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Justin Upton


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Its not identical, but this reminds me of Torii. I vividly remember a handful of people on here who used to constantly rag on hunter, circa 2010 and 2011.... when the team was struggling. "Hes not a leader".

Upton isnt an all star, like AJ said. But the alternative was jb shuck, or bourjos, like Fletcher said.

 

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3 minutes ago, ten ocho recon scout said:

Its not identical, but this reminds me of Torii. I vividly remember a handful of people on here who used to constantly rag on hunter, circa 2010 and 2011.... when the team was struggling. "Hes not a leader".

Upton isnt an all star, like AJ said. But the alternative was jb shuck, or bourjos, like Fletcher said.

 

Torii was also black. Hmmm

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5 minutes ago, Vladdylonglegs said:

Lol I think Strad is the only one here who considers this place an extension of his private social life. 

Idk why people get so angry on message boards. This is all supposed to be entertainment. 

Stradling is actually a good guy in person but if Mike Trout took a sh*t on his couch he would somehow rationalize why it needed to be done. Because Mike Trout.

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10 hours ago, happybat4 said:

Upton is currently 33rd on the active war list. He is good. Averaging 3.5 WAR for 10 years is pretty dam good. 

See comment below. 

7 hours ago, Inside Pitch said:

I'll stop you right there. Notice where he ranks on that list in games played. He's got 121 more games on anyone in the top 30, meaning a lot of him being 2nd is due to him playing a lot. 

How about looking at wRC+? He is 13th.

Again, Upton has been a good player but not a star. I suppose we should give credit for him being a good player for a long time, but it is good quality in quantity, not start quality - except for a few years out of a dozen.

I'm not saying he's the problem, not at all. I'm talking about fan expectations - that see him as a star, because he's had a few star caliber seasons including the first as an Angel. Most of his career he's been more of a 3-4 WAR player, which is a good player but not a star.

 

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5 minutes ago, Angelsjunky said:

See comment below. 

I'll stop you right there. Notice where he ranks on that list in games played. He's got 121 more games on anyone in the top 30, meaning a lot of him being 2nd is due to him playing a lot. 

Yes, he's been both consistent and reliable.  You know why he's played that many games -- because he's been better than most everyone during that span.   Teams don't sit quality players.  Sometimes they don't sit bad ones as we have seen with AP.

18 minutes ago, Angelsjunky said:

How about looking at wRC+? He is 13th.

You're moving the goal posts...   

I'm assuming you initially chose WAR because it tries to factor everything a player does and not just offense.   Now you're pointing to wRC+ which is a measure of offense only -- it's a different discussion.  Still, if you apply the same argument you did above regarding playing time.... guess where he ranks....  Third.   One spot lower.   If you use the 30 year sample he drops ten spots but again but if you compare him to guys who played as many games -- he rises to 10th overall -- 12th if you include two guys just under 1600 games (Albert Belle, and Ryan Braun).   Guess what happens when you look at the 70 year sample and comp him to players with similar longevity...  He moves up to 26th.   

Again, being able to maintain that level of "good" for as long as he has makes him a bit of an outlier.   This doesn't make him a star, but it makes him better than the average "good" player.  

47 minutes ago, Angelsjunky said:

I'm not saying he's the problem, not at all. I'm talking about fan expectations - that see him as a star, because he's had a few star caliber seasons including the first as an Angel. Most of his career he's been more of a 3-4 WAR player, which is a good player but not a star.

I understand the point you're trying to make and I agree to an extent, I just genuinely believe there is value in guys who are reliably good.   Fred McGriff is probably the best example of such a player.  There were a ton of 1B that were better than him but if I had to pick someone to be stuck with at one position for 20 years he'd be in the conversation.   And no, I'm not comping Upton to McGriff, I mention the Crimedog because he's possibly the best example of a guy who isn't typically thought of as one of the best to play and yet he was amazingly good for a long long time.

As far as fan perception goes ... that will always be skewed.  Nothing you or I say no matter how well thought out will be able to change the minds of people who view anyone who isn't a star as a scrub.   

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7 minutes ago, Inside Pitch said:

BTW AJ -- appreciate the actual discussion.

Me too, but I don't think we're really disagreeing all that much - mostly on semantics--what a "good player" vs "star" is, and perhaps where on that spectrum Upton lies.

We both seem to agree that he's good but not a true star, or at least not a superstar. Yes? We also both agree that there is value to his longevity, and I hope you don't think that I'm one of the people calling for his head, because I'm not. I 110% agree with your statement about the common either/or thinking about stars vs scrubs. That said, I also don't think he's a true star, and not irreplaceable. Trout is in his own category, but my opinion is that Upton is closer to, say, Calhoun than he is Simmons or Ohtani.

So he's at least good, but probably short of a star...that's pretty much the definition of players who average around 4 WAR. As I've pointed out before, the median fWAR for qualifiers is historically around 2.7, both in recent years and going back decades; for players with 600+ PA it is 3.3. So the median for full-time players is somewhere around 3 WAR, +/- 0.3, depending upon PA. 

A full-time player is, by definition, a good player. If you are a full-time player it means you are better than something like 70-80% of all major leaguers (qualifiers account for about one-third of all players with at least 100 PA, and about 20% of all players with at least 10 PA). So the fact that you qualify already makes you at least pretty good and better than most.

So Upton is undeniably at least a good player. I don't think there is an intelligent argument to state otherwise, and any such arguments are mainly based on irrational vitriol. He is also undeniably a good player who has been generally consistently good over a long period of time. That has value beyond just being good in a given year or few years.

But how much better than a good player is up for question and I don't think there's a definitive answer. Between "good player" (say, roughly 3 WAR) and "definite star" (say, roughly 5 WAR), there's a gray area. It really depends upon how we want to define a "star." Is it a player who is in the top 10% of all players? Top 5%? 

So again, 2.7 WAR is the median for all qualifiers, with 3.3 being the median for 600 PA. I think 3 WAR works for where a "solid regular" becomes a "good player." 3 WAR is a bit over the 55th percentile of qualifiers--meaning solidly above average for a regular--and about 83rd percentile for all players with 100 PA (which cuts out pitchers who hit). 

What sort of percentiles do we want for a "star" or a "superstar?" It is entirely subjective. I personally tend to think of a star as a 5 WAR or better player, a superstar as being one of the dozen or so best players in the game (pitchers and hitters), and an MVP candidate as one of the very best. 5 WAR is 85th percentile among qualifiers; over the last ten years (2009-18), there have been 224 position players with at least 5 WAR, or about 22 per year. If we broaden that a bit to 4.5 WAR we get 311 players and 31 per year - which averages out to about 1 per team. Maybe that works better - that a star distributes as roughly one per team? 

So what about this as a rule of thumb: 

A star distributes at roughly one position player per team. That would make 4.5 WAR the cut-off point.

A superstar distributes as roughly one position player per three teams, or roughly 10 per year. That would make 6.0 WAR a solid cut-off for superstar.

An MVP candidate should be no more than around one per division, or roughly 6 per year. That would make 7.0 the closest solid cut-off point.

But again, those are relatively subjective and just suggestions that I'm not all that married to.

Back to Upton, I have often thought of players like him--and Torii Hunter--as "borderline stars." If a "good player" is 3-4 WAR and we cut-off a "star" at 5 rather than 4.5, then a bordeline star is 4-5. If we look at Upton's ten qualifying seasons only (2009-18), he's only had three seasons of 4+ WAR (30%), four seasons in the 3-4 range, and three below 3...with a median of 3.45. So he still ends up below the mark of "borderline star."

But the problem with that thinking is that it looks at seasons as separate from each other. Perhaps the fact tha he's been consistently good, for the most part, makes him better than good. But I think the point is, in a given year, most of the time he's in the "good player" range, with just as many borderline star/star seasons as he has merely solid player seasons.

p.s. I shifted to wRC+ because I wanted to look at his qualitative value, not just quantity. Unfortunately Fangraphs doesn't have any kind of "WAR/162 games" column.

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