ashbury

20+ cuts to make, a couple of weeks to make them? I think your guess is safe.

Talent development, and talent evaluation. Two separate issues and yet joined at the hip.

I really think the issue you are getting at is abstraction, not subjectivity. A subjective stat would be if I created Ashbury's All-around High-performers (AAH!), which is batting average, plus a value that I choose for each player. Bryce Harper batted .249 last year but his AAH is .749 because I think he's a hell of a player and I give him .500 more. Ehire's AAH is just his .251 BA because I think he's only OK. You don't want to know what AAH I assigned Pedro Florimon a few years ago. Harper had exactly 100 RBI last year, which sounds like a made up round number but is actually computed in a way that MLB has defined for over a century now. Harper had a bWAR of 1.3 because of a formula some guy developed in 1995, or 2007, or maybe 2013. (Actually RBI has gone through changes in its time too - I'd have to go back and check the specifics but runs scored on sac flies and double plays counted or didn't count depending on which season you are looking up.) If you accept the framework, you can verify the numbers in each case. What both of these objective stats leave unanswered is, "... and this is important, why?" RBI is situational, so that for instance a player who was hurt for half a season will appear less valuable, and a guy with weak-hitting teammates will get fewer chances. WAR tries to figure out how a player correlates to his team's chances of winning. The importance of either stat depends on what you want to use it for, and subjectivity definitely comes in there. As a different example, FIP has importance to some people, because studies have shown that it is a better predictor for the next season's ERA, than is ERA itself. FIP is also not subjective, as you can check any website's number by computing it yourself, but its use certainly is subjective, as we saw for instance with Ricky Nolasco. The difference, to me, is that RBI faithfully records what happened. It's extremely concrete. WAR and FIP are both abstractions. There's no such thing as an actual Win in the standings being allocated to anyone but a particular pitcher (unless you are a Bill James acolyte) so WAR tries to remedy that - and there are other similar remedies to consider instead, for instance BJ's own Win Shares. FIP tries to recognize that pitchers sometimes run into hard luck, and again there are other remedies for that if FIP itself bothers you, or you can stick with ERA and its ability to record what demonstrably did happen. Sorry to wax philosophical. My recollection is that you aren't averse to peeling back the layers of the onion a bit, now and then.

I'm not surprised if they walked that statement back. It was amateurish.

No minor league options get exercised until Opening Day, correct? So cuts like Stewart can be undone if conditions change drastically? These early moves are just clearing the decks so that the harder decisions are done with a little more clarity.

This for me is key. One of FalVine basically threw the one-year guys under the bus, in explaining the disappointing season - if they feel the clubhouse chemistry was impacted by guys who were playing only for themselves (the rationale given), how are Kimbrel's or Keuchel's personalities different? If anything, I see their personalities as basically similar to those signed last year.

What tribute or sacrifice is required, to avert this fate? Would Tyler Jay's left arm on a platter suffice? Or does it have to be something still of value?

You should always be wary. OPS is quick-and-dirty. WAR is quick-and-dirty. RBI and ERA and Wins all have extenuating factors. Including defensive wins into WAR tells you something additional, even if it's staticky and sometimes even misleading. You teach your kids to watch their step on ice - you don't tell them not to walk on ice.

I asked only because an old boss of mine used to ask me, "what would you do with that information if you had it?" and I'd be stuck for an answer sometimes.

Suppose the answer were "flipflops". It being a celebration, well after the games were over. How would that affect your view of things?

Last 30 years, playing 80% or more at SS and having WAR of 2.0 or better (basically MLB average SS or above), there are 10 such seasons for the Twins. Bartlett twice(!), Florimon once (and just barely), Gagne three times, Guzman once, Meares twice and now Polanco once. I think you'll agree I set the bar low enough that I didn't miss anybody important. Across the majors there were such 418 seasons by shortstops, out of 900 possible of course. I don't think we got our fair share. Positional weakness for this franchise since Versalles and Cardenas, with only Smalley providing a break in a long stretch of futility.

I thought Brian's story would end up with the cat trapped in the box, sort of like the cat in our apartment would.

Ron Cey retired some time ago.

First post? Welcome!

What more proof of the conspiracy do you need, man?

The good news may be that it's less important to be able to make the distinctions between good and so-so defense, for the same SSS reasons that make the analysis harder: Robbie Grossman in the outfield doesn't get a chance to affect the game's outcome as often as we sometimes think.

Are shifts leaving third base uncovered common in that scenario?

Understanding why they are different (and I offer no guarantee that I do) allows one to judge when and how much to trust the defensive stats we do have. It's not, for instance, all subjective on the defensive side - that's not the core problem.

I concur with all that Spy wrote above, but want to add that defensive stats suffer from an inherent small sample size compared to batting stats. Each plate appearance consists on average of around 4 pitches, these days. Even though only outcomes are recorded, there is a richness in the experience being measured that goes far beyond the basic numbers. How well does the batter lay off bad pitches, how often does he whiff on good pitches - all these micro-results wind up contributing to what we know of as a plate appearance. By comparison, defensive stats suffer the opposite problem. There is less to the data than meets the eye. An awful lot of Total Chances are on plays like cans of corn to the outfield and routine grounders to the infielders. Separating the wheat from the chaff is the first task of the data analysis, and there is an awful lot of chaff. That's IMO why it takes multiple seasons for defensive stats to take on the same meaningfulness of their offensive counterparts.

Traditional scouts don't usually net six-figures either. Are the teams just rolling the dice with them? Sure, in a sense, but they also treat the information with respect and as having value. Baseball doesn't pay much, compared to other industries, for pretty much any except the top-end jobs, for all the reasons you mention. You're setting an arbitrarily high bar there. If the goal is player evaluation, then data mining and analytics being considered on a par with traditional resources sounds pretty good to me.

It's like George Carlin's observation about breaking a crumb in half. You don't have two half-crumbs, they're just two crumbs now, in seeming violation of the laws of physics. Similarly, putting together small sample sizes remain small sample sizes, no matter how long you keep doing it.

And I don't know either, and if I had thoughts of Kubel being my #1 guy for the question posed here (I was just throwing him into the mix among other good candidates), I'm definitely backing off. At this point I'm just contemplating the what-ifs for 2006.

I thought he was considered to have pretty good wheels, but I don't happen to have a pre-ACL Baseball Prospectus on my bookshelf to re-check that. The 2005 Prospectus certainly is, ahem, measured in its description of his defense - "adequate" is often a left-handed compliment. He DH'ed half his games in his September 2004 callup, pre-injury, but that's not unheard of when breaking in a young prospect in September. With his minor league progression, accounting for underperforming at Ft Myers and overperforming at New Britain, and the fact he didn't embarass himself when called up to the majors at age 22, and I don't think it's a stretch to imagine him as an offensive force two years later at age 24, and thereafter.

Moderator's note: While meant in good fun I'm sure, this kind of tangent doesn't belong in the baseball threads.

When we play the Rangers my runners have the green light rounding third every time on a ball hit to the outfield, Castro and Cron and Cruz included. / edit - OK, except for when it's hit to that Gallo guy