Magnetic Curses

And Izturis is very similarly OBP challenged. It's not ridiculous, it's quite accurate. Yes but that's not all of my arguement. Please respond to the rest. The only reason Izturis hasn't hurt the Cubs as much as Neifi yet is because he hasn't played as much. Give him 700 plate appearances next season and he'll do more damage, and cost twice as much. I think a healthy Izturis with 7 solid bats would be good but I doubt this guy will stay healthy and we all know the Cubs are far from 7 solid bats. i think a healthy izturis with 7 solid bats wouldn't hurt as much as with less than that amount of solid bats, but would be far from good. izturis is tolerable if the rest of the lineup is good, that much is true. I'd also hope like mad he could hit 290 or better because he does swing at everything. Hendry has his work cut out for him and since he has signed that extension he had better get it right this time. he's the perfect type of hendry hitter. low strikeout total, low walk total. you see, it's my hypothesis that hendry has tried to invent a philosphy much like that of moneyball, only, kind of the opposite. hendry acquires guys with low walk and low strikeout totals, guys who "just put the ball in play". he thinks that the low strikeout totals will be enough to cause the team to score runs. however, what he has failed to research or understand is that high strikeout totals have a greater relation to runs scored than low strikeout totals. putting the ball in play at any cost takes pressure off of pitchers and defenses, not the other way around. moreso than OBP, hendry has ignored SLG to the point of ridiculousness.

And Izturis is very similarly OBP challenged. It's not ridiculous, it's quite accurate. Yes but that's not all of my arguement. Please respond to the rest. The only reason Izturis hasn't hurt the Cubs as much as Neifi yet is because he hasn't played as much. Give him 700 plate appearances next season and he'll do more damage, and cost twice as much. I think a healthy Izturis with 7 solid bats would be good but I doubt this guy will stay healthy and we all know the Cubs are far from 7 solid bats. i think a healthy izturis with 7 solid bats wouldn't hurt as much as with less than that amount of solid bats, but would be far from good. izturis is tolerable if the rest of the lineup is good, that much is true.

And Izturis is very similarly OBP challenged. It's not ridiculous, it's quite accurate. Yes but that's not all of my arguement. Please respond to the rest. How many DP has Izturis grounded into this year, how many per year? How often do you see him swinging away when the runner infront of him gets a stellar jump? How many pitches per plate appearance? He sucks offensively right now yes. Is he Neifi? God no. I will tell you before others do that his P/PA is pretty low, but I do agree with you that he is very patient when he gets deeper in the count. Izturis has a pretty good eye for the strike zone-he just doesn't like to take very many strikes, and so will put many pitches into play early in the count. He'll usually look at pitches out of the strike zone though (this is based on the limited look we've seen him so far-it could either be validated or softened as we see him in some more situations, but so far that is my impression) 1. neifi=3.28 P/PA, cesar=3.38 P/PA 2. neifi grounds into a DP every 60 ABs, cesar grounds into one every 64 ABs. 3. neifi strikes out less. the rest of what you said is typical anecdotal evidence given by people who like izturis for some reason, and is the exact reason why you can't trust what your eyes see much of the time in baseball. truly, "he is very patient when he gets deeper in the count" is such a meaningless thought, i doubt even you yourself know what you meant by it. check out #1 and #3, neifi strikes out less and sees roughly the same amount of pitches per PA in his career.

moneyball was NOT about simply exploiting inconsistencies in the market of baseball. It WAS about OBP, and that it's undervalued. if teams had undervalued defense, he wouldn't have exploited THAT incosistency, because undervaluing defense is not really exploitable, defense isn't nearly as important as OBP. Billy Beane was able to find that the single most important conventional statistic in the game of baseball (also referred to as "outs NOT made") was also it's most ignored. Sulley, what abou this quote from Beane from 2004? "BB: Exactly, guys like Scottie Hatteberg. Now people are recognizing the value of that and they're paying for it. And if we're in a bidding war, we're going to lose that. So we have evolved. If you look at some of our first playoff teams, the `99 team that won 87 games, it was a power, on-base team. Now we're tops in the league in defense and pitching. For us, it's all about filling in on the backend and figuring out what people are undervaluing. You know, one day we're going to have a team with guys who steal 50 bases because people aren't paying for it. But it's all about wins. That's all that matters." It certainly sounds like he has gone after some defense since it was undervalued, and would do the same thing with speed. Beane is willing to exploit any inconsistency in the market, not just OBP. By the way, here's the link on that-it's about halfway down. http://www.athleticsnation.com/story/2004/9/20/23544/2604 this is the same billy beane that will tell you, to this day, that it's impossible to compete with a smaller market, despite what the a's and other teams have done. in the first chapters of moneyball, it documents how beane would go around to GM meetings, winter meetings, etc. and say dishonest things to get what he wants. billy beane is a businessman and will say anything to serve his purpose. you think a magician just gives out his tricks without profiting a little bit? billy beane isn't ethical, but he's probably a genius.

what do you expect? you post a stupid article by a casual fan/writer and you get responses, some absurd, some intelligent. you might as well have posted a link to an article by an amateur hyper-religious astronomer claiming that copernicus was an idiot and that the earth, in fact, is the center of the universe while using the "epicycle" argument to back his theory up. also, dinosaurs did not exist, discuss.

no anger here, just dissapointment in people who are in high places as sports analysts who know absolutely nothing about baseball that they didn't learn from the movie "major league". i guess i understand why billy beane seems so smug, it's because he CAN be. i can't believe that even when michael lewis spoonfeeds it to us, some can't even grasp it. moneyball was NOT about simply exploiting inconsistencies in the market of baseball. It WAS about OBP, and that it's undervalued. if teams had undervalued defense, he wouldn't have exploited THAT incosistency, because undervaluing defense is not really exploitable, defense isn't nearly as important as OBP. Billy Beane was able to find that the single most important conventional statistic in the game of baseball (also referred to as "outs NOT made") was also it's most ignored. There was also a part about pitching and the findings of voros mccracken, whom i don't necessarily agree with, but whose points are nevertheless valid ones. um, chad bradford is a cheap pitcher who has been very consistently effective over the course of his career. i think that was the point. does bill simmons even know what baseball is? again, it's easy to be smug when you're surrounded by dunces. hatteberg? his production over the course of his career speaks for itself. again, the smugness is warranted if your peers don't understand who scott hatteberg is or what he has done. i'd say he's probably the most cost-effective player of the last 20 years. but hey, among those with the entirely understandable inferiority complex, he doesn't exist. how can one not be smug when people don't know who scott hatteberg is? jeremy brown, as rocket has said, a prospect, whom beane took a cheap flier on, so what? and nick swisher reminded beane of lenny dykstra, he had the right attitude and approach to the game. you can't necessarily acquire players who understand the importance of OBP, but you can acquire players who just be themselves and good things follow. no, beane's team does not have a good OBP right now, and they may be due to his artificially encouraging players to go up to the plate looking for walks all throughout the a's system. but the a's are a work in progress and that's beane genius. no theory is complete.

cantu seems to be the perfect hendry player.

Ditto. Edmonds is performing below his 10th percentile projection in PECOTA. That's very unusual. If his problem really is a treatable injury, he might be a bargain if the Cardinals don't bring him back. His projected OBP's for the next four seasons: .396, .392, .401, .419. I guess I'll never understand these projections very well. I really don't understand why it would project a 36 year old player who has had an OBP above .385 only once in the last four years can project a player to have above .385 each year for the next four years, including a .419 at age 40. this is the first year in the last 7 that edmonds hasn't posted a +.900 OPS and +.500 SLG. wait, you're the same person saying that juan pierre can still be a very productive player, yet would object to the cubs acquiring a much more valuable player in edmonds? shouldn't you like edmonds because he's good defensively? i'll never get your love for sub-.700 OPS players and hatred of +.900 OPS players, it just doesn't make much sense. izturis and pierre are great but edmonds isn't worth acquiring. that's the bigegst friggin joke i've ever heard in my life.

i think it's even more blind to trust your eyes in a sport that has a 162 game regular season. So you should blindly trust only on a system that has proven unreliable? I'm all for using metrics to judge a player's defense but I feel that it's necessary to use your eyes along with the metrics so that when such a silly mistake comes out from the metric, you can analyze it critically. Also if a reliable metric contradicts what your eyes see, you can do the same. why do you insist in speaking matter-of-factly? where did i say that you should only analyze with statistics? nowhere. in many cases, i've found, people who tell others to "go watch the games" watch less games than their counterparts anyway. i watch most games, and i try not to make judgements based on outlying anomalies. Correct me if I'm misunderstanding you but this seems to be questioning the validity of non-statistical analysis (anecdotes as you call them). I'm also not telling you to "go watch the game" since I assume that most on the board watch around the same as I do. I just was attempting to debate what I viewed as some disregarding any view not metric-based. I feel there is value in a balanced analysis of the game. i still don't see how anything that you've quoted me as saying states that you should only analyze statistically. furthermore, "anecdotes" is a word in the english language--it's not like i'm the only one who uses the term. you make it sound like i'm using a clingon word or something. the word "anecdote" means, according to the english dictionary, "a short account of an interesting or humorous incident". with "anecdotes" being the plural form. I understand what an anecdote is. The issue that I have is that these quotes show, whether intentional by you or not, a feeling that one cannot trust what their eyes see and must therefore rely mainly if not completely on metrics. My feeling is that a balance between the two is ideal. I also don't see how CCP's reference to an anomaly in the metrics is appropriately referred to as a "short account of an interesting or humorous incident". To me, it's an anomaly which makes one think about the overarching validity of some metrics, not all but some perhaps. I quite liked Pedro's explanation of metrics and tend to believe that "taken with a grain of salt" means we should balance the metrics that may not be developed enough yet with another means of analysis. first of all, a baseball season is such a long one that you absolutely cannot trust your eyes. the eyes do not generally know the difference between a .250 hitter and a .300 hitter, for example, which is quite a large difference. i'd rather put all of my faith in numbers than anecdotes--but as you say, there should be a balance, just not a 50-50 balance, not by a long shot. watching games is fun and going to games is more fun, but even if you watch every single one of them, you aren't going to remember what each player does from day to day in every game from april to october.

it doesn't matter who we get, hitters will continue to draw walks against us, and likely use those walks to score. it's not that our pitchers are wild, it's just that hitters aren't swinging at just anything close anymore--they only seem to swing at pitches down the middle of the plate. this only seems to be a startegy used against us. sorry, i'm venting.

I think he is a believer of the Yosmite Sam Cult. They firmly believe that OF's and infielders should back off and worshop the speed of a rabbit. then he'd never make it in colorado today.

only if grossman gets hurt again.

i wonder if farny is part of some sort of anagram. maybe his full name is farny lee?

what is pierre's religious preference?

i think it's even more blind to trust your eyes in a sport that has a 162 game regular season. So you should blindly trust only on a system that has proven unreliable? I'm all for using metrics to judge a player's defense but I feel that it's necessary to use your eyes along with the metrics so that when such a silly mistake comes out from the metric, you can analyze it critically. Also if a reliable metric contradicts what your eyes see, you can do the same. why do you insist in speaking matter-of-factly? where did i say that you should only analyze with statistics? nowhere. in many cases, i've found, people who tell others to "go watch the games" watch less games than their counterparts anyway. i watch most games, and i try not to make judgements based on outlying anomalies. Correct me if I'm misunderstanding you but this seems to be questioning the validity of non-statistical analysis (anecdotes as you call them). I'm also not telling you to "go watch the game" since I assume that most on the board watch around the same as I do. I just was attempting to debate what I viewed as some disregarding any view not metric-based. I feel there is value in a balanced analysis of the game. i still don't see how anything that you've quoted me as saying states that you should only analyze statistically. furthermore, "anecdotes" is a word in the english language--it's not like i'm the only one who uses the term. you make it sound like i'm using a clingon word or something. the word "anecdote" means, according to the english dictionary, "a short account of an interesting or humorous incident". with "anecdotes" being the plural form.

darin erstad seems to be a hendry-type player, pencil him in in CF if pierre doesn't re-sign. pedro feliz at 3rd if aram walks is a probability. that's all i can think of if hendry continues his children's crusade.

i think it's even more blind to trust your eyes in a sport that has a 162 game regular season. So you should blindly trust only on a system that has proven unreliable? I'm all for using metrics to judge a player's defense but I feel that it's necessary to use your eyes along with the metrics so that when such a silly mistake comes out from the metric, you can analyze it critically. Also if a reliable metric contradicts what your eyes see, you can do the same. why do you insist in speaking matter-of-factly? where did i say that you should only analyze with statistics? nowhere. in many cases, i've found, people who tell others to "go watch the games" watch less games than their counterparts anyway. i watch most games, and i try not to make judgements based on outlying anomalies.

Why do you think that is? There have been plenty of teams with 2 hitters like Cedeno and Izturis that have made the playoffs even in the last 5 years-the trick is what you surround hitters like that with. That's the rub. The rest of the lineup isn't close enough to being that good that it would take quite a retooling to bring it to that level. Much easier to get an offensively competent middle infielder. True-and I'm an advocate of replacing Cedeno. Teams like the Cardinals and Astros last year though had 3 players who couldn't put up a .700 OPS, and in fact the Astros had 3 players where the highest player had a .654 OPS with OBP's of .319, .299, and .294 and slugging of .324, .323, and .293. The rest of their offense wasn't as good as ours either. No, we don't have as good of pitching as they did, but teams can contend and even make the WS with 2 or 3 bad hitters, depending on the rest of the team. are you actually trying to compare the 05 astros to the 07 cubs? if the cubs have 3 starting pitchers (with over 200 innings pitched) next season with eras under 3 (and 1 with an era under 2), i'll eat my hat. they'll have to decrease their team era by over a run, acquire at least 1 more top of the rotation ace, possibly 2--and hope the bullpen can retain a semblance of stasis (which doesn't usually happen with bullpens). the 05 astros team era is only eclipsed by the other team that you mentioned. a team with all 5 starters around, at, or above 200 innings and with era all around, at , or below 4. unbelieveable, you continue to compare apples to oranges and pretend as if it's some kind of validation of putting a sub-par offensive team out there. teams with amazing pitching staffs are GOOD, they can compete with other teams. we do NOT have an amazing staff and have little hope of fielding one. thusly, we must compete offensively with other teams. why can't you understand this?

i've heard the same thing, and even heard them compared to ted washington, with one glaring exception--ted washington was good.

Sadly, there is no hope for this team as long as Hendry is in charge with this moronic, head-in-th-sand attitude :evil: I read that as Bruce impersonating Hendry. That's what it was, as I pointed out before I started the "celebrity impersonation." the question is: does hendry believe his own line of BS, or is he simply being disagreeable? does he fancy himself as a last bastion of the "old days" when stats were as useless as a sac bunt? and how much does this have to do with his relationship with hughes, who is an outspoken critic of all things numerical?

Podsednik has a whopping 20 point advantage in OBP. Over the course of 700 plate appearances, that 14 additional times that he gets on base. At most, that's about 4-5 runs over the course of the entire season. Now, add in Pierre's superior defense and more efficient baserunning -- see Dan Schroedinger's well-reasoned BP article from 7/13/2006 that concluded that Juan Pierre is the best baserunner in the game and generates approximately 4-7 runs per year solely from his ability to advance bases on balls hit in play -- and Podsednik's OBP advantage is negated entirely. good points, but can you give me the gist of the BP article? pierre may be a superficially superior baserunner, but he's also a perrenial leader in productive outs made, which means absolutely nothing.

I seem to remember Gonzalez dropping a routine DP in game 6 of the NLCS. Yeah, I guess defense isnt important. yes, and many feel that gonzalez was screwed out of the 2003 GG by a flashier renteria. look back and tell me who had the highest fielding percentage among qualifying NL shortstops in 2003 and get back to me, please. as frostwyrm has made clear, you can't acquire someone on the basis that they'll make that one play if it comes up deep in the playoffs, all you can do is put someone out there who is competent and hope they make the easy plays. besides, it has also been made clear that the playoffs are a crapshoot, absolutely anything can happen at any time. you can't put together a team built for playoff success, you must put together a team built for regular season success and hope they can get hot in the playoffs.

Did you even see the hit? Brown barely touched him, Urlacher's hit wasn't that bad and what I'd expect of practice. It really didn't look that bad, I hope it's not too serious. no, i didn't see it, and the report that i heard on espn 1000 was that urlacher and brown "pinballed" benson as he was making a catch over the middle. i only knew what i was told, so i apologize for the knee-jerk response. that said, urlacher and brown both acted like benson was on a different team when questioned about it. There's a video link earlier in the thread if you're interested in seeing it....it's not great quality, but you can get an idea of how trivial the contact was. thanks, but i'll take everyone's word for it. every other person i've talked to has said it wasn't a serious hit.

Did you even see the hit? Brown barely touched him, Urlacher's hit wasn't that bad and what I'd expect of practice. It really didn't look that bad, I hope it's not too serious. no, i didn't see it, and the report that i heard on espn 1000 was that urlacher and brown "pinballed" benson as he was making a catch over the middle. i only knew what i was told, so i apologize for the knee-jerk response. that said, urlacher and brown both acted like benson was on a different team when questioned about it. Bernstein is just an angry soul who feels the need to insult others randomly to re-affirm his intelligence. I'd think twice before taking his attitude or philosophies to heart. Just a bit of advice... bernstein is actually one of the smarter and progressive radio personalities on the air. the fact that he likes to make fun of everyone is just an added bonus. i don't think boers brings much to the table and think a pairing of lawrence holmes and bernstein would make for much more informative radio. holmes likes to stay on point where boers will go off on some tangential joke or anecdote. that said, boers and bernstein are the best thing going on the air in chicago today. mac, jurko, and harry are just terrible now.

my wife bought me the Total Baseball Encyclopedia a couple years ago and i'm finally getting around to finishing it. it has this old magazine article about the playing and managerial life of rogers hornsby, and how he got fired and traded all the time because he argued with ownership. this reminds me a little of that. i'd rather have girardi than dusty, but i don't think that girardi is a huge fan of hendry and macphail.