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Post by joshv02 on Nov 13, 2013 12:57:46 GMT -5
Why do you limit yourself to the "preseason"?
The question "what number of wins do you expect to have with the talent that is able to play." Missing their starting 3B, SS, 1B, and CF plays into your expectations of their talent and how many wins you'd expect them to have, no? I don't know when they expected Overay, Wells, Nunez, Nix and Hafner to be in the top 9 in PAs, but, well, that group sucks.
I haven't looked at it in-depth, but I'd expect that the Yankees won a number of games more than we'd expect with the lineup they put out there (clearly they outplayed their pythag, but that's a slightly different question). I wouldn't be surprised if it is more than the Sox. Its certainly up there.
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Post by joshv02 on Nov 13, 2013 12:27:05 GMT -5
I could care less about Christina's vote (or the award itself), but her supporting argument is bogus. Posters are in this "debate" about preseason expectations and whether the team was a 70 win projection, or 81, or 90 but that's all missing the point...is anyone arguing the Yankees or Rays outperformed their preseason expectations MORE than the Red Sox did? No? Ok then Why not? Esp the Yankees.
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Post by joshv02 on Nov 13, 2013 12:23:32 GMT -5
Tazawa's velocity fluctuated pretty wildly all year long. He's not a guy I'd want to rely on too much. I said this numerous times during the season but got resistance. It seemed to me that Taz , when rested, could pop 94-96. On second or third consecutive days he was 91-93. Miller's return will help immensely but we definitely need another, preferably power, bullpen arm. I am glad Hanrahan may be out of our price range because his lack of control does not fit our model. We were very fortunate with Breslow and Uehara as well as our other lower budget signings. I wonder if that formula can be repeated or was something of a one-trick pony in the larger sense. Surely tho, there are a lot of guys that may be on the cusp or as yet 'undiscovered' for one quality arm to stick. He had 15 appearances with 1 day rest, with an average FB speed of 94.2 He had 69 with 2+ days, avg = 94.3 I don't see it. The only times he had a FB velocity under 93: game Date Days rest OAK@BOS 4/22/2013 1 CLE@BOS 5/23/2013 4 BOS@BAL 6/16/2013 3 BOS@DET 6/21/2013 3 BOS@DET 6/23/2013 2 TOR@BOS 6/27/2013 1 BOS@ANA 7/7/2013 2 BOS@OAK 7/13/2013 4 NYA@BOS 7/19/2013 6 (Obviously includes playoffs)
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Post by joshv02 on Nov 13, 2013 10:36:13 GMT -5
Can't it be a little more nuanced than either?
Just tell me what you thought each team was going to do given their talent level, and what they did do, then attribute some of that delta to either luck or the manager (or something else). I don't know why we need to have only the two extremes.
There is nothing wrong with there being multiple right answers.
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Post by joshv02 on Nov 13, 2013 7:56:20 GMT -5
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Post by joshv02 on Nov 13, 2013 6:56:19 GMT -5
The voting took place prior to the playoffs. When Karl wrote "to win" she meant to win, not win it all. They were expected - by her - to be better than .500.
In any event, that is the relevant baseline, which is the main point. How many wins above expectation is more relevant than how many wins above 2012. Both need a hefty dose of skepticism, of course.
That probably bodes better for the Indians though it's close, as she recognized, and both are defensible. As are nearly a half dozen picks.
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Post by joshv02 on Nov 12, 2013 8:17:53 GMT -5
The teams and MLB PA have a system to value a contract that has deferred money. Its moderately complicated such that I'm too lazy to translate here, but it is basically present valuing the money down by reference to a series of agreed upon interest rates, and the valuation takes place at the start of the contract. See CBA XXIII(E)(6).
I assume we know about 90% of the information to understand the CBT, but there is a large portion that we just assume we know but don't really have any idea.
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Post by joshv02 on Nov 12, 2013 7:55:24 GMT -5
I wouldn't consider his contract "huge" in the sense that it'd be a tough burden for us to take on. It'd simply be one year of a high AAV, but we don't need to make many high-cost additions (unless we're going to hand McCann a giant contract), and there's a good chance we unload a chunk of change by trading Dempster or Peavy. It's not even a high AAV-- Ramirez would only count $12m against the luxury tax next year, which is not much more than what Abreu would would have cost ($11.3m). But it is twenty million dollars in real money, absent deferrals or salary relief from the Brewers. My understanding is that the Sox actual cash-out-of-hand budget is not significantly different from their budget for calculating the luxury tax.
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Post by joshv02 on Nov 12, 2013 7:52:18 GMT -5
Give me Dioner Navarro or give me death. Please, put this man out of his misery.
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Post by joshv02 on Nov 12, 2013 7:51:27 GMT -5
Silly side note: For hitters, what is the difference b/w Steamer and a relatively simple marcel? I see the difference on the pitching side (mainly correlating velocity [as a stand-in for stuff] with k$ when we regress), but the only thing I see on the offensive side is using translated minor league batting numbers. The Vazquez Steamer projection is just a 3 year translation with a league average weight, right? I assume the regression is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
I agree with jmei - when looking at positions with average-ish players, you likely should end up curving your $/win. Though, most $/win studies show a linear, not curved, relationship overall, so I suppose as a rule GMs don't do that -- or the exception is swallowed by the rule in the data.
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Post by joshv02 on Nov 11, 2013 8:41:32 GMT -5
A problem with the logic -- beyond the differences b/w sports, leagues, the lack of knowledge we have about LeBron's Nike contract, etc. -- is the it simple is poorly done:
Player A was paid a lot before playing in the highest pro league and was very good, therefore player B who is also paid a lot before playing in the highest pro league will also be very good.
You shouldn't need 709 posts to defend that bad logic.
You don't have a bad ancillary point, but you overstate it by a lot. In fact, the idea that an expert (or repeat player --- like a baseball GM) wants to pay a lot of money for something is itself decent evidence of that something's worth; this is especially true when there is a large cloud obscuring the value of the thing we are looking at. It is, however, not particularly convincing evidence in light of the history of buyers who have wrong about valuation. So, using it as merely a datapoint is perfectly reasonable, but not having much more to the argument is silly.
It isn't that far from saying "a player who went to Yale is going to be good at calling a baseball game," in fact. Its using one datapoint that may be decent at pointing in a direction to overstate the argument to certainty.
And making post-after-post doesn't help the cause.
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Post by joshv02 on Nov 5, 2013 12:53:50 GMT -5
Brian: I don't really know what to think of JBJ. I tend to think of him as a normal minor leaguer - good scouting, good production (MLE of ~332/402), good up the middle defense. I'd probably not be surprised by 340/400, really, as it wasn't that far out of line with his MLE, but it may be a touch high as a mean projection (330/390?). I agree with nexus that a hit chart that shows 1/5 or 1/7 or 0/6 or whatever is not that useful, but the underlying message likely is right - don't have huge expectations for JBJ until we see more.
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Post by joshv02 on Nov 5, 2013 8:20:17 GMT -5
He was the 6th best offensive CFer in baseball (and 33rd overall). Most of his "top 15" status is base running and defense, both of which are fluky, tend to fluctuate, and are difficult to measure. He was not likely a +6 win player in 2013, and is less likely to be a +6 win player in 2017, etc. Baserunning and defensive value stats as a whole might be controversial, but literally every measure of them (as well as the eye test and every scout you can find) will tell you that Ellsbury is, at the very least, a very good defensive center fielder and an elite baserunner. Even if you do totally ignore baserunnng and defense, he was roughly a 4 win player in 2013, so it's not exactly like he becomes a bad player without them. Plus, his baserunning and defense marks in 2013 weren't too far from his career norms (baserunning: 7.1 runs/600 career, 10.8 runs/600 in 2013; defense: 9 runs/600 career, 12.72 runs/600 in 2013), and even if you want to substitute in his career marks for his actual 2013 marks, he was still a roughly 5.5 win player. You can quibble with the exact figures and should at least slightly regress his performance to his career averages in projecting him for 2014 and beyond (FWIW, Steamer projects him at 5.9 fWAR in 2014), but it should be undisputed that replacing Jacoby Ellsbury with a .340/.400 version of Jackie Bradley Jr. makes the team worse in 2014. I'm not saying you have to re-sign Ellsbury at all costs, but we should properly understand the costs to not doing so (and try make that difference up elsewhere as much as possible). My post is going to get very boring very quickly 1. We don't need to positionally adjust or add in a replacement level baseline. I don't know much, but I know that the Red Sox in 2014 will have a CFer. So, we really are just looking at batting, base running, and defense. Have it be above whatever baseline you like, though I prefer average when comparing specific players. Doesn't really matter at that point, though, as X+2=Y+2 can just be rewritten as X=Y. So, when we start by saying Ellsbury is a +5.5 win player, it is only helpful in the context (during this conversation) of his expected replacement. So, just look at the three components of value without adjusting for position/replacement/etc. That gets us to a much more reasonable conversation, imho. 2. When you look at defense and base running, you agree that we should regress. However, we shouldn't regress his 2013 numbers against his career UZR/baserunning numbers; we regress against the sample mean. So, either he is a +12 player in 2013 regressed heavily towards zero (likely a +4 or so player) or he is a +8 career UZR player in CF in a about 3.5-3. years of data regressed to +6 or so. Do the same for base running and we get to something similar. So he gets about a win out of base running and defense. Maybe you can stretch it a few more runs. The question is how much better or worse that is than what we expect out of Bradley -- I'd give Ellsbury a 0.5 win advantage, as I think Bradley will be a similar defensive player with positive - but lesser - baserunning. This level of precision is the closest we can get to, I think; we cannot -- and should not - speak with such false precision. My kid doesn't have a fever b/c the thermometer reads "99" instead of "98.6" as there are problems both with the 99 and the 98.6 that false precision. 3. Ellsbury had a 355/426 line in 2013. It is undisputed that replacing 355/426 with 340/400 makes the team worse Probably about 10 runs worse. I think a 340/400 line is not unreasonable for Bradley. So, maybe the difference b/w Ellsbury and Bradley is a win and a half. All that gets me to a similar place - there is a definite expected downgrade b/w Ellsbury and Bradley. But, I think in a little more reasonably toned manner, and it focuses the downgrade on the more reasonable expected 1.5 win range, which is fixable. Having read your (insightful) posts for years now, I know you get all this, though you may believe I overstate it. However, I think it worth doing so. This harkens back to someone's argument years ago about Daniel Nava strike out rate in his first 100 PAs, or whatever. The argument was that a SO rate "stabilizes" quickly such that after 100 PAs (really, 60, iirc) you can see it -- and cited to old BPro studies. But, that really misunderstood the math to speak with much greater precision than it attempted to do. All that we can say after 60 or 100 PAs is that the SO rate is likely buried inside there, with a few standard deviations guiding our way, and an unstated assumption about distribution (that I believe is likely correct, fwiw).
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Post by joshv02 on Nov 4, 2013 15:41:00 GMT -5
So do most people here worry about handing over the CF position to JBJ? If he were able to put up a 250/340/400 line with above average defense, would that be enough to warrant the job? It would clearly warrant the job and make him an above-average center fielder. The problem for me is that Ellsbury was one of the 15 best players in baseball last year, and if you're going to let Ellsbury walk, that production needs to be made up elsewhere. He was the 6th best offensive CFer in baseball (and 33rd overall). Most of his "top 15" status is base running and defense, both of which are fluky, tend to fluctuate, and are difficult to measure. He was not likely a +6 win player in 2013, and is less likely to be a +6 win player in 2017, etc.
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Post by joshv02 on Oct 4, 2013 11:45:49 GMT -5
Funny, Kukuk doesn't look Druish.
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Post by joshv02 on Oct 3, 2013 12:23:02 GMT -5
Do you think, however, he'll get multiyear deals at the QO-range if the Red Sox make a QO? (I don't.)
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Post by joshv02 on Oct 1, 2013 11:01:14 GMT -5
I don't know if you still do, but you used to be able to get MLB Players Association benefits for at least one day of "active" service.
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Post by joshv02 on Sept 28, 2013 18:56:25 GMT -5
His SP page says all three options were used.) Actually, his SP page agrees with you -- no options used before this year. I think I've gone crazy. Thanks.
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Post by joshv02 on Sept 27, 2013 8:05:15 GMT -5
How many options does Ruby have left?
He was added to the 40 in aay 2011 and not optioned that year. He blew out his arm and was DLed.
In 2012, he was placed on the 60 day DL until August 25th, when he was optioned. But that option would have been rescinded as he wasn't in the minors for 20 days (the minor league year ended prior to then). [Correct me if I'm wrong.]
In 2013 he was optioned.
So, I count only one option used, no?
(Perhaps this was already discussed? His SP page says all three options were used.)
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Post by joshv02 on Sept 16, 2013 12:20:51 GMT -5
Salty is a 100 wRC+ player with limited defensive skills. That is pretty good for a catcher - I wrote this elsewhere, but basically it is at most a touch better than Russell Martin prior to 2013. Without a QO, Martin signed for 2/17. I suspect that Salty would be 3/27ish, maybe 4/36 ish without a QO.
With a QO, I don't think he'll be able to sign a long term deal with the Sox or anyone else. I suspect he accepts the QO, which is a pretty fine outcome for the Sox.
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Post by joshv02 on Sept 13, 2013 14:50:49 GMT -5
Playing at instrux means the team sponsored a visa so there is a high likelihood that the player will be stateside.
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Post by joshv02 on Aug 13, 2013 10:56:18 GMT -5
He is an '12 draftee. Why do we need to figure out who he is roughly one year into his professional career?
We can simply admit to not knowing, yet. The statistical evidence certainly isn't there to mean much. We can likely rule him out as a 30 hr hitter, or a stiff in the field, with potential career paths in between. Everyone is a likely second division player until they prove otherwise so that doesn't tell us much, either.
It's ok to not yet have an opinion.
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Post by joshv02 on Jul 24, 2013 5:49:53 GMT -5
About a month ago I looked at Pedroia contract and thought it was perfect for the organization. This extension is three years to long. Length reminds me of Crawford contract for a 30 yr. old. Sox are going to eat last two years of this deal ($28 Million). He'll basically be paid $20 million per year for five hopefully productive years and amortize it, from his perspective, over seven years. Realistically, what kind of deal would a 32 year old Pedroia have received on the free agent market and would it have beat what the Red Sox would have paid him two years from now. Phenomenal work by Dustin's agent. Red Sox not so much. He wouldn't be expected to be worth zero over the final two years. Do we expect 20 WAR over 7 seasons? I don't see how you anyone cannot project that. That's worth >100mm. The Red Sox took on downside risk. That's a contract. Pedroia is being paid for possibly as little as 65% of his expected value. That's the trade off.
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Post by joshv02 on Jul 13, 2013 14:35:41 GMT -5
Jmei: why are you using fip or xfip for a reliever, with <30 ip at that. Of course he is significantly likely to be better than Beato. Or Rowland-Smith. In small sample sizes, advanced stats are way more likely to be predictive than ERA. Strikeout, walk, and groundball rates stabilize (i.e., become predictive) very quickly, while ERA or batting-average against are very vulnerable to mostly-random fluctuations in BABIP or strand rate or home run/fly ball rate. And yeah, he's probably better than Beato or Rowland-Smith, but by a lot less than you'd think. I don't know what you think I think, but RS has been out of the majors for two years, and has a career 5 fip. Nearly all of his positive projection is regression to a mean he likely is below. Fip is not predictive in 27 innings for a relief pitcher. Period. Rps likely demonstrate some control over bip, and we have enough data to simply run a normal projection. I've seen the studies of how quickly things normalize. I think they are likely nonesense when applied prospectively rather than retrospectively.
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Post by joshv02 on Jul 13, 2013 10:20:24 GMT -5
Jmei: why are you using fip or xfip for a reliever, with <30 ip at that.
Of course he is significantly likely to be better than Beato. Or Rowland-Smith.
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