Mephistopheles

Florida's out of conference schedule included Miami, Florida State and Hawaii. Most of these games are scheduled well in advance of this season (when FSU and Miami are good). The three teams have combined for 10 BCS appearances this decade. USC's non conference has 8. Florida tried to schedule 3 games against OOC opponents that are good, but because these games were scheduled five or so years ago, when two of the teams were practically BCS and top 10 locks, you cant really blame UF for not scheduling tougher OOC games. Im not saying their OOC schedule is tough. I am saying they tried to make a tough one, which you said they did not. SC's OOC really isnt that good. Rankings in Sagarin. SC's 18 Ohio State 42 Notre Dame 62 Virginia Not terrible, but not outstanding.

im pretty sure i said peavy was better than or comparable to santana a long time ago.

man byu > uf for sure.

hill has absolutely no trade value at this point.

I don't see us completing this deal with Felix Pie as the centerpiece. I think it would have to include Soto.

his batted balls remained largely the same? if going from a league average LD% to the worst in the league is remaining largely the same, then fine. he's a .330-.340 BABIP kind of guy. That'll get him .300/.350/.500 if he doesn't develop more power or learn to walk more frequently. i dont see how he compares to reed johnson in any way

lol...pence is a career .293 .335 .500 hitter against righties and is just 25

some are more than others. decent offspeed pitches are common

source article: http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2008/oct/14/padres-peavy1420020/?padres Hmmmm. The last places we want him are Houston and St. Louis. The Dodgers couldn easily put together a deal for him. Hopefully Hendry can go all out and pull another rabbit out of his hat. Hes dont it before. Houston has 0% chance of having the pieces to get him. St. Louis on the other hand does, but they'd have to give up Rasmus. Pence for him would get it done. They would consider Pence for him.

khalils a great buy low candidate you know. id love to get peavy and khalil in a package. ive stayed out of this discussion because we dont have the assets to make this deal. well we do, but we just wont trade soto

im not saying its why. im saying that's why he should struggle against right-handed pitchers with quality sliders. you're more likely to face these types of pitchers in the playoffs, so we should expect him to be hurt more than the average hitter in the playoffs. its obviously not something that will cause him to have this big of a split, it's just one ingredient. Some of it is luck, some of it is that he really is ill-suited for post season play. That has nothing to do with the fact that he's performed poorly, it has everything to do with the basis of his production. he's actually slugging .315 against lefties in the post season (40 PAs is small) but still. there's more at work than inability to hit sliders and proneness to swinging at them. the fact that he *probably* has a higher percentage of his production coming on mistake pitches is another ingredient.

strikeouts do not mean you don't have good plate coverage. and strikeouts don't mean you don't have good contact skills. strikeouts are a byproduct of discipline. when you have a HUGE walk rate and a fairly average strikeout rate you have good pitch recognition and the sort.

the probability of soriano hitting as poorly as he has in ~150 random PAs is about 3%. That's enough to suggest the PAs aren't random.

its not that hard to think about.... better teams make the playoffs better pitchers make teams better better sliders make pitchers better

i should note that #xbh is usually invariant among parks. in most cases doubles become homers or homers become doubles. in in extreme cases though the smaller park tends to increase xbh. Aka, at the very least, the park argument is going to hurt Iwamura relatively to Fukudome #xbh wise.

Because every pitcher can't throw one consistently good like most good pitchers cannot? anyways, this shows how poor soriano is at laying off of sliders (or curves) off the plate from righties. The top portion is like the who's who of crap. The bottom portion is like the who's who of awesome hitters. With one or two exceptions of course. Only right-handed batters facing sliders/curves off the plate coming from righty pitchers. +----------+-------------+------+------+-----+--------+--------+ | first | last | Con | Sw | NP | SwRt | ConRt | +----------+-------------+------+------+-----+--------+--------+ | Angel | Berroa | 45 | 63 | 105 | 0.6000 | 0.7143 | | Jesus | Flores | 38 | 84 | 145 | 0.5793 | 0.4524 | | Adam | Jones | 68 | 110 | 190 | 0.5789 | 0.6182 | | Miguel | Olivo | 27 | 72 | 137 | 0.5255 | 0.3750 | | Bengie | Molina | 75 | 94 | 180 | 0.5222 | 0.7979 | | Carlos | Gomez | 70 | 129 | 254 | 0.5079 | 0.5426 | | Adrian | Beltre | 64 | 113 | 229 | 0.4934 | 0.5664 | | Alfonso | Soriano | 66 | 131 | 268 | 0.4888 | 0.5038 | | Ryan | Braun | 59 | 101 | 209 | 0.4833 | 0.5842 | | Torii | Hunter | 46 | 97 | 201 | 0.4826 | 0.4742 | | Damion | Easley | 30 | 51 | 106 | 0.4811 | 0.5882 | | Vladimir | Guerrero | 69 | 115 | 241 | 0.4772 | 0.6000 | | Kevin | Kouzmanoff | 33 | 90 | 190 | 0.4737 | 0.3667 | | Clint | Barmes | 38 | 65 | 139 | 0.4676 | 0.5846 | | Jorge | Cantu | 79 | 144 | 309 | 0.4660 | 0.5486 | | Aaron | Rowand | 43 | 109 | 236 | 0.4619 | 0.3945 | | Howie | Kendrick | 20 | 54 | 117 | 0.4615 | 0.3704 | | Khalil | Greene | 27 | 64 | 142 | 0.4507 | 0.4219 | | Mike | Aviles | 26 | 50 | 113 | 0.4425 | 0.5200 | | Jose | Castillo | 35 | 73 | 166 | 0.4398 | 0.4795 | | Jerry | HairstonJr. | 34 | 46 | 105 | 0.4381 | 0.7391 | | Willy | Taveras | 43 | 54 | 127 | 0.4252 | 0.7963 | | John | Buck | 27 | 53 | 125 | 0.4240 | 0.5094 | | Alexei | Ramirez | 53 | 91 | 217 | 0.4194 | 0.5824 | | Ben | Francisco | 40 | 78 | 187 | 0.4171 | 0.5128 | | Jeff | Mathis | 28 | 65 | 156 | 0.4167 | 0.4308 | | Jeff | Francoeur | 66 | 107 | 257 | 0.4163 | 0.6168 | | Ty | Wigginton | 28 | 72 | 174 | 0.4138 | 0.3889 | | Miguel | Tejada | 43 | 77 | 189 | 0.4074 | 0.5584 | | Edwin | Encarnacion | 50 | 84 | 208 | 0.4038 | 0.5952 | | Delmon | Young | 47 | 93 | 231 | 0.4026 | 0.5054 | | Freddy | Sanchez | 64 | 101 | 251 | 0.4024 | 0.6337 | | Yorvit | Torrealba | 21 | 43 | 107 | 0.4019 | 0.4884 | | Miguel | Cabrera | 44 | 95 | 239 | 0.3975 | 0.4632 | | Reed | Johnson | 32 | 41 | 104 | 0.3942 | 0.7805 | | Scott | Rolen | 28 | 52 | 132 | 0.3939 | 0.5385 | | Rod | Barajas | 31 | 60 | 153 | 0.3922 | 0.5167 | | Kelly | Shoppach | 23 | 66 | 170 | 0.3882 | 0.3485 | | Yuniesky | Betancourt | 36 | 54 | 141 | 0.3830 | 0.6667 | | J.J. | Hardy | 49 | 80 | 209 | 0.3828 | 0.6125 | | Xavier | Nady | 42 | 72 | 190 | 0.3789 | 0.5833 | | Vernon | Wells | 24 | 53 | 140 | 0.3786 | 0.4528 | | Matt | Holliday | 34 | 76 | 202 | 0.3762 | 0.4474 | | Franklin | Gutierrez | 43 | 71 | 189 | 0.3757 | 0.6056 | | Brandon | Phillips | 41 | 101 | 269 | 0.3755 | 0.4059 | | Hunter | Pence | 59 | 126 | 339 | 0.3717 | 0.4683 | | Carlos | Quentin | 45 | 76 | 207 | 0.3671 | 0.5921 | | Kevin | Youkilis | 47 | 81 | 221 | 0.3665 | 0.5802 | | Andy | Marte | 17 | 37 | 102 | 0.3627 | 0.4595 | | Kenji | Johjima | 27 | 46 | 128 | 0.3594 | 0.5870 | | Jose | Guillen | 50 | 75 | 209 | 0.3589 | 0.6667 | | Lastings | Milledge | 46 | 91 | 254 | 0.3583 | 0.5055 | | Billy | Butler | 27 | 57 | 161 | 0.3540 | 0.4737 | | Jason | Bartlett | 24 | 46 | 130 | 0.3538 | 0.5217 | | Jeff | Keppinger | 39 | 51 | 145 | 0.3517 | 0.7647 | | Ivan | Rodriguez | 27 | 45 | 129 | 0.3488 | 0.6000 | | Marlon | Byrd | 26 | 49 | 142 | 0.3451 | 0.5306 | | Brandon | Inge | 23 | 48 | 141 | 0.3404 | 0.4792 | | Carlos | Lee | 38 | 55 | 162 | 0.3395 | 0.6909 | | Mike | Lowell | 34 | 57 | 169 | 0.3373 | 0.5965 | | Placido | Polanco | 37 | 44 | 131 | 0.3359 | 0.8409 | | Pedro | Feliz | 34 | 60 | 180 | 0.3333 | 0.5667 | | Josh | Willingham | 37 | 62 | 186 | 0.3333 | 0.5968 | | Marcus | Thames | 25 | 42 | 126 | 0.3333 | 0.5952 | | Andruw | Jones | 16 | 38 | 114 | 0.3333 | 0.4211 | | Conor | Jackson | 44 | 69 | 208 | 0.3317 | 0.6377 | | Edgar | Renteria | 30 | 43 | 132 | 0.3258 | 0.6977 | | Paul | Konerko | 26 | 62 | 191 | 0.3246 | 0.4194 | | Alex | Rodriguez | 23 | 42 | 130 | 0.3231 | 0.5476 | | Matt | Kemp | 30 | 82 | 254 | 0.3228 | 0.3659 | | Juan | Uribe | 22 | 47 | 146 | 0.3219 | 0.4681 | | Mark | Ellis | 30 | 56 | 175 | 0.3200 | 0.5357 | | Bill | Hall | 22 | 40 | 126 | 0.3175 | 0.5500 | | Jeff | Kent | 18 | 38 | 120 | 0.3167 | 0.4737 | | Rickie | Weeks | 29 | 65 | 206 | 0.3155 | 0.4462 | | Chris | Iannetta | 21 | 52 | 165 | 0.3152 | 0.4038 | | David | Wright | 43 | 86 | 273 | 0.3150 | 0.5000 | | Andy | LaRoche | 21 | 33 | 105 | 0.3143 | 0.6364 | | Yadier | Molina | 31 | 44 | 140 | 0.3143 | 0.7045 | | Scott | Hairston | 16 | 38 | 121 | 0.3140 | 0.4211 | | Jason | Michaels | 15 | 32 | 102 | 0.3137 | 0.4688 | | Jose | Lopez | 29 | 57 | 182 | 0.3132 | 0.5088 | | Ramon | Hernandez | 34 | 50 | 160 | 0.3125 | 0.6800 | | Melvin | Mora | 23 | 39 | 125 | 0.3120 | 0.5897 | | Corey | Hart | 39 | 73 | 234 | 0.3120 | 0.5342 | | Jason | Bay | 45 | 92 | 295 | 0.3119 | 0.4891 | | Geovany | Soto | 31 | 80 | 258 | 0.3101 | 0.3875 | | Joe | Crede | 28 | 40 | 129 | 0.3101 | 0.7000 | | Casey | Blake | 43 | 81 | 262 | 0.3092 | 0.5309 | | Elijah | Dukes | 17 | 42 | 136 | 0.3088 | 0.4048 | | Ryan | Zimmerman | 23 | 46 | 150 | 0.3067 | 0.5000 | | Ryan | Ludwick | 26 | 59 | 193 | 0.3057 | 0.4407 | | Jason | Kendall | 33 | 40 | 132 | 0.3030 | 0.8250 | | Derrek | Lee | 34 | 78 | 259 | 0.3012 | 0.4359 | | Troy | Tulowitzki | 33 | 43 | 144 | 0.2986 | 0.7674 | | Cody | Ross | 39 | 61 | 205 | 0.2976 | 0.6393 | | Mark | Reynolds | 38 | 82 | 276 | 0.2971 | 0.4634 | | Edgar | Gonzalez | 18 | 35 | 118 | 0.2966 | 0.5143 | | Jhonny | Peralta | 43 | 69 | 234 | 0.2949 | 0.6232 | | Chris | Young | 42 | 99 | 338 | 0.2929 | 0.4242 | | Jayson | Werth | 25 | 41 | 140 | 0.2929 | 0.6098 | | Justin | Upton | 27 | 48 | 165 | 0.2909 | 0.5625 | | Dustin | Pedroia | 46 | 55 | 190 | 0.2895 | 0.8364 | | Jamey | Carroll | 17 | 29 | 102 | 0.2843 | 0.5862 | | Hanley | Ramirez | 43 | 78 | 276 | 0.2826 | 0.5513 | | Mark | DeRosa | 21 | 53 | 188 | 0.2819 | 0.3962 | | Brendan | Harris | 20 | 39 | 140 | 0.2786 | 0.5128 | | Bobby | Crosby | 20 | 50 | 180 | 0.2778 | 0.4000 | | Chris | Snyder | 23 | 49 | 177 | 0.2768 | 0.4694 | | Jermaine | Dye | 38 | 72 | 261 | 0.2759 | 0.5278 | | Alex | Rios | 38 | 77 | 280 | 0.2750 | 0.4935 | | Aramis | Ramirez | 33 | 69 | 257 | 0.2685 | 0.4783 | | Rich | Aurilia | 12 | 27 | 101 | 0.2673 | 0.4444 | | Mike | Napoli | 13 | 27 | 103 | 0.2621 | 0.4815 | | Emil | Brown | 11 | 33 | 126 | 0.2619 | 0.3333 | | Ryan | Garko | 28 | 51 | 196 | 0.2602 | 0.5490 | | Evan | Longoria | 29 | 47 | 182 | 0.2582 | 0.6170 | | Mike | Cameron | 20 | 50 | 194 | 0.2577 | 0.4000 | | Derek | Jeter | 19 | 35 | 137 | 0.2555 | 0.5429 | | Gary | Sheffield | 26 | 45 | 177 | 0.2542 | 0.5778 | | Yunel | Escobar | 19 | 46 | 185 | 0.2486 | 0.4130 | | Russell | Martin | 30 | 63 | 261 | 0.2414 | 0.4762 | | Garrett | Atkins | 29 | 49 | 208 | 0.2356 | 0.5918 | | Ryan | Theriot | 32 | 41 | 176 | 0.2330 | 0.7805 | | Pat | Burrell | 24 | 51 | 219 | 0.2329 | 0.4706 | | Kurt | Suzuki | 18 | 34 | 150 | 0.2267 | 0.5294 | | Dan | Uggla | 33 | 79 | 352 | 0.2244 | 0.4177 | | Magglio | Ordonez | 23 | 33 | 149 | 0.2215 | 0.6970 | | Troy | Glaus | 26 | 50 | 226 | 0.2212 | 0.5200 | | Julio | Lugo | 10 | 23 | 105 | 0.2190 | 0.4348 | | Austin | Kearns | 12 | 22 | 102 | 0.2157 | 0.5455 | | Ian | Kinsler | 35 | 51 | 237 | 0.2152 | 0.6863 | | Orlando | Cabrera | 18 | 34 | 161 | 0.2112 | 0.5294 | | Jose | Bautista | 25 | 41 | 196 | 0.2092 | 0.6098 | | Kevin | Millar | 22 | 38 | 182 | 0.2088 | 0.5789 | | Manny | Ramirez | 26 | 48 | 235 | 0.2043 | 0.5417 | | Albert | Pujols | 28 | 39 | 198 | 0.1970 | 0.7179 | | Michael | Young | 12 | 28 | 160 | 0.1750 | 0.4286 | | Carlos | Ruiz | 9 | 21 | 122 | 0.1721 | 0.4286 | | B.J. | Upton | 19 | 27 | 173 | 0.1561 | 0.7037 | | Marco | Scutaro | 14 | 17 | 164 | 0.1037 | 0.8235 | +----------+-------------+------+------+-----+--------+--------+

Dividing percentages? Seriously? No offense, but thats one of the most [expletive] things to do in math. this isn't true. it's paramount. paramount =/= [expletive]. it's the complete opposite but that's beside the point. I don't know why everyone gets the idea that power = home runs. it really wasn't close at all: +------+----------+----------+---------+------+------+------+------+-------+ | Year | PlayerID | Last | First | AB | 2B | 3B | HR | xbhrt | +------+----------+----------+---------+------+------+------+------+-------+ | 2006 | 1064 | Fukudome | Kosuke | 496 | 47 | 5 | 31 | 0.167 | | 2005 | 1064 | Fukudome | Kosuke | 515 | 39 | 6 | 28 | 0.142 | | 2003 | 1064 | Fukudome | Kosuke | 528 | 30 | 11 | 34 | 0.142 | | 2004 | 1064 | Fukudome | Kosuke | 350 | 19 | 7 | 23 | 0.140 | | 2007 | 1064 | Fukudome | Kosuke | 269 | 22 | 0 | 13 | 0.130 | | 2005 | 993 | Iwamura | Akinori | 548 | 31 | 4 | 30 | 0.119 | | 2004 | 993 | Iwamura | Akinori | 533 | 19 | 0 | 44 | 0.118 | | 2002 | 1064 | Fukudome | Kosuke | 542 | 42 | 3 | 19 | 0.118 | | 2002 | 993 | Iwamura | Akinori | 510 | 35 | 2 | 23 | 0.118 | | 2006 | 993 | Iwamura | Akinori | 546 | 27 | 2 | 32 | 0.112 | | 2000 | 1064 | Fukudome | Kosuke | 316 | 18 | 2 | 13 | 0.104 | | 2001 | 1064 | Fukudome | Kosuke | 375 | 22 | 2 | 15 | 0.104 | | 1999 | 993 | Iwamura | Akinori | 252 | 11 | 4 | 11 | 0.103 | | 1999 | 1064 | Fukudome | Kosuke | 461 | 25 | 2 | 16 | 0.093 | | 2000 | 993 | Iwamura | Akinori | 436 | 13 | 9 | 18 | 0.092 | | 2001 | 993 | Iwamura | Akinori | 520 | 24 | 4 | 18 | 0.088 | | 2003 | 993 | Iwamura | Akinori | 232 | 6 | 2 | 12 | 0.086 | +------+----------+----------+---------+------+------+------+------+-------+

um iwamura struck out 18% more than fukudome. fukudome walked 40% more than iwamura. under no definition is that similar or close. 3 percent may seem close but it really isn't.

ugh. youre not getting it. fukudomes translated numbers are roughly .290/.390/.490 here give or take. every other hitter approached their translated numbers in time. youre right that pitchers adjusted to him, he just has not had time to adjust to them yet (and it takes more time) and the whole thing about him not being able to hit anything on the outer half is bull.

The main problem can be illustrated as an SAT Test question. Brendan Harris Best Year : Albert Pujols Career Average :: Akinori Iwamuras Best Year : Kosuke Fukudomes Career Average Iwamura in Japan played for the Yakult Swallows routinely placing equivalent averages in the .290 to .300 range. Fukudome, on the other hand, had one season in his last 6 seasons where his equivalent average was below .330. The difference from Fukudome's average season and Iwamura's best season was roughly 40 to 50 pts of equivalent average. Harris and Pujols' difference is 60 points, or so. Seriously Fukudome was incredible in Japan http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f189/kctigers23/Fukudome4.gif Yakult's one of the top three offensive parks in NPB. Chunichi is more or less the RFK of NPB. Yakult would be Citizen's Bank or Ameriquest Field. In Japan, Iwamura was an all or nothing slugger. He had high power numbers because he was more or less trying to be Matt Stairs. What he ended up doing was homering a lot, striking out a lot and getting a few walks thanks to opposing pitchers being scared. Fukudome couldn't do that in Chunichi. He had to be more of a complete hitter who used the entire field and routinely shot balls to the gaps. He displayed great plate coverage, recognition and discipline, something Iwamura did not. He showed great contact skills, something Iwamura did not. He showed roughly the same amount of power, relatively speaking, but augmented it with a more well-rounded attack. This is in Japan, since moving over here Iwamura has competely changed his approach to the plate to being a slap hitter. Your comparison of the two of them has probably more to do with Iwamura changing his game to adapt here. He does not have enough power to be a Matt Stairs in the US. He has 20 HR power, but that would come with 200 strike outs and a .225 batting average. He's changed his game and is actually outproducing his projections based on his Japan numbers despite producing in an entirely different way than anticipated. Fukudome on the other hand didn't have the glaring holes in his game that Iwamura had, so he shouldn't have to adjust his game to succeed. I have little doubt in my mind that Fukudome will approach or pass his translated level of production. Every hitter coming here has. Tadahito Iguchi did, Kaz Matsui did, Kenji Johjima did, Ichiro did, and Hideki Matsui did. With the exception of Matsui, Fukudome was considerably better and more complete as a hitter in Japan than the others. Matsui was fairly one dimensional in Japan too, but that's beside the point. There has not been a more complete hitter than Fukudome to come over. He'll adjust in time. He's no Iwamura. Poor comparison.

You're not really going out on the a limb on that one. I'll go ahead and predict that Adam Dunn walks more than Alfonso Soriano next year too.

Hey you can copy and paste numbers. I am impressed. And what are those things? Let's see: From the Same League - Check Identical Numbers - Nope Identical Swings - Not really. Ichiro and Matsui do the same things they do, but their actual swings are totally different. Age - Nope. 2 years is a lot. and the fact I chose Pujols and Harris means something. I didn't randomly pull two names out of a hat. It's really that type of comparison.

im not really ranting on you or marcel or anyone projection system in general. just the idea. and i know exactly why the results are what they are. it's just the utility from them is non-existent. so its kind of a waste of time for someone like me and others who already have an understanding of things like certain skills being more based off of luck than others. you're really not filtering out "noise" when you do this. the "noise" is always there. you just havent developed a system sophisticated enough to predict the "noise" so you assume the "noise" is random - or largely random. and im not meaning you as in you, im meaning you as an everyone. a lot of the noise is predictable, if you work with probability based assessments. certain pitchers have higher likelihood of .250 babip seasons then others. you know this, and your projections sorta kinda include this. but not really. projections are what they are. more or less the middle value of production, with a 50% chance above and a 50% chance below. if I take the last two years of a player, average the stats (which is even simpler than Marcel) and use that for a projection, we're going to get results that are pretty damn close to what you get. what's the purpose of projections? to try to construct the best team you possibly can using information we know. the problem is that the difference between my 2 year projection and your two year projection is only going to be a handful of runs, if that. We're talking five or six runs - tops. However, those five or six runs are only going to fall in the middle 45-55 percentiles for most players. So really the accuracy of one system to another really doesn't tell us anything we didn't know. What's really important are the likelihoods for large deviations from previous play - the busts and booms. Those are what win and lose divisions.

I already did: I think he's wrong because they're not comparable. And I don't think they are comparable because of the things he said only one is true (thus my reasoning must include the other things he mentioned).

unfortunately only one of the things you said is true: they're both from japan.