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Swihart vs. Vazquez vs. Hanigan
ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Feb 18, 2016 21:21:37 GMT -5
We don't want an average catcher though, at least not on average. It's fine if one of these younger guys is average in 2016, and we could set that as a floor, but we're hoping for a catcher that could help us win the WS, and for that you need more than average. Well, Vazquez can be reasonably projected to be the second best catcher in baseball. That good enough? FIFY. It doesn't work that way. It's like saying you're like to marry a rich woman, but only if she has money in stocks AND bonds.
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Feb 19, 2016 4:15:46 GMT -5
I'm not sure I feel totally comfortable with hard declarations of future value based on pitch-framing right now. To me, some of the best evidence for pitch-framing as a real skill is that the correlations were always really robust. Catchers who were good at it tended to remain good at it, and ones who were bad remained bad. But there's some evidence that is less true in the last couple of years, especially last year. www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-beginning-of-the-end-for-pitch-framing/Seems too early to make any declarative statements to the contrary, also, but it at least gives me a little pause. There's also a less than zero chance that we'll have automated pitch calling at some point in the future. The new commish seems more liberal than the last. That would pretty much negate the value of pitch framing and take out the human error we're accustomed to. If that happens, Swihart's future value relative to Vazquez' future value skyrockets.
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Post by Oregon Norm on Feb 19, 2016 9:34:47 GMT -5
I think you mean greater than zero chance. That may happen, but it will probably be over the dead body of the Umpires Association, so I'd hesitate to say it will be in my lifetime. And while framing has gotten a lot of the buzz with the availability of Pitch/fx data, there's a bit more to catching than that.
That rocket is going to have to have a lot of fuel to reach the catching stratosphere where Vazquez spends most of his time. Swihart is such a good athlete that I believe he'll improve a lot as time passes. But that won't be tomorrow either.
I do think the umpires will be on the lookout for framing bias, and they have that Pitch/fx data also. But that give and take is only one part of a much larger story.
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Feb 19, 2016 11:40:03 GMT -5
LOL, meant non-zero chance. I don't disagree that Vazquez is the superior catcher in pretty much every facet of defense but the single most important difference in terms of run prevention is pitch framing and significantly so. Let's not forget that Swihart was brought up to the majors and thrust into the starting role a full year before expected. He'll be a decent defensive catcher just as I think Vazquez will be a decent offensive catcher. I do think though that the scales get tipped significantly if pitch framing is eliminated.
The Umpires Union isn't very strong and now that we have the ability to plot pitches, we also have the ability to statistically evaluate individual umpires and their comparative ball/strike calling acumen. That might not be so pretty for the umps.
We also have other factors which involve how the game is evolving. Strikeouts are up, bullpen significance is at an all time high (we had less than 1 pitcher per team reach 200 innings last year and that is spiraling down). The last time we had pitching take a dominant position, we lowered the mound, a significantly bigger step than automated pitch calling. Shot clocks, pitch f/x, field f/x, the game is changing.
Sorry to hear that you think you life expectancy is so short but hang in there guy.
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Post by sox fan in nc on Feb 19, 2016 14:00:37 GMT -5
I think it's the consensus CV will start the year in AAA. If Swihart struggles out of the gate, I can see him being sent down to finish his seasoning in AAA. If they both struggle out of the gate, I can still see the Sox bringing up CV & sending Blake down. IOW Blake would have to hit like he did in the 2nd half of last year for him to stay with Boston.
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Post by Oregon Norm on Feb 19, 2016 14:40:08 GMT -5
LOL, meant non-zero chance. I don't disagree that Vazquez is the superior catcher in pretty much every facet of defense but the single most important difference in terms of run prevention is pitch framing and significantly so. Let's not forget that Swihart was brought up to the majors and thrust into the starting role a full year before expected. He'll be a decent defensive catcher just as I think Vazquez will be a decent offensive catcher. I do think though that the scales get tipped significantly if pitch framing is eliminated. The Umpires Union isn't very strong and now that we have the ability to plot pitches, we also have the ability to statistically evaluate individual umpires and their comparative ball/strike calling acumen. That might not be so pretty for the umps. We also have other factors which involve how the game is evolving. Strikeouts are up, bullpen significance is at an all time high (we had less than 1 pitcher per team reach 200 innings last year and that is spiraling down). The last time we had pitching take a dominant position, we lowered the mound, a significantly bigger step than automated pitch calling. Shot clocks, pitch f/x, field f/x, the game is changing. Sorry to hear that you think you life expectancy is so short but hang in there guy. We can agree to disagree, then. I don't believe that Swihart will approach Vazquez' overall defensive value anymore than Lucroy has approached Yadier Molina's defensive value, and I do think the difference is significant. I also think you over-estimate the glacial pace of change in MLB, Manfred aside. He found himself back-tracking quickly for his recent statements, as innocuous as they were, about introducing the DH to the National League. We only have to look at how long it took to get significant change in HoF voting eligibility, to the detriment of Bobby Grich, Dwight Evans, and lots of others. And while I may outlive you, I won't outlive the Umpires Union. The day MLB decides that plate umpires are obsolete, is the day they man the barricades, with a lot of support from the old-line media. It won't come anytime soon. I think you're right, they will try to educate the umpires about pitch framing, and the framers. That's a very fine line. If they've been calling strikes, it's because they believe that's what they are seeing. Trying to finesse that, say for certain catchers, may very well cause them to call balls that really are strikes. That will lead to its own fierce brand of criticism. Either way, I see catchers who've spent a long time learning how to quiet themselves behind the plate and to move with the pitch still having a significant role to play.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Feb 19, 2016 17:05:14 GMT -5
I think it's the consensus CV will start the year in AAA. If Swihart struggles out of the gate, I can see him being sent down to finish his seasoning in AAA. If they both struggle out of the gate, I can still see the Sox bringing up CV & sending Blake down. IOW Blake would have to hit like he did in the 2nd half of last year for him to stay with Boston. The consensus is based on what the Sox are saying. And what they have to say is that they don't expect CV to be ready. Saying they expect him to be ready is a perfect prescription for asking him to do more than he he ought to. Think it through. However, CV is adamant that he will be ready, and early returns are that it looks like he may well be. Meanwhile, the Sox have the same data that we do. That data says that CV is easily the best defensive catcher in baseball when framing is included (even heavily regressed), and almost certainly the best defensive player in all of MLB, and such a good defender that he is an impact player even with a subpar bat for his position. How good a defender is CV? When you talk about dominance on one side of the ball in MLB today, there are only two things in the discussion: Mike Trout's offense and Christian Vazquez's defense. Here are the largest gaps between the best and second-best projected oWAR or dWAR at their position, according to Steamer projections per 600 PA, with my adding framing, properly regressed, to catcher defense: 2.4 Mike Trout's CF offense 1.8 Christian's Vazquez's C defense1.1 Andrelton Simmons' SS defense 1.0 Bryce Harper's RF offense 0.8 Kevin Kiermaier's CF defense 0.7 Kris Bryant's 3B offense Nobody else > 0.5 Now, that Vazquez projection is the one where he is crazily ranked as the 17th best defensive catcher (8th best starter) without framing! When you make the reasonable adjustment I did above, his gap (over Yasmani Grandal) goes to 2.3 wins. And that's in 125 games rather than Trout's 150. Which is actually the more dominant skill set is open to debate. The gap between CV's defense and the next best is like the gap between Trout's offense and McCutchen's. It's in its own class. Swihart is just a guy who projects to be below average this year, excellent in the long run, but probably never as good as CV is right now. CV will be the starting catcher from the moment he is capable of doing it, which would appear to be either Opening day or sometimes later in April. The only way that doesn't happen is if his throwing proves to be significantly impaired from the surgery.
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Post by ray88h66 on Feb 19, 2016 19:40:26 GMT -5
Can anyone name a catcher who was better or even the same player after T. J. surgery? I know the sample size is tiny in MLB, but it's growing larger in College and high school ball. I mentioned it before and got no response, my nephew plays college ball and had the surgery 3 years ago. He's talked to Wieters and several others who had the surgery, The leg weakness alone from the harvested ligament leg is rarely talked about. For those so confident in C.V. please give other examples.
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Post by benogliviesbrother on Feb 20, 2016 14:10:57 GMT -5
… In fact, in the post-season, he'll have more value than a player with the opposite profile.) Look at the Orioles with Mark Belanger. Why?
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Feb 20, 2016 18:14:43 GMT -5
I'm going to wait and see what a full season of MLB CV's defense looks like before I extrapolate his 2014 numbers over a full season and accept them as fact. Highly relevant: www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-beginning-of-the-end-for-pitch-framing/ TL;DR version - Framing ain't what it used to be. Everyone is getting good at framing, reducing the marginal value of the best framers, plus umps have become aware of framing and they don't want to be made fools of.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Feb 20, 2016 20:00:44 GMT -5
… In fact, in the post-season, he'll have more value than a player with the opposite profile.) Look at the Orioles with Mark Belanger. Why? If you try to predict post-season results by regular-season RS and RA, you find that the vast majority of upsets were by teams with great run prevention. In fact, in the study I did about fifteen years ago, it was hard to find any statistical correlation between regular-season offense and post-season success. That's how dominant run prevention is in the playoffs, and it's where the ""good pitching beats good hitting" saying comes from. It's popular because it's true. Why is it true? Because great pitchers level the field among hitters. You may remember Enqique Wilson owning Pedro; that wasn't completely a fluke. Against an average or below-average pitcher, in general, the great hitters are destroying the ball and the lousy ones are still struggling, because those pitchers have to get someone out, or they wouldn't have a job. The better the pitcher, in general, the less spread you see in performance between the best and worst hitters. One of the reasons Jeter hit as well during the post-season as the regular (in a huge sample size) is that he was an exception to this rule. And one of the reasons we destroyed the Cardinals in '04 was that their starting staff was also an exception, the ugly way; good pitchers who were succeeding the way mediocre ones do, by dominating the crappy hitters while being just average against the best. One of the reasons I never wanted Cueto is that he has that kind of profile. So all things being equal, always take the player whose value is more on the defensive side of the ball. It's still true that just plain being good is the most important goal if you want to win the WS. But the next thing is indeed "pitching and defense."
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Post by ray88h66 on Feb 20, 2016 20:13:50 GMT -5
I'm going to wait and see what a full season of MLB CV's defense looks like before I extrapolate his 2014 numbers over a full season and accept them as fact. Highly relevant: www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-beginning-of-the-end-for-pitch-framing/ TL;DR version - Framing ain't what it used to be. Everyone is getting good at framing, reducing the marginal value of the best framers, plus umps have become aware of framing and they don't want to be made fools of. Umps have always been aware of framing. It's not a new thing. I umped in the 70's and 80's and it was talked about then. The stat guys seem to have picked up on it in recent years. They are late, and probably are over rating it. Sorry fenway, posted before reading the article, it's right on.
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Post by Oregon Norm on Feb 21, 2016 11:54:02 GMT -5
Good find, thanks for the link. This is what will keep umpires calling balls and strikes behind the plate, the learning curve. As I mentioned above, they have access to Pitch F/x data also, and they don't live in a bubble (although they seem to make calls that may feel that way sometimes!).
All that said, catching skill goes beyond pitch framing. The more a player works at it the better they'll likely be. Vazquez is nothing short of fanatical about that work ethic. If the arm is OK, I expect he'll impress with those skills. He has since he came into the system.
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Post by jmei on Feb 21, 2016 14:55:22 GMT -5
If you try to predict post-season results by regular-season RS and RA, you find that the vast majority of upsets were by teams with great run prevention. In fact, in the study I did about fifteen years ago, it was hard to find any statistical correlation between regular-season offense and post-season success. That's how dominant run prevention is in the playoffs, and it's where the ""good pitching beats good hitting" saying comes from. It's popular because it's true. Why is it true? Because great pitchers level the field among hitters. You may remember Enqique Wilson owning Pedro; that wasn't completely a fluke. Against an average or below-average pitcher, in general, the great hitters are destroying the ball and the lousy ones are still struggling, because those pitchers have to get someone out, or they wouldn't have a job. The better the pitcher, in general, the less spread you see in performance between the best and worst hitters. One of the reasons Jeter hit as well during the post-season as the regular (in a huge sample size) is that he was an exception to this rule. And one of the reasons we destroyed the Cardinals in '04 was that their starting staff was also an exception, the ugly way; good pitchers who were succeeding the way mediocre ones do, by dominating the crappy hitters while being just average against the best. One of the reasons I never wanted Cueto is that he has that kind of profile. So all things being equal, always take the player whose value is more on the defensive side of the ball. It's still true that just plain being good is the most important goal if you want to win the WS. But the next thing is indeed "pitching and defense." This runs contrary to a number of "secret sauce" studies that have been done in recent years, almost all of which conclude that there is no style of play that works better in the postseason than it does in the regular season. There was a period of time when pitching and defense did indeed appear to be the secret to playoff success (see, e.g., Nate Silver's initial secret sauce analysis), but upon re-running the analysis to include a bigger sample, most folks have concluded that there's no particular advantage to run prevention-oriented teams.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Feb 21, 2016 16:14:16 GMT -5
If you try to predict post-season results by regular-season RS and RA, you find that the vast majority of upsets were by teams with great run prevention. In fact, in the study I did about fifteen years ago, it was hard to find any statistical correlation between regular-season offense and post-season success. That's how dominant run prevention is in the playoffs, and it's where the ""good pitching beats good hitting" saying comes from. It's popular because it's true. Why is it true? Because great pitchers level the field among hitters. You may remember Enqique Wilson owning Pedro; that wasn't completely a fluke. Against an average or below-average pitcher, in general, the great hitters are destroying the ball and the lousy ones are still struggling, because those pitchers have to get someone out, or they wouldn't have a job. The better the pitcher, in general, the less spread you see in performance between the best and worst hitters. One of the reasons Jeter hit as well during the post-season as the regular (in a huge sample size) is that he was an exception to this rule. And one of the reasons we destroyed the Cardinals in '04 was that their starting staff was also an exception, the ugly way; good pitchers who were succeeding the way mediocre ones do, by dominating the crappy hitters while being just average against the best. One of the reasons I never wanted Cueto is that he has that kind of profile. So all things being equal, always take the player whose value is more on the defensive side of the ball. It's still true that just plain being good is the most important goal if you want to win the WS. But the next thing is indeed "pitching and defense." This runs contrary to a number of "secret sauce" studies that have been done in recent years, almost all of which conclude that there is no style of play that works better in the postseason than it does in the regular season. There was a period of time when pitching and defense did indeed appear to be the secret to playoff success (see, e.g., Nate Silver's initial secret sauce analysis), but upon re-running the analysis to include a bigger sample, most folks have concluded that there's no particular advantage to run prevention-oriented teams. You're either mischaracterizing these studies, or mine got suddenly out of date, or they're overthinking things and missing the forest for the bushes. The historic record of run-prevention teams upsetting better, offensive-oriented teams, but not the other way around, is incontrovertible. I can imagine that being diminished as of late, however. The exception is that super-elite offensive teams had fared best of all, but the last such one in my study was the Big Red Machine. The Sox before the Beckett trade were thinking they might want to go in that direction (at least, I ran the idea by Jed and he liked it. Then he went off and got Beckett unexpectedly). Edit: Oh, and there are certainly players who fare better, because they have a lower dependence on opposition quality. I looked into it some years ago but never did a full study (that was one of 35 things on the table when the Sox laid me off), but Vince Gennaro has looked into it subsequently and found that these "opponent slopes" (as I called them) are indeed real. Build a team of hitters like Jeter and pitchers like Lester (a regular-season #2 but post-season ace because he succeeds by holding great hitters in check while being comparatively ordinary against weak ones) and you will fare better in the post-season than expected. So all the secret sauce studies are finding is that there's no quick and dirty proxy for a team's collective opponent slopes.
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Post by larrycook on Feb 22, 2016 0:45:50 GMT -5
I think it's the consensus CV will start the year in AAA. If Swihart struggles out of the gate, I can see him being sent down to finish his seasoning in AAA. If they both struggle out of the gate, I can still see the Sox bringing up CV & sending Blake down. IOW Blake would have to hit like he did in the 2nd half of last year for him to stay with Boston. While the sox use spring training to evaluate Vazquez, the bottom line is they have to do what's in the best Long term interest of Vazquez and the team. The question that spring training is going to answer is .... How far along in his recovery is Vazquez? The defense is off he charts and should be almost back to pre injury form by the end of spring training. But how can a youngster take a year off and his offense not be affected?
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nomar
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Post by nomar on Feb 22, 2016 10:57:47 GMT -5
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Post by dirtywater43 on Feb 23, 2016 6:57:49 GMT -5
Yeap. This pretty much guarantees that Vasquez will be in Pawtucket to start the year for me. That's scary. Take your time Vasquez. The Sox got your position covered for now.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Feb 23, 2016 9:56:03 GMT -5
Can anyone name a catcher who was better or even the same player after T. J. surgery? I know the sample size is tiny in MLB, but it's growing larger in College and high school ball. I mentioned it before and got no response, my nephew plays college ball and had the surgery 3 years ago. He's talked to Wieters and several others who had the surgery, The leg weakness alone from the harvested ligament leg is rarely talked about. For those so confident in C.V. please give other examples. Matt Wieters is literally the only catcher of significance I can think of who's had Tommy John, so I think the reason nobody is answering you is because there isn't an answer yet, and to imply that because there isn't an example of a catcher who was 'better or even the same player" that this fact holds significance is pretty unfair. No, Vazquez may not be the same player. This is true of literally every player who has Tommy John.
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Post by sox fan in nc on Feb 23, 2016 9:59:24 GMT -5
Yeap. This pretty much guarantees that Vasquez will be in Pawtucket to start the year for me. That's scary. Take your time Vasquez. The Sox got your position covered for now. I'm curious if this fatigue came from him cutting lose a throw to 2nd base or just from bullpen sessions. I hope it's the latter.
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Post by jmei on Feb 23, 2016 10:02:53 GMT -5
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Feb 23, 2016 10:17:08 GMT -5
Nice. I stand by my assertion that this is a sample from which nothing can be derived.
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Post by ancientsoxfogey on Feb 23, 2016 11:30:13 GMT -5
Nice. I stand by my assertion that this is a sample from which nothing can be derived. I agree. And even if it WERE a sample from which a general conclusion about outcomes could be drawn, I still wouldn't want the organization to take steps (e.g., trade Swihard or Hanigan) that don't allow for the fact that general conclusions aside, you'd never know if CV's situation would be an outlier outcome -- specifically, an unfortunate outlier outcome. The Sox have what could be an absolute once-in-a-generation (if even that frequent) possibility to have stupendous coverage at a position of supreme importance. It could be like having Posada and Molina on the same squad, with both players potentially available for the next decade at least. Now a bump has appeared in the road with CV. The talk about trading one or the other of them, or even trading Hanigan for now, is not sensible IMO. The LAST thing I want to have happen is for the Sox to make a decision on this too early and completely botch what could have been an enormous competitive advantage for them over the next decade +, as part of what could potentially be the next great home-grown Sox franchise. I say this for purely selfish reasons. This "emerging generation" of Sox youngsters and the talent closest in the pipeline is most likely the last generational wave of Sox young talent that I will see. If players such as Betts, Bogaerts, CV, Swihart, ER, Moncada, Espinoza, etc. flourish and play full careers, by the time all of their careers are over I will more likely than not have died.
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Post by ray88h66 on Feb 23, 2016 16:57:27 GMT -5
Thank you Chris and Jmei. I hope the folks predicting top of the league numbers for CV are right. But some of them call others out for not backing up their posts. Projections for CV are useless IMO. I hope for the best.
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Post by jodyreidnichols on Feb 23, 2016 20:39:30 GMT -5
I think you mean greater than zero chance. That may happen, but it will probably be over the dead body of the Umpires Association, so I'd hesitate to say it will be in my lifetime. And while framing has gotten a lot of the buzz with the availability of Pitch/fx data, there's a bit more to catching than that. That rocket is going to have to have a lot of fuel to reach the catching stratosphere where Vazquez spends most of his time. Swihart is such a good athlete that I believe he'll improve a lot as time passes. But that won't be tomorrow either. I do think the umpires will be on the lookout for framing bias, and they have that Pitch/fx data also. But that give and take is only one part of a much larger story. Several years ago at work I took on the whole lunch room regarding instant replays. Man resist sudden change even when it is for his own benefit, it's our nature, please see ribbonfarm.com to expand on this and many other insites into human nature. We do not accept sudden change but we do when it is done incrementally. The very fact that baseball was using the Amica strike zone was proof to me that what they were doing was getting the public used to replays. I told about 15 people in a lunch room that major league baseball within 3 to 5 years would use instant replay and I was admonished for it, sure as shit within months baseball was indeed starting to review some plays and I made sure they all knew it to. That said it is surely a matter of time before some system calls balls and strikes otherwise Amica would not be shown for all televised games. It is a transition the kind used for all of us to accept. Umpires would still be required but their job will be easier. I don't understand the debate between Vasquez and Swihart, I've stated it before and I'll state it again that there is far more reasons NOT to trade either of them for at least several seasons. Chances are both players values will increase over the next several seasons. While I like to tell everyone I see the writing on the wall before most other do, I don't see the call of strikes and balls happening for at least a few more years and that will be all the Sox need to maximize the value of both players without losing out on either by making a quick rash decision on one.
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