Milton Bradley

[TruffleShuffle]

show me where he said bradley has been an .890 ops guy on the road for the past 5 season

 

also show me how many at-bats those totals are for. like 200 a year?

 

okay, okay. this dude is awesome.

 

but only sometimes

 

and only on the road

 

and that's only for small chunks of at-bats.

 

i guess you're going to keep ignoring that every location he played before he got to texas was one of the better pitcher's parks in baseball? most people make the adjustment for guys coming from coors field - knowing that their stats are inflated by their home park - so why can't you make the same adjustment for a guy who has spent much of his career hitting in pitcher's parks? it has nothing to do with not being able to hit at home; it's that those home parks are pitcher's parks so naturally he had better numbers on the road (where the park effects are fairly neutral, overall) than at home (negative park effect on hitters).

 

failing to account for park effects is very foolish.

 

seriously though, it shouldn't surprise me that you're defending him so hard and acting like he's some badass hitter. you were the one who kept saying he was hands down our best hitter before the season (ahead of ramirez) even though bradley has clearly been a mediocre hitter for his career. it was all "his early career numbers were when he was a different hitter. for the last 2 seasons he's clearly found it".

 

now 2 months into the season and this guy looks absolutely brutal and we're still trying to rationalize.

 

your definition of mediocre must be different than mine. bradley has been a very good (.290-.300 EqA) hitter the past 5 years - league average, or MEDIOCRE, is .260. now his EqA is .244, far worse than any season since he was 23, and you're acting smug because you saw this coming? give me a break. your arguments are terrible and your smugness is even more intolerable.

[Sammy Sofa]

Get ready for another career stat slam DUNK.

[cubswin2009]

Who cares what Milton Bradley has done in his career. I care about this year and Bradley is hitting .184 so far. He's easily one of the top 10 worst hitters in MLB in 2009 so far.

[17 Seconds]

Get ready for another career stat slam DUNK.

 

yeah let's just throw away career stats, even though he's played to those numbers 3 of the past 5 seasons.

 

.810 career home ops

.833 career road ops

 

yet he's some stud hitter because you can cherry pick some splits over recent years that make him look a lot better than he is.

 

so how long do we give him before we admit that we're probably getting .840 OPS Bradley this season? another week? another months? next season?

[TruffleShuffle]

Who cares what Milton Bradley has done in his career. I care about this year and Bradley is hitting .184 so far. He's easily one of the top 10 worst hitters in MLB in 2009 so far.

 

he was in the american league last year; he needs time to adjust to NL pitching.

[TruffleShuffle]

Get ready for another career stat slam DUNK.

 

yeah let's just throw away career stats, even though he's played to those numbers 3 of the past 5 seasons.

 

.810 career home ops

.833 career road ops

 

yet he's some stud hitter because you can cherry pick some splits over recent years that make him look a lot better than he is.

 

so how long do we give him before we admit that we're probably getting .840 OPS Bradley this season? another week? another months? next season?

 

that'd be fine with me, he probably has to ops .950 the rest of the year to get back to .840 so i say bring it on.

[17 Seconds]

So you can't use anything except career numbers?

 

i've showed much more, including his numbers the last 5 seasons. it's just that peole are pretending like he was some badass hitter for all 5 of those years just because his road splits those years were good (and not even all of them were good),

 

FOR HIS CAREER HE IS AN .833 OPS ROAD HITTER.

 

stop acting like he's been crippled by home parks, especially when he pumped up all his stats by a monster career year in a park that has andruw jones OPSing 1.000 this season.

 

was he affected by bad park luck most of his career? yes, obviously. i talked about that in the offseason when i was optimistic about him. but let's stop acting like all those crappy years he had were just the result of parks. all that means is that he would have been a little less mediocre those years. yay!

[17 Seconds]

Get ready for another career stat slam DUNK.

 

yeah let's just throw away career stats, even though he's played to those numbers 3 of the past 5 seasons.

 

.810 career home ops

.833 career road ops

 

yet he's some stud hitter because you can cherry pick some splits over recent years that make him look a lot better than he is.

 

so how long do we give him before we admit that we're probably getting .840 OPS Bradley this season? another week? another months? next season?

 

that'd be fine with me, he probably has to ops .950 the rest of the year to get back to .840 so i say bring it on.

 

i don't think so. isn't his ops in the low .700's right now?

[TruffleShuffle]

FOR HIS CAREER HE IS AN .833 OPS ROAD HITTER.

 

that happens to include the years that he stunk, early in his career. his road OPS has been worse than that 1 of the past 6 seasons and his road OPS is probably around .880 or .890 the past 6 years (don't feel like doing the math).

[Gingerballs Lives]

I wish he was Raul Ibanez or Adam Dunn instead.

[Vanilla Ice]

This argument has made me dumber

[sneakypower]

Get ready for another career stat slam DUNK.

 

FOR HIS CAREER HE IS AN .833 OPS ROAD HITTER.

 

dude

 

Mojo can predict the future

[Sammy Sofa]

Get ready for another career stat slam DUNK.

 

FOR HIS CAREER HE IS AN .833 OPS ROAD HITTER.

 

dude

 

Mojo can predict the future

 

I am a sorcerer.

[Eric Clipperton]

Get ready for another career stat slam DUNK.

 

yeah let's just throw away career stats, even though he's played to those numbers 3 of the past 5 seasons.

 

.810 career home ops

.833 career road ops

 

yet he's some stud hitter because you can cherry pick some splits over recent years that make him look a lot better than he is.

 

so how long do we give him before we admit that we're probably getting .840 OPS Bradley this season? another week? another months? next season?

 

that'd be fine with me, he probably has to ops .950 the rest of the year to get back to .840 so i say bring it on.

 

 

I had composed what was easily a 1,000+ word rant on the argument by dexter in this ridiculous thread, and then lost it due to being logged out automatically. Oh well it was WAY wordy anyway-

however I looked at some scenarios such as above in this post which will never actually fulfill its destiny and be posted, but:

 

If we assume 400 PA = "the rest of the way", Milton needs to OPS ~.877 to reach a season OPS of .840. Which is only slightly higher than the "career from 25+" average OPS of .873 which does not count park factors FWIW. Using OPS+ I get 128 over this same period. So .877 is by no way out of the question.

 

If the season is 300 more PA for #21, an OPS of ~.890 gets him to .840 for the full season. Not so ridiculous, huh?

[Eric Clipperton]

Also, dexter you appear to agree that Aramis Ramirez is a good hitter (pre-injury of course). What do you think was a reasonable projection for Aramis coming into this season, assuming he never dislocates his shoulder of course? Because he has a career OPS of .845, but over the last 5-6 years is more like .910. Would you still claim .845 is more likely, or do you just do this for Milton cause you can fuzz around with Milton's #s due to "park effects"? Or are you just making some ridiculous argument up to back up your dislike of our most recent "big money"(sort of) free agent?

[TruffleShuffle]

Also, dexter you appear to agree that Aramis Ramirez is a good hitter (pre-injury of course). What do you think was a reasonable projection for Aramis coming into this season, assuming he never dislocates his shoulder of course? Because he has a career OPS of .845, but over the last 5-6 years is more like .910. Would you still claim .845 is more likely, or do you just do this for Milton cause you can fuzz around with Milton's #s due to "park effects"? Or are you just making some ridiculous argument up to back up your dislike of our most recent "big money"(sort of) free agent?

 

ooh i should've thought of this.

[NCCubFan]

Come on we're talking about Milton Vradley here.

Ah, silly me for thinking we were talking about Milton Bradley. My bad. :D

[UMFan83]

Come on we're talking about Milton Vradley here.

Ah, silly me for thinking we were talking about Milton Bradley. My bad. :D

 

Damn iPhone :?

[Keener98]

Who cares what Milton Bradley has done in his career. I care about this year and Bradley is hitting .184 so far. He's easily one of the top 10 worst hitters in MLB in 2009 so far.

 

Why is it ok to use the excuse that Dero is playing in the AL and needs time to adjust, but its not ok to say the same thing about Bradley? You cant have it both ways

[17 Seconds]

Also, dexter you appear to agree that Aramis Ramirez is a good hitter (pre-injury of course). What do you think was a reasonable projection for Aramis coming into this season, assuming he never dislocates his shoulder of course? Because he has a career OPS of .845, but over the last 5-6 years is more like .910. Would you still claim .845 is more likely, or do you just do this for Milton cause you can fuzz around with Milton's #s due to "park effects"? Or are you just making some ridiculous argument up to back up your dislike of our most recent "big money"(sort of) free agent?

 

I like how the "I just had an amazing and really long post, but I lost it so now I can't show you how awesome it was" line is becoming more and more popular.

 

Anyways, comparing Aramis to Bradley is pretty ridiculous.

 

First of all, and I've already said this several times, I didn't expect Bradley to be an .825 OPS guy. I expected high .800's. I just said it wouldn't have surprised me if he wasn't that good.

 

Comparing him to Aramis is silly. Bradley has had exactly 3 "seasons" where he finished with an OPS above .835. Here they are-

 

2003- .923 (.377 AB)

2007- .947 (209 AB)

2008- .999 (414 AB)

 

Not only are there only 3 seasons of him being legitmately good, but they aren't even full seasons. That's basically 2 full seasons of being good. In between those good seasons, there were 3 straight years of his "meh" numbers I'm talking about.

 

Now let's compare to Ramirez...

 

04- .951 (547 ab)

05- .926 (463 ab)

06- .912 (594 ab)

07- .915 (506 ab)

08- .898 (554 ab)

 

Not only does Ramirez have 5 straight seasons with an OPS of .898 or higher, but he's stayed relatively healthy for the majority of that time, only failing to reach 500 at-bats once.

 

So you think it's okay to compare a guy who stays on the field and has been well over his career averages for 5 years in a row to a guy who has played to his career averages 3 times in the past 5 years? Not to mention the season where bradley was good weren't even full seasons.

 

Seriously, come on. Ramirez hasn't had even a mediocre year since 03. He's been awesome every year. He's established that he is a great hitter. Bradley hasn't done that. He's shown to be a great hitter for about the last 600 at-bats, most of which came in Texas. The previous 3 seasons, he's blown. He'd have to have 4 straight full badass seasons before you can compare him to what Aramis is right now. I don't even understand how you could try to compare the 2.

 

I think people are using the home/road stuff as a crutch and overblowing it. I agree that his numbers are skewed a bit, but not enough to make some kind of huge difference... which is shown in his careers splits.

[17 Seconds]

Also, dexter you appear to agree that Aramis Ramirez is a good hitter (pre-injury of course). What do you think was a reasonable projection for Aramis coming into this season, assuming he never dislocates his shoulder of course? Because he has a career OPS of .845, but over the last 5-6 years is more like .910. Would you still claim .845 is more likely, or do you just do this for Milton cause you can fuzz around with Milton's #s due to "park effects"? Or are you just making some ridiculous argument up to back up your dislike of our most recent "big money"(sort of) free agent?

 

Comparing Aramis to Bradley is pretty ridiculous.

 

First of all, and I've already said this several times, I didn't expect Bradley to be an .825 OPS guy. I expected high .800's. I just said it wouldn't have surprised me if he wasn't that good. I was actually on board with signing Milton...but only if it was at the right price and only if we didn't trade DeRosa. I said that all along. This has nothing to do with me hating the move, it's about the fact that people pretend Milton is some badass stud hitter, when I don't think he is. He can be, but for most of his career he hasn't been.

 

Comparing him to Aramis is silly. Bradley has had exactly 3 "seasons" where he finished with an OPS above .835. Here they are-

 

2003- .923 (.377 AB)

2007- .947 (209 AB)

2008- .999 (414 AB)

 

Not only are there only 3 seasons of him being legitmately good, but they aren't even full seasons. That's basically 2 full seasons of being good. In between those good seasons, there were 3 straight years of his "meh" numbers I'm talking about.

 

Now let's compare to Ramirez...

 

04- .951 (547 ab)

05- .926 (463 ab)

06- .912 (594 ab)

07- .915 (506 ab)

08- .898 (554 ab)

 

Not only does Ramirez have 5 straight seasons with an OPS of .898 or higher, but he's stayed relatively healthy for the majority of that time, only failing to reach 500 at-bats once.

 

So you think it's okay to compare a guy who stays on the field and has been well over his career averages for 5 years in a row to a guy who has played to his career averages 3 times in the past 5 years? Not to mention the season where bradley was good weren't even full seasons.

 

Seriously, come on. Ramirez hasn't had even a mediocre year since 03. He's been awesome every year. He's established that he is a great hitter. Bradley hasn't done that. He's shown to be a great hitter for about the last 600 at-bats, most of which came in Texas. The previous 3 seasons, he's blown. He'd have to have 4 straight full badass seasons before you can compare him to what Aramis is right now. I don't even understand how you could try to compare the 2.

 

I think people are using the home/road stuff as a crutch and overblowing it. I agree that his numbers are skewed a bit, but not enough to make some kind of huge difference... which is shown in his careers splits.

[BigSlick]

i'm not gonna check his LD% or anything or actually put in any research

 

but when I watch at bats of Milton bradley I dont want to curl into a ball like Aaron Miles or even Fontenot

 

the guy clearly "gets" what is going on, but damn is he having some bad luck

[17 Seconds]

Here's the reason I keep citing career numbers. It's not just because they're "career numbers!", it's because he's played right to that level so many times in his career, including not that long ago.

 

It's not like I'm talking about a guy who struggled early in his career before becoming consistently good and has a deceiving career line to show for it. Like Aramis. He has an .845 career OPS, but he's been way better than that for many consecutive years now. His numbers are just brought down from when he sucked early in his career.

 

Bradley has not followed that career line. He has 3 good "seasons" mixed in with a much higher amount of ones that were mediocre or bad. I mean, we can agree that it's pretty likely that Milton finishes this season with an OPS around .840-.850 or below, right? I mean, that would be good.

 

Well, that would mean that Bradley had performed to about his career averages in 4 of the last 6 seasons. That's why those numbers are so relevant. He performs that way a lot. I don't understand why those are the fluke seasons and his few good seasons, which have occured at a much lower rate, are not. I think people want Bradley to be a lot better than he is.

 

Everybody says he's good. Hitting coaches love him. The media makes him out to be a guy with mental issued but a dominant bat. At time, he's outstanding. He takes walks. All these things make you want to believe he's awesome, but if you actually look at the way his career has gone, you'll see that he's not that good that often.

[17 Seconds]

i'm not gonna check his LD% or anything or actually put in any research

 

but when I watch at bats of Milton bradley I dont want to curl into a ball like Aaron Miles or even Fontenot

 

the guy clearly "gets" what is going on, but damn is he having some bad luck

 

He should have had hits in all 3 of his last at-bats tonight, and probably doubles on at least 2 of them.

[TruffleShuffle]

Not only are there only 3 seasons of him being legitmately good, but they aren't even full seasons. That's basically 2 full seasons of being good. In between those good seasons, there were 3 straight years of his "meh" numbers I'm talking about.

 

an .830 OPS while playing half your games at dodger stadium is not meh. stop saying this, please. really, there's not that much of a difference between a guy with a .280/.370/.460 line playing for the dodgers and a guy who puts up a .290/.350/.550 line playing for the cubs, especially since bradley has generally had better on base skills than aramis. and while we're on that subject, you continue to use OPS at the be-all, end-all of offensive productivity, even though it's a terribly flawed statistic.

 

Not only does Ramirez have 5 straight seasons with an OPS of .898 or higher, but he's stayed relatively healthy for the majority of that time, only failing to reach 500 at-bats once.

 

nobody is saying that he's more valuable than ramirez; aramis is more reliable in terms of health and plays a more important defensive position. hence the reason he's making more money.

 

The previous 3 seasons, he's blown.

 

how often do people have to tell you this is wrong before you stop saying it? a .290 EqA does not blow; if that blows, then probably more than 80% of major league hitters blow.