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4/8-4/11 Red Sox @ Orioles Series Thread
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Post by Jimmy on Apr 11, 2021 20:57:38 GMT -5
There are none.
He's now probably made 20 or 30 great plays. He's made one three days in a row. He's had great range and a strong arm from day one.
His only "defensive issues" are shaky footwork, which is something you learn, and self-consciousness of his errors, which leads to more errors ... which is a problem that Alex Cora can help him fix literally in a day.
I first believed he'd become a plus defender when I saw him make a "wow!" play for Salem against the Wilmington Blue Rocks (only game below AAA I've ever seen!) and I've never wavered from that opinion.
And he was already one of the best defensive 3B in MLB at age 22. The next year he had no Cora to talk him down from being too hard on himself and hence getting into a mental negative feedback loop. It was pretty obvious to me that he came out this year overly aware of the need to get off to a good start instead of trusting that he would and putting the question out of his mind, and hence was a mess of overthinking and uncertainty the opening series. But after Cora rested him he's returned to his 2019 form and then some.
Let us break this down a little. First of all, you say Devers has zero fielding issues after a total of nine games. Second, your declarative statement is absolute and allows for Devers no room to be ordinary as opposed to a plus defender. Third, you claim that he had already made 30 great plays, which is belied by the FACT that he has had 29 total chances so far. No issues? You must be joking. I think the point he was making is that Devers still projects as an above average 3B *in the long term* since he consistently makes “can’t teach that” plays, while the errors are something that are theoretically pretty fixable mistakes. I certainly agree that it’s tough to give up on Devers at 3B seeing him make great plays so often. At the same time it’s also tough seeing him consistently make bad errors. Hopefully experience helps him to reduce the miscues. I think some people fail to realize how young he is.
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Post by patford on Apr 11, 2021 21:24:15 GMT -5
Let us break this down a little. First of all, you say Devers has zero fielding issues after a total of nine games. Second, your declarative statement is absolute and allows for Devers no room to be ordinary as opposed to a plus defender. Third, you claim that he had already made 30 great plays, which is belied by the FACT that he has had 29 total chances so far. No issues? You must be joking. I think the point he was making is that Devers still projects as an above average 3B *in the long term* since he consistently makes “can’t teach that” plays, while the errors are something that are theoretically pretty fixable mistakes. I certainly agree that it’s tough to give up on Devers at 3B seeing him make great plays so often. At the same time it’s also tough seeing him consistently make bad errors. Hopefully experience helps him to reduce the miscues. I think some people fail to realize how young he is. Devers has a good chance of being a great 3B. Here's Bloom on Devers. nesn.com/2021/04/red-sox-chief-baseball-officer-chaim-bloom-talks-rafael-devers-play/
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Apr 12, 2021 1:17:13 GMT -5
Wait! Eric’s claims are ridiculously overstated, so it’s regrettable that you have referred to Devers’ number of errors in 2019. The number of errors is not the best marker of good and bad defense. Devers played a good 3b in 2019, then regressed in 2020 and looked bad at the very start of this season—and even a day or two ago when he forgot how many outs there were on an attempted steal. There is reason to be cautiously optimistic that Cora can help Devers be consistently good. But certainty seems unwarranted. In 2019 Devers led all third baseman with 22 errors, 5 more than any other third baseman and second in all of baseball. If you want more detailed metrics, Baseball Reference has his 2019 DWAR at 0.0 and five other metrics (fld%, Rtot, Rdrs, Rtot/yr, and RDRS/yr) that explicitly identify him as below average. So...agree to disagree on how well he played the position in 2019 and from these numbers he absolutely was not "already one of the best defensive 3B in MLB at age 22". Also seemed the quickest way to dump cold water on the ridiculous idea that Devers' current defensive issues could be fixed by Cora "literally in a day" since Cora had all year with Devers in 2019 and didn't fix them. Devers does make a lot of tough plays and I do think that he will eventually grow out of his mental miscues so he has the potential to be an above average or better 3B in the future, but to date he's been a liability. According to Statcast, Devers was the 3rd best 3B in MLB in 2019, with +13 Outs Above Average and +10 runs prevented. In the last year-plus, he ranks 35th out of 38th (-4, -3). But overall his +9, +7 still ranks 6th of 39 qualifiers.
I've been using Statcast exclusively as a measure of plays made since it appeared early in 2020. I had soured on DRS a few years earlier when I discovered that there was no correlation at all between team DRS and the pitching staff's wOBA - xwOBA, which measures the same thing plus directional karma.
Note that Statcast is derived from camera data. DRS is derived from people watching video and eyeballing where balls are hit.
Which of these numbers for runs saved via range matches your eyeballs for Xander, from 2016 to 2020 (the last year prorated to 162 games)?
-11, -9, -8, -8, -11 -12, 0, -4, -8, -5
Historically -10 runs is where you start thinking about moving to another position. Are we talking about Xander that way now (as opposed to in a handful of years)? The top line of course is DRS and the second is Statcast.
I know I went through Devers' error log for 2019 and identified the number of his 22 errors that allowed a hitter to reach base (as opposed to throwing errors that just resulted in base advances). I can't find that now. But think about what kind of tools it takes to make 13 plays more than average despite 15 or more routine balls missed. My estimate of 20 to 30 great plays in his career (I obviously didn't mean this year) actually works for just 2019.
And it's not like those tools are invisible. He has range to his left that's Beltre-like.
Now, in terms of my argument, I'm going to cut jimoh some slack and assume he grew up in a weird lexical cult which regards bold italics as reducing emphasis. The word in bold italics was learn.
Whenever jimoh fails to get the context of an argument I made, there's always a sentence I decided not to type because I thought the point had already been made.
In this case, the point was that:
* Devers already reduced his errors more than sufficiently in 2019 * He has years to work on improving his footwork further * Cora appears to have a great skill for helping him center himself mentally, so that purely mental funks are relatively short-lived
And that missing sentence was:
Name me the last skill infielder who was moved permanently to 1B, DH, or the OF despite retaining grade 65 tools at his position, because he simply could not learn adequate footwork or mental consistency.
It just doesn't happen any more.
(This actually used to happen to minor league shortstops, before teams learned the value of keeping guys on the left side of the defensive spectrum. We'll never know how valuable Reggie Smith and Juan Beniquez may have been had they been left at SS and allowed to reduce their errors.
I repeat a challenge I made earlier: which would you bet happens first, Devers is a Gold Glove finalist, or is moved permanently off of 3B because his defense there is overall too bad to tolerate?
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Apr 12, 2021 1:30:34 GMT -5
According to Fangraphs... Odds of making the playoffs before opening day were 38%, went down to 27% after the opening series, and now are at 40%. I feel more enthusiastic about the team than 40%, but I’m a fanboy homer. And that's with a projection for JDM where he easily has the second-worst season of his career since he became a stud, the rest of the way. And the following ERA pitcher projections:
4.26 Eovaldi 4.46 Whitlock 4.49 Andriese 5.00 Pivetta n/a Houck (not currently projected for further MLB action; pretty clearly an error)
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jimoh
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Post by jimoh on Apr 12, 2021 5:57:28 GMT -5
Eric, everyone knows what bold italics mean when you use them. They mean "I am so much smarter than everyone else that i can't believe that anyone ever disagrees with me, even though I have publicly declared that I often exaggerate and overstate my position."
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Post by manfred on Apr 12, 2021 9:15:34 GMT -5
According to Fangraphs... Odds of making the playoffs before opening day were 38%, went down to 27% after the opening series, and now are at 40%. I feel more enthusiastic about the team than 40%, but I’m a fanboy homer. And that's with a projection for JDM where he easily has the second-worst season of his career since he became a stud, the rest of the way. And the following ERA pitcher projections:
4.26 Eovaldi 4.46 Whitlock 4.49 Andriese 5.00 Pivetta n/a Houck (not currently projected for further MLB action; pretty clearly an error)
While JDM is apparently back, I don’t think those ERAs are absurd, even now. I have certainly not seen anything to make them impossible.
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Post by Jimmy on Apr 12, 2021 9:43:20 GMT -5
And that's with a projection for JDM where he easily has the second-worst season of his career since he became a stud, the rest of the way. And the following ERA pitcher projections:
4.26 Eovaldi 4.46 Whitlock 4.49 Andriese 5.00 Pivetta n/a Houck (not currently projected for further MLB action; pretty clearly an error)
While JDM is apparently back, I don’t think those ERAs are absurd, even now. I have certainly not seen anything to make them impossible. Agree. They all seem a little high, but I wouldn’t be ready to say they are materially off (yet). The exclusion of Houck is probably material though.
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Post by soxinsf on Apr 12, 2021 11:05:23 GMT -5
Re Devers GG or move.
I will take Move as I see it as more likely that he becomes the DH. Dalbec, Chavis and Casas cannot all play 1B.
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Post by manfred on Apr 12, 2021 11:54:51 GMT -5
Re Devers GG or move. I will take Move as I see it as more likely that he becomes the DH. Dalbec, Chavis and Casas cannot all play 1B. Chavis is not a longterm option at 1st no matter how he hits. He’s too small, especially with at least two giants to choose from. I take door C.... no move , no gold glove. I think Eric is right that Devers can be spectacular, but I also think he may be underestimating his lapses. I expect Devers may always be a guy who makes you gasp in good and bad ways in the same game.
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shagworthy
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Post by shagworthy on Apr 12, 2021 12:15:20 GMT -5
Re Devers GG or move. I will take Move as I see it as more likely that he becomes the DH. Dalbec, Chavis and Casas cannot all play 1B. Chavis is not a longterm option at 1st no matter how he hits. He’s too small, especially with at least two giants to choose from. I take door C.... no move , no gold glove. I think Eric is right that Devers can be spectacular, but I also think he may be underestimating his lapses. I expect Devers may always be a guy who makes you gasp in good and bad ways in the same game. I'm going to vote for door D. I don't think he moves off 3b per say, but I do see a platoon for the position coming down the pike. I think JD gets dealt either this year, or during the offseason, I think Arruaz and Devers platoon @3b, with Devers playing DH 50% of the time (like they are doing with Vazquez) currently. In doing that you immediately improve your defense on the left side at least in half of your games, and maybe it improves Devers focus if he doesn't have to glove up every day.
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Post by incandenza on Apr 12, 2021 15:21:29 GMT -5
It is funny you say that. I have watched these 6 games and thought... what is like to be an Orioles fan? Deep question like Nagel on the bat. I mean: they suck. They are dull. They don’t seem to have that much to look forward to. Do you just watch old clips of Eddie Murray or Jim Palmer? I suspect that I'm the only one who got that (since it had no upvotes), and it made me laugh out loud. The bat in question is not Boog Powell's. If anyone is curious, do the obvious Google search. I got the reference, I'm just not a fan of Nagel's (usually overlooked) claim that subjective experience is not in principle unavailable to scientific knowldge.
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Post by manfred on Apr 12, 2021 15:30:50 GMT -5
I suspect that I'm the only one who got that (since it had no upvotes), and it made me laugh out loud. The bat in question is not Boog Powell's. If anyone is curious, do the obvious Google search. I got the reference, I'm just not a fan of Nagel's (usually overlooked) claim that subjective experience is not in principle unavailable to scientific knowldge. (Next time: Kant and the thing in itself?)
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Apr 12, 2021 16:01:09 GMT -5
I suspect that I'm the only one who got that (since it had no upvotes), and it made me laugh out loud. The bat in question is not Boog Powell's. If anyone is curious, do the obvious Google search. I got the reference, I'm just not a fan of Nagel's (usually overlooked) claim that subjective experience is not in principle unavailable to scientific knowldge.
Consciousness (both Hard and Easy Problems) is one of the two or three things that holds my attention and absorbs my interest more than baseball (along with film, and, for the time being, Tolkien).
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Apr 13, 2021 15:30:46 GMT -5
That this conversation was happening at the same time as the Twins thread conversation is mind-blowing to me.
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Post by manfred on Apr 13, 2021 22:04:58 GMT -5
I got the reference, I'm just not a fan of Nagel's (usually overlooked) claim that subjective experience is not in principle unavailable to scientific knowldge.
Consciousness (both Hard and Easy Problems) is one of the two or three things that holds my attention and absorbs my interest more than baseball (along with film, and, for the time being, Tolkien).
Interesting read. I put the book in my wish list. Thanks.
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Post by Soxfansince1971 on Apr 13, 2021 22:26:43 GMT -5
That this conversation was happening at the same time as the Twins thread conversation is mind-blowing to me. l agree, but would use different words than mind-blowing...
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