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There was also a stat called Total Average that’s rarely used but incorporated SB and CS, but it never caught on…

I don’t think it’s fair for sacrifices. But sac flies not being at bats will never make sense to me. And really, the entire name of “sacrifice fly” feels inaccurate. It makes it sound like the hitter is willingly hitting a fly ball deep enough to drive in a runner but not too deep so as to land for a hit. Is the hitter really sacrifice himself here. I’d bet more sac flies are the product of happenstance than attempts to purposefully fly out deep enough to drive in a run. (And why only on a run-scoring play? It is too ponder. Fly out and a runner scores from third? No at bat. Fly out and the runner advances from 2nd to 3b? You’re 0 for 1…

OPS doesn’t treat hit and walks equally. OBP does but SLG doesn’t. I think my conceptual stat would but it’s a fixable flaw…

I've see proposals like that for new statistics. My main flaw with OPS is that it is not quantifiable. Like, if one player has an OPS of .700 and one has an OPS of .900, what does that mean, bedsides the .900 is better? Re-arranging the ratio of OBP to SLG does not fix this flaw. Really, one thing that might help is a new statistic calculated by Total Bases/PA. Or better yet, (Total Bases + Walks + HBP)/PA. Sort of like OPS, but without the lack of a common denominator. I think I will call it HE, or Hitter Efficiency. Although I am open to better names

I’d rather see Devers at 1b than Casas. If one of those two had to be traded (which isn’t the case), I’d prefer it be Casas…

At least the range comes close to doubling and there’s a greater difference between success and failure. No stat really separates hitters like OPS when it comes to range between bad and good.. But as OPS is not quantifiable, then SLG is an underrated stat IMO…

But the point is they also do not differ by all that much. That was always the point here, that we take miniscule ranges we would ignore in many other facets of life and blow them up like they are enourmous. Even you spent the last few days arguing from a perspective of total hits and trying to install the greater numbers. Why? I find it hard to believe you did not see the initial point and struggled with the concept that 28% - 22% = 6%. And if I started to get into how every team in baseball wins between 40% and 60% of their games (or falls slightly outside that range), where would you take it? The point is we watch a game where every hitter is successful between 20% and 30% of the time, and we trat the high end like it is massively different than the low end. Even you yourself just said "much more valuable". Heck, you even said "it takes a lot of skill" to hit .300. Know what else takes a lot of skill? Hitting .200. Sure, it's not as impressive, but it's not some throw-away either. I know all this and see all this and don't try to artificially inflate differences between hitters, and even I value the .300 hitter more than the .200. Even though the difference is not great. I know how significantly each run affects ERA, but I still value the lower ERA. Although a lot of these miniscule differecens are actually why I have turned to other stats, too...

No, the delta shows how we magnify small differences in baseball. The difference between a .220 hitter and a .320 really is only 10 hits in 100 at bats (and 10 hits in 100 at bats is 10 percent!!!!). The difference between a 3.50 ERA and a 4.50 ERA is 17 earned runs over 150 innings. But we lol at the lower players like they’re incapable and the treat the better ones like stars. And there is a huge irony in you accusing me of being incapable of admitting I’m wrong (mvp called me out on things like 3 times yesterday. Maybe more. I made comical excuses but that’s a form of copping to them. The relative difference is meaningless. A .280 hitter named Player A might be 27% better than a .220 hitter named Player B, if you like. But what does that mean? The likelihood of Player A getting a hit is still only 6% greater than Player B getting one (assuming batting averages are accurate predictors). Spin how you want and sell it to who believes you, but that’s not going to make Player A’s average 0.27 better than Player B’s…

That’s because it’s Bellhorn being Bellhorn, like when he refused to admit the difference between “only” and “first”…

I’d gladly take the package to Sox received for Betts over the one the Marlins received for Miguel Cabrera…

I know. How dumb to think something that happens 32 times out of 100 happens 10 times more than something that happens 22 times out of 100! True or false: a .320 hitter gets hits in 10% more of his at bats than a .220 hitter…

I believe “A Boy Named Sue” was written by Shel Silverstein…

A .280 hitter is successful 28% of the time. A .220 hitter is successful 22% of the time. That’s NOT 6%? If a .220 hitter was successful in 6% more of hit at bats, what would his average be?

What’s the difference between 28% and 22%? Key word - difference. I know what you’re saying but you’re misapplying it to the point. A batting average is already a percentage. As in out of 100. Looking at it from a perspective of at bats, not hits. If a player has 100 at bats and gets 22 hits, he hits .220 (or 22%) If he was successful 6 more times out of those same 100 at bats, he hits .280 (28%) If the odds in a casino game go from 1 in 10 to 2 in 10, while the odds have increased by 100%, but the percentage of total players who win still only increases by 10%…

Stop. I didn’t say “better”; I said “more often”. A .280 hitter is credited with a hit in 28% of his at bats. A .220 hitter is credited with a hit in 22% of his at bats. Therefore the difference is 28% - 22%, which equals 6%. And over the any number of at bats, the .280 hitter will be credited with hits 6% more frequently than the .220 hitter. What you’re calculating is how many more bits the .280 will have when both have the same number of at bats, which is actually not real useful. (A batting average is already a ratio; why are you comparing ratios?)

Some with as many as 9 members…

I remember Mike Lowell talking about how tough it was to switch leagues. The better pitchers you usually had an inkling about, but the problems came from all these guys that you never heard of before…

No, but there is a lengthy history with tens of thousands of precedents predicting he will decline. Now, how far he declines is one part of it, and would he still have been worth his rather lofty salary is another…

Somewhere on a Tampa Rays forum somewhere on the net, there’s a thread titled “Those Pesky Red Sox Won’t Go Away.” They’re the defending AL champs. We’re drafting 4th. We’re the pests here…

Sometimes these spikes players have are just lucky breaks. There’s not much difference between a .220 hitter and a .280 hitter (3 hits in 50 at bats) but if a career .220 hitter starts hitting .280, then questions arise about what’s different. Is he cheating? Did he re-tool his swing? Maybe he is just getting lucky 6% more often?

Most likely. And really, he is the #9 hitter. By #9 hitter standards, he’s pretty dangerous…

Very true. There is a big difference between Doug Frobel (6'4" maybe 50-60 lbs?) and Jonathan Broxton (6'4", eats meal larger than Doug Frobel)

Gonzalez, Chavis, Hernandez, Vazquez, Munoz, and the guy I'd like to see go there - Devers.

Fagnraphs touched on that earlir this year. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/matt-barnes-one-simple-trick/ But a lot of fans see a player improve or have a career year, and the assumption is cheating. A lot of times, the difference between a career year and a normal year just isn't as big as many think...

Pitching and defense. Everyone needs pitching. Boston needs people who can field, as well. Dalbec can be demoted or traded. This team has a few people who can handle first. Also, I’m really coming around on Kike as full time CF. I’m fine with Arroyo at 2b. I had some questions about him before the season. He’s done a great job answering them…