sk7326

There are no do-it-all stats, and why should there be? WAR is an attempt to measure everything a baseball player does ... now doing that is HARD, so it makes sense that fangraphs and baseball reference use different inputs - some of this stuff is hard to measure, so you do the best you can. So - to an above point, yes - it means that: 1. There is some significant margin of error. I would never use a 0.3 win difference in WAR to say Player A had a better season than Player B. But a 2 win difference is more meaningful. 2. It is a counting stat - so often it reward durability - which should be rewarded 3. I tend to be a little more suspicious of WAR built on the back of defensive parts. We know those metrics have a higher range of error than the offensive stuff. It doesn't mean it is false - but I think measuring run creation is more solid than run prevention (non-pitching) 4. I tend to use WAR - in terms of saying who is the MVP for instance - to get the list of nominees. Then you go into more detailed stuff.

Baserunning shows up in WAR. Now, negative plays for the most part are negative plays. Hitting the ball to the right side is something you can look for - but you'd rather get on base in all but a very select number of cases

it does - but does it account for it quite enough - (anecdotally) it has seemed hard for a LF to score well

I am speculating of course. Sorry to imply otherwise. But it is one of the realities with stocking your farm - while finding arms is super important, the volatility is higher too.

I do think there is evidence that odd-shaped outfields do impact UZR - Fenway LF for instance I think confounds the measurements a little bit. (there are just many fewer "out creation" chances with the monster)

What they knew was that Espinoza was 18 ... so there is a large range of outcomes, where arm health figures prominently. The defensible part of the trade (I was not fan because of a Top 20 sort of prospect should get more imo) is that pitchers are larger health risks in general. I am reading "The Arm" presently - there is just so much teams don't know about arm maintenance at that age.

Breathe. Nobody has earned anything. I think in reality this is all shuffling deck chairs while management figures out if it wants to take plunge with Devers.

In the playoffs - absolutely. And remember, Francona nodded that way anyway. He was liberal in his use of Foulke and Papelbon in their title chases. I am not sure if it is necessarily sustainable over a regular season. I mean, could you have a pitcher who goes 100 innings over 45-50 appearances? Sure. But the way pens are used these days - I am not sure a manager wants to not be able to go to Miller on back to back days for instance. The relief ace thing is about matching your best reliever to the situation where it will help the team most - and often that is not the 9th. Hell, Farrell has been significantly more liberal with Kimbrel's usage - so I do think the idea is taking hold, but stuff moves slowly.

Given that bWAR and fWAR use different defensive metrics - but have pretty close replacement player definitions and offensive measurement definitions ... a spread there is probably your best estimator.

It's a sunk cost. At the same time, nobody has created separation there either. So - a rotation makes sense on some level. Ultimately, players make these decisions.

He's been okay - and yes good for a 5th starter. And his strikeout ability portends to better results being inside there. Waiting is annoying - but the evidence was always in favor of the team turning the corner on its own.

He is terrific. This is stuff Bobby Cox and Earl Weaver also had down too.

There has been a lot written since this - so I am going to try to address more than just the quoted point ... 1. The manager is the press guy. That takes up a decent chunk of time - and in Boston more than that. Would it be better to have a trained press guy doing the day to day - possibly in isolation, but it clearly would be poor for the customer relationship. Fans want that connection to the club every day, and so someone who is in the dugout is best served to do it. 2. There are a non-baseball demands which have to be worked. Community relations, marketing, the people who get photos onto things, NESN spots. There are more stakeholders who want a piece of the players - and the players still have their actual work to do. So the manager has to help facilitate that stuff. 3. How do you optimize performance? Now, there is a ton of publicly available information (obviously) about stuff players do - and heartfelt attempts to measure them. The org probably has proprietary versions of all of these - and do things with Pitch F/X data which we'll never know. There are also the advance scouts who are sending intel back on tonight's opponent. All of these functions are theoretical inputs into performance. I mean, knowing all this stuff helps - but how does that get translated into stuff that the player and manager can use. That is a big piece - processing lots of data (or more accurately, somebody else's analyses) - into actionable stuff. 4. What is the goal of the organization? Now, who doesn't want to go 162-0? But there are 83 win seasons which don't move the org forward, and there was 65 win seasons that do. That's the managers job too, no? Putting the management's plan and goals (hopefully the manager has some input here) into action. The best example is seeing how hopeless Pedroia looked in a 2006 callup - and then having management decide "he's gonna do this" and Francona not pulling the Alex Cora lever hyperactively. (of course Pedroia had to have rewarded that) 5. The in-game decisions are significant obviously - but I reckon you're basically looking at a decision tree which has been plotted out fairly comprehensively beforehand. If some situation occurs at some point in the game, we'll do this. The manager is not executing this robotically - but yeah, most of the decisions made in a game are not interesting, and fairly obvious. Managing a pitching staff (especially during the season) is probably the most obvious tactical thing a manager does - especially balancing the goal of tonight (Win) vs the longer term (say, why don't we pitch Sale on 2 days rest??).

Life with having options. It was evocative of the 2007 Buchholz no-no ... a burst of sunshine coming out of nowhere

they could not have gotten more for him. i suspect he will be here for a longer haul soon enough.

if you keep generating baserunners - at some point you will sequence them correctly

oh i don't know. it's more like a boss in a real job. Managing assignments, removing obstacles for getting the work done - fostering a good atmosphere, supervising the assistant coaches, communicating with the C-level folks. That is a lot more than a babysitter can do.

Bradley - yes ... although this is the JBJ exprience. There will be a month he will turn into Mike Trout at the plate ... I am zen with this being the reality Panda? Who knows - the good thing is we got zilch from 3B last year - so any improvement will be striking.

The Sox production at catcher is fine - and realistically the option of Swihart could open up later in the year if he has satisfied their goals defensively and Vasquez turns into a pumpkin. (which I am not predicting - but is a fair thing to be bearish on)

Porcello is not as good as the 2016 model - and not as bad as the 2015 1st half version. In some ways, this is what he is (albeit a slightly below median outcome) - guy whose value comes more from inning eating than dominance. Not that he is in reality a bad pitcher - he's not ... but the value is more in churning a lot of "decent-pretty good" ... certainly in bulk more than enough to justify his contract,

John McNamara was an awful manager. Hell, Ned Yost made back to back WS doing a lot of suboptimal things.

There are managers who do help their team (Bochy, Francona, Maddon, a couple others) ... and a few who actively hurt their team (those Matt Williams seasons in Washington, Dusty Baker). The rest are in the middle. Farrell was crucial in 2013 when the Red Sox just needed a normal human being to occupy that position after the Bobby Valentine season. The most direct impact he can have is managing the staff - and while how he has managed relievers has not had amazing results, I am not sure the raw material has been great either. At least this year he seems to have a reliable back of the pen.

The strategy thing is a weird claim. Strategy on the offensive end is mostly bunk anyway. Indeed - the only reason the 2009 Yankees lost games at all in the postseason was because Girardi managed the team like a cellar dwelling NL club.

Shaw got off to a nice start last year too - he is still more likely to turn into a pumpkin than continue this. The Sox got nothing out of 3B last season, and that has persisted this season. Fourtunately, they won 95 last year with zippo from that position.

He averaged fewer than 6 innings a start - the bullpen never got relief in his outings.