"Below average defender" is being extremely benevolent Shayd. :1orglaugh
:1orglaugh
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.
Exactly. Couldn't have put it better myself, my friend. :thumbsup:
Jorge f'ing Posada can't catch an AJ Burnett curveball to save his life, yet his RF/9 is somehow 8.0.
Actually, I kinda agree with you here, in that defensive metrics for catchers are somewhat inaccurate. In the statistical community, trying to gauge catcher defense is still in its infancy. I mean after all, catchers don't play defense anywhere close to the same ways that all of the other positions do, so you're right in regards to catchers.
In 2008, Bobby Abreau had a -25.3 UZR but was second in the league in assists with 10? Something is off there.
Keep in mind that does factor into his UZR rating, however there are too many variables in those situations to justify him being a good defender. His range is absolutely atrocious, his numbers make no buts about that. If it makes it any easier to trust, I can't tell you how many times I've seen him turn around and run after a routine fly ball, leap and still have the ball clear him by a good six feet.
How is Ellsbury a 16.8 UZR in 2008, yet this year he's -18.3?
Sample size. You're looking at a fluctuation, and you've got to look at the bigger picture. If I were a betting man, I'd say his numbers will look much better this year, as in the minors, all of the major defensive metrics show him to be a good defensive center fielder.
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.
But how can you justify any of them as good or bad? There is no frame of reference, no quantifiable means of categorizing them, other than to say, "I think this is how good they are" which doesn't say anything but what you think of them.
It took humans centuries of thinking the world was flat before they empirically proved it's round. On a smaller, and much more trivial level, this is the exact phenomenon going around baseball, we're learning that there are
factual ways of evaluating players. It's irrelevant whether you "believe" it or not, reality is reality, facts are facts, you can't just pick and choose which facts you "trust".
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.
Certainly this discussion has taken a philosophical turn, however it really doesn't need to. Bottom line is reality is reality, there is not a "yours" and "my" reality, in the literal sense. You may not
like what the reality is, because it doesn't match up with your personality, emotions, or what have you, but just because someone doesn't like it, doesn't mean it isn't
objectively true.
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.
I apologize if that came off as a comment directed at you. I was trying to say that the common perception among many fans (who don't know about metrics yet) is inaccurate, not you specifically.
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.
Here's the thing, statistically, the Yankees look like a good bet to at least make the playoffs, however the playoffs as the past decade has proven, are small sample sizes where the best team doesn't always win.
And really, one other thing, I had never even heard of UZR until the Red Sox this year made a big deal about Beltre's glove and why Mike Cameron is going to be the CF, moving Ellsbury to LF.. UZR? Really? Defense? Sure, you keep telling yourself that in a ballpark very favorable to batters.
That's probably because you don't trust the statistic, and I'm guessing you get most of your information from major sports networks (and there's not necessarily anything wrong with that).
They haven't talked about UZR, or nearly any other metric in baseball, and why should they, really? They're paid to talk about players on television; who's good, who's bad, and why would they publicize something that does their job better than them? Honestly, the more I hear about people having problems with these metrics, the more I think it's because it makes their favorite players/teams look worse than they actually are. You're free to still have person opinions about players, but at the end of the day, if you can't back it up factually, it's all for naught.
I don't understand how the Red Sox having a somewhat favorable park (actually more favorable to left handed hitters than right handed), negates the need for good defense. Not every ball put in play is a home run, thus, wouldn't you want someone who can better get to balls that would otherwise be singles, doubles, or triples, and instead make them outs?
I'm done with the UZR topic.. agree to disagree? I'm ignorant to "facts" and I'm an emotional being. I can't help it, I'm human.
If you'd like to be done, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with having emotions, and opinions, but if facts contradict that, inherently your opinion is wrong; it's in the definition of fact.
