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Post by manfred on Jul 19, 2021 11:22:56 GMT -5
Because you're ignoring everything else. Randy Johnson was a tall pitcher and he was a HOF. Jacob Webb is also a tall pitcher, ergo, he might be a HOFer. Having a single similarity does not a comp make. Comparing Maddox to every pitcher without top-line velo ignores that Maddox had arguably the best control of any pitcher ever, insane movement, and a keen mind for pitching. "A guy before him did it" fails to account for what needed to have happened for the guy before him to do it. While I agree with this, it kind of makes me wonder what the point of comps is in the first place. Do we gain anything other than misunderstanding by saying "Player A = Player B (but with caveats x, y, and z)"? It seems more useful in very narrow ways. “His slider is like that guy’s slider” can give you a picture of plane, velocity etc. But “x is like y” elides too many variables. If you say “his slider looks like Steve Carlton’s,” that can be true in a limited sense without suggesting he will be like Carlton overall. But it tends to look too much like the latter (“he’s a young Steve Carlton!”).
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Jul 19, 2021 11:37:47 GMT -5
I am on the record as hating comps in a general sense. They only work if both parties to the comparison (the one offering and the one reading) have the same understanding of the player being used as the comp, the same understanding of how the comparison is being offered (exact same stats? same type of player?), and the likelihood of the prospect becoming the player comped (definitely going to be that? Ceiling? likely projection?). I also don't profess to have an encyclopedic enough baseball mind to be able to come up with the best comparison for a given player. Sometimes I think comps make sense (for example, I really like Duran to non-MVP year Ellsbury with a shade more power and a shade less defense), but sometimes I think they are really forced for the sake of making a comp. But even then I kind of hate them because when you say that, for example, Ellsbury is a comp for Duran, it immediately becomes "Duran is going to become Jacoby Ellsbury," which isn't quite the point.
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Post by jaffinator on Jul 19, 2021 11:44:21 GMT -5
At the risk of severely derailing this thread even further, this is a question of the philosophy of language. In many ways, we are functionally unable to communicate with exact precision (or it is considered undesirable to do so). Comparisons allow us to discuss imprecisely and impressionistically.
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Post by bcsox on Jul 19, 2021 12:12:46 GMT -5
maybe I am in a slightly combative mood today, but with regard to the talk of waiting to the offseason to attempt to add velocity to his arsenal, are we going on the assumption that the Phillies coaches and development staff have been AWOL and just sitting on their hands with this kid. I imagine that they have tried different things, and maybe this is all he has. Wouldnt the Phillies have benefitted from having a kid in their system like this who could throw 94-95 instead of 91-92?
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Post by voiceofreason on Jul 19, 2021 12:45:59 GMT -5
maybe I am in a slightly combative mood today, but with regard to the talk of waiting to the offseason to attempt to add velocity to his arsenal, are we going on the assumption that the Phillies coaches and development staff have been AWOL and just sitting on their hands with this kid. I imagine that they have tried different things, and maybe this is all he has. Wouldnt the Phillies have benefitted from having a kid in their system like this who could throw 94-95 instead of 91-92? And it isn't like the Sox have some magical history of developing pitchers right. Maybe there are some examples of that changing lately but that remains to be seen, aka Pivetta. Bottom line is these guys are all just prospects with different odds for success and it is hard to know who is going to all of a sudden click and become good. DeGrom is the best pitcher in baseball and he went from very good to dominant at the age of 30. Twenty four players were taken before Trout, this isn't an exact science.
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Post by foreverred9 on Jul 19, 2021 20:34:50 GMT -5
Comping Maddux because he's a soft-throwing righty is one thing, but it always gets interpreted as player X has hall-of-fame potential and that's why folks push back on the Maddux comp.
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Post by Underwater Johnson on Jul 20, 2021 0:08:16 GMT -5
Comping Maddux because he's a soft-throwing righty is one thing, but it always gets interpreted as player X has hall-of-fame potential and that's why folks push back on the Maddux comp. Maddux was not a "soft-throwing righty." He sat 91-93 in his long prime (I lived in Georgia for most of it and watched probably 90% of his starts), which was not "soft-tossing" in the 1990s. I guess it's easy to forget that not so long ago every bullpen didn't have five guys who touched 98 to go with three starters who sat 95. Smoltz was their "hard-thrower" and he was around 95 as a starter. Maddux had impeccable command and was the most brilliant sequencer we'll likely ever see (best pitcher I've ever seen, with all due respect to Pedro) but his heater was of at least average speed (with mind-boggling movement that he controlled perfectly). His only flaw, really, was that he gave far too few interviews in which he spoke candidly about his craft.
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Post by redsoxfan2 on Jul 20, 2021 7:50:25 GMT -5
So, the Red Sox just got Greg Maddux for CJ Chatham?
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Post by jmei on Jul 20, 2021 8:12:48 GMT -5
So, the Red Sox just got Greg Maddux for CJ Chatham? Greg Maddux didn’t have a plus splitter.
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Post by jimed14 on Jul 20, 2021 8:15:37 GMT -5
So, the Red Sox just got Greg Maddux for CJ Chatham? Either that or a right handed Henry Owens.
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Post by redsox04071318champs on Jul 20, 2021 8:33:33 GMT -5
So, the Red Sox just got Greg Maddux for CJ Chatham? I'd be thrilled with Mike Maddux for CJ Chatham. Greg's brother gave the Sox a good stretch of pitching in the mid 90s. You could see he had his brother's traits but not quite the precision (who did?)
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Jul 20, 2021 8:41:04 GMT -5
Really good pitching coach though.
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Post by jaffinator on Jul 20, 2021 10:59:01 GMT -5
Really good pitching coach though. Elite brain without elite talent is often a good recipe for a coach.
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Post by bcsox on Jul 20, 2021 11:16:47 GMT -5
Any guesses where Santos slots in our system?
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Post by incandenza on Jul 20, 2021 11:20:36 GMT -5
Really good pitching coach though. Elite brain without elite talent is often a good recipe for a coach. My impression has always been that the ideal formula is elite brain + marginal talent. A guy like that had to work on every aspect of the game, tweak his mechanics, make the most of his ability, learn the tendencies of the opposition, and so on, so would have to know the game inside and out. Whereas the most naturally gifted athletes could coast on their talent, relatively speaking.
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on Jul 20, 2021 12:02:14 GMT -5
Elite brain without elite talent is often a good recipe for a coach. My impression has always been that the ideal formula is elite brain + marginal talent. A guy like that had to work on every aspect of the game, tweak his mechanics, make the most of his ability, learn the tendencies of the opposition, and so on, so would have to know the game inside and out. Whereas the most naturally gifted athletes could coast on their talent, relatively speaking. Yeah, this exactly. More often than not elite talents in sports don't make great coaches because it's hard for them to imprint how they succeeded on others. Baseball it's probably a little easier because it's a bit more technical (at least with pitching) but the basketball example I always use is that someone like LeBron wouldn't be a good coach because it'd just be impossible for him to teach others to see the game the way he does. I think that extends roughly to most sports.
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Post by redsoxfan2 on Jul 20, 2021 12:33:26 GMT -5
So, the Red Sox just got Greg Maddux for CJ Chatham? Either that or a right handed Henry Owens. Now there's a name of a guy I got incredibly hyped for that didn't pan out.
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jimoh
Veteran
Posts: 3,980
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Post by jimoh on Jul 20, 2021 13:12:31 GMT -5
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Post by Oregon Norm on Jul 20, 2021 14:04:48 GMT -5
At the risk of severely derailing this thread even further, this is a question of the philosophy of language. In many ways, we are functionally unable to communicate with exact precision (or it is considered undesirable to do so). Comparisons allow us to discuss imprecisely and impressionistically. The greatest strength of language is also its primary weakness: ambiguity. Diplomats couldn't operate otherwise. I ask you to parse the following for its meaning: Shipping sinks.There's also this anecdote from early efforts at language translation. An attempt to squeeze the aphorism "the spirit is strong but the flesh is weak" out of the software which resulted in " the vodka is good but the meat is rotten". So it goes. Context is all important.
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Post by maxwellsdemon on Jul 20, 2021 14:36:26 GMT -5
My fave is "Out of sight, out of mind." "Invisible idiot."
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jimoh
Veteran
Posts: 3,980
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Post by jimoh on Jul 20, 2021 14:44:17 GMT -5
At the risk of severely derailing this thread even further, this is a question of the philosophy of language. In many ways, we are functionally unable to communicate with exact precision (or it is considered undesirable to do so). Comparisons allow us to discuss imprecisely and impressionistically. The greatest strength of language is also its primary weakness: ambiguity. Diplomats couldn't operate otherwise. I ask you to parse the following for its meaning: Shipping sinks.There's also this anecdote from early efforts at language translation. An attempt to squeeze the aphorism "the spirit is strong but the flesh is weak" out of the software which resulted in " the vodka is good but the meat is rotten". So it goes. Context is all important. Visiting relatives can be dangerous.
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