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Post by gregblossersbelly on Jun 29, 2013 9:17:05 GMT -5
Distributed by Sox PR office today: Jose Iglesias recorded his 50th hit of the season with a 2nd-inning single on Thursday night in just his 118th at-bat of 2013...Elias says that since the 1st rookie standards were set in 1958, Iglesias’ 118 AB are the fewest by a rookie at the time of his 50th hit in a season...The only other rookie who reached 50 hits in a season in fewer than 120 AB was MIN’s Tony Oliva in 1964 (119th AB). Both Cubans. Looks like they're all headed to LA until MLB puts an international draft in place.
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Post by ray88h66 on Jun 29, 2013 17:54:45 GMT -5
Distributed by Sox PR office today: Jose Iglesias recorded his 50th hit of the season with a 2nd-inning single on Thursday night in just his 118th at-bat of 2013...Elias says that since the 1st rookie standards were set in 1958, Iglesias’ 118 AB are the fewest by a rookie at the time of his 50th hit in a season...The only other rookie who reached 50 hits in a season in fewer than 120 AB was MIN’s Tony Oliva in 1964 (119th AB). Great stat Guidas. For the Iggy doubters, Sunday will be 40 games sustaining a plus 400 average. Look up the guys who have done that. Not just rookies. Then there's defense. Sorry, Sunday makes 39 games. Didn't look that up but doubt the list is much longer.
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Post by widewordofsport on Jun 29, 2013 20:52:16 GMT -5
You say that like you have looked it up and are sure it's mostly good-to-better players on that list, and it's not full of MLB washouts. Please share. I'm very interested if it's predictive of future success.
The thing that worries me now is the same thing that worried me when people were freaking out that he was sent down in April hitting .400+ (4 for 9 OMG). This streak is going to raise expectations, and I think a lot of Red Sox fans are going to be shocked when he gets through next May hitting .210/.260/.250. Remember 3B of the future Will Middlebrooks?
Right now he's 53-128, playing a part time role. Assuming he gets 300 ABs this year, he'll need 90 hits to hit .300 for the season. That's 37-172=.215 the rest of the way. I'm fine with using that to say his career peak will be .270 and not .250, but to suggest his success is any way sustainable, or label people as "Iggy haters" is just asinine, in my opinion. He's having a good enough year to be considered for starting SS next year, either until Xander is ready, or if Middlebrooks is struggling enough to put Xander at 3B. He's been great, scouting reports on his ABs confirm stats in identifying improvement beyond a great BABIP, which is awesome. I hope he gets a shot to prove it isn't 100% fluke.
I also think people are overlooking the injury history too, though. Frankly, I think Iglesias is much better in a four game per week role, which I imagine allows for much lower injury risk, basically tripling the amount of time reptetitive microtraumas to joints, muscles, and bones have to heal.
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Post by knuckledown on Jul 2, 2013 7:18:17 GMT -5
I also think people are overlooking the injury history too, though. Frankly, I think Iglesias is much better in a four game per week role, which I imagine allows for much lower injury risk, basically tripling the amount of time reptetitive microtraumas to joints, muscles, and bones have to heal. This is interesting to me, but I think it would more likely fall into the "contributing factor for sustained 2014 success" than "the reason Iggy had a good/great 2013". Time will tell.
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Post by awall on Jul 3, 2013 16:07:30 GMT -5
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Post by johnsilver52 on Jul 3, 2013 16:17:54 GMT -5
The latest example of how valuable Iglesias has been to this team this year when he has been in the lineup and especially at SS. He needs to be playing everyday until he proves he can't and I don't see it happening. He pulls the ball inside and goes the other way when they pitch him away very well. Drew is the odd man out and his absence is showing just how valuable again Iglesias is at SS.
Snyder isn't the answer at 3b and Middlebrooks may never be either with his ridiculously high K/BB rate throughout professional career and Bogaerts/Cecchini might be the only answer.
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Post by jdb on Jul 3, 2013 16:46:50 GMT -5
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jul 3, 2013 17:18:28 GMT -5
Jose Iglesias is at 148 PAs as of today. Will Middlebrooks thought his first 148 Red Sox PAs: .319/.358/.558
Yeah, still not sold.
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Post by awall on Jul 3, 2013 18:07:07 GMT -5
Not sold on what? That he's going to a .300 hitter from now on? Come on, his approach has clearly improved enough to believe that he can be in the .250-.270 range over a full season.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Jul 3, 2013 18:48:46 GMT -5
Not sold on what? That he's going to a .300 hitter from now on? Come on, his approach has clearly improved enough to believe that he can be in the .250-.270 range over a full season. FWIW, this is pretty much exactly what we were all saying about Middlebrooks last year. It's not about being sold on improvements in his approach. It's also about being sold that once the book gets out on him and pitchers figure out how to pitch him, that he'll make the counter-adjustments needed to continue to succeed. Not yet being sold that he'll be able to do that is quite reasonable.
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Post by johnsilver52 on Jul 3, 2013 18:52:39 GMT -5
removed
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Post by sdiaz1 on Jul 3, 2013 19:03:22 GMT -5
Jose Iglesias is at 148 PAs as of today. Will Middlebrooks thought his first 148 Red Sox PAs: .319/.358/.558 Yeah, still not sold. Seeing as that is your position, this article about sample size and how long it takes for peripheral stats to normalize should be of interest to you. It shows that all of the things that occured last year to make WMB successful ie:elevated SLG, ISO, and HR/FB rates, take 500, 550 and 300 PA's to normalize. Conversely Iglesias has been primarily successful because he has been drawing walks at a health clip and has limited the number of times that he strikes out. Stats that normalize after 200 and 150 PA's. If he really is a guy who walks 6% of the time and only strikes out 13% (which there is no reason to not believe) then he will be more than adequate offensively as a shortstop. www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=10231&position=3B/SS
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Post by jimed14 on Jul 3, 2013 21:25:48 GMT -5
Not sold on what? That he's going to a .300 hitter from now on? Come on, his approach has clearly improved enough to believe that he can be in the .250-.270 range over a full season. FWIW, this is pretty much exactly what we were all saying about Middlebrooks last year. It's not about being sold on improvements in his approach. It's also about being sold that once the book gets out on him and pitchers figure out how to pitch him, that he'll make the counter-adjustments needed to continue to succeed. Not yet being sold that he'll be able to do that is quite reasonable. That really doesn't make sense because Middlebrooks' Bb and K rate was still bad and Iglesias' isn't. The only adjustment pitchers had to make on Middlebrooks was to stop throwing fastballs in the strike zone. Iglesias now is working the count to get the pitch that he wants to hit. Given his very high contact rate, pitchers cannot make a simple adjustment against him.
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Post by charliezink16 on Jul 3, 2013 21:51:10 GMT -5
I understand the general essence of the statement, but Middlebrooks and Iglesias aren't very comparable in terms of initial stats in my opinion. We know Iglesias' stats will regress, but the arguement is whether he can put up good enough numbers to be an MLB starting SS. If you don't believe he has that ability at this point, you're being way too pessimistic. Iglesias' approach is so much better than we all believed, and while he still makes weak contact, he's shown the ability to work counts, get his pitch, and walk at a descent rate. Yes, his BABIP will regress towards the mean, but there are some reasons, IMO, to believe that he can sustain a higher than normal BABIP. First off, he reportedly added a step in the offseason which has allowed him to reach on infield hits a ton. Part of that is due to his speed out of the box. Additionally, what is extremely overlooked is his bunting ability. If there's one guy on this team who could go up there and pick up a bunt single (for whatever reason), it's Iglesias. Just checking fangraphs right now, he is 4-5 on the season on bunt attempts. The infield singles and bunt hits may seem unimportant, but with Iglesias they could add 20-30 points to his batting average. Point is, he won't go out there and hit .300 via consistent frozen rope hits, but Iggy does the small things to get on base, some things that are frequently ignored.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jul 3, 2013 21:54:37 GMT -5
Remember when Ortiz was legally dead for two months to start the 2009 season? He was striking out more (which stabilizes really fast, right?), his bat looked slow, etc. It wasn't some weird batted ball fluke or something, he really just flat-out sucked for two months. So when we talk about Jose Iglesias has improved his approach, his BB/K rates have improved, these things stabilize quickly... it's not that I don't believe that he's showing these skills. He is. That's great. But it's still just 150 PAs. A baseball player can show all kind of skills in 150 PAs that he may or may not be able to maintain in the long term.
In the last half of 2012, Starlin Castro posted a 7.3% BB rate and a 11.9% K rate in 328 PAs. Superior to what Iglesias has done this year on both counts, in a larger sample, from a player with superior scouting reports (as a hitter, of course). This year? 3.4% BB, 18.3% K and a robust .232/.265/.326 batting line.
K rate stabilizes quickly. But actual player ability can fluctuate wildly. What Iglesias has done is great, but he's got to do it for a lot longer before I just dismiss everything he did before this season as irrelevant.
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Post by jimed14 on Jul 3, 2013 22:02:40 GMT -5
But Iglesias is showing what many thought would never be seen from him ever. Ortiz' capabilities were known.
Plus Iglesias has always had good contact rates. He has clearly added strength. His potential has risen, maybe dramatically.
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Post by redsox04071318champs on Jul 3, 2013 22:13:53 GMT -5
Sure Iglesias will regress and we all expect his numbers to fall off, but what this stretch shows me is that he's going to be better than the Rey Ordonez comparison that I was expecting.
When the Sox drafted him, he hit around .285 in his first year in the minors. Then the Sox shot him up the ladder and obviously he wasn't prepared or ready for it and his numbers suffered.
Is it possible that those numbers really don't represent his true abilities? He hit like crap at Pawtucket, but is it possible that he was pouting like crazy and basically throwing ABs away? Again things that skew numbers.
I'm all for statistical analysis, but sometimes the numbers don't always project things. For example his minor league numbers would have told you that Wade Boggs might be a .300 - .310 hitter in the majors perhaps. It sure as hell didn't say he was going to be a consistent .360 plus hitter in the majors.
Sometimes a player just improves (or gets worse). In Iglesias's case he was said to have good bat speed and is looks like he's consciously trying to have a better plate approach than he has in the past, and it's clear he's not throwing ABs away. Obviously his BABIP is superinflated, but I think it's quite possible he might have a better than average BABIP down the road. He puts the ball in play a lot and with his ridiculously first fast step down the line he's more likely to beat out infield hits.
All this is leading up to that I think there's enough mounting evidence that he won't be Rey Ordonez, but rather that he can put up an OPS around .650 which for a guy with his defensive skills makes him an asset as an everyday player as opposed to an automatic out whose glove doesn't justify his bat. That's a big difference. Someboy with Ordonez's skill set would have a heckuva time putting up big numbers in even a 50 AB stretch.
This is not like Will Middlebrooks whose K/BB was awful making it easy to see a dropoff in his BA numbers. I didn't think he'd fall completely off the cliff, but it's obvious that if given his ABs, he'd clear 20 homers per year and with better contact (like hitting fastballs in the strike zone that he should be hitting - which to me tells me he's being hampered by injuries more than has been let on), he'd hit for a mediocre BA, have a mediocre OBP, but have a good slugging average as he is somebody with the power to hit 25 - 30 homers per year. His good numbers last year and his bad numbers this year do little to obscure this opinion of him as an eventual low OBP, good slugging 3b.
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Post by redsox04071318champs on Jul 3, 2013 22:17:30 GMT -5
I'm wrong about a ton of stuff, but I think I was dead on about Ortiz. Everybody was trashing him around 2010 thinking he was all washed up. I thought that his skills were still there, but his slump had turned mental. It looked like he was defeated everytime he walked to the plate. It seems like he had forgotten how to hit altogether, but his problem was mental (with all the focus on numbers sometimes we forget that a player's problem can be mental based instead of skill based), and sure enough once he finally got that first HR, he started to get his act together, and then to his credit, he changed approach and stopped trying to pull everything and that elevated him up to the .300 level again.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jul 3, 2013 22:28:31 GMT -5
But Iglesias is showing what many thought would never be seen from him ever. Ortiz' capabilities were known. Whatever we knew about David Ortiz, we saw him suck for 200 odd PAs and assumed it was real. It wasn't. Now we've seen Iglesias be great for 150 PAs and we're assuming that's real. I'm not sure why, other than that it would be awesome if it was real.
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Post by jimed14 on Jul 3, 2013 22:39:16 GMT -5
But Iglesias is showing what many thought would never be seen from him ever. Ortiz' capabilities were known. Whatever we knew about David Ortiz, we saw him suck for 200 odd PAs and assumed it was real. It wasn't. Now we've seen Iglesias be great for 150 PAs and we're assuming that's real. I'm not sure why, other than that it would be awesome if it was real. You cannot compare players who may be on the decline to players who are developing for many reasons. You or I are not going to show what Iglesias has no matter how small the ss. His potential has already been surpassed for many. He got 50 hits faster than any rookie since they started tracking eligibility in 1958. That group of players who have ever been rookies in this league is not a small sample. Use your eyes instead of clinging to a damn copy of Moneyball. Talking about Iggy is getting so polarizing that some people are going to wind up rooting against him so they can say 'told ya so' And again, anything over a 700 ops is more than acceptable, with likely a few allstar games. There is a whole lot of room for him to fall.
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Post by jmei on Jul 3, 2013 22:40:56 GMT -5
Seeing as that is your position, this article about sample size and how long it takes for peripheral stats to normalize should be of interest to you. It shows that all of the things that occured last year to make WMB successful ie:elevated SLG, ISO, and HR/FB rates, take 500, 550 and 300 PA's to normalize. Conversely Iglesias has been primarily successful because he has been drawing walks at a health clip and has limited the number of times that he strikes out. Stats that normalize after 200 and 150 PA's. If he really is a guy who walks 6% of the time and only strikes out 13% (which there is no reason to not believe) then he will be more than adequate offensively as a shortstop. www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=10231&position=3B/SSI have to interject-- you're slightly mischaracterizing the research. The PA intervals quoted above do not mean that once a player has reached 150 or 200 PAs, his performance in strikeout rate or walk rate in that sample is necessarily representative of his true talent levels. It just means that his performance begins to have predictive utility.-- i.e., those samples are big enough to say that it isn't all chance/luck. That doesn't mean that we can confidently project Iglesias to continue to strike out 13% of the time or walk 6% of the time going forward. But, more importantly, if we look at Iglesias' minor league stats, he's always made contact at an above-average level and his walk rate has been in the vicinity of what he's putting up now at the major-league level. My questions have always been: (1) Will he ever hit for even just below-average power? (2) Can he tone down his aggressive approach? (3) Can he sustain a solid BABIP? (4) Can he stay healthy? I'll only speak to the third point here. He's gotten a lot of infield and bunt hits this season, which many observers believe is sustainable. But note that over the past 2.5 years at AAA, over 916 PAs, he's only put up a batting average of .244 despite only striking out 13.3% of the time, for a BABIP of .277. He is admittedly lightning fast out of the batter's box (especially for a RHH) and has bunted for base skills, but despite those skills, his balls in play have turned into outs at a well below-average rate in a rather large sample over a significant period of time at AAA, despite the fact that minor league BABIPs are generally higher than major league ones (due to worse minor league defense). The problem is that for a hitter to hit above .260, even with low strikeout rates, he needs to (a) hit a lot of home runs (those don't get factored into BABIP) or (b) sustain above-average BABIPs. Iglesias has shown little history of being able to do either, and so while I'm cautiously optimistic that he can continue to convert infield/bunt/groundball hits at the rate he has, I'm hesitant to believe that he can. At least one source, for instance, looked at all of his hits and concluded most don't look sustainable, at least from the eye test.
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Post by jimed14 on Jul 3, 2013 22:44:54 GMT -5
'blooper off the fists to the triangle'? sounds a little bitter/biased.
and every hard hit is described as being right down the middle. cmon
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Post by jmei on Jul 3, 2013 22:51:46 GMT -5
When the Sox drafted him, he hit around .285 in his first year in the minors. Then the Sox shot him up the ladder and obviously he wasn't prepared or ready for it and his numbers suffered. Is it possible that those numbers really don't represent his true abilities? He hit like crap at Pawtucket, but is it possible that he was pouting like crazy and basically throwing ABs away? Again things that skew numbers. It's an appealing narrative, but his benching this year is the first anyone has ever heard about Iglesias not playing with 100% effort. In fact, there are a bunch of articles extolling his hustle and team-first attitude: espn.go.com/blog/boston/red-sox/post/_/id/19361/soxprospects-iglesias-coming-on-strongpawsoxblog.com/2011/06/30/hustle-wild-pitch-lead-to-pawsox-victory/
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Post by jimed14 on Jul 3, 2013 23:02:49 GMT -5
Omar Vizquel hit .272 for his career with a bapip of .294 (around league average). He struck out slightly less but .260 is easily obtainable by Iglesias with an average bapip excluding the extra bunt and infield hits.
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Post by jmei on Jul 3, 2013 23:11:37 GMT -5
Omar Vizquel struck out 9% of the time, which is a little more than "slightly less."
I just don't think the extra bunt and infield hits are sustainable. If he could do it consistently, why wasn't he doing so at AAA? I think he can sustain an average BABIP and hit around .260. I think he can be an above-average SS and a solid starter. But I don't think he'll be more than that, and even to reach that level, he has to prove that the recent improvements are real. We'll see.
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