C Young to Athletics

[Clem Fandango]

grounding out into doubleplays is a 'skill', we should treat it as one.

 

Baseball-Reference's "Outs Made" calculation: (At Bats - Hits) + Double Plays Grounded Into + Sac. Flies + Sac. Hits + Caught Stealing.

 

Josh Reddick had 484 outs made. Where is the 541 coming from?

[TheClash]

Ha! My mistake. I accidentally used PA as opposed to AB, thanks. My point still stands though.

[Clem Fandango]

So Josh Reddick created outs at an 80% clip in September, but at a 70% clip the previous 5 months. The 80% coincides with a ridiculous amount of bad luck, and brought up his 70% (which was rounded up from about 69.8%) up roughly 2% (which is actually a pretty big swing for one month to make) to 72%. Let's do a little experiment.

 

Let's compare the Outs Made/PA ratio of players who have fallen in a similar WAR bracket with Reddick. For arguments sake let's say 4.5-5.0 (Reddicks' was 4.8... fWAR, for the record)

 

Player (fWAR) - Outs/PA

Jose Reyes (4.5) - 68.4%

Ryan Zimmerman (4.5) - 68.7%

Dustin Pedroia (4.5) - 67.7%

Adam Jones (4.6) - 69.7%

Angel Pagan (4.8) - 68.2%

Josh Reddick (4.8) - 71.9%

Bryce Harper (4.9) - 68.5%

Prince Fielder (4.9) - 61.5%

Jimmy Rollins (4.9) - 70.5%

Miguel Montero (5.0) - 63.5%

Joe Mauer (5.0) - 62.7%

 

AVERAGE: 67.3%

AVERAGE minus Josh Reddick: 66.8%

 

Do you feel Josh Reddick DOESN'T have the room to improve that percentage by about 5% between now and his free agency? Because around 67% appears to be par for the course for a 4.5 to 5.0 fWAR player, and Reddick wasn't too far off before September crushed his numbers. And if you want to consider Mauer, Montero, and Fielder aberrations that don't fall in line with the others, then the % of the other guys (minus Reddick) jumps to about 68.8%

[TheClash]

You do realize that a 5% difference is about 50 points of OBP, right? Pardon me if I am not confident that a guy with a career .300 OBP in the majors and a career .300 OBP in AAA is going to all of a sudden sustain himself as a .350+ OBP guy.

[Clem Fandango]

Josh Reddick drew more walks in the first half of 2012 then he had drawn in any single season in his entire career, both major and minor. I'd say he's discovered the ability to have a patient approach at the plate. Combine that with an improved batting average with a stabilized BABIP and I think it's very possible that Josh Reddick could continue to improve his OBP, yes. You keep harping on "Career .300 OBP" as if he's some sort of veteran. He was a fill in for injured players last season and a pinch hitter the previous two for like a month. This is his first season as a starter. His .300 career OBP is the way it is because of his bad September. He had a .327 OBP at the end of August, but because of September it dropped to .305. That's how bad his month was. If you think he's gonna have a series of months each season where he goes .164/.214/.295 with a cataclysmic BABIP below .180 and it's going to keep his OBP down, so be it. Reddick is not a .300 OBP guy. Is he a .350 OBP guy right now? No. Do I think he has the ability to become one? Yes. Mostly because he wouldn't need to jump 50 points in OBP, since he's actually closer to a .330 OBP guy at the moment. His low OBP is an aberrational result of one bad month. His OBP was in line with what he did last season before that month (it' was actually identical to the .327 OBP he had last season), and he had improved drastically in his slugging this season to become a legitimate starter with a very desirable OPS.

 

Josh Reddick is not anywhere near as bad as you are claiming he is.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

I find it interesting that we're seeing more high WAR guys with lots of power and low OBP. In theory, OBP should become less valuable relative to slugging as offense goes down. With offense down almost 20% from it's peak, we may be seeing a little bit of that in the offensive value calculations.