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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Jan 15, 2016 17:25:18 GMT -5
Hope we all realize that there are enough question marks with this team to make all the projections prone to both overshoot and undershoot. That's because the team has really transitioned to a younger core, with lots of questions about their older players and real uncertainty about the pitchers as well. Here are just some of those. See what you can do with these questions to "tighten up" the projections: - Is Uehara OK now?
- Can Bogaerts start to re-introduce power into the mix?
- Will Betts continue to develop his hitting skills, and to show well in the outfield?
- Which Jackie Bradley will show up (offensively)?
- Was that just a tired arm on Tazawa last year?
- Will Ramirez make a move back up towards career norms?
- Will Sandoval make a move back up towards career norms?
- Can Ortiz continue to perform and at what level?
- Will Pedroia get hurt again?
- Can Ramirez stay healthy?
- How many innings can Buchholz pitch?
- Was that the real Joe Kelly at the end of last season?
- Was that the real Rick Porcello at the end of last season?
- What does Roenis Elias bring to the team?
Those are just a few I came up with off the top of my head. I'm sure all of you can think of a few more. Gammons casually mentioned in a recent BA column that Brian Bannister deserved credit for Porcello's rebound. That's very interesting, because Bannister was hired in January, as a pro scout and analyst, and was promoted to the newly created position of Director of Pitching Analysis and Development on September 10th, which was after Porcello's first three rebound starts and after Kelly had run off 7 great starts. Kelly was using a dramatic new pitch mix, and Porcello had gone back to his old approach after the new one, with more 4-seamers than 2-seamers, had been terrible. It's easy to imagine that they didn't start taking Bannister's advice for the MLB team until later in the season, and that his obvious success led to the creation of the new job. The potential impact of elite pitching analysis on the staff is something few have considered this winter. But I think it could be very big. |
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nomar
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Post by nomar on Jan 16, 2016 13:39:19 GMT -5
I would be much more convinced Kelly's stretch was real if his pitch mix actually improved his peripherals at all.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Jan 17, 2016 1:13:31 GMT -5
I would be much more convinced Kelly's stretch was real if his pitch mix actually improved his peripherals at all. He had a 4.41 SIERA before the sabbatical and 4.00 afterwards. His previous three years (league-adjusted): 4.31, 4.36, 4.36. If that's entirely for real, it's the difference between ranking 100th among 150 MLB starters and ranking 60th. Which is the difference between being a weak #4 and an average #3. Wade Miley was 4.24 last year. I don't think it's expecting too much of Kelly to hope that half of the improvement was real, and that he therefore represents a slight upgrade. |
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nomar
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Post by nomar on Jan 19, 2016 17:59:26 GMT -5
I would be much more convinced Kelly's stretch was real if his pitch mix actually improved his peripherals at all. He had a 4.41 SIERA before the sabbatical and 4.00 afterwards. His previous three years (league-adjusted): 4.31, 4.36, 4.36. If that's entirely for real, it's the difference between ranking 100th among 150 MLB starters and ranking 60th. Which is the difference between being a weak #4 and an average #3. Wade Miley was 4.24 last year. I don't think it's expecting too much of Kelly to hope that half of the improvement was real, and that he therefore represents a slight upgrade. Still, K%, BB%, and xFIP/FIP don't differ too much at all. I like SIERA, but that isn't enough to make me confident in Kelly personally. |
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Post by ray88h66 on Jan 20, 2016 18:29:08 GMT -5
Not sure where to post this or if it's been posted already.
Big Papi is one of 4 guys to post 140 or higher ops at 39 years of age. The others are Bonds, Williams , and Mays.
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Post by geostorm on Feb 6, 2016 18:25:44 GMT -5
Hope we all realize that there are enough question marks with this team to make all the projections prone to both overshoot and undershoot. That's because the team has really transitioned to a younger core, with lots of questions about their older players and real uncertainty about the pitchers as well. Here are just some of those. See what you can do with these questions to "tighten up" the projections: - Is Uehara OK now?
- Can Bogaerts start to re-introduce power into the mix?
- Will Betts continue to develop his hitting skills, and to show well in the outfield?
- Which Jackie Bradley will show up (offensively)?
- Was that just a tired arm on Tazawa last year?
- Will Ramirez make a move back up towards career norms?
- Will Sandoval make a move back up towards career norms?
- Can Ortiz continue to perform and at what level?
- Will Pedroia get hurt again?
- Can Ramirez stay healthy?
- How many innings can Buchholz pitch?
- Was that the real Joe Kelly at the end of last season?
- Was that the real Rick Porcello at the end of last season?
- What does Roenis Elias bring to the team?
Those are just a few I came up with off the top of my head. I'm sure all of you can think of a few more. Gammons casually mentioned in a recent BA column that Brian Bannister deserved credit for Porcello's rebound. That's very interesting, because Bannister was hired in January, as a pro scout and analyst, and was promoted to the newly created position of Director of Pitching Analysis and Development on September 10th, which was after Porcello's first three rebound starts and after Kelly had run off 7 great starts. Kelly was using a dramatic new pitch mix, and Porcello had gone back to his old approach after the new one, with more 4-seamers than 2-seamers, had been terrible. It's easy to imagine that they didn't start taking Bannister's advice for the MLB team until later in the season, and that his obvious success led to the creation of the new job. The potential impact of elite pitching analysis on the staff is something few have considered this winter. But I think it could be very big. On the evolution of Porcello, there's this from Jeff Sullivan, over at fangraphs - "As Rick Porcello closed out 2015, he was throwing a version of Adam Wainwright’s curveball. The pitch is very similar by its basic characteristics, and it’s also very similar based on the difference between itself and the fastball. I’d be shocked if Porcello had Wainwright specifically in mind, because that would be weird, but I presume Porcello has been doing whatever this is on purpose. Where he’s gotten to is pretty fun.
Wainwright’s a righty who stands 6’7. Porcello’s a righty who stands a comparable 6’5, and Wainwright had his ace breakout at 27. Porcello just turned 27 at the end of December. Wainwright’s emergence was fueled by breaking balls, and now Porcello is in an interesting place, where everyone’s thinking about his sinker, but the curveball might be a real weapon. There are similarities. There are very basic similarities, and there are very specific similarities.
Granted, there are similarities between lots of great players and lots of inferior players. The limitation of the pitch-comp system is it says nothing about consistency, and I can’t imagine Porcello yet trusts his curve the way that Wainwright has trusted his. One still has to assume Wainwright commands the pitch better, and then there’s also the matter of Wainwright having the cutter, which is better than Porcello’s. The effectiveness of a pitch is in part about the effectiveness of the other pitches, so Porcello still has a lot of proving to do. The point isn’t that Rick Porcello turned into Adam Wainwright when nobody noticed.
The point is simply that Rick Porcello’s curveball has evolved into something extremely similar to Adam Wainwright’s curveball. You can choose how much to make of that. If nothing else, it’s something to watch for."
A link to the complete analysis - www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-wainwrightization-of-rick-porcello/ |
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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 Feb 10, 2016 10:06:38 GMT -5
From the Swihart thread, but belonging here ... I'm less sanguine about Panda and Hanley rebounding. Speier had a good piece a little while back on guys who had precipitous, cratering-value years, and the number who recovered substantially was frighteningly small. It was still a minority, I think, that even remained useful. I really, really hope they can both be even 1-WAR players, because that immediately adds about 5 wins...but I'll believe it when I see it. Do you have a link to that piece? I did the same study for the Sox for Mike Lowell (after we acquired him, when we were trying to flip him so that Youkilis could go back to 3B; I wanted to get Carlos Pena for 1B) and reached a much rosier conclusion. Clearly the difference is the degree of the decline, but I would like to see what his methodology was. |
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Post by jmei on Feb 10, 2016 10:31:39 GMT -5
It was in one of his email newsletters, so I can't link it, but here's his analysis:
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nomar
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Posts: 10,825
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Post by nomar on Feb 10, 2016 10:54:18 GMT -5
A 14 player sample tells me just about nothing.
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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 Feb 10, 2016 11:27:58 GMT -5
A 14 player sample tells me just about nothing. I'm going to guess that the number of those 14 players who lost 2.0 WAR of defensive value because they were moved to an easier position is 0. If Hanley had stayed at SS, and matched his worst year there since he learned to play the position there at age 24, he would not only have fallen short of Speier's -1.0 WAR criterion, he would have been above replacement level. |
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nomar
Veteran
Posts: 10,825
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Post by nomar on Feb 10, 2016 12:40:29 GMT -5
A 14 player sample tells me just about nothing. I'm going to guess that the number of those 14 players who lost 2.0 WAR of defensive value because they were moved to an easier position is 0. If Hanley had stayed at SS, and matched his worst year there since he learned to play the position there at age 24, he would not only have fallen short of Speier's -1.0 WAR criterion, he would have been above replacement level. Yeah I had the same thought in regards to the defensive value drops. Hanley's offensive numbers ended up ugly too but he was playing hurt. |
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Post by telson13 on Feb 10, 2016 16:07:40 GMT -5
A 14 player sample tells me just about nothing. I'm going to guess that the number of those 14 players who lost 2.0 WAR of defensive value because they were moved to an easier position is 0. If Hanley had stayed at SS, and matched his worst year there since he learned to play the position there at age 24, he would not only have fallen short of Speier's -1.0 WAR criterion, he would have been above replacement level. That was the major bright spot for me. Both had brutal defensive performances. |
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Feb 10, 2016 17:37:31 GMT -5
With all due respect to Speier, there's really no point to his analysis. We already have good projection systems. They're going to tell us more than manually comparing a handful of players on WAR alone.
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