Brawndo the Thirst Mutilat

I will use the fact that the girl I may or may not still be seeing hates baseball as a way to guarantee that she feels just ignored enough to compete for my attention again.

Sorry to continue the hijack...I'll boil this down to just one simple issue. I do not understand why you think UZR favors range over sure-handedness. Ever since range factor, every new fielding metric has had only one real bias -- they like it when fielders turn batted balls into outs. Any batted balls. UZR, Dewan' plus-minus, all the swankiest new ones...it's true they reward the outstanding play more than they reward the easy one...but at the same time they punish you for blowing an easy play a heck of a lot more harshly than for failing to make a tough one. For simplicity's sake, take two plays -- one that is pretty easy and is converted into an out 90% of the time and one that is very tough and is only converted into an out 10% of the time. If I make the easy one, I get +0.1 plays, if I miss it, I get -0.9 plays. If I make the tough one, I get +0.9 plays, if I miss it, I get -0.1. So, if Freddie Sureglove makes the easy one and misses the hard one, he nets +0 plays. Meanwhile, Bobbles McRange duffs the easy one, but makes the hard one -- he also nets +0 plays. In essence, this is correcting the bias that errors and fielding percentage have in favor of Freddie Sureglove. For most of baseball history, the only defensive stats anybody paid any attention to would have Freddie at 100% FP, 0 errors and Bobbles at 0% FP, 1 error. This is clearly wrong -- they both created the same amount of baserunners and outs. It's true that a lot more outs are recorded on easy plays than hard ones, but I don't see any reason to believe that batted balls are preferentially distributed inside the box you describe...and I don't see any reason to think that Freddie had more value to his team than Bobbles in the above scenario.

If Escobar doesn't hit well enough this year to justify continuing to think about him as an elite prospect, and Hardy can be re-signed, it also might not be a terrible idea to consider the possibility that Escobar serve as the utility IF for the 2010 team (and maybe beyond). It might seem like a waste of service time, but those guys usually do see a pretty significant amount of PT, since middle infielders generally need more off days than anybody other than catchers (often a lot of DL time as well), and all-D is not a terrible route to go with that roster spot. One danger in keeping Escobar in the minors too long is that if he never becomes a decent hitter, the most value he will ever have is in his early 20s, since that's generally where a player's defensive peak falls. If Escobar continues to develop as a hitter, I think you've got a different discussion. In that event, he probably needs to be somebody's starting SS in 2010.

Looking over the last few Triple A and Double A phases, it seems like you might see anywhere between 35 and 60 or so players taken in the minor league phases of any given Rule 5 draft. If 36 have made the majors over the last 10 years, somewhere in the neighborhood of 5-10% of the players taken eventually got at least a cup of coffee. That's probably not low enough to really merit further investigation of my institutional bias hypothesis, but if you really wanted to know, I suppose you'd have to do matched set analysis grouping Rule 5 draftees by similar age and minor league performance, and see whether significantly less MLB opportunities are given to those guys than, say, comparably performing minor league FAs (guys that ran out of options or whatever), or maybe guys that were PTBNL throw-ins in trades or something. Don't think I'm up for that though. I now sorta doubt you'd find any interesting differences anyway. I do still wonder why Bray and Bateman never got more of a chance.

I suppose that last year's injury problems, (possibly related) lack of performance, and his rough spring do justify a certain amount of concern. Short relievers are more prone than any other player to collapse overnight from quality contributors to sub-replacement level. It's not out of the question that Riske is toast. Having said that, I think it's also important to keep in mind that he has a lengthy pre-Brewers track record of solid pitching (5 straight seasons ranging from above average to excellent), that short relievers are also more prone than any other player to have off-seasons (smaller sample = more variance), and that as an established mid-salary vet whose spot on the team was assured, he had little incentive to worry about anything in spring training other than getting his arm ready and staying healthy. In other words, I wouldn't push the panic button just yet. I still think the smart money is on a pretty nice bounce-back year for Riske. None of the comments in this thread have been over-the-top panicky, but in yesterday's game thread, he was called "worthless", "a thorn in my side", and "an inflamed hemorrhoid" (granted, that last one was a tongue-in-cheek response to the second one) in three consecutive posts. I realize that game threads are often treated as semi-vent threads, and he was getting lit up, but still...it's only spring training, folks.

Interesting. I missed that article. I wonder whether this is evidence of the failings of that particular group of players, or evidence of institutional bias in MLB against that group of players. It's probably a bit of both. I guess the latter would go a long way toward explaining why neither Bateman or Bray's minor league numbers ever justified a shot in the bigs in the eyes of the team -- players acquired in this fashion may well have to do really extraordinary things to even get on an organization's radar screen.

It is, and that fact, combined with the parks he's hit in, really hurts his MLEs. Last three years: 06 .222 / .286 / .376 07 .239 / .303 / .378 08 .247 / .309 / .468 Only that last line even resembles a remotely useful player. He's probably a little better than Thorman, though, so whatever.

Man I hope so. Every inning he plays in the OF for that team brings the Brewers ever closer to nudging them out for the wild card for the second consecutive year.

A few days ago at bodog, I saw that the Giants were at 81.5 wins for an over/under. I was seriously considering making a $500 bet on the under...until I saw that it was already at -150, so it's pretty clear that I wasn't the first person to notice how absurdly high that figure is. That team will not score any runs. But they play enough of their games in that terrible division that I suppose anything could happen, and I'm not certain enough to lay $150 to win $100.

Why? A missed play is a missed play -- in either case you have a runner on base who wouldn't otherwise have been. If player A makes 10 more errors on routine plays than player B over the course of a season, but makes 10 extra plays on balls that are very difficult to get to, how doesn't that even out? It's one thing to say you don't trust that the stringers are getting it right when they log a play as in a certain zone that 90% of defenders do not convert into an out. This is the source data for UZR. But I would suggest that however subjective that fact is, it's hardly any more subjective (and probably based on much clearer and more logical guidelines), than the mind-numbingly ridiculous scoring decisions I see made about whether a play should count as an error or not. But I'm not really even sure that's your argument here. With respect to your point about "consistency", I'm just not sure I follow. Is the argument that a botched routine play carries some sort of psychological impact that is more harmful than a missed opportunity for a great play? Isn't it just as possible that a team receives some sort of psychological boost from Ozzie Smith type defensive wizardry? I don't really believe either of these possibilities matters too much, but I'm pretty sure it would be nearly impossible for me to believe in the one without also believing in the other. Is your problem with UZR that it assumes context-neutrality (your point about the vacuum)? I'll grant that it isn't literally true that every missed play on defense results in exactly 0.8 runs. That's obvious enough -- I've never seen a team score a fraction of a run. But the only reason to try to keep track of the actual context when a missed play occurs and the actual amount of runs that result would be if there were such a thing as "clutch defense" that is a significant enough repeatable skill that it actually would wind up having a real impact on player evaluation. Considering how dry that well has proved on the hitting front, I'm pretty sure it ain't worth the effort. Besides, if I miss a play that would have ended an inning, and the pitcher then allows a 3 run homer, walks 2 more, another pitcher comes in and gives up another 3 run job, exactly how many of the 6 runs are really my fault? That would have to be decided using massive amounts of data and context-neutral, vacuum-style thinking, or else total arbitrary capriciousness. Maybe I'm totally missing what you mean about the vacuum, but context-neutrality is usually what people are objecting to when they make this point. I'll grant that UZR isn't perfect, but for me this always goes back to a point I read someone make a long time ago -- Neither was batting average, but it was still a heck of a lot better than trying to evaluate hitters by using your eyes and looking aesthetically and mechanically at their swings, or by trying to remember who got the one extra hit a week that makes the difference between a good hitter and a bad one without any records at all. As an aside, I do want to say that it is to your great credit that unlike the vast majority of people who are skeptical about the accuracy of metrics like UZR, it's quite clear that you've taken the time to learn a good deal about them. That's the only reason I'm interested in having this discussion with you.

Erstad has always been a quite good CF defender (still is, by UZR), but for the love of all that is holy, is he ever a terrible hitter. A poor man's Erstad would be a pretty bad player in AAA. Since the Brewers are probably going to keep Duffy, let's hope he's at least an upper middle class man's Erstad.

Duffy is a better hitter, better defender, and probably a more efficient base-stealer than Podsednik at this point. Gwynn is probably significantly enough better on D that I'd rather have him as well. I think it's a good idea to think about defense for the 5th OF spot if Nelson is the 4th.

This thread is 4 pages old, and none of the resident statheads has yet popped in to post the actual optimized lineup, at least according to current thinking. Guess we're all too lazy, or too tired of talking about something that has so little impact on the number of runs the team will score. I know I almost never post in lineup threads for that very reason. Anyway, if you're not already familiar with what The Book has to say about lineup optimization, go here for the best brief summary I've yet read. The first thing you need to know to optimize the lineup is who the best hitters are. I went to fangraphs and took the average of the 5 wOBA projections for all the starters, and here is what I found: 1. Braun .395 2. Fielder .391 3. Hart .350 4. Weeks .348 5. Hardy .345 6. Cameron .338 7. Hall .324 8. Kendall .300 For all intents and purposes, 1 and 2 are close enough to call a tie, and so are 3-5. Those definitely have to be the top 5 hitters, though. Your two best hitters should hit 2 and 4, so long as they are power hitters. Ours are. Fielder is the higher OBP of the two, so he's probably best for the 2 spot. But if you like Braun's baserunning there, you're not crazy. Next we have to pick a leadoff hitter. Should be the third best hitter, but we've got a three way tie for that. So we need to pick the guy who is the highest OBP, lowest SLG hitter. That's Weeks, whose lowest projected OBP by any system is still higher than the highest projected OBP for either Hardy or Hart. That leaves Hardy and Hart for 3 and 5. This is basically a pick 'em. But Hardy projects to hit more HR and fewer 2B and 3B, so I would give a narrow nod to Hardy 3, Hart 5. From there, you simply arrange the hitters in declining order of quality. Except that national league teams are a few runs better off with the pitcher 8th, especially when someone like Kendall (no SLG) would be the 9 hitter. Here is your end result: 1. Weeks 2. Fielder (or Braun) 3. Hardy (or Hart) 4. Braun (or Fielder) 5. Hart (or Hardy) 6. Cameron 7. Hall 8. Pitcher 9. Kendall The organization won't do this for a couple reasons. They already tried the Kendall 9th thing, and it was viewed by the press and the fans as a failure. Why I still have no idea. And whichever of Fielder and Braun was asked to hit 2 would flip out, because they view it as a bunterriffic singles hitter's job. So, fine, as long as Weeks is the leadoff hitter, and 2-5 is Braun, Fielder, Hardy, and Hart in some order, you're probably only talking like half a dozen runs short of perfect optimization (if that), and keeping the players and fans comfortable and happy probably trumps that.

That's probably harder than you think. On the soul, or what's left of it, at least. Imagine how you'd feel if every time you ever tried to say anything of substance, examine anything sincerely, or argue anything controversial using actual evidence, your bosses are totally miffed, but so long as you hand them totally inane puff pieces exactly like you describe here, they're thrilled. I would think that would get incredibly frustrating for a person of even moderate intelligence. Understanding that, however, still in no way predisposes me to cut a jerk like Justice any slack whatsoever for despising his audience.

The issue isn't whether he's being serious. Of course he isn't. The issue is that every sportswriter knows these "hope springs eternal" spring training pieces are pointless drivel, but Justice wants to write one and at the same time say, in an all-too-thinly-veiled fashion, "Here it is, imbeciles...the pointless drivel you expect, enjoy, and deserve...capped off with some really strange ironic self-congratulation that will trigger your idiot outrage reflexes." If you read this article, he treated you like an imbecile. I get angry when someone treats me like an imbecile. A related question (chicken or egg) -- which came first? That we are a nation of imbeciles, or that the people responsible for delivering the news to us treat us like a nation of imbeciles?

The best explanation I've seen offered for this BABIP phenomenon, for those to whom this is news, is that it probably has to do with the hitters and not the pitchers. Home hitters are more accustomed to the hitting backdrop in their home park than visiting hitters, which tends to increase the likelihood they will make solid contact. This in turn obviously gives home pitchers an advantage over visiting pitchers, since they get to face hitters who are unaccustomed to the hitting backdrop.

Man, I hate this guy. His material always reeks of infinite contempt for his audience, like your typical explosion-riddled Bruckheimer / Bay thrillfest starring Nicholas Cage. I mean, why not go ahead and add that sportswriters are also notoriously excellent lovers, with breath as fresh as daisies in spring? I've also heard that they can cure the afflicted with their touch, and manipulate physical reality through will alone. Maybe if you put all that at the end of your article you'll get the rise out of your audience you're looking for, Justice.

If all range refers to is foot speed, I doubt you'd find many people that would say Hardy is above average for a MLB SS. But all I really care about is how many balls he gets to, and how often he turns balls he gets to into outs. It seems there's not much argument about the latter -- everybody basically agrees that Hardy is quite reliable on balls he gets to. The best current defensive metrics tend to show Hardy as above average at the former as well. Now, that is a combination of positioning, reactions when contact is made, acceleration, and foot speed. The only one of those four components I think my eyes are any good at evaluating is foot speed. On television, you almost never see an infielder's reaction and first step in the same shot as the hitter making contact. Even if I'm at a game, my eye is following the action, which means I'm not looking at the SS when a ball is hit. By the time my attention shifts to the SS, he's already moving. I don't doubt a professional scout with a trained eye and the narrow objective of evaluating a single player can do a lot better with his eyes alone than me, but I still think I'd rather have mounds of data than anybody's subjective evaluation based on (at most) a handful of plays over a couple of games. You'll sometimes see it lodged as a criticism of defensive metrics that they don't separate true range out from all the other stuff. I don't necessarily see it as such a weakness. The coaching staff probably shares some credit/blame for positioning, but the rest is all the player. Even if Hardy is slow, he might still have elite range (at least in the fashion I think about range) if he has exceptionally quick reactions or a great first step, or if (as Ennder points out) his arm is allowing him to play deeper and make up for a lack of raw speed by giving himself an extra fraction of a second to get in front of the ball before it's on him.

A 5 gallon pail on a stick might scoop more balls... As far as scooping throws is concerned, MGL looked at this from 2000-2008 and found that the true talent spread between the very best scoopers and very worst scoopers is on the order of 4-6 runs per season. Fielder doesn't even show up on the list of the worst guys. I'll grant that he's lousy at it, but it's just not a very important skill. It's highly unlikely that he gives back more than 1/3 of a win or so in this department. I'd like a track record of at least 2 consecutive years before I'm willing to qualify someone +X wins Fair enough, but then everybody except Hardy from endaround's post fails this test, so I'm not sure why you singled out Fielder from the original list to quibble with. Braun has yet to have a 4 win season at all (3.9 last year). ............................. Fielder is also one of the worst baserunners in baseball coming in at roughly 7 runs below replacement on the base paths. Between the baserunning and fielding he really does have to keep up monster offensive stats to stay in the 4+ win range. I'm assuming you're thinking of Dan Fox's EQBRR from BP. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think those are runs below average, not below replacement. Now, it might turn out to be the case that a replacement player actually IS an average baserunner, since MLB teams aren't exactly using baserunning as a vital criteria to make decisions about who to keep out of the "freely available talent" pool, but I haven't seen any objective attempt to determine whether that's true. If replacement players aren't average MLB baserunners, then you can't simply subtract those runs from Fielder's Fangraphs win value, because the replacement level figure they're using would have to be recalibrated if they added non-SB baserunning. I don't guess that a replacement level baserunner would be more than a couple of runs worse than an average baserunner in any event, though, so your point is taken. At the end of the day, I suppose it is fair to say that unless Fielder improves defensively OR he puts up another monster offensive season (like 2007), he is probably more of a 2.5 - 3.5 win player instead of a 4 win player. I guess it just doesn't seem unreasonable to me to think that one (or perhaps both) of those things might happen. It would be pretty unusual for a hitter to have the best season of his career at 23.

I suppose that's evidence that the Twins thought he's gone cliff-diving. It wouldn't be unheard of for a corner IF to collapse at 32, but it would be unusual. I think it's still pretty likely it was just an off year. It's not like any of the systems ignore that data -- all of them assign more weight to his most recent performance, which is why nobody is projecting Lamb to match his career numbers this year.

Relative to replacement level (which I assume is what endaround meant), sure there is. He was at least that valuable in '07. Fangraphs has him at +4.9 wins that season, even with -9 run glovework. Yeah, he stinks in the field. Lots of 1B do, since along with LF (DH too if you're an AL club), it's really the only place to stash world class hitters that happen to be slow and/or clumsy, and there are lots of those guys. That drags down the baseline for comparison. You've got to be really atrocious to be much worse than 10 - 15 runs worse than the average 1B, because the average 1B just isn't a very good defender.

Believe me, it's not like I'm a Lamb guy. But the most pessimistic projection system of the five fangraphs has still thinks he's good for a .263 / .315 / .403 line. Contrast that with McGehee's 2008 MLE line of .242 / .282 / .341 and the fact that the most optimistic projection for him (not counting Marcel, which is agnostic about MLEs) is .252 / .312 / .369. It's not at all unreasonable to think that Lamb's bat still has more to offer than McGehee's. McGehee's defense and versatility may be enough to swing the balance in his favor (maybe not though -- this is mainly a PH spot since Counsell is certain to see the lion's share of reserve IF innings), but I don't think that's clear cut or anything. Certainly not to the tune of three >>>s. The only reason I can see to feel that strong a preference is if you believe in McGehee's hitting this spring. In short, I don't. Neither Duffy or Gwynn should be expected to hit worth a lick, though Duffy doesn't project to be quite as terrible. Both are good baserunners. I would concede to Gwynn fans that it's not out of the question that he could make up for the missing pop with his glove, but only if he really is +10 runs / 150 or better in CF. He'd have to be a really terrific fielder, since Duffy seems to be at least average in CF, which is no easy feat. It's hard to see much separation here, but I'd go with Duffy because I am more confident in my assessment that he's a slightly better hitter than I am in the guess that Gwynn might be a better fielder. Still, can't really bring myself to care very much -- I don't want either of these guys getting significant numbers of PA. Personally, the only real concern I've got left about the 25 man is whether they'll be smart enough to keep DiFelice up. I can't seem to get worked up about the battle for the last few positional reserve spots. Frankly, all of those guys are pretty terrible.

Aside from superior performance in spring training games, does anybody have any serious reasons for thinking that Duffy and McGehee are actually superior to Gwynn and Lamb? Before spring, I would have said Duffy is probably ever so slightly better than Gwynn and Lamb is probably ever so slightly better than McGehee. What they've done in spring really doesn't do much to change these opinions. Maybe you want to treat spring training contests for the last few roster spots somewhat seriously, but only if you care about giving the marginal guys on your roster an incentive to try really hard in spring training games. What difference does that really make? The established vets are still going to treat the games as meaningless tune-up chances where the most important thing is not to get injured. It's the performance of those guys that really makes the difference between a successful and a disappointing season, and I'm not sure that there's anything that can be done to change their attitude toward spring training, nor am I sure that it would be a good idea to change it if you could. Having said all that, I do think that when you are a borderline contending team like the Brewers are this season, you probably should be treating every PA and IP as a precious commodity, since there is a high probability that making or missing the playoffs might come down to a couple of wins or losses here and there. If McGehee and Duffy are actually better players, I think the club should keep them on the 25 man roster, even if it means sacrificing some replacement level types who are out of options. I'm just not sold that looking at spring training performance is the best way to make that determination.

minorleaguesplits.com has Sean Smith's (creator of CHONE) TotalZone defensive ratings for minor league players from 2003 to 2008. It is true that there is no PBP data to base these on, but they're still significantly better than simple errors and fielding percentage. There's an article at Hardball Times describing the methodology (very briefly) and looking at some of the strong points and weak points of the ratings: http://www.hardballtimes....one-takes-on-the-minors/ Unless you've got access to some MLB organization's proprietary info, I think this is the best you can currently do in terms of quantifying defensive performance in the minors. McGehee looks pretty average by this metric. Alcides Escobar was +22 runs last year, best of any infielder at any minor league level.

Darn tootin'. He's also almost certainly better than the Jeff Suppans of the world, but that the club should recognize that is a pipe dream. He has options left, so they'll probably leave him off the 25 man to start the season, which in my view is completely stupid. We're a borderline contender this year. Every inning wasted on a useless veteran retread for the sake of conventional wisdom ought to be taken to be a rather more precious commodity than I think it will be. Radar guns do not tell the whole story.