haltz

24 year old Ron Santo and 24 year old David Wright are pretty similar. They have practically identical EqAs (.336/.337) and 13ish WARP3s. Both above average fielders according to FRAA, and probably actual above average fielders to boot.

The info is correct. They have the choice to non-tender the players at the end of every year. Years 3-6 will be arbitration and then they'll hit free agency. They are under control and not contract. Cot's also lists service time which is nice.

The Yankees lose the Texas money if he hits free agency. They'd have to extend him, and whatever they spend costs them another however many cents on the dollar thanks to them being over the luxury tax threshold. At least that's how I understand it.

I think that being healthy matters for these stupid awards, and I said OPS+ not OPS. 19 pts is a big deal. Check out the park factors for Shea and Wrigley. So are 38 walks which is what you get if you pro-rated Ramirez' totals. Wright has an advantage of 1.5 RC/G. Does that help? A .336 EqA versus a .307 EqA? All I'm doing here is looking up random stats here that tell me Wright's had a better year at the plate. And none of it should have anything to do with the Gold Glove, but for some reason it does.

He's got another 100 PA, 44 TB, 48 BB, 31 SB at an 86% success rate, etc. He's got him by 19 pts of OPS+. He's right in between Chipper (50.8) and Cabrera (47.6) at 48.4 btRuns which is more than double Ramirez' contributions (above the average anyway). He's much better with the glove than the two guys in his division this year. I'm just talking about the Gold Glove. All else equal, it seems like the guy who has the better year at the plate wins it. These are the same guys that vote for Jeter all the time, so trying to explain it is probably a fool's errand though.

This non-Cubs fan has noticed. He's definitely fighting an uphill battle with regards to the actual vote though. At the ASB, Rolen was somehow having a career year defensively and on pace to better Ramirez in UZR by 23 runs/150. Small sample size and Rolen's shoulder is messed up etc, but I'm curious to see how the final numbers look. David Wright has been a much better hitter this year, and unless Rolen just has ridiculous staying power with the voters, I bet he'll get it. Both Wright and Ramirez are much improved on defense. Using those same ASB numbers, they were about even on pace to be +11/12 runs above average. Pedro Feliz might be the best of the bunch but he won't ever hit enough I guess. He's not easily outhitting Manny this year, whoever said that. He has a .4 edge in BtRuns. And count me as someone else who had no idea they were cousins.

Sounds like typical Boras posturing to me. Which would make you think there aren't any tampering issues here. That'd be a pretty funny thing to leak from a bunch of lawyers when there are hundreds of millions of dollars at stake. Just speculating of course.

I should have the "dignity" to Google this for you? Give me a break. Does Clutch Hitting Exist? by Tangotiger The Statistical Mirage of Clutch Hitting by Harold Brooks My Take On Clutch Hitting by JC Bradbury In Search of Clutch Hitting by Tom Ruane

I don't have to prove it. Smarter people than myself have already done that. I'm just trying to throw some rationale into the discussion. If you want to prove that clutch exists, you could make quite a name for yourself. Speaking of the burden of proof being on you, is it even true that closers are worse in non-save situations?

I don't follow this line of thinking at all. How do you acknowledge that some players are negatively affected by high pressure situations, yet at the same time say that those that are affected in a positive way are just random occurrences. Seriously, this makes zero sense. I said that one seems more plausible than the other, and that there's data to support that conclusion. I don't know how else to explain it. One's some sort of extra ability and one sounds like human nature. I have a hard time thinking that some dude wouldn't perform to the best of his ability for at least the first six years (and plenty of reason to after that, not even to mention srtaight competitiveness). Whatever makes someone "clutch" should show up in short season ball. If some dude can't handle that, then he will probably get weeded out. Now, there is probably a small amount of this ant-skill that makes it through, so that in the biggest situations that player has faced, they crack a little. I can buy that to a small degree, although I wouldn't think that I could pinpoint it. Some dude not playing as well as he can until it's the World Series, or until it's tied bottom nine, or there's ducks on the pond. I have a hard time with that.

Most studies conclude that there's not much clutch hitting ability. But I have read a couple that say anti-clutch may exist to some degree. Also, wrt the whole RISP thing, I wouldn't define clutch by a garbage time at-bat with some dude on 3B. Maybe WPA for hitters will actually turn out to be good for something. Anyway, it doesn't make much sense that a player can leap to a whole new ability level when the game is on the line. MLB players have a finite number of at-bats every year, and from a self-interest perspective, they are all important. When I played, I cherished every official at-bat, because you really don't get all that many of them. I can buy that a pressure packed situation may effect a few players negatively, but I find it hard to fathom that there are a bunch of players that have a switch that they only flip on every once in a while. For instance, they should probably switch it on and duct tape it to the wall during their pre-FA years. I could link a ton of studies I guess, but intuitively, some amount of anti-clutch makes much more sense than clutch. Like I said earlier, if there's some extra skill that a guy on my team has, but only taps into sometimes, then I don't think that's actually a good thing. It's not like basketball (or even pitching) where you are playing for an extended period of time and there probably is coasting and raising your game involved. You get five a night if you are lucky.

And when he's hitting sixth in the lineup he turns into Ty Cobb. Same sample size. It's not like anyone is going to dispute that Murton went 54-215 with RISP. It all matters to some degree. "Is it predictive?" is the question. Are there biases here. Is a 200 at-bat batting average susceptible to a lot of random variance? Or should we just conclude that, "that is Matt Murton ... can't hit with runner's in scoring position."

Baseball-Reference.com. We have a similar sized sample that "proves" that Ramirez becomes a terrible hitter when the game is tied, he's much better hitting fifth than fourth, better in the second half, he's better with 1 out than 2 or 0, etc. Trying to prove that a player is capable of a certain level of performance, but over half the time he plays at something less than that, like that's a good thing, seems weird to me.

Thanks. I had to set bounds on PI to get that earlier list. I wish you could search that stuff by %PA. Or maybe you can and I don't know how. Anyway, that's certainly more illustrative. Someone should sit Joe Sheehan down and give him the Sample-Sizes 101 lecture. Did he really think that Upton would strike out in 40% of his at-bats this year? That was written on May 16th. Geez.

Tampa Bay should just give him a blank check.

His career doesn't matter; that's not what he was bucking. It should've been obvious that he's not a .313 hitter. I'm not surprised that he hasn't been able to sustain Babe Ruth's IsoP either. A 140 pt drop in OPS sounds about right.

It's historically ridiculous actually: Yr Player SO%(PA) BA 2006 Howard 26% .313 1970 Bonds 25% .302 1998 Sosa 24% .308 2000 Sosa 24% .320 1996 Gal'raga 23% .304 1988 Gal'raga 23% .302 2002 Soriano 22% .300 1975 Luzinski 22% .300 1965 Allen 21% .302 2001 Sosa 21% .328 1996 Vaughn 20% .326 B-Ref PI set at 650 PA, 150 K, and a .300 BA.

Example #97 of cliches players spout to journalists. What if some guys feel like they get in a better rhythm when the pitcher is in the windup? In the end, it doesn't matter. Players know it doesn't matter, but you don't actually think they would ever possibly say they don't like hitting with runners on, do you? a) "I try to wait for my pitch and hit the **** out of it, because I'd like to be in Chicago not West Tennessee. I don't care who's standing where." b) "I'm a team player." According to Tango, it depends on if you are gambling or if you want to reward performance. If you are gambling you want to know how much Utley changes WP, but if you are concerned with performance evaluation, you'd have to devalue contributions from good players to do it this way since it's zero-sum. I think that's it anyway. I'll look it up.

Stuff like team chemistry usually doesn't stand on its own. Jaxx seems like a nice guy, so I'm not picking on him here, but it's usually part of a narrative given by people in journalism because it's romantic, and it's the kind of pat answer that players and coaches feed people that interview them. If most players were honest they would say that their at-bats have nothing to do with whoever's sitting next to them on the bench or three spots away in the lineup. I supported this logically earlier in the thread, but I could do so anecdotally as well.

According to UZR, he's about average. His worst year from 2003-2007 was -8 in 2003, and his best year was +7 in 2004. He was -3 last year, and was on pace for +3 this year right before the ASB. Dial's ZR had him at 0 last year. PMR thinks he was about -10 outs last year, and +10 outs in turning DPs. The doesn't matter thing is semantics. Of course defense matters. Meph is saying that it doesn't matter because Theriot isn't a better defensive SS. It just reinforces Tejada's marginal value.

Ah, yes I took it to mean "they can't spend the money". Yeah, I would have my doubts as well. 30-run upgrades also don't usually come with two-year contracts in the FA market either.

Why? Is this an ownership saga thing? I'm not really up to date on that, but they certainly have the cashflow. That's not an unreasonable buy, acquiring a less volatile commodity to boot, when they'll probably be right back in the playoff sweet spot next year.

Mulder, Maroth, Miles at SS, and countless other head-scratchers have certainly been exciting.

This has never ever made sense to me. So the other players are better/worse depending on who is around them in a lineup or sitting next to them on the bench? I think you are seriously underestimating Major League hitters and pitchers (as in talent a work ethic) and the economic self-interest involved in the game at that level. I'm not trying to be a jerk, but I'm always curious how people rationalize this. Team chemistry in baseball didn't make sense to me when I played, and it doesn't make sense to me now that I'm a message board geek. Theriot's kind of a poor man's Eckstein at SS, and a poor man's DeRosa when constructing a roster. I'm not sure how useful he'll be to the Cubs when they find a better starting SS.

THT: Evaluating the Evaluators Well, we do. MMP affects different hitters differently. Park effects have to be much more granular than just looking at a run-scoring environment if you want to look at ability, i.e., what a player would do in a neutral context. I think this was basically said, but if you want to look at how valuable Biggio has been, you have to see how much his offensive contribution is worth at Minute Maid Funhouse. If the ultimate and obvious goal in MLB is wins, then you need to look at how how much a run means to a win at a certain ballpark. It depends whether you want to target a player's ability or how valuable he's been. This is the difference between a projection, and something like VORP. Do you want to look backwards, or forwards? At least, that's how I understand it. And being a weak stat-head at best, I'm sure Meph will correct me if need be.