Kris Bryant Being Called Up!

[Gilby]

He's right on Rizzo's tail for the team lead in fWAR. 2.9 to Rizzo's 3.2.

 

Bryant is 10th among 3B in UZR/150 and 6th in pure range. And as Olney tweeted a couple days ago, he's made like one error in the last month.

[seanimal]

please hammer, don't hurt him!

 

and it still would have been you straight up guessing while attempting to pass it off as a data-driven prediction. literally zero people care what you pretend to know; it's the charade of it all that has me engaged

 

I believe that you believe that. Not to your credit, but can't be helped.

 

i think your hamfisted snipe at my cognitive capacity is a flimsy attempt to distract from your intellectual cowardice

 

that said, i don't disagree with your "prediction" of bryant's performance. it's something like a 10% chance he becomes that next tier of player. however, i do disagree with your stated reasoning. his performance delta over the next 4-5 years has little to do with age; that he will be 24 next season tells us basically nothing. it is what he needs to improve that is the reason we should expect only slight improvement in offensive value

[Hairyducked Idiot]

It is not a snipe on your intelligence. I'm simply noting that several of your assertions are incorrect, and I know this as assuredly as if I were standing on a beach and you told me sand was a myth. You can be as smart or dumb as you please, I have no opinion to offer on that.

 

I have as little interest in justifying my "young prime" ideas or flatter pitching aging curve ideas (well, not my ideas, I didn't create them) as I do in going to Facebook and explaining to people why RBIs are a bad stat. It simply is what it is, and if you disagree, no skin off my nose.

 

If you want to present an alternative idea of Kris Bryant's future based on something besides aging curves, feel free. I would probably find it an interesting read, whether I agree or not.

 

My guess is that you will instead try once again to try to convince me I am as awful as you believe I am, and you will say in some words that you find this post derisively laughable. I have yet to meet a person who acted this way who wasn't lashing out, self included at times, so my preemptive response is a metaphorical hug.

[seanimal]

oh, we're hugging now?

[Ding Dong Johnson]

HUG! HUG! HUG!

[seanimal]

you say "alternative idea of kris bryant's future" as if you actually presented an idea about kris bryant's future. saying "he's going to be 24 next year" isn't an idea, it's a fact stated as if there is an underlying idea motivating its expression. it's a careful distinction you refuse to acknowledge, not because you aren't interested in explaining yourself, but because doing so would imply a level of accountability you're clearly uncomfortable with

 

and to be perfectly clear, i've never asked, nor do i want any kind of explanation from you about aging curves. the only thing i've really ever asked of you is to support your statements with some sort of reference/citation/whatever. i've done that because i've gone down the player age rabbit hole myself a few times and have consumed anything i can get my hands on, so when you make a statements like the ones you've made recently, and they don't really jive with my comprehension of the literature, perhaps it's because i missed something. or perhaps i haven't, and that's a risk you're unwilling to take. that's fine. but just know i want you to explain baseball to me like a want a punch in the dick

 

as an aside, it's interesting that you think that i think that you're awful. i don't. not enough information to make that judgement, if i was even inclined to make it. it's your posts on this subject that i think are awful

[Guest]

Kyle,

 

I've seen the research on the shifting of aging curves, as well. But it is a logical fallacy to assume that the general trend will automatically apply to any individual. It is certainly something you can provide as evidence that it is likely to be the case that he has arrived "fully formed". But I think that you are presenting your case with too much certainty based on a generality.

 

I think it is likely the case for KB that he has room to improve based on the relative lack of dongs we've seen in the majors compared to every other level at which he has played. I also believe that the shifting of the age curve has to do with the improved level of instruction available in the minor leagues these days. Given how little time KB spent there, I think that he still has time to improve with the level of instruction he is getting now compared to as little as two years ago.

 

Either way, we have a great player on our hands.

[Sammy Sofa]

you say "alternative idea of kris bryant's future" as if you actually presented an idea about kris bryant's future. saying "he's going to be 24 next year" isn't an idea, it's a fact stated as if there is an underlying idea motivating its expression. it's a careful distinction you refuse to acknowledge, not because you aren't interested in explaining yourself, but because doing so would imply a level of accountability you're clearly uncomfortable with

 

and to be perfectly clear, i've never asked, nor do i want any kind of explanation from you about aging curves. the only thing i've really ever asked of you is to support your statements with some sort of reference/citation/whatever. i've done that because i've gone down the player age rabbit hole myself a few times and have consumed anything i can get my hands on, so when you make a statements like the ones you've made recently, and they don't really jive with my comprehension of the literature, perhaps it's because i missed something. or perhaps i haven't, and that's a risk you're unwilling to take. that's fine. but just know i want you to explain baseball to me like a want a punch in the dick

 

as an aside, it's interesting that you think that i think that you're awful. i don't. not enough information to make that judgement, if i was even inclined to make it. it's your posts on this subject that i think are awful

 

It's difficult to formally cite the comments section of a site like Goat Riders of the Apocalypse.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

I don't think saying "I expect" is applying any level of undue certainty. We all know that player projections involve huge margins of error and anything can happen.

 

It isn't just his age, although that is a big part of it. His scouting reports frequently described a player with more certainty than potential, floor than ceiling, or whatever you want to call it.

 

I do see the argument that he is due for more power than he is shown, but I also don't think UZR is going to like him this much long-term and despite what he has done as a pro, I don't think he can sustain a .360 BABIP (flashback to arguments on whether Castro's two years of .345 to start his career were sustainable).

 

But just in case this isn't implicit, the above is simply my opinion and is not meant to carry any authoritative weight beyond that of a message-board goob who reads crap like Fangraphs and hardball timesz

[seanimal]

uzr will most assuredly hate kris bryant next year, but that's because uzr sucks for 3rd base year to year. barring injury or indifference, we should expect him to stay stable for a few years in terms of defensive contribution. he's not going to be a butcher and he's not going to be machado, so i'm of the inclination it's not particularly worth much consideration. if we become more gb heavy as a pitching staff, it might be worth a little more attention

 

the primary problem as far as i can tell (and this is nothing new) with bryant in terms of future development is that his biggest weakness is that he misses the baseball on 1/3 of his swings. while we see contact% improve with age through 28/29, it correlates so highly year to year that those improvements are likely to be very small. we should also see some improvement in strike zone judgement, particularly with relation to swings and misses on pitches outside the zone. if not cancelled out by negative variance, the convergence of these two minor trends over the next several years will give bryant more opportunities to express his dong abilities. will this equate to an improvement on the magnitude of 1 or 2 additional war? i honestly have no idea, maybe someone does

 

anyway, leaps in contact% do occur, but i haven't seen anything suggesting that they are sustainable. and anecdotally, they don't seem to correlate strongly with increases in war but that observation is useless because it was just me cherry-picking a few names to see how those differences manifest themselves

 

the positive outliers to the trends on contact% and plate discipline are very rare. perhaps there's an argument to be made that bryant is more likely than the rest of the field to be one of those positive outliers, but i'm not the one to make it

[BrockLanders]

Bryant now leads the team in fWAR with 3.2. He passed Rizzo last night, despite having 44 less PA's. Kris Bryant is really [expletive] good.

[Gilby]

Bryant's fWAR up to 3.6, and as Brock said, it leads the team. It was widely believed that Rizzo is our best player, but has rookie Kris Bryant overtaken him in people's minds? I think he's already our biggest "star" with the hype he had as a prospect and in the spring; also, fwiw, whenever we're on ESPN it's always advertised as "Kris Bryant and the Cubs vs..."

 

I wasn't expecting him to be THIS good, especially with just a .203 ISO and only 12 dongs through 75 games.

 

Oh, he's also passed Pederson (3.2) as well. Bryant actually has the fielding and baserunning edge over Joc, while JP has hit for a lot more power. Weird how that's turned out in the first half of the season.

[mul21]

Rizzo is so much more polished at the plate and is overall a much better hitter right now than Bryant. It took him several years to get there and he made what appear to be some significant changes in his approach, and I'm not convinced there's a lot of guys out there that could do the same thing. I mean, he was touted as a guy who would likely top out around .280 in avg., and he's well above that right now with no reason to think there's some big regression coming.

 

Rizzo may not have as much WAR, but he's a better player right now and Bryant, who's been a lot better than I expected at 3rd, is getting a decent bump from his position I'd bet (since I'm too lazy to look it up right now).

 

Either way, it's awesome to have them both for the next 6.5 years.

[jersey cubs fan]

Rizzo may not have as much WAR, but he's a better player right now and Bryant

 

Does not compute

[seanimal]

yeah that makes no sense. the better player is the guy who contributes more overall. awarding subjectivity points because you like his moxie or the cut of his jib is irrelevant

[Guest]

Defensive stats pretty much suck for 1B. I can't believe he's a negative defender there which is what knocks him down under Bryant in WAR.

[Burt Macklin, FBI]

Among qualified 3rd basemen:

 

4th is wRC+ and WAR

1st in BsR

7th in UZR/150

 

 

_{last in K%}

 

[seanimal]

also 3b gives uzr the fits. it will probably hate bryant next year

 

that said, wRC+ gives the edge to rizzo even accounting for bryant's fewer plate appearances

[Geech]

Defensive stats pretty much suck for 1B. I can't believe he's a negative defender there which is what knocks him down under Bryant in WAR.

 

Are these numbers including a positional adjustment, though? The best qualified defenders at first base on fangraphs all still have negative "def" ratings due to the positional adjustment.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

Misclick Edited July 10, 2015 by Hairyducked Idiot

[Hairyducked Idiot]

Defensive stats pretty much suck for 1B. I can't believe he's a negative defender there which is what knocks him down under Bryant in WAR.

 

The way fangraphs does it is to not include a boost to offense by position and compare defenders to everyone else instead of just to their own position. So basically all first basemen have negative defensive value

[mul21]

Rizzo may not have as much WAR, but he's a better player right now and Bryant

 

Does not compute

 

It does if you don't believe the accuracy of the defensive statistics, which is where Bryant makes up a lot of ground. Yes, 3rd is certainly a more valuable defensive position, but I take Rizzo 100 times out of 100 right now in a do or die situation at the plate.

[Tracer Bullet]

is rizzo really a butcher at first?

[Ding Dong Johnson]

is rizzo really a butcher at first?

No. Defensive metrics are pretty terrible.

[BigSlick]

:? Bryant's batting average has dipped below .250

 

It saddens me to see his nice slash line drop, its important to me, aesthetically, that his OPS stays above .800 for his entire season