Oz27

Huh. When I'm in the States I use this as an example of a stereotypical Australian expression when people say something like "throw another shrimp on the barbie". Perhaps I was wrong to make out that it was an Australian thing. Oh no, I get it. That is a skill. Guys have made good careers off that (see Juan Pierre as a good example - or even Revere at his peak). Pierre actually made a good career out of having a similar batted ball profile to 2016 Pierre. There is definitely BABIP upside for Revere, but a big uptick in fly balls for a guy with no power is not a good sign. Let me put it this way- there is a lot to worry about from Revere's 2016. His baserunning value was way down. He didn't walk, didn't get on base and didn't hit for power. He had some defensive value but really it was a pretty minimal amount. He's young enough to bounce back and maybe the injury impacted him more than he let on but his overall game really fell away in a big way.

I remember a lot of similar comments last year. "Nava and Gentry couldn't possibly be as bad as Joyce" was a pretty popular sentiment, even though their recent history suggested that was a pretty reasonable chance. You're right, though, his BABIP should be better. But he showed no power at all (see my exit velocity point before). When you hit the ball that weakly and hit it in the air as often as he did, your BABIP probably isn't going to be very good. Hitting a lot of weak line balls and very few line drives is not a good recipe to get on base.

Yeah, I get it. He is a pretty good chance to be around a replacement level outfielder - with some upside to be better than that (although clear downside too) - and there are much worse moves we could have made. But people being so excited about signing someone who was worse than 2015 Matt Joyce is pretty bizarre.

It's awfully dangerous to just assume he is going to bounce back to being productive. He played enough where last year wasn't a small sample and he was truly awful. In all of baseball, he had the fifth lowest average exit velocity last year for anyone with 100 batted balls. Nine pitchers with at least 30 plate appearances had a better OPS+ than him. It's hard to overstate how awful he was.

While I don't mind this as a 'buy low' signing, the comments in this thread would suggest we signed a guy who posted a 109 OPS+ last year, not a 49 OPS+. His WAR and OPS+ last year were actually worse than 2015 Matt Joyce. I certainly wouldn't say it's a terrible move or anything, but I don't get the level of excitement over us signing someone who was worth -1.2 WAR and posted a .260 OBP last year.

I'm sure he would have if they'd guaranteed that fourth year - and that still would have been a way better path for the Rockies to go down than the one they have taken, without it costing them any more. To be fair though, it's hard to think of a path that is worse than the one which the Rockies have followed.

The Rockies spent a combined $85 million on Ian Desmond and Mike Dunn when Edwin Encarnacion was available for $25 million less. Oops.

Huh? Who said anything about making less money? If you employed it with the Kershaws of the world then, yeah, maybe you couldn't quite match that salary level (although it would be close - 160ish innings of even better Kershaw would be enormously valuable). Anyway that wouldn't happen, as this makes much more sense with guys below that extreme elite tier. Two guys were just paid $85 million for 60-70 innings per year. Doc cited the Rich Hill example too. If this was done with, say, Garrett Richards, he might end up around 160 innings and those innings would probably be quite a lot better than the innings he's likely to give us now as a traditional starter. You're kidding yourself if you think teams wouldn't be willing to pay an enormous sum for that.

Who f**king cares? His role is to pitch when the team decides it needs him to.

I would use this year to say that he has. Compare how he is talked about here (and people actually saying another team should sign him) to how Player X, with identical stats but without Weaver's history, would be talked about. The difference is massive. Look at Joe Blanton, for example. By many measures (FIP, cFIP, DRA) 2016 Weaver was quite a bit worse than 2013 Blanton but I'm guessing if you took a blind poll, 90 per cent plus of posters here would say Blanton's 2013 was worse. My point is the guy got cut an awful lot of slack this year for how terrible he was. It is somewhat understandable, but I would consider that something like being given the "kings treatment".

By DRA - Weaver: 7.97 Shields: 6.03 By WARP - Weaver: -5.32 Shields: -1.39 Weaver had the worst DRA of anyone who threw more than 25 innings. Given that is the best pitching statistic we have, that is a pretty strong argument that he was the worst pitcher in baseball (or at least the worst at the role he was assigned by his team).

Just to be clear, would you have preferred to have Weaver facing the order the third time or Morin coming in instead? The stats are extremely clear about which option is better, even if you don't like it.

Walks? Aren't they a false stat?

"Pound for pound, I think Altuve should be ahead of Trout," ANAHEIMBOB. Now THAT is a smart fan. Or something.

Yeah, claimed from the Yankees a couple of months back. Really good minor league numbers, less good in the majors - http://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.cgi?id=yates-001kir

Uhhh, Morin was a lot better than our worst starters last year ... let alone once those bad starters were facing the order the third time.

How does a grown man end up so desperate for attention that you devote a huge portion of your life to making moronic posts like these in discussions about topics you know nothing about? It's just sad.

What? Forecasting durability based on previous durability is a pretty obvious thing to do, especially with pitchers. Projection systems would be worthless if they didn't do that. Past injuries are as good a predictor as we have of future injuries.

It's kind of funny that these theories get much less play in sabermetric communities now, not because anybody believes them less but just due to everyone being kind of tired of the argument because it has been floated for so long now. But at the same time as the theory gets talked about in saber circles less because of that, it seems to be getting a bit wider attention.

Fans of every team says this and the majority of them are wrong. There is no justification for expecting "better from nearly everyone" besides overwhelming bias. Uhh, they're based off a player's previous performance. We'd need to play something like a million games to have as many plate appearances at the projections suggest we would. Looking at our projected regulars heading into 2016, Trout, Cron and Calhoun beat their projections (measuring by WAR). Escobar performed exactly as projected. Simmons, Perez, Giavotella, Nava and Pujols were worse. Looking at pitchers (and using FIP) Shoemaker and Richards were better. Tropeano, Weaver, Skaggs and Santiago were worse. You can look for yourself using this link for the projections - http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/2016-zips-projections-los-angeles-angels/ And this one for actual performance - http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=sta&lg=all&qual=0&type=8&season=2016&month=0&season1=2016&ind=0&team=1&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0 But yeah, it sure looks like you're criticizing the projections because they don't say what you want them to.

Cron is really projected to be much the same as he was in 2016 (115 OPS+ last year, 111 this year). The system uses DIPS and BABIP theory to forecast future BABIP for its projections so it's possible it doesn't believe a right handed hitter who hits fly balls at an above average rate will sustain a .300 BABIP. But that is me speculating on the reason and I could be wrong. With these projections, there are always some which seem 'wrong'. There are some you look at and think they will obviously be better or worse than that projection. But if you took a random sample of 20 (or 40 or 100 or 200) player projections and guessed whether they'd be better or worse than that projection, you're unlikely to be more accurate than a coin flip would be. Basically, the projection systems are so much better at forecasting performance than any of us are.

While you're correct with the defense bit (although the positional adjustment will limit the impact of that), if anything the 487 PA projection is a little optimistic. He has only made it past 400 in one of the past three seasons.

Most project systems are a little pessimistic on Trout because he is such an extreme outlier. When PECOTA comes out in a month or so, Trout will be 1-2 wins lower than he should be and about 10 OPS+ points below what you'd expect. As BP put it after PECOTA came out prior to the 2016 season: "It pegs the four-time earner and one-time winner of the AL MVP for 7.3 WARP and a .332 TAv, and beyond it being remarkable that a system could esteem a player so highly, I find it interesting how obviously and irrefutably those numbers sell him short. I mean these numbers sell Trout way, way short. That .332 TAv would be 20 points worse than his career mark, which is right about where he’s sat for the last two seasons. ... PECOTA underestimates Trout, because Trout has completed a practical transcendence of baseball." - http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=28453

Doc has gone through this at length but the statistics really don't back this up at all. Street and Smith struggled but they had been used in a pretty standard late inning reliever way. You wouldn't look at their innings/games totals and think they were overworked. Plus the Angels bullpen came in 23rd in 2015 in innings pitched, with a mere 483 innings. Admittedly their usage increased as the season went on, but not in an abnormal way - they were 15th in IP in the second half and 16th in September/October. That bullpen didn't perform that badly anyway. In September/October they had the 13th best ERA and the third best xFIP. Anyway, every team is carrying at least seven relievers. The number of relievers teams carry over the past decade or so has increased, yet bullpen innings pitched has not followed. In 2004, the median bullpen IP was 497. This year it is 526.2. So yeah, it has gone up, but not by that much. That is a six per cent increase in IP, but bullpens are now 16.67 per cent bigger because teams were carrying six relievers then and are now carrying seven. So the workload per reliever has gone down, not up. I really don't buy the theory that the modern, massive bullpens could not handle more work - and I would guess they could actually handle a lot more.

Here is the link to the latest release of individual player projections, this one the FanGraphs ZiPS system - https://t.co/saYmNLrls7 So, firstly the good... Trout: 9 WAR, 169 OPS+ Pujols 1.7 WAR, 114 OPS+ (this one feels a little optimistic) Calhoun 3.0 WAR, 113 OPS+ Simmons 3.3 WAR, 87 OPS+ Bedrosian 119 ERA+ Kirby Yates 110 ERA+ Now the 'in the middle'... Shoemaker 101 ERA+, 2 WAR Skaggs 100 ERA+, 1.3 WAR Richards 106 ERA+, 1.9 WAR Maybin 97 OPS+, 1.1 WAR Cron 111 OPS+, 1.1 WAR Escobar 99 OPS+, 1.4 WAR (it seems unlikely he puts up a 1.4 WAR if he's a below average hitter, though) Marte 101 OPS+, 0.5 WAR Street 103 ERA+ Bailey 101 ERA+ And the bad... Espinosa 76 OPS+ (!!!), but a 1.1 WAR Perez 66 OPS+, 0.6 WAR Nolasco 89 ERA+, 0.9 WAR So what's good and what's bad? The starting outfield projects for 13 WAR and that is probably the best in baseball. The bullpen is projected to be worth 1 WAR and that is awful. We have five positions where our starters project to be below average (catcher, 1B, 2B, 3B, LF) while DH is on the bubble for that too. But the rotation doesn't look quite as terrible as it perhaps could.