So how about Daniel Nava?

[a700hitter]

Are you wrong??????? You couldn't be any more right if you tried. My coaches t aught me that method and from what I know all the coaches I know teach exactly the same way. You hands are used as a defensive barrier to ward off a knee' date=' elbow or leg coming down on you from an infielder you were supposed to take out of the play. Hell I used to teach my boys to be certain to have dirt in their hands BEFORE they took off in order to protect them from finger or hand injuries. Thinking back to what you said 700, I remember now seeing that half ass slide of Jacoby where he slid on his side and was totally vulnerable to an accident. You jogged my memory and thanks. Still my contention is that he is too damn brittle for his own good. I could live with that if he was a fast healer but the guy doesn't seem to able to mend except in slow motion. He needs to do things right, and I insist he needs to toughen up as well. Thanks for the reminder 700.[/quote']I don't think it is an issue of slow healing. It is the pampered princess syndrome of today's players. There was a statement from Dice K that he was not ready to comeback, because he was not 100 percent physically and mentally. He voluntarily shut himself down. What! He is paid to play and give 100% effort regardless of whether he is 100% physically and mentally. It's up to the team management to determine whether a less than 100% Dice K can help the team. This notion that the player has to be 100% is absurd. Someone must have gotten to him after Bard velocity dipped further to 91 mph and told him that a job was available if he could get his ass back on the field, because it was suddenly last night it was announced that he would be taking a minor league start this weekend.

 

I am sure that Ellsbury is waiting to return to 100% which could take a very long time. Most separated shoulder never feel as good as they were before the injury. You just need to get it back to where you have a sufficient range of motion to be able to play, and that does not take months. As I said before and it pisses people off, Yaz missed maybe a couple or 3 games when he separated his shoulder in 1975. He was less than 100%, but the manager felt that the team was better off with a hurting Yaz than with his backup. Did his stats suffer? Yes, but you hit the field every day if you can and your team needs you. We need Ellsbury and Crawford back on the field, but they are 2 pampered princesses who are not in a rush. Crawford pisses me off more than Ellsbury, because he is pulling down huge dough. He should feel more of an obligation to get back on the field. He has a sore f***ing arm! From what I have read, it doesn't affect his swing. He's not a pitcher, catcher or SS -- positions requiring several high stress throws each game. He plays LF at Fenway park, he can lob the ball back into the SS. Cut the s*** and get back on the field. Johnny Unitas played QB in the NFL for several years after he popped that elbow ligament and he never had surgery to repair it. Jim Kaat pitched in the major leagues more than 10 years after popping his ligament on Fenway's mound on the second to last game of the 1967 season. He also never had it surgically repaired. So, please don't tell me that a LFer with a weak ass arm can't play with a strained elbow. I ain't buying that line of bull.

[User Name]

It pisses people off because it's idiocy, fyi. It's easy to say "this guy should be playing even though he's hurting" while comfortably seated in a couch/office chair.

[a700hitter]

So the manager is useless? Fundamentals in ST are wasted time if players only learn by injuring themselves/getting it wrong?

I wouldn't go that far. A lot of players listen and play fundamentally sound baseball, but not all of them do. You are a Dad. I don't know if you are planning on additional kids, but if you do, you may have the experience that some will heed your advice and others will not. Sometime they learn the hard way by making avoidable mistakes. Bobby V is, by all accounts, a very good manager when it comes to teaching fundamentals. At the beginning of the season when Al Leiter was asked about Bobby V, he said that Bobby could get on your nerves, but if the players listened to him they would bw better players.

[kapsis21]

It pisses people off because it's idiocy' date=' fyi. It's easy to say "this guy should be playing even though he's hurting" while comfortably seated in a couch/office chair.[/quote']

 

yep i think i am in agreement, lot easier to sit on the couch and say toughen up for multiple broken ribs or shoulder sublux to heal and our brilliant staff brings him back early during 2010 season to break the ribs again f***ing morons..

 

and the fact that blaming Ells for not sliding correctly, when all he was trying to do is break up the double play putting his body in harm.. i dont get how he was selfish there putting himself in harms way...

cmon guys its really easy to type s***.. i want you to get beaned by 1 fast ball on your arm and see how long you take before you even try to pick that bat up..

[User Name]

yep i think i am in agreement, lot easier to sit on the couch and say toughen up for multiple broken ribs or shoulder sublux to heal and our brilliant staff brings him back early during 2010 season to break the ribs again f***ing morons..

 

and the fact that blaming Ells for not sliding correctly, when all he was trying to do is break up the double play putting his body in harm.. i dont get how he was selfish there putting himself in harms way...

cmon guys its really easy to type s***.. i want you to get beaned by 1 fast ball on your arm and see how long you take before you even try to pick that bat up..

 

I had two hairline rib fractures a number of years ago acquired in a story i'm not eager to recount, and let me tell you, it is not nice at all. You can't even pee without your whole torso hurting. So how can you expect to swing a bat unless the ribs are fully healed?

[example1]

I think it is fair to say that the only people who are questioning the toughness or resolve of particular Red Sox players are also those who bring he highest level of cynicism to virtually every post. Let's not spend too much time worrying about convincing them that Ellsbury actually wants to play baseball, or that his injury might be as bad as it appears to be.

 

Finally, why wouldn't we want him to come back as close to 100% as possible? I have always heard that once you start the daily grind of the season your health generally gets worse, simply due to wear. Hence, if he returns at 82% his chances of getting to 97% are pretty low.

 

What I care most about is having an extremely healthy Ellsbury for the stretch run. Same with Crawford. If everything comes down right, the Sox lineup in August could be:

 

Ellsbury

Pedroia

Ortiz

Gonzalez

Middlebrooks

Crawford

Saltalamacchia

Sweeney/Ross

Aviles

 

That's a lineup that turns over pretty quickly, IMO.

 

(*and to bring it all back to the thread topic, there's not Daniel Nava in that lineup. )

[kapsis21]

I had two hairline rib fractures a number of years ago acquired in a story i'm not eager to recount' date=' and let me tell you, it is not nice at all. You can't even pee without your whole torso hurting. So how can you expect to swing a bat unless the ribs are fully healed?[/quote']

 

thats tough..

[Dojji]

Yaz was pretty slim when he first came up. I don't know if he was 175. He gained some weight after a few years, started hitting lots of HRs, but his BA dropped after the great '67 triple crown year. He was still slim in '67, but gained weight the following year. His average dropped as he hit more HRs. In his later years, he controlled his weight pretty good--I would guess around 185-190.

 

As I've said, Nava reminds me of him when he bats left handed. He has the same line-drive swing. Yaz was a helluva line drive hitter when he first game up. Great hitter. That '67 year was as good a year as I've seen anybody have. He was an awesome player that year.

 

Well I've compared nava to Pedroia, and to David Dejesus, but Yaz? Umm wow. Wasn't even on my radar as a comparison having never seen him play.

[Dojji]

Well that's the point' date=' he doesn't really have any potential at the major league level. Backup outfielder is all he'll ever be, whether you agree or not that he "stinks" or not doesn't really factor in, because it's a subjective term.[/quote']

 

And I say Daniel Nava is talented. He's not a scrub, you don't put up his numbers even in the minors as consistently as he did it if you have no talent. He just got overlooked repeatedly on account of his size and being an older prospect. He's an adequate fielder playing a position where adequate fielding is acceptable, and while he doesn't bring A grade power or blazing speed to the table, the two things he does best, are the two things you absolutely need a ballplayer to do -- square the ball up on contact and get your butt on base. And doing those things successfully takes talent.

 

He's got good bat control and quick hands at the plate, and we've already seen him put up some really disciplined at bats. He's not a flashy power hitter, but the way he's not a flashy power hitter is kinda like the way Pedroia wasn't considered a flashy power hitter. The 2 we've seen go out were not cheap homers. If I recall correctly, one was into the second row on top of the Monster, the other cleared that tall wall down the right field line in Camden Yards.

 

I really don't think a career line of .275/.370/.430 is beyond Nava's capabilities at all ad that's an .800 OPS line. And MHO is that he has the talent (yes, there's that word again) to hit .300 at the big league level. Normalize his BABIP this year and he's right around the .280-.300 range. He's not going to develop much more physically, but he would gain experience at big league pitch recognition, which was the thing that held him back a couple years ago. And he really doesn't have all that far to go.

 

That said, he may need to switch to full time LHH at some point if that righthanded approach can't improve. I was kinda hoping he could be part of the solution of our platoon difficulties at the moment -- not really trending in that direction right now.

[Bellhorn04]

We are in agreement that he is not a starter, but a backup. To be clear, I wasn't trying to dispute that fact. I was just saying he's not a crappy player. He's a league average, or slightly better than league average LF.

 

http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/team/_/stat/batting/split/83

 

Here are the stats, separated by team, for production from LF in 2012. The league average AL LF is hitting .243/.319/.416 right now. Last year, the league average AL LF hit .250/.310/.392 for a whopping .702 OPS. Now - These numbers are for all players who played LF, and include back ups as well as regulars (however, you would expect the ratio of playing time that a backup LF gets compared to a starting LF to be small enough that it wouldn't manipulate the data by a huge margin. Not nearly enough to bump it to a .800+).

 

If you look at qualified LF with 100 PA as a LF, the median OPS is .717, ranging from .535 to 1.015. They don't display the average of the candidates at the bottom, and I really don't feel like calculating it myself, so the median is the best you're going to get out of me tonight.

 

It's strange, and it's something I noticed during my fantasy baseball draft. Outfield has really gone from a position that seemed to have a magnitude of depth to a very shallow position.

 

Agreed. If you expand the numbers to include all outfield positions, the average AL outfielder has a line of 254/325/423.

[Dojji]

We are in agreement that he is not a starter' date=' but a backup. [/quote']

 

Only from the perspective of a team like the Red Sox that tries to have a star caliber player at every position. On a team like the Rays, or on any team in the AL Central, Nava could start.

 

(Well I suppose the Royals do have Alex Gordon, but seriously, look at left field in the Central. A lot of places Nava could play).

[a700hitter]

Only from the perspective of a team like the Red Sox that tries to have a star caliber player at every position. On a team like the Rays, or on any team in the AL Central, Nava could start.

 

(Well I suppose the Royals do have Alex Gordon, but seriously, look at left field in the Central. A lot of places Nava could play).

In 3 years Daniel Nava will not ever sniff the majors again.

[User Name]

http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/team/_/stat/batting/split/83

 

Here are the stats, separated by team, for production from LF in 2012. The league average AL LF is hitting .243/.319/.416 right now. Last year, the league average AL LF hit .250/.310/.392 for a whopping .702 OPS. Now - These numbers are for all players who played LF, and include back ups as well as regulars (however, you would expect the ratio of playing time that a backup LF gets compared to a starting LF to be small enough that it wouldn't manipulate the data by a huge margin. Not nearly enough to bump it to a .800+).

 

I agree with most of your post but disagree with the bolded part. The amount of playing time from backup OF'ers in LF is statistically significant considering the amount of AB's and drop-off from regular to bench player. Maybe not .800+ OPs, but still significant.

 

There's also the fact that guys like Willie Bloomquist and Jerry Hairston, no-bat supersubs who play multiple positions would also be included in the analysis.

[User Name]

Agreed. If you expand the numbers to include all outfield positions' date=' the average AL outfielder has a line of 254/325/423.[/quote']

 

You shouldn't, because Nava can play center, which is also a weaker position offensively than LF and RF, skewing the sample anyway.

[Bellhorn04]

In 3 years Daniel Nava will not ever sniff the majors again.

 

Could be. But if you look through the numbers for starting outfielders around baseball right now, there are an awful lot of guys with OPS's in the 600's and lower - offensive stiffs.

[Dojji]

You shouldn't' date=' because Nava can play center, which is also a weaker position offensively than LF and RF, skewing the sample anyway.[/quote']

 

What? Umm, I'm assuming you mean "can't" play center. If he could play center, he'd be playing center.

[Bellhorn04]

You shouldn't' date=' because Nava can play center, which is also a weaker position offensively than LF and RF, skewing the sample anyway.[/quote']

 

AL center fielders actually have the highest OPS of the three positions right now.

[User Name]

What? Umm' date=' I'm assuming you mean "can't" play center. If he could play center, he'd be playing center.[/quote']

 

Yes.

 

AL center fielders actually have the highest OPS of the three positions right now.

 

I'm aware. But that fluctuates year-to-year. The norm is, however, that CF is the weakest offensive position of the three over large samples.

[SoxFanForsyth]

I agree with most of your post but disagree with the bolded part. The amount of playing time from backup OF'ers in LF is statistically significant considering the amount of AB's and drop-off from regular to bench player. Maybe not .800+ OPs' date=' but still significant.[/quote']

 

Right - It's going to manipulate the data, but like I said, not by a huge margin. Obviously huge is a subjective measurement so I tried to be more specific, i.e. not going to bump the average AL LF OPS to .800. It may be around .755-.765, and even then, that's probably where Nava projects.

 

I mean, in all honesty, is it not realistic to suggest that Nava could be a .265/.360/.395 hitter? His OPS is going to be made up by about 45% to 48% OBP, whereas a guy like Middlebrooks could have an .850 OPS made up of a .280/.310/.540 line where it's almost exclusively SLG. Different strokes for different folks. The problem with judging players by OPS is that you essentially assign an equal distribution of importance on getting on base and slugging, which is not the case.

 

Some teams needs OBP more than SLG, so Nava could be a much better fit for a team like TOR, who has a .310 OBP, but slugs to the tune of a .408 SLG%, or BAL who has a .312 OBP, but slugs .439. Nava would be a very good 2 hole hitter for a team like BAL right now, and would likely start in LF. Baltimore is getting a .283 OBP from their LF right now.

 

He could definitely be a starting LF for some clubs that need a guy who can get on base at an above average clip.

[User Name]

Right - It's going to manipulate the data, but like I said, not by a huge margin. Obviously huge is a subjective measurement so I tried to be more specific, i.e. not going to bump the average AL LF OPS to .800. It may be around .755-.765, and even then, that's probably where Nava projects.

 

I mean, in all honesty, is it not realistic to suggest that Nava could be a .265/.360/.395 hitter? His OPS is going to be made up by about 45% to 48% OBP, whereas a guy like Middlebrooks could have an .850 OPS made up of a .280/.310/.540 line where it's almost exclusively SLG. Different strokes for different folks. The problem with judging players by OPS is that you essentially assign an equal distribution of importance on getting on base and slugging, which is not the case.

 

Some teams needs OBP more than SLG, so Nava could be a much better fit for a team like TOR, who has a .310 OBP, but slugs to the tune of a .408 SLG%, or BAL who has a .312 OBP, but slugs .439. Nava would be a very good 2 hole hitter for a team like BAL right now, and would likely start in LF. Baltimore is getting a .283 OBP from their LF right now.

 

He could definitely be a starting LF for some clubs that need a guy who can get on base at an above average clip.

 

Fair enough.

[SoxFanForsyth]

And yes, I realize that last night I argued that he was a backup OF, but after looking at some more stats, and looking at them a bit deeper than I did last night, I think he would be a good fit for a team like the O's. I'm not saying trade him to the O's. It's strictly for discussion on his value.

[User Name]

Nolan Reimold is, realistically, a better LF option than Nava imo.

[a700hitter]

Could be. But if you look through the numbers for starting outfielders around baseball right now' date=' there are an awful lot of guys with OPS's in the 600's and lower - offensive stiffs.[/quote']He's small. He has no power. He has a weak arm and no speed. He doesn't have major league tools. Without those tools, he will have to get on base at a much higher rate than other OFers to stick in the majors. Those other OFers who you refer to in the 600's and lower who are rosters -- almost all of them will not be in the majors in 3 years if they don't pick up their game. The ones who stick in the majors will have some other asset, e.g, they are either defensive whizzes or they have good speed and can steal a base, etc.

[a700hitter]

And yes' date=' I realize that last night I argued that he was a backup OF, but after looking at some more stats, and looking at them a bit deeper than I did last night, I think he would be a good fit for a team like the O's. I'm not saying trade him to the O's. It's strictly for discussion on his value.[/quote']Keep in mind that the Sox opinion of him was so low that he didn't even merit an invitation to Spring Training. No one would give us a bag of balls for him

[SoxFanForsyth]

Nolan Reimold is' date=' realistically, a better LF option than Nava imo.[/quote']

 

As an overall player? I don't know - maybe a wash. Reimold has more power. Nava destroys him in OBP. Nava would make the Orioles a better team than Reimold right now, I'll tell you that. The O's need OBP, not more high SLG, low OBP players.

[SoxFanForsyth]

Keep in mind that the Sox opinion of him was so low that he didn't even merit an invitation to Spring Training. No one would give us a bag of balls for him

 

I really think that since Nava didn't get here in the traditional, drafted player way, you're always going to hold that over his head rather than actually judge his talent.

 

If a 5th rounder had a career .415 OBP in the minor leagues, you would be screaming at the FO to get him up here.

[User Name]

As an overall player? I don't know - maybe a wash. Reimold has more power. Nava destroys him in OBP. Nava would make the Orioles a better team than Reimold right now' date=' I'll tell you that. The O's need OBP, not more high SLG, low OBP players.[/quote']

 

You need to factor in D, arm and speed too. Reimold is a very good LF'er with a strong arm and above-average (but not base-stealing) speed.

[SoxFanForsyth]

You need to factor in D' date=' arm and speed too. Reimold is a very good LF'er with a strong arm and above-average (but not base-stealing) speed.[/quote']

 

Reimold: LF Career UZR/150: -8.6 (1,627 innings)

 

Nava: LF Career UZR/150: -5.7 (503 innings)

 

They're about a wash in LF, considering SSS for Nava, but like I said, I'm not saying Nava is better than Reimold, just that he fits their needs better than Reimold.

[a700hitter]

I really think that since Nava didn't get here in the traditional, drafted player way, you're always going to hold that over his head rather than actually judge his talent.

 

If a 5th rounder had a career .415 OBP in the minor leagues, you would be screaming at the FO to get him up here.

I am not judging how he got here. I am judging him by his talent. He has no major league skills. He will have to get on base at a much higher rate than other players to have a place in this game. He has been with the organization for some time already. it's not like they just discovered this kid. How he got here is irrelevant at this point. They still didn't think enough of his tools to give him a Spring Training invite this season.

 

It doesn't matter how he got here. He's here now and no one in baseball is impressed. He is with the Sox now because we are down to about plan D on OFers. Mike Piazza was drafted in the 62 round by the Dodgers. At age 29, he was a star. it doesn't matter how you get there. In the end, you will make it to the majors and stick if you have talent. Not getting a Spring Training invitation in 2012 speaks volumes about Nava's standing in the organization. Last year they DFA's him twice, and no one claimed him.

[User Name]

Reimold: LF Career UZR/150: -8.6 (1,627 innings)

 

Nava: LF Career UZR/150: -5.7 (503 innings)

 

They're about a wash in LF, considering SSS for Nava, but like I said, I'm not saying Nava is better than Reimold, just that he fits their needs better than Reimold.

 

Except that Reimold plays in Baltimore, which is definitely a harder park than Fenway's wall, on the other hand, i do see your "how he fits" point.