ashbury

That's a Stro Man Argument.

I started to reply, but decided to post a separate thread instead of doing a possible threadjack here. https://twinsdaily.com/forums/topic/67054-rate-the-outfielders/ Spoiler alert: I come to the same conclusion you do. Laboriously. 😀

"Line them up and choose for yourself. " TD poster tony&rodney posed this thought in the discussion on Austin Martin (concerning who else on the roster is a worse defensive outfielder). I have thoughts on that - don't we all? I doubt we'll reach full and complete consensus, but maybe some useful insights will develop. Being the kind who likes to break down questions, I thought of 5 general attributes I want in a center fielder. It helps to define your terms, especially when each term is fuzzy at best. Range. Not quite equivalent to foot-speed in all aspects of the game but close. Getting a quick start overlaps with routes. Routes. Often range and routes are lumped together, because a lousy route reduces the range. I still feel like it's something that can be split into parts. Arm. Unlike the above two, I lump together arm strength and arm accuracy, because, although arms are important in CF, they're still secondary to other skills. At the Wall. Maybe there's a better term, but by this I mean long, difficult flies. Who do I trust to gather it in? Range is great, but you have to close the deal. Judgment. Some of that overlaps with At the Wall, but I also mean knowing when to dive and when to play safe. Texas leaguers. Also, general game smarts. Throwing to the wrong base goes here, not under "arm." I use a 1-5 rating scale, 5 high. Conceptually '3' is major league average. However, that would be for a corner outfielder, as 3's across the board might be someone's average left fielder, while the grading curve is steeper for center field, and all 3's would likely be a defensive liability. For whatever that's worth. Just to set a common frame of discussion. I list the 8 outfielders, not just CF, who have played this season. (They're pretty much played everywhere - 4 in CF, 5 in RF, 6 in LF.) I also include Michael A Taylor, because I really enjoyed his defense last season, and between him and Byron Buxton they set the recent gold standard for Twins CF play that others need to aspire to I'm sure there will be dissent. What do you see as the worst over-ratings or under-ratings, in the table below? I'll confess that Martin's my whipping-boy, and I hate his arm, and his judgment coming in, and his technique on difficult long flies. I also give Margot maybe more credit than he deserves, or has shown me, because he did have this reputation for quality. Maybe he lost it all. The bottom line, for me, is that the discussion about CF backup behind Buxton is complex only because all the options are lousy. You don't actually need these numbers or this breakdown to come to that conclusion. But I am me, and always will be. 😀 Buxton MAT Kepler Willi Martin Margot Kirill Larn Wallner 5 5 4 3 4 3 2 1 1 Range 5 5 5 3 2 3 2 2 2 Routes 4 4 4 2 1 2 3 2 4 Arm 4 5 5 3 1 3 2 2 2 At the Wall 5 4 5 3 2 2 2 2 2 Judgment

Still waiting for it.

Martin just needs to learn a few things. How to throw, how to hit with power, how to make good decisions on defense, how to feast on left-handed pitching. A couple of weeks in St Paul to smooth off some rough edges should have him good to go!

They should ask around.

Excellent clarification.

baseball-reference.com's StatHead tool confirms. Hrbek reached 23 games, BTW.

The Twins: Great bullpen? Or, GREATEST bullpen?

That was my reaction to the comment above, too. If you wait long enough to know for sure, he's not a prospect anymore. But teams have to make their decisions based on incomplete knowledge; direct scouting and statistical analysis are all they get to use. And when the numbers are at odds with the eye test, as seems to have been the case for SWR until now, it's a really difficult decision.

I'd enjoy reading something that actually persuades, concerning the direction of cause and effect. Correlation not being causation, and all that. (The above-mentioned Athletic article doesn't sound like it addresses this particular tangent exactly.) More plausible to me would be that fewer and fewer youths are playing baseball, and the downsizing of the minors reflects that reality, up and down the farm system; sure, you can find warm bodies to fill any number of rosters but what is the point? But I don't have any actual data, nor any inside sources to confer with.

Did the teams make sure to cut good players along with the bad when they downsized?

To me, their catcher was properly positioned when the throw was on its way, the throw was a bit up the line and he had to go get it. The catch was in time to tag the runner bang-bang, so I would never call this anything but an out.

Sometimes the boundary conditions supplied with the partial differential equations go a little wonky. I'd stick with my Tuesday hunch unless you are a trained professional.

According to mlb.com he went on the 10-day IL May 3, so by some proprietary advanced analytics I believe it could be yesterday or the final day of the season or possibly somewhere in between. But I like to play hunches so I'll throw away the poindexter stuff and guess Tuesday.

I knew you were better than that, and also pretty sure you can take a joke.

The other side of the coin is that this has him relying on the #2, 3 and 4 hitters to drive him in. Or he could drive himself in, as power hitters sometimes do, giving his team a 1-0 lead instantly. Margot is .757 while Kepler is 100 points lower. But that's across career plate appearances in the neighborhood of 1000, whereas you seem to want to look at the most recent one or two dozen as being meaningful for planning. No question Kepler has been hot recently, while Margot has been only so-so against lefties (and excruciatingly bad against right handers). But players go hot and cold at unpredictable intervals. I might be tempted by the hot hand too, but it's not crazy talk to use Margot in the only situation he's on the roster for (because it's become clear it's not "Buxton's backup in center").

Sometimes my head hurts after reading this site, but I go lie down and it gets better.

As for the merits of the post here, even though I'm on the analytic side of the spectrum, I have some skepticism about the brand of analytics I see in the Twins organization, looking only at their outward signs of course. For all the data they have on hand, their strategy seems to be simply, "he bats left, let's minimize his opportunities against lefties." Last year the Twins were second to the bottom in the majors for OPS of L-vs-L. Are they smart to minimize the opportunities? Or are they causing the problem itself, with this strategy (either killing confidence, or not letting the batters practice at it)? This year their L-L OPS is among the best. Kepler has gone nuts against lefties (1.056 OPS) and Julien's held his own (.756) as the two with the most PA. I'm open to being convinced. I'm also open to this being Small Sample Size and we revert back to last year - not coincidentally, the team has the 5th fewest PA in the majors for L-L matchups.

That would be Stat Drunk Computer Nerd™. Were you there on Usenet back in the 90s when SDCNs ruled over rec.sport.baseball? You could tell who they were by their veneration of on-base percentage, and they hated sacrifice bunts. I think noted college professor Earl Weaver may have been among their number.

Yes. I'll try to find time to read the article later, and learn the details of why.

You might want to look into a team called the Chicago White Sox. 😀

I'm confident that there are many who don't appreciate my style of contribution to game threads either.