SoxProspects News
|
|
|
|
Legal
Forum Ground Rules
The views expressed by the members of this Forum do not necessarily reflect the views of SoxProspects, LLC.
© 2003-2024 SoxProspects, LLC
|
|
|
|
|
Forum Home | Search | My Profile | Messages | Members | Help |
Welcome Guest. Please Login or Register.
Castillo placed on waivers
|
Post by tjb21 on Jun 21, 2016 13:46:15 GMT -5
Ah well, wish it worked out better for Rusney and Boston.
Wonder how many people crushing the signing now were ecstatic at the time. Might have to peek back at that thread..
|
|
nomar
Veteran
Posts: 10,794
|
Post by nomar on Jun 21, 2016 15:42:43 GMT -5
$70M is a good fallback to not coming near your potential.
|
|
|
Post by stevedillard on Jun 21, 2016 18:52:28 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by mtsquad on Jun 23, 2016 19:23:20 GMT -5
$70M is a good fallback to not coming near your potential. This is true, but little consolation if he truly loves the game. He may be rich but the failure will stay with him for the rest of his days. Hope he wakes up
|
|
jimoh
Veteran
Posts: 3,977
|
Post by jimoh on Jun 23, 2016 20:35:32 GMT -5
$70M is a good fallback to not coming near your potential. This is true, but little consolation if he truly loves the game. He may be rich but the failure will stay with him for the rest of his days. Hope he wakes up Yeah, Craig has a weird life now but he has a ring and can say it was injuries. Castillo has a pile of money but he's a failure. Somebody should do a book about them, or a fictional TV show.
|
|
|
Post by sox fan in nc on Jun 24, 2016 10:51:20 GMT -5
Saw Rusney on NESN last night. Looked awful at the plate. We really don't know, but someone from Cuba having 70 million in the bank, it might not matter to him as it would for say, Allen Craig, who "might" be concerned about his legacy. I just don't sense he is going to break his neck to try to "fix" himself.
|
|
|
Post by James Dunne on Jun 24, 2016 12:04:23 GMT -5
Saw Rusney on NESN last night. Looked awful at the plate. We really don't know, but someone from Cuba having 70 million in the bank, it might not matter to him as it would for say, Allen Craig, who "might" be concerned about his legacy. I just don't sense he is going to break his neck to try to "fix" himself. Why would an American player be more concerned about his legacy than a Cuban player? That's the sort of catch-all discriminatory characterization that I have absolutely zero tolerance for. You even got your stereotypes backwards - baseball is a way bigger deal in Cuba than it is in California. Ugh. I've seen Castillo a few times the last two years. I feel pretty strongly that the problem is not his effort. The problem is that he's not a good hitter.
|
|
|
Post by jimed14 on Jun 24, 2016 14:18:45 GMT -5
$70 million after taxes and the fees associated with defecting from Cuba (which I remember reading were about half of the total contract and agent fees probably works out to about $15-20 million, if that. Still nice, but not anywhere near $70 million.
|
|
|
Post by sox fan in nc on Jun 24, 2016 14:37:50 GMT -5
Saw Rusney on NESN last night. Looked awful at the plate. We really don't know, but someone from Cuba having 70 million in the bank, it might not matter to him as it would for say, Allen Craig, who "might" be concerned about his legacy. I just don't sense he is going to break his neck to try to "fix" himself. Why would an American player be more concerned about his legacy than a Cuban player? That's the sort of catch-all discriminatory characterization that I have absolutely zero tolerance for. You even got your stereotypes backwards - baseball is a way bigger deal in Cuba than it is in California. Ugh. I've seen Castillo a few times the last two years. I feel pretty strongly that the problem is not his effort. The problem is that he's not a good hitter. I didn't want it to come across as discriminatory. All I was saying is that he is playing the game in a country not of his origin. If he fails here, to me, it's a little different than him failing in front of his own people. He is human. I apologize if I'm off base here.
|
|
|
Post by dnfl333 on Jun 25, 2016 12:21:20 GMT -5
How does my post contradict that opinion? Or is your general frame of mind not to try to fix things that are broken? He's a troll, don't encourage him. The truth hurts don't it. Are you really Allard Baird? Tell the truth, we won't laugh just smirk.
|
|
ericmvan
Veteran
Supposed to be working on something more important
Posts: 8,926
|
Post by ericmvan on Aug 30, 2016 12:40:22 GMT -5
Rusney is .371 / .417 / .526 in his last 25 G / 108 PA. He is not hitting the ball in the air at all (no HR), but he is making consistent hard contact. Very hard and very consistent.
Here are the numbers, with comparisons to 152 qualifying hitters or MLB average.
.148 K rate. Would be 34th best. Furthermore, he had a .333 over one six-game stretch and is .086 in the other 19, which is a rate so low that it's silly, even coming from someone other than Rusney.
.074 BB rate. 58th to 60th worst. Same rate as Xander. However, all 8 of his walks came in a 5-game stretch immediately preceding the six games just mentioned. For the most part, he's attacking very early in the count, as if he has a great new toy and can't wait to use it.
.542 GB rate. 13th highest, but there are good hitters with higher rates.
.356 BABIP on GB. AL this year is .248. Likely because he's hitting a lot of hard grounders, plus ...
.111 Inf Hit rate (of GB). Would be tied for 8th.
.253 LD rate. Would be 14th.
.667 BABIP on LD. AL average is .643.
.857 SABIP on LD. AL average is .926. Some of his FB XBH may have been LDs if scored in MLB.
Warning: silly zone is next.
.205 FB rate. Would be 4th lowest.
.353 BABIP on fly balls. AL average is .083.
.941 SABIP on fly balls. AL average is .259.
The thing is, Rusney has only hit 13 fly balls to the OF. He has 6 hits: two 2B and four 3B. (His BABIP on OF fly balls is .462 and his SABIP is 1.231.) He actually went the first 15 games of the 25 without recording an AB on a fly ball out to the OF (he had two SF).
.235 IFFB rate, which would be the worst in MLB, but that's because the total FB rate is so low. They should really just separate OF-FB from PU and report those. His .048 PU% would be 23rd worst, but of course it's a SSS (4 popups).
Stylistically, this is basically Christian Yelich with an earlier-in-count attack and 2B and 3B instead of HR. Making very hard, very consistent contact for 25 games is actually a very good sign; he can be a useful 4th OFer with that skill set. If he can add some loft to his swing and turn some of those OF rockets into homers, that's a guy who can start.
Of course, he might revert to his pre-July 30th form at any time. But this suggests he has learned something that has clicked.
|
|
|
Post by jmei on Aug 30, 2016 16:44:26 GMT -5
In a sample that small, I don't think you can assume that the high BABIP or non-HR slugging means he's making especially hard contact, especially because a big chunk of the reason for that high BABIP comes from infield ground ball hits and fly ball hits, and the small sample means the extra 2B/3B could be just bloops and/or defensive misplays rather than hard-hit balls.
With that said, I've consistently thought (and still think) that, even assuming that he doesn't make meaningful skill improvements, Castillo is a legitimate MLB fourth outfielder. He's got great range, a good arm, and good OF instincts, and, while his high GB% may mean he never hits for as much power as we'd hope for, I think he'll hit for average (by not striking out much and by running a high BABIP). The contract is a sunk cost, but by this point in the season, bringing him up costs less than $1M in additional luxury tax hit, and he's clearly an upgrade on, say, Bryce Brentz. It makes all the sense in the world to bring him up on September 1, even if they plan to DFA him again after the season.
|
|
ericmvan
Veteran
Supposed to be working on something more important
Posts: 8,926
|
Post by ericmvan on Aug 30, 2016 17:57:55 GMT -5
In a sample that small, I don't think you can assume that the high BABIP or non-HR slugging means he's making especially hard contact, especially because a big chunk of the reason for that high BABIP comes from infield ground ball hits and fly ball hits, and the small sample means the extra 2B/3B could be just bloops and/or defensive misplays rather than hard-hit balls. With that said, I've consistently thought (and still think) that, even assuming that he doesn't make meaningful skill improvements, Castillo is a legitimate MLB fourth outfielder. He's got great range, a good arm, and good OF instincts, and, while his high GB% may mean he never hits for as much power as we'd hope for, I think he'll hit for average (by not striking out much and by running a high BABIP). The contract is a sunk cost, but by this point in the season, bringing him up costs less than $1M in additional luxury tax hit, and he's clearly an upgrade on, say, Bryce Brentz. It makes all the sense in the world to bring him up on September 1, even if they plan to DFA him again after the season. jmei, with all due respect (which is considerable), there are times when your SSSS (the last "S" for skepticism") becomes SSSSSS (the first two for "stupid silly"). I've been watching baseball since 1962. I scored every pitch of nearly every Red Sox game from 2003 to 2012, with a scoring system that classifies ball trajectories on a continuous scale. I cannot recall ever seeing a bloop fly ball triple. Bloop doubles happen because the ball is up in the air long enough for the hitter to get to second. But bloops by definition fall among fielders. You can't get to 3B on a bloop to the OF (without an error). And you're wondering whether Runsey Castillo did it 4 times in 13 OF fly balls? What we're trying to determine from these numbers is exit velocity. There are three things that I'm quite sure correlate strongly: LD%, GB BABIP, and FB Iso. Castillo in this streak has a terrific LD%, a terrific GB BABIP even without the INF hits*, and a terrific FB Iso (.588 vs. AL .378) despite 0 HR and a popup % that is ... sky-high. Any model that tried to estimate average exit velocity based on the available data would not only come out very positive for him, but with a surprisingly small error if your model included the variance among the three separate indicators. I think he's added to the 40-man in September and he stays there. He would clear waivers again, but some team would take him in the Rule 5 and I think his odds of his winning a starting job in ST after a further extended look at his tools are good. He only needs to be a 1.5 WAR player to earn his salary, and that's a low bar. *Edit: I decided to check that. He's .275 versus .183 for the AL this year. That's 150 as a proportion a la OPS+; his FB Iso is 156.
|
|
|
Post by jmei on Aug 30, 2016 20:18:24 GMT -5
Fair enough-- let's call the triples "defense-assisted triples" instead of bloops. Official scoring decisions and defense are inconsistent enough in the minors that you can't assume that a double or triple was particularly hard-hit, is my point.
You know what else correlates strongly with exit velocity (and in fact correlates most strongly with exit velocity)? HRs, and Castillo hasn't hit any of those. You know what has a strong negative correlation with exit velocity? Pop-ups, and Castillo has a good number of those. Work those variables into your model, and it won't be as rosy as you're suggesting.
|
|
|