rluzinski

Last 6 starts: 1.63 ERA, 38.2 IP, 45 SO, 11 BB, 4 HR I think it's fair to say that Greinke has been pitching great but he's probably also been a bit lucky as well! The guy is still occasionally throwing his fastball right down the middle (just like every other pitcher). I don't know if his off speed stuff has just been that much better but batters haven't been jumping on the fastball as much as they were earlier in the year. What does Greinke have left, about 9 starts? 9 starts at 6-2/3rds IP per, that gives him 60 more innings. If he can put up a 3 ERA during that time, he will finish with a 3.77 ERA.

Without looking at pitching matchups, I have the Brewers with around a 45% chance of winning each game. Based on that SWAG: 0 wins: 17%1 win: 41% 2 wins: 33% 3 wins: 9% Brewers 52% favorites today, according to Vegas: http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/odds/moneyline;_ylt=AuhEM.hAFabfmBFIyLWFbCM3WaB4

Much of the pretend angst over outs on the bases is just not understanding math...with two outs, you should get runners thrown out at home, as long as they have a 30-35% chance of scoring. I agree, that is not a huge issue, although I question if some of these runners even have a 30% chance of scoring after they are out by 20 feet. There have been a number of outs at home with less than 2 outs, however, as well as a number of outs at 3rd. Also not a big fan of the 3-1 hit and runs, either. No idea what that all adds up to. BP has the Brewers middle-of-the-pack for base running: http://www.baseballprospe...ble/index.php?cid=975444

Let's look at how he's done at the 3 infield positions: SS: 2.3 UZR/150; 114 full games3B: -8 UZR/150; 85 full games2B: 6.2 UZR/150; 546 full games (over 3 seasons worth, decent sample) http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=144&position=2B/OF The average difference between a SS and 2B is around 5 runs, so Hairston's 6.2 UZR/150 at 2B suggests he might be around average at SS. Still, he's old (as you pointed out) and has had a long career (so some of this data is older), so let's not get carried away. I think that is fair to project him as a little below average at shortstop defensively but I suspect he would still be a sizable improvement over Betancourt's D. Couple that with him possible being a marginal upgrade offensively as well and it seems almost a no-brainer to give him at least SOME starts at shortstop.

Of course. No stat can tell you anything with certainty. Two years of wOBA is about equal to four years of UZR in terms of uncertainty.

As I said, it is a big red flag to me when the correlation from year to year is only 0.5. Sample Size and Reliability One thing to keep in mind is that as with all metrics based on sample data where you are trying to estimate a true mean or value, the more data you have generally the more reliable your estimate. In other words, the more opportunities that UZR is based on, the more reliable the number, everything else being equal. On defense, 2B, SS, and CF have almost twice the number of opportunities per game than do the other positions on the field, but that does not necessarily mean that a UZR based on 100 games at SS is as reliable as 200 games at 3B. There are other factors that affect the reliability of a sample number. How many UZR opportunities do you need for UZR to be reliable? There isn’t any magic number. If I asked you how many AB you need before a player’s BA becomes reliable, you would likely answer, “I don’t know. The more the merrier I guess.” That is true with UZR and with all metrics. Of course, for some metrics, you need more or less data than for other metrics for an equivalent reliability. It depends on the sampling error and the spread in underlying talent, and other things that are inherent in that metric. Most of you are familiar with OPS, on base percentage plus slugging average. That is a very reliable metric even after one season of performance, or around 600 PA. In fact, the year-to-year correlation of OPS for full-time players, somewhat of a proxy for reliability, is almost .7. UZR, in contrast, depending on the position, has a year-to-year correlation of around .5. So a year of OPS data is roughly equivalent to a year and half to two years of UZR. Another way to look at it is after one year, a player’s true talent UZR or what you might expect from him in the future is as close to that one-year number as it is to zero (technically, the average of a similar type player, which might not be zero). The best estimate is somewhere in between – in fact more or less the mid-point. Given that, I don’t think it is fair to say that one year of UZR data is “unreliable.” Of course, the words “reliable” or “unreliable” have no quantitative meaning. You can make of them whatever you want. Personally, no matter what size sample of data I look at, I always do a mental regression. For a one-year UZR, I mentally regress UZR halfway toward the mean, which means basically to “cut it in half” since the mean is defined more or less as zero. If you want to refine that “rule of thumb” a little, you can regress a player’s UZR (per 150 games) toward +2 for a fast player, -2 for a slow player, and zero for anyone in between. That is more true in the OF than in the IF, and more true at SS and 2B than at 3B or 1B, as you might expect. In addition, when I say “fast” or “slow,” I mean relative to the average player at that position. So, for example, if a player is fast, but only as fast as the average CF’er, and he is a CF’er, then you still want to regress his UZR to zero. http://www.fangraphs.com/...he-fangraphs-uzr-primer/

"The implication has pretty much been that YB would not be better than the .220 hitter he was early in the year." That is not the implication, at not by anyone who understands statistics He was a .272 career batter through 2010. A bad half season is not going to change his projected BA by nearly that much. So unless you are lumping in anyone who knows how to look up a batting line in with the "stats oriented" group, I don't agree with you. As for your UZR comment, I took that as an attempt to suggest that Yuni may not be as bad defensively as some claim. If it had to do more with Counsell, fair enough. But AGAIN, people who are truly "stats oriented" should look at Counsell's PROJECTED offense and defense, not a small sample of his stats from this year. I may have missed a few posts because I don't really understand what we are arguing about anymore. I don't think anyone is arguing that Betancourt is good or even average, are they? So we are arguing whether he is just bad or terrible? It seems like the ones who are arguing that he is merely bad are questioning the notion that Melvin could have realistically upgrading the position. On the other hand, the people who think he is terrible think there is no question Melvin could have found an upgrade, as Betancourt set the bar so low. If that is correct, everything else just seems someone irrelevant.

I think it's a fair question. He's not asking, "Of people who put the ball in play on the first pitch, how do they do compared to a player who didn't swing". You can't just look at this kind of split: http://www.baseball-refer...=b&lg=NL&year=2011#count Because that "first pitch" split only includes PA's that ended at 0-0. Since you can't K on a 0-0 pitch, it's not surprising that batters have a nice slash line in that situation. Pitch f/x data could answer your question pretty easy but you need to be able to manipulate a database to get it I think. You could try to extract it from here but I have not had luck: http://www.joelefkowitz.com/recent_articles.php There are some articles on the subject as well. Just google "swing at first pitch data" or something along those lines.

"Some people are just so sure he shouldn't be playing..but nobody can give a better solution of someone that is definitely better that should be playing instead. " No one can be certain about anything like this but I think Hairston is a clear upgrade over Betancourt. OFFENSE: ZiPS ROS Projections:Betancourt: .272/.295/.399Hairston: .260/.321/.390 DEFENSE: Career UZR/150 as SS:Betancourt: -9.4Hairston: 2.3 2010 Fan's Scouting Report*:Betancourt: 34Hairston: 53 *Scale of 0 - 100; 50 is average; one standard deviation is 20-----------------------------------------------------------------------While Gomez is hurt, let Betancourt bat against lefties when Hairston is in CF.

Without looking at pitching matchups, I have the Brewers with around a 45% chance of winning each game. Based on that SWAG: 0 wins: 17%1 win: 41% 2 wins: 33% 3 wins: 9%

I wish we could get back on track. Is there evidence of Yuni changing his approach and what is it? This seems to show that he's been hitting way more grounders lately: http://www.fangraphs.com/graphs.aspx?playerid=8585&position=SS&page=9&type=full (scroll to the bottom)

"He started poorly and some very smart stats oriented people jumped all over it and acted like he was never going to improve." Who was were they, exactly? If these people didn't think Yuni would improve, they obviously weren't very stat-oriented to begin with. can you site a specific individual, a specific example? The thread is still there. People jumped on Yuni before he ever played an inning for the Brewers. He projected to be a very bad SS, due in large part to his bad defense. While his poor offensive start increased the number of fans who wanted to see him replaced, that came largely from the fans that judge players more on in-season performance than anything else. Betancourt's great July/August has allowed his offensive numbers to rise to close to his preseason expectations: Current: .268/.286/.391 ZiPS projection: .272/.299/.409 Sorry if that doesn't excite me. "The level of certainty put of defensive stats and WAR to decimal places leads some down that path of declaring there is a noticable difference between a bunch of bad players. I have no problem saying Yuni is below average defensively, now whether or not he is -11.5 or -7.0 or -2.0, I question how accurate defensive metrics are when combined with very accurate stats like the hitting ones. When a defensive stat like UZR 150 comes up with Craig Counsell is the best fielding SS in baseball this year, over 2x better than Tulo, I tend to question how anyone can use it to the decimal place level for accuracy, or that defensive ability jumps all over the place for a player in his prime." Another straw man argument. No one is using only a small sample of UZR to suggest that Betancourt is a bad defender. No one even needs to rely on only advanced defensive metrics. It doesn't seem like you are arguing in good faith, as all the evidence that suggests Betancourt is a very bad defender has been presented MANY times on this board. I don't "hate" Betancourt; I simply don't like that he projects to be a bad player and he starts for the team I root for.

Does understanding the fundamentals of statistical analysis make me a zealot? The only reason Betancourt is still in the league is because he can hit OK for a SS. The fact that a hitter like him can hit great for 80 AB is NOT something to get too excited about in terms of future expected performance. It's not hard to find many examples of an average hitter having an excellent month. "I really don't understand this "I told you so" attitude." Don't you remember when the Betancourt detractors said that he couldn't hit great for even 80 consecutive AB? It was a big deal.

Greinke got a late start, so I would be fine with playing a little catchup and trying to get him an extra start or two now.

There's no question that Betancourt was under performing offensively in the first half. Now, there is no question is is over performing. I'm skeptical that he even HAS a new approach, much less that it is the cause of his offensive explosion as of late. I know he was working with Svuem but what exactly is he doing differently now, approach-wise? Line since all-star break: .373/.392/.560 (75 AB). He still isn't walking, although that doesn't necessarily mean he isn't being more patient early in the count. I just see a guy who has a high had a really high BA over 75 AB. That's great in terms of the production the Brewers got from it but I don't think it represents some huge shift in expected performance going forward. He has a ZiPS rest-of-season production of .267/.290/.391

Did you even read what I wrote? The part you specifically quoted from me starts out with "His defense is not good for a SS". I was just pointing out that some people place too much value over defensive metrics over a smaller sample and place too much value over them overall. But yes, Betancourt is a bad defensive short stop, I agree. You wrote "His defense is not good for a SS, but..." I took that as a suggestion that perhaps Betancourt hasn't been as bad as some have said. Apparently am I am wrong so how does the first comment relate to the the subsequent ones?

Honestly, I have no idea.

ZiPS ROS Projection: .241/.346/.435 Kotsay could only beat that if it was 2004.

"His defense is not good for a SS, but some people also place too much value on defensive metrics over a smaller sample. I know Betancourt has shown to be specifically bad defensively over a long period of time at SS, but I still do not believe the defensive metrics are as accurate as some people want them to be." We've gone over this over and over again. All defensive metrics says he's bad; scouts say he's bad; the fan's scouting report says he's bad. It's fair to assume that Betancourt has played bad defense this year!

I buy into "Playoff experience"... IF, and ONLY IF ...the two players that could be on the roster would be identical in every other way.Agreed. That kind of stuff is great for tiebreakers but that's about it.

I never worry about that kind of stuff. To a very large degree, it's based on the relative team strengths and luck. That's why when you look at Vegas lines, they don't consider that kind of stuff. Of course, the 1-900 numbers you can call for gambling advice will tell you that it does!

I think people need to look at this a little differently. It seems there is a temptation for people to say, "Bahh, it was a fluke game, if you take that one game out, he still has been bad!" Whether Mcgehee hit 3 HRs in 1 day or 1 week really has no bearing with regard to future expectations. All that matters is that he has recently hit 3 HRs. "As for Betancourt his hot month is what he has to produce over a season to overcome his terrible defense especially since its still such a low OBP." Precisely. Betancourt projected to be right around replacement level in preseason projections He projected to hit OK for a SS (bad OBP but good SLG) but but bad defense. Even with his upswing in offensive production, he's still below his projected offensive numbers: ZiPS Projection: .272/.299/.409 Actual: .257/.283/.382 That's why it's hard for many of us to get too excited.

I have to say, I was surprised to see their odds so high, as they've barely outscored their opponents. But a soft schedule plus good secondary stats suggests they should do well.

When I say average, it's relative to the total value of all players in the league (offense, base running and fielding). To do that, you obviously have to have some kind of positional adjustment, so you can compare third basemen to say, first basemen. Here's how WAR does that: "Traditionally, offensive position adjustments have been popular, which aligns the positions by adjusting on the basis of the difference in offensive runs. However, due to the variability in offensive performance from year to year, that can lead to miscalculations, such as believing that an NL 2B and an NL SS were equal in 2008 because they had the same batting line. Clearly, shortstops are better defenders than second baseman, and we have to reflect this in their value." http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/explaining-win-values-part-three That's how I see it as well. The positional adjustments are not based on 2/3rds of a season; they are based on years of data. And I don't compare McGehee's hitting to just other third basemen; I compare him to all batters (after utilizing the positional adjustment).

I just look at updated ZiPS projections to see how much recent performance should affect my expectations going forward. Not the gospel, obviously, but it's way more objective: McGehee: .263/.317/.407/.727 Couple that with below average defense and he still projects to be well below average but he's also getting paid league minimum.