1st Half Awards (Stark)
by madhatternalice on Jul 8, 2007 8:48 PM EDT
61 comments
Jayson Stark gave out his "midseason awards," and there are few surprises.
The only O's mentioned are:
Jay Gibbons (honorable mention, AL LVP)
Jeremy Guthrie (honorable mention, AL ROY)
For the most part, I agree with Stark's selections. I'm not sure how you pick Holliday as the NL MVP over Prince Fielder, but there you have it.
Any other O'S that should have made this list?
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by madhatternalice on Jul 9, 2007 3:13 AM EDT up reply actions
Stark
Its very inconsistent.
Now I have a question
What could be more valuable then knowing how often a guy gets a hit with runners in a position to score? How is that a terrible stat?
I mean, I get the value of on-base percentage vs. average, and I guess slugging + on-base percentage is supposed to mean something, although I can't really tell why it's supposed to be some be-all end-all stat.
But I'd want to know what my chances are that a given hitter is going to get a hit with a guy on 2nd or 3rd or both. How is that a terrible stat?
"I vanna be left alone."
Snarky answer
This is similar to the fact that sabermetricians blindly hold that a walk is as good as a hit in all circumstances, even though that's clearly not true in many specific situations. Sabermetrics has simply declared it to be so.
Your last paragraph
Batters 3-6, I want to know what are my chances of getting a hit with someone in scoring position. A walk is nice with a man on second and 2 outs, but a hit is better. Or am I completely off-base with this?
"I vanna be left alone."
RE:
And OBP is valuable for all hitters not just because it tells you how often a players makes himself available for another player to drive in; but it also shows you how often a player doesn't make an out. Not making an out is a very valuable skill no matter if you are a leadoff hitter or a #4 hitter.
by BirdFanInPhilly on Jul 9, 2007 11:47 AM EDT up reply actions
No, you're exactly right
Ted Williams
He approached every AB the same. Didn't matter if he was leading off the 2nd or in the 9th, down by 1, 2 out with men on 1st & 2nd.
If it was a ball, he'd take it. Period. Even if flaring one just off the plate the other way would be more productive.
by Sluggo on Jul 9, 2007 3:35 PM EDT up reply actions
Ted Williams is the greatest hitter ever . . .
He contributed a lot more to the Red Sox by getting on base and getting big hits than he would've by moving the runner over or whatever else.
Agreed
But from time to time he DID miss out on some key RBI opportunities by always taking the walk instead of swinging at some borderline pitches in game breaking situations.
Yogi Berra did the opposite. That's why most of the old timers who played with & against him say he was the greatest clutch hitter of his era.
by Sluggo on Jul 9, 2007 5:21 PM EDT up reply actions
RE:
Sure he most likely did miss out on some RBI's; but he also left many RBI's out there for other guys on his team to pick up; which likely would have lost by not taking the walk.
by BirdFanInPhilly on Jul 9, 2007 5:38 PM EDT up reply actions
Williams should've worked on his stats
Yogi appeared to be "clutch" (something I don't believe actually exists, Yogi Berra wasn't "clutch", he was "good") because he bat fourth on a team that always had guys on base in front of him and always had good hitters behind him.
Baseball isn't like football or basketball because there is no premium on teamwork beyond a few specific situations. A batter is a lot more like a singles tennis player than a lineman or a point guard.
RE:
Many Saber guys say it doesn't, personally I'm not sure I agree with that. I've never seen anyone quantify that certain players can be clutch hitters; but that doesn't mean they aren't clutch hitters.
I do think it's extremely overrated and luck plays a huge role.
by BirdFanInPhilly on Jul 9, 2007 11:51 AM EDT up reply actions
Lies, damned lies and statistics
If you're basing a projection of average with a player into future seasons, and you do that with slugging percentage and OBP, why must you suddenly say "Oh, you can't do that with average w/RISP, too much luck is involved." Huh? WTF?
If anything, I'd argue average w/RISP may be THE most important stat for hitters 3-5. Let's face it - their jobs are to drive in runs. I'd want to know what their batting average is with runners in scoring position - is it better or worse than their normal average, especially with a pitcher from a given side? If anything, I think it's LESS dependent on luck - does a batter hit to the proper side of the field to stay out of making an out (either himself or a base runner) and basically, how often does he produce in those situations?
How many times have we screamed about Tejada going 2 for 5, when the 2 hits were with 2 out, no one one and the 3 outs were with somebody on base? Is that dependent on luck, or does Tejada really perform worse when he's needed the most? I doubt many of us would argue it's luck.
"I vanna be left alone."
RE:
As I said, I think clutch hitting is overrated, but I think it does exist. Some people perform better under pressure; some perform worse. But I do think it's overrated.
by BirdFanInPhilly on Jul 9, 2007 1:34 PM EDT up reply actions
OBP in and of itself isn't necessarily less
So say you happen to play the Orioles and hit a dribbler between the immobile Melvin Mora and the absolutely anchored Miguel Tejada. That's probably going to be a "hit." But you hit the same ball against the Mets and Wright/Reyes, well, you're more likely to go down.
Nobody can quite figure out what "clutch" means to even attempt to measure it, but AVG w/ RISP is usually a small sample size, and AVG in general tends to revert to a mean.
RISP
Has an excellent chapter on "clutch hitting." The problem with trying to determine if someone is a clutch hitter is how do you define clutch? Game winning? Down? Ahead? The book stipulates that we can't really determine if a player is clutch, because sample sizes are just too small.
Personally, I think clutch is a meaningless idea. I've played the game. You appraoch each at-bat the same. If you consistently come up big (Ortiz), it's because you're just a very good baseball player.
by madhatternalice on Jul 9, 2007 6:36 PM EDT up reply actions
re:
As for Tejada, well:
RISP: .278/.379/.403 -- .782 OPS (overall OPS this season is .783)
RISP, 2 outs: .333/.471/.556
Tejada's lack of clutchness this season is somewhat overstated.
Here's something interesting, though.
Batting 3rd: 111 AB, .243/.309/.342
Batting 4th: 172 AB, .349/.396/.477
Junior in '08
OK
Tell me . . .
Like I said about Tejada, do you think that Payton would manage to stay in the big leagues for ten years if his ability disappeared every time a runner is on in front of him? Don't you think word would get around?
RE:
by BirdFanInPhilly on Jul 9, 2007 2:12 PM EDT up reply actions
91 at bats seem like a lot . .
Also, look at his stats with runners in other scoring positions. There is no discernible pattern of chokiness. He's pretty good with guys on 1st and 3rd or 2nd and 3rd, but kind of eh with a guy on 2nd. His overall stats with men on are .282/.337/.419 which aren't that far removed from his career overall stats of .284/.329/.435.
RE:
by BirdFanInPhilly on Jul 9, 2007 2:43 PM EDT up reply actions
SC's stat shows. . .
"Tejada's a rally killer. I remember this one time there were two guys on and Tejada just popped up, inning over." My Dad is the king of that.
Miguel Tejada has been involved in big-time baseball since he was 17 years old. He did not get as far as he has by being the kind of player whose ability leaves him when he has guys on base in front of him. No Major League player is. Batters get out with runners on base mostly because batters usually get out. It's the most likely outcome for every at bat regardless of where the runners are.
cluutch hitting
Go to www.sabr.org. Search for articles on clutch hitting and read to your heart's content. Here's a start.
http://www.sabr.org/cmsFiles/Files/btn2005-02.pdf
"We're going to turn this team around 360 degrees"
by drj on Jul 9, 2007 2:51 PM EDT up reply actions
Umm
How is statistical-based research . . .
Small ball, double switches, etc., those are sacred cows because they is no compelling proof that they are ever a good idea yet continue to be done. If doing something unquestioningly simply because there is a tradition of doing it isn't characteristic of a sacred cow, I don't know what is.
RE:
by BirdFanInPhilly on Jul 9, 2007 3:24 PM EDT up reply actions
I actually did mean double steals
Double switches are typically a bad thing since you have to assume that typically the eight best players are on the field and replacing one of them with a bench player isn't such a great idea, but there are a lot of mitigating factors. A good manager makes it work for him.
RE:
Sure it can be screwed up, but not being an NL guy, I'm guessing it's kind of rare.
by BirdFanInPhilly on Jul 9, 2007 4:21 PM EDT up reply actions
don't Phillies fans complain
I'll admit, they still kind of confuse me and I'm a really big baseball fan. But I think that, especially in the NL where teams seem willing to give up hitting for defense or eight-hitterness or whatever, they can work. Like, if I'm the Astros and I can double-switch both the pitcher and Adam Everett out of the game or something for like Lance Berkman and some bench dude who can OPS like 700, I'll take it.
Or something.
more precisely
"We're going to turn this team around 360 degrees"
by drj on Jul 9, 2007 3:14 PM EDT up reply actions
One last one, I promise...
WHY? WHY is it far more important? Sorry, SC, just because you say it doesn't make it so. (Unless it's about this site, in which case it DOES make it so.) If a batter bats in the 3-6 spots, his JOB is to drive in runs. A walk doesn't get that done. A hit-by-pitch doesn't get that done. A HIT gets that done.
And I have NEVER understood the importance of slugging percentage. Raw numbers of doubles triples and HRs tell you what power a hitter has. Contriving some number that adds value to an average based on how many bases the hitter advanced seems to me to be mathematically suspect at best.
What could POSSIBLE be more important than knowing how many time a batter gets a HIT with runners on 2nd or 3rd or both? OBP w/RISP would help, but how many of those precious walks just delayed the 3rd out, or God forbid, made it EASIER for the opposing team to get the 3rd out (or 2nd AND 3rd outs)? Not that I'm buying into the Dusty "Let's not clog the bases" Baker theory of managing...
There's a reason pitchers intentionally walk hitters with first base open. And a statistic that REWARDS that is supposed to be more meaningful than telling me how many times a batter got a HIT with runners in scoring position? WTF?
"I vanna be left alone."
SLG
Anyway, as to your main query, think of it this way:
The single most precious commodity in any baseball game is outs. You only get (with rare exceptions) 27 of them (unless you don't need the last three, obviously). The single goal of every hitter, every time (with perhaps the rare exceptions of bottom-9th [or later] and less than two outs, when getting in the winning run at the expense of an out is of course desireable. but this is getting off track) should be not to get an out.
Thus, OBP is merely a measure of which hitters are the best at not getting out, and is thus the biggest predictor of run-scoring success. Now, all things being otherwise equal, would a team rather have a dude who doesn't walk much but hits around .370 and thus OBPs .400 or Todd Walker who does nothing but walk or strike out, hits .240 and OBPs .360? Of course they'll take the AVG guy. But AVG is a fluky, voliatile, often luck-dependent stat that many players can't repeat from year-to-year (see: Melvin Mora, Freddy Sanchez, etc., etc.), whereas the ability to take a walk is nearly always there (see: Scott Hatteberg). So the guy who hits .370 and OBPs .400 one year might all of a sudden only hit .310, and then he's making a ton more outs than he used to (OBP more like .340, which is not so good). And since outs are the only things you can't get back, the team is overall less successful.
This holds true much more over the long-term, like 162 games or more. In any one situation a hit or even an out might look better, but it's best to avoid the mentality that outs are acceptable.
I hope I didn't get too convoluted in there with the parenthesis and such, and that that helps clarify why myself and others are such anti AVG guys. There's a lot of good stuff to read about it on sabr.org and baseballprospectus.com that is probably both better-written and better-informed than what I just wrote.
recognize
Lets say the O's send 8 men to the plate in the first inning. In the second inning, Bako <shudder> leads off. Now, if there were runners on base with less than two outs, Bako might have bunted. But in this case, he has to get on base.
Let's say Bako gets a hit. Roberts is up. It's Roberts's job to get Bako home (or, at the very least, advance him). Roberts's role has changed.
Please let go of the perception that batting order means something.
Now, as far as walks and hits go, if the game is tied in the eighth inning, runners on first and second, and the count is 3-1 on Tejada, and he's pitched a fastball that's going to be high, are you telling me that he's better off swinging for that fastball than taking the walk? Your job as a baseball player is not to score runs, or kn ock in runs. Your job is to NOT MAKE OUTS. Period.
RISP is also a situational stat that the batter cannot control. Huff has no control of whomever is on base when he comes up.
by madhatternalice on Jul 9, 2007 6:45 PM EDT up reply actions
OK, this makes sense
Please let go of the perception that batting order means something."
That's true, and a good point. But typically, the guys in the 1 & 2 spots are usually the baserunners for the 2-6 guys, since the 7-9 guys usually aren't on base, 'cause they suck. That's why they're batting 7-9.
"I vanna be left alone."
well the idea is
Seriously, batting order really doesn't matter. you just want your nine best guys at not making outs out there. Because that'll minimize your team's outs, maximizing runs.
The first job of a batter is . . .
The reason a lot of people don't like statistics involving runners in scoring position is that they are they are dependent on the skill of his teammates, which introduces a random element that doesn't seem shake out as consistently as other statistics do.
As for slugging percentage, it's a numerical representation of what a guy does when he actually hits the ball. You know that a hit by Harmon Killebrew is more valuable than a hit by Lou Brock because Killebrew's slugging percentage is .509 and Brock's is .410. That means when Killebrew hits the ball, he usually gets past first. The same isn't true for Brock. Personally, I think that's valuable to know.
Just because something gets done a lot, like walking a batter with the bases loaded, doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. When pitchers walk a batter with a base open, nine out of ten times they are making a mistake because it puts another man on the bases with no additional out. Base runners are force multipliers. They can turn a crappy little single into a run or two or even three.
I also want to point out that you're sort of creating a straw man because good hitters get hits with men on, men off, and usually walk a lot as well. Babe Ruth walked a ton and hit the shit out of the ball when it counted. Those things aren't mutually exclusive.
RE:
Teams that hit well tend to hit well with RISP; but the correlation between BA with RISP doesn't correlate anywhere near as strongly as OPS and Runs.
by BirdFanInPhilly on Jul 9, 2007 6:52 PM EDT up reply actions
Here's the thing . . .
The second most important stat for a hitter is slugging percentage because it gauges what the guy actually does when he gets a hit.
Although I'm not 100% dismissive of stats like runners in scoring position, I don't like the idea of using stats dependent on another player's performance and I do think it's mostly luck. I also see the point in worrying about the things that "don't show up on the stat sheet" like moving the runner over and such. If the batter gets a hit or a walk, the runner will advance. Trying to hit it to the other side or other things that change what the hitter would normally do strikes me as counter productive.
In my mind, the proof is in the pudding. Every baseball dynasty of the lively-ball era has been built around getting on base and getting big hits and not sweating stuff like steals, hit and runs, and the like. Hell, the 1953 Yankees (the last of five straight World Series winners) won 99 games and stole a total of 34 bases.
From 1966 to 1983 no team won more games, pennants, or World Series than the Orioles and offensively they did it by getting on base, getting big hits, and not worrying about much else.
damn
Oh well, now we have two tributes to the ability to not make an out.
btw, this is why Barry Bonds is still so good. Dude still makes outs, like, less than half the time he goes up there. Which is insane and Ted Williams- or Babe Ruth-esque.
Veering back to a discussion of awards
Heyman Mid-Season Awards
I'd like to see an explanation how the team's lack of support affects an individual accomplishment. To my thinking, if you are to look at an individual's body of work and assign an award, how can you honestly say Guthrie has been brilliant and then discount his achievements because he plays for a poor team? It strikes me as intellectually lazy at best, or blatant hypocrisy at worst. Let's say Pedroia played for the O's, would Heyman find a reason to discount his .318 BA?
Or perhaps Heyman views the ROY award as somehow intertwined with the team's achievements. That may be the intellectually lazy crutch he'll use if he bothers to explain himself.
Assuming Guthrie maintains his body of work, he's in for a major skewering at the end of the season. I think it's BS.
"We're going to turn this team around 360 degrees"
Guthrie doesn't have a ton of wins . . .
As you might've picked up Jon Heyman is a stupid, lazy sportswriter (whose opinion of Tejada and other players of color has made me think he's kind of closetedly racist as well) who is less deserving of his job than anybody who regularly posts on this site. The fact he evaluates a player by the quality of his teammates by factoring stats like wins (he also loves RBI) makes that rather clear.
old school vs. new school
by InRipkenITrust on Jul 9, 2007 3:31 PM EDT up reply actions
You know the answer to this
Every talking head was spouting off about how important wins are. Wrong, wrong, wrong! Wins are, for the most part, out of the hands of the pitcher.
Think about it this way: Would you rather have:
A) 17-4, 4.57 ERA, 1.49 WHIP
B) 10-9, 2.47 ERA, 0.98 WHIP
Krukie was actually posed a similar question on BBTN last year, and his response (I swear to God) was, "A, because he knows how to win."
by madhatternalice on Jul 9, 2007 6:49 PM EDT up reply actions
They pay John Kruk to be stupid
RE:
by BirdFanInPhilly on Jul 9, 2007 6:58 PM EDT up reply actions
yeah
(Can I swear here?)
by madhatternalice on Jul 9, 2007 6:58 PM EDT up reply actions
just making sure
by madhatternalice on Jul 9, 2007 8:50 PM EDT up reply actions
You obviously haven't read
From the Mother's Day Massacre Gameday Thread...
Yeah, we've been known to throw around a word of curse around here...
"I vanna be left alone."
That's why baseball is filled with stupid people
I guarantee that if you put Ozzie Newsome in charge of a baseball team he'd figure that out in about a day or so, yet this would elude half of the front offices in the Majors. The fact that the Orioles can't succeed in such a climate of ignorance is an indictment of their patheticness.
Ozzie Newsome? Sure, but even Ozzie Osbourne
Perhaps most annoyingly, certain of the less meaningful and wholly unmeaningful stats will continue to serve as legitimate criteria for HoF selection even after the dawn breaks for many or even most of the voters: the dimbulb Veterans Committee can in effect override the wisdom and common sense of professional observers (when they have such) and put undeserving people in the Hall because, well, they feel like it.
Hello Enos Slaughter, Hall of Famer. Makes your frickin' teeth grind-- and makes you wonder Why keep stats at all when "immortality" is based on legends your grandad really liked to hear retold by the likes of Joe Garagiola.
Historically nothing separates the good and bad
It amazes me that almost 90 years after the introduction of the lively ball there are long-tenured Major League baseball personnel who haven't got the memo.
Can you imagine how a NFL coach or executive who refused to pass the ball or blitz? That would be no more absurd than the way Ozzie Guillen runs the White Sox into the ground on a daily basis.
Nothing personal, Enos...
http://www.baseball-reference.com/s/slaugen01.shtml
The short version: Slaughter led his league once in hitting and total bases (in 1942, a depleted wartime year) and once in a regular season in one of the three major offensive categories of the day (RBI, 1946).
That's it-- and whoosh, one night when nobody's looking the guy's snuck into the Hall of Fame! Some committee, that Veterans Committee.
Blyleven
Grinds my gears to no end.
NO END.
He had a great nickname...
I think if Jay Gibbons became Jay "Country" Gibbons even he might have a shot at immortality. Or immorality.k
by tbone shelby on Jul 9, 2007 6:00 PM EDT reply actions
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