haltz

He should have traded him before the deadline, but he's not a bad guy to have around in the bullpen and the money's fairly negligible. Anyway, you said you'd rather have Pineiro, which probably wouldn't be smart -- especially considering the money. That was my point. Just in case I get another Harry Potter rant, I'll just say that I'm going to use the same argument as last time plus his ZiPS projections. Pineiro sucks, and Franklin will be alright.

Ryan Franklin is a reliever making $2.5M per for two years. Pineiro will be making $7.5M in 2009 as a starter. I'd rather have Franklin in either role, regardless of money, but it's an apples to oranges comparison as is.

BIS is actually tracking the speed and vector of each ball in play, along with exactly where the fielder was positioned and all that jazz. If you haven't already, read "The Fielding Bible" I thought they were still spotting those classifications. Is this something new with the Gameday parks? I can't find my copy of The Fielding Bible for whatever reason. Anyway, apparently there was a presentation on this at SABR 37, so I think we're talking about two different things here.

That's not the point. It's just weighting it properly for the individual to make it correlate better to run scoring. You are essentially comparing BA+IsoD to BA+IsoP I guess, and we could be more precise with LWTS or whatever to tell us what that comparison is. Though I'm not sure what it'd be telling us. OBP and SLG even have different denominators, it's an apples to oranges comparison. The reason that GPA (1.7*OBP+SLG/4) is useful is that it scales well to BA and EqA. However it's not adjusted, and the gains from OPS are marginal. It's just a little easier and more accurate back of the envelope calculation that people are familiar with (the OPS part, at this point anyway) the components. If I wanted to be precise I'd use EqA or something similarly complex. OPS is just fine as a quick and dirty stat for most purposes. If spotters for PBP data had a stopwatch, fielding metrics would be a lot better. I forget who said it first, but that's all you would really need with where the ball was caught. Hangtime has to be a lot more accurate than "fliner." Anyway, whoever said that stats were too personal and lacked real-world run-scoring or whatever ... there are pretty much stats for everything now as far as production goes. A lot of stats are about removing context because a lot of that is luck and clutch. But there are things like WPA and LWTS by base-out state that give you a pretty good idea with the context in. If you are really, really concerned about context, then look at RBI and Runs Scored. It's a bad way to gauge performance, or make side-by-side comparisons, or make projections, but it's "what happened."

"Toast" being capitalized is my favorite part. I stared at the title for way too long thinking that Torres Toast was something I'd never heard of.

Sometimes the mediocre NLC team scores more runs than the other teams and somehow wins the WS, and sometimes they get swept by the DBacks. Being built to go to the postseason is most of the battle. The rest is a crapshoot. A fascinating and enjoyable one, of course, but for the most part a crapshoot nonetheless. Getting to the postseason is fun, and about all a team can really control. There's something like an 87% chance that you are going to be let down after that, so it's probably best to "enjoy the ride," actually. It's not the ultimate failure; it's three baseball games. Important ones, but still subject to all the variance that entails. There's a lot of weird stuff in this thread, so I thought I'd offer an outsider perspective. Kind of a weird version of condolences, but there it is.

I read somewhere else where someone was speculating that Bill Hall was on his way out. Maybe BTF, but I'm not sure. Anyway, what do you think it would take to get him? Or are the Brewers mainly interested in unloading his contract? I guess it depends on what kind of market there is for him if they made him available, but I'm just wondering what your thoughts are, or the prevailing Brewer fan opinion is.

Or Denny McClain 1966. There are lots of examples, but you'd think most of the 799 seasons where a pitcher won 20 games were pretty good. Pitcher wins are obviously a terrible measurement though.

I didn't come across as though he accepted it as truth. Just that he hated it, which is fine for him if he wants to remain ignorant about something he's (presumably) passionate about. He seems to go farther than that anyway; this is [expletive] for several reasons:

The ESPN guys are probably just scared of not picking an NLC team with 85 wins, thanks to last year. I didn't read the article, but these are especially funny when the analysts pick a team in a certain amount of games. Neyer and Keri should know better.

It's a terrible argument. If he wants to ignore it he can. If you or I find that analysis makes baseball more enjoyable then that is fine also. I hate that argument. No one is holding a gun to his head, or saying that 20-game winners are bad pitchers.

Larry says that a lot in the show. "Pretty, pretty, pretty good." I sat on the rooftops for the September 10th Cardinals game. Well, the first time when it rained and then again for the rescheduled game. The rainout was fun because all the drinks and food are included, so it was basically a big party for a couple of hours until the game was called. During the game on the 10th, I didn't really enjoy it. If you have a choice, being in the stadium anywhere is much better. It's better than nothing for playoff baseball though, of course.

He's probably the second best defensive left fielder in the league, counting Byrnes I guess. Due partly to skill and partly to the fact that there are some terrible fielding left fielders in the National League. Over the same amount of playing time, the average NL LF would create about 15 less runs, and (just guessing here) be worth about 15 less on defense. So he's probably about 3 wins above the average LF in what is presumably his peak. Which illustrates how bad the end of the contract will likely be. At some point over the next however many years, the Cubs are going to want to hide a bat out there, and it should probably be troublesome that the organization didn't make much of an effort to play him somewhere else, especially at this stage in his career.

They weren't built that way, and even if they were built to be outscored and still win (whatever that means, all teams want -- and some have -- three great relievers), they'd have to get seriously lucky to explain double digit games. And of course it looks like they are using terrible pitchers in blowouts. Let's think about that for a second.

The Padres are right on their pythag record. Fans of every team, every year, try and rationalize why it doesn't apply to their team, but there's probably not much skill to getting outscored and winning 90 games. There's no leveraging that accounts for that, and it's not out of the realm of possibility for a team to happen into a weird run distribution or just luck their way into a discrepancy like that. The 2006 Indians come to mind as a team that found themselves on the wrong side of the bell curve. Look at them now, four games over their pythag and clinched the division. DBacks fans should take solace in the fact that it really just doesn't matter. They have had a good year, and their young offense should improve. As for the playoffs, it doesn't really matter who's playing who in a short series. Enjoy the heightened atmosphere.

I'm asking how you would define a clutch pitcher. And being clutch in one year does not make a hitter have a clutch talent. Those studies I linked are much more comprehensive than that. I'm fairly sure that the research in "The Book" addresses the issue that I think you are getting at, but I don't own it. Maybe someone who does can weigh in.

"Clutch pitching" is probably just another way to say "good pitching." Pitching is an endurance match and an intellectual exercise. Any worthwhile study would have decent sample sizes and controls for quality of opposition. So you don't know if clutch pitching exists, you assume it doesn't, and you use that assumption to conclude that clutch hitting doesn't exist. That's terrible. It certainly isn't science. I assume there's room for some sort of clutch pitching and that it doesn't make much sense that hitters would consistently hold something back in certain situations. Also, that if we have enough hitters and data that they would all face "clutch" and "un-clutch" pitching if it exists. Maybe we're defining things differently, because I'm not following you.

"Clutch pitching" is probably just another way to say "good pitching." Pitching is an endurance match and an intellectual exercise. Any worthwhile study would have decent sample sizes and controls for quality of opposition.

You should. It's not very long. First of all you are missing the whole thesis here when you ask for proof. Secondly, he's not claiming that hitters put forth max effort every single at-bat without exception, he's saying that they have self-interest to put forth max effort in almost all situations. There's no need for effort preservation, like there would be even for pitchers.

Hot hand stuff and streaks aren't very predictive. Just another sabermetric finding that makes the game less interesting or romantic to some, so they'll ignore it, while it makes baseball more interesting to others. It depends on your point of view whether you dismiss that or not. Teams are hot until they are not, and vice versa. The hindsight proclamation as to why can't really be refuted, but if it's valid it should be predictive. Players certainly feel like momentum is a real thing. Everyone's probably felt "locked in" doing something. Did you feel locked in because you were performing well, or were you performing well because you were locked in? In baseball I think it's usually the former.

Pujols is in there because he won't come out of the lineup. He's almost at his seventh straight 100 RBI season and he probably wouldn't sit either way. Wainwright being in there for that long is completely inexplicable. He'll probably blow his elbow out throwing the last game of the season. 75 IP last year, and 180 or something in AAA in 2005. It's really getting pointless and kind of scary.

Luckily Tony was thinking ahead when he ran Taguchi into an out at 2B down by four runs.

Duncan wasn't on the team in 2004. It wouldn't matter if it was Memphis. It's three baseball games. He was talking about the Cards sweeping the Brew in August. I'm making an unfunny joke about those dudes being healthy. I know what he's talking about. Well, not in general, but I know what series he meant there.

Duncan wasn't on the team in 2004. It wouldn't matter if it was Memphis. It's three baseball games.

LOL @ this thread