Please tell me there was an obscure pitcher from, say, the 1930s named Lefty Fireballer. Hard thrower, poor control, threw a no-hitter in the minors while walking eight and hitting three batters, called up by the Cardinals who thought they had another Dizzy Dean on their hands but he just couldn't get a handle on his overpowering stuff.
The game would be far more aesthetically pleasing with more Arraez' that's for sure. Fans love him because it's getting kinda tedious to only see the 3 true outcomes.
Strikeouts aren't even all that fun anymore. When every middle reliever has an 11 k/9 it loses some of the magic.
We're all aware what the math says but nobody buys tickets to watch the boys at MIT whip out the slide rule.
I'm so tired of watching guys strike out all the time. Much like the NBA has turned into a 3 point chuck 'em contest, MLB is just...homers and strikeouts. Maybe that's a bit unfair, but the amount of strikeouts are borderline obscene.
Part of that is due to the pitching being better than ever, but also part of that is due to hitters not being afraid to strike out. It used to be a mark of shame.
And I get it, power is what drives baseball these days...but I have to believe there's some sort of value in a guy who doesn't strike out (I'm also well aware he doesn't walk a lot, either) but puts the ball in play.
His WAR totals are pathetic. So, I get it....but I also don't get it. With two outs and runners in scoring position, he's hitting .329 for his career. Late and close, .286. High leverage situations, he's hitting .348.
How can there not be value there? How can you not want a guy at the plate who's only struck out 14 times in 248 plate appearances in 2 out and runners in scoring position? His on base percentage is .415!
My favorite team is the Orioles, it's a team laden with highly touted prospects and young players who have superstar potential. There's so much to like, there's so much to look forward to. But there isn't a single one of them outside of Gunnar Henderson who doesn't have some sort of sensical approach at the plate. All these guys are swinging from their heels all the time no matter the situation. Adley Rutschman, who once had the patience of a Buddhist monk has turned into a free swinging hack machine. He posted the lowest OBP of his career last year and in the second half of the season he was around .310.
There were late and close situations last year where I would have killed to see someone like Arraez at the plate because all that was needed was a single...and instead one of the top prospects like Coby Mayo or Jackson Holliday or Colton Cowser or mainstays like Ryan Mountcastle or Anthony Santander are swinging as hard as they can and striking out.
I have to believe there'll be a return to valuing guys who make contact and don't strike out as much at some point when teams realize how many outs are being wasted at the plate. It's a shame Arraez is a man without a country.
The nba actually isn't just chucking 3s though. Less than half of shots are 3s and its not like guys just dribble up and shoot. The game has more movement and passing then it's ever had before
Those 3s all come out of sets and multiple picks. I agree about TTO stuff though. The ks are painful.
"Less than half of shots are 3s" is faint praise - you could also say less than a third of at-bats result in strikeouts. The point is that in both cases, the game has changed, and for many (I think the majority), it is not better.
Doing a quick calculation every 10 years: seasons ending in 84, 94, 04, 14, 24, NBA percentage of shot attempts that are 3's goes 3%, 12%, 19%, 26%, 40%. That's actually more severe than % of at-bats result in K's in MLB which goes 16%, 18%, 19%, 23%, 25%.
For baseball, it mainly comes down to lack of balls in play and the rate of plate appearances without the ball put in play is going up 26%, 29%, 30%, 32%, 35%. That's a frustrating and disappointing trend for many of us.
I concede that it's not that simple in basketball. The game wasn't necessarily better before the age of the 3-pointer when the middle was clogged and the game was really physical and fewer points were scored - perhaps the best balance was 10-15 years ago?
When looking at how many players hit over .300 in 2024 compared to 1977, we have to acknowledge that the league hit .243 in 2024 and .264 in 1977. Also, there were 129 qualified hitters in 2024 compared to 147 in 1977.
Therefore,
In 1977, 33 hitters finished with a .300 AVG or better in a league that hit .264, so these hitters all had batting averages that were at least .036 higher than league average. There were 147 qualified hitters and 33 out of 147 is 22%.
In 2024, 28 hitters finished with a .279 AVG or better in a league that hit .243, so these hitters all had batting averages that were at least .036 higher than league average. There were 129 qualified hitters and 28 out of 129 is 22%.
On Naylor trade - After Gimenez ... who covered extra ground @2nd, Naylor whom had a rough yr. defensively, Naylor was expendable. Carlos can cover ground. And Front office wasn't totally convinced of Manzardo @1st. Read an interesting Joel Reuter article rating the Farm systems - Giants and Yankees have nothing. Reuter wrote an article about 6 weeks ago - the worst MLB contracts still out there. Ranking from 10 to worst. #10 was different - all players who still had 2 yrs. left on their contracts. To Everyone who doesn't understand the browns diaries - watch the official Selelna Gomez video of "Heart wants what it wants". She speaks of "then one stupid thing"... And ends with "then you make me feel like it was my fault" (Gaslighting?) followed by the song... And so it goes ... Mustard gas and roses..
forgive the recent lateness of my comments, we're having internet issues at the whole building where i live, so must go out 1st thing in morning for wifi (which is, of course, the dead of night for all those in USA)
i love Arráez, wish there were more players like him... of course, would be nice if he had more speed!
Here is the thing about Arraez: While he is not a "star" despite leading the league in batting average, due to his limitations in power, speed and fielding, he has still been an above average player overall. Last year was easily his worst of the last 3, and I have him at 11.5 runs above average offensively, -1.5 runs base running, and -6 in the field. Still a +4 player. (This is above average, not replacement)
He was quite a bit better in the field and at the plate the previous two years, though the base running was still not good. Would he be the star of a team that traded for him? No. Could he be an important piece of good team at an affordable price in today's market? Oh, yeah, he definitely could.
I wonder of he and his agent are not on the same page with mgmt and are wanting to be compensated/extended based on his popularity and uniqueness rather than his calculated value? When he hits free agency next year at age 29, he should be exactly what you are speculating: sign with a good team at a fair market price. I wonder if he has in his favor a more sustainable value compared to players that hit free agency at 30 or 31 and much of their value was due to athleticism (baserunning, defensive range, prodigious power). I also think his consistency suggests he's the type of player for which the "clutch"/high leverage numbers are reproducible and WAR doesn't like to give credit for that.
I gather you made these calculations yourself, rather than taking the runs above average numbers from Baseball Reference or FanGraphs. If so, can you briefly explain your methodology?
It is too complex to go into, but the base of the pyramid is linear weights. I have been doing this and refining it for 20 years.
One of the biggest differences is that they use WAR type positional adjustments even for runs average, despite not using fictional replacement players. For Arraez, this take of somewhere between 7.5 and 8 runs on those sites. While I sometimes compare a player to his positional peers using average for that position for that year (I did not in this case, it complicates things too much to put on a comment. I already had to do two parks. It would lessen Arraez some, but he would still be at least average.) Besides that, there is no good source that I am aware of to have the comprehensive differences in base running between positions, so that has to be league average anyway, and when I do a team, and then add up all the players on a team without taking position into consideration, the numbers end up the same.
I do use park effects, and everyone does this differently. At least two of the 3 sites (including statcast) take a a multi year average when doing park effects (I guess trying to get at what it "should" be?) I am only concerned with comparison for each individual year. If I am doing other years, I use the park effects for that year.
Everyone does base running differently, and I like my method. There is no reason to even look at the Statcast base running "metric", as it is straight garbage. I had a too long comment on the post where Joe talks about that, using Elly De La Cruz as a test case.
I use DRS for defense, straight stealing it, as I have no better method. They look at every play, and their runs saved are based on the actual situations, not just a computer average. The FG UZR and the Statcast range based simplistic stat (with the not good expected batting average as it's base) have such terrible methodologies that they are not worth even giving the time of day.
I think they all underrate the negative effects of outs.
I don't mess with trying to extrapolate wins, nor do I bother with fictional replaement players. I am comparing players to the league environment for that year. Runs created and outs. That is what the game is about, and that is what I measure.
The 1970s-style .300 hitter and mention of Ralph Garr reminds me of a lesson my uncle taught me in 1972, when he took me to see a Phillies-Braves game in which Steve Carlton and Phil Niekro each pitched all 11 innings in a game that ended Lefty's remarkable 15-game winning streak. (Thanks, Mike Lum, the forst player I was aware of who was born in Hawaii.) "You could wake Ralph Garr out of bed at 3:00 am," my uncle explained, "and he'd hit ropes!"
That's one of those lessons I'll remember as I take my final breaths.
Lord do I loathe the attention Arraez gets. He’s just not a very good player. I mean, Joe, you’re comparing him to Rod Carew, who had 81 WAR, with Arraez, who has 15 WAR heading into his age-28 season? You’re trying to compare people who have high batting averages and nothing else in common. Carew was a WAY better player than Arraez. So were Wade Boggs and Tony Gwynn.
I even object to the term “batting title.” What a silly anachronism. You’re the “batting champion” if you can hit a lot of singles and few extra-hits or walks.
No one cares about BA maybe but they do about OBP and Arraez is pretty good there. He reminds me a bit of Matty Alou when he was with the Pirates. (Guess I don’t need my tech-illiteracy to show my age.)
Batting average is way undervalued in today's game. I have done an analysis of the correlation, not of runs but of wins with on-base, slugging, and batting average, as well as hits, strike outs and a few other things. The difference between the BA of your team and the BA your pitchers give up is more tightly correlated with wins than is OBP, SLG, or even OPS. The goal in baseball is to win, not to score runs.
One can see a hint of this in Arraez's career. Everywhere he goes his team improves by 10 wins or so. It happened to the Twins when they brought him up, to the Marlins, and then to the Padres. Also, everywhere he goes his teammates give him great credit for their wins and he is basically the favorite player on the team among the players. Pitchers also say he is the player they least like to face. Maybe the players know more about baseball than the analysts who obsess with OPS.
Please tell me there was an obscure pitcher from, say, the 1930s named Lefty Fireballer. Hard thrower, poor control, threw a no-hitter in the minors while walking eight and hitting three batters, called up by the Cardinals who thought they had another Dizzy Dean on their hands but he just couldn't get a handle on his overpowering stuff.
The game would be far more aesthetically pleasing with more Arraez' that's for sure. Fans love him because it's getting kinda tedious to only see the 3 true outcomes.
Strikeouts aren't even all that fun anymore. When every middle reliever has an 11 k/9 it loses some of the magic.
We're all aware what the math says but nobody buys tickets to watch the boys at MIT whip out the slide rule.
Man, I wish there was more respect for Arraez.
I'm so tired of watching guys strike out all the time. Much like the NBA has turned into a 3 point chuck 'em contest, MLB is just...homers and strikeouts. Maybe that's a bit unfair, but the amount of strikeouts are borderline obscene.
Part of that is due to the pitching being better than ever, but also part of that is due to hitters not being afraid to strike out. It used to be a mark of shame.
And I get it, power is what drives baseball these days...but I have to believe there's some sort of value in a guy who doesn't strike out (I'm also well aware he doesn't walk a lot, either) but puts the ball in play.
His WAR totals are pathetic. So, I get it....but I also don't get it. With two outs and runners in scoring position, he's hitting .329 for his career. Late and close, .286. High leverage situations, he's hitting .348.
How can there not be value there? How can you not want a guy at the plate who's only struck out 14 times in 248 plate appearances in 2 out and runners in scoring position? His on base percentage is .415!
My favorite team is the Orioles, it's a team laden with highly touted prospects and young players who have superstar potential. There's so much to like, there's so much to look forward to. But there isn't a single one of them outside of Gunnar Henderson who doesn't have some sort of sensical approach at the plate. All these guys are swinging from their heels all the time no matter the situation. Adley Rutschman, who once had the patience of a Buddhist monk has turned into a free swinging hack machine. He posted the lowest OBP of his career last year and in the second half of the season he was around .310.
There were late and close situations last year where I would have killed to see someone like Arraez at the plate because all that was needed was a single...and instead one of the top prospects like Coby Mayo or Jackson Holliday or Colton Cowser or mainstays like Ryan Mountcastle or Anthony Santander are swinging as hard as they can and striking out.
I have to believe there'll be a return to valuing guys who make contact and don't strike out as much at some point when teams realize how many outs are being wasted at the plate. It's a shame Arraez is a man without a country.
The nba actually isn't just chucking 3s though. Less than half of shots are 3s and its not like guys just dribble up and shoot. The game has more movement and passing then it's ever had before
Those 3s all come out of sets and multiple picks. I agree about TTO stuff though. The ks are painful.
"Less than half of shots are 3s" is faint praise - you could also say less than a third of at-bats result in strikeouts. The point is that in both cases, the game has changed, and for many (I think the majority), it is not better.
Doing a quick calculation every 10 years: seasons ending in 84, 94, 04, 14, 24, NBA percentage of shot attempts that are 3's goes 3%, 12%, 19%, 26%, 40%. That's actually more severe than % of at-bats result in K's in MLB which goes 16%, 18%, 19%, 23%, 25%.
For baseball, it mainly comes down to lack of balls in play and the rate of plate appearances without the ball put in play is going up 26%, 29%, 30%, 32%, 35%. That's a frustrating and disappointing trend for many of us.
I concede that it's not that simple in basketball. The game wasn't necessarily better before the age of the 3-pointer when the middle was clogged and the game was really physical and fewer points were scored - perhaps the best balance was 10-15 years ago?
"Baseball is like church. Many attend, few understand." Leo Durocher.
Either you're smarter than all 30 MLB teams or you're part of the "few" that the Lip was describing. There's no third alternative.
Well, I guess when you put it that way...
...I'm smarter.
:)
When looking at how many players hit over .300 in 2024 compared to 1977, we have to acknowledge that the league hit .243 in 2024 and .264 in 1977. Also, there were 129 qualified hitters in 2024 compared to 147 in 1977.
Therefore,
In 1977, 33 hitters finished with a .300 AVG or better in a league that hit .264, so these hitters all had batting averages that were at least .036 higher than league average. There were 147 qualified hitters and 33 out of 147 is 22%.
In 2024, 28 hitters finished with a .279 AVG or better in a league that hit .243, so these hitters all had batting averages that were at least .036 higher than league average. There were 129 qualified hitters and 28 out of 129 is 22%.
The Red Sox seem to believe there’s a market inefficiency in pitchers recovering from Tommy John surgery.
Al Oliver. Have bat, will travel.
On Naylor trade - After Gimenez ... who covered extra ground @2nd, Naylor whom had a rough yr. defensively, Naylor was expendable. Carlos can cover ground. And Front office wasn't totally convinced of Manzardo @1st. Read an interesting Joel Reuter article rating the Farm systems - Giants and Yankees have nothing. Reuter wrote an article about 6 weeks ago - the worst MLB contracts still out there. Ranking from 10 to worst. #10 was different - all players who still had 2 yrs. left on their contracts. To Everyone who doesn't understand the browns diaries - watch the official Selelna Gomez video of "Heart wants what it wants". She speaks of "then one stupid thing"... And ends with "then you make me feel like it was my fault" (Gaslighting?) followed by the song... And so it goes ... Mustard gas and roses..
forgive the recent lateness of my comments, we're having internet issues at the whole building where i live, so must go out 1st thing in morning for wifi (which is, of course, the dead of night for all those in USA)
i love Arráez, wish there were more players like him... of course, would be nice if he had more speed!
Tommy Davis is the original hat bat will travel
Have bat will travel
Here is the thing about Arraez: While he is not a "star" despite leading the league in batting average, due to his limitations in power, speed and fielding, he has still been an above average player overall. Last year was easily his worst of the last 3, and I have him at 11.5 runs above average offensively, -1.5 runs base running, and -6 in the field. Still a +4 player. (This is above average, not replacement)
He was quite a bit better in the field and at the plate the previous two years, though the base running was still not good. Would he be the star of a team that traded for him? No. Could he be an important piece of good team at an affordable price in today's market? Oh, yeah, he definitely could.
I wonder of he and his agent are not on the same page with mgmt and are wanting to be compensated/extended based on his popularity and uniqueness rather than his calculated value? When he hits free agency next year at age 29, he should be exactly what you are speculating: sign with a good team at a fair market price. I wonder if he has in his favor a more sustainable value compared to players that hit free agency at 30 or 31 and much of their value was due to athleticism (baserunning, defensive range, prodigious power). I also think his consistency suggests he's the type of player for which the "clutch"/high leverage numbers are reproducible and WAR doesn't like to give credit for that.
I gather you made these calculations yourself, rather than taking the runs above average numbers from Baseball Reference or FanGraphs. If so, can you briefly explain your methodology?
It is too complex to go into, but the base of the pyramid is linear weights. I have been doing this and refining it for 20 years.
One of the biggest differences is that they use WAR type positional adjustments even for runs average, despite not using fictional replacement players. For Arraez, this take of somewhere between 7.5 and 8 runs on those sites. While I sometimes compare a player to his positional peers using average for that position for that year (I did not in this case, it complicates things too much to put on a comment. I already had to do two parks. It would lessen Arraez some, but he would still be at least average.) Besides that, there is no good source that I am aware of to have the comprehensive differences in base running between positions, so that has to be league average anyway, and when I do a team, and then add up all the players on a team without taking position into consideration, the numbers end up the same.
I do use park effects, and everyone does this differently. At least two of the 3 sites (including statcast) take a a multi year average when doing park effects (I guess trying to get at what it "should" be?) I am only concerned with comparison for each individual year. If I am doing other years, I use the park effects for that year.
Everyone does base running differently, and I like my method. There is no reason to even look at the Statcast base running "metric", as it is straight garbage. I had a too long comment on the post where Joe talks about that, using Elly De La Cruz as a test case.
I use DRS for defense, straight stealing it, as I have no better method. They look at every play, and their runs saved are based on the actual situations, not just a computer average. The FG UZR and the Statcast range based simplistic stat (with the not good expected batting average as it's base) have such terrible methodologies that they are not worth even giving the time of day.
I think they all underrate the negative effects of outs.
I don't mess with trying to extrapolate wins, nor do I bother with fictional replaement players. I am comparing players to the league environment for that year. Runs created and outs. That is what the game is about, and that is what I measure.
The 1970s-style .300 hitter and mention of Ralph Garr reminds me of a lesson my uncle taught me in 1972, when he took me to see a Phillies-Braves game in which Steve Carlton and Phil Niekro each pitched all 11 innings in a game that ended Lefty's remarkable 15-game winning streak. (Thanks, Mike Lum, the forst player I was aware of who was born in Hawaii.) "You could wake Ralph Garr out of bed at 3:00 am," my uncle explained, "and he'd hit ropes!"
That's one of those lessons I'll remember as I take my final breaths.
Lord do I loathe the attention Arraez gets. He’s just not a very good player. I mean, Joe, you’re comparing him to Rod Carew, who had 81 WAR, with Arraez, who has 15 WAR heading into his age-28 season? You’re trying to compare people who have high batting averages and nothing else in common. Carew was a WAY better player than Arraez. So were Wade Boggs and Tony Gwynn.
I even object to the term “batting title.” What a silly anachronism. You’re the “batting champion” if you can hit a lot of singles and few extra-hits or walks.
Merry Christmas to all! And Happy Holidays! Thanks Joe!
No one cares about BA maybe but they do about OBP and Arraez is pretty good there. He reminds me a bit of Matty Alou when he was with the Pirates. (Guess I don’t need my tech-illiteracy to show my age.)
Batting average is way undervalued in today's game. I have done an analysis of the correlation, not of runs but of wins with on-base, slugging, and batting average, as well as hits, strike outs and a few other things. The difference between the BA of your team and the BA your pitchers give up is more tightly correlated with wins than is OBP, SLG, or even OPS. The goal in baseball is to win, not to score runs.
One can see a hint of this in Arraez's career. Everywhere he goes his team improves by 10 wins or so. It happened to the Twins when they brought him up, to the Marlins, and then to the Padres. Also, everywhere he goes his teammates give him great credit for their wins and he is basically the favorite player on the team among the players. Pitchers also say he is the player they least like to face. Maybe the players know more about baseball than the analysts who obsess with OPS.
When he is playing against my team, Arreaz is the absolute last player I want to see at bat with runners in scoring position.
If Manfred’s Golden Bat ever came about, Arraez would get a lot of opportunities.
As a Padres fan, I would like to see them keep Arraez. Like Transformers,he is more than meets the eye.
Elaine: Perhaps there's more to Newman than meets the eye. Jerry: No, there's less.
Same with Arraez.