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Post by jmei on Sept 3, 2014 16:35:54 GMT -5
I thought he addressed the strikeout/walks issue rather well and certainly didn't rule out those going up in the future. Personally, I find this type of analysis to be far more informative than trying to use analysis systems designed for major league players on evolving baseball players at any level. Let's be honest here, this hasn't been a banner year for 'advanced metric systems' in terms of SoxProspects, they've pretty much missed the boat on all of our top prospects. The thing is, pitchers who can get weak contact should generally also be able to get swings-and-misses (and thus Ks). As such, there are relatively few pitchers who have the stuff/command/deception to consistently get mishits but who don't get many strikeouts. I think Ball is certainly capable of improving his strikeout numbers as he matures and improves his secondaries; I'm just saying I'd be happier if he had started to show a bigger improvement in his strikeout rate this year. I'm totally on board with the idea that scouting is more predictive than statistical analysis in the low minors. But that's not what Eric is doing here. He just happens to subscribe to a slightly different sabermetric philosophy than I do, which is fine, but we have far more in common than you seem to think we do. Anyways, there's a DIPS thread in the Off-Topic forum if you want to discuss further. As for the rest, I've written a response here. No need to clutter up this thread with personal sniping.
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Sept 3, 2014 18:04:06 GMT -5
The opposite of that is that if you have inexperienced hitters swinging at anything near the strike zone, you're unlikely to have an opportunity to strike someone out because they've already made an out when they would normally have had a two strike count.
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Post by James Dunne on Sept 3, 2014 18:21:13 GMT -5
The opposite of that is that if you have inexperienced hitters swinging at anything near the strike zone, you're unlikely to have an opportunity to strike someone out because they've already made an out when they would normally have had a two strike count. If that were true, the South Atlantic League would have a lower-than-usual strikeout rate.
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Post by jmei on Sept 3, 2014 20:26:20 GMT -5
The opposite of that is that if you have inexperienced hitters swinging at anything near the strike zone, you're unlikely to have an opportunity to strike someone out because they've already made an out when they would normally have had a two strike count. If that were true, the South Atlantic League would have a lower-than-usual strikeout rate. Just to be clear, the SAL does not have a lower-than-usual strikeout rate. Here are the 2014 strikeout and walk rates by league for each of the leagues that the Red Sox have an affiliate in, per Baseball-Reference: International League: 7.5 K/9, 3.4 BB/9 Eastern League: 7.3 K/9, 3.1 BB/9 Carolina League: 7.6 K/9, 3.3 BB/9 South Atlantic League: 7.7 K/9, 3.2 BB/9 N.Y.-Penn League: 7.7 K/9, 2.9 BB/9 Not to mention the fact that if Ball was so good at enticing hitters to swing early in counts, his walk rate probably wouldn't be so high.
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Trey Ball
Sept 3, 2014 21:16:15 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by larrycook on Sept 3, 2014 21:16:15 GMT -5
Does ball start next season in Salem?
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ericmvan
Veteran
Supposed to be working on something more important
Posts: 8,931
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 3, 2014 23:19:20 GMT -5
Of course he didn't develop a real .218 BABIP skill at mid-season, since no one has that. But there's a credible explanation as to why he may have been getting easy outs in play in the second half. And perhaps those were ultimately in lieu of strikeouts.
His walk rate was unchanged but his BABIP plummeted. Some of the latter may be due to better velocity of movement, but it's probably mostly due to command in and around the strike zone (which we know can be relatively uncorrelated to control).
So, we have a pitcher facing hitters who have largely faced him previously, and who had hammered him. It's reasonable to think they would be overly aggressive on pitches in the strike zone. They have an expectation of getting very hittable pitches, so they're swinging at pitches they might take for strikes, had they never faced him before.
Let's see. There were four clubs he faced in both the first and second halves, and with one exception he faced them at least twice in each half. Here's the BABIP allowed in each half to each club:
Team 1st 2nd Asheville .625 .120 Savannah .412 .200 Lexington .371 .222 Augusta .333 .273 The correlation here is -.965, which is statistically significant (p = .035) despite the sample being a whole four.
This doesn't prove a thing, but it is consistent with the hypothesis that explains the low BABIP in the second half. I admit to not being able to find any pattern in the K rates. And it doesn't explain why he he allowed a .229 BABIP in the two second-half games against clubs who hadn't faced him previously -- but that is just two games, after all, whereas as noted previously, the data in the table is two games per number (except one for Savannah first half and three for Augusta second half).
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Sept 4, 2014 3:44:12 GMT -5
I'm curious as to the real differences isolated by experience levels. It would seem logical to me that there would be a significant difference between the results for high school pitchers, especially those in their first year vs the results for college pitchers as a whole and even more so for college pitchers out of big conferences. Logically, that difference would diminish as the levels went up because the filtering intensifies and because there's a bigger percent difference between 1 and 4 years experience than 2 and 5 years experience. It also seems logical to me that you should expect less from a first year high school pitcher than a first year college pitcher. It's why earlier, I comped Ball to Owens and Lester rather than college lefties like Johnson.
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Post by jmei on Sept 4, 2014 6:34:27 GMT -5
I'm curious as to the real differences isolated by experience levels. It would seem logical to me that there would be a significant difference between the results for high school pitchers, especially those in their first year vs the results for college pitchers as a whole and even more so for college pitchers out of big conferences. Logically, that difference would diminish as the levels went up because the filtering intensifies and because there's a bigger percent difference between 1 and 4 years experience than 2 and 5 years experience. It also seems logical to me that you should expect less from a first year high school pitcher than a first year college pitcher. It's why earlier, I comped Ball to Owens and Lester rather than college lefties like Johnson. Yeah, I agree that there's a huge difference between a high school pitcher's first full year in Greenville and a three-year college guy (think Workman or Barnes or Johnson) who starts his career in Greenville. You give the HS guy a lot more leeway because you know he's a lot more raw and can move a lot slower through the system but still be on track to reach the majors at a young age. The comparison with Ball and Lester is very apt-- HS guys can struggle somewhat in their first year and still become very, very good pitchers.
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Post by jimed14 on Mar 24, 2015 11:26:47 GMT -5
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Post by kungfuizzy on Mar 25, 2015 5:10:23 GMT -5
I still weep every time I see Austin Meadows on the top prospects list...awful
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nomar
Veteran
Posts: 10,824
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Trey Ball
Mar 25, 2015 7:16:25 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by nomar on Mar 25, 2015 7:16:25 GMT -5
I still weep every time I see Austin Meadows on the top prospects list...awful Eh, that'll be okay. I like Meadows, but he's kind of got the Nimmo, tweener thing going on. Not a ton of power, good hit tool, but strikes out too much for me to think he'll be a plus hitter for average. I think he'll be a good player, but I think he may end up offensively similar to Cecchini rather than a true star.
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Trey Ball
Mar 25, 2015 7:33:53 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by kman22 on Mar 25, 2015 7:33:53 GMT -5
I still weep every time I see Austin Meadows on the top prospects list...awful The silver lining is that a potential impact pitcher seems like a more pressing need, at least long-term, than an outfielder.
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Post by jimed14 on Mar 25, 2015 7:51:27 GMT -5
I still weep every time I see Austin Meadows on the top prospects list...awful The silver lining is that a potential impact pitcher seems like a more pressing need, at least long-term, than an outfielder. Trey Ball can be an outfielder too.
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Trey Ball
Mar 25, 2015 8:07:36 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by kungfuizzy on Mar 25, 2015 8:07:36 GMT -5
I still weep every time I see Austin Meadows on the top prospects list...awful The silver lining is that a potential impact pitcher seems like a more pressing need, at least long-term, than an outfielder. I agree with you. I understand the logic of why they did it. But it just hasn't worked out. Hopefully Ball takes a step forward and I'm wrong. Maybe he some how gets to AA this year. But I'm not holding out hope.
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Post by jimed14 on Mar 25, 2015 8:55:01 GMT -5
The silver lining is that a potential impact pitcher seems like a more pressing need, at least long-term, than an outfielder. I agree with you. I understand the logic of why they did it. But it just hasn't worked out. Hopefully Ball takes a step forward and I'm wrong. Maybe he some how gets to AA this year. But I'm not holding out hope. So it's guaranteed that you're going to be negative about him no matter what because of unrealistic expectations in jumping 3 levels in one year. He's 20. There's pretty much no chance he gets to AA this year. He has pitched one pro season after 7 innings in 2013 and he was drafted as a very raw project. If he got to AA this year, he'd probably be in the top 30 next year.
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Post by beany24 on Mar 25, 2015 9:14:34 GMT -5
I watched this kid in person last week and I just don't understand the big rush for returns on this investment. He's learning to repeat his delivery, has good velocity and movement, and didn't seem to get rattled even when he gave up a couple of real laser shots. It's all about location. When and if he learns to hit his spots, he can be very good. Just relax and and let the kid develop.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Mar 25, 2015 10:03:34 GMT -5
The silver lining is that a potential impact pitcher seems like a more pressing need, at least long-term, than an outfielder. I agree with you. I understand the logic of why they did it. But it just hasn't worked out. Hopefully Ball takes a step forward and I'm wrong. Maybe he some how gets to AA this year. But I'm not holding out hope. Luckily, you draft players trying to find the guy who will be the best big leaguer, not who will be the best prospect or who will climb rungs of the minor league ladder fastest, and we don't know anything about that just yet.
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Post by Guidas on Mar 25, 2015 14:34:43 GMT -5
I watched this kid in person last week and I just don't understand the big rush for returns on this investment. He's learning to repeat his delivery, has good velocity and movement, and didn't seem to get rattled even when he gave up a couple of real laser shots. It's all about location. When and if he learns to hit his spots, he can be very good. Just relax and and let the kid develop. Well, he was also a hell of a hitter in high school, so there was a decision which way to take his talents, though some speculated that if he was drafted with an eye toward developing him as a position player he would've likely dropped to later in the first round. But yeah, better to check back when he's 21/22 or so.
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