Pierre, CF
Kemp, RF
Loney 1B
Kent, 2B
Martin, C
Ethier, LF
LaRoche, 3B
Hu, SS
Penny, P
LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
No, Pierre is less valuable because he's a terrible hitter.Originally Posted by DanteHicks
All I'm saying that if you are going to sing the guy's praises, you'd better be able to back it up with stats.
This is an absolutely 100% bogus analogy.
In hockey, you have to earn your shot and missing a shot doesn't stop your teammate from taking one either (quite the opposite!). In baseball, you come up every nine guys regardless and your plate appearance is based on your place in the lineup, not based on your knack for getting up to bat.
I'm way less worried about the $ (though I would like to have that $ to pay for somebody who can actually hit) than I am about having him making outs, the most valuable commodity in baseball, at a very high rate in every single game. Every game he is in is a game that a better player (Kemp/Ethier/Gonzalez) is not playing in.
If you want to figure out why the offense isn't very potent, the lowest OPS (ok, one point ahead of Furcal) on the team is a good place to start.
Yeah, I had already fixed it to say 70, that was a typo by me.
Anyway, I'm tired of arguing this, we're never going to agree. I've always favored fast players since the Reds of the 70s and the Cardinals of the 80s. Granted they played on those crappy carpets which was more condusive to faster players, but nonetheless. Different strokes, I guess.
I'm more referring to believing that Pierre playing just about every inning of every year is an asset, but shows up as a liability in your formulas. I used to know a guy that said Nolan Ryan didn't deserve to be in the HOF because his BB:K ratio was too high. Sometimes people read too much into stats that "correlate" with other stats.
In the context of my earlier post, I'm not saying that it's a liability nearly as much as I'm saying it needs to be factored into discussion. You need to be able to figure out how valuable that he "leads the team in runs" is. This is why I don't think counting stats are nearly as useful as percentages (though percentages can be flawed if the sample size isn't big enough), because it doesn't level the playing field. More opportunity=higher totals.
In the context of your post, you could also say it is a liability because he's a below average player who makes a lot of outs. He can't hurt you when he's not in the lineup, but every day that he is in the lineup, as previously mentioned, is a day that a better player (Gonzo/Ethier/Kemp) isn't playing. Pretty simple.
I still have no idea where you pulled that hockey analogy from though.
Now that's just silly.
Sometimes they do, but you have to call them on specific instances instead of making generalizations.
Too many people are focused on stat totals. For Pierre to get as many hits as he does doesn't really mean that much because of the number of AB's he gets. Extrapolate out the numbers of other #1 or #2 hitters over the amount of AB's that Pierre has and you will see why he isn't very good.
Or, just look at a much more meaningful stat like OBP. There is a reason that stat category exists.
And there it is.
My analogy with Robitaille illustrates that you might be tempted to say that someone with a higher shooting percentage would be a better option than someone who "just" scores a lot of goals, because if you extrapolate it out, it would result in more wins.
You can't only look at total runs scored, you can't only look at OBP and you can't only look at OPS. You can cherry-pick stats to back up any sort of opinion you want to form. That's why professional teams use scouts and not computers.
Unless you're the A's. ;-)
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote