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Red Sox outfield roster crunch
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Post by jimed14 on Apr 23, 2014 13:55:49 GMT -5
So your defense is that the other guys suck too? My defense is that Nava is far better defensively. None of them are hitting. Nava's wRC+ is drug way down because of his -45 wRC+ in 22 PA batting RH which he should never be doing. |
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Post by jmei on Apr 23, 2014 15:00:07 GMT -5
Eh, I'm a fan of Nava, but I think Sizemore has both been better in the early going and has a higher ceiling. Sizemore's defense in CF has been spotty, but in left field, Sizemore probably has the better range (though he still has some rust to shake off in terms of jumps and first step). And Sizemore has flashed a ton of offensive potential, flashing a career-low strikeout rate and a bit of power. His BABIP will regress positively, as he's both hit a good number of line drives and very few pop-ups (he was robbed by Ellsbury last night, for instance).
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ericmvan
Veteran
Supposed to be working on something more important
Posts: 9,020
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Post by ericmvan on Apr 23, 2014 15:50:37 GMT -5
That Nava would be a better option for the roster than Carp is hard to dispute. It's not knowing where Sizemore fits that is keeping things in flux. There's a small chance that Sizemore is, in the long run, the least of the trio, so trading Carp now to make room for him could backfire big time.
In a month we'll know better, and the bench downgrade from Carp to Nava in the interim is unlikely to cost a win. Meanwhile, Nava can get himself straightened out at the plate.
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Post by okin15 on Apr 23, 2014 16:08:47 GMT -5
No point in having Nava sit on the bench in the majors. Let Carp and Gomes do that while we figure out what we've got in JBJ and Sizemore, and Nava gets himself straightened out. No reason we can't still trade/drop Carp at some point (or Sizemore for that matter. Or we can demote JBJ later in the season if we like. But right now, this is the best compromise between a 1/16th of a win better now, and giving the moving pieces with the most upside time to play out.
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Post by mgoetze on Apr 23, 2014 17:21:35 GMT -5
I don't suppose there's any chance they told Nava to drop the switch-hitting charade and try out as a full time lefty in Pawtucket?
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Post by moonstone2 on Apr 23, 2014 18:35:37 GMT -5
Okay Jmei since you watch all the games and have seen Nava extensively, why was Nava doing so badly? You can't possibly think that the Red Sox are just overreacting to a temporary slump. Does that sound like something they have done in the past?
Farrell has said that Nava doesn't have the same approach as last year.
In my opinion pitchers have adjusted to him by throwing him more fastballs especially inside and that has forced him to change his approach.
The data backs that up too as he's clearly swinging more often especially at strikes. He's not making less contact but he's striking out more and walking less as you would expect.
When Nava was good in April and May of 13 he would get himself ahead in the count and get a pitch that he could drive, usualy belt high from the middle out, or take a walk.
Around the middle of June or so pitchers started pitching him inside and his walks went down and his strikeouts went up.
If Nava is to be more than a bubble player he's going to make pitchers sorry for comming inside. Time will tell if he can do that.
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Post by moonstone2 on Apr 23, 2014 18:37:23 GMT -5
Time to stop feeding the troll, guys. Yeah especially when the troll ended up being right. Sour grapes. |
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Post by jmei on Apr 23, 2014 18:56:59 GMT -5
Okay Jmei since you watch all the games and have seen Nava extensively, why was Nava doing so badly? You can't possibly think that the Red Sox are just overreacting to a temporary slump. Does that sound like something they have done in the past? I think they're demoting him because they have a roster crunch and he is the only outfield who has options left. Even if he were performing to career norms, there's a good chance he'd be the one demoted because this front office values its depth early on in the season and the difference between Nava and Carp or Sizemore is small enough that they maximize depth. I've made this point multiple times in this thread. Farrell has said that Nava doesn't have the same approach as last year. In my opinion pitchers have adjusted to him by throwing him more fastballs especially inside and that has forced him to change his approach. The data backs that up too as he's clearly swinging more often especially at strikes. He's not making less contact but he's striking out more and walking less as you would expect. When Nava was good in April and May of 13 he would get himself ahead in the count and get a pitch that he could drive, usualy belt high from the middle out, or take a walk. Around the middle of June or so pitchers started pitching him inside and his walks went down and his strikeouts went up. If Nava is to be more than a bubble player he's going to make pitchers sorry for comming inside. Time will tell if he can do that. . Short answer: he's struggling more with breaking balls in two-strike counts, not fastballs early in the count. Pitchers are indeed throwing him more fastballs, but Nava has hit them just fine. He's not swinging more often either at strikes or non-strikes-- his swing rates this year are basically identical to his career norms. He's striking out more because in plate appearances that ended against an offspeed/breaking pitch, he's 1/14 with 8 strikeouts. Compare that to last year where he hit breaking/offspeed pitches pretty well. This theory that pitchers adjusted to him in the second half last year and now he's worthless is pretty clearly incorrect. Nava hit .336/.410/.479 in the second half last year. He also killed inside pitches last year. |
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Post by moonstone2 on Apr 23, 2014 20:59:33 GMT -5
Jmei you say you use data because it's unbiased but as you have clearly shown you use data in a biased way as well.
For instance you are quick to mention Nava's 9 line drives but ignore that he actually has more pop ups than liners. More telling the ratio of Grounders to liners which is up significantly.
The roster crunch is part of the issue but you find a way to keep hitters with 370ish OBPs on the field and I think you know that.
Take a deeper look at Nava's numbers from a year ago. After June 1st walks and power were down significantly. It is clearly true that Nava was a worse hitter as the season wore on.
They don't do splits for types of balls in play but I do remember him hitting a lot of balls into the ground and that's certainly been a theme so far in 2014.
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Post by joshv02 on Apr 23, 2014 21:35:46 GMT -5
Take a deeper look at Nava's numbers from a year ago. After June 1st walks and power were down significantly. It is clearly true that Nava was a worse hitter as the season wore on. They don't do splits for types of balls in play but I do remember him hitting a lot of balls into the ground and that's certainly been a theme so far in 2014. If only there was a site that showed if his GB% increased from June to September! |
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Post by jmei on Apr 23, 2014 21:42:17 GMT -5
Jmei you say you use data because it's unbiased but as you have clearly shown you use data in a biased way as well. For instance you are quick to mention Nava's 9 line drives but ignore that he actually has more pop ups than liners. More telling the ratio of Grounders to liners which is up significantly. What are you looking at? That's absolutely not what I'm seeing. - Versus four-seam fastballs in 2014, Nava has hit 15% ground balls, 35% line drives, 45% fly balls, and 5% popups. -Looking at his spray chart, he's hit three popups and nine line drives this year. -You must be just comparing his LD% to his IFFB%, but you can't do that because they have different denominators (LD% = LD/BIP; IFFB% = IFFB/FB), so you're comparing apples and oranges. Plus, this early in the season, an elevated IFFB% is basically just one extra infield fly ball, and IFFB% takes 500 PAs to stabilize. It's just basically just a rounding error at this point and not real evidence of decline. The roster crunch is part of the issue but you find a way to keep hitters with 370ish OBPs on the field and I think you know that. If you think Nava is a true talent .260/.360/.400 guy and Carp is a true talent .260/.330/.440 guy (ZiPS RoS has Carp at .258/.321/.437, by the way) going forward, it makes sense to option Nava to keep Carp on the roster. Take a deeper look at Nava's numbers from a year ago. After June 1st walks and power were down significantly. It is clearly true that Nava was a worse hitter as the season wore on. They don't do splits for types of balls in play but I do remember him hitting a lot of balls into the ground and that's certainly been a theme so far in 2014. Fangraphs does have batted ball splits by month. Here they are for Nava's 2013. There's basically zero evidence of your theory. Aside from a few random-looking fluctuations, both his line drive rates and his ground ball rates are very consistent month-to-month, and there is no evidence of some precipitous decline (if anything, he hits fewer ground balls as the year goes on). The only major difference in his results are that he didn't hit any home runs in July and August, but his only real bad month was in July (and even that wasn't that bad-- .270/.343/.333), as he hit a whopping .396/.473/.563 in August despite the no home runs and finished the year hitting .333/.400/.476 in September (with two homers). This is why I trust the data more than your memory, because your memory is just wrong. |
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Post by redsox04071318champs on Apr 23, 2014 22:48:30 GMT -5
No point in having Nava sit on the bench in the majors. Let Carp and Gomes do that while we figure out what we've got in JBJ and Sizemore, and Nava gets himself straightened out. No reason we can't still trade/drop Carp at some point (or Sizemore for that matter. Or we can demote JBJ later in the season if we like. But right now, this is the best compromise between a 1/16th of a win better now, and giving the moving pieces with the most upside time to play out. Okin, I have to give you credit. I really didn't think they'd option Nava down to AAA. I still think he's a good major league hitter, not a star, but a useful player who can play LF as part of a strict platoon. If he and Gomes shared LF that's an effective platoon, perhaps not of Jon Lowenstein/Gary Roenicke proportions, but still highly effective. Nava played very well last year and still had a good OBP over a long stretch when his BA wasn't that hot. This year Nava kind of got screwed. He spent a lot more time in RF than would be desired (as he did last year, too, but nothing bad ever happened to the Red Sox in 2013), and it seemed like with the way the roster was constructed he seemed to be facing way too many lefties, and he lost his job to the reputation of the former Grady Sizemore, had 67 horrible ABs and got sent down since he did have the option. All I can say is I hope Sizemore is worth all this effort. Originally it seemed like he was the choice for CF allowing Bradley to get some more experience with the bat in AAA, but it quickly became obvious that Sizemore can't play CF anymore and it's looking like he can't even handle RF at Fenway and is limited to LF. Hope his bat still works. I expect that Nava will be back up soon as somebody will get hurt sooner or later. It's too bad 67 lousy ABs and poor roster construction overrode about 1000 ABs of good offensive baseball for him. Doesn't seem right, but I understand why they're doing this. |
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Post by moonstone2 on Apr 23, 2014 23:02:01 GMT -5
Jmei the data supports my memory. His GB/FB ratio AND GBP were both significantly higher after the first two months of the season.
The reason Nava did so well last year was that he hit over .290 on groundballs. For reference Miguel Cabrera who has won the past three batting titles doesn't do that well on groundballs.
So basically your argument is to trust the data as opposed to common sense. But how good is the data when you misrepresent it or just plain lie about it.
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Post by jmei on Apr 23, 2014 23:20:43 GMT -5
Jmei the data supports my memory. His GB/FB ratio AND GBP were both significantly higher after the first two months of the season. The reason Nava did so well last year was that he hit over .290 on groundballs. For reference Miguel Cabrera who has won the past three batting titles doesn't do that well on groundballs. So basically your argument is to trust the data as opposed to common sense. But how good is the data when you misrepresent it or just plain lie about it. His first-half GB%: 33.6%. His second-half GB%: 35.6%. His first-half production: .288/.374/.429. His second-half production: .336/.410/.479. His BABIP on ground balls in 2013: .291. League-average BABIP on ground balls: .231. It's elevated, but that's why I don't project him to hit .303 going forward. If he hits .270, he'll be an above-average regular. I'm done wasting my time researching this stuff. Believe what you want. |
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Post by moonstone2 on Apr 23, 2014 23:28:04 GMT -5
By the way the exact numbers for GBP are 28 percent before June 1st and 37 percent afterwards. That seems significant to me.
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Post by moonstone2 on Apr 23, 2014 23:32:25 GMT -5
And yes when I present data that proves that you wrong you would give up wouldn't you?
You tell us to use the data but when the data refutes you lie.
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Post by jimed14 on Apr 24, 2014 7:22:53 GMT -5
Even if Nava is the .600 OPS guy you think he is, he's still way more useful than Carp on a team with a full-time DH.
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Post by jmei on Apr 24, 2014 7:51:39 GMT -5
You started off with the argument that starting in June last year, Nava was exposed and became a terrible hitter. Well, Nava hit .315/.382/.437 after June 1st, so now you're what, clinging to the fact that he had a slightly higher ground ball rate after your arbitrary end-date? Give it up, man. We're all wrong sometimes.
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Post by mwgray13 on Apr 24, 2014 10:15:27 GMT -5
Nava was going to be demoted regardless. With Victorino's return imminent, someone had to be send to AAA. Bradley is the best defensive OFer on the team, and Victorino is the only one able to challenging him for that title. Secondly, none of the Sox OFers have really done much offensively, with the exception of Gomes (RC+ 96) which is why defense is taking priority here. Victorino is exactly what the Sox need, he brings a new dynamic to the OF defensively, and is a quality RH bat out there as well. With Victorino back, this will reshuffle the Sox bench to typically have two left LH and RH hitter available to pinch hit & make a opposing manager respect the bench. In the past few weeks, Farrell has had to rely on Gomes and Nava as the RH hitting OFers, we can all agree the right side is not Nava's best side. In addition, it has limited what Farrell has been able to do in games, because of a bench full of lefties, who really can't counter LH pitching. Nava, Bradley, Pierzynski, Herrera, and Sizemore have not demonstrated any reasonable ability to handle LH pitching in there careers. Carp has at least been adequate against LH pitching in comparison to the previous five mentioned, Carp spot on the roster has and will always be based on his offensive contributions. Carp is here to back up Gomes, Napoli, and Ortiz, occasionally pinch hit, and play full time in the event of an injury not to be a gold glove OFer. Once you consider that, given the options available on Bradley & Nava, Bradley's far superior defense, as well as Bradley's having better offensive numbers against both handiness of pitching, the decision becomes obvious. It is not as if Bradley is guaranteed the roster spot all season, if he continues to struggle offensively while Nava demonstrates success at AAA, it's possible to flip them, and let the prospect/rookie get a opportunity to get back on track. If Bradley continues to struggle offensively, it is very likely the Sox will look to get him revitalized at AAA.
On a side note, we may see a similar situation occur in the middle infield. Herrera the more established player, could/should be optioned to Pawtucket in favor of a prospect/rookie Holt when Middlebrooks returns. Both Holt and Herrera are contact/avg hitters and in the case of Holt, he has been the better hitter while demonstrating a more ideal Sox plate approach. Based on the current MIF, Pedroia and Bogearts will play almost everyday, 3B is the spot that will reuire the most backing up. To this point Holt has looked better defensively at 3B than Herrera (small sample size, so beware).
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Post by jimed14 on Apr 24, 2014 10:36:16 GMT -5
Carp is here to back up Gomes, Napoli, and Ortiz, occasionally pinch hit, and play full time in the event of an injury not to be a gold glove OFer. Nava could also do all of that, plus do it better. So can Sizemore (give him a 1B mitt and I bet he's instantly better than Carp). That has always been the point. I don't really care about the options when we're going with an inferior 25-man roster. I really hope Nava forces Ben to do something about Carp, because his being on the team is useless when we need another competent glove in the OF in a season where our defense has been atrocious. And despite what moonstone continues to harp on in this thread, Nava had a wRC+ of 128 last season, good for 4th on the team. And against RHP, which he should be exclusively facing as a platoon player on a correctly constructed roster, he had an MLB-elite level of 146 and even higher than Carp's 144 vs RHP. |
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Post by okin15 on Apr 24, 2014 10:40:59 GMT -5
I still think Nava's a good major league hitter, not a star, but a useful player who can play LF as part of a strict platoon. If he and Gomes shared LF that's an effective platoon, perhaps not of Jon Lowenstein/Gary Roenicke proportions, but still highly effective. Nava played very well last year and still had a good OBP over a long stretch when his BA wasn't that hot. This year he kind of got screwed. He spent a lot more time in RF than would be desired (as he did last year, too, but nothing bad ever happened to the Red Sox in 2013), and it seemed like with the way the roster was constructed he seemed to be facing way too many lefties, and he lost his job to the reputation of the former Grady Sizemore, had 67 horrible ABs and got sent down since he did have the option. All I can say is I hope Sizemore is worth all this effort. Originally it seemed like he was the choice for CF allowing Bradley to get some more experience with the bat in AAA, but it quickly became obvious that Sizemore can't play CF anymore and it's looking like he can't even handle RF at Fenway and is limited to LF. Hope his bat still works. I expect that Nava will be back up soon as somebody will get hurt sooner or later. It's too bad 67 lousy ABs and poor roster construction overrode about 1000 ABs of good offensive baseball for him. Doesn't seem right, but I understand why they're doing this. I agree with all of this, and also agree with the idea of trying him full time LHH. |
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Post by DesignatedForAssignment on Apr 24, 2014 11:26:42 GMT -5
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Post by mwgray13 on Apr 24, 2014 15:48:18 GMT -5
Carp is here to back up Gomes, Napoli, and Ortiz, occasionally pinch hit, and play full time in the event of an injury not to be a gold glove OFer. Nava could also do all of that, plus do it better. So can Sizemore (give him a 1B mitt and I bet he's instantly better than Carp). That has always been the point. I don't really care about the options when we're going with an inferior 25-man roster. I really hope Nava forces Ben to do something about Carp, because his being on the team is useless when we need another competent glove in the OF in a season where our defense has been atrocious. And despite what moonstone continues to harp on in this thread, Nava had a wRC+ of 128 last season, good for 4th on the team. And against RHP, which he should be exclusively facing as a platoon player on a correctly constructed roster, he had an MLB-elite level of 146 and even higher than Carp's 144 vs RHP. Two points to make: 1. The baseball season is not a sprint it's a marathon, you need to keep as many good players available to the active roster as possible. At the beginning of the season Bradley was going to be sent down because he had options. Instead of Carp being DFA, at this point Nava played his way to AAA instead of Bradley. Neither has been spectacular but Bradley is probably 20 runs better on defense than Nava. Nava needs at bats, and he wouldn't get that in Boston right now. 2. My point was about Carp backing up those guys is that he hits LH pitching, and they are run producers. You left out the part where I mentioned Nava doesn't hit LH pitching, and is more of a run scorer. With Victorino on the roster their is no need for a below avg defensive RF/ avg LFer that Nava is. |
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Post by ray88h66 on Apr 24, 2014 18:56:42 GMT -5
I suggest that anyone who hasn't read the whole thread go back to page 2. Okin 15 and jmei were on the mark in their evaluations. I don't like seeing Nava go down , but understand it. My guess is he hates it but works as hard as he always does to get back.
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Post by moonstone2 on Apr 24, 2014 20:17:58 GMT -5
You started off with the argument that starting in June last year, Nava was exposed and became a terrible hitter. Well, Nava hit .315/.382/.437 after June 1st, so now you're what, clinging to the fact that he had a slightly higher ground ball rate after your arbitrary end-date? Give it up, man. We're all wrong sometimes. Actually he was optioned I was dead right. I argued that after June 1st his power and walks took a significant dive and correspondingly he started hitting a lot more ground balls. All of which are true. If this were any other player you would agree that these are significantly negative leading indicators. You argue neither rationally nor fairly. You use 1st and second half splits to argue that Nava was consistent all season. Yet I use June 1st as a cutoff point and suddenly the end point is arbitrary and you dismiss it. The way you have misrepresented and lied about the data in this case is a joke. And you have the gall to argue that I was wrong about a player who has completely collapsed at the plate and was optioned. |
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