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nomar
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Post by nomar on Sept 13, 2015 14:02:43 GMT -5
Is Xander tired? He doesn't seem able to pull the ball much right now. Everything is kind of weak to the right side. I half expect a reverse shift at some point. He hasn't the whole year. He's going to have to make changes in keeping his weight back and start driving the ball instead of slapping at it, all while not losing the plate coverage he's gained this year. Big offseason for him.
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Post by larrycook on Sept 13, 2015 14:05:12 GMT -5
Is Xander tired? He doesn't seem able to pull the ball much right now. Everything is kind of weak to the right side. I half expect a reverse shift at some point. In my mind, I think he still has trouble picking up sliders. Which means pitchers will keep feeding him them.
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Post by sarasoxer on Sept 13, 2015 14:13:04 GMT -5
Is Xander tired? He doesn't seem able to pull the ball much right now. Everything is kind of weak to the right side. I half expect a reverse shift at some point. He hasn't the whole year. He's going to have to make changes in keeping his weight back and start driving the ball instead of slapping at it, all while not losing the plate coverage he's gained this year. Big offseason for him. For sure. It just seemed that recently that lean over slap was getting more pronounced...that the bat was flagging.
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nomar
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Posts: 10,824
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Post by nomar on Sept 13, 2015 16:16:06 GMT -5
He hasn't the whole year. He's going to have to make changes in keeping his weight back and start driving the ball instead of slapping at it, all while not losing the plate coverage he's gained this year. Big offseason for him. For sure. It just seemed that recently that lean over slap was getting more pronounced...that the bat was flagging. I know exactly what you mean but to be honest I think he's been swinging that way for a while. Maybe a be more of late and I just haven't noticed. No power being generated from his lower half, he's all arms. But luckily the kid is just a gifted hitter and has managed to be a solid producer.
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Post by benogliviesbrother on Sept 13, 2015 16:34:36 GMT -5
Much the same argument for reliability could be made for every position, although SS probably is the most important. But recall what was going on earlier in the season when Hanley was butchering LF. It was obvious that it was demoralizing the pitchers to see what should have been routine outs turning into hits, sometimes extra base hits. That had to be one of the factors in the collapse of the pitching early on. And as evidence of that, since he stopped playing LF, the pitching has improved, especially the starting pitching. Clearly, most of that is due to the pitchers just pitching better, but balls hit to the OF that should be caught now are being caught. How was it obvious? I somehow missed it.
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ericmvan
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Supposed to be working on something more important
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 13, 2015 17:39:41 GMT -5
Re-read the post. He's suggesting that (a) there is psychological discomfort and that (b) it affects some pitchers' performance on the field. There is no evidence for the latter statement, but he doubles down on it. I would bet that there is, because we'd have to toss out a good chunk of human psychology if there wasn't. That's why I have no doubt that the effect exists. You might need to look at twenty years of data to get a significant result, and discover that the effect was too small to worry about. Or you might find it in a few years of data, and discover that it was a couple of runs per year and actually worth considering as a tie-breaker. It's about 578th on my list of baseball things to investigate. There's no debating the fact that if you have two equally good fielders who are more or less average, the guy who is more erratic and flashier causes his teammates more psychological distress, by booting more routine balls, than the guy who gets the same total number of outs by making all the routine plays and failing to make an offsetting number of great ones. To what extent that psychological distress causes his teammates to subsequently play less well is unknown, and it might be very small, but it's really unlikely to be unmeasurably small. That follows from human psychology, and from the fact that once in a great while we sure seem to see it happen.Yes, human beings love to create causation where none exists, so I'm not talking about a guy booting a routine ball, followed by two hits, and an announcer claiming after the fact that the error rattled the pitcher. That's never convincing. I'm talking about a routine ball being booted, the pitcher (call him "vintage Derek Lowe") looking obviously upset, the thought occurring to everyone that he now has a danger of melting down, the pitcher quite obviously executing his delivery less well (e.g., gets behind the next batter 2-0 with pitches way outside the zone), and then giving up a couple of hits. We've seen that happen.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Sept 13, 2015 17:43:40 GMT -5
Is Xander tired? He doesn't seem able to pull the ball much right now. Everything is kind of weak to the right side. I half expect a reverse shift at some point. He hasn't the whole year. He's going to have to make changes in keeping his weight back and start driving the ball instead of slapping at it, all while not losing the plate coverage he's gained this year. Big offseason for him. This year: Pull: 32.0% Center: 35.1% Oppo: 32.9%
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nomar
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Posts: 10,824
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Post by nomar on Sept 13, 2015 17:56:59 GMT -5
He hasn't the whole year. He's going to have to make changes in keeping his weight back and start driving the ball instead of slapping at it, all while not losing the plate coverage he's gained this year. Big offseason for him. This year: Pull: 32.0% Center: 35.1% Oppo: 32.9% He's 10th in oppo% this year. He has trouble pulling the ball.
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Post by fisterroboto on Sept 13, 2015 18:39:18 GMT -5
He hasn't the whole year. He's going to have to make changes in keeping his weight back and start driving the ball instead of slapping at it, all while not losing the plate coverage he's gained this year. Big offseason for him. This year: Pull: 32.0% Center: 35.1% Oppo: 32.9% To put it in context, he has the 17th lowest pull rate and the 10th highest opposite rate in baseball this year, not including today. Edit: Scooped by nomar Per fangraphs, his splits for pull rate over the last 30 days (32.0%), 14 days (34.1%) and 7 days (31.8%) are pretty consistent.
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Post by Oregon Norm on Sept 13, 2015 18:39:35 GMT -5
This year: Pull: 32.0% Center: 35.1% Oppo: 32.9% He's 10th in oppo% this year. He has trouble pulling the ball. I mentioned this at the beginning of the year. I don't think he has trouble pulling the ball. I think he decided to spend an entire season making sure he knew how to go the other way. That was his real weakness. He's definitely figured that out, now that gives teams fewer options for pitching to him. A couple of times in the last few weeks, he's seen that stuff inside and he showed me he can still launch it. We'll see what happens next year.
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Post by jmei on Sept 13, 2015 20:32:43 GMT -5
Re-read the post. He's suggesting that (a) there is psychological discomfort and that (b) it affects some pitchers' performance on the field. There is no evidence for the latter statement, but he doubles down on it. I would bet that there is, because we'd have to toss out a good chunk of human psychology if there wasn't. That's why I have no doubt that the effect exists. You might need to look at twenty years of data to get a significant result, and discover that the effect was too small to worry about. Or you might find it in a few years of data, and discover that it was a couple of runs per year and actually worth considering as a tie-breaker. It's about 578th on my list of baseball things to investigate. There's no debating the fact that if you have two equally good fielders who are more or less average, the guy who is more erratic and flashier causes his teammates more psychological distress, by booting more routine balls, than the guy who gets the same total number of outs by making all the routine plays and failing to make an offsetting number of great ones. To what extent that psychological distress causes his teammates to subsequently play less well is unknown, and it might be very small, but it's really unlikely to be unmeasurably small. That follows from human psychology, and from the fact that once in a great while we sure seem to see it happen.Yes, human beings love to create causation where none exists, so I'm not talking about a guy booting a routine ball, followed by two hits, and an announcer claiming after the fact that the error rattled the pitcher. That's never convincing. I'm talking about a routine ball being booted, the pitcher (call him "vintage Derek Lowe") looking obviously upset, the thought occurring to everyone that he now has a danger of melting down, the pitcher quite obviously executing his delivery less well (e.g., gets behind the next batter 2-0 with pitches way outside the zone), and then giving up a couple of hits. We've seen that happen. That brings us back to jimoh's list. There's lots of stuff that seems to make intuitive psychological sense, yet there's no meaningful/significant statistical evidence for-- think clutch hitting/pitching, "run production," the idea that pitchers have a significant control over their balls in play, the importance of bat control or baserunning speed in the second spot in the order, the shutdown inning, etc. As we've seen again and again, you need more than intuition if you're going to assert that this is a thing that is beyond debate.
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Post by telson13 on Sept 13, 2015 21:05:18 GMT -5
Manny was a terrible fielder, though. Bogey is above-average and continues to improve. He's far more Ripken than Ozzie, but at least he doesn't make a lot of mental errors. FWIW, Ted Williams wasn't much of a fielder either (nor is Cabrera), but Mattingly did both exceedingly well, and Trout's a pretty good CF. I think it depends on the individual, and whether or not they hyper-focus on one area or work to improve across the board. Frankly, X's improvement across the board is a great sign, I think. I mean jeter not bogey. Ah, totally different point, my bad. I think Jeter's main problem was that he was playing out of position for a lot of his career, using his strength of coming in on balls. I do remember Cashman kind of saying something to him in 2008 or so, and he went to Arizona and really improved (a ton) by most metrics for a couple of years in his mid-30s, which was pretty impressive. Then age kinda hit him and he was bad again. But yeah, his range was just absolutely terrible in his 20s, when it should've been good. I think through ego (understandable) and team error (much less so) he was a much worse fielder than he could've been. That's why I'm so happy about Bogaerts...he's working every facet of his game.
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ericmvan
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Supposed to be working on something more important
Posts: 8,931
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 14, 2015 14:45:48 GMT -5
That brings us back to jimoh's list. There's lots of stuff that seems to make intuitive psychological sense, yet there's no meaningful/significant statistical evidence for-- think clutch hitting/pitching, "run production," the idea that pitchers have a significant control over their balls in play, the importance of bat control or baserunning speed in the second spot in the order, the shutdown inning, etc. As we've seen again and again, you need more than intuition if you're going to assert that this is a thing that is beyond debate. There's firm evidence that about 10% of clutch performance is predictive, which almost certainly means that a lot more of it was real; I've always argued that being clutch or non-clutch is a state variable, not a trait variable -- it's a frame of mind a player can get into and out of. There has never been ANY argument that pitchers do not have a significant control over their balls in play. The argument is that whatever control they do have is swamped by some much noise that it becomes very difficult to measure successfully. But the data we do have is perfectly consistent with a true SD of BABIP allowed being .010 or even .015 points, and that is quite significant on the ball field. We can only be sure about the guys at the extreme ends of the distribution, though. And besides, most of these are examples of psychological intuitions about the game itself, not psychological intuitions about player psychology. Psychological intuitions about psychology are generally very good, because it's really important for us to understand how other minds work. (This point, amusingly only to me, has been missed by the school of philosophy of mind called eliminativist materialism, which is the subject of chapter 6 of the book I've been writing since the start of 2012 and that I've just started working on a ton lately ... which is why you're likely to see much less of me here until next spring! Which is my personal deadline for getting a combo draft and outline into the hands of an agent. Gotta get that out of the way before next season starts.)
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Post by sarasoxer on Sept 15, 2015 8:26:57 GMT -5
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Post by James Dunne on Sept 15, 2015 16:54:35 GMT -5
That brings us back to jimoh's list. There's lots of stuff that seems to make intuitive psychological sense, yet there's no meaningful/significant statistical evidence for-- think clutch hitting/pitching, "run production," the idea that pitchers have a significant control over their balls in play, the importance of bat control or baserunning speed in the second spot in the order, the shutdown inning, etc. As we've seen again and again, you need more than intuition if you're going to assert that this is a thing that is beyond debate. There's firm evidence that about 10% of clutch performance is predictive, which almost certainly means that a lot more of it was real; I've always argued that being clutch or non-clutch is a state variable, not a trait variable -- it's a frame of mind a player can get into and out of. Maybe that's true. But it isn't unanimous. Jeff Sullivan with the quite-timely discussion of this topic.
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Post by blizzards39 on Sept 15, 2015 22:01:01 GMT -5
Just something to note. Xander is now 2nd in the AL batting race to Miguel Cabrera. Although he is unlikely to catch Miggy, it is possible that he does not get enough plate appearances to qualify. I'm not proposing or hoping for a great player like Cabrera to miss time, just pointing out that it is possible for Xander to win the batting title. By my account, Miggy needs 45 PAs in the Tigers last 22 games to qualify. By my count xman is only 17 points behind now
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Post by ramireja on Sept 15, 2015 23:20:45 GMT -5
That brings us back to jimoh's list. There's lots of stuff that seems to make intuitive psychological sense, yet there's no meaningful/significant statistical evidence for-- think clutch hitting/pitching, "run production," the idea that pitchers have a significant control over their balls in play, the importance of bat control or baserunning speed in the second spot in the order, the shutdown inning, etc. As we've seen again and again, you need more than intuition if you're going to assert that this is a thing that is beyond debate. There's firm evidence that about 10% of clutch performance is predictive, which almost certainly means that a lot more of it was real; I've always argued that being clutch or non-clutch is a state variable, not a trait variable -- it's a frame of mind a player can get into and out of. So you're saying clutch hitting is the same thing as.....hitting.
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ericmvan
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Supposed to be working on something more important
Posts: 8,931
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 16, 2015 0:29:52 GMT -5
There's firm evidence that about 10% of clutch performance is predictive, which almost certainly means that a lot more of it was real; I've always argued that being clutch or non-clutch is a state variable, not a trait variable -- it's a frame of mind a player can get into and out of. Maybe that's true. But it isn't unanimous. Jeff Sullivan with the quite-timely discussion of this topic. FanGraph's Clutch stat makes no sense to me. It correlates pretty weakly with the way I've always done it, which is just WPA translated into runs, versus RAA. At the SABR conference a few years ago I showed that career differences between hitting with men on base versus the bases empty literally had a 1 in a billion (or so) chance of being random. Rob Neyer and Christina Kahrl mentioned it online, and Dick Cramer (first person to apparently disprove the reality of clutch) says it's the only good evidence for any kind of clutch hitting he's ever seen. My guess about inning / score clutch is that it has no predictive value in the long run, but absolutely runs much streakier at the player and team level than you'd expect if it were random.
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Post by cologneredsox on Sept 16, 2015 5:25:32 GMT -5
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Sept 22, 2015 12:42:51 GMT -5
From 108 Stitches today:
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Post by jodyreidnichols on Sept 22, 2015 13:05:23 GMT -5
I would bet that there is, because we'd have to toss out a good chunk of human psychology if there wasn't. That's why I have no doubt that the effect exists. You might need to look at twenty years of data to get a significant result, and discover that the effect was too small to worry about. Or you might find it in a few years of data, and discover that it was a couple of runs per year and actually worth considering as a tie-breaker. It's about 578th on my list of baseball things to investigate. There's no debating the fact that if you have two equally good fielders who are more or less average, the guy who is more erratic and flashier causes his teammates more psychological distress, by booting more routine balls, than the guy who gets the same total number of outs by making all the routine plays and failing to make an offsetting number of great ones. To what extent that psychological distress causes his teammates to subsequently play less well is unknown, and it might be very small, but it's really unlikely to be unmeasurably small. That follows from human psychology, and from the fact that once in a great while we sure seem to see it happen.Yes, human beings love to create causation where none exists, so I'm not talking about a guy booting a routine ball, followed by two hits, and an announcer claiming after the fact that the error rattled the pitcher. That's never convincing. I'm talking about a routine ball being booted, the pitcher (call him "vintage Derek Lowe") looking obviously upset, the thought occurring to everyone that he now has a danger of melting down, the pitcher quite obviously executing his delivery less well (e.g., gets behind the next batter 2-0 with pitches way outside the zone), and then giving up a couple of hits. We've seen that happen. That brings us back to jimoh's list. There's lots of stuff that seems to make intuitive psychological sense, yet there's no meaningful/significant statistical evidence for-- think clutch hitting/pitching, "run production," the idea that pitchers have a significant control over their balls in play, the importance of bat control or base running speed in the second spot in the order, the shutdown inning, etc. As we've seen again and again, you need more than intuition if you're going to assert that this is a thing that is beyond debate. To further your point, isn't this a case of someone transferring their own thoughts and how they feel about it onto the situation? These guys are at the zenith of their profession and are more strong willed than the norm or chances are they would never have made it to the top to begin with. Face expressions, behavior do not mean anything. Many athletes react the same way to situations and their results are different. Also these same players don't always react the same way to the same situation. I'm sure most here played sports at some level and you very likely "chocked" at some time or you played worse after a teammate made a big error but did you do that every time, you better not have or you do not play very long and or you sucked. Anytime you give a team 4 or more outs in an inning the chances improve that they can string along more hits/runs. And if they do what does that indicate? Not a whole lot if anything but people incorrectly put their own experiences onto these players.
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Post by James Dunne on Sept 22, 2015 13:21:32 GMT -5
Betts and Bogaerts are now at 5.1 and 4.5 bWAR. The last team to have two 22 or younger players to have two 4.5+ bWAR players? The 1909 Tigers, who had Ty Cobb and Donie Bush. And if you've never heard of Bush, it's because he didn't do anything in his 30's: 37.2 WAR and 2,135 times on base in his 20s.
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Post by Nick Rabasco2 on Sept 22, 2015 17:09:17 GMT -5
Dating back to September 1 of 2014, Xander has exactly 700 plate appearances. His numbers in that time:
.321/.348/.435
11 HR 36 2B 3 3B 94 RBI 88 Runs
September of last year brings the AVG/OBP a tick down but he still hit .313 and had 5 doubles and 4 HR last September
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Post by telson13 on Sept 22, 2015 17:53:08 GMT -5
That brings us back to jimoh's list. There's lots of stuff that seems to make intuitive psychological sense, yet there's no meaningful/significant statistical evidence for-- think clutch hitting/pitching, "run production," the idea that pitchers have a significant control over their balls in play, the importance of bat control or base running speed in the second spot in the order, the shutdown inning, etc. As we've seen again and again, you need more than intuition if you're going to assert that this is a thing that is beyond debate. To further your point, isn't this a case of someone transferring their own thoughts and how they feel about it onto the situation? These guys are at the zenith of their profession and are more strong willed than the norm or chances are they would never have made it to the top to begin with. Face expressions, behavior do not mean anything. Many athletes react the same way to situations and their results are different. Also these same players don't always react the same way to the same situation. I'm sure most here played sports at some level and you very likely "chocked" at some time or you played worse after a teammate made a big error but did you do that every time, you better not have or you do not play very long and or you sucked. Anytime you give a team 4 or more outs in an inning the chances improve that they can string along more hits/runs. And if they do what does that indicate? Not a whole lot if anything but people incorrectly put their own experiences onto these players. They're human beings, not robots. And there's a fairly extensive body of psychology studies on workplace performance that would disagree with you. I'm sure some are more sanguine than others, but the tantrums, brawls, and broken hands from punching dugout walls are proof positive that these guys aren't superhuman, and aren't impervious to frustration.
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Post by jodyreidnichols on Sept 22, 2015 21:38:04 GMT -5
To further your point, isn't this a case of someone transferring their own thoughts and how they feel about it onto the situation? These guys are at the zenith of their profession and are more strong willed than the norm or chances are they would never have made it to the top to begin with. Face expressions, behavior do not mean anything. Many athletes react the same way to situations and their results are different. Also these same players don't always react the same way to the same situation. I'm sure most here played sports at some level and you very likely "chocked" at some time or you played worse after a teammate made a big error but did you do that every time, you better not have or you do not play very long and or you sucked. Anytime you give a team 4 or more outs in an inning the chances improve that they can string along more hits/runs. And if they do what does that indicate? Not a whole lot if anything but people incorrectly put their own experiences onto these players. They're human beings, not robots. And there's a fairly extensive body of psychology studies on workplace performance that would disagree with you. I'm sure some are more sanguine than others, but the tantrums, brawls, and broken hands from punching dugout walls are proof positive that these guys aren't superhuman, and aren't impervious to frustration. You should reread what I wrote. I never claimed they were robots not claimed they were never emotional. I indicated that they each reacted differently to the same stressful situations at different times. That their face expressions did not mean anything in terms of performance. Whats happens in the dugout has nothing to do with how they perform on the field. The studies you refer are for typical work places not competitive sports and not at the major league level. Part of what makes the MLB stand above is not merely talent but the ability to focus when 60,000 fans are screaming at you. You nor I could handle that stress and these guy can. Fans often try to put there emotions onto the players because they think they can read face expressions etc, this is called transference coined by Frued over a 100 years ago.
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