Geech
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Everything posted by Geech
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I don't get it. Why describe hitters with batting average, home runs and RBI?
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I think it's satire. If this guy meant the things he was saying, he probably would not have used stats like VORP and UZR as examples. He probably would have just used some long jumble of letters, since that's the sort of lame joke crotchety old sportswriters make.
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Do we really need two active "Spray Charts" threads? HEY OH!
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Didn't see a thread for this anywhere. http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=ap-cubs-joshua&prov=ap&type=lgns Hendry has no plan and no clue.
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Bradley Suspended for the Rest of the Season
Geech replied to Wilson A2000's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
I don't know, guys. As much as I would have preferred to keep Bradley, I just don't see how he can stay after this. You can always trust Hendry to make a bad situation even worse. Someone earlier commented that unless Hendry pulls a miracle and replaces Bradley with a good player he should be gone, and I really have to agree. Jim doesn't deserve to keep his job even through next season after such a complete screw-up. -
Bradley Suspended for the Rest of the Season
Geech replied to Wilson A2000's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
Ratings are going to be way more dependent on whether or not the team is winning than on whether Bradley mans RF. If moving Bradley hurts the team, and I think there's a really good chance that it will, then the overall effect on ratings is going to be slightly negative. -
Did they get a quote from Roast?
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You missed the point. Theriot barely has the bat even for shortstop. He's a somewhat valuable player while he is a shortstop, but moving from short to second makes him that much more replaceable. If you're not going to play him at short, then he doesn't need to be in the starting lineup. Reyes is better than Fontenot/Baker, but that Theriot isn't when you're talking about 2nd base.
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Theriot is looking like a pretty marginal starting player at short. If you can upgrade the position, I think you should do so. However, if you do I'm not sure that moving Theriot to second really makes a lot of sense, because we can probably do better than him for not much money. A Baker/Fontenot platoon might be better, or for that matter Baker by himself might do a better job. My point is that specifically seeking out a shortstop so you can move Theriot to second is pretty ineffective use of resources.
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Theriot is *not* hurting the team defensively, and moving him to second will expose his bat even more. National league 2nd basemen hit .269/.337/.409 this year whereas shortstops hit .266/.324/.393. Theriot's .286/.334/.381 doesn't look good at either spot, but it's better at short.
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No, I don't. I think there are some areas of performance that are not measured well enough to derive useful statistics. Wherever possible, however, objectivity is desirable. My turn: Why do you feel your haphazard observations and analysis are superior to UZR and Plus/Minus? Is it simply because you don't like the results or can you point to serious flaws in the methodology?
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It's not fraught with difficulty, it's fraught with impossibility. Here's the thing, even if we assume for the sake of argument that you can form an accurate judgment of a given players fielding, that's not enough. In order to be useful, you have to compare it with something. In order to rate Theriot's defense at shortstop as average, above average or below average, then by definition you must watch 95% of every shortstop's plays, form a judgment for each player and then make meaningful comparisons between them. Attempting to do this on your own, inside your own head, is ridiculous. And while that process may lend itself to consistent evaluations of players from year to year, that is because those evaluations are consistently meaningless.
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I don't know what that is supposed to mean, but I have a strong suspicion that I don't care.
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What do you do for a living that allows you the luxury of watching 95% of Theriot's plays? I doubt even scouts see that much. Anyway, Plus/Minus is video scouting in which someone watches all of the player's plays. The field is divided into a series of zones and each zone is analyzed to determine how often plays are made on different velocities and types of batted balls. Players are then penalized or given credit for making plays based on how often a similar play is made. The results of Plus/Minus are derived from no less observation than you perform, and much more analysis. It's fine to be skeptical of the method when there are clear deficiencies or when similar systems produce widely different results, but it's hubris to completely reject them simply because they don't mesh with your observations. Assuming for the sake of argument that you're a rational human, even if you literally watched 95% of Theriot's plays your observations would still be fraught with bias and inaccuracy. That's just the nature of human observation and memory, and that's why having an objective approach is so important. So, yes. Compared to plus/minus or UZR, you are basing on your opinion on virtually nothing. I'm specifically responding to dexter, but this post can obviously apply to all three of you, BTW.
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Why is that?
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The point is that eyeballing a player's defense is an even worse idea. At least something like UZR or Plus/Minus is attempting to add some objectivity to the process of defensive metrics with their advanced analysis of batted ball data. You're right that they aren't perfect, but they're better than nothing, which is what you seem to be using.
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I especially love that it's the one post he's ignored in the thread.
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Are you ever right about anything?
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seriously? Seriously. Plus/minus has him above average at shortstop for the past three seasons. While defensive metrics may not be perfect, there's no question that I trust their methodology more than your jaundiced perceptions.
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I actually agree with this comparison more. 2004 was a good, talented team that collapsed at the end. The difference between 2004 and 2008 is that in 2008 it happened in the postseason. 2009 feels like 2005 because in both years I had good expectations for the team going into the season and both years were colossal disappointments.
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What gave you that idea?
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FYI, Hill's career CERA is 4.36, while Soto's is 3.98. Those numbers don't actually mean anything, but that appears to be the style at NSBB these days, so there you go.
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That's just not true. We're dealing with a couple of catchers who split part of a season between them. If Hill starts the rest of the season then they may have about half a season worth of data each. That's not enough to negate the factors that people have talked about, or the effect of pure, random chance for that matter. Check out Keith Woolner's CERA study here: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=432
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Then I guess we don't have a disagreement.
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Get a grip here, Fred. IMB wasn't saying that R/G had anything to do with CERA, he was pointing out that the R/G stats were clearly very heavily influenced by outside factors and suggesting that the same was true for CERA. It is, by the way.