example1

Whenever there is a phenomenon in baseball that can't be measured adequately, it is too easy to write it off as unimportant or as apparently beneficial, but actually evening out over time. Ellsbury has a unique impact because of his speed. He adds a different element than most other players that isn't reflected in his WARP or OBP or OPS. We've spent years watching guys like Carl Crawford and Chone Figgins bring a different skillset and they always seem to be causing trouble or coming in handy. Ellsbury looks much more comfortable at the plate than he did the first quarter of the season. He could definitely be a very important player in a short, closely contested playoff series

So, Kilo, where's this thing at, anyway? It's been almost a month.

Here's what you're basically saying: The playoffs for the Tigers could be one game, in a 5 game series they could be swept 3 games. He has one chance to be the guy who "pitched very well all year" but he hasn't pitched tremendously for quite awhile. He has a 6.12 ERA in September, and a 5.20 ERA between August and September. He's a decent pitcher, but he's still pretty young and the Yankees have a fantastic offense. I don't take it for granted that he'll pitch as well in Yankee stadium in October as he did against Baltimore in May.

With the amount of $$ it would obviously take to sign Martinez, Mauer, Bay (or replacement Bay) and probably Beckett, that 3rd catcher would be one of Kottaras, Exposito, Federowicz, Lavarnway, Wagner, etc., I have absolutely no doubt about that. If V-Mart and Mauer can start 75% of games then the best of the homegrown guys will be fine.

Verlander is a threat, Jackson has yet to show he can do it in the biggest games.

The thing about A-Gon that has been impressive to me offensively is merely that he is consistently making contact. Frankly I couldn't care less about whether he hits .300 right now. He just needs to not look overwhelmed, occasionally move a runner over or get a pitcher to throw pitches, hit a sac fly or bunt if it comes down to it, etc.,. He simply needs to come through by doing the least amount possible to not completely be harmful to this team and he will be fine for them moving forward. Defensively he seems to step up to make plays when he absolutely has to. I think the difference between he and Nick Green is significant defensively, as Gonzalez seems to make the more difficult and impactful plays if given a choice. Pedroia does the same thing. We see a lot of Pedroia ranging toward 1B and still making the long throw back to get the lead runner--sometimes even the middle runner--at 2B. Aggressive defensive plays like this statistically increase the team's chances of winning and clearly give the pitcher more confidence while reducing the number of "stress pitches" with RISP. For whatever reason, Gonzalez just plays more like a "professional" shortstop than a lot of other SS have with the Red Sox lately. To me, the shortstop needs to be the most self-assured and confident fielder in the infield. With Lowell, Pedroia and Youkilis on the infield already, that's a pretty tall order, but it is a reasonable expectation for a team with as many resources as the Sox. Gonzalez isn't that guy longterm, but he does play like that now. Orlando Cabrera brought the same sense to the Sox defense in 2004 and it changed them considerably. The stats don't always back up the value of their plays, but the impact is immediately present.

After 2010. I think there's a good chance MN keeps him, to be honest. I think otherwise he will have to be traded, and the Sox would need to land him to see if they could resign him longer term (a la Santana). Mauer is a hero in Minnesota. He was a HS football and baseball star in St. Paul and they were more than thrilled to draft him. They are opening a new park next year and I'm sure they would love to have a franchise marquee player to build around. It probably won't be Justin Morneau. That said, at $20m he would be about 30% of their payroll.

I (for one) feel it would be more useful to just give an explanation about why batting average or OBP are useless/useful, rather than sending people all over the place when someone asks a question. I would think that coming to a board like this and asking is just as good a way to find out as any. :dunno:

Dipre is right. Batting average isn't a great statistic to look at. OBP tells you all that you thought you were finding out by looking at batting average, plus some other stuff. The offensive goal for teams like the red sox is not to get HITS. The goal is to not make outs. The team has 27 outs to 'spend' throughout the game. OBP is ones ability to not make outs. Batting Average is merely a representation of some percentage of struck balls that do not make outs. OBP represents plate control and discipline. AVG includes good hits and s***** hits, half-errors, etc., It isn't just a matter of opinion by people on these boards that AVG is a less than useful stat. It is pretty much conventional wisdom around baseball that AVG is overrated.

And in the future. CC is good, but Burnett is a #3 at best, Joba looks really bad, Pettitte is old and not intimidating in any way (no better than a #4) and Mitre isn't an MLB pitcher except for a team with an offense like the Yankees' offense. I imagine that this offseason they'll get right back into the "expensive FA pitcher with questionable stuff" market that they managed to get themselves out of the past few years. Joba doesn't look like a good starter.

The Yankees pitching is pretty bad right now though. Joba got hit hard again today.

I think this reminds me a lot of 2004. Yankees took a big lead and it slowly disappeared over the last few weeks of the season while the Sox were paying more attention to the wild card. The Sox are also performing roughly at their pythag record and the Yanks are outperforming theirs. I suspect that the Yankees will win at least one game in their Sox series and so the lead will not be jeopardized. Long story short, the Sox will remind everyone that they're still a force to be reckoned with but the Yankees will win the division because they're a good team with a good lead.

I'm not sure what the defensive metrics say, but Gonzalez is clearly a more confident fielder and his confidence seems to have positively impacted the pitching staff and rest of the team. Unlike with Green, I feel confident moving into the playoffs with him as this team's SS.

I think we should all expect that Tek will play in a few playoff games... at least one in the first series and (god willing) more in subsequent series. Tito's style is to mix the lineup up, even when it makes none of us happy. Mirabelli started game 4 against the Guardians in the 07 ALCS, and Bobby Kielty started game 5. Tek will play and it won't be the end of the world.

It's funny. I half-heartedly suggested this reason the other night, but I wasn't very serious about it. I haven't heard Tito address it. Until then we just don't know.

Yeah, I don't expect you to read all of my blather above, but I used the weighted dice analogy above too. I also mentioned above that I mistook crapshoot to have been argued as completely random. Your explanation is similar to my line of thinking, though I think that a loss in a 7 game series shouldn't always be attributed to luck.

The Yankees have won nearly 64% of their games this year, and 73% in the second half. I'm not willing to say that they have the same chance of winning as the Rockies or the Tigers, even in a short series. I think a big part of my confusion in this discussion might be the use of the word "crapshoot", as the definition of that (slang) word means basically "unpredictable". I have taken that to mean "completely random" (like rolling dice). The way many others are using it is that any results are possible. I acknowledge this is the case also. In terms of the Yankees, if they don't win this year it is a big choke and a huge failure. I'm not willing to project into the future and attribute it to bad luck, just like I'm not going to say that the Tigers losing to the Yankees in the first round would be "bad luck". They will have lost to the better team.

That's called choking, not crap shooting. Let's call it what it is.

What's your take on the "crapshoot" discussion? I'm curious. EDIT: I think it is a useful term and an interesting discussion, but it should not be confused with "complete randomness" when evaluating who should win (or should have won) the World Series. If teams are more or less equally balanced throughout the regular season and in terms of talent, then it really is just a bunch of short series to see who is playing the best at that time. If one team has a huge lead over other very good teams, has dominated for most of the season and spends nearly twice what everyone else does, that team should be expected to do more than just show up for a coin flip. I think history shows that there are times when some teams are just better, both in the playoffs and regular season. The Yankees of the 90s and the 30s both took that form and backed up their talent gap by winning when it mattered. Good teams do that. EDIT 2: This years Yankees team is not one of the middle of the pack competitive teams for the WS IMO. They added a huge amount of talent to an already very talented team and they haven't had a problem turning that into wins.

It is, by itself, a good indicator of overall offensive and defensive prowess, which is what teams are really all about. It is predictive of overall results in any particular year throughout the history of baseball.

Because one mistake can cost a team a series? No. One mistake doesn't cost a team a series unless they're in the position to lose that series with only one mistake. If the Yankees don't win the WS because they lose on a balk in the 7th game against the Rockies then it won't be the balk that put them in a position to lose. The Yankees won in 98, 99, and 2000. They were the best team in each of those years and they stepped up and won the games they should have won. We can address 10 years ago if you would prefer. A crapshoot implies randomness. It isn't random. If it were then the Vegas odds makers would say that all playoff teams have the same chance of winning once the playoffs start. Let's check in at playoff time and see if the big-boy money guys put equal odds on the Rockies and the Yankees. Yes, it is a shorter season and the games need to be played. That doesn't make it an unpredictable crapshoot.

The playoffs are not a complete crapshoot. That is a phrase that people take from "Moneyball", where Beane used it as a way of describing why he would prefer to build his team for the regular season rather than the playoffs. All the stuff about "things evening out" applies to the regular season, so teams that build themselves around OBP or scoring runs will eventually score their runs. If the playoffs were truly a crapshoot then there would be no way to explain the championships the Yankees won in the 30's or the 90's. They won four in a row in the 30's. Instead, everyone knew they were the best team and they played like it. Likewise, it isn't a crapshoot if Josh Beckett comes out and dominates the Rockies in the World Series, or if CC does the same thing. It also isn't a crapshoot if a team sweeps another team (Sox in 04 and 07). When you're up 3-0 in the series it doesn't matter who runs the bases poorly or well, the team up 3-0 will usually win. I think it is time to put this "crapshoot" idea to rest. It is cute and is a nice explanation for teams that are relatively equal in terms of talent. But if the Yankees lose in the World Series to the Dodgers or the Rockies then the crapshoot theory will hold no water. It's a 7 game series, the Yankees depth and talen tshould absolutely win out.