TheClash

Sort trey. Not interested

You do realize that a 5% difference is about 50 points of OBP, right? Pardon me if I am not confident that a guy with a career .300 OBP in the majors and a career .300 OBP in AAA is going to all of a sudden sustain himself as a .350+ OBP guy.

Ha! My mistake. I accidentally used PA as opposed to AB, thanks. My point still stands though.

grounding out into doubleplays is a 'skill', we should treat it as one.

So in other words he's Alfonso Soriano with more outs.

It's not going to be anything more anecdotal because Castro is probably more talented than 98% of guys who ever put on a major league uniform and more than likely has a much greater capacity to "learn" selectivity than the other average type guys you're referring to. You skipped a step logically to make that connection. Let's break it down. Castro is probably more talented than 98% of guys who ever put on a major league uniform This may be true. more than likely has a much greater capacity to "learn" selectivity than the other average type guys you're referring to. The logic here assumes that Castro is a more talented hitter than 98% of guys. That's much less certain. Castro's ability to stick at shortstop and provide above average offense at the position is why he's an extremely talented baseball player. Castro's ability at the plate is far from being in the 98th percentile. He's certainly above average in that regard, but he's probably closer to the 75th to 80th percentile in terms of a hitter. He's probably going to settle in as a .300-.310 BA guy with power to hit 15-20 homers a year. That's outstanding as a shortstop, but as a hitter that kind of upside is good, but not super-duper. If we assume that only super-duper offensive guys can be forced to learn to walk, then he's not one of them. He's a early-count hitter whose value is spraying line drives around. He's more or less league average at swinging at good or bad pitches. He's not overly aggressive to do that. He just doesn't swing and miss. Do you want him to start swinging and missing? Excuse me for not specifying I'm of the opinion his overall hit tool is better than 98% of guys who ever put on a uniform and that's why he will be able to learn something he's never been exposed to before. okay. So is josh vitters

And hence likely also to have a lower WAR. They're also a bunch of guys who merely stepped to the plate more than Reddick. Jeter went to the plate 70 more times... Reddick contributed to some 541 outs in 671 PAs, or about .81 outs per PA.

It's not going to be anything more anecdotal because Castro is probably more talented than 98% of guys who ever put on a major league uniform and more than likely has a much greater capacity to "learn" selectivity than the other average type guys you're referring to. You skipped a step logically to make that connection. Let's break it down. Castro is probably more talented than 98% of guys who ever put on a major league uniform This may be true. more than likely has a much greater capacity to "learn" selectivity than the other average type guys you're referring to. The logic here assumes that Castro is a more talented hitter than 98% of guys. That's much less certain. Castro's ability to stick at shortstop and provide above average offense at the position is why he's an extremely talented baseball player. Castro's ability at the plate is far from being in the 98th percentile. He's certainly above average in that regard, but he's probably closer to the 75th to 80th percentile in terms of a hitter. He's probably going to settle in as a .300-.310 BA guy with power to hit 15-20 homers a year. That's outstanding as a shortstop, but as a hitter that kind of upside is good, but not super-duper. If we assume that only super-duper offensive guys can be forced to learn to walk, then he's not one of them. He's a early-count hitter whose value is spraying line drives around. He's more or less league average at swinging at good or bad pitches. He's not overly aggressive to do that. He just doesn't swing and miss. Do you want him to start swinging and missing?

"Getting excited" in this case meaning "posting a link to a blog post without comment and without reply before you decried it as being more or less pointless". I see even the moderators get in on the fun. See, the problem is that this "half season" was under completely different management who, if you read a bit, you'll find really emphasizes seeing pitches and patience and has just come out and said how devoid this organization was of any thought of teaching prospects in that manner. Everybody else here is aware of the different circumstances this spike in walks was achieved under and due to the approach change, some decline in BA was expected as Castro made the adjustment. Does that make you feel better? Yeah because every hitter who was told to "walk more" walked more for awhile and was able to walk more forever. I'd venture an educated guess that close to all of them went back to being walking as much as they did before. A lot of those who did collapsed in other ways because of it. If Castro's going to develop patience at the plate it's going to be a part of his development as a hitter - not because the front office tells him to. Sure they can encourage him to as much as they want, but that's all. If that was a good argument, Billy Beane's Oakland Athletics would finish last (or so it seems) in walks every year. We're trying to ascertain Castro's value, not some random stupid anecdotal crap of an argument.

"Getting excited" in this case meaning "posting a link to a blog post without comment and without reply before you decried it as being more or less pointless". I see even the moderators get in on the fun.

Yea, you know... that 25 year old who just had a 4.8 WAR season. Really. pardon me for not wanting a right fielder who is an out machine. J.J. Hardy Ian Kinsler Derek Jeter Starlin Castro Elvis Andrus Jimmy Rollins Jose Reyes Adam Jones Hunter Pence How many of those players would you a) like to have on your team b) be indifferent if they were on your team or c) would adamantly oppose them being on your team? Oooh, the I'm going to create a list of players with name recognition who were outperformed by Reddick's WAR last year so I can trick him or her into a corner and counter with Reddick being better than that player argument. Sorry Logan, I'm not stupid and can see right through your feeble children's games. My point is quite simple. Sabermetric research on offense is quite advanced. If a player has a season that is worth five wins on offense, there's a pretty good chance that a player with those statistics is actually worth five wins. Sabermetric development on defense - while a lot better than it was five years ago - is still rudimentary and in its infancy. If we were to define the progression in offensive statistics as something like RBIs, AVG, OBP, OPS, OBA. Or if we were to define the pitching progression from W, ERA, RA, FIP, xFIP. The most advanced fielding statistics would fall somewhere between RBIs and batting average or wins and ERA in terms of accuracy. (Im not including at relative defensive position weights) Our understanding of what maps defensive ability into wins is pretty weak. In fact, there may not be an OBA or xFIP equivalent. It very well could be that the difference in true talent level between the best and average at a position is only 10 runs, the rest is pure randomness. Past defense is still a pretty terrible predictor at future defense for one thing. The point is that if given a player who has a nice WAR, but a ton of that WAR is tied up into his defense - at a non-defensive position no less - I'm going to pass. Offensively, we're looking at a right-fielder with a career .300 OBP. For him to be worth it, we better be damn sure that his defensive WAR is legitimate. Odds are its not. Of course if we can get him for fair value excluding his defense, that's one thing. There's no reason to give up a decent package for him. It's not like we're going to be good during his cheap years.

You know posting random pictures, quotes or memes attacking the poster instead of countering my point. It's quite pathetic. You see I make a point about how walk rates for half a season can vary quite erratically, Starlin Castros has done this. Therefore, Castros "improvement" the second half of the season is only mildly encouraging. Of course it's better than not improving, but there's no reason to get excited for a pretty insignificant change over his career norm. Of course instead pointing out something intelligent, they act like drunk guys slapping each others back after downing shots

It's nice to see NSBB's Internet meme reddit force is in full circle jerk mode.

Yea, you know... that 25 year old who just had a 4.8 WAR season. Really. pardon me for not wanting a right fielder who is an out machine.

Josh Reddick....really? Really.