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Post by azblue on Dec 6, 2013 23:09:49 GMT -5
One scouting report that appeared on this board last summer indicated that Swihart's arm had become a "real weapon."
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Dec 7, 2013 3:55:55 GMT -5
It is interesting that Blake won defensive player of the year, which means most improved not best (Iglesias never one one). The reason it is interesting is that according to this article including his own quotes, he spent the year concentrating on hitting. LOL, had to dig deep to find this one, The Republican, it has a great pic of Blake and Henry.... www.masslive.com/redsox/index.ssf/2013/09/boston_red_sox_have_quite_a_ca.htmlADD: Blake led the league in CS% and the difference between him and second place was a huge margin. (Sorry, don't remember the numbers but low to mid 40s% compared to low 30s%
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Dec 7, 2013 4:11:58 GMT -5
OK give up trying to find my source so either believe my regurgitation or don't.
I also read an article, about Henry Owens which was written during the later part of his no-hit streak at Salem. The article contained quotes from both Henry and Blake. Surprisingly, if you look at the stats of that streak, what Henry was working on was pitching to contact. That was mentioned by both. That also showed me a set of battery mates working towards a common goal.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Dec 7, 2013 14:44:39 GMT -5
Will admit that the Sox definitely have something of "reward" versus "most deserving" angle with their internal awards. Fair point on Iglesias. However, I'd say that "most improved" is the wrong way to describe it. Going back, Bradley-Vazquez-Lin-Dent-Lin-Ellsbury-Ellsbury, since they started giving it, were all outstanding defensive players in the minors.
As for the CS%, there are only 8 teams, so I went through them all. Leaderboard for those with at least 50 games:
Swihart (BOS), 101 G 42% Leonida (WAS), 52 G, 42% Nieto (WAS), 86 G, 33% Morin (KC), 88 G, 32% Cantwell (TEX), 66 G, 31% McGill (ATL), 52 G, 30% Brownstein (ATL), 51 G, 30% De San Miguel (BAL), 50 G, 30% Wolters (CLE), 58 G, 28% Smith (CWS), 92 G, 25% Deglan (TEX), 71 G, 21%
So yeah, relative to the league, he was great. That said, it could just be a down year for the league too. A spot check on 2012 shows that most of the teams had guys in the mid 30s.
However, ENORMOUS CAVEAT: At the lower levels of the minors, a lot of basestealing is stealing on the pitcher. It is quite possible that a lot of this is organizational philosophy with what they have pitchers doing at the level. Thus, all I'd read into these numbers is that Swihart had a very good year throwing out baserunners, not that Swihart was lightyears ahead of every other primary catcher in the league at throwing out baserunners.
BTW, I wouldn't necessarily read anything into the games played - quite possible that guys got promoted, etc.
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Post by colombianrsox on Dec 7, 2013 15:19:19 GMT -5
Don't you think that maybe Butler or Lava will be DFAed in the next 24 hours? Or traded..
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Dec 7, 2013 15:20:07 GMT -5
Don't you think that maybe Butler or Lava will be DFA in the next 24 hours? Or traded.. Why? Just delay the signing and make a trade. Villarreal is a much better DFA candidate. Lavarnway or Butler could have SOME value to another team.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Dec 7, 2013 15:32:37 GMT -5
In mid-September I completed a big project to objectively rank all our hitting prospects. I never got to post it in a timely fashion, so I've been saving it for the slow season. But the findings are relevant to this question.
What I did was take Clay Davenport's peak projections for the last 3 years, weighted 3-2-1 (and by PA of course), adjust them for position, take his defensive ratings and weight them 3-2-1 and regress them to the mean (spent a lot of time on that) and then translate that into equivalent points of EqA, and then make an adjustment for level, i.e., closeness to MLB (a lot of work on that -- I tried to find a formula that would turn the existing rankings into as good a match as possible to the rankings here.)
Here are the leaders:
.302 Bogaerts .290 Cecchini .285 Bradley .281 Betts .272 Swihart .272 Hassan .261 Marrero .261 Rijo
That passes the smell test, doesn't it? One significant surprise, but a lot of folks around here think Hassan is very underrated,
It's worth noting that Clay's defensive metrics have Bradley as overrated (he was +5, regressed to +3) and Cecchini as underrated (+9, regressed to +5). Yes, I know that no scout in the world thinks that Cecchini is a better defender than Bradley, but the entire goal of this exercise was to create a ranking entirely from objective data (in this case the percentage of balls hit near a fielder that were turned into outs, as tweaked by one of the sharpest saber guys around). I think it's fair to say that if we can produce a ranking like the above without reference to a single scouting report, from nothing more than miLB play-by-play data, then actual player performance is pretty damn meaningful, as long as it's given expert interpretation.
Except I lied. Here is is the actual leader board:
.302 Bogaerts .290 Cecchini .286 Vazquez .285 Bradley .281 Betts .272 Swihart .272 Hassan .261 Marrero .261 Rijo
That should convince you that Christian Vazquez's minor league performance, objectively measured and regarded, has been massively better than people realize.
Is he actually a better prospect than Swihart? Of course not. Blake Swihart has gone .246, .270 his two years at the plate (adjusted), and my algorithm says that's .261. A lot of scouts, and most folks here, see that not as random variation around a mean, but as real progression (remember that these numbers are all relative to age and level). Swihart going .246, .270 in his first two seasons suggest he might be headed for .294. If he does that next year, and has the same defensive ranking, he'll be at .292. All he has to do to catch Vazquez is .281, much more modest improvement.
Vazquez has gone .282, .251, .274, which yields .268. So Davenport's system says he'll be a slightly better than average hitting catcher (.265 is average), maybe a tick below average for a starter. You combine that with plus-plus defense and you've got a first-division starter, not an impactful bench player. He's not quite on a par with Betts and Bradley as a prospect because he's probably not really going to be a +18 defender (regressed from +28), but I certainly think that if you are dividing our position prospects into two groups, he's the last man in the prime group, not the first man in the second tier.
Here, by the way, is the defensive leader board, regressed. Again, this resembles scouting reports sufficiently to be worth paying attention to.
+18 Vazquez +14 Swihart +11 Marrero +10 Aneudis ".. guy growing up" Peralta +10 Rijo +9 Margot +8 Raymel Flores +7 Lin +7 Shaw +7 Jayson Hernandez
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Dec 7, 2013 15:47:05 GMT -5
Uh, wut? Is Vazquez .286 or .268? you say both. Quite possible I'm missing something. (Thanks, jmei) And as for Davenport Peak Projections... this sonsofsamhorn.net/topic/23502-fun-with-davenport-peak-translations/ (By the way, a Google search for Davenport Peak Projections literally turns up nothing but your SOSH posts, Eric. Completely tangential and I'm not saying it means anything, but it's interesting.) Beyond the inherent problems with those, I want nothing to do with projections based off of stats from two years ago. Even the subject here, Vazquez, is completely different than he was two years ago as a hitter. Dude hit 18 home runs and slugged .505. That's barely even an afterthought in his projection now. On the other hand, his major improvement this year was cutting down on the K's and generally having a better approach at the plate, to the degree he eventually started hitting out of the 2 hole for Portland. It's an interesting project for conversation, but I just don't see any predictive value necessarily, if that's the implication. If the point is that what he has done at the plate in the minors is a bit underappreciated, I think I can get on board with that. ----- Also, solid pun on Peralta. I might prefer "... was a bad idea," but either way.
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Post by jmei on Dec 7, 2013 15:58:38 GMT -5
.286 includes his defense, .268 is his offense only.
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Post by jdb on Dec 7, 2013 16:15:16 GMT -5
I just think its Swihart and his ceiling. Hopefully he comes into spring training with an extra 10 lbs of muscle.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Dec 7, 2013 16:25:21 GMT -5
Beyond the inherent problems with those, I want nothing to do with projections based off of stats from two years ago. Even the subject here, Vazquez, is completely different than he was two years ago as a hitter. Dude hit 18 home runs and slugged .505. That's barely even an afterthought in his projection now. On the other hand, his major improvement this year was cutting down on the K's and generally having a better approach at the plate, to the degree he eventually started hitting out of the 2 hole for Portland. It's an interesting project for conversation, but I just don't see any predictive value necessarily, if that's the implication. If the point is that what he has done at the plate in the minors is a bit underappreciated, I think I can get on board with that. Point 1: there are many cases where the numbers from two years are meaningful. One size fits all, and,yeah, that has gross limitations. That's why the numbers are a starting point. Point 2: Not meant to be predictive and not meant to replace any of our conventional assessment methods. It is meant to supplement them, and as you have currectly surmised, its chief usefulness is to point out guys whose objective performance has been very different from their present perception. In this case, for instance, they might serve as a reminder that for a plus to plus-plus defensive catcher to not be able to start in MLB, he'd have to be an awful hitter, and not even his scouting reports say that about Vazquez -- which means his 4 projection, 5 upside on the main page is off by 1. (And the Sox would never have signed a catcher for just one year if they didn't think Vazquez could start, and at age 24 to boot.)
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Post by rjp313jr on Dec 7, 2013 18:10:52 GMT -5
Is it fair to call Vasques a "plus to plus-plus defensive catcher?" Doesn't he have big issues blocking balls in the dirt? Isn't that particular problem a big weakness for a defensive catcher?
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Dec 8, 2013 0:30:35 GMT -5
Will admit that the Sox definitely have something of "reward" versus "most deserving" angle with their internal awards. Fair point on Iglesias. However, I'd say that "most improved" is the wrong way to describe it. Going back, Bradley-Vazquez-Lin-Dent-Lin-Ellsbury-Ellsbury, since they started giving it, were all outstanding defensive players in the minors. As for the CS%, there are only 8 teams, so I went through them all. Leaderboard for those with at least 50 games: Swihart (BOS), 101 G 42%Leonida (WAS), 52 G, 42% Nieto (WAS), 86 G, 33% Morin (KC), 88 G, 32% Cantwell (TEX), 66 G, 31% McGill (ATL), 52 G, 30% Brownstein (ATL), 51 G, 30% De San Miguel (BAL), 50 G, 30% Wolters (CLE), 58 G, 28% Smith (CWS), 92 G, 25% Deglan (TEX), 71 G, 21% So yeah, relative to the league, he was great. That said, it could just be a down year for the league too. A spot check on 2012 shows that most of the teams had guys in the mid 30s. However, ENORMOUS CAVEAT: At the lower levels of the minors, a lot of basestealing is stealing on the pitcher. It is quite possible that a lot of this is organizational philosophy with what they have pitchers doing at the level. Thus, all I'd read into these numbers is that Swihart had a very good year throwing out baserunners, not that Swihart was lightyears ahead of every other primary catcher in the league at throwing out baserunners. BTW, I wouldn't necessarily read anything into the games played - quite possible that guys got promoted, etc.
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Dec 8, 2013 0:42:41 GMT -5
Agreed on the award concept. I suppose you could say that all the winners were already good but got better. I do think it is a pat on the back for those that put forth efforts that catch management's eye.
I was mostly trying to point out that despite the title, it shouldn't be interpreted as Swihart is the best defensive position player in our system.
The rest is fair enough and agree that cs% in the lower minors is a dubious stat to try to determine. Also, even if he was light years ahead of the league, with only an 8 team sample size, it could easily be that the rest of the league is poor and he's average. My general thought here is that he's likely to be plus in that category but that Vazquez is plus-plus. Vazquez' sub 1.70 POP time this past spring is the only sub 1.7 POP time that I know I have seen. I probably saw some but didn't know the pop time. I had never heard of a lower pop time, anyplace.
ADD: I must have been bored at the time because the stop watch reports said 1.68 so I went through six years of Minor League Baseball Analysts who have several POP times. IIRC I only found two POP times below 1.80 and those were something like 1.78 and 1.79. To put that into perspective, and somewhat speculating, I would guess that his average POP time is in the vicinity of a quarter of a second faster than catchers like Tek, Martinez, Lavarnway, Salty. Now picture how much ground Jacoby can cover in a quarter of a second.
ADD2: CS% is a dubious stat at any level. As you progress up the ladder, the baserunners that attempt to steal becomes more select because slower runners don't attempt steals against top armed catchers. At minimum, a combination of CS% and stolen bases attempted needs to be used.
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Dec 8, 2013 3:48:47 GMT -5
eric
Call me curious. Do you do the major league players as well as the minor league players ? Do you do other teams as well as The Red Sox ?
I am pretty sure that the thought of developing a predictive system has at least crossed your mind and I am also guessing that Shandler's system would be the target since you specify no scouting input which is something the Saber systems also don't do (pecotas, zips, tangos, James, et al). It's only Shandler's system that is scouting based.
I am also curious if you caught the Saber Society's round table discussion about 8 years ago on Shandler? That had to be the low point in their history. LOL, the active participants (The tango guy, Dan Zips and the originator of the PECOTAS) in that roundtable should get their mother's permission to do a road trip to St. Louis. Maybe Deric Mckamey will let them fondle his World Series Champion ring.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Dec 8, 2013 7:33:17 GMT -5
eric Call me curious. Do you do the major league players as well as the minor league players ? Do you do other teams as well as The Red Sox ? I am pretty sure that the thought of developing a predictive system has at least crossed your mind and I am also guessing that Shandler's system would be the target since you specify no scouting input which is something the Saber systems also don't do (pecotas, zips, tangos, James, et al). It's only Shandler's system that is scouting based. I am also curious if you caught the Saber Society's round table discussion about 8 years ago on Shandler? That had to be the low point in their history. LOL, the active participants (The tango guy, Dan Zips and the originator of the PECOTAS) in that roundtable should get their mother's permission to do a road trip to St. Louis. Maybe Deric Mckamey will let them fondle his World Series Champion ring. One year I grabbed all of Clay Davenport's data for minor leaguers and did a similar crunching. I'd love to do that each year, but don't have the time. I've never bothered to do anything systematic with major leaguers because there are so many projection systems to look at. I do have many random spreadsheets compiling a given year's projections for a specific position, i.e., one the Sox were looking to fill. I've certainly given a lot of thought about creating my own projection system. I have a whole bunch of private metrics, some of which I've introduced here, like the challenge / pitch-around splits, and splits by batting order position, but there are a whole bunch of others that I've merely conceived of and haven't even calculated yet! It's my suspicion that some of these metrics are informative of career paths, and could really help with player projection. If somebody wanted to pay me an appropriate sum of money, for what would be a lot of fascinating work, I'm fairly certain I could come up with the world's best projection system.* But I have way more important stuff to attend to. I didn't even know that Shandler's projections had a scouting input; all I know about them is that he thinks second-half splits are meaningful, which is why he's going to clean everyone's clock on Ellsbury projections. I've never heard about that SABR panel; it sounds legendary. My blog has two long posts on Ellsbury, including the full text of two e-mails I sent the Sox about him and his power potential (in 2009!), and gives a flavor of what else is on my mind these days. *I said this knowing full well it would elicit snorts of derision from folks who don't know me or my background, but in terms of expressions of intellectual confidence from me, that's mild. I once read in Scientific American that consciousness was far and away the biggest puzzle in the history of science; my reaction was "I bet I could figure it out." And it appears as if I have (which also meant proving the existence of free will, the biggest problem in philosophy). So there! Finishing the book on consciousness and free will is my biggest priority, which of course explains why I'm typing this now.
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Dec 8, 2013 8:49:26 GMT -5
LOL, left-right thinker. Good on ya, don't let the critics get you down.
I once had an email conversation with McKamey about Beseball HQ in general and their approach. What they basically do is examine the scouting and examine the previous stats, when there's a conflict they dig deeper. On his projections, he runs them then tweeks them according to scouting. If the previous results didn't mach the scouting, the tweeking is more extreme.
I am pretty sure that McKamey is missed because of his input. He was not only an analyst but a grad of MLB scouting school. I am sure you realize that none of these analysts can possibly see every player so, based on the thoroughness of his scouting summaries, he must have had a lot of friends.
It's really rather humorous because Shandler's baby is a Fantasy magazine. I can see the Saber guys picking up a copy and hiding it in a brown paper bag.
The roundtable was actually an invite to Shandler to come discus his system because he was winning every year according to their own analysis but I think he pretty much knew he'd be walking into a 200-1 ambush so he never showed up. After that, they pretty much got quiet except the three I mentioned. I don't remember which said which but here's the gist of their embarrassing input.
1. We shouldn't give it much credence because he tweeks his data which is unsound. 2. He wins but the winning percentage is small. (It wasn't) 3. He's been lucky (That one cracked me up the most since there were several years of results and therefore thousands of data points, which made me wonder if that guy even had a high school stats class.
The following year, the society stopped running (at least publicly) the comparisons and I haven't seen one since.
I mainly recall all of this because I was a huge fan of the work of McKamey and always found his scouting reports and grades to prove out over time. I am pretty sure the Cardinals are big fans as well. A World Series ring is quite the compliment.
ADD: My opinion but they seem to be heavier on the skills and less heavy on the tools than most.
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Post by joshv02 on Dec 8, 2013 9:11:52 GMT -5
.286 includes his defense, .268 is his offense only. using minor league pbp data ... For a catcher. No problems there!
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Dec 8, 2013 9:27:35 GMT -5
.286 includes his defense, .268 is his offense only. using minor league pbp data ... For a catcher. No problems there! It's based on the hardest possible data: SB, CS, PB, WP, and it's been adjusted for confounding variables and context by one of the best sabermetricians on the planet. It absolutely represents his actual performance relative to his minor league peers, which is all I claimed to be measuring, indeed, all I wanted to measure.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Dec 8, 2013 9:35:06 GMT -5
The roundtable was actually an invite to Shandler to come discus his system because he was winning every year according to their own analysis but I think he pretty much knew he'd be walking into a 200-1 ambush so he never showed up. After that, they pretty much got quiet except the three I mentioned. I don't remember which said which but here's the gist of their embarrassing input. 1. We shouldn't give it much credence because he tweeks his data which is unsound. 2. He wins but the winning percentage is small. (It wasn't) 3. He's been lucky (That one cracked me up the most since there were several years of results and therefore thousands of data points, which made me wonder if that guy even had a high school stats class. Thanks for the great recap! If I'd been on the panel my comments would have been: 1) He's not doing what we're doing. He's starting with an essentially dumb system, like ours, and then he's adding human intelligence. Of course he's going to kick our butts. But you're comparing eggs and apples here. 2) What we want and need to do is track all the sorts of changes that scouting intelligence can make to such a set of dumb-system projections, and try to codify them into an expert system. Our Clay Buchholz projection for this year didn't know he had been recovering from back surgery the previous year, and that therefore his slow start was not random variation. Stuff like that can be coded in and made part of the algorithm. So we would turn the mathematical model into a more robust expert system.
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Dec 8, 2013 22:47:39 GMT -5
Just for the fun of it I googled 1.6 POP times and read most of the results. This one seemed the most informative but I need to cut n paste from slides. It is a wiki question/answer. Q. I've heard Steve Yeager had the best pop-to-pop time in baseball...An average of 1.65, which is pretty astronomical. That takes a mix of amazingly quick footwork, a real cannon of an arm, and accuracy--to save time on the tag. Guys like Carlton Fisk and Ivan Rodriguez (both nicknamed "Pudge" by the way), had/have averages of around 1.80 to 1.85 throughout their careers. The major league average is around 2.0 to 2.1, so that gives an idea of how quickly Yeager was able to get in down there. A. Incorrect. Sorry, but mlb average is 1.85 to 1.95. Pudge Rodriguez was consistently in the 1.7s, and may of touched in the 1.6s, but I'm pretty sure Steve Yeager never had an average of 1.65. He may of touched 1.65 a few times, but as to the best average pop times, no one beats Ivan Rodriguez and Johnny Bench. wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_fastest_pop_to_pop_time_in_baseball?#slide1
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Dec 9, 2013 0:18:33 GMT -5
Perspective on the Vazquez or Swihart question.
Please don't jump all over me, I am not making any predictions here, just trying to make a point and use very vague comps with people everyone is familiar with.
If you had two catchers, one who projected to be 85% of Pudge Rodriguez and one who projected to be 85% of Johnny Bench, I'm pretty sure the more Bench-like player would be the every day starter.
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Post by zil on Dec 9, 2013 9:03:03 GMT -5
Perspective on the Vazquez or Swihart question. Please don't jump all over me, I am not making any predictions here, just trying to make a point and use very vague comps with people everyone is familiar with. If you had two catchers, one who projected to be 85% of Pudge Rodriguez and one who projected to be 85% of Johnny Bench, I'm pretty sure the more Bench-like player would be the every day starter. I'm pro Swihart, but 85% of Bench or Rodriguez is still easily a Hall of Fame catcher. That's an absurd standard for either guy to meet. I'd be thrilled if either one of Swihart or Vazquez turns out to be as productive as Varitek.
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Dec 9, 2013 9:05:26 GMT -5
I knew there would be at least one poster with reading comprehension problems.
Johnny Bench career .267/.342/.476/.817 Pudge Rodriguez career .296/.334/.464/.798
x 85%
Bench .226/.290/.404/.694 Pudge .252/.283/.394/.677
Warm up the HOF ballots
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Dec 9, 2013 9:20:03 GMT -5
I knew there would be at least one poster with reading comprehension problems I think they're teaching kids to read every other paragraph now, aren't they?
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