gregmag

I'm not thrilled about it. Remember, he has a serious injury history. I'd kind of rather have him next year than next inning. Greg.

Joe, thank you for posting the info, and thank you for patiently, courteously taking the flak -- some of which is very reasonable and thoughtful, but some of which is just predictable beef from a predictable direction. You're a gentleman and a scholar. Greg.

IMHO, discussions like this ignore the difference between the predictive value of a stat and the descriptive value of a stat. I think RBM makes a fair point, if what we want to do is figure out who has produced this year. If, on the other hand, we want to make choices about whom to keep or target to pick up, I don't care at all about stats like RISP or BA with runners on, because they don't repeat. In fact, the guys I would target are ones who have great predictive stats -- i.e., OPS -- but have a bad year in terms of "production" stats. If the OPS is there, the production will come. Brian, I like your post -- that's a useful way of thinking about the issue. Greg.

No, it would create heated arguments. Stat guys don't agree with traditional baseball knowledge because if their stats don't back it up, they don't believe it. If you ask me, there are MANY discussions here that totally degenerate because of statistical talk. When I started reading this thread. I too thought about the idea of expanding the statistical analysis forum into a "strategy and analysis" forum. Then I read the measured, thoughtful quote reprinted above. Now I say to hell with the whole thing, if that's the amount of respect you have for other points of view. Greg.

you did bring up another interesting point though. are things like recovery from injury and time off/rustiness at all quantifiable? you posted that the projections for hardy could have been altered to take these things into account. what would be the best way to go about doing this? are there actual formulas that have been developed based on type of injury or time away? considering how different each player's mental and physical makeup is, and how different each individual injury can be, it seems like those are things that would be nearly impossible to quantify. particularly if that player has never suffered a major injury before, and there is no past information to reference. I wish I actually knew enough to give a good answer to this very good question; all I can do is take a general stab at it. When you're trying to use deductive reasoning, which is all statistical analysis really does, you figure out what information is available and how salient it is to the problem at hand. Can we find other players who have missed substantial time and then come back? If so, that's helpful, and we can use that info; but, as you point out, it still leaves a lot of variables out there. Maybe we can actually find a bunch of truly similar cases -- guys who have missed a year right before their rookie season. If not, maybe we can refine the numbers with other "disruptive" rookie experiences, like guys who were pushed to the majors too quickly. Like I said, I'm just engaging in general guesswork here. I suspect that, even if a more knowledgeable person could come up with a specific model for incorporating something like JJ's injury rust into the projection, that person would have to acknowledge that the incorporation added a larger measure of likely error to the quantitative exercise. Still, my sense is that a general adjustment of this sort would be possible. Maybe I'm wrong; maybe a better approach would be to take BP's PECOTA projection as a good assessment of JJ's "established level of ability" and then have a qualitative, rather than quantitative, discussion of caveats -- remember that he was out for a year, so we should expect him to underperform his established level of ability, but who knows by how much. That would just be a different way of following the same basic thought process. Greg.

isn't that a prime example of how unreliable stats can be? because they don't take things like this into account? that's an entire half-season worth of baseball that stats would have never predicted due to the "human element." I think I'm not explaining my position very well. Part of the problem may be the framing of this discussion as "stats vs. non-stats." What I'm saying is: Stats are incredibly valuable as predictors. In making a prediction, you have to read stats in context. A lot of contextual factors can be quantified; information can always be made more complete. Nobody here is arguing for robotic application of stats. At the beginning of this year, I reacted to the BP projection about Hardy approximately like this: "Hmm. They think, based on his minor league performance, that he's a solid major league hitter. That seems like a valid assessment of his ability. I wonder how recovery from the injury will affect his performance?" That isn't some nebulous "human element," in the way I think you mean -- something that nobody could ever hope to quantify. Obviously it involves a human element, but just as obviously you can predict a lot of human behavior. If people are starving, they will probably steal food. That's as human as it gets, but if I owned a grocery store, I could make a pretty good estimate of how that human tragedy would affect my inventory and revenues. If the BP folks had focused on everything we knew about JJ Hardy, they could have adjusted their numbers based on the fact that he sat out a year. It isn't like he's the first person who ever had that problem, which means we have information that we can use to adjust the numbers. BP didn't do that, because they use a consistent method across the book. As it turned out, recovery from the injury (plus dumb luck) affected JJ's performance a whole lot. In June, if you had asked me, "Doesn't this debacle prove JJ Hardy isn't a good major league hitter?" I would have said, "I don't believe it does. His minor league stats still make me confident that he'll hit, once he's cleaned off the rust from missing most of 2004." I was right about that, because of the statistical info. That's all I'm saying. I can't put it any more simply than that. To me, the thought process I just described is a statistical analysis. It's not a robotic statistical analysis that says the numbers tell you everything without thought, assumption, or adjustment. But I have to disagree with you that something like the injury recovery, or the random variance that Russ and James have both talked about, undermines the value of stats. Ultimately, we aren't talking about "stats"; we're talking about the belief that concrete information has great value for predicting future events. Some predictable events, like injury rust as a drain on performance, are harder to quantify than others. Even predictable events are subject to random variance. I think you and I agree on those two facts. If you want to keep shouting to the hills that I'm disingenuously denying the imperfection of stats, I can't stop you. But with all respect, I think I'm not doing that. I hope my clarification here will at least convince you of my good faith in this discussion. Greg.

But if you look at his overall stats, those numbers do not show a hitter who is a solid major league hitter this year. A .684 OPS is much different than the .765 that was predicted. The thesis here -- the one scoop was talking about and the one I'm talking about -- is that Hardy's first half was not the "real" J.J. Hardy, because he got hurt last year and wasn't ready to come back, and that once Hardy got over that initial freakout, the "real" J.J. Hardy emerged. That's a thesis. I can't prove it conclusively; maybe he'll hit .230 again next year. But the circumstances provide a solid basis for the thesis. BP's numbers -- which, by the way, don't consider the injury-recovery angle, just his raw performance in the minors when he was healthy -- show a player that looks an awful lot like J.J.'s line would look if his first half had been merely poor, rather than world historically bad. This is part of the problem with arguments about stats, especially predictive stats. It's not a crystal ball. Statistics vary for a variety of systematic and random reasons. Too many people look at that problem and say it proves stats aren't worth anything in a given situation, like this one. That's dead wrong, IMHO; it just means we have to be critical and sophisticated in how we read and crunch the numbers. That's all I got. For me, it's self-evident: BP's numbers (which is to say, J.J.'s minor league performance) made me confident he would hit. He is now hitting. Can you point us to the study that analyzes how accurate PECOTA projections have been for all rookies since BP began these projections? I can't. I don't know whether such a study exists. I do recall that Bill James, when he first developed major league equivalencies back in the late 1980s / early 1990s, claimed that MLEs had totally failed to predict a minor league hitter's approximate value in only one case: Glenn Braggs. Presumably PECOTA has improved over James' initial methods. But that's anecdotal; maybe it's all smoke and mirrors. Greg.

Right, but they predicted he would be a solid major league hitter this year. In June, a lot of people -- including Jim Callis, IIRC -- were saying he couldn't hit. I'm not saying BP's projections were spot on; I'm saying I saw exactly what scoop saw, but not because of a hunch -- I saw it because I had numbers that told me Hardy would hit. Greg.

I knew Hardy would hit dispite the fact that he was hitting .180 for a long time. there wasnt a statistic to be found that would indicate that Hardy would hit and hit a lot. Low and behold, post all star break OPS .878. Find me a stat that would have predicted that. How about his minor league stats from last year or the year before? BP's PECOTA system, which is just a sophisticated predictor based on past performace, projected before the season that Hardy would hit .268 / .328 / .437 this year. Stats are exactly why a lot of us knew Hardy would hit. I'm not trying to dump on your post, scoop; I think you make some good points. But I do think this is an example of how people sometimes assume things are unquantifiable, when they really are. We're talking about baseball. It's wonderfully complex, but it isn't love, death, or poetry. An amazing amount of what goes on in a baseball game is quantifiable. There are indeed some things that can't be reduced to numbers. But there are a lot of things, like defense, that I'm quite sure can be reduced to numbers, but we haven't quite figured out how to do it yet. Greg.

Oh yes. Hell, yes. This is the one I've been waiting for. He may not have dominated like Clemens, but he was a lot closer to that than to run-of-the-mill good pitcher territory -- Jack Morris, say. He was a staff ace and workhorse forever, and the only reason he isn't in is that he won 287 games in a freakish era that produced a bunch of 300-game winners. Greg.

Yes some are mediocre points but the major points don't convince everyone and I have until 2011 to convince the veterans committee. I love it! I'm definitely not arguing that Simmons wasn't terrific in those years, and I also agree with you that Simmons should go in the Hall. You're kind of throwing everything but the kitchen sink out there, so I think some of it is weak, but you're right that Ted's case is strong and mulifaceted. Sorry I got cranky about RBI. RBI do that to me sometimes. Thanks for your good humor. Greg.

For Carlos Lee to have 28 more RBI's than the 2nd place ribbie guy on the Brewers and to be acknowledged being the best player on the Brewers how come: When Simmons led his teammates by: 72: 15 73: 22 74: 3 75: 24 76: 4 77: 4 78: 5 Okay, you've made a string of medicore-to-bad arguments before, but this one can't be allowed to stand. I could ask what your assertion about Lee and the Brewers in 2005 (I think Jenkins can make a case) has to do with Simmons and the Cards in the early 1970s, but there's a much deeper problem here: RBI, at least on a single-season basis, is a really bad way to decide who's the best player on a team. Let's look at your own evidence, first; just the triple crown stats: In 1974, Reggie Smith outhit Simmons by 37 points and hit three more home runs. But you want us to believe that Simmons' advantage of three RBI makes him better? In 1976, Brock outhit Simmons by ten points, plus leadoff man Brock came within one homer and eight RBI of Simmons' "production." So for those years, your argument is laughable. For the others, I agree that Simmons was the Cards' best hitter (Hernandez, not Brock, beat him out in 1976, according to this method.) So that's something big: five years out of seven as his team's best hitter. But what doesn't that take into account? In the early 1970s, Brock was running up obscene SB totals, at a time when that mattered for offense. He was also scoring a ton of runs, a stat every bit as important as RBI. In 1973, Simmons has Brock by 12 points of OPS+, but Brock stole 70 bases (in 90 tries) and scored 110 runs to Simmons' 62. I'd say that takes 1973 out of Ted's "best Cardinal" column. Then there's defensive value. Ted was a catcher, and a decent one, so he mattered a lot to the defense. But the young Keith Hernandez was one of the great defensive 1Bs of all time. In 1978, Ted had Keith by 19 points of OPS+, but Keith probably mattered a lot more to the defense. I'd score this one as close, but definitely not a clear win for Simmons. So for clear-cut seasons as the Cards' best position player, Simmons is down to 1972, 1975, and 1977. Now we have to think about pitchers. Yes, the Bill James method that we're using here, like plain English, counts pitchers among "players." In 1972, Bob Gibson went 19-11 with a 2.46 ERA and pitched 278 quality innings (ERA+ 139). I'll take that over Simmons' .303-16-96 (OPS+ 127). In 1975 and 1977, Bob Forsch led the Cards' pitching staffs. He was very good, but he didn't do as much as Simmons. My analysis is no more perfect than anyone else's, but it shows Simmons as the Cards' best player in two seasons -- not the seven you get by looking at RBI exclusively. Two years as top Card fits exactly the profile I think Simmons has: a strong borderline HoFer. He still has my vote. Greg.

Oh, okay. Thanks. Because I wasn't thrilled contemplating that as an argument against starting Santos or de la Rosa.http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif Greg.

Also, see Ben Hendrickson in multiple starts last year. Right -- I didn't mean I thought Dennis could shut 'em down; I just meant that we've seen recent precedent for bringing a guy up from AA to start, which is essentially what bringing up Dennis would entail. Sorry I wasn't clear. As long as we aren't scoring runs, we might as well put a fan out on the mound. That would be an interesting promotion. This is beautiful. Just beautiful. KKK Huh? Greg.

He is the best option we have for the fourth starter right now. For the rest of the season we just have to hope Wes pitches like he did in the first couple of innings and does not hit that wall he hit tonight. I understand that we're short of starters, and we don't exactly have any great options. But why stick with the one option that is most clearly established as a losing proposition? Wes always hits that wall, except maybe once every five starts when he gets lucky. Here are the better options, as I see them -- in no particular order, and recognizing that we need two of these guys, not just one: Santos: also has proved that he can't do the job -- in the second half. Maybe he comes back stronger after his recent extra rest. He has put together better, longer stretches as a starter than Obermuller has ever dreamed of. de la Rosa: Why not? What do we have to lose? Maybe his command improves when he's able to get into a groove for more than an inning at a time. Sarfate: See Saenz last year. Helling: Unlike Wes, Rick has only blown one start. Glover: A better track record as a major league starter than Obermuller. Lehr: A complete unknown quantity as a major league starter, but he did the job at AAA, and it isn't like taking him out of relief will bring the bullpen to its knees. I'm excluding some other conceivable candidates -- Eveland because we have to protect his arm, Hendrickson because the last thing he needs right now is another blow to his confidence, Wise because stretching a guy out after an injury isn't, um, wise. I would try any two of those guys as starters before I resorted to Obermuller again. Greg.

This just in . . . Wes Obermuller sucks. This is actually one of those issues that divides reasonable people. Some folks here believe passionately that Wes just needs more of a chance to establish himself as a starter; others of us think he has proved he can't do it. So let's negotiate. I'd like to talk the Wes fans down to middle relief, which I think he might be good at, but I don't expect they'd accept that. So how about a number of nonquality starts? How many more ugly starts does Wes need to put up until we stop talking about him as a rotation candidate? One more? Three? Five? Greg.

Like hvf, I've been pretty negative so far, although I voted yes on Simmons and have felt torn about Sutter. I too see Raines as the first clear-cut HoFer to come up so far. He was just a flat-out brilliant leadoff man. His biggest problem is that he played at the same time as Rickey Henderson and Paul Molitor, two of the other greatest leadoff men of all time. Leadoff guys get underrated, and it's hard for the guy who plays in Montreal when there are other great ones around. John made a sound point about looking at the number of impact seasons, but I don't see Raines' career as top-heavy. Tim's tenth best full-season OBP is .374 in 1995. His tenth best full-season SLG is .405 in 1992 -- and this is a leadoff man, one who played a lot of his career in poor hitting environments. His tenth best run total is 80 in 1994 (when he played only 101 games). He scored 100 runs six times, hit .300 six times, stole 70 or more bases six times, and had 50 or more extra-base hits five times. He certainly had his peak, but a lot of those achievements are scattered around his career. FWIW, Bill James has Raines as the seventh greatest LF of all time, IIRC. I don't have the book with me now; I'll correct this later if I'm wrong. Greg.

With the exception of AAA, where it's good to see Krynzel and Cruz hurt some balls, that has to be the most prospect-free day of systemwide success I've ever seen. Especially in BC, it looks like some kind of bizarre passover ritual where the offensive explosion skipped all the guys we'd like to see mashing. Greg.

Power/speed number is an interesting stat for identifying a certain type of useful player. At bottom, though, it's a freak stat. Is the combination of power and stolen bases more important than the combination of power and getting on base? No, because getting on base is staggeringly more important than stealing bases. Evaluating Andre Dawson's HoF candidacy based on power/speed number is a little like evaluating Brady Anderson's HoF candidacy based on number of 50 home run seasons by a leadoff man or Dave Stewart's HoF candidacy based on consecutive 20-win seasons. It stacks the deck in favor of the player's greatest positive while obscuring much more important negatives. (I say "a little" because obviously discussing Dawson for the HoF is defensible, while discussing Anderson or Stewart wouldn't be.) Also, on Dawson's MVP: Bill James calls it one of the worst MVP selections ever and argues that Dawson wasn't one of th 20 most valuable players in the NL that year. The crux of his argument, in brief, is that all Dawson really did was hit lots of home runs in Wrigley Field for a last-place team. Note that James is on record as a Dawson fan, so this argument isn't part of some hatchet job. You can buy the argument or not, but people keep waving Dawson's MVP around as if it were the key to the kingdom, so I thought James' objection was worth noting. Greg.

I don't think there's any question that Rice was a better hitter than Dawson: OPS+ 128 to 118. Dawson's OBP is almost embarassing -- .323. I don't think Rice belongs in the HoF. So does Hawk have other advantages over Rice? Longevity: Dawson played 800 more games. Speed: Dawson stole 314 bases at a 74% clip. Rice, we'll just say, didn't. Defense: Rice was good; Dawson was better. I don't think that's enough. But it's closer. There's a type here -- call them the RBI men, guys who only played corner OF or 1B, power hitters but not at a world-class level, hit for good averages but not great on-base guys overall. Recent players in this category include Rice, Dawson, Winfield, Perez. (Jackson was a cut above this category; he hit for his whole first decade at a level Rice only touched for three years, and he did it in much tougher conditions.) Players in this group, IMHO, tend to be historically overrated. In order to make the HoF, I think a player like this needs to add longevity to the package. Winfield is the best of the group, and properly makes the cut, because he was as good a hitter as Rice but did it for 800 more games. Perez and Dawson lasted a long time, but they didn't produce at Rice's and Winfield's level. So I'll vote no on Dawson. I would have voted no on Perez as well. Greg.

The article you linked to does exactly what you do -- picks the numbers that support its position and ignores everything else. I already made my case. They were nearly identical hitters, but Fisk did it longer, and his defensive reputation is much stronger everywhere I look. That makes Fisk an obvious Hall of Famer and puts Simmons on the bubble. Greg.

If, as some people are advocating, we trade Bill Hall -- how far is Enrique Cruz from being the new Bill Hall? Greg.

A rundown of RBM's arguments in favor of Simmons: -- Leading your team in RBIs for seven straight years should get you into the Hall of Fame. -- Having a better BB/K ratio than another player proves that you're a better hitter than that player. -- Having more hits than any other player at your position should be an automatic ticket to the HoF, and if it isn't, then all players who led their positions in hits should be disqualified, without regard to anything else they did. -- Picking a random, midcareer age at which to compare two players is automatically a valid basis for assessing their relative values, even if one of the two started earlier and declined fast. Look, I voted yes on Simmons, and even I think these are some silly arguments. I would love to discuss anyone who would actually break down a year and tell me that Fisk was better. Based on their rate stats, and bearing in mind that Fisk got to play in Fenway, they're extremely close: Simmmons: .285 / .348 / .437, OPS+ 117 Fisk: .269 / .341 / .457, OPS+ 118 Fisk has a decent edge in OPS, but OPS+ cleans out his park advantage. In essence, their rate stats mark them as equals. The thing is, Fisk caught 450 more games than Simmons. Given the equal rate stats, that makes Fisk's career a lot more valuable than Simmons' career. I buy the argument that Simmons belongs in the Hall, but you have to cook the numbers and twist the logic pretty badly to argue that Simmons was better than Fisk. Also, any comparison of either man as a hitter to Piazza is absurd. Yes, Piazza played in a hitter's era, but he also played in two terrible parks for hitters. All of that comes out in the wash of OPS+: Piazza: .315 / .385 / .562, OPS+ 150. Mike has caught 350 fewer games than Simmons, so I accept that he'll drop some as he wears out, and he'll never come close to Fisk's longevity. But I'm not sure it's physically possible for him to drop anywhere near Simmons' and Fisk's rate stats, even if he plays for a couple of years after he's dead. Piazza is in his own class among catchers as a hitter. Greg.

This is really a tough one for me. In general I think the Hall undervalues the contributions of guys who play key defensive positions in favor of too many 1Bs and LFs who get to bat fourth. So Simmons, for me, is a lot closer than Jim Rice. Simmons caught as many games as Johnny Bench (about 1750 games), and performed offensively at the level of Carlton Fisk (OPS+ 118, compared to 126 for Bench). That's kind of Simmons' problem: he needed either a bit more offensive potency or a bit more longevity to be a sure thing for the HoF. So he's on the borderline, which for me means his defense should be the deciding factor. Presumably he wouldn't have caught 1750 games if he wasn't any good; but catchers' defensive contributions are notoriously tough to measure. I'm going to vote yes, mainly because I have to believe that catchers in the HoF should run at least 12 deep, probably substantially more. But I'm not sure. Greg.

Yes, Mass, it's very exciting that our latest high-round HS pitcher pitched two fantastic innings in rookie ball in his first pro season. All my concerns about HS pitching injuries have vanished. Nick who?http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif Speaking of which, I'm sorry, but I can't get excited about Rogers' allowing seven baserunners in 5+. It's a fine outing, and I love the Ks and groundballs, but this is supposed to be a high point? For a guy with his billing? I'm grumpy. With all the challenge promotions, including to Milwaukee, plus some injuries and slumps, it seems like we don't have any fun prospects to follow. I like the promotions, and I know I'm blowing hot air -- it just FEELS that way, on a night like tonight. Guess I'll just have to get hyped about the big leaguers. Greg.