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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Jan 10, 2024 5:12:33 GMT -5
STEAMER has him sixth among all first basemen in wOBA - only Olson, Freeman, Yandy Diaz, Vlad Jr., and Harper are better. Slash is .259/.370/.487, which looks right on, to me. If you look at his numbers, he never really had that one season where he put everything together in the minors either -- until he does, that looks like a totally reasonable projection, whether by computer or human. Projection systems don't generally project breakouts unless it's someone whose stat line showed that they got weirdly unlucky. You've nailed what the algorithm is doing, I'm pretty sure. They need three years of data (weighed 5 - 4- 3) and will convert ml numbers to MLB equivalents and then add in an average improvement given age and level.
Not only did Casas not burn up the minors, he didn't arrive in MLB early.
The unavoidable error here is the assumption that that Casas was trying to achieve the best results--as opposed to trying to learn how to achieve the best results, later. I always felt he was trying to do the latter, e.g., his experimentation with choking up on two strikes. His entire approach -- trying to match his bat angle to the ball angle, while worrying much less about timing, is radical, and certainly seems correct to me.
Among 1B he was 4th in MLB and 2nd after the ASB, in the two different major metrics I looked at (a few weeks ago!). I think he'll be better this year than last.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Dec 26, 2023 22:34:33 GMT -5
It’s not captured in xwOBA, since xwOBA assumes an average baserunner. It’s important to keep that in mind since his speed helping him outperform his actual batted ball output is a key way he contributes to the team. xwOBA incorporates sprint speed. It may only be for ground balls / singles though, not sure add: but yes I do expect him to regularly outperform his xwOBA based on his profile, but whether it will be by as much as in 2023 is TBD According to who?
Or more strongly, no, it doesn't. That would defeat the entire purpose of the metric.
xwOBA ignores where you hit the ball. A 400' fly ball that is hit directly at CF for an easy out has the same value as one pulled for a homer. You can see in the 2023 MLB totals for fly balls, by direction (wOBA, xwOBA, diff):
.888 .652 = +.236 pull .312 .487 = -.175 straightaway
.241 .242 = -.001 opposite
xwOBA is based on exit velocity and vertical launch angle only. It is designed to be a pure measure of quality of contact, regardless of batted ball direction.
The reason why the metric ignores BB direction is that it's unclear that pitchers have any control over that. And the offensive and defensive xwOBA numbers are identical.
----
A 15-way breakdown -- fly, LD, grounder x 5 directions (fly and LD split home and away) -- of BA and SA, expected vs. actual, would cast some light on Duval. Speed is not an element in BA vs. xBA for liners and fly balls.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Dec 15, 2023 16:43:42 GMT -5
Yamamoto options laid out...lets say everyone will offer 300 plus million. He reportedly would like to be in a big market and loves attention. Mets-have to compete with Senga and always being compared to him Phillies-have a star in Harper who will always be center of attention Dodgers-second fiddle to Shohei Yankees-have Cole as their ace and Judge as the star Red Sox-one of his best friends on the team. Will be the unquestioned ace and most marketable player and center of attention I hope ultimately he comes to the Sox to lead the rotation and to play with one of his best friends. We'll see... He's expressed a desire to play on a team that already has a Japanese player, which is more than reasonable.
The Yankees and Giants have none.
The Dodgers have one that, as you point out, will always overshadow him. And it's hard to imagine them making a billion dollar investment. With the impending Glasnow trade, this would make three expensive aces added in one off-season. My first reaction to the trade news was, the Dodgers are out of the Yamamoto chase.
That leaves the Sox and the Mets (with Senga). The Mets ... who play second fiddle to another team in their own city, play in a ballpark that no one lists as among the best, and have only one non-stupidity-assisted WS victory in their history. Whereas the Sox are revered in 5 1/2 states, play in the most renowned park in the sport, and have easily been the most successful team in the tax-limit era.
Some unusually perceptive sportswriter (whose post I can't find) pointed out that Dice-K loved Boston so much that he actually moved here for a long stretch, and that Koji Uehara has also been vocal about how much he loved the city. Keep in mind that a newly wealthy person can buy a nice house in the Boston suburbs that's just a 15 minute drive to the ball park. Try that in NYC.
And how many MLB teams are run by an over-achieving pitcher whose career backup plan was MD, who has a working knowledge (at least) of biomechanics, and who brought with him one of the game's best-regarded pitching coaches?
But the best argument that the Sox are the front-runners is that almost every supposed expert has the Sox as having just an outside chance. These are the folks who watched Ron Santo retire as the second greatest 3B of all time (after Eddy Matthews) and couldn't get him into the HOF before he died.
Sportswriters (and many fans) seem to believe that ballplayers just take the highest $$$. But the latest study (2023!) shows that beyond 500K of annual income there's no increase in happiness. That is of course less than the MLB minimum. I'm sure the occasional player goes for the highest bid as a substitute for the unconditional love they didn't get from their parents (I'm being just half sarcastic here), and it also makes sens if new (or newly motivated) ownership wants to simply buy a WS, like the Mets have been doing. But their first shot was a colossal misfire.
Players want a) a fair amount of money given the market (and I'd like to hope that most can recognize a desperate overpay or two); b) a pleasant and hopefully great experience with teammates, the manager and coaches, and the city and fans; and c) WS rings.
In this specific case, I think everyone (again, including many fans) is thinking, well, they didn't pay you-know-who what he was worth, so why would they
pay this guy? The Sox under John Henry have gone over the tax limit 12 times in 21 years, second only the Yankees and double the next team (the Cubs), so what sense does it make to think they've suddenly gone penurious? (Admittedly, you have to go all the way back to 2022 to find them over.)
This is neither the time nor (especially) the place to argue again that y-k-h was never going to sign an extension. But in fact, signing a really expensive, coveted FA would not just make some folks re-think that unfortunate bit of recent history ... it would signal to everyone, smart and clueless alike, that the the Sox were still / back in the money-spending business. That itself will sell tickets.
The Sox seem to be the last team he's meeting in person. I'm beginning to think that signing here was the default position. I mean, he's talked to Masa, and quite possibly Koji and Dice-K, the former before he was posted.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Dec 11, 2023 16:18:07 GMT -5
"When I started writing this post, my viewpoint was that O’Neill is a low-risk, high-upside player whom Boston acquired for basically nothing. And even when compromised the past two seasons, he was essentially a league-average part-time outfielder. Seems like there’s little to lose and much to gain.
Now, I’ve talked myself into O’Neill being two Advil and a yoga class away from turning back into the Canadian Adolis García. "
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Dec 11, 2023 15:41:27 GMT -5
Many sportswriters spent all year asserting that Dalbec had "fallen out of favor" with the team, presumably because he was languishing in AAA. He was, of course, the backup to Devers, Casas, and Turner, and after about August, Refsnyder (more on that in a moment), and none of them went on the IL until September. When Casas did they called him up and he was the best hitter on the team for a week (by all metrics). They then gave him an extra day off after an off day, and after that he was one of the worst hitters on the team. He finished in the middle of the pack for those games. Also left nearly unmentioned anywhere is that he started 35 games in RF, including 18 of his last 23. And Cora volunteered positive words about him, talking to the press at the Winter Meetings. So, if Turner re-signs as expected, and assuming they won't have an all-RH bench, there's no spot for him on the MLB roster. It would be unfair to him to send him back to AAA. But you could trade Refsnyder at the end of ST and put Dalbec in his spot, with the added value that he plays not just RF but 3B and 1B, and SS in an emergency.
Refsnyder is a FA at the end of this tear and is a known commodity; Dalbec has 4 years control left and may well have upside. Interesting decision.
Without getting into any small sample discussion: If an extra day off is going to mess up a role player like Dalbec would be, then he's not a better fit than Refsnyder, who has shown the ability to stay sharp and have good at-bats with inconsistent playing time. Some, I might even argue many, players need to play every day to stay their sharpest. If that player's sharpest isn't quite good enough to be an everyday guy, well, that's why being a quality backup is a hard job. Refsnyder's ability to offer relatively consistent play with inconsistent playing time is an underrated part of his value. I actually meant to note that there were serious doubts about his ability to come off the bench. I've also been wondering whether a guy or guys like that could take a daily early BP session that simulated a game, which is doable now that they have pitching machines that can duplicate any pitchers' repertoire.
As for the the idea that he has no trade value at all because they already tried to move him and no one offered anything -- I think that's silly. First, he had a role with the big league club; they just didn't need him until September. But more to the point, a guy who ranks 5th in MLB in a solid power metric and slashed .269 / .381 / .557 in AAA will always be a person of interest. Every team with no credible chance of contending would take a look, and it just takes two who are genuinely interested to strike a deal. Every GM dreams of getting a guy like this for little and having him blossom into solid adequacy under his watch. That he can play 3B, 1B, and RF adds to the interest, because it means you can get him into the lineup more easily.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Dec 11, 2023 0:14:58 GMT -5
Many sportswriters spent all year asserting that Dalbec had "fallen out of favor" with the team, presumably because he was languishing in AAA.
He was, of course, the backup to Devers, Casas, and Turner, and after about August, Refsnyder (more on that in a moment), and none of them went on the IL until September. When Casas did they called him up and he was the best hitter on the team for a week (by all metrics). They then gave him an extra day off after an off day, and after that he was one of the worst hitters on the team. He finished in the middle of the pack for those games.
Also left nearly unmentioned anywhere is that he started 35 games in RF, including 18 of his last 23.
And Cora volunteered positive words about him, talking to the press at the Winter Meetings.
So, if Turner re-signs as expected, and assuming they won't have an all-RH bench, there's no spot for him on the MLB roster. It would be unfair to him to send him back to AAA. But you could trade Refsnyder at the end of ST and put Dalbec in his spot, with the added value that he plays not just RF but 3B and 1B, and SS in an emergency.
Refsnyder is a FA at the end of this tear and is a known commodity; Dalbec has 4 years control left and may well have upside. Interesting decision.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Dec 10, 2023 22:27:16 GMT -5
Reading Law's take on the trade, I finally realized why I have such a low opinion of him.
To my mind, the first thing you do when a trade like this happens is, figure out why the teams made the trade. In the Sox case, it's very clear that they believe O'Neill can start in the OF; you wouldn't trade Refsyder to replace him with an identical guy who costs $3.5M more. It's also likely that they think he can play RF, a position almost any team would put him in given his speed and arm strength.
You also have to realize that the team that made the trade knows 10 times as much about the player as you could ever know.
Law is so convinced of the accuracy of his assessments* that he is disinterested in what the teams believes. In this case he's so sure that O'Neill's offensive decline is the inevitable consequence of his high K rate that he simply reports that it cane "immediately" without offering any evidence or explanation as to why it happened overnight. He then mentions the four injuries an as apparent aside.
This is as useful as spam. At best.
* Assuming there may be folks on the board who became Sox fans after 2006, and admittedly because it's just plain fun to repeat, Law was vehemently certain that "Dustin Pedroia lacks the bat speed to hit major league pitching" and that his upside was backup middle-infielder, but he was unlikely to reach even that.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Dec 10, 2023 20:51:51 GMT -5
This set of splits blew my mind so severely that I'm still looking for it. Men On PA OPS+ _ _ _ 293 157 1 _ _ 109 170 _ 2 _ 58 188 _ _ 3 12 80 1 2 _ 30 53 1 _ 3 15 57 _ 2 3 11 36 1 2 3 9 2
Yes, four of these buckets are very small, but the overall pattern is bonkers. His performance starts to collapse when there are 2 runners in scoring position or a runner on 3rd--clearly higher leverage than just a man on 1st or or 2nd-- and the more important the situation is, the worse he hits.
I calculated the Run Expectancy for each man-on situation starting with a lone runner on 1B, and correlated it to the hitting results. The situation explains 82% of the results. The odds of this being random are 1 in 208. (If you think about it, the small sizes of some of the buckets makes this even more impressive.)
My immediate guess was that this is a guy who is altering his approach based on the situation, to his detriment. If this is the case, his splits with 1 out should be a lot better than 0 or 2 outs, because those two situations are regarded as special -- men on with no outs threatening a big inning. Here are the slash lines: PA 0 outs 14 .083 / .143 / .167 1 out 27 .304 / .296 / .522 2 out 36 .171 / .167 / .343
So that worked.
The three words are "ignore the situation."
.
Maybe a stupid question: how is this different from doing poorly in high-leverage situations, which you’ve criticized other players (JDM, Bogaerts) for? Actually a really smart question. Because he did hit poorly in high-leverage situations.
There are three or four different ways, I think, that a hitter can end up as a bad high-leverage performer.
1) Presses, i.e., puts too much pressure on himself. Opposite: thinks hitting with the game on the line is ... fun! Familiar poster children: Xander Bogaers (last 5 seasons) vs. Alex Verdugo (2021 - early 2023).
1b) Self-doubt vs. confidence, lumped together with the above because it's also psychological, and the two can be part of the same feedback loop. The more Papi succeeded in walk-off situations starting in the '04 playoffs, the more certain he seemed to become that he would get it done again.
Note these can come and go, as they are states of mind. In psych terms, they are state variables rather than trait variables.
2) Feasts on the crap pitching in garbage time, so is significantly less good in high-lev than expected. Poster child: J.D. Martinez.
3) Alters their approach in certain base/out situations. Tries to make a productive out, or tries to hit a homer with 2 on and 2 out. That a;most always backfires in the long run.
I went deeper into O'Neill's numbers than the stuff I posted, and he definitely has type 3 going. I think it's pretty likely he has a type 2 effect, and I was about to look into it when I realized ... OK, maybe he got 1.0 WAR or more that's bogus because of feasting on bad pitching ... at 6.1 per 600 PA to start from, he's still damn good if you make that adjustment.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Dec 10, 2023 0:18:20 GMT -5
Buying low on a toolsy, oft-injured guy in hopes of a bounceback. Why does this feel so familiar. Grady Sizemore says, What's your problem? A tale of two declines:
Age PA WAR/600 PA WAR/600 Surgeries 25 420 1.5 745 6.0 Elbow, Hernia 26 482 6.1 503 2.5 L Knee 27 381 1.9 140 -0.9 Hernia, R Knee 28 266 1.8 295 0.4 Back, R Knee 29 ? DBP 30 DBP 31 oops
Except for the five medical conditions requiring seven surgeries, and the two years at replacement level followed by two years of inactivity, a close comp.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Dec 9, 2023 20:20:57 GMT -5
Totally brilliant. This dude had 6.1 WAR / 600 PA in 2021, but more importantly, he was 1.9 and 1.8 the last two years, playing through injuries. If he can stay reasonably healthy (the one big if), his floor is probably 2.5 or even 3.0. So he's comparable to Verdugo, but a) has huge upside, b) restores the proper R/L balance, c) costs about $4M less and c) is not on Alex Cora's **** list.
There is even the hope that he'll be good enough to sign to an extension. Given that the top three prospects are all position players who hit lefty and are due to arrive in 2025, we can really use a RHB who rakes. (I'm still reasonably high on
And here's a bonus: the ceiling is conceivably higher than [6.1 - regression]. His 2021 had a subset of PA that was awful, but should be fixable with 3 words of advice. This set of splits blew my mind so severely that I'm still looking for it. Men On PA OPS+ _ _ _ 293 157 1 _ _ 109 170 _ 2 _ 58 188 _ _ 3 12 80 1 2 _ 30 53 1 _ 3 15 57 _ 2 3 11 36 1 2 3 9 2
Yes, four of these buckets are very small, but the overall pattern is bonkers. His performance starts to collapse when there are 2 runners in scoring position or a runner on 3rd--clearly higher leverage than just a man on 1st or or 2nd-- and the more important the situation is, the worse he hits.
I calculated the Run Expectancy for each man-on situation starting with a lone runner on 1B, and correlated it to the hitting results. The situation explains 82% of the results. The odds of this being random are 1 in 208. (If you think about it, the small sizes of some of the buckets makes this even more impressive.)
My immediate guess was that this is a guy who is altering his approach based on the situation, to his detriment. If this is the case, his splits with 1 out should be a lot better than 0 or 2 outs, because those two situations are regarded as special -- men on with no outs threatening a big inning. Here are the slash lines: PA 0 outs 14 .083 / .143 / .167 1 out 27 .304 / .296 / .522 2 out 36 .171 / .167 / .343
So that worked.
The three words are "ignore the situation."
.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Dec 6, 2023 14:47:10 GMT -5
63 players taken in the minor league section, 7 of them from the Red Sox.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Dec 6, 2023 13:11:53 GMT -5
(I wrote this yesterday and forgot to post it (something I do fairly often!) ... in today's Globe Peter Abraham asserts that Verdugo was "a goner" after the second benching )
Hmm .. player who was benched twice for disciplinary reasons is traded to your arch-rival ...
I've always thought that the keep-or-trade decision came down to makeup. Here's a guy who was consistently "clutch" because he regarded hitting with the game on the line as fun. And a guy who fell apart when he was denied an All-Star berth he likely deserved.
Will he put pressure on himself to maximize his next contract? That's a recipe for disaster. He could also put that thought aside, juice up his self-confidence, and asserts that Verduho was a have a huge year. I don't pretend to know which is likelier. But I certainly imagine that Breslow talked to Cora and probably some teammates about that, and about his general clubhouse presence. Even if he's personally liked (which I think is ... likely), no one likes needless drama.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Dec 5, 2023 3:37:11 GMT -5
(I imagine that folks are using the "predict the roster" thread for this, just as they were using this thread for pitching. It deserves some on-topic attention.
I actually think 11 or 12 of the 13 spots are spoken for. First, Jen McCaffrey at The Athletic has kept on top of the Yoshida LF / DH issue: The other thing worthy of note is that the Red Sox have no starting pitchers who put significant extra stress on the outfield defense.
You can't measure this with simple GB and FB rates. A high-K pitchers gets outs without using the defense at all.The correct metric is:
Air Balls [FB + LD] / (Air Balls + GB + SO + Popups). I did that for last year's starters and converted the results to a + score where 100 is MLB average.
Name AB+ ------ --- Pivetta 103 Crawford 98 Sale 98 Houck 86 Bello 83
So, Yoshida is in LF, most of the time. You'll want at him at DH on the road, when one of the three neutral pitchers are starting, and when there's also a big or tricky LF and/or an opposing lineup full of flyball hitters.
This of course makes room Turner, who hugely wants to return to the Sox.
And here's Breslow on the reality of Turner's value in the clubhouse (again from McCaffrey): "It’s a subjective evaluation for sure, but that is very, very different than saying it doesn’t matter," and then he mentions "the value ... of an additional coach on staff or someone who can get an entire clubhouse moving in the same direction."
So as soon as Ohtani signs, all the losers will make their offers to Turner, and he and the Sox will know what a fair price is. The same thing is very likely to happen with Duvall, who was born to hit in Fenway.
Wong, Casas, Devers, Story, Duran, and the aforementioned trio gives you 8 starters. McGuire, Refsnyder, and, Reyes are on the bench. The Angels are likely waiting until they lose Ohtani before trading Brandon Drury ... if he goes elsewhere, the Sox will find a different plus defender who hits righty for2B.
So, what do we want from guy # 13 ?
The standard bench is backups for catcher, middle infielder, and corner infielder, plus a fourth OFer. The Sox will have the regular DH as the corner IF backup, and when he's in that role, the LF will be at DH. So you want a 5th outfielder.
You also have 5 LF hitters and 7 RH hitters, and one of the 5 lefties is the backup catcher. 5 vs. 8 would be a huge imbalance, so you want a lefty bat.
Of course we already have two outfielders who hit lefty: Alex Verdugo and Wilyer Abeu. And this decision is way trickier than it seems. I'm going to put that in the Verdugo trade thread.
---- Batting order vs. RHP looks strong on paper.
Duran Casas Story Devers Tuner Yoshida Duvall (or Verdugo) Wong 2B
If Stoy is struggling he swaps with Turner. And there are days when you swap Duran and Yoshida, and if Verdugo exists, Duran and him.
Note that putting two LHB back-to-back is not a problem. If needed, you pinch-hit Refsnyed for Duran, and (if applicable) Duvall for Verdugo. Just the threat of that will scare opposing managers away.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Dec 2, 2023 3:06:28 GMT -5
Brayan Bello had two huge splits: four days rest vs. five or more, and day vs. night. Both of these are about rest. Extra day, extra hours of sleep. All of the following numbers are xwOBA adjusted for opposing team's offense over the season, vs. RHP. The translations of xwOBA into rotation slots (on an average team) has the top 15 pitchers as aces (because we wouldn't call then aces if there were enough to go around), and then groups of 30, which leaves the last 15 guys as needing replacement. This system happens to put the line between #3 and#4 exactly at MLB average, which seems right, right?
------ Time Off
.360 (7 G, 154 PA) 4 days rest .303 (21 G, 514 PA) 5 or more days. .360 is a somewhat below average #5 starer, while .303 is a slightly below average #2. A further breakdown: .296 (15 G, 365 PA) 5 days rest .313 (6 G, 149 PA) 6+ days
.296 is a great #2 , while .313 is a good #3. ----- Like Day vs. Night (because it is!)
.353 (10 G, 220 PA) Day .296 (18 G, 448 PA) Night Similar numbers, eh? Here the bad split gets promoted from "somewhat" to "slightly" below average #5. It's kind of cute that the best conditions for each of the splits differ by just .000. But this doesn't tell you that much. You want to break it down 6 ways, 3 x 2, with the 3 being short, normal, and long rest. I mean, what if all his games with extra rest came at night? Which is exactly what happened. And that's where it gets really interesting.
------ On the 6th Day He Rested (damn, again?)
To begin with, after the ASB he had 8 days of rest, and had an xwOBA of .191. Remove that, as you should, and his longer-rest goes from .313 to .337, which is worst #4 starter. What to make of this? It's very likely that his experience with 6 days rest was minimal, right? Which means he had no between-game throwing regimen for it, and likely did what the team told him to. And it didn't work. But you'd like to hope that he worked on that regimen over the season. We're not looking for a statistically significant result with just 5 starts, but a trend in the right direction would be a good sign. So here are the starts: .389 (5/17) .389 (5/30) (Really!) .310 (6/18) .321 (7/26) .293 (9/27) OK, I set you up. If you just number the starts 1 to 5, and use that as the dependent variable, that trend is statistically significant, p = .035.
It could still be random, of course (1 chance in 28). But it sure looks like Bello, who by all reports is both smart and a dedicated and had worker, figured out a routine that worked for him.
Now, if we were to find another such improvement, we'd be that much more confident that he does this, right? ----- As You Wish ... or, Normal Rest, Short Sleep Bello had 7 of his day game starts on 5 days rest (starts 1 through 4, and 7 through 9), and 3 on four days. Here are the 7 rested game results: .371 (4/14) .375 (4/23) .380 (4/29) .270 (6/5) .354 (8/24) .218 (9/4) .260 (9/10) Even with the August hiccup, that is also statistically significant, p=.048. Every article online about work schedules for MLB players references night games only. But my guess is that starting pitchers arrive by 10 AM or earlier for day games. If Bello goes to bed after midnight, that's going to be tough for him. I will spare you the complete explanation of sleep bed-times, and just note that most night-owls make things worse by exposing themselves to blue (other than red, really) light, in the evening, which fakes out the brain into thinking it's still daytime. If someone told him about this after April, and he started a project of finding how early he needed to go to all red-light, that would explain what we see. August could well be, "hey, that really worked, maybe I don't need to start that early."
(There are other way to get extra sleep, of course, but the pattern works with those as well.)
Opposites Intrigue: Short Rest, Normal Sleep
The four night games on 4 days rest are very interesting. Overall he's .306, somewhat below average #2. BUT ... .355 (5/4) .279 (6/23) .421 (8/29) .199 (9/15) This is also hone, road, home, road. That's .386 at home and .239 on the road.
The odds of the results happening by chance are 1 in 10, but if you look at the average event in each of the two sets, it just misses significance (p = .057).
His kid arrived too late to explain the first home game, but of course there are plenty of reasons why behaviors might be different (in either direction) home vs. road. I think this is probably for real, but they if go to a 6-day rotation it may well not happen again.
---- The Other Split Splits ...
Which are his Worst and Best situations.
1) Short Rest Day Games
Annihilation. .495 on 7/19, .367 on 8/12, .514 on 9/20 = .445. This suggests that he's still a bit sleep-shy for day games, but it's not an issue unless he's also lacking rest both ways. Again, they should keep him off short rest as much as possible.
2) Immediate Upside ...
a/k/a Optimum-Rest Night Games
It's just 8 games, with 205 PA.
It's .280, which is an average ace. Obviously he's not that good (wait for it ... wait for it ... yet). Two ways of looking at this: Given that he had splits that were both good and bad, it makes good sense to regress the .280 to the mean, and that's .295 (by my metric), which is the best #2 in the game. That's credible for his 8 ideal games, I think.
And obviously, if you took the best split from every pitcher who has them, .280 is likely not extra-special. But that just stresses the importance of getting your pitchers into the situations where they're at their best. Bonus Feature: The Second-Half "Fade"!
The first pair is before the ASB and the second one is after. Split G xwOBA G xwOBA Night-5 5 .265 3 .303 Day-5 4 .341 3 .290 Night-6+ 3 .359 3 .268 Night-4 2 .312 2 .300 Day-4 0 3 .445 He was .312 in the first half, and .289 in the second excluding the death combo, which he never had to face in the first half. The .265 in his most common situation would have ranked him 3rd in MLB if sustained for a whole season, so that was likely due for regression. The resulting .303 (still a bit below average #2) was more than offset by improvements in the others. Meanwhile, the 3 ultra-tough games boosted his overall number to .317. So there's .028 of illusory struggles.
His adjustment for opponent hitting went from adding .004 (meaning the opposition was .004 below average) to subtracting it, so that adds another .008.
But both of those pale in comparison to his luck and defensive support on balls in play. In the first half his wOBA was .295, so that's .017 of good luck / defense. In the second half it was .373, an amazing .056 of unearned badness. That's another .073 of mirage decline (relative to the first half), for a total of .109!
And yes, wOBA - xwOBA is almost entirely luck and defense. If anyone disagrees, we can talk. Conclusion: Throwing You a Changeup
Of the 72 pitchers who had 100+ PA end with a changeup, Bello ranked 8th with a .210 xwOBA -- but none of the 7 guys with more success approached his 626 pitches and 172 PA. (Next best was Nick Martinez with 504 /141.) It's well-established that the more you throw a good pitch, the less effective it becomes, so it's likelier than not that Bello had the best change in MLB.
A good thing, because that was his only pitch that was above average. That he still finished with a .315 -- a somewhat above-average #3 -- was impressive for a rookie with one reliable pitch.
What, you say? Even his sinker --a glorious pitch to watch, when he has it working -- was subpar? Yes : .343.
But I gave it away, didn't I? When he had it working.
In his 11 starts from 5/10 to 7/19, he had a .280 in 98 PA. But in 5 earlier and 12 later starts, he had a .408 and .371 (46 and 120 PA).
(At present I have no plans to break down all of his pitches. Ha!)
Consistent execution of your pitches, for both command and movement ... that is very big. It sure looks like Bello has resolved his day / night problem, so this is his final frontier. And man, if I were Andrew Bailey I'd be over the moon with excitement at helping a talent this large achieved that step.
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Post by ericmvan on Nov 29, 2023 5:29:05 GMT -5
I remember Heymen saying Max Scherzer will sign with west coast team only because of family reason but he signed with the Mets. Yamamoto will go where the money is they always do.False. For instance ...
The Red Sox outbid the Mariners for Adrian Beltre the first time he was a free agent. They wanted to use him at SS for a year until
Bill Mueller's contract was up.
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Post by ericmvan on Nov 25, 2023 4:03:05 GMT -5
Is everyone else tired of hearing the 2023 starters' collective ERA, or rank in MLB?
So here's an antidote. (All the rankings are by xwOBA, and when appropriate (*) they and competitors are regressed to the mean, i.e., adjusted for sample sizes.
1st. Rank of Chris Sale among all SP in baseball in the time frame after he got the rust and before he got hurt again (6 starts).
2nd. Rank of Tanner Houck among all SP, first three innings, at the time he got hurt.
6th (tie). * Rank of Nick Pivetta among top 150 pitchers in PA, beginning 6/26 (two days before he introduced his sweeper).
6th (tie). * Seasonal rank of Kutter Crawdord as a starer or bulk pitcher (top 150 pitchers), with no runners in scoring position.
Next up, Bello's splits, them comment in this one.
(Note that I included Pivetta's relief outings because they were actually worse than his his starts / bulk, while I excluded Crawfirds' because they were better. I did include his virtual bulk outing, which turned out to be almost nullified by his sample-size adjustmen)t
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Post by ericmvan on Nov 21, 2023 22:35:49 GMT -5
On 9/19 I had him at -15 runs per 150 G (Statcast for plays made, average of DRS and UZR for arm, plus DRS "good plays made").
Cora said he was just -1 in September, which is -6 for the season, and that is playable, especially when half your games are in Fenway.
I just ran the final numbers and he was -13.
I'm pretty sure he went from 0 to 1 "Good Plays Made," and that has to be a rounding illusions (e.g actually 0.45 to 0.55).
That leaves him roughly league average over his last 9 games.
It's a small sample size, but it's still promising. And it has huge implications on re-signing Justin Turner. Look for a thread on that.
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Post by ericmvan on Nov 21, 2023 21:43:35 GMT -5
We all remember how mediocre he was, overall, in 2019, before he was shut down for what proved to be TJ.
What I had forgotten (I'm sure others remember) was that he got killed an his first and third starts and was otherwise meh in the other first 4.
And then he was tremendous for 9 starts, before he started fading a couple of months earlier than usual. In that stretch he had a .219 xwOBA, .001 behind Verlander as the best in MLB, and .025 ahead of #3 Ryu.
This last year he had 5 so-so starts shaking off the rust of nealy years of inactivity ... and then was the best pitcher in MLB for six starts, before getting hurt again.
A healthy and properly rested Sale is still as good as any pitcher in MLB. The dual challenge is to figure out just how much rest he needs to stay himself into the playoffs, and the best way to give him that rest--shorter outings, more days between starts, or a combo of both.
Sale was essentially on a 5-days-rest schedule in 2023. Should they try to continue that? It might be useful for younger guys like Bello and Crawford, not to mention Garrett "Kid Gloves" Whitlock to go every 6th day. Even Pivetta was throwing every 6th day most of the time when he went back into the rotation and excelled. Should they try a 6-man rotation, then? Let's say you sign a big-name FA -- it might be tough to work that arm in every 5th day if the rest of the staff is on an every 6th-day routine. Maybe when the ace's 5-day routine bumps into another pitcher's 6-day routine, you either bump that other pitcher for one start or you give your ace an extra day of rest. You'd probably only need to do that in long stretches of no off days. Unless... you sign a pitcher whose first and last names both start with Y (at least when transcribed into our language). I get that you don't want to reduce the number of starts for your big name FA acquisition but has he been throwing once a week like a lot of NPB pitchers do? Maybe to break YY into MLB life, he could go every 6th day. For reference Ohtani and Senga both pitched mostly every 6th day in 2023; Snell, Montgomery, Nola, Cole all were about half and half, 4 or 5 days rest. Just some food for thought. Bello was awful all year on 4 days rest. And they gave him 5 coming off his 1-outing rehab stint. Look for a post on his splits (including day / night) in the next few days (Thanksgiving excluded).
Crawford was awful overall on 4 days rest. I'm doing his splits next.
As you point out, Sale was treated like he needed 5 days (starting only 3 times with 4 days), and if we were to sign a Japanese free agent SP, that would ease his transition to less rest.
I think the only reason that teams haven't gone to a six-day rotation is that most teams struggle to have 5 good pitchers. I think it's no-brainer for the '04 Sox.
(A 5 day rotation means that when you have an off day, you skip one guy, unless it's felt that the whole team needs an extra day. You have 3 starters with bullpen experience, and you can set up the rotation so that one of them can always be skipped--and used in in relief instead, if that makes sense.)
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Post by ericmvan on Nov 19, 2023 21:42:56 GMT -5
To think Sox fans are worried of a top ten Cy-Young finish for Chris Sale. Mass made MJ legal right? Where does rational kick in? It will be 4 seasons since the 34 YO pitched 147 innings and he passed 43 IP last year for the first time in 3 seasons at his age 34 season. If you in any way shape or form think he's something we can depend upon ANYthing beyound a fifth starter AND think we can be considered contenders without saying a minimum of 2 top end starters then well there really isn't anything that needs to be said EVEN if he actually does come through. At best he should only be considered a back-end starter. Give me just one example of any pitcher who’s missed the time he has at his age who came through. Now even after all your research you happen to find one, it would actually be proof against you, as it would be the exception that proves the rule and not the point of the rule. I beg any of you who think otherwise to stop thia nonsense. If somehow he has one last exceptional season consider it hitting the lottery, count your blessings and move on. Not sure worried is the right word, but when Chris Sale is healthy he pitches like one of the top 20 best pitchers in the AL. He’s not a backend starter when on the mound, the issue is just being there sufficiently often. Anyways the whole point of discussing the option is that if he does have a good season they can’t move on because the option would vest, but they wouldn’t want to anyways. We all remember how mediocre he was, overall, in 2019, before he was shut down for what proved to be TJ.
What I had forgotten (I'm sure others remember) was that he got killed an his first and third starts and was otherwise meh in the other first 4.
And then he was tremendous for 9 starts, before he started fading a couple of months earlier than usual. In that stretch he had a .219 xwOBA, .001 behind Verlander as the best in MLB, and .025 ahead of #3 Ryu.
This last year he had 5 so-so starts shaking off the rust of nealy years of inactivity ... and then was the best pitcher in MLB for six starts, before getting hurt again.
A healthy and properly rested Sale is still as good as any pitcher in MLB. The dual challenge is to figure out just how much rest he needs to stay himself into the playoffs, and the best way to give him that rest--shorter outings, more days between starts, or a combo of both.
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Post by ericmvan on Nov 18, 2023 20:01:28 GMT -5
We talk about Urias bouncing back…he really only had what? Like 1 month of bad baseball? He had a .360 obp here and had 2 good years in a row going into last season He’s probably gonna be fine He did slash .225 / .371 / .337, for a wOBA of .321
I recall him getting a bunch of cheap, lucky hits ... . Yup, he had a .187 / .330 / .332 expected batting line, and that's a .305 xwOBA, and that's below the MLB average for 2B, which is .315.
Over his last three years (all that's predictive) he ranks 50th of 57 in Success Rate Added at 2b. It's not as bad as it sounds, because he was just -1%, but still ... he's a below average fielder at the position.
If he's not above average overall, he's useless to us. So everything boils down to whether he can come back to his offensive form of 2 and 3 years ago
The Red Sox probably have 100 times as much information to answer that question as we do ... and they have spoken. I think it's completely crazy to guess that he'll be fine when the team clearly believes he won't be.
I thought they'd non-tender him and sign him to a ml contract. This is much better.
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Post by ericmvan on Nov 16, 2023 1:56:58 GMT -5
The new expanded and revised version of The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien arrived a few hours before the Rule 5 deadline ... which is why I didn't remember it until an hour so ago!
The other way to look at this: who are the 14 guys on the ST 40-man who don't project to be on the opening day 26, if all are healthy?
Hamilton Rafaela Valdez - no way you even need a second backup infielder
Abreu - great up-and-down guy who needs to get even better
Murphy can you see him pitching in a close playoff game? Kelly ditto Walter Robertson Gonzalez Perez Mata they'll try to sneak him through waivers or deal him to a second division team, if he doesn't look great in ST
I took 4 guys off the projected MLB roster and put them here ... and still have 3 open spots!
One I think is a no-brainer: a better up-and-down SP than Murphy and Walter, ideally a guy set to start a career as a genuine 4th starter, but who has an option left.
Another is easy to spot: a catcher who has options left. They need a legit 3rd catcher in any case, why not acquire someone who won't need a 40-man move if needed?.
There are numerous possibilities for the last spot on the 40:
A prospect obtained in a Verdugo or Dalbec trade that isn't one of the above Their own Rule 5 pick Yet another depth-chart starter Something we don't know about Weiss, Jaceses, or Mills
[my fave] Both Verdugo and Dalbec until a ST trade or injury
Given this analysis, not protecting Drohan makes good sense.
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Post by ericmvan on Nov 13, 2023 0:35:45 GMT -5
I'd think CSA would be much more relevant than MSA given that a team's catchment area or whatever you want to call it doesn't just end where the commuters end; it pretty much keeps going until it hits another team's area. E.g., Maine and Vermont are definitely Red Sox country. So actually CSA would undereshoot the relevant geographical zone. Having said that, I think the Red Sox' market definitely punches above the weight of its population.
I wonder what you'd get if you just totaled the population in each of the colored areas of this map.
I think my algorithm is good enough for ticket sales and concessions. The further you are from the park, the less likely you are to show up. And if a team is drawing more long-distance fans than average, that's a result of their popularity.
Where you might really want to use the above map is in figuring out TV revenues. But again, that's a a function of the team's popularity. The Sox revenues are terrific relative to the potential size of their fan base, and that's because they are popular enough to own their own broadcasting rather than having a deal with a local network affiliate. And that revenue pays for the tax, which gets them better players ... it's a positive feedback loop.
The way to do this right is to know the average breakdown of ticket sales of all franchises, by MSA, CSA, and Other, where the last is a formula based on the size of "other." For the TV revenue, you'd have a formula expressing the average number of viewers as a function of the three locations, and another predicting the average revenue, given the viewers.
All but one of the teams close to the Sox in my version have even bigger areas to draw from than the Sox do (I believe the color strength measures actual fan engagement). If we did the above, I think the Phillies drop down below the Sox. And that's all.
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Post by ericmvan on Nov 12, 2023 5:37:54 GMT -5
Here's a table that says a lot. The "Pop" is Population of the team's Metropolitan Statistical Area, plus 1/2 of the extra population in their Combined Statistical Area. For the Sox, the latter goes west to Worcester, south to Providence, and north into NH.
There really is a 3-way tie. (And yes, this is also the average of the two populations. Math!) The last two lines show the team's luxury tax history, beginning with the current system in 2002. 2013 numbers are Sportrac estimates. Tax paid is millions of bucks.
No team that was below the (current) top 15 most populous regions has ever gone over the tax. Rnk Team Pop Tax Paid Years 1 NYY 20.8 386.3 19 1 NYM 148.1 2 2 LAD 15.7 193.8 7 2 LAA 1.1 2 3 ChC 9.6 14.2 6 3 ChW 0.0 0 t4 Tor 8.2 4.0 1 t4 Tex 8.2 0.0 0 t4 Was 8.2 4.4 2 7 Hou 7.5 3.1 1 8 Phi 6.8 9.6 3 9 SF 6.8 8.8 3 10 Atl 6.7 4.0 1 11 Bos 6.6 52.3 12 12 Mia 6.5 0.0 0 13 Ari 5.0 0.0 0 14 Det 4.9 9.0 3 15 Sea 4.5 0.0 0 One of these things is not like the others, no?
We're the #14 team in the #11 market, and until this year we were #3 in tax spent (with a huge gap to #4), and we are still the only team to have paid the tax more often than not.
This is obviously very connected to the success tale in the earlier post, and not just in the simple $ = wins fashion. We are off the scale in money spent relative to market size, and way ahead of everyone in WS success.
Clearly, we can spend the money because the fans are so ardent that they will pay the highest ticket prices in MLB.
It seems as if the the passion of the fan base actually contributes to the success story.
And that is food for thought (e.g, a dog and some cotton candy).
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Post by ericmvan on Nov 12, 2023 3:54:30 GMT -5
...
John Henry is the only constant here.
...
and Tom Werner and Mike Gordon and Sam Kennedy (dare I include Larry L.?) Or course! The business end has been very stable ...
But no, you may not include Larry L.!
Someone in a position of authority used the 2008 recession as an excuse to make baseball ops let go all of their consultants but one, which had to be be Tom Tippett, because he still hadn't finished the Carmince data system. This was in January, IIRC. Baseball ops was not happy.
At the time I was working on a big meta-project: a description of about 10 (more?) cool analytic ideas. My previous year's contract stated that I was to discuss any such idea with Bill James, and any that he deemed worthy would be contracted separately from my monthly pay. I spent a lot of that year mucking about with them, and was gearing up have all the descriptions done before opening day 2009. I suppose I should take a look at whatever work I did finish!
Zack Scott did go to bat for me and got me six months severance pay.
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Post by ericmvan on Nov 9, 2023 5:26:09 GMT -5
I can't figure out the pattern with the years, but I believe #2 is the Marlins (1997) and #1 is the Red Sox (2 thousand something). Can't figure out why Blue Jays (1992) and Astros (2017) don't count either. You got the 2 and 1! That's all I expected.
The Blue Jats and Astros don't count for the same reason that the Yankees' five most recent wins count as 1. I'm looking for multiple WS wins with a completely different set of players. So each entry is the year you have to go back to, to find two different WS winners in each franchise, players-wise. Another way of looking at this is that we count a dynastic pair or set of wins, like Bochy had with Giants in '10 '12, and '14, as one success-entity.
The O's have an asterisk because the only overlap between their '66 and '83 victories was Jim Palmer, but in '83 he had 0.2 WAR and pitched just the 5th and 6th innings of game 3 (and got the win!). I would count that: his absence would have no affect on the WS outcome.
The Sox' date is 2013, with an asterisk for Xander, the only player who made it to 2018. Xander replaced Brock Holt as backup SS / 3B on August 19 and had just 50 PA (nowhere near rookie max) with a .684 OPS, for 0.3 WAR. He did take over from a slumping (since September 10!) Will Middlebrooks starting with game 5 of the ALCS, and put up an .893 OPS ... so maybe you can argue that this shouldn't count at all.
In which case, of course, you just go back to 2007.
Furthermore, the 2004 and 2013 teams had only one player in common. Granted, he was a first-ballot HOF'er, but I looked for other near-misses like that one and all I could find was the '96 to '09 Yankees, but they had Rivera, Jeter, and Petttte in common, plus Posada for the last 4 of the 5.
Do I have to mention that the '04 / '07, '13, and '18 teams had different heads of baseball ops and different managers? I didn't think so.
John Henry is the only constant here.
My original title for this thread was a combo Prince and Sinead O'Connor tribute, "Nothing Compares, Nothing Compares to Us." Sometime in the next few days I'll speculate why.
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