2011-12 MLB Offseason Thread: Tigers are really stupid

[JPhillips]

OPS is a very simple stat that gives you a rough idea of the value of a hitter.

ERA is probably the best of the simple stats for pitchers.

Neither give you a complete evaluation, but they both are good at quick rankings of "who is good".

[Logan]

Originally Posted by Chief Rum

You struggle to understand what a win is or what an RBI is?

That's exactly my point...I don't struggle to understand what either of those are, which is why they can be described as simple.

[Chief Rum]

Originally Posted by Logan

That's exactly my point...I don't struggle to understand what either of those are, which is why they can be described as simple.

Oh, okay, because the person who used term simple was molson, who is arguing for the simplicity of those stats. You saying you have a different definition of simple came off as a counter-argument to molson. HiFi, the previous post who was clearly disagreeing with molson, never used the word simple in his post.

[Pumpy Tudors]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

What a motherfucking idiot.

[cartman]

Originally Posted by Pumpy Tudors

3.8 WAR

Discuss.

I need to know his GJLF rating.

(Go Jump lake fuck)

[Crapshoot]

Originally Posted by cartman

He didn't have the gaudy stats outside of batting average, but from a contribution standpoint, he definitely could be considered the MVP of the Rangers. He played at 1B, 2B, SS and 3B. When there were injuries to Beltre and spotty play at 1B, he stepped right in and kept things going with little dropoff. Cruz and Napoli generated the headlines during the postseason, but for the first 162 games Young was definitely the anchor of the team.

I dunno - Adrian Beltre, Mike Napoli, CJ Wilson, Josh Hamilton, Ian Kinsler - all were more valuable than Young. Yes, he played all over the place as a super-utility man, but how on earth could anyone with a straight face suggest Michael Young was the most valuable player in the AL?

[Pumpy Tudors]

Originally Posted by cartman

I need to know his GJLF rating.

(Go Jump lake fuck)

about 8000 obv
michael young suxxxxxxxx

[cartman]

Originally Posted by Crapshoot

I dunno - Adrian Beltre, Mike Napoli, CJ Wilson, Josh Hamilton, Ian Kinsler - all were more valuable than Young. Yes, he played all over the place as a super-utility man, but how on earth could anyone with a straight face suggest Michael Young was the most valuable player in the AL?

I wasn't arguing in the AL, I was merely making a case for the Rangers team. Beltre, Napoli, and Hamilton all missed a bunch of games this season, and he was incredibly valuable to the team during the stretches when those players were out of the lineup. It could have been disastrous when Beltre went down for six weeks with the hamstring injury. That's why WAR to me seems like a bit of a stat in search of an answer, because there was no drop off for the team between Beltre at 3B and Young.

[molson]

Originally Posted by HiFiRevival

Does a W tell you if a pitcher went 5, gave up 7, and won 10-7 or that he went 9 and threw a perfect game? Does it tell you the pitcher walked 4, gave up 7 hits, threw 112 pitches, but danced around the mess and got through 5 with only 3 of the 11 baserunners scoring? Does it tell you the defense had a phenomenal night, that the bullpen pitched 3 perfect innings, or anything relevant other than a team stat was assigned to an individual?

When top starters routinely pitched complete games W was a relevant pitching stat. With the specialization of pitching today, the W just isn't a meaningful stat.

RBI is little more than a counting stat. According to RBI, Pedro Feliz was a decent hitter. The fact that he had 98 RBI in 2006 with a .709 OPS should be enough to put RBI in its place.

If i'm watching a game and i know the starting pitcher is 18-5, and he won 17 games the year before, and the opposing pitcher is 2-5 with an era over 6, that gives me a pretty good context of that game's pitching matchup. wins can also be viewed in the context of how good the team is. I expect a guy with a pulse on the yankees to have a decent w/l record, but if a guy on the royals does, its a bit more noteworthy.

Rbis are similar. I care more about who drove in the runs in last night's game than the guy who hit empty base doubles and then was stranded. those hits contribute equally to "how good a guy is", but the run scoring hits are more important to the story of that game. I wouldn't use that stat to compare players if I was a gm trading for one of them, but as a fan, it can tell me about a guy's specific contrubution to that team's story, and that team's success generally.

someone here said once that traditional stats tell what you did and the advanced stats try to predict how you'll do, or how good of a player you are. That's a pretty good simplfied explanation.

[TRO]

Regarding the MVP being a "hitter" award. Why do they need 2?

Position players have the Hank Aaron Award. It's not as prestigious since the majority of MVP winners are position players, but there is no need to designate the MVP to a specific subject of players.

Frankly, more pitchers should be considered for the MVP every year. The league leaders generally face around 1,000 batters a year. While the Plate Appearance leaders are generally around 700. Defense for position players certainly should be weighed into the equation, but let's not kid ourselves, the MVP is generally won or lost by what happens at the plate. Pitchers are involved there more than the hitters are.

[molson]

Originally Posted by HiFiRevival

But W doesn't tell you anything. Rick Helling "won" 20 games in 1998. He had a 4.41 ERA, 4.34 FIP, his K/9 was worse than league average, his BB/9 was worse than league average, and he gave up a bad 1.12 HR/9. He was barely a 4th starter by every measurable other than "wins."

but nobody's saying we should ignore context or those other stats. But you had to give about 8 stats to show he's average. Are announcers or fans supposed to reference all 8 when helling's name comes up? Era and fip don't tell us anything about how many starts a guy has, so they're useless alone.

Edit: and none of those stats say anything about how deep a guy gets in games...wins do, in a broad way. What would be a better newspaper line for sp than w/l and era?

[TRO]

Originally Posted by molson

Edit: and none of those stats say anything about how deep a guy gets in games...wins do, in a broad way. What would be a better newspaper line for sp than w/l and era?

IP/Start takes care how far he gets into games.

Quality Starts was put out there to quantify it to an extent as well. Unfortunately, 3 ER in 6 IP is a very bad measure of a Quality Start.

[cartman]

The Rangers sign Joe Nathan from the Twins. Looks like they are going to move Feliz to the rotation next year.

[molson]

Originally Posted by TRO

IP/Start takes care how far he gets into games.

Quality Starts was put out there to quantify it to an extent as well. Unfortunately, 3 ER in 6 IP is a very bad measure of a Quality Start.

That's true, but that's getting pretty far into the level that's not going to come up unless you're examining a player closely.

Pumpy had a point earlier, a "pumpy point," as I call them, about what announcers should be talking about during games with regards to player stats. If RBIs and Wins really tell us nothing, should in-game announcers be talking about more advanced metrics instead? Beyond the "the ignorant fans won't get it" angle (my only real pet peeve in all this), what if we're not considering that - what SHOULD announcers be talking about? Should they really be spouting off IP/Starts for everybody? Or are Wins/RBIs still direct and simple enough to warrant discussion in that context - "20 game winner Helling" with maybe some qualifiers if there's time. I like the simplicity of Wins, and RBIs, and they us a lot with a single number - obviously subject to qualification - but if there was alternative game feed that got into FIP and 8 other stats for every guy who took the mound, would you listen to that?

[molson]

Originally Posted by jbergey22

I generally assumed that DIPS theory was very reliable for 90+ percent of the pitchers.

Me too, but I get hung up on some things there. So a 327 yard home run is the pitcher's fault, but a 324 yard double off the wall isn't? And throwing a pitch by a batter is something good that a pitcher did, but almost throwing it by him to where the batter is way late on a pitch and pops it up is just luck? Maybe in between those extremes there's a lot of luck involved, but I think a little common sense has to enter the equation at some point - if a home run is partly the pitcher's fault a lot of deep line drives have to be also. The pitcher's fault can't end at the exact dimensions of the outfield.

[ISiddiqui]

That's the reason to avoid placing all your eggs in one stat. It's Defense Independent Pitching Stats... but that can have a lot of leeway.

[stevew]

I guess it's Barmes time? I suppose I'd rather have him than Yuni.

[Pumpy Tudors]

Originally Posted by molson

Pumpy had a point earlier, a "pumpy point," as I call them...

Not sure if this is good or bad, but I'll take it.

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by molson

Me too, but I get hung up on some things there. So a 327 yard home run is the pitcher's fault, but a 324 yard double off the wall isn't? And throwing a pitch by a batter is something good that a pitcher did, but almost throwing it by him to where the batter is way late on a pitch and pops it up is just luck? Maybe in between those extremes there's a lot of luck involved, but I think a little common sense has to enter the equation at some point - if a home run is partly the pitcher's fault a lot of deep line drives have to be also. The pitcher's fault can't end at the exact dimensions of the outfield.

Here's some pretty interesting stuff from the last couple of weeks which keeps evolving DIPS:

Baseball Prospectus | Spinning Yarn: Who Controls How Hard the Ball is Hit?
Baseball Prospectus | Spinning Yarn: How Does Quality of Contact Relate to BABIP?

Originally Posted by article

The reasons that balls fall for hits are complex. We saw in the previous article that pitchers have significant control over how hard batted balls are hit. We saw here that the speed of the batted ball interacts with the vertical launch angle to determine whether the ball is likely to fall for hit.

We're going to keep seeing a little chipping away from the base theory of DIPS. Mike Fast already pointed out that Tom Tippett did quite a bit in the first year after Voros McCracken's study. The more that happens, eventually FIP and xFIP will be relegated to "quick and dirty" status as reasonably accurate, but with too much noise to be used as the "be-all-end-all" pitching stat it is today.

That doesn't mean that McCracken was wrong or even really diminish the significance- it was revolutionary at the time. But as time goes on, I think we'll see that it's some number like 70% accurate, which is not perfect but much better than we had before.

SI

[lungs]

Originally Posted by stevew

I guess it's Barmes time? I suppose I'd rather have him than Yuni.

God I hope the Brewers have a plan other than going back to Yuni B.

[Pumpy Tudors]

I think baseball should just go with a +/- like hockey. If you're on the field or still in the batting lineup when your team scores or gives up a run, then it's +1 or -1. Just remember that power play runs don't count.

[JediKooter]

Originally Posted by Pumpy Tudors

Sorry, if I want to get insulted, I'll watch a Don Rickles video.

Yea, but, now that Don is in his 80s, his F2R (Funny to Relevant) stat has been in steady decline since the late 70s. So if you watch a recent performance compared to one, say, in 1978 before John Wayne died and he was doing a celebrity roast, you would feel less insulted now than you would if you had watched the 1978 performance. However, if you coupled Rickles with Jeffery Ross, you would have to then combine Rickles' F2R with his DSAR (Duo Standup Act Rating) divided by the time of day. If that shit is anywhere near or above 3, watch out and be prepared to not only be insulted, but, probably run out of the room crying. A 3 rating and above has only happened 3 times in the modern era. Shecky Green came close one year ('58 I think), but, went into a tail spin at the end of the year when he teamed up with Red Buttons and finished with a 1.7.

[Ronnie Dobbs2]

Sweeping draft changes:

Draft tax is harsh: Teams that go more than 5% over slot get a 75% tax. From 5-10% over, a 75% tax and loss of 1st-round pick the next year.

Jeff Passan 1

More draft tax: Go 10-15% over, 100% tax and loss of 1st- and 2nd-round picks. 15% and higher is 100% tax and loss of two first-round picks.

Jeff Passan 2

Under the rules of the new CBA, Bubba Starling is an option QB at Nebraska, never to be seen on a diamond again.

Kevin Goldstein

Wow, Bud. Great job.

[gstelmack]

There is all kind of gold in that JK post.

[Logan]

Is this part of the new labor deal we're hearing about?

[Ronnie Dobbs2]

Yup. Caps on draft, international signings. 5 team playoffs. HGH testing.

edit: A lottery of the ten smallest markets each year, with 6 supplemental picks given out.

No major league deals to draft picks.

All-Star game participation mandatory if elected, unless injured.

[Ronnie Dobbs2]

Allotment given for international signings will be tradeable. If this is true, why not just let draft picks be traded too?

[Ronnie Dobbs2]

I wonder how this will impact the Cespedes deal. I could see him getting much more in this environment (he won't be beholden to these new rules).

[Ronnie Dobbs2]

The ridiculous thing is that this will most affect the smaller market teams that succeed. Punished for their success.

[ISiddiqui]

I do like the caps on the draft. This will likely prevent players holding teams hostage as in the past - or small market teams not picking players because they were afraid they'd ask for so much that they'd be held hostage.

[ISiddiqui]

And Ryan Braun is your NL MVP with 20 out of the 32 first place votes:

Ryan Braun of Milwaukee Brewers wins NL MVP - ESPN

[Ronnie Dobbs2]

Originally Posted by ISiddiqui

I do like the caps on the draft. This will likely prevent players holding teams hostage as in the past - or small market teams not picking players because they were afraid they'd ask for so much that they'd be held hostage.

The former rarely happened - (see the list of unsigned first round pick since 1993 here) and the latter was happening with increasing rarity as the small market teams began to understand that this was the best way for them to rapidly improve.

edit:

Guess which two teams spent the least in last year's draft?

Spoiler

White Sox and Tigers

In '09?

Spoiler

Mets and Phillies

08-10 spending

[lungs]

Originally Posted by ISiddiqui

And Ryan Braun is your NL MVP with 20 out of the 32 first place votes:

Ryan Braun of Milwaukee Brewers wins NL MVP - ESPN

Glad to see the MVP coming from Milwaukee. He's a hell of a player.

[Logan]

Mazel Tov Ryan!

[Crapshoot]

Originally Posted by ISiddiqui

I do like the caps on the draft. This will likely prevent players holding teams hostage as in the past - or small market teams not picking players because they were afraid they'd ask for so much that they'd be held hostage.

Why not? Why on earth is a player having some leverage a bad thing?

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by ISiddiqui

And Ryan Braun is your NL MVP with 20 out of the 32 first place votes:

Ryan Braun of Milwaukee Brewers wins NL MVP - ESPN

Don't get me wrong, Braun had a fine year. Ordinarily, I'm first in the line that says "the MVP should come from a winning team." But I look at each team's supporting cast, and I see that the Brewers had Prince Fielder, Nyjer Morgan, and Rickie Weeks at 1B/OF/2B and won 96 games.

The Dodgers had James Loney (whose numbers were atrocious until the last six weeks of the year), Tony Gwynn Jr and Jamey Carroll and finished over .500 only because Matt Kemp came within a cunt hair of being the first player to 40/40 his way to a Triple Crown.

Kemp got walked almost 50% more than Braun did, which tells you something about the relative strength of the surrounding lineup, and still put up the year he did.

Without Matt Kemp, the Dodgers lose at least 90 games.

Without Ryan Braun, the Brewers are probably the wild card instead of the NL Central champions.

If Kemp's numbers were a little less gaudy, Braun over Kemp is the right call for me. If Kemp puts up those numbers for a team that loses 90-100, Braun is the right call ('we lost 100 with you, we can lose 100 without you).

As things played out, though, I think the voters made the wrong call here. They rewarded Braun for having an owner willing to go out and get guys like Greinke and Marcum to make the team better, and punished Kemp for having an owner/GM who saw Jamey Carroll and Jon Garland as the panacea to the team's needs.

[Ronnie Dobbs2]

My point with all that data being that this is *not* a competitive balance thing. This is Bud tamping down draft costs to the detriment of the sport as a whole, and a slap in the face to the ideals of the RBI Program.

[lungs]

Well, Ryan Braun agrees with you as he just said on the radio that he wouldn't have argued with Kemp winning and that he won because of his teammates.

[ISiddiqui]

Originally Posted by Ronnie Dobbs2

My point with all that data being that this is *not* a competitive balance thing. This is Bud tamping down draft costs to the detriment of the sport as a whole, and a slap in the face to the ideals of the RBI Program.

But you can't argue it hasn't happened before (J.D. Drew) and that teams haven't weighed drafting the best player vs. someone who will hold out for a big contract.

[stevew]

I hate the draft changes. It means we get only Jamison Tailon and not Allie(questionable results aside) last year. That we don't get Josh Bell this year. Even if a guy like Bell hits big time 5%, MLB will be turning away dozens of potential stars each year.

[dawgfan]

I'll want to see more details, but I HATE the idea of a draft "tax" on going above slot.

Scott Boras isn't going to give two shits about that - he's still going to ask for the moon for his guys and say "Hey, you have the choice to pay more than slot - you're not restricted from doing so".

You either put in a hard cap on draft signing bonuses, or leave well enough alone. This idea of a "tax" on going above slot only hurts small market teams. The Yankees aren't going to be anywhere near as inclined to back away from going over slot to sign a kid because of a tax as Tampa Bay will.

[dawgfan]

Dola -

The stuff about limiting signing budges for international free agent signings is similarly bullshit. Seems like this CBA was written by a Steinbrenner.

[Atocep]

Originally Posted by dawgfan

I'll want to see more details, but I HATE the idea of a draft "tax" on going above slot.

Scott Boras isn't going to give two shits about that - he's still going to ask for the moon for his guys and say "Hey, you have the choice to pay more than slot - you're not restricted from doing so".

You either put in a hard cap on draft signing bonuses, or leave well enough alone. This idea of a "tax" on going above slot only hurts small market teams. The Yankees aren't going to be anywhere near as inclined to back away from going over slot to sign a kid because of a tax as Tampa Bay will.

You lose your next first round pick by going 5-10 percent over slot. You lose your next 2 for going 15 percent over.

Boras can ask for the moon all he wants, but I don't see him getting it with those restrictions.

[Logan]

So if a team forfeits a 1st round pick for going over slot, what happens if they sign a type A free agent that same year?

[Ronnie Dobbs2]

Originally Posted by ISiddiqui

But you can't argue it hasn't happened before (J.D. Drew) and that teams haven't weighed drafting the best player vs. someone who will hold out for a big contract.

I never said it hasn't happened before. Destroy the whole system because something happens every now and then?

And J.D. Drew happened in a very different time. Teams realize the value of getting the best prospects in the draft in a way they didn't before.

[Ronnie Dobbs2]

Originally Posted by ISiddiqui

teams haven't weighed drafting the best player vs. someone who will hold out for a big contract.

If you think this new system is going to put a stop to this you have another thing coming. Boras will just demand a team use all their allotment, hell, even lose a first round pick if they want to sign his client.

[Pumpy Tudors]

Originally Posted by JediKooter

Yea, but, now that Don is in his 80s, his F2R (Funny to Relevant) stat has been in steady decline since the late 70s. So if you watch a recent performance compared to one, say, in 1978 before John Wayne died and he was doing a celebrity roast, you would feel less insulted now than you would if you had watched the 1978 performance. However, if you coupled Rickles with Jeffery Ross, you would have to then combine Rickles' F2R with his DSAR (Duo Standup Act Rating) divided by the time of day. If that shit is anywhere near or above 3, watch out and be prepared to not only be insulted, but, probably run out of the room crying. A 3 rating and above has only happened 3 times in the modern era. Shecky Green came close one year ('58 I think), but, went into a tail spin at the end of the year when he teamed up with Red Buttons and finished with a 1.7.

Seriously, I love you.

[ISiddiqui]

:Shrug: I'm with Atocep - He can ask, but he is very unlikely to get it under the new system that applies to all teams.

[Ronnie Dobbs2]

Yeah, but once he finds a team that will, then essentially his best guy goes to the highest bidder. This is better how?

Edit: if you think that teams wouldn't do that to get a Harper/Strasburg/Cole talent, well, agree to disagree.