Oz27

Is the current bench Perez, Marte, Pennington and Revere? If so, I don't really see how that is better than what we had last year.

Interesting read from The Hardball Times. Pitch Framing Was Doomed From the Start
It seems to echo what I was saying to @Oz27 about the gap between the best and worst framers decreasing because of teams actually seeing the data.

Yep just like I was trolling last year.
 

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.

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.

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

this is a pretty idiotic thing to call an informed opinion. hold yourself to a higher standard, big guy.

'The Book' answered this question pretty clearly. Your best hitter should be hitting second.

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.

'The Book' answered this question pretty clearly. Your best hitter should be hitting second.

I'm not sure what people see in him. May be a decent signing, but people are acting like this was some game changing move.

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.

yeah.  it's called productive outs.  

I look at the Indians, Cubs and Red Sox and feel like we have zero f'n chance.  But that why you play I guess. 

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

Logical Fallacy??
Are you calling Logic a dick?

Exactly: it'll be much better.

'Finally, Szymborski will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on depth chart to produce projected team WAR. '
 
A quote from the disclaimer.  
I think the people who generate these 'projections' understand way more about what they are than the people who read them then and assume they are predictions.  

Yea this is a thread you should just avoid TD.  Everyone knows how you feel about metrics and stats, so this type of post was expected from you.  Just go to a different thread that is more suitable to your manner of thought. 

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.

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.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-rockies-interesting-rotation-experiment/
 
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/a-more-radical-pitching-staff-proposal/
 
http://www.billjamesonline.com/the_three_man_starting_rotation/
 
http://www.espn.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/66690/the-three-man-rotation-could-be-the-future-of-baseball
 
If you are having trouble with the concept some of these articles will help.

Nope.  your scenario entails the do or die situation of the playoffs.  Read the entirety of what I wrote and you will recognize like I did that even a mediocre reliever (or even one that isn't very good) is actually more effective than just about any starter the third time through the order.  You aren't burning up 3 guys in particular as much as you are sharing the wealth among a bunch of other guys that normally would pitch as many innings.  That's the hurdle though.  Perception.  Getting past the idea of a reliever being ineffective because he has an era of 4.  But if that reliever pitches to an era of even 4.5 and chews of the 120 innings where your starter would be facing an order the third time through and put up and era between 7 and 9, then it's an effective measure of run prevention and it's cheap as shit because you can bring in a bunch of guys to fill that production who are making league min.  Even if you use 3 guys to eat those 120 innings and they are on a perpetual shuttle between the major league club and AAA, their production is still better.  
I know it's hard to believe, but I mapped it out pretty well above.  

Another anecdotal point. The Angels did quite well despite Garret Richards injury when they had Rasmus going ~2-3 innings and the bullpen doing the rest of the work. I was livid when Scioscia opted to throw CJ Wilson in the post season rather than stick with this plan which had been so effective.

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.