sk7326
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Everything posted by sk7326
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Honestly - and this won't happen ... I'd go 11 pitchers and possibly add a Rusney Castillo for a pinch runner and a reserve outfielder who can provide some solid defense.
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Yes and no - movement is not a thing generally with a four-seamer ... but there are differences in backspin - and some subtle movement, and of course you add general deception. There is a reason that Joe Kelly's or Eovaldi's four seamers have never gotten much swing and miss. For me, the two seamer, the cutter and the slider are just "degrees" of fundamentally the same pitch with relatively similar grips.
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Replacement value is ALSO a calculated result. Really what position player WAR is doing is taking all of the building blocks of offense and defense and converting their value into runs. Then the runs are turned into wins. A replacement player is contributing the runs added associated with basically that 43 win Tigers team. The idea is that if you just randomly picked a team of AAAA sort of guys, they would be a 43-119 sort of team. And conceptually it makes sense. A team does not have ready access to an average major league ballplayer. They DO have ready access to Tzu-Wei Lin, or a Rick Lancellotti or a Dan Butler. THAT is what you'd actually be doing if you had to replace a player right now.
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But have the betting favorites still finished in the money at all? This could easily just be a random cold streak. Past performance guarantees nothing - but past performance can inform probability of stuff happening. That's all statistics (the academic discipline, not simply listing of box score data) is: Given past performance, what is likely?
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LOL (in case this wasn't snark) ... assuming a bell curve, this was decidedly a better than average outcome for his season. That said I think an "average" outcome for him this season was still pretty good.
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Given how reliever-centric the sport is now - it is not that surprising that bullpens are facing serious attrition problems. Where I fret about the Sox is how hard they have leaned on relievers, especially with that #4 and #5 spot in the rotation. Rodriguez when he has pitched has been outstanding, but like Pomeranz last year, was still not getting deep into games. I expect the expanded rosters will help take some pressure off.
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I think this is definitely a right tailed outcome for him - though there was no doubt he would be a 30 HR sort of guy for the early part of the contract. The question with his contract was health and the aging curve for guys like him (see Pujols, who is actually a better athlete) - if bat speed goes, there is not much of a ballplayer there. That said, the early part of the contract looked promising - and both sides should end up really happy with that.
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What I like about him at 9th is that it improves the chance of having a baserunner around for Betts to do something ...
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The bullpen has also been seriously taxed with the inability of the back end starters to give innings - even Rodriguez who has been outstanding. The bullpen needed the roster expansion badly. Barnes has suffered - but a lot of that could be fixed just by having help besides Brasier.
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it is clear the Red Sox are slow-walking some of these injuries ... it's a spoil of having 90 wins before the end of August
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If it s a blowout, Leon should just employ the Crash Davis approach to that.
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True - although Betts was the best DRS outfielder in the bigs the last 2 seasons by a really wide margin. I am not sure the other guys as good as they were - were on the same level. Also I think playing in KC vs Fenway is a help there - there are just so many more chances to make plays. One of UZR's weaknesses are odd shape outfields. I mean, Fenway LFs have graded poorly for years ... sometimes it's on merit, but I think there are just very few chances to make OOZ plays. Almost any non-routine or line drive is hitting the wall.
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WAR is the dumbest stat known to mankind (Trout vs. Betts)
sk7326 replied to kenmeister's topic in Boston Red Sox Talk
Personally, I tend to use fWAR more as far as making inferences about the future ... they try to control for things which are (in part) lucky. I prefer bWAR for stuff like awards - the normalization is a bit more grounded in things which actually happened. (like how bWAR starts with runs allowed for pitchers, as opposed to FIP) And for pitchers, they seem to be more precise in normalizing for the lineups the pitcher actually faced. -
Are PawSox games hurt by the Red Sox (or the Worcester Whatevers)? Note that the Durham Bulls are a Rays affiliate. If the Rays moved closer it might benefit everybody.
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It's the major American hub on the East Coast ... flying there is a non-issue
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Well naturally it would be Charlotte or somewhere in the Triangle. I think San Antonio or Austin (who could draw fans from both places being only an hour and half apart) is a natural. San Jose has wanted the A's (and vice versa) for years but the anti trust exemption has blocked it.
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It motivated doing it - but without willing cities and large expansion fees it'd have not happened. 32 teams, 4 divisions - 12 games in the division, 9 out of the division, 6 interleague games. It's a more balanced schedule - 135 of the teams 162 games are identical in each league. Division winners make it, 4 wild cards otherwise. Two wild card games. Elimination games are awesome, and we should have more of them.
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WAR is the dumbest stat known to mankind (Trout vs. Betts)
sk7326 replied to kenmeister's topic in Boston Red Sox Talk
My defense of numbers guys is "I love baseball so much I am doing dorky math stuff about it". It is complementary to the eye stuff. And it gives me some perspective since of course just watching the Sox means my opinions are skewed in both directions. That Jackson catch becomes exponentially more impressive with the wide angle view and you saw just how far he ran and tracked that. -
I suspect he is also hurt by having an outstanding defender next to him ... there are just not as many plays as other CFs might get.
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Andruw was just phenomenal. He was the hardest omission on my pretend HoF ballot. His career just fell off a cliff after age 30. He also suffered from being a prodigy - starring in the WS as a 19 year old - so whatever very goodness he achieved always left you wanting.
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I am very much for the Rays and A's moving. The A's have wanted to go to San Jose for years while the territorial monopoly issues have held it back. Personally 32 teams makes a lot of logistical things much easier ...
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WAR is the dumbest stat known to mankind (Trout vs. Betts)
sk7326 replied to kenmeister's topic in Boston Red Sox Talk
Of course not - Baseball America is using its own assessment (and probably cross checking with the metrics) Also of course the metrics are largely range based - which does shortchange someone who has an exceptional throwing arm. Bradley I suspect is shortchanged by the metrics for having a similarly superb player to his left. (Betts who has lapped the field in DRS in RF the last 2 seasons) Bradley is an exceptional defender who has made some of the most amazing plays I have ever seen in CF. (for the record, that Austin Jackson catch last year was the best catch I've ever seen made at Fenway) -
WAR is the dumbest stat known to mankind (Trout vs. Betts)
sk7326 replied to kenmeister's topic in Boston Red Sox Talk
My rules of thumb have been 1) don't get hung up on fractions of wins when comparing players, 2) be skeptical of WAR built on defense or heavy platooning -
The population is larger - the baseball playing population is larger. Growing the game is a good thing - that doesn't really get accomplished via contraction or whatever. You can fix the inequity you mention by just having a more balanced schedule. (I'd do 12 teams in division, 9 games cross division and 6 interleague).
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WAR is the dumbest stat known to mankind (Trout vs. Betts)
sk7326 replied to kenmeister's topic in Boston Red Sox Talk
No need to apologize. WAR IS FLAWED - so is everything else. WAR gets closer to an all-in-one approximation of overall player value than anything else publicly available (teams probably are making their own more precise versions of it) ... that's all. Now - it is silly for us to EXPECT that there would be a unified "stat" which would be 100% accurate. There would be no need for player evaluation if that were true! But if you look at 17% (if that's what you want) ... that means you can take everybody within a win or so Jose Ramirez' 8 and put them in the MVP soup ... and that's pretty good. Personally, with regards to awards and such - I think WAR is useful for identifying the tiers ... and then you have to dive further after that.