Eaton posted 2nd highest AL CF OPS+ in 2014-15

[southsider2k5]

MLB Network Verified account ‏@MLBNetwork Dec 22

 

After @MikeTrout, AL CF @AdamSpankyEaton had the highest OPS+ over the last 2 seasons (121 OPS+ in 2014-15). #ThinkBaseball

[Balta1701]

This is a bizarre thread. Are the white sox particularly unusual in having only 1 player playing CF while most teams switch their CFs out? Because I simply sorted teams in the AL by WAR in CF, the stat listed in the thread title, and found the White Sox overall CF is in the bottom 1/3 of the American league over 2014-2015 and looking particularly mediocre with Eaton

Team WAR

Angels 16.6

Royals 15.1

Rays 14.6

Red Sox 9.8

Astros 8.7

Yankees 8.1

Orioles 7.9

Indians 7.9

Blue Jays 7.4

White Sox 6.6

Athletics 5.5

Rangers 5.4

Tigers 5.1

Twins 5

Mariners 0.4

[LittleHurt05]

This is a bizarre thread. Are the white sox particularly unusual in having only 1 player playing CF while most teams switch their CFs out? Because I simply sorted teams in the AL by WAR in CF, the stat listed in the thread title, and found the White Sox overall CF is in the bottom 1/3 of the American league over 2014-2015 and looking particularly mediocre with Eaton

Team WAR

Angels 16.6

Royals 15.1

Rays 14.6

Red Sox 9.8

Astros 8.7

Yankees 8.1

Orioles 7.9

Indians 7.9

Blue Jays 7.4

White Sox 6.6

Athletics 5.5

Rangers 5.4

Tigers 5.1

Twins 5

Mariners 0.4

 

To be fair, the thread is about OPS+. The top three teams in WAR have Trout, Cain, and Kiermaier, the holy trilogy of outfield defense. How would the teams rank based on OPS+ from the center field position?

[BlackSox13]

Hopefully Eaton can continue to do what he's been doing at the plate and get his defense back up to where it was at in '14.

[Dick Allen]

This is a bizarre thread. Are the white sox particularly unusual in having only 1 player playing CF while most teams switch their CFs out? Because I simply sorted teams in the AL by WAR in CF, the stat listed in the thread title, and found the White Sox overall CF is in the bottom 1/3 of the American league over 2014-2015 and looking particularly mediocre with Eaton

Team WAR

Angels 16.6

Royals 15.1

Rays 14.6

Red Sox 9.8

Astros 8.7

Yankees 8.1

Orioles 7.9

Indians 7.9

Blue Jays 7.4

White Sox 6.6

Athletics 5.5

Rangers 5.4

Tigers 5.1

Twins 5

Mariners 0.4

The thread is about OPS+. The bizarre thing is you say the thread is bizarre and list WAR the first post after the original.

[caulfield12]

Accounting for defense as well, Eaton has to be somewhere around #8-12 (individually for CF, overall MLB) over the last two years, right?

 

But yeah, it's remarkable that the numbers could be skewed so much by other Sox players at that position in limited action.

 

Wasn't he next to the bottom in DRS for CF last.

 

 

Lots of inconsistencies. How much of it is coaching? Stubbornness? Having Cabrera and Avi on his flanks?

Edited December 27, 2015 by caulfield12

[Balta1701]

The thread is about OPS+. The bizarre thing is you say the thread is bizarre and list WAR the first post after the original.

When I originally posted that the headline said WAR. It has since been edited, thus making me look bad.

 

D'Oh.

[Balta1701]

Anyway, number of players who have a qualifying number of at bats in center field in both years 2014-2015: 2.

 

Eaton is therefore also #2 in terms of qualifying CF in the AL in 2014 in basically every single stat, because there's only 1 other guy.He's #2 in 2b, runs, hits, HR, RBI, SO, BB, Average, OBP, and Slug.

 

The other guy is just pretty good, but we've also excluded "all other baseball players".

[caulfield12]

1. Trout 17.3

2. Cain 12.2

3. Pollock 11.3

4. McCutcheon 11.2

5. Kiermaier 11.1

6. Eaton 9.1

7. A.Jones 8.2

8. Carlos Gomez 7.1

 

Not counting Betts and Pillar since both were full-time regulars for first time last year.

[greg775]

Didn't Eaton really stink until we fell out of the race? Not ripping him, I sort of like the guy and his hustle, but I recall really despising him the first couple months at least. Hope he gets off to a sizzling start this year.

Is his ceiling a poor man's Pete Rose?? Hustler who is going to learn how to get the key hit/walk at all times?

Then on the other side of the spectrum his possible low would be Rowand after Rowand forgot how to hit (or got old, I forget why he suddenly started sucking)?

[OmarComing25]

This is a bizarre thread. Are the white sox particularly unusual in having only 1 player playing CF while most teams switch their CFs out? Because I simply sorted teams in the AL by WAR in CF, the stat listed in the thread title, and found the White Sox overall CF is in the bottom 1/3 of the American league over 2014-2015 and looking particularly mediocre with Eaton

Team WAR

Angels 16.6

Royals 15.1

Rays 14.6

Red Sox 9.8

Astros 8.7

Yankees 8.1

Orioles 7.9

Indians 7.9

Blue Jays 7.4

White Sox 6.6

Athletics 5.5

Rangers 5.4

Tigers 5.1

Twins 5

Mariners 0.4

The fact that the Sox don't switch out their CF is exactly why they look so "mediocre" when you compare them to the other teams. Fangraphs adds the WAR totals for any player who plays in CF, it doesn't do partial WAR for each position. So even though Colby Rasmus only played 43 of his 131 games in CF this year for the Astros, his 2015 season WAR gets added to the Astros CF WAR totals, even though he accumulated most of his WAR while playing in LF. Those totals are artificially inflated. Look at the Cubs WAR from the catcher position for another example. Fangraphs adds in Schwarber's season total WAR for the Cubs, even though he only played 21 of his 69 games at catcher in 2015. Some of the numbers also don't make sense if you click on the teams to see the breakdown. For example, in 2014-2015 the Yankees have Gardner at 4.9 WAR, then Slade Heathcott at 0.5 WAR, Mason Williams at 0.3 WAR and Eury Perez at -0.2 WAR. That totals 5.5 WAR, far lower than the 8.1 on that list. Same with the Indians. They have Abraham Almonte at 1.4 WAR, Nyjer Morgan at 0.3 WAR, Michael Bourn at 0.3 WAR and Tyler Holt at 0.0 WAR. Same thing happens with the Blue Jays as well.

 

The Sox should definitely be ahead of those teams. If you account for the Astros' WAR inflation the Sox should be ahead of them too (new total for Houston is about 5.8). Boston, KC and Tampa Bay are also seeing a lot of WAR inflation here, but are still ahead of the Sox if you account for it, but not by as much as it seems from your list. According to my calculations (I just adjusted the WAR by percentage of games played in CF, crude yet should be approximate), the Sox are 6th in the AL in CF WAR the last two seasons, just 0.2 WAR behind Boston for 5th. That's certainly not "particularly mediocre", especially considering the kind of talent at CF in the AL right now. I'm too lazy to do the calculations for the NL right now, but there's a lot of WAR inflation for them too (for some reason the Dodgers get to count Ethier's 2.9 WAR for 2015 in their two year CF sample, even though Ethier played all of 1 game in CF this year), though it looks like only the Pirates, Diamondbacks and Brewers are solidly ahead, with the Mets basically a wash. So 10th or 11th in the MLB, sounds about right for Eaton.

Edited December 27, 2015 by OmarComing25

[BlackSox13]

Didn't Eaton really stink until we fell out of the race? Not ripping him, I sort of like the guy and his hustle, but I recall really despising him the first couple months at least. Hope he gets off to a sizzling start this year.

Is his ceiling a poor man's Pete Rose?? Hustler who is going to learn how to get the key hit/walk at all times?

Then on the other side of the spectrum his possible low would be Rowand after Rowand forgot how to hit (or got old, I forget why he suddenly started sucking)?

Eaton had a rough April but started coming around in May and hit well the rest of the season.

 

Split G GS PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS TB GDP HBP SH SF IBB ROE BAbip tOPS+ sOPS+

April/March 19 19 83 78 7 15 3 1 0 0 1 1 5 14 .192 .241 .256 .497 20 0 0 0 0 0 1 .234 26 42

May 26 26 117 107 20 28 5 2 2 6 0 1 8 19 .262 .325 .402 .727 43 2 2 0 0 0 3 .302 83 104

June 25 24 111 98 13 27 3 3 3 8 4 1 9 19 .276 .355 .459 .814 45 0 3 1 0 1 1 .316 105 128

July 25 25 116 97 21 31 5 2 4 11 4 1 13 24 .320 .421 .536 .957 52 2 4 2 0 0 0 .391 141 166

August 28 28 124 108 17 28 5 0 1 10 4 1 13 33 .259 .347 .333 .680 36 1 2 0 1 1 0 .360 73 89

Sept/Oct 30 29 138 122 20 46 7 1 4 21 5 3 10 22 .377 .434 .549 .983 67 0 3 2 1 0 0 .433 148 167

[caulfield12]

Although the first 2-3 weeks in August and April/May are when we most needed him, arguably.

 

 

[TheFutureIsNear]

Didn't Eaton really stink until we fell out of the race? Not ripping him, I sort of like the guy and his hustle, but I recall really despising him the first couple months at least. Hope he gets off to a sizzling start this year.

Is his ceiling a poor man's Pete Rose?? Hustler who is going to learn how to get the key hit/walk at all times?

Then on the other side of the spectrum his possible low would be Rowand after Rowand forgot how to hit (or got old, I forget why he suddenly started sucking)?

 

1st month- sucked (.497 ops but .234 babip, small sample size)

2nd- not good but not horrible (.727 ops)

3rd- good month (.814 ops)

4th- great month (.957 ops)

 

There were a lot of people to despise within the white sox organization last year...Eaton should have been very far down that list.

[OnlyGillis]

You can probably count on one hand players who are consistent through every month of the season. Eaton is no different than most.

[Bob Sacamano]

And yet some people think we should trade him.

[Vance Law]

2nd- not good but not horrible (.727 ops)

 

For a whole season, .727 OPS would be good for 14th best among all CFs with 350 plate appearances or more. Just better than Carlos Gomez .723. And obviously Eaton's season total was much better than that. I was in Chicago area for Christmas and listened to some meathead sports radio in the car. There was someone who gets paid to talk on the radio (not just some s***ty caller) who, with absolutely no knowledge of actual facts or numbers went on and on about how terrible Adam Eaton was. It was beyond absurd and a good reminder of how brutal and unlistenable sports talk radio is.

Edited December 28, 2015 by Vance Law

[southsider2k5]

I split all of the chaff out of this thread. Going forward, if there is a true problem with posts, instead of ruining threads, please address it through PMs. Any other ruining of threads with this petty stuff could result in suspensions.