This is very true. I like comprehensive stats as much as the next guy, but they tell me nothing about a player's skill set or how they created their value. Even if BA means nothing to production, which is debatable IMO, it's still an important component of a player's offensive makeup that needs to be taken into account. Lumping it in with RBIs and wins as cast onto the scrap heap by SABR people is just a total misinterpretation.
You are correct, but it's not unusual to lose a starter during the year. The fifth starter sometimes has to become the fourth starter. The Cards have Lance Lynn and Joe Kelly and they seem to be pitching a lot.
Looking for a more perfect rotation, I think one alternative is Cueto, Latos, Bailey, Arroyo, and another solid veteran.
Another alternative is Chapman.
I think the Reds should consider both alternatives. I don't dislike Leake but I think another veteran may have value.
I disagree. The Batting Average thing has been trumpeted around here too much lately, not just in this thread either. Batting Average is simply a misleading and irrelevant statistic. Putting any faith in BA whatsoever is going to do you more harm than good. If you are worried in the slightest about batting average you are going down the wrong track.
The Reds need to improve their wOBA. To do that they need to make fewer outs and get more high-weight hits (extra-base hits). High contact leads to fewer walks and fewer extra-base hits and more double plays and more fielder's choices (lead runner gets thrown out). Improving contact is a poor strategy by itself.
Looking at the .260/.350 splits is another bad way of looking at hitting stats. You should be looking at it like this: .xxx/.350/.450 -- the batting average doesn't add any value.
I don't expect the negative attitude toward batting average to be popular amongst people who value batting average. I am not the one who created the condescension toward old-school stats like batting average. I am just the one who explained it in this thread. I am not a pure saber geek and I personally don't hate batting average lovers. I am just telling you how the saber geeks think about batting average lovers. I am just calling a spade a spade. That is the way it is in the world today. Don't kill the messenger.
Last edited by AtomicDumpling; 10-16-2012 at 03:54 PM.
I kind of want the Reds to keep Leake around as backup for the Chapman starting experiment (if they intend to do that next year).. It would suck for Mike to start in AAA.. but if they kept his innings low there, he might have to finish off the year in Chapman's rotation spot.
I'm concerned if Chapman could make it through an entire season next year starting.. or if he would have to be Strassburged before the playoffs start.
[Phil ] Castellini celebrated the team's farm system and noted the team had promising prospects who would one day be great Reds -- and then joke then they'd be ex-Reds, saying "of course we're going to lose them". #SellTheTeamBob
Nov. 13, 2007: One of the greatest days in Reds history: John Allen gets the boot!
Here's where I disagree. Let's take OPS for simplicity.
The Reds have a number of fair to high OPS players with low OBPs and high SLGs. Chris Heisey is an example. .400 SLG (approx) and .315 OBP.
Frankly, I don't care what the composite shows for Chris. I'm not that interested in his wOBA and his OPS. Because the Reds as a team need more OBP and more BA. Not so much more SLG, particularly from the right side. The stats tell us this. I personally don't think Chris fills the need.
The Reds need tablesetters. So this off-season, if I'm Walt, I'm looking for the OBP and BA part of the equation. That's where my team is deficient.
I believe in offensive balance. Sometimes that requires more power. Sometimes, more BA or OBP. Sometimes more lefty hitting. Sometimes more righty.
I'm unwilling to simply say, decent OPS, I'll take him. To me, the need is to be more granular and look at more specific stats sometimes, particularly when fillng specific needs on a good ballclub.
Last edited by Kc61; 10-16-2012 at 03:55 PM.
I have a hard time with this concept. I get that OBP/SLG is more important, but if given the choice between .200/.330/.450 and .300/.330/.450, it makes no difference? BA may not correlate perfectly with runs scored, but to say it means nothing just sounds like oversimplification to me.
Yep, it's called baseball and not hitball, but some aspect of batting average has to be surfaced since it's the measurement of the times a player put wood on the ball and it fell into fair territory.
Sure it doesn't tell you how hard it was, how many bases it compiled, it tells you that a player used a piece of the equipment called a "bat" to hit a ball and ended up on base.
And as a member of SABR I can assure you that there are tons of SABR members who use it and cite it, and in fact SABR and sabermetrics have absolutely no connection at all expect when someone cites the evils of the SABR crowd.
OK that is fine. If you just want to know how a guy creates his production you can look at his batting average to help you determine if he is a slap-hitter or a power hitter if you like, although there are better ways to do it. However, that is not what has been going on in this thread. People in this discussion have been advocating using batting average as an important tool in measuring the production of players and are arguing that the Reds need to bring in high batting average hitters to improve the offense. Only after that strategy was debunked did they try to salvage batting average as merely a "learn more about a player" stat.
If that's your perception, so be it. I don't agree that anything has been "debunked."
I, for one, would like some higher BA hitters on the team. I think the inability to get hits consistently hurts the Reds.
Best case, these guys would walk as well and have .350 plus OBPs. But I don't just want a selective walker. I want a guy who regularly gets base hits, if one or two could be acquired.
Debunked is a strong word. I still believe that just because OPS correlates more strongly with runs scored doesn't mean we can ignore batting average. Hits are more valuable than walks and putting the ball in play is more valuable than a strikeout. All else being equal, a .220 hitter is not the same as a .320 hitter.
If you are looking for a table-setter, why does it matter if his OBP is BA-driven or BB-driven? If the bases are empty (a table-setting situation) then a walk or a HBP is exactly the same as a single. In a table-setting situation batting average is even less important than OBP.
We agree that the Reds need to drastically improve their OBP. So we are working together on that one.
One thing that people who like contact hitters might not realize is that those hitters are more likely to hit into double plays (a terrible outcome) and they are more likely to cause a lead runner to be retired (another terrible outcome). These outcomes are not fully reflected on the hitter's rate stats (BA/OBP/SLG) because they are simply recorded as an out. Hitting into a double play affects your rate stats exactly the same as a strikeout, yet the double play is much more harmful to your team's run expectancy for the inning. Hitting a comebacker to the pitcher with a man on 3rd base that causes that lead runner to be retired is much more harmful than hitting an infield fly rule popup, yet both are recorded on your slash stats the same way. Getting a base hit to left field with a runner on 2nd base that causes the runner to get thrown out at home plate is much more harmful to a team's run expectancy than making a routine out would have been -- the player got a hit and created a bad outcome. These are all ways where a game is affected by hitting the ball that are not accurately reflected by the hitter's batting average. However these effects are built into the correlations with run scoring for the individual rate stats. This effect skews the value even more strongly in favor of OBP over Batting Average.
Neither old-school nor new-school stats are singing Chris Heisey's praises.
I agree that you need to consider lefty-righty splits when using statistics.
I respect your opinion. I just disagree. Hits are more valuable than walks in some instances, and that difference is built into wOBA and OPS. Walks do have tons of value though, and batting average totally ignores that value. That is one of the major reasons why batting average is so misleading -- it leaves out critical information.
Regarding the putting the ball in play vs strikeouts issue, I disagree on that one too unfortunately. Strikeouts have been mathematically proven to be only infinitesimally more harmful than contact outs. Yes, you can advance a baserunner with a contact out but you can also hit into double plays (not only groundball DPs, but also line-outs where a runner gets doubled-off and outfield fly balls where a runner tries to tag up and gets thrown out) and fielder's choices that cause an advance runner to be retired. These extremely harmful plays cancel out the benefits gained from advancing the runner with a contact out. These facts can be seen by becoming familiar with the weighted outcomes tables like the one here: http://www.tangotiger.net/RE9902event.html and a different and in some cases better one here: http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/inde...ues_of_events/
You can see in the table that the average linear weight of a strikeout is only .01 runs worse than a contact out, which is an extremely insignificant difference. A regular out is worth -0.30 runs while a strikeout is worth -0.31 runs. For comparison's sake a single is worth +0.47 runs and a home run is worth +1.40 runs and a double play is worth -1.06 runs (3.5x worse than a strikeout). All of those outcomes are worth 5--150x more than the difference between a strikeout and a contact out. You can see in the second chart that there are lots of ways to make an out that are MUCH more harmful than striking out. Strikeouts are just another out. They are no more harmful than another out. What matters is how many outs you make, not how you make them.
Last edited by AtomicDumpling; 10-16-2012 at 04:57 PM.
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