S5Dewey

Four words SOLID. UP. THE. MIDDLE.

The more I hear these big numbers for Mookie being thrown around the more is sounds Pedroia-esque to me. We signed Pedey to a long term contract and now people are asking themselves, "What were we doing???" because Pedey is now injured (Thanks, Manny! Ugh) and we still have that contract on the books. I'm not predicting an injury. Even without an injury isn't it realistic to think that Mookie will be past his prime in 10 years and we'll be stuck with his contract? And we'll be complaining about it like we're now complaining about Pedroia and his contract.

For some the regular season is all about physical talent with others believing it's about physical talent + the human element. For some the playoffs are a crapshoot. For others the playoffs are a combination of luck, physical talent + the human element. For some, "Oversimplification is us".

I think that depends on how bad you want the team to be during the reset.

Wait a minute! At what point did moving JDM to 1st base get rejected because Jose Offerman was a bad 1B-man?

You're not...at all. This may be the mother of all no-brainers. JDM is pleading to play defense and the Sox need a first baseman. If you look back through my old posts I've always been an advocate of being strong defensively up the middle and if you have to give up defense to get power do it at the corner positions. As early as a year ago I was wondering why they didn't give JDM a 1st baseman's glove and say to him, "Here. Learn how to use it during the off season". He may not be a GG'er at 1B but he's playing defense every day. he's happy and we still have him in the lineup. What's the downside?

I'm just sitting back quietly listening to the chatter about all the reasons they're going to either non-tender JBJ or trade him so I can smile happily when April comes and he's still on the roster. Sure, they may have to pay him $10M to keep him next year and they can likely sign someone who's cheaper but at the same time you often get what you pay for and the FO knows it. Logic says he stays unless, of course, you think that those GG Cf'ers with an OPS of >.700 grow on trees and they're everywhere.

soo.... you're saying that those folks who are rating every defensive play to determine defensive skills to calculate dWAR have all those traits, right?

Are you familiar with "trickledown"?

Anecdotal evidence! (But I will admit there's the possibility that the personality of those two has a lot to do with how their accomplishments are viewed). LOL

It's nice to know that someone else thinks like I do. Maybe that's why I think stats are overrated.

Aw, c'mon. That's semantics. You know as well as I do that some posters here present statistics as being "true value". Let's not get all wrapped up on how they phrase it.

Now that we've established that it is their ability to "handle situations", why is it so difficult to think that there's a difference between the ... say... top 20% of MLB players and everyone else in their ability to handle those situations. And isn't how they handle situations pretty much the definition of 'clutch'? BTW, to be plain, I'm not saying that something magical happens at the 21st %..it's a sliding scale.

I'm copying and pasting this from my recent post: "That's an over-reliance on statistics, but it's brought on by the 'stat geeks' insisting that the stats always represent a player's true worth - and the lemmings buying into it." While it's possible that Anderson was favored by facing pitchers with a higher WHIP - but at the same time it's equally as possible that the reverse is true and he faced pitchers with a lower WHIP. We don't know. It's a great example of why I don't blindly accept statistics. IMO they serve a purpose as an indicator but so does the oft- maligned eye test. (See: our discussion of JBJ & UZR). Neither is perfect. There's room for both. And at the end of the day why does it matter? It's baseball. Let's not make it as much fun as doing our taxes.

This isn't a swipe at anyone here, but I find it mind-boggling that anyone who's ever played or coached sports at any level could believe that momentum, clutch, and 'chock' don't exist.

Now there's an "interesting" spin! In an absolute statistical way you're right but in the real world the flaw is in the way it's presented as JBJ's true ability to chase down batted baseballs. It's 'honest' but disingenuous. Most people would look at JBJ's UZR and say, "Hmm... I thought he was better than that. Oh well, the stats say he's not so he must not be." That's an over-reliance on statistics, but it's brought on by the 'stat geeks' insisting that the stats always represent a player's true worth - and the lemmings buying into it.

No. Do you? That's why I'm willing to say that things like momentum and clutch have value as do statistics. However, every time i verbalize that I'm met with a 'brick wall' of statistics and the cry of "anecdotal evidence". Now you tell me who has the biases.

Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner!!!

It wasn't intended to be passive-aggressive at all. I still think it's a good question. If I were to walk into a Yankees bar and start extolling the virtues of the Boston Red Sox I'd expect to get a lot of pushback. I'd even expect some of it to be physical - which is a very good reason why I wouldn't do it! But if I did I wouldn't whine about it. I'd have known what I was getting into when I walked in the door.

This raises an interesting question. Can a Red Sox fan troll a Yankees fan on a Red Sox board? Or does that Yankees fan have to know that his allegiance is going to provoke a certain amount of animosity just by his being here - and be willing to quietly accept it?

By all means. What we need to account for the human element is more statistics.

"but at the same time remember that we stat geeks value the human element in a game".

Why were you joking? That kid has been playing baseball all his life and suddenly he knows that he may be blowing his chance to be a MLB player. That's pressure... or to put it another way... "high leverage". Just because a situation doesn't fit Fangraph's definition of 'high leverage' it doesn't mean that the player doesn't have a lot of pressure on him.

While I do appreciate the tutorial, at the same time at least we agree that "high leverage" is an undefined term.

I know that Fangraph's has their definition of 'high leverage' but I'm not at all sure it pertains to the topics of clutch and choke. Only the player can determine whether he feels that he's in a 'high leverage situation' and it's how a player responds to that feeling that determines clutch.. or choke, for that matter. Besides,not all 'high leverage' situations are created equal. For example, a rookie player who's 0-for-22 and knows he's on the verge of being sent down may think each at- bat is a 'high leverage' situation because... for him - it is! Does Fangraphs take that into consideration? There are also different degrees of 'high leverage'. If David Ortiz is at bat in the 9th inning with a runner on base and behind by a run in the regular season as 'high leverage' as Papi in that same situation if it's the 7th game of the WS? I know that 'they' are trying to quantify everything but IMHO there are some things, some parts of a game, that just aren't quantifiable because they deal with a player's emotions and neither Fangraphs or anyone else knows what's going through that player's mind.