Sammy Sofa
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Everything posted by Sammy Sofa
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No, it's really not. You've yet to show how sliding to avoid a tag or breaking up a double play is a similar risk/reward situation. If you don't slide when you can avoid the tag you're out and your value as a runner and ability to score as a result of that PA gone. If an OF doesn't choose to try to make a diving catch they can still play it and keep the runner to a single or a double instead of more.
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Because his "casual chasing" isn't typically resulting in runners taking extra bases or getting hits when they shouldn't be.
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Fine. Ryan Braun, Jose Bautista, and Matt Holliday dont do much of it either. All three have gotten their share of criticism for their less than ideal defense. And Im sure any manager in baseball would take any one of them over Reed Johnson, Sam Fuld, or Aaron Rowand slip and sliding all over the field to make a slightly non routine play. Since it's clear you're not following the debate, the issue at hand is what (if any) added value would come from Braun/Bautista/Holliday giving the sort of effort Johnson/Fuld/Rowand do. Preferring Holliday etc. to Fuld etc. is completely irrelevant. If that's the debate then it was over a long time ago. The added value of them busting their asses and leaping after balls in the OF is so negligible (since it's not an all or nothing situation and they can still play the ball well or adequately otherwise) vs. the increased injury risk and losing their bats.
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Sign Kosuke to a 2 year deal if possible
Sammy Sofa replied to Bowas temper's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
DON'T FORGET ABOUT KEMP. -
Other people have brought up the idea of hustle in regards to running out grounders in the thread. And those percentages are hardly the focus of the discussion, nor should they be, since we pulled them out of our butts.
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Well, yeah.
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Fine. Ryan Braun, Jose Bautista, and Matt Holliday dont do much of it either. All three have gotten their share of criticism for their less than ideal defense.
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Sign Kosuke to a 2 year deal if possible
Sammy Sofa replied to Bowas temper's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
Gotcha. -
And they all player corner IF positions.
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And I'd rather he not get hurt. He's going to have a better idea as to his physical limitations/vulnerabilities than us. There's a big difference between being lazy and not wanting to end up on the DL.
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I'd be shocked if that was the case. Players are pretty smart about choosing when they dive now which makes the percentage a lot higher. Of course, that's part of the reason I don't want Soriano diving. He doesn't have the instincts out there and probably would make some dives that would make it a very poor percentage play. This is my thinking as well. As has been alluded to previously, players make these calculations on the fly. If they think they have a reasonable chance of catching the ball, they go for it. If not, *and* they don't have a teammate backing them up, they usually don't. All of which leads to a success rate greater than 35% for sure. I'm including when guys try to catch a ball leaping against the wall/fence and not just diving, so we're likely coming at this differently. We're also not that far apart. If there are two dozen attempts made at these types of plays in a week I'm saying they succeed 8-10 times and you're saying, what, 12-15 times? Two dozen attempts across MLB you mean? That seems low. But the rest, sure. I was just spitballing for the sake of a point. I have absolutely no clue how many times in a week MLB players are typically leaping/diving for catches in the MLB.
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If that were reality you WOULD have guys taking extra bases on him left and right.
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Sign Kosuke to a 2 year deal if possible
Sammy Sofa replied to Bowas temper's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
Can Jackson not play RF? -
I'd be shocked if that was the case. Players are pretty smart about choosing when they dive now which makes the percentage a lot higher. Of course, that's part of the reason I don't want Soriano diving. He doesn't have the instincts out there and probably would make some dives that would make it a very poor percentage play. This is my thinking as well. As has been alluded to previously, players make these calculations on the fly. If they think they have a reasonable chance of catching the ball, they go for it. If not, *and* they don't have a teammate backing them up, they usually don't. All of which leads to a success rate greater than 35% for sure. I'm including when guys try to catch a ball leaping against the wall/fence and not just diving, so we're likely coming at this differently. We're also not that far apart. If there are two dozen attempts made at these types of plays in a week I'm saying they succeed 8-10 times and you're saying, what, 12-15 times?
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So Soriano is somehow more effective by loafing after the ball than sprinting for it? And folks think I'm nuts. I think the difference between his "loafing" and "sprinting" and the bases given up because of it is negligible. He could be faster, but he's not nearly as slow as people like you think he is. Given that his injuries are leg-based I understand why he's slower and don't want him aggravating things since, again, I don't think he's giving up singles into doubles and doubles into triples at a pace anywhere even close to worrying.
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I'd be shocked if that was the case. Players are pretty smart about choosing when they dive now which makes the percentage a lot higher. Of course, that's part of the reason I don't want Soriano diving. He doesn't have the instincts out there and probably would make some dives that would make it a very poor percentage play. Like I said, I have no idea if I'm right, but it wouldn't surprise me if I was. It's a [expletive] hard thing to do, and it's typically done out of desperation.
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Why do you think a non-OF with limited OF defensive ability would be automatically better if he's hauling ass? Catching balls on the fly isn't easy, so why you assume he'd be better if he's stepping up the speed (which just makes it harder coupled with his wariness of getting injured again) doesn't make much sense to me.
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I have absolutely no idea if this is right, but I'd bet that leaping/diving for a catch only succeeds around 35% of the time. I think you're focusing on Web Gems.
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It would be crazy if we existed in a world where we could have stats that gauge how much of a liability defensively a fielder is based on the speed they display/plays they make, etc.. You'd think davearm2 would be all over that because surely it shows that Soriano as someone who obviously would benefit from busting his ass more. A), defensive metrics in their current state are unreliable, at best. But that's a totally separate discussion. The bigger issue is, B) those metrics are never ever going to be able to tell you how many more plays a particular fielder giving <100% effort would have made with 100% effort. And that's the issue at hand here. So you think Soriano would be a better OF if he ran harder out there and took more risks as a defender?
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Diving/leaping in the outfield isn't necessary. Hitting is necessary. Sliding and blocking the plate aren't necessary, but you're much more likely to be succeed in your attempted task, which is more likely going to be in a critical position. Most of the time a player can lay out for a catch it's for a hit that will typically only result in a single. Most of the time if a player is close enough to dive it's going to hold a runner on 3rd if they were starting on 2nd. Basically the "gains" of an average OF laying out for a catch don't outweigh the "losses" because of the likelihood of them succeeding aren't very good. I mean, let's remember, this was started about Soriano. Soriano has his obvious limits as an OF. Him hauling ass and diving for catches is just going to exacerbate that, not make it better.
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Wow that is just a whole bunch of ridiculous unsubstantiated nonsense right there. I can't really substantiate it without going through all the game tape. It's not like it's something I can look through the game log and find examples from. As others have pointed out, 20-30 bases might be overstating it. I thought of a few examples from the last month or so and then tried to extrapolate that over the entire season, assuming that he has committed around the same number of mistakes each month. That might very well be a logical fallacy. I would probably adjust it a little bit down, but knowing an exact number without the game tape is impossible. We do know from fangraphs who have tracked all these things that Ramirez and Soriano have been 2 of the worst 5 baserunners in all of baseball this season though. But thanks to the stats we also know Aramis is the best 3B offensively in the NL this year. So would the elevated risk of him busting his ass out of the box every time (and being older and somewhat injury prone) be justified? I wouldn't think so. Fangraphs has his baserunning take away a full third of his offensive value this year, but I don't think hustling on outs would help that very much as I think he just has deficiencies in that area . But I haven't even seen Ramirez be that bad at not hustling either. So is that just based mostly on his speed?
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Wow that is just a whole bunch of ridiculous unsubstantiated nonsense right there. I can't really substantiate it without going through all the game tape. It's not like it's something I can look through the game log and find examples from. As others have pointed out, 20-30 bases might be overstating it. I thought of a few examples from the last month or so and then tried to extrapolate that over the entire season, assuming that he has committed around the same number of mistakes each month. That might very well be a logical fallacy. I would probably adjust it a little bit down, but knowing an exact number without the game tape is impossible. We do know from fangraphs who have tracked all these things that Ramirez and Soriano have been 2 of the worst 5 baserunners in all of baseball this season though. But thanks to the stats we also know Aramis is the best 3B offensively in the NL this year. So would the elevated risk of him busting his ass out of the box every time (and being older and somewhat injury prone) be justified?
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It would be crazy if we existed in a world where we could have stats that gauge how much of a liability defensively a fielder is based on the speed they display/plays they make, etc.. You'd think davearm2 would be all over that because surely it shows that Soriano as someone who obviously would benefit from busting his ass more.
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His start wasn't "horrendous" this year. He just wasn't hitting for his usual power.
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Do you seriously think Soriano is on the cusp of going balls out on every play? LOL Why you think such a thing is quantifiable and isn't completely subjective and that it's something you think you can argue is baffling.
