ashbury

Wonder which AAA team has the highest payroll this year?

Looks like Jackson is accepting the minor league assignment. No surprise, he'd have to be pretty mad at the team to take a pay cut to play somewhere else. Not that $1.3M (plus the $200K buyout) the Twins are on the hook for is that huge, but money is money and the difference is a lot to walk away from.

If the complaint is that defense isn't included, tell me a defensive stat that everyone agrees with, and we can improve WPA by using that. To the degree that the individual events correspond to what the fan experiences, I think WPA usually stacks up pretty well. The batter gets credit for a base hit. He loses credit for a strikeout. A strikeout to end the inning with runners on base and a close score, well, don't we groan when that happens? Adding them all up during a game tells one story, listing individual numbers tells another - but for those who call it a garbage stat, nothing TD does will satisfy them. (Individual events will almost always favor the batters, won't they?) Margot getting thrown out at third base to give Royce Lewis an undeserved additional negative score for what should have been a fly out is just noise in the system, by comparison. That kind of stuff evens out during the course of a long season. But people want to throw it all out instead of looking for the information that does get imparted.

And that seems to be the core of the argument against WPA. "What if something else had happened?" As the game actually played out, the Twins scored a run in the top of the first, for which the batters got suitable credit (surely you agree that scoring the first run in a game brings a significant advantage), and then Ober gave away that advantage with a home run in the bottom of that inning. The hitters put the game away, for all intents and purposes, in the top of the second. Ober still gave up a home run in the bottom of that inning too, which was much less damaging, and from there on he was lights out - but by that point they would have likely won (96 times out 100, with that lead, according to b-r.com's tally) even if he or some relievers who followed had been less effective. Bailey Ober had a fine game. But the hitters won it, and during the brief period the game was still in doubt, Ober was not effective at the job of holding the lead. "What if those hitters hadn't scored in the top of the second? What if the big inning had been in the top of the ninth?" Different, non-existent ballgames, those. It's not Ober's "fault" that he had little opportunity to affect the winning outcome, but that first inning wasn't a plus. I'm not one to dwell on "clutch" performances too much, but to whatever degree major leaguers are clutch, WPA may reflect it. Joey Gallo last year had a negative WPA despite positive WAR, because the stats that feed WAR seemed to come only when the team was already comfortably ahead - and that seemed to agree with the eye test of all of us who disliked having him in the lineup. I'm not going to cast aspersions at Ober now, but merely point out that in this one game, his performance got better when the game was not tight anymore; other games, Ober has done well when it counted. Pablo pitched his masterpiece on Sunday under much tighter circumstances, clinging to a 1-run lead for six of his eight innings, and did better by surrendering zero runs, not two. WPA reflects all of that too. The batters other than Buxton (and Castro and Correa to a degree) didn't win that game, Lopez (to whatever degree we assign anything to one person) did - three runs by the offense loses more times than not. One final observation, WPA might reflect the fan's mood as the game progresses. I enjoyed my afternoon in the sun in Oakland in a much different, more relaxed, way with that early lead than if it had been a tight ballgame. The much-maligned Manuel Margot gave me that luxury as a fan, and he deserves the WPA he earned. WPA reflects the game, as it actually went, better than the box score and rhetorical arguments do. Does the stat have flaws? Yes! Is it the one ultimate stat that tells us how good a player is? Not at all! But criticizing it for not doing things it's not designed to, isn't any more fair than me criticizing RBIs because they don't include defense. Someone else called it a garbage stat, not you, I believe. That's no way to start a reasoned discussion.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with what you said leading up to this, what you say here in conclusion seems exactly what the original objectors disagree with.

Did you watch the game, or merely read the box score?

No, no isn't. 😊

Are we going to do this every night? WPA is not a garbage stat. You're not going to read what I say, so I'll leave it at this: WPA is not measuring what you apparently want it to measure. It addresses "why did the team win? (or lose?)". Not "who had a good game?" There are plenty of other stats for the latter. Often the two forms of question line up; when they don't, there is insight to be had as to why not.

Carlos didn't tag up to go to second, though. Running ourselves out of an inning.

Oh Margot! Know thyself.

Tell us you didn't read the article to completion without saying the words "I didn't read the article to completion." 😀

This article is an extreme example of Betteridge's Law of Headlines, where the author went ahead with the requisite answer of "No," instead of waiting for the reader to say it.

His best case is that he's somehow a "slow learner" in baseball terms, and therefore still has room for growth even as a 25-year old. Lacking knowledge of the man or having any kind of direct experience watching him, I'm pretty skeptical of someone that age who lacks defensive value and is putting up "pretty good" but far from stellar numbers at AA.

I think there was one other TD poster who was there, as was I. Great day for an enjoyable ballgame!

Friday night was part of the investment, unfortunately.

Enjoyable game!

No one warming up as far as I can tell.

Ober wants the CG.

I love him but his approach at the plate is hard to take. Swings at anything, then with two strikes becomes super selective.

Yes, covering five whole innings. 😊

W. TF.

Don't look now but everybody's favorite whipping boy is in line for a Quality Start if he doesn't weaken.

Rough game for Soderstrom.

I think I just took your picture. Point yourself out. 😊

Oh. My bad. I thought you said someone wise.