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Brock Beauchamp

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Everything posted by Brock Beauchamp

  1. No, it's within the margin of error and I don't get too upset about it one way or the other. Clinton had a 67% chance of winning the election last year according to 538. She lost the election. Was 538 wrong because they didn't give Trump a 100% chance of winning? Statistics are often imprecise. Some acceptably so, others unacceptably so. I believe WAR mostly falls under the acceptable category.
  2. Good point. I forgot how Amazon tried to dive into that business and bailed the **** out a few years back.
  3. Ah, I may have forgotten to check the relievers against bWAR. I know I did it for the position players but may have glossed over the reliever B-Ref pages. Fangraphs had Kintzler at .5, Abad at .3. Either way, it's a giant "meh" all around and I think we can all accept that WAR isn't meant to be used when the difference is
  4. Well, they're going for pretty different markets. Amazon is geared for bulk sales and people jumping into their site ecosystem, Shopify is geared for individual retailers who want their own web presence. And Amazon doesn't profit much from their actual site sales. It's all the add-in stuff that competes with other web services that makes them a boatload of money (Prime Video, cloud computing, et al).
  5. Yep. I generally ignore everything under one full point and hesitate to declare anything matter-of-factly under 1.5 points.
  6. I'm going to assume you meant Buxton there. Sure, that's definitely a WAR argument. As I said, most of my problems with modern WAR come from partial seasons and its use for past players. I don't fully trust the metric when it comes to defense but I don't think it's bat**** insane, either. Most of the time, it aligns with what I see on the field. For example, right now UZR/150 (one of the worst stats in modern metrics, IMO) has Buxton as a +48 run defender. That's absurd. But if Buxton sticks around all season, that number will likely normalize and he'll just be really, really good defensively... not GOAT defensively.
  7. I really don't mind when people question WAR. It's good to question things (most of the time). I have issues with people who use it when convenient and discard it when it's not. I have my own problems with WAR. I think it leads to specious results when the majority of WAR is accumulated through defense, especially for players through the 90s and 2000s. And also its defensive accuracy over partial seasons. I also have issues with fWAR for pitchers, as it measures expected results over actual results. That's good for projection and maybe not so good for valuation of things that actually occurred on a baseball diamond. But I also believe it continues to get better and is a good quick and dirty valuation of a player.
  8. Isn't this how most divisions end up, though? One team that's good, three teams that are middling and end up with ~10 games of one another, and one team that's really bad. The fact that the AL Central doesn't have a team off to a roaring start isn't really news. Cleveland is playing at a good clip, as expected. Then there's a bunch of teams beating one another. Then there's a bad team off to a hellacious start. The NL Central has just a two game gap between first and last, led by the Cub (13-12) and trailed by the Pirates (11-14). Is that a mediocre division? One of those teams is better than anything in the ALC (Cubs) and I'd take two more of those teams over everyone in the ALC but Cleveland (Cards and Pirates).
  9. First, neither Abad nor Kintzler were more valuable than Sano in 2016 by either bWAR or fWAR. Second, WAR doesn't believe Rosario was significantly more valuable than Sano, as Eddie had roughly half a point higher in fWAR value. That's well within the margins of wiggle room. As for bWAR, Sano had the half-point advantage. Sano was terrible in right field, bad at third base, and spent most of his time at DH. Despite playing all of his time at some of the most bat-first positions on the diamond, he only posted a .781 OPS for the season. It seems pretty damned logical to me that Rosario, even with his .718 OPS, was more valuable than Miguel last season. He's a clear defensive asset on a team that loves to throw the baseball at bats. And given the small difference between bWAR and fWAR (a half point each direction), it's pretty much a wash and certainly not significant. As for Nunez, he played a full season, posted an adjusted OPS just a few percentage points below Sano, and did it while playing decent defense in the field. So you have a guy who hit at a similar clip, played ~40 more games, and was an asset in the field, not a detriment. If you don't think that guy is worth more, I'm not sure what to say. And even then, Nunez wasn't significantly more valuable than Sano. A bit over 1.5 wins by fWAR standards, a bit over 1 win by bWAR.
  10. Yeah. As much as I'd like to get a return on Santiago, a team that has been bad five of the past six years can't give away the second half of a promising season. Though I wouldn't do much to improve that team at the deadline, either. As it stands, this *should* be the kind of team that continues to improve as the season progresses (barring injuries, of course). The young guys get more experience, the minors fill holes and replace mediocre vets, etc.
  11. Going from memory, that's actually pretty common from Joe. When he gets rolling, he stops walking. I think most hitters kinda do that, now that I think of it.
  12. Oh, I know, I was just surprised by that Bonds number because it was steady throughout his career. Even when he was a speedy gap hitter with good (not amazing) power, his BABIP was still in the .280-.290 range. I wasn't trying to make a point about it, just a little surprised by that number given how good a hitter Bonds was through his career and also how different a hitter he was early vs. late in his career.
  13. I'm patient on Buxton as well. I should have clarified: a .700-.750 OPS is what I consider competent. Given how he has played defense this year, that could make him a 4 WAR player. Fangraphs has his defense for 2017 at 5.2. The next closest non-catcher is at 3.4, almost two full points lower. His UZR/150 stands at an absurd 48.1. I tend to ignore UZR/150 because I think it's garbage but that number is beyond ridiculous.
  14. Indeed. Imagine what this team looks like with a competent Buxton (who seems to be making strides) and an above average Berrios.
  15. Based on what we know of Smith's skillset, this sounds like a good fit.
  16. I wouldn't say it's irrelevant because there's often a strong correlation between homers and BABIP when you enter the elite echelon of hitters (guys like Votto, Cabrera, Trout, Bryant, et al). Guys who hit the ball really hard (which usually results in a high BABIP) also hit the ball out of the park quite often.
  17. Weirdly, yes, it appears that is the case.
  18. Guys like Cabrera and Votto hang in the .350-.360 range. If Sano keeps hammering the ball the way he is right now, that's a reasonable expectation. So obviously the .450 BABIP is going to drop. A lot. Interesting thing I never noticed before: Barry Bonds had a relatively bad career BABIP at .285.
  19. So Andrew Jackson had a really big heart. That's news to me (and probably anyone who has read more than a single paragraph about the legacy of Andrew Jackson).
  20. How good is Buxton defensively? Right now, he's on pace for a 1.5 fWAR season. Heh.
  21. Yeah, I don't know if he can keep it up but his results have been acceptable. He'll likely never be the pitcher he was in the past but if he can hold down a 4.50 ERA and 150+ innings, so be it. He's not killing the team at that point and can stay in the rotation.
  22. Interesting to see the former player back up the difficulty of that catch. I remember that play and thought it was a nice catch but nothing extraordinary. Only after watching it a few times did I begin to see just how hard that catch was for Max.
  23. That team also had Jeff Kent in his prime.
  24. Some day, I think metrics will attempt to measure "influence". How does a guy like Sano alter the approach to a lineup? Maybe it's very little, maybe it's significant but I think it has some impact on how pitchers approach a great player.
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