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ashbury

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Everything posted by ashbury

  1. ashbury
    There's no question that today's analytics* has figured out some new things. But just as infielders long ago figured out how to get cheap double plays on popups, leading to the Infield Fly Rule, the solution is always to adjust the rules and/or playing conditions if it's ever felt to have gotten out of balance. If batters and pitchers and fielders figure out methods to increase the chance of winning that also makes the game boring, change the conditions they're operating under. And it doesn't have to be drastic in most cases. If an absolute newcomer watches a game today and asks why the shortstop is positioned where he is rather than a few feet even farther over, you can tell them the rule and they'll go "oh, okay." Soften the baseball, lower the pitcher's mound or move it backward to 62 feet, change the strike zone slightly - things like this have happened through the years and can be done again, and years later you don't even remember that it was ever any different. * Longtime SABR member and yet I more or less hate the term sabrmetrics. SABR's about the study of baseball, the majority of its efforts being in research to establish the historical record or correct it, and Bill James's co-option of the organization's name was short-sighted. In business they call the same thing analytics, so I go with that.
  2. ashbury
    Bingo. They used to give the batting title to the player who had the most hits in a season. Then someone stopped to wonder about frequency, and batting average was born, and I imagine some diehards took it hard.
  3. ashbury
    I'm all for correlating any information that makes a team better. "The good face"? "Looks like a young Barry Bonds to me"? An analytics team should at least look at what goes into a statement like that from a veteran scout, and see if either they can break it down to something with predictive power, or can be validated as meaningful and not simply something an old guy says about every hitter of a certain build who happens to hit the ball over the fence the day he's watching. Inside the player's head? I'm optimistic that sound conclusions can be drawn. But those will come from trained professionals who know what they are looking for and then can specify it in a way others can recognize - if it were easier than that then it would already be done. I take a very broad view of analytics, and a table that has a column containing simply "yes" or "no" for a given player, or "low", "medium" "high", and so forth, can be of very high value to a front office making decisions. It's all about breaking down intractable problems into smaller ones that can be more easily tackled. A never ending process, and I disagree strongly with Manfred that it's in any way harmful. It's what problem solvers (managers, team executives, whoever) do.
  4. ashbury
    Pagan has enough service time to refuse a minor league assignment. And he's out of minor league options anyway. St Paul fans will be spared the annoyance. Trade or cut, those are the alternatives (either of which I support).
  5. ashbury
    Is your complaint that the OP doesn't have insider knowledge on the players' actual personality traits? If I were a GM, I would be salivating at having an additional database of information on player personalities, assuming it's collected by knowledgeable people actually in the game and who understand from experience the dynamics inside a clubhouse. The methodology is intriguing to me, even if one knows going in that it's a subjective area, and is qualitative rather than quantitative. The "data" provided in the graphs above are just placeholders for discussion purposes, and are basically beside the point. Even the exact choice of 3 dimensions of leadership, C I and P, represent just a working model based on one study, that surely would be refined with use.
  6. ashbury
    Ortega vultures a win. Presumably Schulfer was in line for it (official scorer's discretion, but realistically he'd be it), and he must be so pleased.
  7. ashbury
    Note to Rocco: use Pagan before the ninth inning, even when you anticipate the ninth to be low-leverage. That way, if his usual antics occur and you have to warm someone up, it can be one you were presumably going to use anyway in an inning or so.
  8. ashbury
    Came here for an obligatory straw-man argument. Leaving satisfied.
  9. ashbury
    Seth, just a heads-up, it appears that USAFChief has hacked your account.
  10. ashbury
    Then we're talking analytics. Aren't we? I'm satisfied if I've broadened your perspective a little.
  11. ashbury
    That's where you misunderstand analytics*. Analytics is breaking down a problem into the smaller components until you feel you understand the problem better. Often it's with numbers. Here, it's really not, despite the graphical approach to communicate it. "Better" versus "worse" - that can be analytics. * OK, my definition of it.
  12. ashbury
    Mahle's morale looks pretty good, all things considered.
  13. ashbury
    Mahle's a reliever/closer?
  14. ashbury
    I expect we all plan to do the same.
  15. ashbury
    I love the cat-that-ate-the-canary look on Buxton's face after he scores on the steal of home "sacrifice" fly.
  16. ashbury
    Now after two wins, shouldn't it be 324-0?
  17. ashbury
    Interesting graph that seems to rate Carlos higher in each of the 3 categories than Nelson. I wouldn't have imagined that. Does any player anywhere come to mind that exceeds Carlos? Lots that could be discussed, so I will try limiting myself to just one typical case. Talented rookie player X is mired in a slump and goes to a player he considers a leader, and moans, "I'm 1-for-27, and I don't know what to do." He's not looking for batting tips, indeed he doesn't know what he's looking for. Does Player X go to Buxton? To Cruz? To Donaldson? To Correa? I'm thinking it would be Cruz. And yet I'm not sure which of the three dimensions this fits - you kind of ruled out Pragmatic when you specifically mentioned (not) "emotional work", and I don't quite see where a leader's charisma is the key here, nor the vague idea of shared ideology. It's extremely possible that the right leader gets this kid going, so I don't think it's a trivial example. Okay, one more comment. I often bang the "analytics" drum here, and I want to mention that I see this approach as another excellent instance of baseball analytics. Not everything can be measured in numbers, and different people might rate a player vastly differently on any one of these dimensions. Yet, to make decisions, a front office has to start somewhere, and this analytic approach feels very right to me, even if the key is whether it's implemented wisely or not.
  18. ashbury
    Sounds like a guy who takes his job seriously.
  19. ashbury
    Wait until you see Luis Arraez wearing a real Marlins cap - you won't be sure he isn't back with us, but that would involve wearing the crazy Twins cap that looks like a Marlins cap, but maybe that means he's with the Marlins after all, and so on, and so on, into an infinite regression.
  20. ashbury
    Betteridge's law of headlines, in action.
  21. ashbury
    I was being tongue in cheek and you are replying with literalism. So let me be literal. The guy you want as your long reliever would be starting, in today's game. You are talking about winning more games by using your long relief strategy - otherwise why bother. So you're not talking about a random arm to soak up garbage innings - if all you care about is a reliever pitching 3 innings and giving up another run or two like most pitchers will on average, then few if any additional wins will be the result because your team is already in a hole, by the very nature of needing to bring in the long reliever. No, you implicitly want a guy who will put up zeroes for 3 innings, and keep his team in the game when the day's starter has already not given a quality start. Guys who can shut the other team down for 3 innings are almost certainly capable of going 4 or 5 or 6 and delivering at least quality production. And we know guys like that are in short supply. IMO you're not following through on the scenarios where your desired long reliever would make an actual difference in the season. The guy you say you want as your long reliever would be starting.
  22. ashbury
    That link also provided links to two different ways of providing a side-by-side comparison, of real-time versus edited. This critical strikeout in the final inning is not improved (from the fan's perspective) by lengthening the time between pitches, using the edited version as a baseline. There was plenty of time to anticipate and ponder. If I weren't already in favor of enforcing the clock, I think this comparison would have won me over. Even if I didn't personally care about games going 3.5 hours and longer, I would have to concede that no entertainment value is being sacrificed with the pitch clock enforcement, and if it's making someone else happier to be able to head home before 10 pm most nights, I'd be now on board. I'll say again: absolutely nothing is lost by the still rather generous limit now imposed on pure dilly-dallying in the name of players collecting their thoughts. The action is still all there, and it's only the dead time for the fan that is missing. I always give Scott Boras a careful hearing when he weighs in on a topic because he's a student of the game, even if biased in certain obvious ways, but in this case I have to disagree with him - if performance by the players is slightly less than optimal, it affects batter and pitcher essentially equally, and the public who foots the bill is the beneficiary. Long overdue and I'm thrilled with the early returns.
  23. ashbury
    Great? Your genealogy may be correct but the terminology is prone to misunderstanding.
  24. ashbury
    There's a word for pitchers who can "easily" go 3 innings. "Starter."
  25. ashbury
    I'm holding my breath until official lineups are announced Saturday.
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