[quote]DBCooper wrote:
Bautista, Encarnacion…
[/quote]
And if they are caught cheating and not blindly accused I’ll be right there leading the hunt pitchfork in hand.
But neither have.
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
You’re too emotionally invested in this thread, Raj. Your thinly-veiled comments toward me are clear-cut signs that my earlier comments about your ability to evaluate what happens on the field really struck close to home. [/quote]
This thread use to be a lot more interesting when it was 95% emotional arguing.
[quote]therajraj wrote:
Plus he could very well get sucked into the cheater culture that exists in SF.
Bonds, Mota, Melky. [/quote]
Heh now that is hilarious.
I was in the bay area for undergrad + first few jobs, and I’d call it a soft culture more than anything. Of course that’s in general, not just baseball.
And needless to say, I much prefer the superficial culture of the southland.
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
If he can’t handle the temptations of addiction while living in Dallas, he’ll never survive in San Francisco. The city is just too fucking weird in all the right ways for a guy with a predilection for drugs, booze and slam-pieces to not get sucked in and swallowed up.[/quote]
Ha ha ha, once again DBC is on-point!
[quote]therajraj wrote:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
You’re too emotionally invested in this thread, Raj. Your thinly-veiled comments toward me are clear-cut signs that my earlier comments about your ability to evaluate what happens on the field really struck close to home. [/quote]
This thread use to be a lot more interesting when it was 95% emotional arguing.
[/quote]
HAHAHAHAHA! For once I am in 100% agreement with you. Good call.
Wooo, the Padres win over the Dodgers has really put them in a hole I don’t think they are going to come out of. They need a miracle.
I know you guys are doubters of WAR, so here’s a good breakdown of why Trout has been so much better than Cabrera.
I argued in late June that Mike Trout had the early look, statistically speaking, of an MVP candidate, because he was such a complete player, contributing in all facets of the game. That MVP race has turned out to be a rout, with Trout nearly lapping the field in value, though that hasn’t stopped a portion of the media and the fan base, largely situated in a certain state that borders four Great Lakes, from arguing in favor of another candidate, Miguel Cabrera.
The Luddite argument – and don’t kid yourself, that’s what this is, a backlash against progress – says that wins above replacement isn’t reliable, or credible, or accurate enough to use in an MVP discussion. So while Trout destroys all of his competition in WAR, whether you use FanGraphs’ version (a lead of 2.6 wins) or Baseball Reference’s (a lead of 3.7), it might be more convincing to consider just why Trout’s lead is so commanding.
The reactionary campaign for Cabrera right now focuses primarily on his offensive output, and if you look only at the raw, unadjusted stats, he does have a slight edge over Trout. The two players are in a dead heat in OBP, with Cabrera just .001 ahead (.395 to .394) while holding a 58-point (.060) advantage in slugging percentage, equal to roughly 40 total bases during the course of a full season.
Cabrera also has about three weeks of additional playing time over Trout, who inexplicably started the season in Triple-A to free up playing time for Vernon Wells. If offense was the entire story, Cabrera would be the MVP, holding a lead of about half a win of value over Trout once we adjust for their ballparks, because Comerica Park is a better park for hitters than Angel Stadium is.
Of course, we live in 2012, an era in which any rational observer of the game should realize that there’s a lot more to a position player’s value than just what he provides with his bat. The most obvious aspect is defense, something we’re only beginning to measure accurately but can at least quantify at a level beyond the useless stat of fielding percentage. FanGraphs uses Ultimate Zone Rating to try to measure defensive value, looking at all balls in play in that fielder’s area and assigning them positive or negative run values based on how often balls hit that way were fielded, and if they weren’t, what the typical damage was to the fielder’s team. UZR has Trout saving 12 runs over an average center fielder this year, plus another net run saved in left and right, for a total of 13 runs saved; it has Cabrera costing the Tigers a little more than nine runs compared to an average third baseman.
The Defensive Runs Saved metric, from Baseball Information Solutions, is even more favorable to Trout, giving him credit for 25 runs saved while rating Cabrera at four runs cost. (DRS is what is factored into Baseball Reference’s version of WAR.) I prefer the UZR method, but both results match the eye test as well: Trout’s a plus defender, and Cabrera is at best a below-average defender (and more likely a poor one). The defensive value difference between Trout and Cabera is something on the order of two full wins, if not more.
Players add value through their baserunning. Trout has stolen 46 bases in 50 attempts, and because the break-even rate is somewhere in the 70 to 75 percent range, that is a significant net gain for the Angels, and he’s added another six runs on the bases independent of his base-stealing prowess. Cabrera, on the other hand, has stolen four bases and been caught once, while his baserunning has cost the Tigers just under 3 runs. (The baserunning numbers also are drawn from FanGraphs, and include things like taking an extra base on a batted ball or advancing on a fly ball or groundout.)
Baseball Prospectus also produces baserunning numbers, including stolen base value and other baserunning events in a single number, giving Trout a net gain of 10.4 runs and Cabrera a net loss of 4.9 runs. Again, you might disagree with the precise figures, but there is no disputing that Trout has been substantially more valuable on the bases than Cabrera, on the order of over a full win.
There’s a little more work to do, but even at this point, it should be obvious why Trout has been much more valuable than Cabrera, and this why there is such a large gap in their respective WAR. Cabrera’s small edge in offense is wiped out by Trout’s value on defense and on the bases. Trout even gets a small bump for playing center, a position where replacement level – that is, the expected offensive production of a generic player called up from Triple-A to fill that role – is slightly lower than it is at third base.
And WAR doesn’t consider the quality of competition, a factor that also favors Trout, who has faced more difficult pitching than Cabrera this year. Miggy has particularly feasted on the two worst pitching staffs in the league in 2012, Cleveland and Minnesota, slugging .742 against those two clubs in 132 at-bats. Trout has just a third as many at bats against those clubs, but has spent more time facing the A’s, Mariners, and Rangers, all above the league median in ERA.
Furthermore the Triple Crown ignores walks, the added value of doubles and triples, stolen bases, other aspects of baserunning, defensive value, positional value and park effects.
[quote]therajraj wrote:
Furthermore the Triple Crown ignores walks, the added value of doubles and triples, stolen bases, other aspects of baserunning, defensive value, positional value and park effects.[/quote]
Instead of writing a small essay, you could have just linked the article that you plagiarized all your ideas from. After all, some of us might have already read it a couple of days ago and wouldn’t have had to waste our time reading something that sounds very, very familiar.
http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20120923&content_id=38895636&vkey=news_mlb&c_id=mlb
Brian Kenny is correct, though. Trout is the MVP. Of course, anyone who’s actually been watching the two of them play instead of depending on faulty statistics, WAR being one of the most faulty, could tell you this. I don’t get you WAR/VORP guys. You criticize “Civil War-era” statistics for being too arbitrary and yet, the ENTIRE basis of WAR depends on a completely arbitrary assumption of what a replacement player in the minors is capable of doing in the majors.
First of all, no one knows how guys are going to play in the majors and secondly, the “average replacement player” isn’t always available to teams. That alone increases a player’s value. If a guy is hitting .250 but there simply isn’t any capable replacement available in his team’s minor league system he suddenly has a lot more value than a guy hitting .250 with a top prospect at his position tearing up Triple A. But WAR doesn’t take these individual discrepancies into account, nor can it. It tries to homogenize the entire league when you simply can’t do it.
What I posted is from espn. I didn’t link it because its from the pay area from the site
Article is by Keith Law who writes for the espn insider section of the site
[quote]therajraj wrote:
Article is by Keith Law who writes for the espn insider section of the site[/quote]
Were you planning on pointing this out? How long were you going to try to pass off his article as your own post?
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
Brian Kenny is correct, though. Trout is the MVP. Of course, anyone who’s actually been watching the two of them play instead of depending on faulty statistics, WAR being one of the most faulty, could tell you this. I don’t get you WAR/VORP guys. You criticize “Civil War-era” statistics for being too arbitrary and yet, the ENTIRE basis of WAR depends on a completely arbitrary assumption of what a replacement player in the minors is capable of doing in the majors. [/quote]
Yes but arbitrary in a good way!
Honestly, I’m not sure why that even matters. Replacement player value is really designed just to give you s comprehensive standard unit of measure.
Say a replacement player’s value is set arbitrarily at 100 points. Now assume based on this, the following 3 major league players have the following values
ML Player A value is 105
ML player b is 107
ML player c 120
While the 100 point mark is arbitrarily set, you can still compare how the players measure up against each other when measured in replacement players.
In this instance you can say player C is 13 replacement player points better than player B and 15 points better than player A.
Lastly, aren’t most or all units of measure arbitrary? I mean isn’t the length of an inch arbitrarily set?
If I were to say boat A is 5 inches longer than boat B would my measurement be worthless because the length of an inch was arbitrarily set?
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
First of all, no one knows how guys are going to play in the majors and secondly, the “average replacement player” isn’t always available to teams. That alone increases a player’s value. If a guy is hitting .250 but there simply isn’t any capable replacement available in his team’s minor league system he suddenly has a lot more value than a guy hitting .250 with a top prospect at his position tearing up Triple A. But WAR doesn’t take these individual discrepancies into account, nor can it. It tries to homogenize the entire league when you simply can’t do it.[/quote]
WAR isn’t meant to be used that way. It’s really just to compare players performances around the league.
Replacement player value is being used as a standing unit of measure, not to assess how a specific major leaguer compares to a specific minor leaguer.
I think you’re getting tripped up over the naming of the stat.
If they renamed it to “wins above a low quality player” or something would you still have such strong reservations against the stat?
Heck what if they called it “wins above 2011 Emmanuel Burriss” and used his performance in 2011 as their standard unit.
Mike Trout = 25 Emmanuel Burrisses’s
Miguel Cabrera = 21 Emmanuel Burrisses’s
I remember BONEZ being similarily confused.
His understanding was that it gives a good minor league/major league dynamic. That’s not the case.
I want to change what I said slightly: WAR is NOT standardized as different sites calculate WAR differently. However WAR is scaled equally for all players. Of course WAR is calculated differently for position players and pitchers though.
[quote]therajraj wrote:
I want to change what I said slightly: WAR is NOT standardized as different sites calculate WAR differently. However WAR is scaled equally for all players. Of course WAR is calculated differently for position players and pitchers though.
[/quote]
That’s my whole point, really. It’s TOO arbitrary in that there isn’t even one set standard for determining what the statistic is. How legitimate of a stat would you consider HRs if one site or statistical analyst said that Cabrera hit 48 bombs this year and another said he only hit 42? I think there is some value in that stat in that I have yet to see a really good player end up with an astonishingly low WAR/VORP and vice versa. But like I said earlier, I don’t need a flawed statistic to tell me what I can clearly see with my own two eyes.
And since stats are only useful when comparing players of relatively equal merit (Cabrera and Trout instead of Cabrera and Emmanuel Burriss) the fact that it IS so arbitrary, vague and ambiguous makes it totally useless when comparing players who stack up against each other pretty favorably with all other things being considered. In other words, it’s an absolutely horrendous tool to use as a tiebreaker of sorts when determining who had the better year.
One other thing: does this statistic take into account the fact that the talent level in the majors is not distributed in anything resembling a standard bell-curve? After all, if you were to graph the talent level of major leaguers the graph would be right-skewed, meaning that most of the data is stacked up on the left and sharply tapers down to the right. “Average” talent level is actually pretty rare so I wonder if this statistic takes into account that there are WAY more players in the majors at any given time whose talent/production is below average than above it. The mean talent level sits well below the median talent level.
Don’t look now, but Brandon Crawford has legitimately entered the conversation for Gold Glove at SS in the NL.