rluzinski

As I've said before, I don't put much faith in OPS to see the full value of a player. To me, it is way too highly correlated with bases on balls. In my mind, drawing walks isn't very indicative of a hitter's offensive prowess. I say this because the pitcher is more attributable to the walk than the hitter. Simply put, the pitcher is not doing their job. Everything you've said there has been proven false a many times over. OPS is not perfect but it values batting events pretty well. In fact, it looks like it slightly undervalues a walk: http://www.hardballtimes....icle/ops-for-the-masses/ And a batter and pitcher can take the credit for a walk pretty much equally. It's pretty clear that high walk batters should get a lot of the credit for the walks, isn't it? Or maybe they just face a disproportionate amount of high walk pitchers? It just doesn't pass the sniff test. If we talking about projections, I certainly wouldn't expect Cam's walk rate to stay as high as it is. 14.1% now but projects to be 12% going forward, according to ZiPS. His ZiPS projection going forward is .248/.341/.453/.794. That's still very good for a CF.

Cameron is admittedly an ugly batter to watch, so if you are the kind fan that thinks fan enjoyment is proportional to player value, you'll think Cam is not worth the cash. And the only stats that are correct are the ones that validate your opinion. Nothing to debate.

As defined by Tangotiger (and basically copied by Fangraphs), Replacement level is about 2 wins below average. So if you 1-8 batters who were all 3 WAR and everything else was average, you'd win 89 games. Replacement level is a nice baseline, since we know the value of a AAAA player, league minimum. The tango/fangraphs method of assigning value assumes that every win above replacement level is worth about $4.5 mil. It doesn't matter if the player is 3 WAR or 6 WAR. His total value is just WAR x $/WAR. Like anything, it's all just a best guess estimate but it seems to work pretty well in predicting what teams are willing to spend in free agency, so sounds good to me. And no, none of that includes the value of intangibles, since by definition, it doesn't have a quantifiable value. I try not to spend my money on things that have a completely unknown value, personally. Prince is one pace for a 6 WAR season. He was at 2.6 and 4.9 for the preceding 2 years. A projection for 2010 and 2011 might be around 4.5 for each year? Obviously, if Melvin can't get more than 9 WAR for the price Prince will get over the next 2 years, there's little point in trading him. If he could get 15 WAR in return but they would be spread out between 2010-2014, Melvin has to decide where he wants the wins. i find it hard to see how the Brewers could be legitimate contenders next year, so my vote would be to move him if the offer good. And I think some will never appreciate the concept of "projected production minus salary". If the only way the Brewers can sign Fielder is by paying him more than he's worth to them, they've already lost. That money can most likely be used more efficiently somewhere else. Also remember, the value of a win for each team is different. Anytime the Brewers go up against the Yankees or Boston for a free agent, they HAVE to overspend to get that player. Those are the kind of situations the Crew has to avoid. What do people really think are the odds of the Brewers resigning Fielder? I'd put it at less than 10%, easy. And as enjoyable as he is to watch, I don't think it will be in the best interest of the Brewers to resign him. But I have to take of my "fan" hat to come to that conclusion.

The Brewers got $1.3 mil for a player that had negative value (projected value - salary). I figured the best Melvin would be able to do is trade for another player with negative value, so good for him.

Thanks for the link. I'll have to take a look when I get the chance.

I only meant that loosely, simplistically, generally, whatever. Then have every SB change a single to a double and every CS change a single to an out: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AgWzSZZwrdLYcGpPaFp6UHBuUF9Pd3BZNlpRV1ZiRFE&hl=en Of course, our best guess going forward is that he won't keep up that kind of SB/CS ratio in the majors. I'm not a big fan of using the linear weight values for stolen base attempts. Unlike batting events, which more or less occur at random times, a base runner chooses when to attempt a steal. A CS at 2B to end the inning is not nearly as costly as a CS at 3B with no out.

Didn't check out the Wild Animal Park but the San Diego Zoo was as much a garden as it was a zoo. Just grab a map and figure out what you want to see. You shuold be able to cover most of it over around 5 hours. I think the Polar Bear exhibit is very popular. The skylift (like at Summerfest) is amazing and takes you right there.

Agreed. It's all about the meat, IMO. If it's not freshly shaved from the spit, it has a good chance of being dried out. Yuck.

It sounds like we are only a couple years away from knowing where all the fielders are at all times (not sure if it's going to be available publicly). Someone will be able to answer your question soon.

Thanks for the link. I'll have to check it out. "The Book" provided evidence that players in the midst of a hot streak do in fact hit better than their expected performance, but the difference was quite small. I've read other studies that came to similar results. Assuming a constant probability of success isn't 100% right but it's a damn good estimate.

This is very similar to when people try to estimate the odds for a particular hitting streak. You are right that you have to consider the opportunities. The easiest way is to just use a monte carlo approach. Really, that's the only way I've seen people approach it (not that there isn't a super secret probability equation to figure it out).

I believe that hit f/x only tracks the initial velocity of the ball off the bat: http://www.fangraphs.com/...php/the-start-of-hit-fx/ I would think they could pick up bat speed if they wanted to. Don't we care most about the velocity of the bat when it's likely to make contact with the bat? Whether a player has a long swing seems secondary to me.

This is why I don't even bother anymore. Waste of time.

If your criticism of OPS was only with regard to using it w/RISP, that at least makes some sense. OPS works for the average value of each batting event, so it will be thrown off if you start slicing and dicing, based on the base/out situation. But BA still is not even remotely close to being superior no matter what situation you are looking at, in terms of average runs scored. BA says that a walk has no value and a single is as valuabe as a HR. It is a very course stat, to say the least.

OPS = OBP + SLG SLG = BA + ISO (Isolated Power) OPS = BA + OBP + ISO If you trade walks for extra hits and hold OPS constant, and you raise BA but lower ISO. The net result in terms of runs scored is basically zero. One cancels the other out. If you know OBP and SLG, BA really doesn't tell anything extra, in terms of expected runs scored. For an average team, 100 K's in an average situation = 1 less run. Obviously K's w/RISP are much more costly. With a runner at 1st, a weak grounder to 2B is more more costly than a K. Again, it mostly balances out. Some high K guys have a knack for shortening up their swing with a runner at 3B (Fielder?) , to get that productive out. Most guys don't. Now, if the Brewer hitters could somehow trade K's for hits, they would score more runs but their OBP and SLG would also go up. The one thing OPS ignores that matters is baserunning. The Brewers seem to be a pretty weak baserunning team in general . Compared to getting on base and hitting for power, baserunning comes in a VERY distant 3th. And we can look at any kind of season split we want (winning the last game of a series, winning at home, day games, etc..) but what are we learning from it? All we should be learning is that over the course of a season, all kinds of random streaks occur. We are not identifying weaknesses of the team.

Just got to jsonline a couple of times and you will realized who has a disease. I know exactly how bad it is on the other side, which is why I value BF.net as much as I do. I also know of more than a few posters who have converted from the "darkside" and became an asset to this community. That's what I was attempting to express with my clumsy "disease" analogy.

Do you really need to carry yourself like this here all the time? You're a smart guy, but you do realize you kind of come off as pretty elitist with comments like this, right? I want an intelligent discussion, void of a hundred "I hate Bill Hall!" posts." We should be able to do this: http://community.sportsbubbler.com/forums/t/79843.aspx It gets frustrating when I see "my" message board act like jsonline's or milwaukeebrewers.com's. I have come to expect more from this community.

Pixar has followed the same formula for every movie so far, so I wouldn't say they're doing much growing. Cars is the kind of movie that deserves that kind of comment. Ratatouille? WALL-E was like nothing ever made before. UP was pretty out there as well. Overall, Pixar has been pretty darn bold in recent years. I like Up very much but the plot kind of lost me midway through. Stop reading this if you haven't seen it already... It seems like almost out of the blue, the old man was willing to risk his last dream for a bird he had shown no interest in before? It just seemed odd.

There's a rule that at any given point, there has to be one poster who is obsessed with letting everyone know how much they dislike a player. It's a disease. Although fatal for some, others have been able to eventually fight the illness off and have fruitful lives at BF.net. Only time will tell.

The Book did some work on pitcher types, to see if they could tease out some correlations. Nadda. Some franchises might have a internal data that shows meaningful splits but I'm pretty sure we can rule out the Brewers. We are stuck with 6 AB samples.

I wish the Hall-needs-to-make-adjustments crowd could explain themselves as well as posters in a thread I just found at sportsbubbler.com did. Basic description of his batting stance and mechanics. Spray charts, . A link to a video showing the timing of his swing. Actual evidence given and all done without anyone expressing their hatred for him. I found it very compelling. I wish we could do that.

I'm supposed to believe that if Hall woke up one morning and decided to try and go opposite field more often, he would realize a significant increase in production? Furthermore, I'm supposed to believe that the only thing motivating him NOT to do that is a morbid desire to continue playing poorly? If you have to come up with such a farfetched scenario as Hall wanting to suck, to find an explanation for your theory, that should probably tell you that your theory is almost certainly incorrect. I think Hall wants to be the hero more than almost anyone else on the team. And I can see no reason why Hall would accept a minor league assignment. He'd be better of rejecting it and hoping he gets DFA's. He'll still get paid and would have a decent shot to get picked up to platoon somewhere.

I appreciate that Gamel is not as bad as Braun was but I am skeptical that he'll ever be even average at 3B, defensively. Right now, he's bad enough that despite not having any other viable option right now, the Brewers are very reluctant to give him a shot. Considering how little weight Melvin has given defense in the past, that says a lot. I realize he could be the next Aramis but that's he's the exception to the rule.

Yes, we all know Parra is pitching poorly. Most of his stats are bad. But instead of looking at his win/loss record and concluding it's obvious he needs to be sent down to AAA (which isn't obvious), maybe we can gain some real insight by looking beyond the surface stats. Or we can throw out cliches like, "Bottom line is that he isn't getting the job done" and learn nothing.

So, despite having success in a massively large 6 AB sample, he wasn't able to able to have success in 3 AB? Hall hasn't had a decent year against righties since 2006. That seems to be the data set we should be focusing on. All these means is I'm going to have to hear excuses for Gamel's bad defense everyday, just like I did for Braun. As I always say, I hope I'm wrong!