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Here's Another Homer Bobby Bombs: the Bobby Dalbec thread
ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on May 18, 2021 2:24:10 GMT -5
I happen to like Dalbec. He has great usable power. He fields well. I am rooting for him. That said, it was a month ago when the leadership of this forum told us that Bobby makes adjustments faster than the average bear and other predictive declarations of coming success. We are now into the second half of May and I would love hear folks like Eric and Norm comments on trends and adjustments now. Do they still feel as sure as they did, and, if so, why. Respectfully submitted. One thing that would have already become clear if I had posted my breakdowns of all his seasons is that his ability to make quick adjustments is often undercut by an inability to sustain his grove. And his messed-up stretches come in a wide variety.
His expected BA is .242, and if it weren't for his shit luck, folks would be looking at that and his .497 SA (again, expected) and saying "pretty much as expected, so far so good." He's walked less than expected, which is another reason he ranks 22nd at 1B in xwOBA despite being 12th in xSA.
As far as streakiness is concerned, he was awful in the opening series (like everyone) and had an awful stretch of 7 games from 4/27 to 5/6. That's a .128 xwOBA in 10 G and 37 PA. Otherwise he's has a .423 xwOBA in 23 GS and 85 PA. The good Dalbec, whom we see 70% of the time, is as good as Vlad Jr. is overall. We want him to either up that percentage, up the good performance even further by adding walks, or reduce the badness of the slumps (where adding walks would help, too).
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Post by joshuacoffee on May 18, 2021 9:39:03 GMT -5
On the surface it certainly does seem odd that Dalbec has both a high barrels rate and a high swing and miss rate. I wonder if this points to a timing issue? There's a great article about the need for better swing tracking here. towardsdatascience.com/3-things-we-could-learn-from-swing-timing-analysis-84486fdab209. I'm guessing the Sox do this in house, its just the rest of us that have jobs and don't have time to sit and chart every swing that are missing out on the data.
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Post by ramireja on May 18, 2021 10:09:58 GMT -5
I actually think there is a fairly intuitive explanation. I think (and if I'm wrong, then you can ignore everything I'm about to say) that Barrel% may be barreled balls divided by 'barreled ball event' or in other words, batted balls (not sure if they need to be in play, but I suspect yes). Therefore, if you swing and miss at an above average rate, your swings produce fewer batted balls. This reduces your denominator in Barrel% calculation and then inflates the % as a result. As an example, the Statcast leader right now in Barrels/BBE% is Franmil Reyes at 21.6% but he's also striking out in 31.6% of PAs and his total number of barreled ball events is lower than some of his peers. If you look at barrels/plate appearance %, Reyes is still near the top of the leader board, but is surpassed by Ohtani and Acuna who presumably make more contact than Reyes.
So yeah, you can think of it as a bit of an all-or-none approach right? Dalbec is going to make below average amounts of contact, but when he does, its more likely to be quality contact. The inverse is true too for some players. Someone like Gilberto Jimenez is going to make tons of contact, but most of it is going to be low EV with less than ideal launch angle contact which may still lead to a lot of hits for someone with plus speed.
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Post by incandenza on May 18, 2021 10:10:20 GMT -5
Doesn't seeem too unusual for a slugger to have lots of hard contact + lots of whiffs. Could it be a tall slugger thing especially? Aaron Judge has had a similar high barrel/high whiff profile throughout his career. (See also ramireja's Franmil Reyes example.)
ADD: Actually, now that I think about there may be a survivor bias issue here: no one makes it to the majors with a super high whiff rate unless they also have a high barrel rate.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on May 18, 2021 10:18:06 GMT -5
I actually think there is a fairly intuitive explanation. I think (and if I'm wrong, then you can ignore everything I'm about to say) that Barrel% may be barreled balls divided by 'barreled ball event' or in other words, batted balls (not sure if they need to be in play, but I suspect yes). Therefore, if you swing and miss at an above average rate, your swings produce fewer batted balls. This reduces your denominator in Barrel% calculation and then inflates the % as a result. As an example, the Statcast leader right now in Barrels/BBE% is Franmil Reyes at 21.6% but he's also striking out in 31.6% of PAs and his total number of barreled ball events is lower than some of his peers. If you look at barrels/plate appearance %, Reyes is still near the top of the leader board, but is surpassed by Ohtani and Acuna who presumably make more contact than Reyes. So yeah, you can think of it as a bit of an all-or-none approach right? Dalbec is going to make below average amounts of contact, but when he does, its more likely to be quality contact. The inverse is true too for some players. Someone like Gilberto Jimenez is going to make tons of contact, but most of it is going to be low EV with less than ideal launch angle contact which may still lead to a lot of hits for someone with plus speed. That's definitely Dalbec, but I get the question - intuitively, why would it make sense that a batter is better at making good contact when he does make contact, but then also swings and misses. The implication is that getting bat to ball, and that getting the best part of the bat to the ball, are two completely separate skills. It's not clear to me, intuitively, why that would be. Like, you're still taking the bat and swinging it towards the pitched ball. If you think of it as a spectrum between "whiff" and "barrel", wouldn't it make the most sense for it to be something like a bell curve, with the best hitters having a curve more towards the latter than the former? On that theoretical spectrum, Dalbec has something of a bimodal distribution in which he either drills the ball or misses it (exaggerating). Or is it more that he's just got a flatter curve and it means that he ranks higher on the front and back end but lower in the middle? Like I get the concept of all-or-nothing hitter. It's just that intuitively you can see why that player existing is a bit confusing.
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Post by wcsoxfan on May 18, 2021 10:27:25 GMT -5
Doesn't seeem too unusual for a slugger to have lots of hard contact + lots of whiffs. Could it be a tall slugger thing especially? Aaron Judge has had a similar high barrel/high whiff profile throughout his career. (See also ramireja's Franmil Reyes example.)
ADD: Actually, now that I think about there may be a survivor bias issue here: no one makes it to the majors with a super high whiff rate unless they also have a high barrel rate.
You make a good point about the survivor bias. Players with high strikeout rates, low BABIPs and poor slugging numbers simply don't make the major leagues. I actually think there is a fairly intuitive explanation. I think (and if I'm wrong, then you can ignore everything I'm about to say) that Barrel% may be barreled balls divided by 'barreled ball event' or in other words, batted balls (not sure if they need to be in play, but I suspect yes). Therefore, if you swing and miss at an above average rate, your swings produce fewer batted balls. This reduces your denominator in Barrel% calculation and then inflates the % as a result. As an example, the Statcast leader right now in Barrels/BBE% is Franmil Reyes at 21.6% but he's also striking out in 31.6% of PAs and his total number of barreled ball events is lower than some of his peers. If you look at barrels/plate appearance %, Reyes is still near the top of the leader board, but is surpassed by Ohtani and Acuna who presumably make more contact than Reyes. So yeah, you can think of it as a bit of an all-or-none approach right? Dalbec is going to make below average amounts of contact, but when he does, its more likely to be quality contact. The inverse is true too for some players. Someone like Gilberto Jimenez is going to make tons of contact, but most of it is going to be low EV with less than ideal launch angle contact which may still lead to a lot of hits for someone with plus speed. That's definitely Dalbec, but I get the question - intuitively, why would it make sense that a batter is better at making good contact when he does make contact, but then also swings and misses. The implication is that getting bat to ball, and that getting the best part of the bat to the ball, are two completely separate skills. It's not clear to me, intuitively, why that would be. Like, you're still taking the bat and swinging it towards the pitched ball. If you think of it as a spectrum between "whiff" and "barrel", wouldn't it make the most sense for it to be something like a bell curve, with the best hitters having a curve more towards the latter than the former? On that theoretical spectrum, Dalbec has something of a bimodal distribution in which he either drills the ball or misses it (exaggerating). Or is it more that he's just got a flatter curve and it means that he ranks higher on the front and back end but lower in the middle? Like I get the concept of all-or-nothing hitter. It's just that intuitively you can see why that player existing is a bit confusing. I believe we are looking at 'hitting' as a skillset, but there are multiple skills/talents involved. 1. In the case of a player who has a high barrel percentage, this may be indicative of strong hand-eye coordination. 2. In the case of a player with low swing-and-miss rates, this may have less to do with coordination and more to do with timing and recognition of pitch-type. This also would show in players 'raw power' scouting ratings as they have shown huge power in batting practice, where pitch-timing and recognition are quite easy, but they can struggle to show it in games.
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Post by julyanmorley on May 18, 2021 10:28:06 GMT -5
Is part of it maybe a guess hitter thing?
If you're reacting to every pitch, then I would think you get a bell curve. If you're guessing either fastball or slider, then you might get closer a bimodal distribution.
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Post by soxinsf on May 18, 2021 10:32:36 GMT -5
Doesn't seeem too unusual for a slugger to have lots of hard contact + lots of whiffs. Could it be a tall slugger thing especially? Aaron Judge has had a similar high barrel/high whiff profile throughout his career. (See also ramireja's Franmil Reyes example.)
ADD: Actually, now that I think about there may be a survivor bias issue here: no one makes it to the majors with a super high whiff rate unless they also have a high barrel rate.
The mention of Judge makes the point in spades. Judge is hitting .291 with an OPS in the baseball stratosphere. He has hit 12 HR. Bobby is hitting near the Mendoza line with an OPS of less than.700 and just 4 bombs. We all hope for better from him. We want him to be so good that he, Devers and Casas create a logjam at the corners. It is way too early to give up on him, but it is not too early to wonder whether he will ever overcome the downsides in his game. And even to wonder if he needs to go back to Worcester where he can work out some of his inconsistencies. I don’t care how many times he strikes out and bats .235 if he hits 40 HRs and drives in approx.100. Today, no matter what barrel statistics get quoted, he is nowhere near that trajectory.
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Post by ramireja on May 18, 2021 10:33:06 GMT -5
I actually think there is a fairly intuitive explanation. I think (and if I'm wrong, then you can ignore everything I'm about to say) that Barrel% may be barreled balls divided by 'barreled ball event' or in other words, batted balls (not sure if they need to be in play, but I suspect yes). Therefore, if you swing and miss at an above average rate, your swings produce fewer batted balls. This reduces your denominator in Barrel% calculation and then inflates the % as a result. As an example, the Statcast leader right now in Barrels/BBE% is Franmil Reyes at 21.6% but he's also striking out in 31.6% of PAs and his total number of barreled ball events is lower than some of his peers. If you look at barrels/plate appearance %, Reyes is still near the top of the leader board, but is surpassed by Ohtani and Acuna who presumably make more contact than Reyes. So yeah, you can think of it as a bit of an all-or-none approach right? Dalbec is going to make below average amounts of contact, but when he does, its more likely to be quality contact. The inverse is true too for some players. Someone like Gilberto Jimenez is going to make tons of contact, but most of it is going to be low EV with less than ideal launch angle contact which may still lead to a lot of hits for someone with plus speed. That's definitely Dalbec, but I get the question - intuitively, why would it make sense that a batter is better at making good contact when he does make contact, but then also swings and misses. The implication is that getting bat to ball, and that getting the best part of the bat to the ball, are two completely separate skills. It's not clear to me, intuitively, why that would be. Like, you're still taking the bat and swinging it towards the pitched ball. If you think of it as a spectrum between "whiff" and "barrel", wouldn't it make the most sense for it to be something like a bell curve, with the best hitters having a curve more towards the latter than the former? On that theoretical spectrum, Dalbec has something of a bimodal distribution in which he either drills the ball or misses it (exaggerating). Or is it more that he's just got a flatter curve and it means that he ranks higher on the front and back end but lower in the middle? Like I get the concept of all-or-nothing hitter. It's just that intuitively you can see why that player existing is a bit confusing. I think part of the explanation lies in the definition of what constitutes a 'barreled' ball which takes into account two factors: Exit Velocity (needs to be at least 98 mph) and launch angle (needs to be between 26 and 30 degrees at the lowest of qualified EVs and this range expands as EV increases). Therefore, there are power and swing path thresholds that basically eliminate certain players. As an example, Nick Madrigal has zero 'barrels' on the year despite the ton of contact he makes. He's ranks near the bottom in both avg EV (85 mph) and avg launch angle (2.4 degrees) so this makes sense. So to try and make sense of the question a bit more.....for this specific stat (barrel %) were using as indicator of contact quality, first off you need to have power and indeed, we know more power helps you make more quality contact. In Dalbec's case, he's less likely to make contact compared to the average player, but when he makes contact, its more likely to count as a 'barrel' simply because of the power prerequisite. Swing path is the other factor. I'm not sure if this is true but it may be that a swing path that leads to ideal launch angles may also lead to more swing-and-miss?
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Post by Oregon Norm on May 18, 2021 11:18:28 GMT -5
Did you watch the video? If not, the thing that has me optimistic is how many times he's barreling up on the ball, he's in the 94th percentile (16.4% of the time, vs. 5% average). For him to be batting so poorly with those barrel numbers screams unlucky. So unfortunately I would say the message is still "give him more time". On the flip side, it is disappointing to see his low contact rates. That also came out strongly in the video, both in the zone and out of the zone. And flipping one more time... his K% is at 32% and dropping. That leads me to believe that there may be a difference over the last few games in his approach, and how he swings. I'm going to try to ferret some of that out.
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Post by bcsox on May 18, 2021 11:38:27 GMT -5
I am a big Bobby guy and pay attention closely to his at bats. Through this point in the season, the two major problems I see observationally, is that I am surprised and frustrated with the amount of fastballs say 92-94 mph that are true middle middle that he swings and misses at. I think if he is going to post numbers that will keep him in the starting lineup that he needs to start getting to some of those pitches, and hitting them with authority. It is not a good sign that pitchers seem to have little fear of throwing pitches to him there.
Also, he seemed to be using more of the right center and right field areas to hit the ball during spring training and during his hot run last year. I think he was trying to do that early in the year, but not unlike young hitters who struggle he seems to have gone pull happy the last few weeks, even as his numbers have improved.
He seems to have the same hole as Chavis where anything 95 plus belt high or above is something he cant get a bat on.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on May 18, 2021 11:47:49 GMT -5
the leadership of this forum As an aside, I would caution posters against assuming that post length equates with "forum leadership," whatever that means. There is a team of moderators (ramireja, vermontsox1, iakovos11, Oregon Norm, and to some extent myself and James) who help enforce the ground rules, but there is no "forum leadership" that sets forth any official positions or anything like that. We let our moderators post their opinions as well but those are their personal opinions. And to be clear, Eric isn't affiliated with this site at all. He's a poster like anyone else, valued as much as all of the posters who we welcome and appreciate!
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Post by soxinsf on May 18, 2021 12:14:30 GMT -5
the leadership of this forum As an aside, I would caution posters against assuming that post length equates with "forum leadership," whatever that means. There is a team of moderators (ramireja, vermontsox1, iakovos11, Oregon Norm, and to some extent myself and James) who help enforce the ground rules, but there is no "forum leadership" that sets forth any official positions or anything like that. We let our moderators post their opinions as well but those are their personal opinions. And to be clear, Eric isn't affiliated with this site at all. He's a poster like anyone else, valued as much as all of the posters who we welcome and appreciate! Chris—I respect, indeed admire, what you have created here. I have lurked for years, posted occasionally, and have finally become a more regular poster. Eric may not be management but his deep analysis makes him part of the thought leadership. You all set the tone and hopefully most of us post thoughtfully within the content and behavioral parameters you have established. My feeling, as expressed in my recent posting, is that some of the questioning of Dalbec was met with rather universal disagreement from the folks in management and content leadership in my perception of how this forum works. That is why I asked about the leadership view of Dalbec today.
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Post by joshuacoffee on May 18, 2021 12:28:11 GMT -5
That's a great point ramireja, especially about the factor that power plays in the "barreled" ball stat. When you really consider it, barreled balls are almost entirely about how far the ball is going to go when it is hit, and has little (though definitely some) to do with the batter showing the skill to be able to hit balls in the first place. So I would expect barreled balls to correlate to slugging percentage while wiffs would correlate to batting average.
When you look at it, there's actually a stronger connection between barreled% and slg than there is between wiff% and avg.
Of the top 20 hitters (with 50 or more PAs) in barreled% this year, 18 of them have a slg of 450 or better (roughly top 100), while only 9 of them have a avg of 270 or better (roughly top 100). Of the top 20 hitters (with 50 or more PAs) in wiff% this year (lowest 20), 4 of them have a slg of 450 or higher, and 10 of them have an avg of 270 or higher.
So, there seems to be a reverse correlation between wiff% and slg. The correlations between wiff% and avg, as well as barreled% and avg is negligent. And there is a strong correlation between barreled% and slg. I have been thinking that barreled% was an indication of having a high level of bat to ball skill. The stats seem to say otherwise.
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Post by ramireja on May 18, 2021 13:42:16 GMT -5
That's a great point ramireja, especially about the factor that power plays in the "barreled" ball stat. When you really consider it, barreled balls are almost entirely about how far the ball is going to go when it is hit, and has little (though definitely some) to do with the batter showing the skill to be able to hit balls in the first place. So I would expect barreled balls to correlate to slugging percentage while wiffs would correlate to batting average. When you look at it, there's actually a stronger connection between barreled% and slg than there is between wiff% and avg. Of the top 20 hitters (with 50 or more PAs) in barreled% this year, 18 of them have a slg of 450 or better (roughly top 100), while only 9 of them have a avg of 270 or better (roughly top 100). Of the top 20 hitters (with 50 or more PAs) in wiff% this year (lowest 20), 4 of them have a slg of 450 or higher, and 10 of them have an avg of 270 or higher. So, there seems to be a reverse correlation between wiff% and slg. The correlations between wiff% and avg, as well as barreled% and avg is negligent. And there is a strong correlation between barreled% and slg. I have been thinking that barreled% was an indication of having a high level of bat to ball skill. The stats seem to say otherwise. Yeah we might be tempted to intuitively think of a high barrel % as indicating someone who can consistently square up the baseball, but its not that exactly. Its more an indicator of big power with lift. Thats why the top of that list includes guys like Judge, Alonso, Stanton, Reyes, Bryant, Matt Olson, Nelson Cruz, and Devers. If you look at a different stat like Hard Hit Rate (95+ EV balls as a % of swings) you get a different leaderboard. Sure, Cruz and Stanton are still there, but the rest of the top 15 looks a bit different from the Barrel% leaderboard. Guys like Manny Machado, Charlie Blackmon, Jose Altuve, Eric Hosmer, and Trent Grisham show up now. Coming in at #3 is real surprise...Pavin Smith. Despite the fact his swings often result in hard hit balls, his average launch angle is only 5.9 degrees (compare that to 19.7 for Acuna), and as a result, he actually ranks quite low in Barrel %.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on May 22, 2021 7:32:33 GMT -5
I actually think there is a fairly intuitive explanation. I think (and if I'm wrong, then you can ignore everything I'm about to say) that Barrel% may be barreled balls divided by 'barreled ball event' or in other words, batted balls (not sure if they need to be in play, but I suspect yes). Therefore, if you swing and miss at an above average rate, your swings produce fewer batted balls. This reduces your denominator in Barrel% calculation and then inflates the % as a result. As an example, the Statcast leader right now in Barrels/BBE% is Franmil Reyes at 21.6% but he's also striking out in 31.6% of PAs and his total number of barreled ball events is lower than some of his peers. If you look at barrels/plate appearance %, Reyes is still near the top of the leader board, but is surpassed by Ohtani and Acuna who presumably make more contact than Reyes. So yeah, you can think of it as a bit of an all-or-none approach right? Dalbec is going to make below average amounts of contact, but when he does, its more likely to be quality contact. The inverse is true too for some players. Someone like Gilberto Jimenez is going to make tons of contact, but most of it is going to be low EV with less than ideal launch angle contact which may still lead to a lot of hits for someone with plus speed. That's definitely Dalbec, but I get the question - intuitively, why would it make sense that a batter is better at making good contact when he does make contact, but then also swings and misses. The implication is that getting bat to ball, and that getting the best part of the bat to the ball, are two completely separate skills. It's not clear to me, intuitively, why that would be. Like, you're still taking the bat and swinging it towards the pitched ball. If you think of it as a spectrum between "whiff" and "barrel", wouldn't it make the most sense for it to be something like a bell curve, with the best hitters having a curve more towards the latter than the former? On that theoretical spectrum, Dalbec has something of a bimodal distribution in which he either drills the ball or misses it (exaggerating). Or is it more that he's just got a flatter curve and it means that he ranks higher on the front and back end but lower in the middle? Like I get the concept of all-or-nothing hitter. It's just that intuitively you can see why that player existing is a bit confusing. I think that ramierja has part of it: because he's so strong, he has a higher chance of registering a barrel if he simply squares up a ball decently. The virtual barrel of his bat is bigger.
That, however, doesn't explain the bimodal distribution. I think the answer to that one is surprisingly simple. ...
He's either fooled or he isn't.
I wish we had a metric for how much a batter missed a pitch by, because I think he'd be among the leaders for balls in the zone. When Chavis swings and misses, it's usually "well, right idea, but that was high, not a strike, you have to learn to lay off that." The pitcher is expecting him to misjudge the rise on the ball. We can see the swing and miss coming (and wonder why he can't).
Dalbec can be fooled into swinging through hittable pitches in the zone. It's usually "what?" Which is a considerably less complex response. I'm usually surprised by his swings and misses, the exact opposite of Chavis.
(What follows is a rewrite after 30+ minutes of thought ...)
Watching Dalbec, it seems to me as if specific combinations of pitches and locations are things unto themselves that must be learned separately and do not generalize into similar combinations. E.g., learning to hit the fastball from RHP on the inner third of the plate will not help him learn to hit one on the inside corner, as it would be for most hitters.
This leads to a Grand Unified Theory of Dalbec which I'll present later today (since I need to go to bed). But the short version is this: his seeming innate "adaptability" is quite likely better explained as an artifact of his running through an unusually large number of much shorter cycles where pitchers try something new, he adapts, pitchers try something else, he adapts to that (because his procedural ("muscle") memory doesn't generalize much). And if I'm right about that, he's going to be a slow and sometimes frustrating learner overall. But the end point is pure monster.
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Post by philsbosoxfan on May 22, 2021 8:19:32 GMT -5
Technicalities aside, Bobby Dalbec ranks 20th of the 22 first basemen with 130 PA in fWAR. First base is probably our biggest hole.
It's no longer SSS, he's not getting it done. Perhaps Dalbec not Chavis should be on the future WooSox bus.
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Post by voiceofreason on May 22, 2021 8:29:34 GMT -5
Remember Pedroias start in 07 Patience is a virtue
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Post by Chris Hatfield on May 22, 2021 8:38:48 GMT -5
Technicalities aside, Bobby Dalbec ranks 20th of the 22 first basemen with 130 PA in fWAR. First base is probably our biggest hole. It's no longer SSS, he's not getting it done. Perhaps Dalbec not Chavis should be on the future WooSox bus. I mean, this is true, but in his last 11 he's .316/.366/.737. He's one of their best hitters right now. If you look at his game log, he's got pretty clear hot and cold streaks (I'll let Eric do the honors since I'm not at a computer). This is what he's going to be. He just needs to work to make the hot streaks longer and the cold streaks shorter.
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Post by philsbosoxfan on May 22, 2021 12:48:07 GMT -5
My thought is that if we go back to a 3 man bench after Arroyo's return, a Santana/Chavis combo is more versatile and might be more productive than a Santana/Dalbec combo.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on May 22, 2021 13:47:07 GMT -5
My thought is that if we go back to a 3 man bench after Arroyo's return, a Santana/Chavis combo is more versatile and might be more productive than a Santana/Dalbec combo. On a roster with Hernandez, Santana, and Gonzalez, though, I'm not sure Chavis being more versatile than Dalbec (which is really only true because they're not playing Dalbec at 3B...) means anything. Give me the better hitter, which is Dalbec. Even using just since May 8, when Chavis came up: Chavis: 31 PA, .290/.290/.516, 1 HR, 12 K Dalbec: 37 PA, .286/.324/.657, 3 HR, 11 K
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Post by James Dunne on May 22, 2021 14:21:45 GMT -5
I'll add to that, versatility itself isn't an end. If you've got guys you can shift around the field because you want to platoon a right fielder and a first baseman, or maybe like the Dodgers have done where they have an offense-first arrangement and then a defense-first one, then that's great. But at some point, choosing players because of how many positions they play instead of how good they are and moving all those players around is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Keeping Chavis over Dalbec would be kinda that. You wouldn't want Chavis hitting instead of Dalbec when all else was equal (maybe if you have a soft-tossing RHP there's an exception). And, while Chavis can ostensibly play more positions than Dalbec, Chavis isn't better than anyone on the roster at any of those positions. Like Chris said, Marwin Gonzalez and Danny Santana can both do all of the things Chavis can do and complement the rest of the roster better.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on May 22, 2021 15:54:15 GMT -5
Technicalities aside, Bobby Dalbec ranks 20th of the 22 first basemen with 130 PA in fWAR. First base is probably our biggest hole. It's no longer SSS, he's not getting it done. Perhaps Dalbec not Chavis should be on the future WooSox bus. I mean, this is true, but in his last 11 he's .316/.366/.737. He's one of their best hitters right now. If you look at his game log, he's got pretty clear hot and cold streaks (I'll let Eric do the honors since I'm not at a computer). This is what he's going to be. He just needs to work to make the hot streaks longer and the cold streaks shorter. Well, his luck is normalizing here -- his expected line is .222 / .279 / .545. And both lines have been helped by his being platooned a bit.
However, at .342 he has the 4th highest xwOBA among the regulars, after Xander, Renfroe, and JDM. The team has a .338 xwOBA.
And he's actually cold at the moment.
Top line is expected, next is actual
First 7 of those games, 12th to the 15th
.266 / .320 / .705 = .418, second to Xander .360 / .407 / .840 = .517, best
Last 4, 16th on:
.138 / .200 / .238 = .194, worst .231 / .286 / .538 = .349, 6th (ahead of X, Renfroe, and Gonzalez).
Now, the glorious 3-run bomb off the RF pole on Thursday had a skill component that Statcast ignores. But there's a reason they sat him last night.
But your general point stands: when he's hot he's as good as anyone, when he's cold he's very, very cold, and the demarcations between phases are seldom ambiguous. Overall he ranks 22nd in xwOBA among 1B, and he's either -2 or -3 runs defensively despite flashing obvious tolls.
So he's not one of the reasons we're in first, but neither is he dragging us down to the point where you wouldn't suffer him if you were trying to win. He's been your run-of-the-mill second-division starter.
It's true that he has played like a guy you'd want to replace with someone better. That perception of his contribution so far is not inaccurate.
Fortunately, we already have that guy, and it's him.
Well, I've been awake for more than 2 hours and all I've done is do the Franchy versus his teammates comparison, and this reply. The Franchy stuff is great, but I have to do lunch. Folks will have to wait a bit for both that and the Dalbec Theory.
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Post by James Dunne on May 23, 2021 15:41:16 GMT -5
Ridiculous splits update (through 5/23):
Vs. LHP: 48 PA .326/.354/.674, 4 HR, 2 BB, 14 K (29.2%) Vs. RHP: 93 PA .141/.215/.247, 1 HR, 7 BB, 35 K (37.6%)
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Post by philsbosoxfan on May 28, 2021 22:12:40 GMT -5
Maybe he should do some bullpens. Weak side lefty killer platoon and mop up pitcher would be fairly valuable.
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