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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 12, 2022 21:20:30 GMT -5
Defensive Shift: I am on board with this. The focus of this rule will eliminate the extreme shifts where the 3Bman heads out to short RCF. It will continue to allow moderate shifting with the SS playing one-step his side of second base and the 3Bman sliding to the SS position. Will put more of a premium on good defensive players. Larger Bases: I don't think I like this one. The larger first base will essentially make the throw from SS/3B shorter. Will this have the reverse effect with more players thrown out rather than just beating the throw?Pitch Clock: Mehh.... I think pitchcom has already reduced the average time to throw a pitch. I don't expect to notice much difference. It would be a difference of about 2 inches. If a 3B/SS makes a 100 ft. throw at 80 mph, the ball would get to the first baseman... let's see, carry the 3, then divide by the... well, let's just say it's a trivial difference.
But a runner is much slower than a thrown ball, and the distance between bases would be reduced by twice as much as the throw to first would be reduced, so the effect on baserunning time from first to second would be much more significant.
It's .0014 seconds.
Base stealers will arrive about .02 seconds sooner.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 12, 2022 20:09:06 GMT -5
The easiest way to dodge the QO dilemma is to re-sign them before the deadline for doing so.
I'm hoping to see that for Wacha.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 12, 2022 15:15:21 GMT -5
I've spent a whole bunch of hours diving deep into Brandon Nimmo's numbers (and numbers by lefty hitters in general), and I've reached a really painful conclusion about his likely free agent destination. I mean, think the worst.
(All the numbers here are for the last three years.)
First, here are some park factors for fly balls pulled by lefty hitters. These are wOBA multipliers, relative to all of MLB.
1.11 Rogers Centre (4th in MLB)
1.10 Camden Yards (6) 1.09 Yankee Stadium (7) 1.06 Tropicana Field (9) 0.90 Citi Field (24)
0.88 Fenway Park (25)
It's hard to build an offense that's equally as good in your own park and that of your division rivals if you're the Sox. It's amazingly easy if you're another AL East club. (Yes, that has to be a contributor to you-know-what). This division is nirvana for lefty home run hitters (or wannabes).
So, Nimmo. He has insane home / road splits for balls hit in the air. I broke it down six ways initially, pull / straightaway / opposite field x fly ball / line drive. To my relief, the line drive numbers did not vary significantly by direction and asked me to lump them together.
At home, Brandon Nimmo is in the 93rd percentile for wOBA in line drives. On the road, he's .... 12th. Sample sizes are 91 and 106, respectively.
It may or may not be kosher to lump his fly balls to right and center together. If you do that ... he's in the 35th percentile at home and 98th on the road. (And now you know who I think the "wannabe" might be. He doesn't hit a lot of these; he just gets terrific results when he does.)
For pulled flies, he's in the 53rd % at home and the 99th on the road.
For flies hit to CF, he's in the 10th percentile at home at and 87th on the road. What's really weird is that the park factor at home is 1.12.
The Fenway park factor for fly balls by lefties to center is 1.14. For LHB, the two parks play very much alike until you get to the opposite field. And he's having an awful year hitting at home.
And note that the only split here that Nimmo is above average in, home and away, is ... fly balls to right. Which is the split that's very bad in Fenway.
Fly balls to the opposite field? MLB average (for lefty hitters, on the road to remove the bias of teams building their lineup to their park) is .208. Nimmo is .163 at home and .030 on the road, sample sizes of 33 and 19 respectively. (I didn't bother with the % ranking for these.)
That's right, folks ... the only split where Nimmo is bad home and away is fly balls to LF ... where the Fenway park factor is 2.05. Yes, Fenway would help that suckage, but it would help someone who could actually hit hard flyballs to LF a lot more.
He really does seem to have two approaches ... at home he's trying to hit liners and on the road he's trying to lift the ball. I looked at his line drive numbers in every park, and there's some suggestion that he uses the home approach at some others, but all the other parks in the NL East, where the sample sizes are adequate, are neutral for pulled flyballs, so it's hard to draw any conclusions.
Now, I did use all these numbers to come up with Nimmo .359 wOBA (it went up to .361 while I did this!), .362 in a neutral park, and .366 in Fenway. But it sure seems to be the case that his projected numbers would be much better in a park where he could try to go yard when the pitch asked for it. Nimmo has a .379 wOBA on the road.
So, is there a team that's so thin in CF that they had to play their superstar RF there, and who may need to replace that guy too, and is a great park for Nimmo's road approach ... and one where he wouldn't have to move?
Kiermeier looks like a good fit for Femway. (You'll excuse for for waiting a few days to run his numbers!) He and Refsnyder would make a fine, inexpensive platoon. Use the saved money to get Abreu to DH, and a frontline starter.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 11, 2022 2:45:34 GMT -5
First of all, you need to use the most optimistic metrics to call him a 2 WAR player this season(Bbref has him at 1.1 as of today). But I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt there. I’m not saying he’s old, or expensive. I merely pointed out that he’s regressed in AVG, SLG, OBP and OPS every year in Boston. At some point the focus changes from “he’s young” to “he’s just not that good”. He’s certainly not killing the team with a $6m contract, but he’s a year from being a strong non-tender candidate unless he turns it around in 2023. And I don’t think Verdugo is so hard to replace, either. They found Renfroe on the scrap heap and he outperformed Verdugo in 2021 and 2022. Do you have a reason to prefer bWAR to fWAR or does it just fit your narrative better? Now that fangraphs uses OAA for their defensive rating I don't see any reason at all to prefer bWAR for position players. In any case, OAA hasn't liked his defense this year so his 1.7 fWAR is hardly "the most optimistic metric" you could apply to him; if fangraphs still used DRS he'd probably be above 2 WAR already.
By the eye test for me, Verdugo's defense is average, and by the numbers he's a somewhat above average hitter (107 wRC+). His wRC+ was also 107 last year, and in fact it's 128 over the past three months, which sort of complicates the claim that he's "regressed every year in Boston."
I suppose you don't have any interest in engaging scottysmalls' point about how he overperformed his underlying numbers in 2020; his xwOBA this season is actually 34 points higher than it was in 2020.
Verdugo's defensive decline is real and so fixable it's stupid. Way easier to fix than the successful fixes of Bogaerts and Devers.
His sprint speed, % rank in all MLB, has gone 67.6, 51.7, 36.5. That's a bit misleading because the actual speed has gone 27.5, 27.0, 26.8. Below 27 there are more folks clustered.
Lose some weight, do some training.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 11, 2022 2:11:18 GMT -5
If the Sox don’t sign X, they are dead to me. Got a feeling your fandom gonna get tested this winter. Looks like I need to do the infield item in the 2023 Position Players thread, and explain (again) why folks who think that the Sox are unlikely to re-sign Bogaerts are, to use the technical term from cognitive psychology, bonkers,
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 11, 2022 1:40:54 GMT -5
Were not the only team with rule 5 issues. I'm sure a few of these clubs are swallowing hard this offseason. We don't appear to have major issues compared to others.
Given all of the free agents, the Sox will have an open slot, and I think there's a decent chance that they draft a reliever.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 10, 2022 13:39:38 GMT -5
What has Duran done that makes you think he should be penciled into an MLB starting role, even if it's in LF and not CF? Not sure, but the dropoff from Verdugo to Duran might not be that much of a margin for league minimum dollars. Verdugo is having a unlucky year and has a OPS hovering around .740 He had a OPS around .777 in 2021. Maybe the answer is neither. Verdugo will cost around 6-7 million I'm guessing in 2023 in second year of arbitration. He's starting to get expensive for a league average hitting LF. Maybe the new shift rule will help Verdugo be a .800 OPS LF. Be a little better than what he's given the Sox production wise right now. What?
The league average LF has a .310 / .311 xw/xOBA. The 45th best outfielder (out of 86 with 250+ PA) has a .311 xwOBA.
Verdugo is .333 / .324, the former ranking 24th and hence making him a first-division starter.
But he is also 10th in MLB for Win Probability Added among outfielders since we acquired him, ranking 3rd in MLB in FanGraph's "Clutch" approximation.
He's actually been worth $25M this year, $12M of that being his "clutch" hitting. And before you say "that's not predictive" ... last year his "clutch" hitting added $13M of value.
I'm putting "clutch" in "quotes" because a lot of what is measured as such is his hitting badly when leading or trailing by 4 or more runs, and other low-leverage situations.
However, in a Sox uni, he's had 26 PA with Leverage Index 4.0 or better. Excluding 2 IBB, he's hit .450 / .458 / .600.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 10, 2022 12:25:19 GMT -5
One helpful step is to list guys already on the 40-man who seem likely to be optioned next year, if everyone is healthy. Subtract the number of names you come up with from 14 and you have the number of open slots.
(Presumed MLB) Dalbec Crawford Bello Casas
Likely or Certain (7)
Mata Seabold Duran Downs Winckowski Cordero Kelly
Iffy (4) (a/k/a relievers of dubious value)
Taylor D. Hernandez Ort Bazardo
Gone (out of options) (3)
R. Hernandez
Danish J. Davis
While I'm at it ... there are currently 45 guys on the 40-man, so lets count the likely further trims, the idea being to see how many relievers they can add. Start here:
(Re-Signed or Replaced *) Bogaerts Martinez * Eovaldi * Wacha
Strahm *?
Pham * (with RF)
That leaves ...
Gone (7)
Brasier (DFA?)
Plawecki (FA)
Paxton (FA)
Hill (FA)
Hosmer (trade)
Familia (DFA)
Almonte (DFA)
Note that not only does Hosmer project to be just an OK DH, you need a RHB for that role or the lineup becomes imbalanced (assuming they sign Nimmo). And if they end up with a RHB in RF instreaf, there's no way you wouldn't want to trade Hosmer and sign Joc Pederson.
So, 45 - 7 + 7 additions per Chris - 7 = 38. So 2 more relievers, at least one lefty, to join Houck, Schreiber, Barnes, Strahm or a replacement, and Crawford (long man / 7th starter).
There may of course be trades here, but they should wash out in terms or roster and roles.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 10, 2022 10:43:09 GMT -5
An honest question: this scenario of a team grabbing some prospect who's far from the majors and then just keeping him on a major league roster for a full season even though he's far from ready gets bandied about regularly... have teams actually done this in the past? Akil Baddoo, Luis Torrens, Allen Cordoba and Anthony Santander are the position players since 2016 that had never played in AA and stuck Baddoo was two years past low-A (A+, COVID), and Santander was coming off an excellent A+ season. That leaves the two from the insane Padres experiment for guys drafted from low-A or lower.
What we don't know is how often position players have been protected out of low-A. As far as I know there's no comprehensive set of records of within-franchise transactions, i.e., players added to the 40-man or removed from it, clearing waivers, and staying in the organization. . Even a simple listing of the 40-man rosters at Rule 5 time from each year would be a valuable resource.
Looking at Wade Boggs' career, any naive person would assume he was selected to the 40-man after he hit .306 / .396 / .364 in AAA. But he wasn't, and nobody took him.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 9, 2022 18:21:42 GMT -5
Will read the whole thread later ...
I adore the pickoff rule, as it adds value to a real skill and creates big-time strategy and drama. A second throw over is a danger because, if it fails, after that, guys can take very big leads, and there's big tension as to whether you throw a third time or not.
For the same reasons I dislike the banned shift, as it removes strategy and diminishes the value of a real and quite valuable skill, hitting to all fields. What they should have done is just banned infielders playing off the dirt. Routine ground balls either find a hole or not and there's not a big sense of unfairness when one fails to. Whereas I don't think anyone really likes the smoked liner to the OF that is turned into a 1-hop 43 out.
I know I can produce a list of every hitter in MLB and how much they will gain by the ban. I'm as yet unclear as to the extra detail / extra accuracy tradeoff. Note that guys who fail to gain the average amount are actually being hurt, relatively.
(The right way to do this is to create 24 different lists (!), 3 batted ball directions x 2 batter-handedness x GB or LD x shift or no shift. The question I have to think about is what you assume will happen without the shift. I can look at the league numbers year-by-year as shifts grew more common, and that will help a lot, but it's tough to estimate the impact on grounders of a formerly shifted player who is now stationed right next to 2B. Impact on LD's should be easier to assess).
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 9, 2022 2:01:12 GMT -5
On Dalbec: despite this being a subpar season for him, he's still managed a 119 wRC+ against lefties, and 129 for his career. Why not just run with a Dalbec/Casas platoon at 1B to start the season? Trade Hosmer for either a marginal prospect or include a prospect to get back something useful for the major league roster. If Dalbec can rebound somewhat next year then they could trade him next offseason when his value might be a bit higher. And if by some chance he returns to his late-2021 form they can get him ABs at DH. It's not ideal to use a roster spot on the short end of a 1B platoon, but his ability to back up Devers at 3B mitigates that somewhat, and all the more so if he can fill in at corner OF. You're really trying to make me look up how Dalbec has hit LHP after a day off, aren't you?
If there's not a significant penalty from that -- if in fact he can hit lefties coming off the bench -- than this is an obvious choice for the reasons you state.
And I just figured out how I can use Stacast to very easily get his splits vs. LHP by days off.
Mind blown.
122 career PA vs. LHP, after a personal day off:
.450 wOBA, .418 xwOBA
203 career PA vs. LHP after playing the day before:
.312 wOBA, .324 xwOBA.
He has no split at all vs. RHP:
.301 / .306 (157 PA) after day off
.296 / .306 (402 PA) after playing
I can't explain this at all (yet) and it may even be noise, but my statement that there was no reason to believe he could hit coming off the bench was plainly wrong. He's an easy keeper, with an eye to his having a good enough year in his bench role to be sought after as an everyday 3B.
That catch here is that none of Devers, Casas, Verdugo, or Nimmo (I've already ordered the jersey) are guys you would platoon. But you can start Dalbec and/or Refsynder fairly regularly against LHP and then have whoever is sitting is available to hit for either their guy or the catcher. That will mess with opposing bullpen strategies, and the sitting guys will often still get 2 PA.
BTW, vs. RHP this year, Dalbec was a 53% regular; vs. LHP he was 74%. (Pct of all team PA he had, x 9).
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 8, 2022 14:21:45 GMT -5
On Dalbec: despite this being a subpar season for him, he's still managed a 119 wRC+ against lefties, and 129 for his career. Why not just run with a Dalbec/Casas platoon at 1B to start the season? Trade Hosmer for either a marginal prospect or include a prospect to get back something useful for the major league roster. If Dalbec can rebound somewhat next year then they could trade him next offseason when his value might be a bit higher. And if by some chance he returns to his late-2021 form they can get him ABs at DH. It's not ideal to use a roster spot on the short end of a 1B platoon, but his ability to back up Devers at 3B mitigates that somewhat, and all the more so if he can fill in at corner OF. You're really trying to make me look up how Dalbec has hit LHP after a day off, aren't you?
If there's not a significant penalty from that -- if in fact he can hit lefties coming off the bench -- than this is an obvious choice for the reasons you state.
And I just figured out how I can use Stacast to very easily get his splits vs. LHP by days off.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 8, 2022 14:15:02 GMT -5
Bradon Nimmo just makes too much sense, it also gives you a guy who can play both CF/RF which is important if Kiké goes down. Having 3 left-fielders play in the outfield (yeah Verdugo is ok in right) has left me with PTSD. Doesn't have to be Nimmo, but having a good CF/RF guy who can also add value in your lineup lengthens this lineup and thats' important. Devers can't do it all. Brandon Nimmo? [Insert obvious reasons here.]
But wait, there's more.
Over the last 3 seasons, 103 outfielders have amassed 650 or more PA.
Where does Nimmo rank in Oppo%
How about 4th?
What if we eliminate players who have never had a single season with a wRC+ above 100?
First. In fact, he's been the best left-handed hitter in MLB who is also very oppo-field heavy (although Nathan Lowe may be about to pass him).
He'd be moving from a park that ranks 15th in wOBA-xwOBA for balls hit in the air to LF by visiting LHB (last 3 years), with .011, to the park that ranks first with .202. (Minutemaid is next with .117).
When compared to all OFer's he's actually rather better as a pull hitter, but he's still above average going the other way, and would thus be a great for for the ballpark. Keep in mind that when opposing pitchers know they want to avoid a LHB going the other way, it narrows done how they can pitch to him. The total effect is more than you'd project from superimposing his batted balls on Fenway.
If I'm Bloom, the first thing I do when free agency opens is text Fred Lynn's home and road splits with the Sox to Nimmo's agent. I believe that players will jump at the opportunity to play in a park that will make them a star.
Opening day batting order:
Bogaerts Verdugo (eventually Nimmo or Casas) Story Devers Jose Abreu, DH
Nimmo / TBD Hernandez Catcher Casas / TBD
Story hits 3 because he seems to benefit from protection, while Abreu is the opposite and furthermore, hits relatively poorly from the 7th inning on and hence is not the guy you're itching to get one more bat. But Guaranteed Rate field was not a good fit for him and he'd be huge for us hitting 5th.
It won't be one of those lineups that has a terrifying stretch, but it would be insanely deep ... if Casas is as good as we hope, eventually either Doogie or Nimmo is hitting 9th.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 8, 2022 12:53:22 GMT -5
I believe we can safely assume the following. That doesn't mean things are certain, but if they don't play out this way, it will be unexpected.: To be determined, with in-house options: C) Last man on bench: Bobby Dalbec, Hosmer; longshots Cordero, Jarren Duran Jumping to the end because of new thoughts about the fates of the Gang of Four Enigmas / Disappointments. I'm assuming here that Arroyo is 3rd on the depth chart for 1B and you need a guy ahead of him.
Hosmer
Given Kiké's usefulness in the infield, you really want five guys on the roster who can play the outfield. And you don't have that if you go with Hosmer.
Furthermore, how much PT would a guy who backs up only 1B and DH get next year? Backup 1B guys, unless they're in a strict platoon, almost always double as a backup for either OF or 3B.
Hosmer's injury was unfortunate. He had a small but real chance of establishing himself as next year's DH, if he could recover the swing that made him the God of opposite field hitting before 2020, when he changed it to get more pull power and ended up with a wash. Best move now is to trade him to a rebuilding team that has a shot at contending (where the O's and White Sox were last winter) that has a hitter-favorable LF, preferably one that has misjudged their prospect talent. If that doesn't exist (which seems likely), any team that wants an OK 1B at essentially no cost would work. A small-market contender that has nothing at 1B would be a great fit.
Duran
His trade value is at a low point, and I'm including his apparent need for an attitude adjustment in that. So I'd keep him in Worcester for another year. I'd end the regular-OF experiment and see what he looks like at 2B in a potential bench role, but I'd mostly have him DH and see how he fares there. His AAA numbers project to much better MLB numbers that he's put up, and it's possible that worrying about failing in both aspects of the game, and pressing as a result, is part of that. He's probably a guy who struggles disproportionately against good pitching and feasts against bad pitching, so he probably won't reach his ML equivalents, but he should be considerably closer to them than he's shown. That profile describes lots of guys, including Stanton, A-Rod, and J.D. Drew.
Cordero
Franchy's tools are elite, but next to him Jackie Bradley, Jr. looks like a model of consistency. I'm convinced he needs to go to a non-contending team, a no-pressure situation where they can spend a year or two trying to build him a toolbox. But I like the idea of keeping him through most or all of his last option year and have him working at LF and DH. Have Duran at DH and Franchy in LF for a couple of weeks at a time and then do Franchy DH / Duran 2B for a week. With luck, there will be two or more teams that like his upside enough to give you genuinely interesting talent in return.
Note that he and Duran give you very good organizational depth for 2023, so it's not like they're laboring in AAA strictly to build trade value.
Dalbec
Dalbec fits the positional bill perfectly; he has the tools to play RF, let alone LF where they've had him take some reps. However ...
Given his streakiness, is there any reason, however microscopic, to believe that he can hit coming off the bench?
And there's no question that he can be a starting 3B, where he would have more value than he would as a bench player for us. I think that most teams are aware that he hit .300 / .381 / .723 in his last 147 PA last year (starting August 6). There have to be some teams that are intrigued by his evident upside, and I'd like to see him get some MLB time before the season is over. He may be dealt this winter, next ST, or later in the year, but I think that's the right thing to do for all parties.
Bonus: Pham
I like him a lot. But there's no place on the roster for him. In the last 4 years he's played 91 innings in CF, 7 in RF, and 3,193 in LF. And we have an excellent left fielder who has made better contact against LHP each year with the team and therefore doesn't need to be platooned, and a terrific platoon OFer in Refsnyder.
Conclusion
We should be considering backup 1B / OF, RHB, as another need.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 6, 2022 19:02:27 GMT -5
xBAs on the Rays' 5 hits last inning: .250, .250, .870, .110, .290 And an average exit velo of 63.3.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 6, 2022 18:13:07 GMT -5
Casas's career .333 Iso is unsustainable.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 6, 2022 1:51:55 GMT -5
All that matches the eye test to me - he appeared to have terrible luck on balls in play in his first few starts, and then the last few starts look much better because of the K and BB rates. I'd point out that there's a certain kind of hit he has yet to give up in his major league career, but I don't want to jinx it. Suffice it to say there's at least *some* luck there, but I wonder if it's *all* luck. Well, 54% of those hits are pulled fly balls, and 36% of pulled fly balls are those hits.
He's only given up 2 pulled fly balls, and they have xwOBA's of .009 and .483 (xSA of .017 and .840). The average pulled fly ball of those hits has a 1.284 xwOBA.
19% of those hits are center fly balls, where it takes an average 1.616 xwOBA. 9.5% of center fly balls are this hit, and he's had 10 of those with an average xwOBA of .555. The worst of them had a 1.203 xwOBA and a 2.30 xSA. Of the 362 fly balls to CF with an xSA of 2.20 to 2.40, 56 were this hit, a fraction less than 9%.
(Of the 914 of these hit to center, 150 had a lower xSA. So 16% of these hits to CF as fly balls are cheaper than his worst ... but I', not sure that tells us anything more.)
The other types of this hit are too rare to bother with and he has very low xwOBA's.
So, there's no evident luck involved here at all except the absence of usual bad luck, if you get my meaning. If you throw a perfect game, fanning 10, and the other 17 guys all have a .180 xBA, the expected number of hits is 3. You were 3 hits lucky, but you never gave up anything close to a hit and the universal perception would be "didn't need any luck." Bello has yet to give up anything that comes close to the thing he hasn't given up.
BTW, I spotted a very mysterious mistake in my spreadsheet. Turns out his adjusted xwOBA since August 1 is not .322 but .324, so he has been a tiny bit lucky. I'll fix the main post next.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 5, 2022 17:41:01 GMT -5
tl, dr version: This is awesome.
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So, Bello's season so far divides so easily it's almost stupid. He had 3 starts and a bulk appearance in July and fanned 13 of 83 batters while walking or hitting 13. In August and September he's had three starts and a 2-out relief appearance and he's fanned 16 of 67 hitters while walking or hitting 5.
That's a 52.5% improvement in K rate and a 52.4% improvement in free-pass rate. Seriously.
When you look at his batted ball numbers, it gets confusing. Here's his xwOBA and wOBA on balls in play (the MLB average is .361):
.327 / .448 July .347 / .332 August / September
Has he really been worse in August when contact has been made? But lucky?
The .015 points of wOBA in question are not trivial. In Augst and September he's had a .302 overall xwOBA, and a .302 wOBA makes you an average #3 starter. But he's had a .268 wOBA, and if that's for real, that's a strong #2. It would rank 19th in MLB.
Now, if you've read my past posts on xwOBA, you know it can't be fully trusted, because it ignores where the ball is hit. Opposite field grounders this season have a wOBA that's 1.84 times expected. Pulled flyballs are 1.42, while fly balls hit to CF are 0.65 and pulled grounders are 0.82.
(Yes, I did a lot of preliminary work to verify that you adjust for this by using the ratio.)
Let's go back to this:
.327 / .448 July (xwOBA / wOBA on balls in play.)
It's possible that Bello had bad batted ball direction in July, and that some significant portion of that immense .121 difference was for real. But I have the numbers to test for that.
What happens when you adjust the .327 xwOBA for where and how the balls were hit?
You get .327. He was absolutely average for batted ball direction, and so the .448 was all bad luck. All .121 of it.
And how about this?
.347 / .332 August
What happens you adjust that .347 for where and how the balls were hit?
You get .334. He's been the tiniest bit lucky, and the .347 xwOBA is an inflated number because it doesn't take into consideration where the balls have gone.
The .347 represents the quality of contact ignoring direction, and of course you can expect hitters to make a bit better contact when he's pounding the zone. But if his excellent K/W ratio is a product of better command, the you would expect him to be able to limit that better contact to less dangerous directions. And he has. He's has 0 pulled fly balls and 1 opposite-field grounder since August 1st. Guys are hitting the ball a bit better off of him than in July, but to worse places, and the latter come within a hair of canceling out the former.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 4, 2022 5:22:58 GMT -5
Fun with unbalanced schedules ...
Win pct. outside of division
.582 AL East .479 AL West .437 AL Central
Adjusting for that quite simply ... If the season ended today,
O's miss the playoffs, Guardians make it instead despite finishing 10.5 G behind them
Guardians get home field vs. the Jays as 3rd seed despite finishing 11 G behind them
Mariners use the tiebreaker against Rays for 4th seed despite finishing 5 games behind them
Red Sox season widely viewed as a disaster despite finishing 70-64 (85 win pace) and missing playoffs by 4.5 games despite surreal injury problems
If we'd been in the Central, we'd be 3.5 up on the Guardians and the talk if the town.
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 3, 2022 18:01:24 GMT -5
Two homers (not calling them "bombs") off of Whitlock have a combined .54 expected hits.
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 3, 2022 17:52:40 GMT -5
Story now .417 / .440 / .500 in 25 PA since his return.
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 3, 2022 17:25:35 GMT -5
Bello expected hits in this game is 5.9. Rangers are 1 for 5 in hard hit balls with xBA > .500. Karma regresses to the mean!
Bello now 16 K and 5 BB + HBP after is 13 - 13 start.
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Post by ericmvan on Aug 31, 2022 12:24:03 GMT -5
Thinking the Red Sox "tweaked" McGuire is like thinking they tweaked Sandy Leon in 2016, when he hit .310.369.476.845 before having an OPS of 450-650 the next eight years. Nobody loves a small sample size like Eric. Guilty as charged! More often than not they're illusions. But the first step is always to test whether what you're seeing is highly unusual, and if it is, I'm going to a) look further to see how real it is, and b) suggest that it might be real, because wouldn't that be great!
Re Leon ... that was definitely for real. But this happens occasionally -- a guy changes his approach and turns his former cold zones into hot ones, and goes crazy until the league adjusts, at which point he's back to where he was. The day before the Varitek / A-Rod, Bill Mueller walk-off game, I saw Kevin Millar hit three homers using a new open stance (he mentioned that on the air a while ago). I vaguely recall reports that Leon had made the proverbial "adjustment."
I did point out that if they did find a tweak for McGuire, it might well not last for that reason.
In any case, whether he's the starting catcher or just an excellent backup next year, he's going to come in handy.
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Post by ericmvan on Aug 31, 2022 11:54:22 GMT -5
So I looked at McGuire splits, last July in 21 games he hit .344 .385 .492 .876. So he's shown you before he can have big months, the key is stringing them together. Otherwise it's just a hot streak every player has in a season. Excellent catch!
And in fact there's a little bit of evidence that he just happened to be traded as he was getting himself into a hot streak. He started four games from July 7 to July 15 and was just brutal, 1/11, 2B, .093 /.115 xwOBA / wOBA.
On the 17th he pinch-hit in the 8th inning with his team up 11-0 and greeted new reliever Jharel Cotton with a well-placed (.400 xBA) line drive 2B, 100.6 mph. Cotton this year was the Twins' version of Phillips Valdez, an up and down guy who got good results. He got Abreu and Moncada impressively but gave up a 106.6 barrel line drive out to Gavin Sheets. We have no idea how tough the pitch McGuire hit was, but even if it was a cookie, that he hit it hard would be a good sign. In the 9th he fanned swinging against Emilio Pagan, who was apparently getting some work in.
He started on the 23rd and hit two marginally hard (96.0, 96.1) ground balls off of Guardian's rookie Konnor Pilkington, total expected hits, .69, and then hit a 99.3 lineout against Bryan Shaw (.72 expected hit). A good day.
The joker in this deck was that his last start for Their Sox was on the 29th against the A's, and he did nothing. James Kaprelian popped him up in the 3rd and fanned him swinging on 3 pitches in the 5th. He had an 83.9 mph groundout off Domingo Acevedo in his final PA, a ball hit weekly enough that it had .41 expected hits, and that gave him an inflated .132 xwOBA to go with his .000 wOBA.
All 18 games with Our Sox have been better than that in terms of wOBA / xwOBA.
The way to do this properly, of course, is to grab his entire career game log from Stacast and identify hit hot stretches. I'm likely to do that at some point.
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Post by ericmvan on Aug 31, 2022 4:45:57 GMT -5
Strong disagree that the Vázquez trade was made with McGuire in mind at all. I think it's far more likely that he was an acceptable replacement available in a deal they made primarily because the White Sox would take Diekman and his money off their hands. He's cheap and good defensively. They traded Vázquez because someone met the asking price they put on a guy about to become a free agent. How do you explain the fact that everyone had a long list of guys that could be moved, but CV was the only one who was?
The key concept here is "meeting the asking price." Remember, the team was unquestionably trying to load up for a run at the WC. If a team's offer fails to meet the asking price, it meant that the prospects they were offering were not worth the projected decline in WC chance that would result from the absence of the traded player. They obviously got offers for Eovaldi and JDM that they now wish they had taken, but turned them down because they didn't have what you call an "acceptable replacement." Or more precisely, the downgrade to the best replacement they could muster (including internal options) was perceived as too severe, given the offers they received.
It is true that folks routinely overestimate the impact a single player can have over two months. The downgrade from CV to a really good backup / second division starter is something you can live with while still upgrading elsewhere, provided that describes the guy's floor.
But the idea that the two trades were not linked is, I think, indefensible. They were not going to to pursue a WC, to the extent of adding Pham and Hosmer and keeping Eovaldi and JDM, with a catching tandem of Plawecki and Renaldo Hernandez (Wong had just missed a few games and would not return until May 13). And if you understand that the asking price is dependent on a replacing player, you more or less contradict yourself with the last sentence.
So the only question is, did they make this trade regarding McGuire merely as next year's backup, or did they have in mind the possibility that he could be good enough to start for a contender?
If you go with the former, then you are regarding all of the following as coincidences without meaning: - CV has a 105 wRC+ in 41 PA since the trade, while McGuire has a 155 in 52
- McGuire is a former #14 pick in the draft (which makes the possession of unrealized upside more credible)
- The team trading him hired Tony LaRussa as their manager ... and traded for Jake Diekmann and his contract
I believe we can safely assume the following, That doesn't mean things are certain, but if they don't play out this way, it will be unexpected.: 1) Reese McGuire will be either the starting or backup catcher. 1) McGuire had a .243 / .249 (actual / expected) wOBA with the Wrong Sox. With the Right Sox, he's .391 / .310, and in a very sample, his big platoon split has disappeared completely. He's playing like the first-round pick he was rather than the backup he became.
The trade of Christian Vazquez makes vastly more sense if they thought there was an easy tweak they could make to McGuire as a hitter. They knew it would shake up the clubhouse. And if you have a tweak you want to test, trying it out for two months is vastly better than committing to it in advance in the off-season. And check this out ("Prev" is his entire career before he came here: Stat Prev RSox LD% .288 .471 GB% .322 .294 FB% .479 .235
The odds of getting the before-and-after LD% split in a random simulation are precisely in 100 (p = .0100) .
The catch here is that no one has a .471 LD% -- Bryce Harper, who leads MLB in Baseball Info Solution's less generous numbers, has a a .338. McGuire's success (his .310 xwOBA matches CV's season figure exactly) is likely due in part to pitchers using an outdated "book" on how to get him out. And the high xwOBA relative to wOBA is likely in part a function of outmoded positioning. Obviously everyone has to wait and see how he does in the remainder of the season, as pitchers and defenses adapt to him. But I'm convinced they believe he might be an above average starting catcher. You don't trade CV if McGuire's ceiling is top backup or below-average starter. How likely they think that is we have no way of knowing, but the odds are apparently not negligible.
So fret not -- signing Contreras or trading for Murphy are very likely still on the table. But if McGuire can be an above-average staring catcher, that money or talent might well be better used to fix an actual hole. The remaining 6 points will each get their own posts. Note that I won't respond to any disagreements with this until I get to the corresponding point, when I'll try to address them all.
Also, why would the Red Sox know how to make "an easy tweak" to McGuire that nobody knows how to do? Like Chris said, I doubt the Sox dumped Vazquez because they instantly thought of McGuire as their catcher of the future. I do suspect that McGuire does wind up platooning with Wong and that McGuire won't hit that much. Easy tweak to implement if you're McGuire, not easy to figure out.
Nick Pivetta says hi. Note that I figured out why he had serious upside within a couple of days after the trade, just from splits available at b-Ref. The notion that everyone doing analytics is equal and that every organization is doing it the same way is not correct. I could say much more, but we'd be drifting off topic.
And that's because this would be a mechanical tweak, not an analytic tweak, and that's essentially the same thing as better player development, which is the newer thing where teams are not perceived at all as equal.
There is of course a long list of guys who changed organizations and blossomed very quickly. Justin Turner had a been in three organizations, and had 926 PA with a 92 OPS+ when the Dodgers signed him a FA. He had a .537 OPS in his first 30 G (86 PA) with them, then had a 1.030 the rest of the way and ended up with a 141 OPS+ in his first 4 seasons with them.
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