. That's why we keep Sale.

Also here's another thing to consider about a possible Sale trade: ^The lines of Byron Buxton & Miguel Sano this season. From John Sickels, last October: From yahoo last year: From MLB.com http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2013/07...says_videos.php ^From this article: ^There's one of the many Willie Mays comps made re: Buxton in the last year. Where are we now? Let's say we had in January traded Sale for Buxton, Sano, and Kohl Stewart the Twins #3 prospect. We'd have the greatest thing since sliced bread with wrist issues, someone who didn't play at all and would be coming back from major injury, and a 19 year old who threw 87 innings in A ball. Anyone wanna guess what most of us would be thinking right about now? Probably "f***.... these guys better turn out." And you could say I'm just cherry picking here but I'm not, this is how the game works, how it has always worked. Go trade Sale for all the greatest prospects in the world and then watch how we lose that deal.