Thread: Hunter or Jones?

Originally Posted by OrangePuck

Again, you are missing my point. You have read my baseball arguments and you know that in my opinion I believe that a players value goes far beyond a stat sheet. Yes, you can look at statistics but in addition to that you have to look at a players performance under pressure, who is he getting the hits against, what was the game situation, etc. If I don't know any of those things because I didn't watch much of the playoffs that season then why would someone, who evaluates talent the way that I do, go to baseballreference.com to get JUST THE STATS. It's not enough information in my opinion so short of finding VHS tapes or DVDs of the games and reading up on all the articles written at that time I don't think I can formulate an opinion on Vlad's performance in the 2005 playoffs to my satisfaction. Not lazy, just honest with myself and with you.



Again, Vlad was injured, Garret was half blind. I'll stand by that. If you think that the poor performance by an injured players in a 3 game series is indicative of his overall value then that is just wrong. When was the last time Michael Cammalleri scored a goal? Oh yeah, his groin hurts, I forgot about that. Interesting how he was leading the league in goals when he wasn't hurt but suddenly he can't shoot a puck in the ocean if he were shooting from the shore. Vlad had a myriad of injuries going into the Boston series as did a number of Angels players. They didn't stand a chance against Boston going into the series and I knew that the moment the playoff matchups were determined.



I was simply making reference to the fact that several Angels players were hurt going into that series. I merely mentioned Matthews Jr. because he was a starter and didn't play a single inning. It was an example of the teams health situation going into the series but not trotted out there as an explanation as to why Vlad played below his usual standard.




Backpedal my ass. What you do is constantly take words out of context. No where did I say that Matthews not playing affected Guerrero but you sure did make it seem like I did didn't you? Another tactic that I have noticed from you is that you completely dismiss the argument or point of view of a person you debate with which pretty much makes it easy for you to "win the argument." Case in point, your insistence that protection in a lineup has no real benefit. I was polite enough to say "we agreed to disagree." We evaluate talent differently. Instead of accepting that and entertaining a different point of view you stand by your assertion that lineup protection is of no value and thus my argument is wrong. Then you little nutswinger buddies come buy and hang from your short and curlies and suck you off to make you feel like you won. Answer me this...if lineup protection is of no real value then why are Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz so incredibly successful in Boston? You don't think that Manny sees a lot of fat fastballs down the middle of the plate from right handed pitchers when Ortiz is on deck? Was the idea of "Murderers Row" just a marketing gimmick to employed by the Yankees to get the word out about Gehrig and Ruth? DiMaggio, Mantle and Maris? Didn't the Yankees get rolled in the 76 Series 4 straight by Cincinnati? Then they add Reggie Jackson to the lineup for protection for Munson and Chambliss and go on to win back to back World Series? Lineup protection has been around for 100 years but you are so ****ing smart that you are going to disprove it validity? Funny thing, beyond merely saying that lineup protection is not important you haven't proven jack ****. All you have given is an opinion.



Players feed off one another. Regardless of the sport it has happened time and time again. Magic Johnson made the players around him better. Andy McDonald and Chris Kunitz are suddenly below average hockey players with Selanne not around. Dustin Brown hardly every scored until he was put on a line with Kopitar and Cammalleri. Randy Moss is tearing up the NFL all of a sudden because he is catching balls from Tom Brady. But oh, it doesn't work in baseball because jbruin says so. What a freaking joke.

Holy ****, you're backpedaling worse than Juan Pierre misjudging a ball in the lights.

The "makes players around him better" argument. I'm looking at the last paragraph there when you're talking about MAGIC JOHNSON and TEEMU SELANNE and FILL IN REALLY GOOD SPORTS PLAYER HERE. Are you talking about Guerrero here, or are you talking about Torii Hunter? Because if you're talking about Torii Hunter (or even David Eckstein), then you're using an analogy that compares them to other players who are some of the best in the sport. Which is RIDICULOUS because you're not referring to Hunter or Eckstein's talent (I hope), you're referring to their "character."

Also, a baseball player's "making others around him better" isn't nearly as much of an impact as it is in football, basketball, or hockey. Baseball (of all the "team" sports) is inherently a much more dependent on the individual's performance (offensively). One on one. Pitcher vs. batter. It's pretty damn basic, and this is why baseball "people" have such a huge dependence on a laundry list of statistical categories (i.e. the saber crowd). So your whole analogy is pretty baseless.

And let me also say that protecting your big hitter with those around him is nowhere near as important as the "team play" that exists in the other three sports. It's just a bad comparison.

And the whole character/gritty/smilesalot/toughguy/goodguyness factor is so much less important than a player's actual talent. Do you really think Casey Kotchman is going to slug .550 because Torii Hunter smiles a lot?

I think Casey Kotchman is going to get Casey Kotchman numbers whether Casey Kotchman gets along with everyone or not. Casey Kotchman doesn't have to catch passes from Tom Brady or be open on the wing because Magic Johnson is drawing a double team...he just needs to step up to the plate and get on base. At the end of the day, it's pitcher vs. batter with very little help from the guy on first base or the guy behind you on deck. TALENT is what matters.

That is just how baseball works.

But I think you and Joe Morgan and a large handful of the old timey baseball analysts (like, Tim McCarver!) would get along great. So, you have that going for you.

Oh, one more thing. Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz have great numbers because they're GREAT HITTERS. Not because they're "protecting" each other. Barry Bonds has OPS'd over 1.000 this year with what was probably the worst "protection" in the league. At like, sixty five years old, too.

You severely overrate "protection." And it's not like your Torii Hunter didn't have any "protection" in Minnesota, either.

P.S. I don't know how you can say Justin hasn't "proven ****" when he is the only one out of you and him who has given ACTUAL STATISTICAL, FACTUAL EVIDENCE that you can point to and say, "yes, those things which you just said are true and irrefutable because they are facts." Really, it's basic argumentation, and you've yet to really establish the "support" side of your argument other than "agree to disagree" and "magic johnson made his teammates better" and "the Yankees won the World Series because they got Reggie Jackson" [???]...all of which are either a) not facts or b) pretty gosh darned unrelated.

Lineup protection is overrated. It doesn't really have that significant of an impact. The only protection that you can really see having an impact is weak protection (eg, a pitcher won't pitch around the #3 hitter if the cleanup man is also a dangerous hitter). Hitters in the major league as a whole do not do significantly better when being protected versus not being protected.

More facts! I'm going to pick one of your really hard to refute "protection really matters" arguments with...oh! The Reggie Jackson example! Whoopee!

Reggie Jackson's first year as a Yankee, 1977:

.286/.375/.550

GREAT NUMBERS! What fantastic protection he must have provided! Let's look at Munson and Chambliss the same year.

Chambliss:
.287/.336/.445

Holy OPS, Batman! Decent Andre Ethier-like numbers (actually, not even as good an OBP as Ethier, but comparable)...he must have sucked without that protection! Let's look at the numbers in '76, before The Incredible Hulky Protector, I mean, Reggie Jackson, was there.

.293/.323/.441

My God! Those are virtually the same numbers! Well, surely Thurman Munson paid huge dividends from Reggie "God" Jackson!

1976: .302/.337/.432
1977: .308/.351/.462

Ah ha! Six points better in batting average! 14 in the OBP!! Surely, this is all because of Reggie Jackson and not because of a slight yet predictably on par deviation in numbers from season to season.

(Just for the hell of it, Chambliss' and Munson's OPS+ both went down slightly from 76 to 77. Just sayin' is all.)

In conclusion, the Yankees won the World Series because Reggie Jackson hit the **** out of the ball, not because he was some groundbreaking force in the rest of the lineup. They basically did the same as they did before. Thus, Reggie Jackson's "protection" either had a) a very minor impact on those hitting around him or b) a negligible one.

Clearly.

As the mother****ing numbers show.

The end.

I disagree with you guys wholeheartedly. If a speedy runner is on first the guy at the plate is more likely to see a fast ball, a pitch that every major leaguer can handle, versus a slow breaking pitch. Same goes to a #3 hitting being protected by a #4 hitter with runners on base. You see it in San Francisco all the time. 2 outs, runners on second and third, Barry Bonds at the plate will almost always get a free pass because he's got some scrub batting behind him. Teams would rather face a scrub with bases loaded instead of Barry Bonds with runners on 2nd and 3rd. If he had Miguel Cabrera batting behind him then Cabrera benefits from a bases loaded situation or they pitch to Bonds. It goes hand in hand.

Game situations and yes, the guy on deck affects the pitches called at the plate. They always have. It's an intangible of the sport and the reason why actually watching the game is far better then just reading the box score or reading stat reports from nerd fantasy baseball leagues.

I played baseball competitively and while I won't say that that means I'm an expert I will say that I have experienced just about every possible scenario first hand and have seen how it changes the very nature of the game.

Make fun of Joe Morgan, Tim McCarver and the "old timers" all you like. It's the fantasy baseball playing geeks, many of whom have never stepped foot on a baseball diamon beyond little league, who don't know **** about the game.

Sorry, I don't play fantasy baseball.

But I did play real baseball for, oh, about fourteen years.

(My lifetime OBP kicked severe ass)

Originally Posted by TBrown33

More facts! I'm going to pick one of your really hard to refute "protection really matters" arguments with...oh! The Reggie Jackson example! Whoopee!

Reggie Jackson's first year as a Yankee, 1977:

.286/.375/.550

GREAT NUMBERS! What fantastic protection he must have provided! Let's look at Munson and Chambliss the same year.

Chambliss:
.287/.336/.445

Holy OPS, Batman! Decent Andre Ethier-like numbers...he must have sucked without that protection! Let's look at the numbers in '76, before The Incredible Hulky Protector, I mean, Reggie Jackson, was there.

.293/.323/.441

My God! Those are virtually the same numbers! Well, surely Thurman Munson paid huge dividends from Reggie "God" Jackson!

1976: .302/.337/.432
1977: .308/.351/.462

Ah ha! Six points better in batting average! 14 in the OBP!! Surely, this is all because of Reggie Jackson and not because of a slight yet predictably on par deviation in numbers from season to season.

(Just for the hell of it, Chambliss' and Munson's OPS+ both went down slightly from 76 to 77. Just sayin' is all.)

In conclusion, the Yankees won the World Series because Reggie Jackson hit the **** out of the ball, not because he was some groundbreaking force in the rest of the lineup. They basically did the same as they did before. Thus, Reggie Jackson's "protection" either had a) a very minor impact on those hitting around him or b) a negligible one.

Clearly.

As the mother****ing numbers show.

The end.

The end my fat hairy ass. Everybody knows that Billy Martin jerked Jackson around for 2/3 of the year in 77. He batted him in every spot of the lineup from 2 down to 7 during that time and the Yankees floundered all year long. It wasn't until Martin finally slotted Jackson 4th in August of that year and the Yankees went from about 7 games out of a playoff spot to first place in the East and the eventual World Series Championship. The Yankees went on a ****ing tear as soon as Jackson was used properly.

The only way you can win this argument on statistics alone is to find out what the production numbers of the players were once Jackson was slotted in the 4th spot and stayed in that spot until the end of the season. Also, for you to belittle a line like .286/.375/.550 because it doesn't stack up to the steroid era just shows how little you know about baseball in general and how unrealistic your argument is. You also aren't even taking into account that there were far fewer teams back in 1977 and thus the pitching talent wasn't as diluted as it is today. Another thing you aren't taking into account is the tumultuous enviroment that the Yankee players had to deal with in New York that season.

Again, relying on statistics alone is not how you evaluate player impact. If it was all about statistics and statistics alone why do Dodger fans get such a big hard on when they think about Kirk Gibson in 88? All he did was hit a homer in his only at bat in GAME freaking 1 of the 88 Series. It won the game but it did wonders for the Dodgers and spring boarded them to the Series win. But stat geeks such as yourselves would explain it away as just a single at bat. It's ludicrous.

A players value and impact is determined by performance, chemistry, character, heart, perseverence, etc. Only one of those shows up on your lame ass fantasy stat sheets.

Originally Posted by TBrown33

Sorry, I don't play fantasy baseball.

But I did play real baseball for, oh, about fourteen years.

(My lifetime OBP kicked severe ass)

You got me by 2 years. My batting average was through the ****ing roof and there wasn't a ground ball within reach that got by me at third base.

Originally Posted by OrangePuck

The only way you can win this argument on statistics alone is to find out what the production numbers of the players were once Jackson was slotted in the 4th spot and stayed in that spot until the end of the season. Also, for you to belittle a line like .286/.375/.550 because it doesn't stack up to the steroid era just shows how little you know about baseball in general and how unrealistic your argument is. You also aren't even taking into account that there were far fewer teams back in 1977 and thus the pitching talent wasn't as diluted as it is today. Another thing you aren't taking into account is the tumultuous enviroment that the Yankee players had to deal with in New York that season.

Again, relying on statistics alone is not how you evaluate player impact. If it was all about statistics and statistics alone why do Dodger fans get such a big hard on when they think about Kirk Gibson in 88? All he did was hit a homer in his only at bat in GAME freaking 1 of the 88 Series. It won the game but it did wonders for the Dodgers and spring boarded them to the Series win. But stat geeks such as yourselves would explain it away as just a single at bat. It's ludicrous.

A players value and impact is determined by performance, chemistry, character, heart, perseverence, etc. Only one of those shows up on your lame ass fantasy stat sheets.

For the last time, I don't have a lame ass fantasy stat sheet because i don't have a lame ass fantasy baseball team.

And talk about the pot calling the kettle black with the whole "out of context" thing. I never belittled Jackson's numbers. In fact, I'm pretty sure I said "he hit the ****ing **** out of the ball." I may or may not have said "****ing," so I may be (slightly) misquoting myself here.

I'm actually belittling you, and the fact that you think that the Yankees won the World Series because of Jackson's "protection" and not because of HIS performance itself (like when he jumped in front of the ball on the basepaths against the Dodgers. That talented a-hole).

I'm not even a stat geek. You just like to call Justin or me that because it probably makes you feel jock-y (even though I've probably played more competitive sports than you have), and we like to use FAAAAAACTS and EEEVIIIDEEEENCE and our BRAAAAAAAAINS and LOOOGIIIIIC.

I'm a baseball fan. I haven't even read moneyball. I just know what makes a good player good and a bad or mediocre player not so good.

And I played baseball long enough to know that "protection" plays a small role in how well you do.

Oh my God! I'm so geeky! Numbers!

NOOOOOOOOOO!

Originally Posted by OrangePuck

You got me by 2 years. My batting average was through the ****ing roof and there wasn't a ground ball within reach that got by me at third base.

Considering your love for David Eckstein my guess would be you played left bench but took credit for being on good teams due to your leadership* in clubhouse**.

*Leadership in this sentence refers to one who passes out orange slices after the games.

**Clubhouse is defined here as under the shady oak tree at the local junior high.