Red Sox agree to terms with Carl Crawford

[snepp]

Re: Red Sox agree to terms with Carl Crawford

HR, RBI, runs, batting average.....they're fine for fantasy baseball, not the greatest for evaluation.

Defensive metrics, positional adjustments, linear weights (the various runs created measures out there), these are the kind of things (most) front offices are using to evaluate player value.

A 5 win player is a 5 win player regardless of how they get there.

[CabreraMVP]

Re: Red Sox agree to terms with Carl Crawford

HR, RBI, runs, batting average.....they're fine for fantasy baseball, not the greatest for evaluation.

Defensive metrics, positional adjustments, linear weights (the various runs created measures out there), these are the kind of things (most) front offices are using to evaluate player value.

A 5 win player is a 5 win player regardless of how they get there.

Thats your opinion. You clearly only care about new age stats, but a lot of people don't think that way.

Batting average isn't a great tool for evaluation? RISP? Thats your opinion, that doesn't mean its true.

[bigfnjoe96]

Re: Red Sox agree to terms with Carl Crawford

Two of his three 100 run seasons, were in 2004 and 2005. When they were bad.
.

Which make that even more amazing. Tampa lost 91 games in 2004 & 95 in 2005.

[CabreraMVP]

Re: Red Sox agree to terms with Carl Crawford

You said it wasn't fair to him, now you say its more impressive. Which one?

[Sportsforever]

Re: Red Sox agree to terms with Carl Crawford

Thats your opinion. You clearly only care about new age stats, but a lot of people don't think that way.

Batting average isn't a great tool for evaluation? RISP? Thats your opinion, that doesn't mean its true.

EVERY single front office is using the "new age" stats. Batting average IS not a great tool for evaluation - this isn't 1970, it's 2010 and we now realize how overrated hitting .300 is if you only get on base at a .330 clip.

RISP stats will always regress to the player's mean given enough chances. You will probably tell me that Derek Jeter is a "clutch" player. Let's look at this career regular season numbers and his career postseason numbers:

Regular season career - .314/.385/.452
Playoff career - .309/.377/.472

Almost identical. (I chose Jeter because he's had about a season's worth of postseason games so a good sample size).

There's a lot of great information/knowledge being gleaned about baseball...hop onboard the train my friend.

[bigfnjoe96]

Re: Red Sox agree to terms with Carl Crawford

You said it wasn't fair to him, now you say its more impressive. Which one?

It's not fair to say "He's only had 3 100 run seasons" in his career as a bases for your arguement. Though I may have mispoke about his 1st 5 seasons being on bad teams, if you look @ his career numbers, when healthy the man averages around 90-95 runs scored a year which is nothing to sneeze about.

[Matt_350z]

Re: Red Sox agree to terms with Carl Crawford

If the Brewers(just for an example) had signed Crawford to this contract, it would be questionable. Heck, if the Red Sox had signed him, without getting Gonzalez, it would be questionable.

Crawford puts the Red Sox over the top at this point. He is a definate impact player. He fits perfectly into the makeup of the team. More importantly, he has done it all in the AL East. He's played against some very good Yankee and Red Sox teams, while playing on a team that was vastly inferior to those clubs for many years.

The stage is changing. That money/contract is what it took to get him in a Red Sox uniform.
So be it. I could honestly care less about the business side of baseball. Especially from a team thats ownership group just spent near half billion dollars on a soccer team. I care about what happens on the field. After seeing Crawford burn my team for years now, I'm estatic he is wearing a Red Sox uniform.

[CMH]

Thats your opinion. You clearly only care about new age stats, but a lot of people don't think that way.

Batting average isn't a great tool for evaluation? RISP? Thats your opinion, that doesn't mean its true.

Actually, what you pick to be elite is an opinion. Yours.

The stats snepp mentions have proven to be true. More true than the observations you're making based on, well, not to sound disrespectful, but I'm not sure what you're basing your argument on since you keep saying it's not about the things you keep bringing up.

I mean I know what you're trying to say, but we are trying to help you understand that you're wrong. It's not an opinion. There are proven statistics that prove Carl Crawford provides as much offense as the men you name elite.

I, we, no one here can help you understand that if you want to ignore advanced statistics.


Sent from my mobile device.

[CabreraMVP]

Re: Red Sox agree to terms with Carl Crawford

There's a lot of great information/knowledge being gleaned about baseball...hop onboard the train my friend.

Please don't tell me to about this great new information, I know all about it. Baseball is my life. That doesn't mean I agree with all of it. But I think people get to deep into all this talk. People have begun to act like "simple" stats are worthless now. Batting average isn't pointless at all to me. Good hitters will get hits. The good hitters will drive in runs, the good hitters will get on base. There are new statistics that will show some differences between players, but at the end of the day, I think its the same game and we shouldn't begin to totally start over and evaluate in a new way.

You can still look quickly at a players HR/RBI/AVG/OBP/OPS and get the understand of what a guy brings to the table.

For example, Austin Jackson was a popular name among stat guru's all season. Ever since the first week of the season, they all said the same thing. His average will drop, he strikeouts too much. And more importantly, his Batting average with balls in play is sure to go down, because you can't sustain .400-.450 all season. That's why Jackson was going to resort to around .250 or so. This was the first week of the season.

That was a common topic all season long. And sure enough, Austin Jackson's average finally dipped below .300 in the final week of the season. Since the first week, it was about how is BABIP was going to fall off a cliff. It never did. And then I've heard people say that his rookie season wasn't all that great, because his BABIP was unusually high and he struck out too much. It's like, this rookie with no prior big league experience just maintained an average over .300 for the first 145 games of his career and you're going to tell me that isn't very impressive? What sense does that make? Hits are still hits.

I don't totally dismiss all these fancy new stats, but I dont agree with them all. I think people are totally counting off what they see with their own eyes. We can watch these guys play everyday of the season, and learn their game. But some people dismiss everything they see through their own observations, and put all their eggs in the basket of some flyball divided by ground ball on offfspeed pitches while ahead in the count stat.

I noticed Austin Jackson has a negative war rating defensively. Does that mean he hurts the team with his defense? That's hes below average? I know that can't be true, if this what it means. Because with my own eyes, I've seen him run down balls that most everybody can't get to. He has amazing range. I know because I watched him play in one of the biggest outfields in baseball everyday this year and watched him play it flawlessly. No possible stat can convince me that he had a negative impact defensively.

I just don't put all my eggs into the basket of these new stats. Saying that you can't evaluate with "simple" stats says that we have been doing it wrong for 100 years and that we could have been doing it better. I know there are a lot of great minds in the game who the same way, that you can't forget what you see with your own eyes.

I dont want to start a war here (no pun intended), but it's good baseball talk. I'm definitely an old school guy but I have an open mind. I know of these new stats, I just dont agree to use them as the main thing.

"There are proven statistics that prove Carl Crawford provides as much offense as the men you name elite."

We have to remember they rely on each other though. Longoria doesn't rack up all those RBI's without Crawford and Crawford doesn't score all those runs and get some good pitches to hit without Longoria. A stat can say that Crawford has the same value offensively as Miguel Cabrera, heck even more, but I'm going to take Cabrera every time. Or Pujols. That's just because I know what they bring to the table, I know how importance of a big bat in the middle of your lineup. That's just the way I look at the game. It's not wrong, people have been doing this since the beginning of time.

It's just the battle of old school vs new school. One isn't really right or wrong, you can have success building a team using both methods. It's just what you think.

[Sportsforever]

Re: Red Sox agree to terms with Carl Crawford

Please don't tell me to about this great new information, I know all about it. Baseball is my life. That doesn't mean I agree with all of it. But I think people get to deep into all this talk. People have begun to act like "simple" stats are worthless now. Batting average isn't pointless at all to me. Good hitters will get hits. The good hitters will drive in runs, the good hitters will get on base. There are new statistics that will show some differences between players, but at the end of the day, I think its the same game and we shouldn't begin to totally start over and evaluate in a new way.

You can still look quickly at a players HR/RBI/AVG/OBP/OPS and get the understand of what a guy brings to the table.

For example, Austin Jackson was a popular name among stat guru's all season. Ever since the first week of the season, they all said the same thing. His average will drop, he strikeouts too much. And more importantly, his Batting average with balls in play is sure to go down, because you can't sustain .400-.450 all season. That's why Jackson was going to resort to around .250 or so. This was the first week of the season.

That was a common topic all season long. And sure enough, Austin Jackson's average finally dipped below .300 in the final week of the season. Since the first week, it was about how is BABIP was going to fall off a cliff. It never did. And then I've heard people say that his rookie season wasn't all that great, because his BABIP was unusually high and he struck out too much. It's like, this rookie with no prior big league experience just maintained an average over .300 for the first 145 games of his career and you're going to tell me that isn't very impressive? What sense does that make? Hits are still hits.

I don't totally dismiss all these fancy new stats, but I dont agree with them all. I think people are totally counting off what they see with their own eyes. We can watch these guys play everyday of the season, and learn their game. But some people dismiss everything they see through their own observations, and put all their eggs in the basket of some flyball divided by ground ball on offfspeed pitches while ahead in the count stat.

I noticed Austin Jackson has a negative war rating defensively. Does that mean he hurts the team with his defense? That's hes below average? I know that can't be true, if this what it means. Because with my own eyes, I've seen him run down balls that most everybody can't get to. He has amazing range. I know because I watched him play in one of the biggest outfields in baseball everyday this year and watched him play it flawlessly.

I just don't put all my eggs into the basket of these new stats. Saying that you can't evaluate with "simple" stats says that we have been doing it wrong for 100 years and that we could have been doing it better. I know there are a lot of great minds in the game who the same way, that you can't forget what you see with your own eyes.

I dont want to start a war here (no pun intended), but it's good baseball talk. I'm definitely an old school guy but I have an open mind.

Good post, but I want to address Jackson for a minute. I think you (and a lot of other folks) misinterpret what people mean when they say "his BABIP was way high this year, that .300 average is a mirage". No one is saying he didn't have a solid rookie year...he DID. That said, if I'm a GM I can't look at that BABIP and expect him to maintain it over the course of his career. Can't/won't happen. Unless he develops better plate discipline and cuts down the strikeouts/increases the walks, he will not maintain that .300 average in the future.

As for Jackson's defense, I agree that I saw him make some amazing plays this year too (that one in the 9th inning of the Gallaraga "perfect" game was amazing), but I didn't see every inning of every game he played (and I'm willing to bet you didn't either). The defensive metrics are done by someone who has watched EVERY single ball he played this year and they rate him on everything from how he fielded it, how he threw it, etc. For all you and I know he is great at running it down, but he overthrew the cutoff man half the time and allowed an extra base (exagerating for the purpose of making a point). That certainly doesn't help his team and would hurt his defensive WAR.

Finally, I'm not saying stats like batting average are useless. They aren't. But they need to be looked at in context or they are meaningless.

[ImTellinTim]

Re: Red Sox agree to terms with Carl Crawford

Cabrera, they aren't saying that those statistics are worthless. They are saying that you have to look past them in some cases. Sure, an elite player is going to have a good batting average. But, like someone brought up, a .300 BA isn't great if they are getting on base at .330.

There are different types of players and these "new age" stats are designed to help compare the relative value of all these different types of players. All anyone is trying to do is determine how much a player's performance contributes to wins. Wins are king. They are what makes a team what they are. Why wouldn't you want to try and come up with metrics that determine how a player is going to add wins to the team when making decisions about who to offer your largest contracts? It's not like these guys that come up with new stats are pulling crap out of thin air. Chicks dig the long ball. GMs dig the wins.

EDIT: Just read your long post. Good points, but can't we just agree that what was being used for 100 years is now being melded into a new way of looking at things?

What it all boils down to is no, Carl Crawford is not a 3-4 hole anchor as you call him. But he is clearly an elite player who will contribute many wins to any team he's on from the 1-2 hole.

[CabreraMVP]

Re: Red Sox agree to terms with Carl Crawford

Good post. To each his own I guess. At the end of the day, if I were GM I wouldn't give him more than 15 million.

[CMH]

Re: Red Sox agree to terms with Carl Crawford

Good post. To each his own I guess. At the end of the day, if I were GM I wouldn't give him more than 15 million.

Hey, about 25 GMs agree with you.

[Sandman42]

Re: Red Sox agree to terms with Carl Crawford

Can we please stop talking about RBI's. I thought everyone in this forum realized it was junk by now. If Crawford hits in the middle of the Sox order he'll knock in a 100 runs.

Why? Because the guys in front of him are going to get on base enough for him to do it. RBI's are entirely dependent on where you hit in the lineup. If Crawford hits #3 he'll drive in 100 if he leads off he won't since he won't have as many chances. It's not like he's going to become a different hitter by hitting in a different spot in the order.

[reduced price]

Re: Red Sox agree to terms with Carl Crawford

Let's not go too overboard about Crawford. Great speed no doubt, average power at best. very good defense. But a 7 year contract to a guy, who's game is based on speed is not a great idea. The legs will go long before the contract runs out.