jimmer

and when you expand it out to team rankings, the team should get credit for the shift as well.

Sam Fuld is known as being a proponent of metrics. He graduated with an economics degree from Stanford University, no small accomplishment. Clearly he is into the numbers. Back in 2012, there was a story about Fuld and some of the discussions he'd have in the Rays clubhouse concerning metrics. (link below). Fuld has had a few conversations about those numbers in the Rays clubhouse with teammates like reliever Burke Badenhop, another former economics major at Bowling Green State University. "It's just kind of the evolution of baseball. If you can do something and do it better, I think you want to be on that side of the trend," Badenhop said. "You can say batting averages and ERAs and stuff like that, but you know some guys' true value to the team isn't dictated by them, and there might be other metrics that quantify that better." 'Fuld, has always had a passion for the game's numbers. He looked at newspaper box scores as a kid, carried around a Baseball Encyclopedia as a 6-year-old and eventually held an internship with STATS, Inc. That led him to sabermetrics, where his greatest interest currently involves quantifying defensive value through advanced metrics like UZR.' Where did that interest come from? Well, his dad is Kenneth Fuld, is/was the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Professor of Psychology at the University of New Hampshire. Ken Fuld has always been a baseball enthusiast and has studied many things about baseball to include busting some baseball myths. If you click on the link below, you will be able to read some fascinating info Ken Fuld has studied and concluded. Some of the nuggets (but really, the whole thing is fascinating) '"In the last few feet before the plate, the ball reaches an angular velocity that exceeds the ability of the eye to track the ball," Fuld told LiveScience. "The best hitters can track the ball to within 5 or 6 feet of the plate."' 'Sometimes players will abandon eye contact mid-way through the pitch and move their line of sight to where they anticipate the ball will cross the plate. Batters often "take" the first couple pitches of an "at bat" in this manner to try and calibrate the movement and speed of a pitcher's offerings.' (That might explain why some hitters take the first pitch or two consistently) 'When a hitter swings under the ball and misses, baseball announcers sometimes say the pitcher got him with a "rising fastball." But technically, this pitch cannot exist if thrown overhand--it's impossible for a pitch thrown downward to buck gravity and achieve upward lift.' http://www.livescience.com/4093-busting-baseball-myths-scientist-throws-big-curveballs.html http://tampabay.rays.mlb.com/news/print.jsp?ymd=20120623&content_id=33825226&vkey=news_tb&c_id=tb Needless to say that Sam and his dad have a passion for understanding the game as much as possible.

Speaking of tall pitchers and how long it takes them to hone their craft, how tall was Jon Rauch? Maybe we should also consider comparing Meyer to him? Or maybe Chris Young? How about Eric Hillman? Maybe there's a reason we've seen so very few (like one) or so) really successful really tall starting pitchers.

As a huge Twins fan, I also have a NL team and that team, along with other teams and players I like, play in the Cactus league. It's less expensive for me (in travel and lodging)to go to Arizona. Arizona is closer for me. My brother, who I'm going with like we've always wanted to, has no interest in going all the way to Florida to watch a team he has no interest in. There are reasons.

What I normally use defensive metrics for is simply rankings, whether it's teams or players. Same thing with offensive metrics and WAR overall.

I wish I was slightly intoxicated :-) Instead I'm on call. I rarely drink nowadays, but it's been an exceptionally rough week.

Good call. I might have goofed it there, though not intentionally Thanks for the catch. In regards to that poor example, I think my overall point was that even if players play some in the previous season, they'll still be considered prospects by some prospect ranking organizations for the next. There's still the international signings, the draft, the performance issues, whether it be poor performance or inability to perform due to injury, which is likely why Sano dropped in a few prospect publications.

Yeah, the way I read the opening explanation, is that the overall rankings wasn't just about the points.

Yes, and you have to wonder how great this prospect really is when he's 25 and can't beat out guys like Pelfrey and Milone (especially Milone since FA contract isn't a factor). We supposedly won that Span trade when it happened.

Do you see a lot of SABR people dismiss the strikeout on offense? Most I've talked to don't like Ks. Striking out hurts the OBP. But if a guy grounds out to 3B as opposed to striking out, his OBP is still hurt the same. I think most SABR people just don't scream 'oh the strikeout is horrible' like they used to. Most would agree that, especially with runners on, a ball in play out will often be at least a little helpful by moving runners over (if it's an out placed in the right spot). It could also lead to a double play. And I also don't see a lot of people dismissing the walk on defense. It's still allowing a guy on base, which a defense shouldn't want to do. My point is that an inning leadoff walk allowed on defense isn't any worse than an inning leadoff single (or a double) allowed on defense. I'd also rather walk a good player on a 3-0 count with a man on 2nd than groove a ball in the strike zone to get pounded just to avoid walking a guy. Allowing a walk isn't more damaging than allowing a hit when preventing runs scored. A walk on offense isn't better than a single or double either, but it's still getting on base (as opposed to creating one of 27 outs). It creates opportunities for scoring by having another runner on and extending the inning. So while a single or better would be better, it's still getting on base. Getting on base is important.

wouldn't the beer carbonation cause a problem?

It is unreasonable to expect that our 25 year old supposedly hot shot pitching prospect could beat out those extremely underwhelming 5 spot options?

Watching KC/W Sox game. Guy on first, line drive to right center. Dyson sprints over, gets to it on the 3rd hop, stops, turns body (since he ran to his left and throws right), plants and throws the guy out at 3B by 4 steps. Instead of there being a man on 1st and 3rd and one out, now there's a man on 1B and two outs. Next batter grounds to the 2B on the next play. If he had done that and the guy was on 3B, they score a run onthe 2nd out. Instead it's out #3. BTW, that next batter came to the plate still shaking his head in disbelief in what Dyson did. Outstanding defender.

I will definitely be going to spring training next year. Unfortunately, it will likely be the Cactus league instead of the Grapefruit League, but should still be a blast.

That would be interesting, but it may not come down to one or the other. I doubt Rosario starts the season on the 25 man roster.

So there's a guy on 1B with one out, and a ball gets hit out to CF. One could argue a better CF, or one who took a better route on that play, gets that ball. It gets by Hicks and instead of it being out #2, and leaving a guy one 1B, the guy on 1B scores on a 'double'. So, 1 run scored and there's a guy on 2B and still only one out as opposed to an above average CF making that play for out #2 outs and having a guy on 1st.

And Danny Santana. And on some lists, Arcia since he wasn't guaranteed a starting job going into 2014, we still saw him on some prospects listings. International signings, performance of prospects (or injury affecting the ability to play), drafting new prospects, etc. Lot of ways to effect it in a year.

http://m.mlb.com/news/article/113105746/cubs-top-list-of-mlbs-10-best-farm-systems Jim Callis has Minnesota at #3 Twins in Top 100: 6 -- Byron Buxton (No. 1), Miguel Sano (No. 12), Alex Meyer (No. 30), Jose Berrios (No. 33), Nick Gordon (No. 34), Kohl Stewart (No. 37) 'What makes an organization rank as one of the top farm systems in baseball? Simply put, it's a combination of quality and quantity. The MLBPipeline.com staff ranked the top 10 systems in the game by considering which organizations have an abundance of elite-level prospect talent as well as depth, in terms of future big leaguers up and down the system. Prospect Points are determined by awarding a team 100 points for the No. 1 prospect on the Top 100 list, 99 points for No. 2 and so on, down to one point for No. 100. Points are then tallied by team.'

As we know, the regression expected of Santana is because of his BABIP over .400. Historically, that's impossible to sustain. But people with his skill set are likely to have a BABIP over league average. ZiPS projects his BABIP this year at .341, which is still very good. Mauer is a fantastic hitter and his career BABIP is about 10 points below that. So it's not like saying he'll regress is such a bad thing, it's just saying a .405 BABIP is through the roof amazing and not sustainable. His .353 OBP was hugely affected by that. As his BABIP drops down, he's going to need to walk more to keep his OBP up. Hall of Famer Rod Carew had a career BABIP a hair under .360. Still 45 points lower than Santana's 2014 BABIP. Yet his career OBP was in the .390s (40 points higher than Santana's).

'Ulitmately the better players will be those that progress more than they regress.It's not rocket science kids' Regression isn't a negative term. It's a mathematical term relative to a mean. If a player, like 2014 Mauer, has an unusually bad season relative to how he normally does (or would be expected to do), he is likely to regress to having a better season. Because regression is to the mean and Mauer's mean is higher than what he did in 2014. Better players have a better mean.

Quite true, quite true. :-) But the reasoning seems sound since one person can only watch so much baseball, and most do it for enjoyment. Unlike the people who do the metrics, an individual fan doesn't watch the games as their job to gauge how each player's defense compares to the other 29 teams' players at the same position. He doesn't say UZR is perfect, he says it's the best option currently available.

Why UZR: 'This isn’t the right place to debate UZR versus another similar metric, but you should use a metric like UZR or DRS because it is a better representation of defensive value than something like fielding percentage. Even your eyes aren’t going to do a great job measuring defensive performance because you simply can’t watch and remember enough plays a year to have a good sense of exactly how well a player stacks up against the competition. You might be able to judge a single play better than the metrics (although that’s debatable), but your ability to recall every play and compare them is limited. Run value defensive stats like UZR provide you with the best estimate of defensive value currently available and allow you to estimate how much a player’s defense has helped his team win.'

http://www.fangraphs.com/library/defense/uzr/ 'For the details on how UZR is calculated — i.e. how we can attach a run value to defensive events — see the FanGraphs UZR Primer. It’s very thorough. The specifics can be a little overwhelming, but at it’s most basic level, it’s a measure of the average amount of damage that batted ball would do and how often it is converted into an out, relative to average at the position. So if the average left fielder makes a player 40% of the time on the ball in question and that batted ball (based on location, speed, etc) is worth 0.8 runs on average, fielding it cleanly earns you 0.48 runs toward your UZR (0.8*0.6). It’s a little more nuanced than that, but that’s the view from 30,000 feet.' And if one wants to read the primer http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-fangraphs-uzr-primer/ 'Now, let’s say that we want to compute a UZR for every player in 2009. For every batted ball, either it is caught by a fielder and turned into an out (either the batter or a base runner is out, or both of course), it is scored as a hit, or the batter reaches on an error or a fielder’s choice (and no out is made). One or more fielders will receive positive or negative credit depending on the outcome of the play and depending on how often that same batted ball in that same situation (outs, base runners, attributes of the batter, etc.) was successfully fielded by each fielder from 2004-2009. Let’s say that that same batted ball in the example above was caught by the CF’er on the first play of a game. Since typically someone will catch that same ball only 25% of the time (see above), this particular CF’er will get credit for an extra .75 plays – 100% minus 25%. We then convert .75 plays into runs by multiplying .75 by the difference between an average hit in that location and the average value of an air ball out. A typical outfield hit is worth around .56 runs and any batted ball out is worth around -.27 runs, so the difference between a hit and an out is worth around .83 runs. (We don’t vary the value of the hit or out based on the outs or base runners because we want “game situation-neutral” defensive evaluations.) Since our fielder gets credit for .75 extra plays, we give him credit for .75 times .83 runs, or +.6255 runs for that play.'

He's exactly the kind of pitcher the Twins have traditionally loved and has moved quickly due to that. We should see him soon.

Why not, that guy is an inner circle HOFer :-)