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Oxtung

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Everything posted by Oxtung

  1. Oxtung
    Lee would be an interesting player to get but depends on the prospects given up. If only there was a player with identical numbers to Cliff but maybe was a little younger, say 29, and didn't require you to give up any prospects. He probably would have been the perfect player to sign this last off season!
  2. Oxtung
    It doesn't matter what your lineup is, if you have two players with identical OPS/wOBA then the player with the higher OBP is going to theoretically provide more runs than the SLG. In the third article I linked to earlier Steven Staube shows this to be true using real life lineups and players and the Markov model. OBP scales better with Runs/Game than SLG does. So as scoring increases OBP becomes more valuable, the math behind this is all available in those articles if you're interested in reading why. Theoretically there is a low run scoring environment where a HR becomes more valuable than a walk/single, which is intuitive because if you're guaranteed to only get 1 hit per inning the only thing that will score a run is a HR, however in reality even during the deadball era run enough runs were scored that OBP was still a better driver of runs than SLG. Now, the real tricky part comes when you're comparing two players, who are almost assuredly not going to have the same OPS/wOBA how much higher does player 1's OBP have to be to make up for a deficit in OPS/wOBA? As I alluded to earlier, who was the more valuable player last year Mauer, .416OBP .446SLG .861OPS, or Willingham, .366OBP .524SLG .890OPS? Willingham's OPS is higher but Mauer has the higher OBP.
  3. Oxtung
    You were making the point that not all teams are as inept as the Royals and Pirates by saying the Rays and Nationals rebuilt their franchises more quickly. While that is true, the Rays and Nats still took a long time to do it. When a teams strategy is rebuild through prospects only that takes a long time. There are no short cuts. I don't know how volatile big leaguers are since I've never seen a study. It would be interesting to look at bust rate vs. years played in a graph form. I imagine it would be a parabola with a foci at ~5-6 years. A lot players get cups of coffee and as players get old they certainly bow out but those years in between I wonder if most players successfully remain in the league.
  4. Oxtung
    So after reading that article as well as the 2 follow ons I now better understand what you were saying. I misunderstood your point the first time. I thought you were comparing HR's to walks when in reality you were comparing HR's to HR's and walks to walks. I need more time to digest the information I read. Here are links to the two follow on articles. Part 2:Linear Weights + BaseRuns = Good | FanGraphs Baseball Part 3:Team-Specific Hitter Values by Markov | FanGraphs Baseball
  5. Oxtung
    On that I agree. Don't bring in the dregs and hope. Go get real talent.
  6. Oxtung
    It sure did take the Rays and the Nationals a long time. The Rays had 10 straight years of 90+ losses before finally getting above .500 in 2008. The Nationals first 8 seasons in Washington saw 7 seasons below .500 and the eighth was at exactly .500. That included back to back 100+ loss seasons. Prospects are volatile commodities. It isn't the first wave that turns a franchise around. It takes many seasons of losing to accumulate enough good prospects that enough pan out to make a difference.
  7. Oxtung
    They sure could for the next 6 years or so but they sure aren't going to.
  8. Oxtung
    Thinking more about this, and just brainstorming here as I type, I wonder if anyone has done a study on the OBP/SLG (or it could be ISO or any power metric) ratio to runs scored.
  9. Oxtung
    It reads like you're using data to backup your assertions on OBP vs. SLG w/r to lineup creation. I would love to read the article if you have a link to it because my intuition says it should be the other way around. I would guess on a team with many high OBP but low SLG guys a HR hitter would be more valuable then another OBP guy because his HR's will drive runners in more efficiently since there are many people on base in front of him, especially 1st base if the team is drawing many walks. On the flip side if a team is filled with sluggers a guy who gets on base would be very valuable because he would then be able to get driven in with a very high frequency thereby also increasing the value of the sluggers behind him. I have no data to back this up, just my intuition so if you have that article I would love to read it. Regardless of which way it turns out, our larger points are the same. A players value is largely determined by the lineup he is a part of. It's easy to say Mauer is a better hitter than Clete Thomas but it is much more difficult to tell the difference between 2012 Mauer and 2012 Willingham. Who the better player is largely has to do with what the Twins needed more. Baserunners or Power hitters.
  10. Oxtung
    I don't think you understood my point. Brock's assuming that what is good for the team is also good for the individual. That leap is not logical as demonstrated by my simple addition example. We know that for a team OBP is slightly more important than SLG when it comes to run creation but that tells us nothing about what is more important from individual hitters.
  11. Oxtung
    Thanks for doing some of the math. A few questions and comments. K% and HR% are usually expressed as a function of PA's not AB's so did you use the actually K, HR and AB numbers in your math or the K%/HR% shown on Fangraphs/Bref? Are your BA's in your last paragraph season totals or from midseason to end of season totals? One thing you left out of your conclusion is that a fall in babip will also reduce his SLG percentage as well because, presumably, he won't hit as many doubles either. His HR rate would remain independent of this however since babip specifically does not include HR's. I think you misunderstood my point about his strikeout rate. He could very well decrease his second half K% to 10%. Since we are almost half way through the season however that would only lower his season k% by 4.5% to 14.5%. In order to drop his season k% to his career average of 12% he would have to have a second half k% of 5%. That seems very unrealistic. So my point was that his season k% might drop 3-4% meaning his second half percentage would be 11-13% which I think is entirely possible.
  12. Oxtung
    My biggest problem with all of these stats is that the correlation is always from a team perspective. People then take that team correlation and make the assumption that it is true for the individual. That is a logical fallacy. A simple example is this: 2+2=4. We know both the addends (the 2's in this case) and therefore we know the sum (the 4). However this does not work in reverse. 4=???? It could be 0+4 or 1+3 or 2+2. Having a sum tells you little about the individual addends. So when you add many teams worth of data together (the sum) for a correlation study that number, regardless of the actual correlation, tells you nothing about the players themselves (the addends). So applying this to players, how can one say that OBP is worth more than SLG? I have another thought brewing in my head but haven't played with it enough...I'll post more later.
  13. Oxtung
    I think there is going to be a lot of pitchers looking to get time with the Twins next season. Gibson Correia Diamond Worley Deduno Hendriks Walters De Vries Hernandez May Meyer Darnell Albers Baxendale Matt Summers Ryan Eades (assuming he signs he has been touted as quick to the majors) Those are all guys at AA or above who, depending on how the pitch the rest of this year and early next could figure into the rotation at some point next year. Pelfrey has never been a particularly good pitcher even before his TJ surgery. I would think out of that mix the Twins could find 5 starters who are at least as good as Pelfrey next season and even if they can't that is good to know going into 2015. To me resigning Pelfrey would be a mistake. We need to see what we have with these young guys and the only way to do that is play them.
  14. Oxtung
    That was a very well thought out and well written post! You bring up some interesting questions that don't often get asked around here with regards to Mauer's height. I think Molina's body type compares with IRod. Molina is 5'11" 220lbs while Pudge was 5'9" and 205 according to BRef. Pudge obviously played into his late 30's and was an elite catcher that remained there his whole career. There is no guarantee Molina is going to decline quickly going forward just because he is a little heavier. It is certainly interesting to discuss.
  15. Oxtung
    I remember a quote from Gardenhire during spring training where he basically was questioning either Pinto's or Herrmann's ability to stick at catcher in the majors. I can't remember which one he was talking about and now the interwebs have failed me. Does anyone remember this quote or can anyone find it? I think it was from either the Star Tribune or Pioneer Press, though it could have been one of their online blogs.
  16. Oxtung
    Isn't Yadier Molina supposed to play elite defense though? Or is that one of the other Molina's?
  17. Oxtung
    No, his career high was in 2009 but it was .373.
  18. Oxtung
    This line of thought reminds me of Liriano's good streak last season just before the deadline. People were sure that streak meant he was going to bring back good value never mind the previous season and a half.
  19. Oxtung
    I was working with my uncle today and he brought up how at 6'5" Joe should be hitting many more HR's. He made many of the same points made above, but with much less vitriol. He is slightly more than a casual fan. He knows the standings and will look at the paper to see who is leading the league in various stats but that is as far as his research goes. He also is of the generation that grew up with RBI and HR's as being defining characteristics of big hitters. I know my Uncle has no clue what OPS even is. If I tried to explain it to him he would just shrug it off as unimportant and go right along thinking HR's and RBI define hitters. All this is a long way to say, I think that much of the flak Mauer takes is from fans who either haven't looked real in depth or view the game from a different perspective. I don't know who if his thought process is right or wrong and I'm not trying to make any judgements. Just trying to bring a little context to this discussion. PS I quoted you AScheib but I don't know why. My point has little to do with yours. Sorry!
  20. Oxtung
    To follow up with the 2nd baseman: 2013 top 2B by WAR: Intl:3 Coll:5 (2 from ASU) CC:2 HS:1 2013 top prospects: Intl:2 Coll:2 CC:1 HS:4+1 (4 from US and Eddie Rosario from PR a Latin American country but still in the draft so count it how you want) Looks like 2B is much more US focused.
  21. Oxtung
    When we did our study of ace pitchers one of the big things that stood out is that it is darn near impossible to hit it big on an international signing. IIRC in the last 30 years there have been 3. Pedro Martinez, Carlos Zambrano and Felix Hernandez. It will be interesting to see what happens with the recent Asian influx. Maybe things will change.
  22. Oxtung
    I think that combined those are the two largest factors in how his stats look at the end of the season. I would guess, and that's all it is, that a 20-30 point drop in babip would outweigh a 3-4% drop in K%. That would be a real interesting study IMO if anyone would care to take it on.
  23. Oxtung
    To toss a few more numbers out there. Comparison to recent big name rookies: Player BB% K% O.Arcia 7.8% 26% B.Harper 9.4% 20.1% J.Segura 7.8% 13.9% A.Rizzo 7.3% 16.8% M.Machado 4.5% 18.8% G.Stanton 8.6% 31.1% C.Headley 8.2% 28.3% C.Davis 6.3% 27.8% C.Gonzalez 4.1% 25.6% Out of 194 rookies debuting in the last 5 years Arcia's walk % would rank 70th as it stands today. His strike out rate would rank him 25th worst. As you can see from the names above rookie stats mean little going forward. Each of those players have turned into big producers despite their "low" walk rates or high K rates. What is more important is what he does this off season to improve.
  24. Oxtung
    There is an element of luck in babip certainly and an increase in LD% will increase the odds of also increasing your babip. The reason I say that Mauer is likely to see a regression is because in the last 10 years only 15 players have finished a season with a babip >.380. Therefore the odds are stacked against his babip remaining any where near the .399 that it is right now. Couple that with his career average of .348 and his career high of .373 and the likely hood of a regression is very high. IMO the question is how large of a regression.
  25. Oxtung
    He also doesn't have Ben Revere's speed on base ahead of him. Revere probably scored from first more often than Dozier/Carroll have been able to on Mauer's doubles.
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