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.
Here's Another Homer Bobby Bombs: the Bobby Dalbec thread
|
Post by redsox04071318champs on Nov 8, 2021 17:27:33 GMT -5
There hasn't been much discussion about Dalbec lately, and his speed hasn't been discussed since the beginning of the season, so I wanted to touch base on it briefly. He finished the season with above-average sprint speed (28.2 ft/s - 78th percentile), HP to 1B times (4.46 - RHH average is ~4.55) and 90ft splits (3.97 - ~70th percentile). Given his arm, he may have the tools to be an above-average OFer. As currently stands, he's likely faster than all 3 OFers who start for the Red Sox (he bested them in each of the 3 statistics). He's only 26 and posted a 107 wRC last year (the starting OFers had 114, 110 and 107 wRCs) so he can hit well enough to hold his own, and he has quite a bit of upside remaining, so I hope we don't write him off as soon as Casas arrives. If I had to choose between losing Renfroe or Dalbec, for instance, I would definitely keep Dalbec - even if he needs to clean up the strikeouts. I'm very skeptical of any stat that says that Bobby Dalbec is a really fast runner, in any useful way. What they call "sprint speed" is really "feet per second in a player's fastest one-second window" which has always seemed like a really weird thing to focus on. It also looks to me as though Verdugo has a better home to first time--as does Schwarber! Kiké and Renfroe are listed as .01 and .03 seconds slower on home to first, but being a good outfielder requires knowing in what direction to go and getting a good jump. We can't just assume that if you put a (poor) 1b-3b in LF he will get decent jumps. On offense, I wish I knew know why Dalbec after his great long hot streak disappeared at the end of the regular season and in the post-season. Maybe it's because his at-bats weren't as regular as they had been and he lost his rhythm a bit? He might be one of those guys that would struggle coming off the bench and needs regular ABs to get his timing down?
|
|
|
Post by wcsoxfan on Nov 8, 2021 19:22:34 GMT -5
There hasn't been much discussion about Dalbec lately, and his speed hasn't been discussed since the beginning of the season, so I wanted to touch base on it briefly. He finished the season with above-average sprint speed (28.2 ft/s - 78th percentile), HP to 1B times (4.46 - RHH average is ~4.55) and 90ft splits (3.97 - ~70th percentile). Given his arm, he may have the tools to be an above-average OFer. As currently stands, he's likely faster than all 3 OFers who start for the Red Sox (he bested them in each of the 3 statistics). He's only 26 and posted a 107 wRC last year (the starting OFers had 114, 110 and 107 wRCs) so he can hit well enough to hold his own, and he has quite a bit of upside remaining, so I hope we don't write him off as soon as Casas arrives. If I had to choose between losing Renfroe or Dalbec, for instance, I would definitely keep Dalbec - even if he needs to clean up the strikeouts. I'm very skeptical of any stat that says that Bobby Dalbec is a really fast runner, in any useful way. What they call "sprint speed" is really "feet per second in a player's fastest one-second window" which has always seemed like a really weird thing to focus on. It also looks to me as though Verdugo has a better home to first time--as does Schwarber! Kiké and Renfroe are listed as .01 and .03 seconds slower on home to first, but being a good outfielder requires knowing in what direction to go and getting a good jump. We can't just assume that if you put a (poor) 1b-3b in LF he will get decent jumps. On offense, I wish I knew know why Dalbec after his great long hot streak disappeared at the end of the regular season and in the post-season. Why are you skeptical of Dalbec's speed? It's measured and the results from year-to-year for each player are very consistent during their prime years before tailing off later in their career. Much better than a scout saying 'he looks fast!' or someone using a handheld stopwatch which is very inaccurate. Previous measurements of speed were guesses, but now we know the correct answers and don't need to guess. Sprint speed measures feet per second over a 1 second period because it's attempting to gauge the player's top-end speed. Measuring their speed when they're not at full-speed wouldn't accomplish this and would skew the numbers. They also have 'bolts' which measures the same thing. Verdugo and Schwarber both have faster home-to-1st times, they also happen to be left-handed, which is not a coincidence. Handedness is one of the main reasons that the home-to-1st measurement isn't the best for judging a player's speed. Also, player's swings/follow-through play a major role. Schwarber has a faster home-to-1st than you would expect, but if you look at how he swings, it makes sense. And despite popular belief - Schwarber has average straight-line speed. He's big and looks slow, so people think he is slow. Baseball Savant also shows their speed in 5-foot running splits, so you can observe it at each point. The scouts thought Dalbec was slow just like they thought Xander was slow, but they were wrong on both counts (in terms of straight-line speed). Nobody is assuming that Dalbec is going to get good jumps if you put him in the OF, but if he's slow to process the ball-off-the-bat (I'm not saying he is) then it's easier to make up for this in the OF if you have above-average speed. I don't remember anyone believing that Dalbec was a poor 3rd baseman, if anything he was projected to be average-or-better, but he's been trying to learn 1B and has been below-average so far. Could be he needs more time at 1B or maybe 1B isn't the best position for him, in which case the OF may the better long-term option.
|
|
|
Post by soxinsf on Nov 8, 2021 19:25:18 GMT -5
I am at a loss to know why Bobby cannot be viewed as having more than adequate footspeed to play LF. No one has yet to say that he has elite speed or even *really fast* speed, whatever that means.
Nor has anyone said that anyone knows what kind of break he can get on fly balls or whether he can catch them better than Schwarber or Manny or Jim Ed or Ted.
But given the potential log jam at 1st in a year or so, why would anyone be against the possibility that Dalbec MIGHT be OK in left.
Unless, of course, they would rather see Casas or Devers in left field.
|
|
cdj
Veteran
Posts: 14,023
|
Post by cdj on Nov 8, 2021 21:09:24 GMT -5
He definitely has the tools to play LF. He probably has the tools to play RF.
The problem is he isn’t an outfielder, we don’t know how he’d take to it. It’s worth a shot but I see him more as a trade chip than anything else
|
|
jimoh
Veteran
Posts: 3,977
|
Post by jimoh on Nov 8, 2021 21:17:32 GMT -5
I'm very skeptical of any stat that says that Bobby Dalbec is a really fast runner, in any useful way. What they call "sprint speed" is really "feet per second in a player's fastest one-second window" which has always seemed like a really weird thing to focus on. It also looks to me as though Verdugo has a better home to first time--as does Schwarber! Kiké and Renfroe are listed as .01 and .03 seconds slower on home to first, but being a good outfielder requires knowing in what direction to go and getting a good jump. We can't just assume that if you put a (poor) 1b-3b in LF he will get decent jumps. On offense, I wish I knew know why Dalbec after his great long hot streak disappeared at the end of the regular season and in the post-season. Why are you skeptical of Dalbec's speed? It's measured and the results from year-to-year for each player are very consistent during their prime years before tailing off later in their career. Much better than a scout saying 'he looks fast!' or someone using a handheld stopwatch which is very inaccurate. Previous measurements of speed were guesses, but now we know the correct answers and don't need to guess. Sprint speed measures feet per second over a 1 second period because it's attempting to gauge the player's top-end speed. Measuring their speed when they're not at full-speed wouldn't accomplish this and would skew the numbers. They also have 'bolts' which measures the same thing. Verdugo and Schwarber both have faster home-to-1st times, they also happen to be left-handed, which is not a coincidence. Handedness is one of the main reasons that the home-to-1st measurement isn't the best for judging a player's speed. Also, player's swings/follow-through play a major role. Schwarber has a faster home-to-1st than you would expect, but if you look at how he swings, it makes sense. And despite popular belief - Schwarber has average straight-line speed. He's big and looks slow, so people think he is slow. Baseball Savant also shows their speed in 5-foot running splits, so you can observe it at each point. The scouts thought Dalbec was slow just like they thought Xander was slow, but they were wrong on both counts (in terms of straight-line speed). Nobody is assuming that Dalbec is going to get good jumps if you put him in the OF, but if he's slow to process the ball-off-the-bat (I'm not saying he is) then it's easier to make up for this in the OF if you have above-average speed. I don't remember anyone believing that Dalbec was a poor 3rd baseman, if anything he was projected to be average-or-better, but he's been trying to learn 1B and has been below-average so far. Could be he needs more time at 1B or maybe 1B isn't the best position for him, in which case the OF may the better long-term option. Ha, my citing the speed of LHH was pretty silly. But I still do not see the value of this “fastest one-second” thing. A big guy who takes time to get going but then once he’s going is decently fast will have a good “fastest one-second” speed, but that’s doesn’t actually mean he’s got usable speed for baseball. It just seems like a dumb stat, and no one’s ever explained it in a way that makes sense to me (a person who ran track for eight years).
|
|
|
Post by wcsoxfan on Nov 8, 2021 21:42:27 GMT -5
Why are you skeptical of Dalbec's speed? It's measured and the results from year-to-year for each player are very consistent during their prime years before tailing off later in their career. Much better than a scout saying 'he looks fast!' or someone using a handheld stopwatch which is very inaccurate. Previous measurements of speed were guesses, but now we know the correct answers and don't need to guess. Sprint speed measures feet per second over a 1 second period because it's attempting to gauge the player's top-end speed. Measuring their speed when they're not at full-speed wouldn't accomplish this and would skew the numbers. They also have 'bolts' which measures the same thing. Verdugo and Schwarber both have faster home-to-1st times, they also happen to be left-handed, which is not a coincidence. Handedness is one of the main reasons that the home-to-1st measurement isn't the best for judging a player's speed. Also, player's swings/follow-through play a major role. Schwarber has a faster home-to-1st than you would expect, but if you look at how he swings, it makes sense. And despite popular belief - Schwarber has average straight-line speed. He's big and looks slow, so people think he is slow. Baseball Savant also shows their speed in 5-foot running splits, so you can observe it at each point. The scouts thought Dalbec was slow just like they thought Xander was slow, but they were wrong on both counts (in terms of straight-line speed). Nobody is assuming that Dalbec is going to get good jumps if you put him in the OF, but if he's slow to process the ball-off-the-bat (I'm not saying he is) then it's easier to make up for this in the OF if you have above-average speed. I don't remember anyone believing that Dalbec was a poor 3rd baseman, if anything he was projected to be average-or-better, but he's been trying to learn 1B and has been below-average so far. Could be he needs more time at 1B or maybe 1B isn't the best position for him, in which case the OF may the better long-term option. Ha, my citing the speed of LHH was pretty silly. But I still do not see the value of this “fastest one-second” thing. A big guy who takes time to get going but then once he’s going is decently fast will have a good “fastest one-second” speed, but that’s doesn’t actually mean he’s got usable speed for baseball. It just seems like a dumb stat, and no one’s ever explained it in a way that makes sense to me (a person who ran track for eight years). Since you've ran track, think of it this way. Track is all about the 100m right? I mean, people who don't run the 100m will tell you it's not, but they're lying, because everyone looks at the guy who runs the 100m as being the fastest guy. He's probably the one with the hot GF and nice car and yada yada, too, right? Even if you don't like that guy, you know what they ran and where they placed, even if you hate knowing it. In baseball, there is no 100m, so you have to attempt to create a 100m. Ideally it would be home-to-1st, since it's quite significant, but as we discussed it has too many flaws. So, they came up with how fast someone is for a single second at top-end speed. It's somewhat arbitrary, but it's as good as any other choice imo. So right now it's the #1 choice to determine 'who's the fastest'. But you know what they great thing is? That 100m guy didn't run every other race (200m, 400m, 800m, etc.), BUT statcast records each 5ft split from zero to 90'. So if you don't like the sprint speed they chose, you can pick and distance you want within 90ft and go with that. Unfortunately, you're going to find that the guy who 'is slow to accelerate' or 'is quick out of the block' within the realm of baseball doesn't really exist. I've stared at these for far too much time and still haven't found the guy who is faster at 30ft but slower at 60ft (you will find that the slower guys are even slow to accelerate, but that's kinda expected). They also have cool graphs and let you watch the players race each other (digitally, not in real like unfortunately). I general observation about the player speeds is that everyone reaches full-speed at about 1.8 seconds and everyone is at 'near' full-speed at about 0.9 seconds. Not sure why this is relevant but maybe someone else will find it interesting as well.
|
|
jimoh
Veteran
Posts: 3,977
|
Post by jimoh on Nov 9, 2021 6:14:41 GMT -5
Ha, my citing the speed of LHH was pretty silly. But I still do not see the value of this “fastest one-second” thing. A big guy who takes time to get going but then once he’s going is decently fast will have a good “fastest one-second” speed, but that’s doesn’t actually mean he’s got usable speed for baseball. It just seems like a dumb stat, and no one’s ever explained it in a way that makes sense to me (a person who ran track for eight years). Since you've ran track, think of it this way. Track is all about the 100m right? I mean, people who don't run the 100m will tell you it's not, but they're lying, because everyone looks at the guy who runs the 100m as being the fastest guy. He's probably the one with the hot GF and nice car and yada yada, too, right? Even if you don't like that guy, you know what they ran and where they placed, even if you hate knowing it. In baseball, there is no 100m, so you have to attempt to create a 100m. Ideally it would be home-to-1st, since it's quite significant, but as we discussed it has too many flaws. So, they came up with how fast someone is for a single second at top-end speed. It's somewhat arbitrary, but it's as good as any other choice imo. So right now it's the #1 choice to determine 'who's the fastest'. But you know what they great thing is? That 100m guy didn't run every other race (200m, 400m, 800m, etc.), BUT statcast records each 5ft split from zero to 90'. So if you don't like the sprint speed they chose, you can pick and distance you want within 90ft and go with that. Unfortunately, you're going to find that the guy who 'is slow to accelerate' or 'is quick out of the block' within the realm of baseball doesn't really exist. I've stared at these for far too much time and still haven't found the guy who is faster at 30ft but slower at 60ft (you will find that the slower guys are even slow to accelerate, but that's kinda expected). They also have cool graphs and let you watch the players race each other (digitally, not in real like unfortunately). I general observation about the player speeds is that everyone reaches full-speed at about 1.8 seconds and everyone is at 'near' full-speed at about 0.9 seconds. Not sure why this is relevant but maybe someone else will find it interesting as well. I appreciate your effort, but I am still skeptical of these guys and their methods. Now you are making me skeptical about their 90 ft times. The claims you have made that I have put in bold just seem to me not likely to be true in the real world. It certainly is not true in track, where all of the top sprinters have similar body types and training and you would expect them to be closer in start times and acceleration ability than the myriad body-types of second basemen and first basemen and DHs. But they are not. If everyone was the same, the guy ahead at 10m in the 100m would always win. He doesn't. Taller guys take more time getting to full speed, etc.. If a system suggests that every athlete is the same at getting to top speed, that system is probably wrong. This may seem like "the #1 choice to determine 'who's the fastest'" but how is it better than how they time guys at scouting combines? Pick two guys, have them run 60 yards, and time them. The fact that some website says "Well, we can't do the best thing so we'll do this other thing" does not make the others thing attractive. You probably know that they adjusted their methods this year to make them more accurate. This to me seems like primitive defensive statistics, and not very dependable. Why is Dalbec only slightly above 50% in minor league base-stealing? 16/34.
|
|
jimoh
Veteran
Posts: 3,977
|
Post by jimoh on Nov 9, 2021 6:31:44 GMT -5
Scouting grades on Dalbec's run tool on 20-80 scale (50 = average) Fangraphs: 40 Prospects Live: 45 Mlb.com 2020: 40 “ below-average speed” Soxprospects: “Well below-average speed, but not a true base clogger. Takes some time to get going, but able to go from first to third on a single when on the move.”
|
|
|
Post by julyanmorley on Nov 9, 2021 10:18:49 GMT -5
One man's modus ponens is another's modus tollens
|
|
|
Post by wcsoxfan on Nov 9, 2021 12:38:13 GMT -5
Scouting grades on Dalbec's run tool on 20-80 scale (50 = average) Fangraphs: 40 Prospects Live: 45 Mlb.com 2020: 40 “ below-average speed” Soxprospects: “Well below-average speed, but not a true base clogger. Takes some time to get going, but able to go from first to third on a single when on the move.” Yes - the above were VERY wrong. Period. One of the major issues with scouting is the area of 'group think'. Do you think that each of those sites timed his foot-speed with a stopwatch? I'm guessing that likely everyone of those sites got the results from someone else and deemed that he 'looked slow' because he's a bigger guy. Baseball scouts are REALLY bad at scouting speed and it's something extremely simple because it can be easily measured. When you ran track, imagine if your coach watched each of you run separately, without timing you, and determined who was faster just by watching. How accurate would he be? Now imagine that your coach didn't have a track background - now how accurate would he be? That's what these guys are doing. Some actually try with a stopwatch, or get the information from someone else, but if they knew how fast he was, they would place his split time in their writeup.
|
|
|
Post by notstarboard on Nov 9, 2021 13:17:45 GMT -5
Since you've ran track, think of it this way. Track is all about the 100m right? I mean, people who don't run the 100m will tell you it's not, but they're lying, because everyone looks at the guy who runs the 100m as being the fastest guy. He's probably the one with the hot GF and nice car and yada yada, too, right? Even if you don't like that guy, you know what they ran and where they placed, even if you hate knowing it. In baseball, there is no 100m, so you have to attempt to create a 100m. Ideally it would be home-to-1st, since it's quite significant, but as we discussed it has too many flaws. So, they came up with how fast someone is for a single second at top-end speed. It's somewhat arbitrary, but it's as good as any other choice imo. So right now it's the #1 choice to determine 'who's the fastest'. But you know what they great thing is? That 100m guy didn't run every other race (200m, 400m, 800m, etc.), BUT statcast records each 5ft split from zero to 90'. So if you don't like the sprint speed they chose, you can pick and distance you want within 90ft and go with that. Unfortunately, you're going to find that the guy who 'is slow to accelerate' or 'is quick out of the block' within the realm of baseball doesn't really exist. I've stared at these for far too much time and still haven't found the guy who is faster at 30ft but slower at 60ft (you will find that the slower guys are even slow to accelerate, but that's kinda expected). They also have cool graphs and let you watch the players race each other (digitally, not in real like unfortunately). I general observation about the player speeds is that everyone reaches full-speed at about 1.8 seconds and everyone is at 'near' full-speed at about 0.9 seconds. Not sure why this is relevant but maybe someone else will find it interesting as well. I appreciate your effort, but I am still skeptical of these guys and their methods. Now you are making me skeptical about their 90 ft times. The claims you have made that I have put in bold just seem to me not likely to be true in the real world. It certainly is not true in track, where all of the top sprinters have similar body types and training and you would expect them to be closer in start times and acceleration ability than the myriad body-types of second basemen and first basemen and DHs. But they are not. If everyone was the same, the guy ahead at 10m in the 100m would always win. He doesn't. Taller guys take more time getting to full speed, etc.. If a system suggests that every athlete is the same at getting to top speed, that system is probably wrong. This may seem like "the #1 choice to determine 'who's the fastest'" but how is it better than how they time guys at scouting combines? Pick two guys, have them run 60 yards, and time them. The fact that some website says "Well, we can't do the best thing so we'll do this other thing" does not make the others thing attractive. You probably know that they adjusted their methods this year to make them more accurate. This to me seems like primitive defensive statistics, and not very dependable. Why is Dalbec only slightly above 50% in minor league base-stealing? 16/34. Stealing is going to have a ton of other variables at play. Maybe his managers hit and run an above average amount of the time, resulting in some cheap CS. Maybe he's bad at timing the pitcher and gets poor jumps. Maybe he's not good at reacting to pickoff moves and ends up getting poor leads. Maybe he's not agile enough to slide in head first and probably gives up a bit of distance as a result.
I'm perfectly content to trust sprint speeds from Statcast personally, but I would nonetheless be interested to see a plot of Statcast sprint speed vs. home to first time for RHH only. I'd expect a reasonably tight linear relationship with the top sprint speed guys also making it to first fastest, but there could well be guys who have big follow-throughs or accelerate slowly enough for it to be a big factor in their times getting down the line. This would be hard to generalize to things like scoring from first on a double or getting to a fly ball in the outfield, but decent agreement on this plot would still make me even more inclined to just trust the Statcast numbers as a gauge of overall speed. Poor agreement would be more cause for an "it depends on the situation" stance.
|
|
jimoh
Veteran
Posts: 3,977
|
Post by jimoh on Nov 9, 2021 13:28:37 GMT -5
Scouting grades on Dalbec's run tool on 20-80 scale (50 = average) Fangraphs: 40 Prospects Live: 45 Mlb.com 2020: 40 “ below-average speed” Soxprospects: “Well below-average speed, but not a true base clogger. Takes some time to get going, but able to go from first to third on a single when on the move.” Yes - the above were VERY wrong. Period. One of the major issues with scouting is the area of 'group think'. Do you think that each of those sites timed his foot-speed with a stopwatch? I'm guessing that likely everyone of those sites got the results from someone else and deemed that he 'looked slow' because he's a bigger guy. Baseball scouts are REALLY bad at scouting speed and it's something extremely simple because it can be easily measured. When you ran track, imagine if your coach watched each of you run separately, without timing you, and determined who was faster just by watching. How accurate would he be? Now imagine that your coach didn't have a track background - now how accurate would he be? That's what these guys are doing. Some actually try with a stopwatch, or get the information from someone else, but if they knew how fast he was, they would place his split time in their writeup. I'm thinking he ran a 60 at a scouting combine just as basically every player does and each of those sites had access to it. They know the 60 time of prospects the same way they know their height and weight. They don't measure them themselves. Nobody says "big guy, must be slow" and just stops at that.
|
|
|
Post by wcsoxfan on Nov 9, 2021 13:36:00 GMT -5
Since you've ran track, think of it this way. Track is all about the 100m right? I mean, people who don't run the 100m will tell you it's not, but they're lying, because everyone looks at the guy who runs the 100m as being the fastest guy. He's probably the one with the hot GF and nice car and yada yada, too, right? Even if you don't like that guy, you know what they ran and where they placed, even if you hate knowing it. In baseball, there is no 100m, so you have to attempt to create a 100m. Ideally it would be home-to-1st, since it's quite significant, but as we discussed it has too many flaws. So, they came up with how fast someone is for a single second at top-end speed. It's somewhat arbitrary, but it's as good as any other choice imo. So right now it's the #1 choice to determine 'who's the fastest'. But you know what they great thing is? That 100m guy didn't run every other race (200m, 400m, 800m, etc.), BUT statcast records each 5ft split from zero to 90'. So if you don't like the sprint speed they chose, you can pick and distance you want within 90ft and go with that. Unfortunately, you're going to find that the guy who 'is slow to accelerate' or 'is quick out of the block' within the realm of baseball doesn't really exist. I've stared at these for far too much time and still haven't found the guy who is faster at 30ft but slower at 60ft (you will find that the slower guys are even slow to accelerate, but that's kinda expected). They also have cool graphs and let you watch the players race each other (digitally, not in real like unfortunately). I general observation about the player speeds is that everyone reaches full-speed at about 1.8 seconds and everyone is at 'near' full-speed at about 0.9 seconds. Not sure why this is relevant but maybe someone else will find it interesting as well. I appreciate your effort, but I am still skeptical of these guys and their methods. Now you are making me skeptical about their 90 ft times. The claims you have made that I have put in bold just seem to me not likely to be true in the real world. It certainly is not true in track, where all of the top sprinters have similar body types and training and you would expect them to be closer in start times and acceleration ability than the myriad body-types of second basemen and first basemen and DHs. But they are not. If everyone was the same, the guy ahead at 10m in the 100m would always win. He doesn't. Taller guys take more time getting to full speed, etc.. If a system suggests that every athlete is the same at getting to top speed, that system is probably wrong. This may seem like "the #1 choice to determine 'who's the fastest'" but how is it better than how they time guys at scouting combines? Pick two guys, have them run 60 yards, and time them. The fact that some website says "Well, we can't do the best thing so we'll do this other thing" does not make the others thing attractive. You probably know that they adjusted their methods this year to make them more accurate. This to me seems like primitive defensive statistics, and not very dependable. Why is Dalbec only slightly above 50% in minor league base-stealing? 16/34. Speed is only one criteria to stealing bases. Anticipation and practice are just as important as I'm sure you know. Also, nobody is suggesting that Dalbec is a speed demon, only that he's faster than what the scouts said (above average speed), and given this knowledge, perhaps he could develop into a good outfielder. The adjustments that I'm aware of (in 2018, a year after they rolled out sprint speed) were regarding a change in what they consider a 'competitive run'. They only use competitive runs when evaluating sprint speed, which is to say if a guy is jogging to 1st on a pop-up, they don't want to include that data as it will skew the numbers and not assist in determining the player's top-end speed, which is what they're attempting to measure with sprint speed. I'm not suggesting that there aren't variations with acceleration, and I'm fully aware that taller sprinters tend to accelerate more slowly, but I was pointing out that based on the numbers the difference is minimal on a 90ft run (this is not sprint speed but a different metric). Keep in mind, this is only 27 meters. If Michael Johnson at his peak was running 27 meter races, he would have never won a medal. Perhaps the issue is that the taller/faster guys will never get their true value shown on such short runs. Even if someone is going 1st-to-third it's questionable how much the turn is going to slow them down. Maybe they will add 180ft runs at some point and we'll see more differentiation between the taller guys and shorter guys. It would be nice if they listed each player's single fastest run. Averaging them together may be more useful in determining speed on a given day, but the single fastest run would be interesting to figure out who would be fastest at one individual point. Is Statcast better than timing players at a scouting combine? Almost certainly yes - but I'm not as familiar with baseball scouting combines. If they're using stopwatches, then they're miles behind statcast as they're going to be very inaccurate. But if they're using lasers, they may be close with some caveats: - laser measurements are typically on the finish line and not the starting line (this is how the NFL does it), which means there's still a person manually operating a watch at the start. - combine typically have people running in 'ideal' conditions, which differ from the real-world running in a game. They likely don't have the same equipment on, are on a faster surface, haven't just swung a bat or reacted to a hit ball and they may not even be wearing cleats. Baseball Savant uses state-of-the-art technology with cameras and radar to measure everything that happens on a baseball field. It's not all perfect due to how the data is categorized and what can be measured currently, but the sprint speed is the best they have at the moment as it completely replaces any previous knowledge of the speed of a player. We've gone from making educated guesses and stopwatches which get us maybe 75% accuracy for a very generalize term to 98%+ accuracy on very precise measurements. Disregarding statcast in place of traditional scouting for speed is like walking everywhere because you're convinced it's faster than driving a car - maybe the rare instance where you're going to the neighbor you're correct, but otherwise you're going to be way off - almost every time.
|
|
jimoh
Veteran
Posts: 3,977
|
Post by jimoh on Nov 10, 2021 7:29:36 GMT -5
I appreciate your effort, but I am still skeptical of these guys and their methods. Now you are making me skeptical about their 90 ft times. The claims you have made that I have put in bold just seem to me not likely to be true in the real world. It certainly is not true in track, where all of the top sprinters have similar body types and training and you would expect them to be closer in start times and acceleration ability than the myriad body-types of second basemen and first basemen and DHs. But they are not. If everyone was the same, the guy ahead at 10m in the 100m would always win. He doesn't. Taller guys take more time getting to full speed, etc.. If a system suggests that every athlete is the same at getting to top speed, that system is probably wrong. This may seem like "the #1 choice to determine 'who's the fastest'" but how is it better than how they time guys at scouting combines? Pick two guys, have them run 60 yards, and time them. The fact that some website says "Well, we can't do the best thing so we'll do this other thing" does not make the others thing attractive. You probably know that they adjusted their methods this year to make them more accurate. This to me seems like primitive defensive statistics, and not very dependable. Why is Dalbec only slightly above 50% in minor league base-stealing? 16/34. Speed is only one criteria to stealing bases. Anticipation and practice are just as important as I'm sure you know. Also, nobody is suggesting that Dalbec is a speed demon, only that he's faster than what the scouts said (above average speed), and given this knowledge, perhaps he could develop into a good outfielder. The adjustments that I'm aware of (in 2018, a year after they rolled out sprint speed) were regarding a change in what they consider a 'competitive run'. They only use competitive runs when evaluating sprint speed, which is to say if a guy is jogging to 1st on a pop-up, they don't want to include that data as it will skew the numbers and not assist in determining the player's top-end speed, which is what they're attempting to measure with sprint speed. I'm not suggesting that there aren't variations with acceleration, and I'm fully aware that taller sprinters tend to accelerate more slowly, but I was pointing out that based on the numbers the difference is minimal on a 90ft run (this is not sprint speed but a different metric). Keep in mind, this is only 27 meters. If Michael Johnson at his peak was running 27 meter races, he would have never won a medal. Perhaps the issue is that the taller/faster guys will never get their true value shown on such short runs. Even if someone is going 1st-to-third it's questionable how much the turn is going to slow them down. Maybe they will add 180ft runs at some point and we'll see more differentiation between the taller guys and shorter guys. It would be nice if they listed each player's single fastest run. Averaging them together may be more useful in determining speed on a given day, but the single fastest run would be interesting to figure out who would be fastest at one individual point. Is Statcast better than timing players at a scouting combine? Almost certainly yes - but I'm not as familiar with baseball scouting combines. If they're using stopwatches, then they're miles behind statcast as they're going to be very inaccurate. But if they're using lasers, they may be close with some caveats: - laser measurements are typically on the finish line and not the starting line (this is how the NFL does it), which means there's still a person manually operating a watch at the start. - combine typically have people running in 'ideal' conditions, which differ from the real-world running in a game. They likely don't have the same equipment on, are on a faster surface, haven't just swung a bat or reacted to a hit ball and they may not even be wearing cleats. Baseball Savant uses state-of-the-art technology with cameras and radar to measure everything that happens on a baseball field. It's not all perfect due to how the data is categorized and what can be measured currently, but the sprint speed is the best they have at the moment as it completely replaces any previous knowledge of the speed of a player. We've gone from making educated guesses and stopwatches which get us maybe 75% accuracy for a very generalize term to 98%+ accuracy on very precise measurements. Disregarding statcast in place of traditional scouting for speed is like walking everywhere because you're convinced it's faster than driving a car - maybe the rare instance where you're going to the neighbor you're correct, but otherwise you're going to be way off - almost every time. Nothing you have said has made me more likely to think that timing a player’s fastest one-second spurt is a useful way of measuring speed. And saying my position is like thinking walking is faster than driving a car is a little extreme. But I’m glad to see you moving off the claim that no runner gets a faster start than another. I’m staying with the assessment of Dalbec’s speed on this site.
|
|
|
Post by julyanmorley on Nov 10, 2021 10:14:52 GMT -5
I think most people would consider the top speed a player consistently reaches in the most fundamental sprint in the sport a "useful way of measuring speed". Someone's first instinct would be to just time the run, but you quickly find out that starting conditions vary wildly for reasons unrelated to speed, which matters over a short run. So we can do even better than just timing the run.
You are correct that this measure does not losslessly capture all dimensions of "speed". You have someone in good faith telling you that if you capture what is lost by looking at more granular data, then your evaluations are not going to change much.
|
|
|
Post by wcsoxfan on Nov 10, 2021 10:44:29 GMT -5
Nothing you have said has made me more likely to think that timing a player’s fastest one-second spurt is a useful way of measuring speed. And saying my position is like thinking walking is faster than driving a car is a little extreme. But I’m glad to see you moving off the claim that no runner gets a faster start than another. I’m staying with the assessment of Dalbec’s speed on this site. As mentioned, Statcast has several measurements of speed, so if you don't like sprint speed because it only measures the fastest 1 second, then look at home-to-1st or the 5 ft breaks over the 90ft average runs. Sprint speed is to Statcast as pepperoni pizza is to a pizza parlor, sure it's the most popular, but if you don't like it there's plenty to choose from. I never said that 'no runner gets a faster start than another', I said that "the guy who 'is slow to accelerate' or 'is quick out of the block' within the realm of baseball doesn't really exist" - this was in the context of their 5ft splits. If you look you may come away from a different opinion (I may be too deep in the forest to see the trees), but I find very little differentiation of there being quick to accelerate and slow to accelerate players. But as noted, the distance measured is very small, so in this regard it is not comparable to track (since nobody in track runs a 27m race where their time is measured at each 1.5 meters). I'm venturing to guess that BA, BP, Fangraphs, Sox Prospects and all of the other sites which gather scouting reports would agree that Statcast is far more accurate in measuring speed than they could ever hope to be. MLB has far more resources and the technology/data is well beyond what any other these sites have available.
|
|
|
Post by Oregon Norm on Feb 20, 2022 16:27:07 GMT -5
I thought I'd have a look at Dalbec's performance as a function of his K-rate. Ian Cundall's reports make note of the fact when a player has "swing-and-miss in his game". Here's a chart that shows how crucial that can be and why we need to listen when he says that. This is a 15-game running average of OPS in green, and K-rate in red (click to expand): This graphic is revealing for a couple of reasons. The obvious one is that there's a very clear relationship between his success at the plate and a lower K rate. Dropping that below 30% sent his slugging into the stratosphere in the last two months of the 2021 season before tailing off at the very end. That's a tipping point that has been mentioned on this site over and over again. And while it might be expected that a player working to cut down on strikeouts would give up some power to do that, it's just not the case for this guy. He crushes baseballs if he makes contact, there's no other way to put it. How consistently he can do that by keeping the Ks in check is the only question.
|
|
|
Post by Underwater Johnson on Feb 22, 2022 23:12:26 GMT -5
I thought I'd have a look at Dalbec's performance as a function of his K-rate. Ian Cundall's reports make note of the fact when a player has "swing-and-miss in his game". Here's a chart that shows how crucial that can be and why we need to listen when he says that. This is a 15-game running average of OPS in green, and K-rate in red (click to expand): <button disabled="" class="c-attachment-insert--linked o-btn--sm">Attachment Deleted</button> This graphic is revealing for a couple of reasons. The obvious one is that there's a very clear relationship between his success at the plate and a lower K rate. Dropping that below 30% sent his slugging into the stratosphere in the last two months of the 2021 season before tailing off at the very end. That's a tipping point that has been mentioned on this site over and over again. And while it might be expected that a player working to cut down on strikeouts would give up some power to do that, it's just not the case for this guy. He crushes baseballs if he makes contact, there's no other way to put it. How consistently he can do that by keeping the Ks in check is the only question. My guess is that both of these trends are a side-effect of some type of mechanical or mental adjustment, rather than "working to cut down on Ks."
When he gets it right, he makes more contact (ergo, fewer Ks) and the ball winds up dented and far from home plate. When he doesn't, he swings and misses.
The romantic in me ascribes his late-season surge to working with Kyle from Waltham.
|
|
|
Post by ancientsoxfogey on Feb 23, 2022 8:45:59 GMT -5
Dalbec turns 27 this coming June, so this season is arguably his age-27 season.
He may be a trade chip, but don't trade him until after this season.
|
|
|
Post by Oregon Norm on Feb 24, 2022 11:33:48 GMT -5
My guess is that both of these trends are a side-effect of some type of mechanical or mental adjustment, rather than "working to cut down on Ks."
... This one is interesting. It's the analytical complement to the eyeball chart above. It's also derived from that 15-game running average by plotting the (K Rate, OPS) points and then running a regression line through that data. The R 2 indicates a bit of explanatory power. It may also point to your "guess" (click to expand): It looks as if there's a wall at the 30% K Rate! The cluster on the lower right of that has a lot of variability, perhaps a bunch of those adjustments you suggest as he worked on his approach. By comparison, there's one lone outlier on the left side of that 30% barrier, just much tighter. I'll bet that separating this into two clusters and running a regression on the < 30% K Rate points would result in an even better fit. If he does find an approach that works for him, he's just about guaranteed to OPS at a very high level. A caveat here is that these points are obviously correlated. Nevertheless, the stretches where he makes consistent contact are easily characterized this way.
|
|
|
Post by voiceofreason on Feb 24, 2022 11:48:50 GMT -5
BD has obviously had some serious ups and downs when it comes to making contact but why wouldn't we be optimistic that he learned something from Schwarber last yr that should help him into the future?
Seems to me that he must have learned something that should help him make adjustments quicker in the future.
|
|
|
Post by Underwater Johnson on Feb 24, 2022 12:48:40 GMT -5
I sure hope he figures something out because as good as he was in the last two months, he was just as bad in the first two, particularly vs. RHP.
I'm hopeful but I also recall he was basically benched in the playoffs -- against good pitching staffs with more focused scouting reports -- while going 0/12 with 5 Ks.
He seems like a good kid though. Easy to root for.
|
|
|
Post by Underwater Johnson on Mar 31, 2022 13:27:58 GMT -5
Very promising sign from Bobby Bombs today in Jet Blue. One thing he's been open about working on this spring is spreading his feet with no leg-kick when he has two strikes (did he talk to Casas or are they both just coached by the same people? he didn't say...). More contact at the expense of power? Perhaps, but he just launched one over everything in left on a 1-2 count using that approach. He's got power to spare.
EDIT: Rocket double off the wall on a 3-2 count in his second AB.
|
|
cdj
Veteran
Posts: 14,023
|
Post by cdj on Mar 31, 2022 14:21:42 GMT -5
If he starts striking out at a major league average rate he’s got some silver sluggers in his future
|
|
|
Post by e on Mar 31, 2022 16:20:35 GMT -5
If he starts striking out at a major league average rate he’s got some silver sluggers in his future With his barrel and hard hit percentages, if he even lowers his strikeouts to around 27-29%, he's a well above average hitter. It's crazy how much potential he has, all he needs is to either cut down on his whiffs or just become more disciplined.
|
|
|