bobbob1313

I must have missed the part where he told you he is bipolar. My bad.

Great pickup. Though following recent panthers history, this'll blow up in our face.

This isn't a trade/signing, but is offseason, Washington Post had a preview of the Caps new uniforms (officially unveiled tonight at draft party). Going back to the old school red white and blue uniforms. I like em personally. Thanks to George Richards and his blog on the herald! Those are sweet. Hockey uniforms keep on getting better and better.

I believe that is a stat that is known as isolated OBP.

PICK HIM UP!

I think we can get Bradley for less, and he's a much better option.

I actually think something like contact rate is a better way of telling you whether someone is good at hitting baseballs. Batting average is only good at telling you "how lucky a player is that the balls they happen to put into play happen to fall in at a certain ratio". True enough, but that doesn't tell you whether you're hitting ground balls, fly balls or line drives. I'm of the opinion that luck even outs in the end and over the long run a player will have the same amount of bad luck as good luck. But neither does batting average, because there are plenty of players like juan pierre who hit dinkers for most part, but they have the speed to beat out some of them. They are hitting the ball really really weakly, but they can beat out like 12 hits a season so it makes them look like good hitters.

You won't get an arguement from me there, my point was the average fan does look at W/L and gage a players value from their that limited stat. Tank is a perfect example 4-1, yet he has mostly struggled this year. Thats the reason why most fans are bad at judging a player's value. Thats my point.

Again if I had the money in my paypal account, I'd do it. Anyway you can do non paypal payment?

That over the course of 5 full seasons, he hasn't had 500 plate appearances in any single season. So there's a good chance that over the course of this season, he probably won't reach 500 plate appearances. Which means he'll probably get injured at some point. Or he'll wear down if he actually does reach 500.

Citizen Kane is good if only because it inspired my favorite White Stripes song. What does 7 Nation Army have to do with Citizen Kane? :lol Oh no he didn't.

Well, good luck finding a CF who can give 500 PAs over a given season at this point in the season. Awesome. Yeah, thats not even close to what my point was. Good job.

That's my whole point. This is not a stock that you are buying or a car that you are buying. This is a sport, a game. Something that you should just sit back and enjoy and be able to cheer for you favorite players. Baseball is not about all of those sabr numbers for most fans. Should Beinfest look at every stat when making a trade, or even drafting a player? Yes, that is his job. I'm just looking at it from a fans point of view. And don't tell other people how to enjoy a game. The argument was never about how to enjoy watching the game. It actually started by disputing which stat conveys who is a better hitter. Bob, I would say that batting average is better at telling "whether someone is good at hitting baseballs," contrary to what the article you referenced says. It does not, however, give an accurate representation of how valuable or productive a hitter is. There is a lot more to being a productive hitter than just batting average. I think that's an important distinction to make. I actually think something like contact rate is a better way of telling you whether someone is good at hitting baseballs. Batting average is only good at telling you "how lucky a player is that the balls they happen to put into play happen to fall in at a certain ratio". As for the guy who said that you can't use the stats if you don't know how they are calculated, thats bulls***. I don't know how a car works, does that mean I can't use one? There are a few scouts left who don't use stats, and they only look at what they see, but they are being phased out, and not slowly. Why? Because it isn't as effective a way to look at player's ability and worth. If you don't look at stats, Reggie Abercrombie looks like a ball player, doesn't he? If you don't look at stats, Kevin Youkilis doesn't really look like a good player. Hey, Cabbfan, don't even get me started on win loss record for pitchers. Thats far worse than any other stat.

You talk about him like hes inept Look.. he is what he is. Im not proclaiming kenny lofton the savior of the marlins or the best player in baseball... but the guy can still play. He gets on base, still plays an effective OF, runs bases extremely well and can still hit the ball.. and i dont think this gets said enough.. the stability of a guy who would play everyday, and one of veteran presence like him, would be great for this team. Everyones looking for a centerpeice.. we have the centerpeices. As for the whole platoon thing, no. If texas didnt have 86 OFs, he'd be playing. Hes shown his career he can hit lefties. This same guy who doesn't have more than 500 plate appearances in the past 5 years is going to be our everyday answer? Awesome.

Citizen Kane is good if only because it inspired my favorite White Stripes song.

Bill drunk is far and away my favorite thing in any tv show ever. So good. THe first three episodes are great, but I watched them so often when I was introducing the show to people that I can barely watch them anymore. The best episodes are yet to come, though. Seriously, the last few episodes are amazing. I also love the soundtrack, and I love that all of the songs are period specific.

Fishstripes.com rules. As does fishchunks.blogspot.com

Rasheed Wallace. He's so annoying that it transends basketball and moves on to MLB.

Holy crap, that dude is seriously crazy.

does not knowing alot about OPS or sabermetrics or anything else like that make you a bad judge of talent? i dont think so...those base statistics have been a pretty good judge of talent of over a hundred years...who am i of all people to argue with history? Yes. Maybe not a bad judge, but an incomplete one for sure. You may be looking at stats that can tell you superficially how good a player is at certain parts of the game, but they can't tell you much more than that. Batting average only tells you how good a guy is at getting hits. Which doesn't actually tell you anything about how good he is. RBI's are based almost entirely on your position in the batting order and who hits in front of you. Sluggin percentage tells you how good a guy is at hitting for power, but OBP is something like 4 times as important as SLUG, so you are missing a big part of the picture. Sabermetric stats are better because they give you a more complete picture of a player's value. As for whether or not those statistics have been a good measure of talent, that's extremely debatable. The fact that most people would say Juan Pierre is a good player, or that Adam Dunn isn't is pretty good evidence that those stats are a fairly awful indicator of talent and performance and value.

no...not at all...but being a widely accepted statistic doesnt make it an overrated one...batting average allows you to gauge the year a guy in particular is having based on his ability to put the ball in play...sure...there are a million different statistics that are kept to judge a players worth...but ultimately...at the end of the day...batting average, hr's, rbis, and maybe slugging is how most people will judge a players offensive abilities...while fielding percentage is what most people will look at first when judging defensive abilities... Being widely accepted doesn't necesarily make it overrated, no. But if it's an awful way to gauge a player's value, and it is also widely accepted as a good way to gauge a player's value, then yes it is overrated. The fact that most people will look at Batting Average, RBI, and Slugging % over OBP, VORP, WARP3, or EQA when trying to judge if a player is good just goes to show that the majority of people don't know a damb thing when it comes to judging a baseball player's worth.

kinda like how your batting average doesnt tell you anything about how good a hitter is right? Actually, yes. Exactly. Just because they are widely accepted stats doesn't mean they are good ones. It just means they are widely accepted. What is so hard to understand about that? Here's some pretty good explanations of why A) Batting Average is an awful way of telling how good a hitter is, and B ) there are many other stats that do a much better job (brought to you by our friends at FireJoeMorgan.com): BA (Batting Average) Hits divided by at-bats; also, perhaps the stat that makes Ken Tremendous' blood curdle the quickest. Okay, maybe that's wins. Batting average is the backbone of traditional hitting metrics, and amazingly, is still looked upon as a good way to determine whether someone is good at hitting baseballs. It is not a good way to determine this. Why? Well, you already know why. You know it intuitively, and you always have. Because a guy who hits .250 but clubs 40 HR and 40 doubles and walks 100 times a year is way way way more valuable to his team than a guy who hits .310 with 2 HR and 19 doubles and 15 walks. That?s kind of obvious, isn?t it? I agree. So why should we keep talking about batting average, ever? We shouldn?t? Okay, we won?t. But Tim McCarver will, and that?s why he should be selling cookware door-to-door instead of talking to the country about baseball every Saturday. In 2005, the MLB leader for BA was Derrek Lee, at .335 (Placido Polanco was 2nd). The median BA for players eligible for the batting title was about .280 last year, or what Raul Ibanez and Mark Kotsay were able to produce. (Incidentally, this sort of helps confirm my belief that Mark Kotsay is the perfect ?average? player. Maybe it?s his name.) Nick Swisher and Mike Lowell tied for last among eligible batters at .236. Because their batting averages were so low, both of these players were unable to recover, and never had a productive season in the Major Leagues again. EqA (Equivalent Average) I'll just quote Baseball Prospectus here: "A measure of total offensive value per out, with corrections for league offensive level, home park, and team pitching." EqA incorporates baserunning but not defense. EqA is derived from something called Raw EqA, which is calculated by (turn away, Rob Dibbles of the world) the following formula: (H + TB + 1.5*(BB + HBP + SB) + SH + SF) divided by (AB + BB + HBP + SH + SF + CS + SB) And you thought things weren't going to get that nerdy around here. EqA is basically like what you used to think BA was ? a true measure of how good a hitter is. EqA is purposely formulated to be on a similar scale to BA so it won't scare off the normal people. .260 is average ? which, as a point of comparison, is what Craig Counsell was able to sport in 2005. Guys like Albert Pujols and Travis Hafner can top .350. That's why Travis Hafner should be talked about ten times more than he is. Somehow, Alex Rodriguez was able to block out the back pages of the NY Post well enough to post a MLB-leading EqA of .350 in 2005. OBP (On-Base Percentage) 1. Read Moneyball. 2. OBP is the difference between Kevin Youkilis and Jeff Francoeur. 3. It's also the reason Adam Dunn is vastly underrated. 4. Very simply, OBP is a way to tell how good someone is at not making outs. It?s the total number of times a guy gets on base without being responsible for making an out (except for reaching on errors), divided by his plate appearances -- which are simply times a guy comes up to the plate and tries not to make an out. See why it?s valuable? (Plate appearances in this case are defined as At Bats + Walks + Sacrifice Flies.) In 2005, Todd Helton led all players with a .445 OBP (Giambi was 2nd). Adam Everett and Pudge Rodriguez tied for MLB-worsts of .290. That?s really bad. The league median among eligible batters in ?05 was .348 (Melvin Mora; Grady Sizemore; Rafael Furcal). And for historically ridiculous reference, in 2004, Barry Bonds? OBP was .604; in 2002, it was .581. VORP (Value Over Replacement Player) An offensive stat only, VORP attempts to calculate the number of runs a player is contributing above what a replacement-level player at the same position would if given the same percentage of team plate appearances. VORP is a counting stat, not a percentage stat ? so, for example, as of July 22, Andruw Jones has a VORP of 31.0. That means that he has created 31 more runs for his team than the average AAA call-up guy would have by this point in the season. It also turns out that every ten runs a player creates is worth roughly one win, so Andruw?s offense alone has earned the Braves three wins. (There are other stats, like Fielding Runs Above Average [FRAA] that do the same thing as VORP, for defense.) See WARP below for more. Old Baseball Men, this is another good one to bandy about if you're interested in tearing down a nerd's argument. Because it sounds funny. VORP. Please. What's that doing in baseball? Forget VORP, let's come up with a stat for the size of a guy's heart, am I right, people? We'll call it the Eckstein Quotient. No, wait, that sounds too nerdy. Eckstein Number. Nope. Still too smart. Eckstein Thing. How about just Thing? The highest Thing in the majors? You guessed it: David Eckstein. That's why they almost named it after him. Once again, Derrek Lee was your VORP leader in 2005 at 95.6. A-Rod, Pujols, Ortiz and Jason Bay rounded out the top 5 (Bay at 72.6). Corey Patterson was dead last at ?17.0. Mike Hampton, by the way, had a VORP of 5.2 (as a hitter), which was better than, like, Willy Tavares at 4.6. I'm too lazy to find something similar for errors, but basically, they (and FP) suck because they are basically a judgement call by the scorer, and they don't take into account things like the fact that Mike Lowell had a ridiculously good 1B playing with him for his entire Marlins career, or that if he doesn't try to get a ball that he could possibly make a play on (or possible make an error on), he doesn't get charged.

He's a huge upgrade over every single person we've had at center field since like Mark Kotsay or something.

The Red Sox knew he was fragile that's why they had no problem trading him. Reason #261. So that's not true? He was always healthy for the Red Sox? No. He was agreeing and saying that it was one of the many reasons the Red Sox had no problem trading him. No, he was saying it because that was my #261st post. It's a vendetta. Oh. Can't say I blame him.