July 4, 20187 yr 22 hours ago, fathom said: Sure I would trade Yoan if you can get a 5-6 win player that has five years or so of control left on a good deal. For example, I would deal him for Judge if that was possible (it's not). Main reason is you could have Yolmer play there two years and then Madrigal takes over. I disagree. Moncada's upside is a notch below Trout. Roided up Robinson Cano with 30-35 SB per year. You don't punt on that type of potential this early. The way I look at Moncada is his upside is Cano with blazing speed and his floor is Trevor Story. Story is still a useful player, but if you think he's going to stay at Story level for the forseeable future you sell on him, sure, but you don't make that determination until 2020 when Madrigal is ready. And if you sell, you have to prepare yourself for the possibility that the light comes on elsewhere, and be okay with that. Edited July 4, 20187 yr by Jack Parkman
July 4, 20187 yr He need to keep protecting and owning the inside corner on fastballs like he did last night on the triple. Make him a guy you have to try and get the ball down and away on, at least as a LHB. The last month or so he's been letting pitchers come inside on him and then the rest of the AB is dictated by the pitcher, Yoan is down in the count, and usually it doesn't end well. If he makes them start respecting his power inside again they will start him off with more useless pitches away where he can get ahead in the count. Hopefully some of this is injury related and timing as he's been jamming himself frequently. I believe Keith Law does not like Yoan's toe tap mechanism and said it would give him trouble at times. Obviously he was correct in hindsight. Might be something he battles his entire career, when he's hot he'll carry the club and when he's not he'll really struggle. Streaky hitter.
July 4, 20187 yr 4 hours ago, Jake said: The best evidence that advanced fielding metrics are not useless is the fact that by and large they identify as great fielders the same people who close observers of the game do. So sometimes they reflect what we see with our own eyes? That's great. They're also completely wrong a lot of the time. They're unreliable, at best.
July 4, 20187 yr 12 minutes ago, chitownsportsfan said: He need to keep protecting and owning the inside corner on fastballs like he did last night on the triple. Make him a guy you have to try and get the ball down and away on, at least as a LHB. The last month or so he's been letting pitchers come inside on him and then the rest of the AB is dictated by the pitcher, Yoan is down in the count, and usually it doesn't end well. If he makes them start respecting his power inside again they will start him off with more useless pitches away where he can get ahead in the count. Hopefully some of this is injury related and timing as he's been jamming himself frequently. I believe Keith Law does not like Yoan's toe tap mechanism and said it would give him trouble at times. Obviously he was correct in hindsight. Might be something he battles his entire career, when he's hot he'll carry the club and when he's not he'll really struggle. Streaky hitter. So you're blaming the toe tap for his struggles and it's obvious? Edited July 4, 20187 yr by TaylorStSox
July 4, 20187 yr 48 minutes ago, TaylorStSox said: So you're blaming the toe tap for his struggles and it's obvious? Perhaps you need further clarification. Keith Law wrote a fairly scathing (even for him) ESPN insider piece from the season before the trade went down (it was late summer '16) and he mentioned that Moncada was having problems consistently making contact (not that he wasn't hitting it hard when he was) in AA and that if the Red Sox were relying on him down the stretch to fill in holes they were likely to be disappointed. And...he was right. Moncada was (and still is) a very raw, toolsy prospect. A lot of loud contact and highlight plays and a lot of strikeouts and blunders -- as we've found. Of course he then got traded, proceeded to do fairly well in AAA (while striking out way too much) then fairly well in MLB (while striking out way too much) and then coming out this season and tearing it up before having a minor injury and cratering again. In retrospect, hindsight, whatever -- Keith was right. Moncada was very raw and for whatever reason (Law, as a former scout, thought it was the toe tap timing mechanism) was going to struggle to make consistent contact. Law is just one opinion but I remember at the time hoping he wasn't right and it turns out he's been quite right. Patience is in order of course as we've seen from Yoan, he's got plenty of talent. Just needs to refine it. Hopefully the Sox can bring it out eventually. TA is proving a nice case study.
July 5, 20187 yr 8 hours ago, TaylorStSox said: So sometimes they reflect what we see with our own eyes? That's great. They're also completely wrong a lot of the time. They're unreliable, at best. I don't take them as gospel but it's really hard for the common fan to recognize range and the ability to get to balls that the average fielder doesn't get to. They're good at showing that. The eye test is what led people to believe that Derek Jeter was a good defender.
July 5, 20187 yr 9 hours ago, Jose Abreu said: I don't take them as gospel but it's really hard for the common fan to recognize range and the ability to get to balls that the average fielder doesn't get to. They're good at showing that. The eye test is what led people to believe that Derek Jeter was a good defender. The media led people to believe Jeter was a good fielder. The eye test most certainly didn't. That's a really outrageous claim. He was a statue out there. I can see using defensive metrics to reaffirm what you see, but too often I see people citing them when evaluating a player they haven't seen enough and it's kind of ridiculous.
July 5, 20187 yr 1 hour ago, TaylorStSox said: The media led people to believe Jeter was a good fielder. The eye test most certainly didn't. That's a really outrageous claim. He was a statue out there. I can see using defensive metrics to reaffirm what you see, but too often I see people citing them when evaluating a player they haven't seen enough and it's kind of ridiculous. The average fan would see Jeter make a diving play on a ball and assume that he's good. In reality, most shortstops would get to said ball routinely, without having to dive. Diehards like you or I can see that Jeter was no good out there, I'm just arguing that the average, casual fan may not be able to identify that. I agree with your last point though.
July 6, 20187 yr There's always a place for the eye test — I felt like Avi was going to be fine by watching his at bats early this season despite the fact his numbers were no good because he was hitting the ball hard. That said, there is really very little justification for throwing out the defensive metrics as useless. They aren't some weird computer thing divorced from what's really happening out there, they are based on humans using the game tape to judge the speed and location of batted balls and using years of data on equivalent plays to see how often the balls are fielded. Nobody's eye test can unite the single play observation with the data in that way. When people say the fielding metrics aren't reliable in small samples, they don't mean that they are meaningless in small samples. They mean a half season of fielding data is about as informative as 40-50 games of hitting data. We pay a lot of attention to 40-50 games of hitting data and see it as basically informative even if things are liable to change as time goes on and with the knowledge that a small number of games may play an outsize role in determining the season total and may not replicate in the long run. For outfielders, we have even better methods now thanks to Statcast when it comes to judging an outfielder's ability to catch the ball. It builds on the same logic that UZR, etc. do but with extremely accurate measurements. Soon I expect us to have similar information from Statcast for infielders and I expect that to really affect the game once we do. I'm sure the teams are already generating these metrics for their own use and MLB's good people are still haggling over the best version to present to the public.
July 7, 20187 yr 2 hours ago, Jose Abreu said: No wonder this thread has been so quiet No worries, it will pick up once Yoan goes 0-4 or has an error. Then the wagon will be lighter again from so many falling off.
July 8, 20187 yr 9 minutes ago, southsider2k5 said: Player A .231/.310/.407/.719 610 PA 19 HR Player B .223/.330/.416/.746 484 PA 16 HR A Moncada... B, not so sure
July 8, 20187 yr 1 hour ago, Chicago White Sox said: Is player B Javier Baez? Also not a bad call, thru his 1st 3 parts of seasons. 244/.289/.392/.680 24 HR, 759 PA at ages 21-23. Also throw in 27 errors.
July 8, 20187 yr 13 minutes ago, southsider2k5 said: Or should I say player BB. I would say Buxton but the numbers don't match up. Barry Bonds?
July 8, 20187 yr 17 minutes ago, Jose Abreu said: I would say Buxton but the numbers don't match up. Barry Bonds? Yes, Bonds.
July 8, 20187 yr 3 hours ago, southsider2k5 said: Yes, Bonds. great, now we just need to inject moncada with roids
July 9, 20187 yr 1 hour ago, reiks12 said: great, now we just need to inject moncada with roids People forget how good the guy was pre-1998. He was a Hall of Famer before that.
July 9, 20187 yr 41 minutes ago, southsider2k5 said: People forget how good the guy was pre-1998. He was a Hall of Famer before that. That's assuming he wasn't on something else before the Tetrahydrogestrinone. The "I'm going to go on the hard stuff" line he fed to Griffey according to that one book could darn well have meant he was on softer stuff before that, there are plenty of drugs like the Stanozolol that can help you build muscle and recover from injury without having your head expand 3 sizes, and it's not like we can assume he's an honorable person who wouldn't cheat on principle.
July 9, 20187 yr Great now Moncada has to take HGH and grow his head 3 times it’s size.. but if he hits like Bonds did then DO IT!!
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