*gasps* Mark McGwire used steroids? NO WAY! :rofl:
MLB 2010 Thread
- Thread starter shayd
- Start date
This UZR is completely bogus.
Jacoby Ellsbury's UZR is -18.3 at CF in 2009.
Brett Gardner's UZR is +15.4 at CF in 2009.
Nick Swisher's UZR is -1.2 in RF in 2009.
Nick Swisher is a disaster waiting to happen every ball hit into right field.. to say he only lets up 1 more run than the average RF in a 150 game season is almost laughable. Then you look at it even further and say that while Brett Gardner saves 15 more runs than the average CF per 150 games, Jacoby Ellsbury is oh-so-terrible that he is prone to letting in 18 more runs than the average?
There are definite kinks in this equation and I for one am not buying it.
I'm still sticking with the eyeball test. Theo Epstein and his band of merry mathematicians can go suck on a calculator.
Is it safe to say my New York Yankees have the A.L. East on lock down already? I don't see how the Red Sox, Orioles, Blue Jays or Rays can compete. Yankees are one outfielder shy of a complete team, but it's pretty damn good right now.
Seattle and San Francisco for biggest surprises this coming season, even though Seattle is going to be everyone's sexy pick. San Fran picked up some great plate presence over the off-season, which is what they were severely lacking last year.
Jacoby Ellsbury's UZR is -18.3 at CF in 2009.
Brett Gardner's UZR is +15.4 at CF in 2009.
Nick Swisher's UZR is -1.2 in RF in 2009.
Nick Swisher is a disaster waiting to happen every ball hit into right field.. to say he only lets up 1 more run than the average RF in a 150 game season is almost laughable. Then you look at it even further and say that while Brett Gardner saves 15 more runs than the average CF per 150 games, Jacoby Ellsbury is oh-so-terrible that he is prone to letting in 18 more runs than the average?
There are definite kinks in this equation and I for one am not buying it.
I'm still sticking with the eyeball test. Theo Epstein and his band of merry mathematicians can go suck on a calculator.
Is it safe to say my New York Yankees have the A.L. East on lock down already? I don't see how the Red Sox, Orioles, Blue Jays or Rays can compete. Yankees are one outfielder shy of a complete team, but it's pretty damn good right now.
Seattle and San Francisco for biggest surprises this coming season, even though Seattle is going to be everyone's sexy pick. San Fran picked up some great plate presence over the off-season, which is what they were severely lacking last year.
I want to like this guy. He was born on June 3rd, just like me. I have some affinity toward men born on June 3rd (see also my love affair with Al Horford of the Atlanta Hawks).
Here's the thing with Pronk - it's not his health he needs to get back, it's his HGH dealer.
I understand what you're saying. The Cardinals wanted a stopgap is really what is comes down to. Freese could do with another year of AAA before he comes up, but he looks to be a plus defender.
Your statement speaks more to the general lack of understanding of UZR than any weakness in the metric. UZR is actually an accurate measure of defensive ability, it just takes a large sample size to regress to the mean, that is to say, make it meaningful. Saying it's garbage because of one year of the metric is about the most out of context interpretation you can get.
Taking that into account, Swisher career is +0.5 runs in right, which is to say he's average, almost on the dot. Ellsbury career is -3 runs in center, which is pretty close to average as well. Granted, neither is stellar, but neither are liabilities either. Saying that the metric is weak because it fails the "eyeball test" is really a vapid argument. Relying on what you see just means a players worth is what you say it is, regardless of reality, and then it just digresses into your word versus someone elses, which is to say nowhere. UZR, and all of the other metrics are there to objectively categorize players, and without them, talent evaluation is little more than a meaningless argument.
Seattle certainly upgraded, but what did the Giants do that was noteworthy? They may be in the race in the West, but if anything they got worse offensively this offseason. DeRosa will probably be much better than last year, but Huff has declined for four years now.
Huff(2009) - .241/.310/.384
Garko(2009) - .268/.344/.421
Both Bill James and CHONE have Garko projected as being better next year than DeRosa to boot.
SgtMarine
Banned
I have no clue what these mean at all.
You're really barking up a storm here, trusting equations and computers more than what YOUR eyeballs tell YOU. My argument may be flat and lifeless, but at the same time, if you are going to only use computer models and data relationships to "objectively" categorize players, why not just assemble a team, crunch the numbers, compute the outcomes, and hell - we wouldn't even have to play a single game - the data processors would let us know the outcome before it even happened. Analyzing players using computers is vapid as well my friend. God forbid UZR was around before Derek Jeter came into the big leagues.. he may never have gotten a chance because his range didn't fit some "standard". It's a new battle between archaic stats and stats that "mean something" these days but baseball is still ephemeral; that's the true beauty of the sport.
I'm not saying I even know what goes into being a baseball scout or even begin to know what variables are used for UZR, how they are calculated / extracted, and how they are weighed in an all too confusing equation, but baseball players still have to play the game and no matter how easy a fly ball appears to be, you've still got the ability to pull a 2009 postseason Matt Holliday (whose UZR with the Oakland Athletics was a 10.6).
Too many ballplayers who have raked my heart, day in and day out, with their crappy play look like gold-glovers in some of these stats. I'm very wary of computers and the way they are shaping the minds of man; forgive my reluctance to blindly follow mathematics and science.. something about it just doesn't sit well with me.. :crash::crash::crash:
As far as the Giants, I watched Brett Pill play for the Connecticut Defenders all last year (god how I miss the New Haven Ravens). Ryan Garko hit .235 with San Fran. This kid Pill will probably hit .250+ with more pop than than Garko's 2 HRs in 40 games with the Giants. I don't know what they plan to do with DeRosa, Uribe, Pill, Huff and the rest of this mess, but call it a gut feeling they will score more than 657 runs this year.. and another gut feeling that Matt Cain won't go winless in the month of August again.
Maybe 15 if he's lucky? My over/under question is total strikeouts for Mike Cameron and Adrian Beltre combined.. can they reach 275?
HA!!! No one does, that's the brilliance of the UZR!
LOL. I hope he never gets in nor anyone who has been proven to have taken PEDs and is on that list.
Yes.
Or I could just be trusting what can be empirically proven, versus what my eyes tell me.
Where did this "not play a single game" come from? Of course there are going to be fluctuations from game to game, but that speaks to exactly why empiricism is more valuable: you have to have a larger sample size to get the whole picture, which is exactly what these statistics do. There are certainly times where traditional scouting can be used to try to shape the way talent is evaluated, but it's mostly among prospects who haven't had enough time to show what they can do, and after a large enough sample size, it becomes objectively clear.
Who said anything about computers? Why can't facts just be facts? Does something that a human being says intrinsically have more objective value than an empirical fact, regardless of the validity of the persons statement? In the end isn't it just about knowledge, knowing how to evaluate talent versus arguing over who we think is more talented?
See but that's the thing. Jeter was never put on a Major League roster for his defense. There's no argument that he's an elite offensive talent, but he is popularly portrayed by the mainstream media, and a bunch of ignorant (I use that in the factual sense, not as an indictment) fans as a complete player, which is the exact opposite of what his number say. Again, that speaks to why using these metrics behooves those wanting to evaluate a players talent: his career minor league statistics mimic those that he's put up as a pro. If these means of evaluation were available at the time, it would have been easy to predict his success offensively.
Again, sample size, plain and simple. Let's say you chose one person, at random, from the United States, and you asked them to name the 14th President of the United States, and they got it wrong. Would you then assume that they couldn't name any of the Presidents? I'm guessing you wouldn't, because that's just one small sample of that persons knowledge of the Presidents. While that's a bit tangential, the bottom line is you look at the bigger picture, and that's what these measurements categorize.
Just out of curiosity, who, outside of those that you've already mentioned, might those players be? I can think of players that are thought to be great defenders who turn out to be terrible, but never really the other way around.
Yes, Garko hit .235, in 40 games, but again, that's such a small sample that it really doesn't mean much. If he was there for the entire year, he'd have played closer to his career average (which he almost did exactly between Cleveland and San Francisco). If he had hit .340 with 12 HR in that time period, would you consider him any better? The Toronto Blue Jays fell victim to that train of thought with Alex Rios, completely ignoring the fact that only twice in his career has he put up an OPS over the league average, and instead saw only what he did over the course of roughly half a season. Pill may be able to hit that well, right now, however, his track record doesn't really suggest that, but next year will probably give us a better indication.
That's sort of the exact point I'm trying to make. Cain has a track record, a general picture so to speak, of who he is as a pitcher, and if one just judged him on his performance in August, one would assume him to be a below average pitcher, which he obviously isn't. As soon as you look at the bigger picture, you see he's less likely to repeat specific anomalies, and more likely to perform like what the metrics indicate he will.
ChefChiTown
The secret ingredient? MY BALLS
Being from Cleveland, I can honestly say (mostly with regret) that I've seen a lot of Cleveland Indians games, many of which have contained the player in question - Ryan Garko. Now, I've always been a lifelong White Sox fan, but living in Cleveland for most of my life, I've seen more than my fair share of Indians games. From someone who's seen Ryan Garko develop, take it from me - he can be a menace.
You're right - 40 games is such a small sampling of games if you are trying to look at somebody's ability. That's only 25% of an entire season. Would you look at an NFL player and judge their career based off of only 4 games? Because, there's no difference between that and judging a baseball player off of their stats throughout the course of only 40 games.
Being a White Sox fan, allow me to sat that Ryan Garko could be an extremely valuable offensive commodity to any baseball team. He almost singled handedly beat my White Sox with his bat on more than one occasion. :grumblegrumble: He might not have the most accurate or the most powerful bat in the world, but he can definitely hit. To think that Garko is going to hit .235 for an entire season is just unrealistic. Could it happen? Absolutely. Anybody can have a bad season. But, is it likely? No, not really.
I think that Garko, when given a full season with the Giants, will show how good he can be. He might not be an all-star and he might not set any records, but he's a solid bat to have sitting on first base.
I trust facts, numbers, and proven evidence over what people's eyes tell me also. People often have a tendency to let emotions, incomplete anecdotal evidence, and subjectivists color their reasoning. Numbers are what they are. Now I admit that statistics can be skewed by people that don't know what they are doing (or maybe have an agenda to skew them) or don't have a complete knowledge of reality (although to a greater or lesser degree nobody has complete knowledge of all aspects of reality.) and that they need to held up to a standard of common sense and sometimes reasonable anecdotal reasoning, but for the most part baseball sabremetrics are solid, or at least a drastically more solid than just opinions people have by merely forming opinions while watching the game.
BTW...I also think if Jeter came up with people that paid attention to statistics and his true skills he would have still made it. I have a hard time thinking he wouldn't. He would just probably be at a different position his entire career, and been considered highly above average for a long time instead of historically great like people think of him now. It's almost not fair to even consider him as a shortstop. That should never of been his natural position and with the exception of a few years he's been bad at it. Yet people look at his offensive performance and compare it to other shortstops that were put there because of their defense. (I knew that New York definitely didn't have a clue when they made Rodriguez move to third instead of moving Jeter somewhere else. Although, then again didn't Jeter complain about that and want to stay at his position, which is unusual since he's supposedly the unselfish team first kind of player that puts the team above individual glory. Of course to his fans won't count that one.)
Jagger69
Three lullabies in an ancient tongue
"Below average defender" is being extremely benevolent Shayd. :1orglaugh Every ball hit to left field when he played for the Cardinals was an adventure. I always liked Duncan's power but he cannot hit for average, strikes out WAY too much, is a klutz in the field and is way slow on the basepaths. He is only suited as a very mediocre 1st baseman (I don't think Youkilis is going to move out of the way for him) or as a DH. He is a very streaky HR guy and definitely has some pop but his shortcomings will become really glaring very quickly as the season progresses. If a really good hitting coach can work with him, he could be a really good DH but otherwise he's a lefthanded power threat coming off the bench as a pinch-hitter is he plays for me. In his defense, yes, he has had some serious shoulder problems but that just makes things worse as far as his chances are concerned.
Ace Bandage
The one and only.
I just heard on ESPN that the Cubbies are pursuing Ben Sheets. Personally, I'm all for it since he beats us every freakin' time he pitches against us. Over the past four years he's been in the top six in most of the major pitching statistical categories. Naturally though, as soon as we sign him, he'll tear both ACLs and a rotator cuff before Spring Training.
Jagger69
Three lullabies in an ancient tongue
LOL....does the name "Mark Prior" ring a bell??? :1orglaugh
Jorge f'ing Posada can't catch an AJ Burnett curveball to save his life, yet his RF/9 is somehow 8.0.
Like I said before about Nick Swisher in RF last year.. his -1.2 UZR is a joke.
In 2008, Bobby Abreau had a -25.3 UZR but was second in the league in assists with 10? Something is off there.
How is Ellsbury a 16.8 UZR in 2008, yet this year he's -18.3?
Here's a good one.. Kevin Youkilis, perhaps the best glove the Red Sox have seen in a while, was only a 4.0 UZR at 1B in 2008 and a -5.4 UZR at 3B this past year.
Robinson Cano, 2007, 11.3 UZR at 2B (sixth highest for any infielder) when he still was learning to turn two (and began his half-ass attempts at getting to a ball hit up the middle - how about you dive Robby?).
Here's the ultimate dickslap to the UZR. Mark Teixeira, your 2009 gold glove award winner for 1B, was a -4.1 UZR ranking him third worst among qualified first basemen. This guy saved us more runs than anyone else I have ever seen at 1B, and now we're stepping into dangerous territory here when I take the great Don Mattingly off his pedestal.
Human life is beautiful in that my reality is certainly not the same as yours and that which I consider a fact perhaps is not a fact to you. That which you consider knowledge, I may consider horse manure and vice-versa. I'd rather not get into a philosophical discussion about "the human condition" and Prometheus and was is 'true' etc etc. It's all about perception my friend.. the essential is invisible and will never be quantified.
I'm fine being considered ignorant, really. Not the first time someone will have called me that, and I'll make damn sure it won't be the last time.
Tell me Mark Teixeira's UZR for 2009 was an accurate portrayal of his brilliance and I'll do like the Greek gods did and I will have you condemned to have a portion of your liver eaten daily by an eagle. :beer:
Bottom line is, Yankees, 2010, call the Boss and tell him to get ready to change Girardi's number again because #28 is as good as ours.
