Hairyducked Idiot

That K:BB ratio is up to 3:9 That's what it looks like when a light bulb goes on. dang.

Denied

Because it always ends with "they're the Cubs, you know they'll screw it up."

Yes, please.

Let's all list fun things about the Cubs. Baseball Prospectus and Fangraphs both project them to be one of the top 6 teams in the NL with 40%+ chances of making the playoffs. Jon Lester has a 2.87 FIP, 2.83 xFIP, and is getting killed by a .434 BABIP and 60.2% strand rate. I'm forced to believe that he's pitching fine, getting insanely unlucky, and everything is going to be awesome starting today.

And since there's absolutely no way I can win at this point, because it's either going to be "Kyle keeps the argument going forever" or "Kyle ran away," I'll just say that I'm done and see ya'll next game thread.

you can't really blame people for viewing all of your posts through that lens. you've earned it. *shrug* I disagree, obviously.

*** waiting until you've had time to respond to my post *** That *was* my response to your post. I agree, we don't know for 100% certain that what Soler's done this year is indicative of what he's going to do. I think it's problematic, but certainly not certain. I'm not a huge fan of splitting up contact stats into zone data, especially this early. It stabilizes quickly, but not *so* quickly that we can afford to break it up.

Nope. You came into this discussion with this exact philosophy, which is why there is no intellectual honesty on one side, and it ain't me. You wanted to do the "sigh, Kyle being Kyle" routine just like you did then. Is his plate approach *that* disciplined? My concerns about Soler are based on the same concerns I had about Lake, albeit to a lesser degree. Your dismissals feel an awful lot like the dismissals in the Lake thread. I think the parallel is pretty clear, but ymmv. *hug it out* That paragraph is the best one I've seen from you in this thread.

I'm definitely open to the argument that last year shows a higher level of contact ability that he can eventually get back to. I brought it up myself early on. Why is this year difference? I'd love to hear a scouting component, because it seems to me that he's just getting wrecked by sliders rather than laying off them.

That's not remotely what's happening here. My argument: "Jorge Soler is exhibiting poor results in contact rate, which I project will cause him OBP problems later on." Their argument: "He's got extremely high velocity off the bat, which is contributing to his high BABIP, so that should alleviate the problem. My response: "I posit that velocity off the bat in small samples is heavily influenced by short-term variance in quality contact, and Soler has had a ton of positive variance in that regard. It's a brand-new stat, so I don't think we really know how much weight to place on it yet." It's on them to show the work. Or at least not to claim victory when I don't.

That's the "Hmm, maybe you should start listening to people who understand contact rate and what it means better than you" argument. But you won't, and that's OK I guess. Lead a horse to water and all. It's pretty breathtaking that you found a way to take a topic that we directionally agreed on(Junior Lake is not good) but not necessarily in magnitude and extrapolate it into intellectual superiority over a tangential and much broader topic. Well done. I'm *trying* to get you to listen and not do the condescending "lol, Kyle being Kyle" [expletive], because there's an interesting discussion to be had. But you turned it into yet another NSBB [expletive] riff, just like you did then. Don't start the condescension if you don't want it thrown back.

I think there's definitely a relationship. I also suspect there's a lot of short-term variance that correlates with hitting line drives, which we know are notoriously fickle. I want to see what Soler's velocity is when he's not hitting 31% line drives, which he won't for very long. So you're choosing to ignore the argument about an obvious causal factor? Huh? I agreed with it in the first sentence: "I think there's definitely a relationship." What I'm positing is that Soler's trouble making contact will eventually cause him to make less consistent quality contact, and that *may* cancel out some of his ability to create high-velocity contact.

I think there's definitely a relationship. I also suspect there's a lot of short-term variance that correlates with hitting line drives, which we know are notoriously fickle. I want to see what Soler's velocity is when he's not hitting 31% line drives, which he won't for very long.

I love how it never even occurs to you that I might understand the issue better than you do. Remember when I tried to explain to you that all those things Junior Lake was doing well were flukes? Fluke, fluke, unsustainable fluke, yes.

It's the old "round bat/round ball" thing playing out. Once the ball is in play and hit forward, the quality of contact is pretty good. The difference between a line drive, ground ball and fly ball in terms of where the bat hits the ball are so tiny that it's subject to wild fluctuations. There's real skill there, but it's like a pitcher's skill to control BIP: it gets drowned out by the noise a lot. I don't know for certain that velocity-of-the-bat is comparable, but I do know that it's a very new stat and I'm not going to start slurping over it until it's proven useful.

Quality contribution. All I'm saying is that Soler's exhibiting the signs of an impending OBP problem. By taking early season results during a slump. By looking at peripherals that are notoriously predictive in small samples and ignoring the ones that aren't.

ok show me right here and now where it supports what you're saying about speed-off-bat data i'll leave you some time for quick, hopeful Googling Not my job. If someone wants to assert that velocity off the bat predicts future success, and I doubt it, it's not on me to disprove it.

That's the "Hmm, maybe you should start listening to people who understand contact rate and what it means better than you" argument. But you won't, and that's OK I guess. Lead a horse to water and all.

It's partially a coincidence.

Quality contribution. All I'm saying is that Soler's exhibiting the signs of an impending OBP problem.

That is a very difficult to read graph, but it would really seem pretty obvious. This is a full on bored Kyle troll. Yes, I couldn't believe I was having to post it. And yes, I'm not sure why they used a bunch of colors so close to eachother. You're not listening. Nobody is questioning the correlation between quality of contact and results. I'm explaining to you that quality of contact on balls in play takes *years* to balance out and isn't meaningful in short-term samples. It's like trying to explain to someone that clutch-hitting isn't much of a skill, and they posted a chart that shows that BA w RISP is correlated with scoring.

Nope. I'm a psycho and keep track of this because I got tired of "Oh, TT is on this side of the argument, everyone stop, it's settled." viewtopic.php?f=26&t=62690&hilit=junior+lake&start=25 Line Drive % is mostly fluky. Swing-and-miss% isn't. When they are telling us two different things, I know which one is the smart money on listening to. This is such a pointlessly extreme place to take this opinion. You're smart enough to know that Lake has the talent to not be the perfect peripheral player and still have utility, which leads to the more important point. Lake can regress quite a ways and still be useful, he's coming from a performance that's well above average. He could regress to league average performance and still be one of the 3 best OF on the roster. He could regress all the way to a 1 win player and still probably be a solid platoon option in the OF. But no, because the peripherals are fluky that means he's a guaranteed -1 win drag on the roster, so we should replace him with NRI flotsam just to prevent this relative disaster. Even though the alternatives are just as likely to be the Lillibridge that someone freaks out over in late April, just without any upside. This is the discussion that started when I said we should cut Junior Lake in ST, because he was a -1 WAR waiting to happen and we'd all say "well, we had to give him a chance." You acted like that was an absurd prediction. And then Junior Lake went on to a -0.9 fWAR. I'm still right. Quality of contact is subject to wild variations. Consistency of contact much less so. People who won't accept this will keep being wrong when situations like this come up. When a player is making amazing but sporadic contact, it's going to balance out in favor of the whiffs rather than the liners.

Speaking of people who were condescending assholes in the Junior Lake argument who might have learned a lesson but are instead doubling down on their ignorance...

fully agreed. http://persephonemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/chris-rock-huh-face.gif His power isn't as good as you think it is. It's good, but not Bryant levels of good.