Transactions: December 2009
by Ryan on Jan 12, 2010 8:33 PM EST
in Transactions
227 comments
Catchup time....
12-2-2009:
Signed RHP Jason Grilli, IF Luis Gonzalez, LHP Mike Gosling, and 3B Brian Buscher to minor-league contracts; Invited them to Spring Training.
Grilli was the fourth overall pick in the 1997 Draft, and was dealt to Florida for Livan Hernandez a couple years later. He made a couple early appearances with the Marlins, but then was sidelined often over the next couple of years with some major injuries (bulging disc, elbow injury).
Grilli didn't pan out with Chicago after the White Sox selected him in the 2003 Rule 5 Draft, but the Tigers saw enough of him to sign him to a minor-league contract. He spent a couple productive seasons with Detroit, though he never quite made the transition to a late reliever. He had a good run with the Rockies in 2008, but struggled early next season and was sold to Texas. The Rangers removed him from their 40-man roster after the season. For Grilli, the Indians are a good situation: a team with a lot of young starters usually means a lot of innings for a middle reliever. I think he has a good shot at making the roster.
The other three seem to be Columbus fodder. Luis Rodriguez has been a reserve infielder in the majors with the Twins (2005-2007) and the Padres (2008-2009), but is coming off a very poor offensive season (.202/.319/.260) with the Padres. Mike Gosling is back in the organization for some odd reason (familiarity? left-handedness?) Brian Buscher, who had some good offensive seasons in the Twins organization but also has a bad defensive reputation, should be an everyday player for the Clippers.
12-10-2009
Drafted RHP Hector Ambriz from the Arizona Diamondbacks in the Rule 5 Draft
The Indians haven't drafted a player in the Rule 5 Draft for themselves during Mark Shapiro's tenure, but that changed this winter. Hector Ambriz has spent his minor-league career as a starter in the Arizona organization, but the Indians are banking on him having better success as a reliever throwing just his fastball and splitter. As with any Rule 5 pick, though, the odds are against him making the Opening Day roster.
12-13-2009
Non-Tendered RHP Adam Miller, RHP Anthony Reyes, and RHP Jose Veres
Signed RHP Adam Miller and RHP Anthony Reyes; Invited Reyes to Spring Training
At this point, it's unlikely we'll ever see Adam Miller pitch in a major league game, but as long as Adam wants to give it a go, the Indians have little to lose by keeping him in the organization. Anthony Reyes has also had problems staying healthy, sitting out much of the 2009 season with an elbow injury. Like Miller, it's unlikely he'll contribute to the Indians in 2010.
12-21-2009
Signed RHP Saul Rivera to a Minor League Contract
You would think that Manny Acta had some influence on this signing, as Rivera pitched for Acta in Washington. Rivera made 161 appearances in 2007 and 2008, but imploded in 2009 and spent much of the year in the minors. When he was on, Rivera was a rubber-armed middle reliever and every club could use at least one of those.
Received RHP Mitch Talbot from the Tampa Bay Rays to complete the Kelly Shoppach trade.
If Talbot, who is at this point a marginal major league starter, had an option left, I would probably be less upset. But Talbot is out of options, and isn't appreciably better than the group of youngish starters (Carrasco, Sowers, Huff, Rondon) the Indians were thinking about placing at the back of the rotation anyway. Heck, there was a chance the Rays would have placed Talbot on waivers in March, so the Indians could have gotten him then for just the waiver fee.
Meanwhile, the Rays subsequently signed Shoppach to a $5.55M contract covering his last two arbitration years, along with a reasonable team option for 2012. He's an immediate upgrade over Dioner Navarro both at the plate and behind it. The Indians, for whatever reason, were anxious to rid themselves of Shoppach, and in their haste, unloaded him at pennies on the dollar.
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I think boredom over the whole non-Acta offseason qualifies.
Though I look right at home, I still feel like an exile
by Manhattan Tribe Fan on Jan 12, 2010 10:16 PM EST up reply actions
Signed RHP Adam Miller and RHP Anthony Reyes
Who?
Though I look right at home, I still feel like an exile
by Manhattan Tribe Fan on Jan 12, 2010 10:15 PM EST reply actions
Man, haven’t we beat that meme to death already?
Time to get down with Nobody and Cracker, CarCar and Vanilla Thunder.
Hear, hear. We can beat them all to death together, anyway. They’re not mutually exclusive.
Though I look right at home, I still feel like an exile
by Manhattan Tribe Fan on Jan 14, 2010 6:21 AM EST up reply actions
Vanilla Thunder being…..I missed this one…
by NickFantana on Jan 14, 2010 10:34 AM EST up reply actions
I don’t hate the Shoppach thing like most. There seems to be a lot of reasons to be optimistic about Talbott: the Law tweet and the THT piece just two of them. If the Indians are convinced he’s a starter right now, then the option piece is less important, obviously.
More than anything, and maybe this is naive, I’m just convinced that this was the market for Shoppach and I felt pretty strongly that Shoppach should’ve been moved. Shapiro has never been one to misjudge the market, though perhaps he’s lost some of that intuition.
The Indians traded Shoppach when his value was lower than it’s been in the past, I concede that. Sure, they probably get more if they trade him after 2008. But I have enough faith in this front office to know the Indians didn’t trade him for less than the maximum return possible at this moment. So yes, in that sense, they sold low.
But I think what’s never mentioned is the fact that Talbot was traded at the moment when his value was at its lowest. Aside from after the 2008 season, I don’t think the Astros or Rays ever trade Talbot for Shoppach one on one in a pure baseball trade (regardless of their rosters at the time).
very true…low value at the time for low value at the time. mostly I am just happy we got rid of shoppach. I liked the guy but he just didn’t pan out. It was worth taking a risk on a guy like talbot, especially since he is still unproven (and shoppach has been proven to be bad)
Shoppach had a 108 OPS+ for his career as an Indian. He was an average hitter (per OPS+) in 2007 and 2009, and in 2008, he had a season far better than anything Sandy Alomar ever did. On the whole, he was a somewhat above-average hitter for us. For a catcher, that’s more than panning out, that’s a great success.
How can you possibly justify calling a player like that “bad?”
yeah…A LOT…plus he got lucky the in ’07, and ’08 (see my below comment).
he strikes out 1/3 of the time over his career…granted, when he ended up getting a hit, there was about a 50% chance it was an XBH but a hit with him was few and far between. he hit balls in play 18% less than average. he is a really, really, really, poor man’s adam dunn. dunn has great power but not a good average and strikes out a lot…shoppach is like dunn when dunn is 40 and about to retire.
But Shoppach is a catcher not a designated hitter that is forced to play the field because he plays in the NL.
he had one good season. like you said he was an average hitter in ’07 and ’09. I will say in ’09 he was pretty bad.
OPS+ is a nice stat but it is not the be-all end-all of stats.
One is like is BABIP (BA for balls in play). The league average is .300. most players hover around .300 this is based off of fielding and speed. shoppach doesn’t really have speed so if he has over .300 that has more to do with luck and the defense. his averages in ‘07 and ’08 were both above .350. that is EXTREMELY lucky. talent has a little bit to do with this stat but it is very minimal. Pujols’ career BABIP is only slightly above average. shoppach’s is .330. in 2009, his BABIP was .280. yes it is slightly below average, but he still came down to earth. everyone eventually goes back to around .300 and that is a telling sign. so I think that the shoppach we saw last year is closer to the true shoppach.
I am not saying he is truly “bad”. that isn’t a good word. he does have some pop in his bat. he is just not very good and likely reached his peak as a player. by the beginning of next season he will be 30. I am just glad we were able to get a younger player who could be good, for him
We actually got Talbot for him, so that kind of hurts the argument you make in the last sentence. BABIP is normalized at .297 for the league. That has no bearing on Kelly Shoppach. His career is .330, which speaks to his ability to put the ball in play hard consistently, not some absurd four year lucky streak.
And strikeouts aren’t that bad, for the love of God.
Yeah assuming a league avg. for BABIP should apply across the board is really missing out on the ability for individual players to consistently demonstrate some control on balls in play through type of hit. As you stated, he hit the ball hard and if he consistently hits more line drives and fliner type hits than he would have a higher than league avg. expected BABIP.
strikeouts I do consider bad when they have no chance at moving the runner over. fly balls are much better than strikeouts b/c there is the possibility of moving the runner over. the only out i see is worse than a K is a double play ball. Yes he puts the ball in play consistently, but I feel his BABIP of about .280 this year is much closer to what he really is than his .380ish in ’08
the only out i see is worse than a K is a double play ball
tripple play ball.
ground-out on first pitch.
pop-up on first pitch
ground-out on second pitch.
pop-up on second pitch
pop-up bunt.
A ground out on the first pitch that advances a runner from second to third with fewer than two outs is better than a strikeout. Same with GO on second pitch. A groundout or popout also has a chance, however minimal, of error.
If you’re going to go with those ridiculous odds, then so do strikeouts.
"You are an LGT success story" -- Jay
by Turkmenbashi on Jan 15, 2010 9:23 AM EST up reply actions
Go run the numbers on how many groundouts are “productive” and how many popouts produce errors, and then we’ll talk.
No need for me to spend the next six years with that—which is probably impossible to categorize retroactively anyway. I can tell you categorically more positive things happen with groundouts than strikeouts, simply because more good things can happen with GOs. (Errors, moving runners, infield hits.)
The only positive result of a K is a passed ball or wild pitch. That’s why high K rates are preferable for pitchers.
I am fully aware of the sabermatic position that strikeouts are perfectly fine. I get that. But I find this insistent defense of strikeouts—as if they’re actually a good way to make an out, as if we should have even more strikeouts—to be kind of silly.
Here’s the problem. The hypothetical events you’re talking about happen on a vanishingly small percentage of plays. So in theory, yes, a nice thing can happen on a groundout or a popup, but in practice, that “edge” is probably worth less than 10 runs a year. For an individual player, maybe 1 run. You can’t worry about stuff that small, because you’ll miss the big stuff, like line drives and home runs.
High K rates are preferable for pitchers because they’re more stable statistically than other types of outs. The “weak contact inducing” skill is very hard to pin down. 2009-high-K-rates will correlate better to 2010-weak-contact-inducing than 2009-weak-contacting-inducing.
There’s an article linked above that really addresses this apparent paradox pretty thoroughly.
I missed one of the nuances of this … which is that not only does all the “productive outing” not happen all that often, it’s also not actually worth all that much when it does happen. Certainly it’s worth almost nothing with 0 outs or 2 outs.
Here’s a nuance that occurred to me. In order to get a hit you have to put a ball in play. A third of grounders (roughly) become hits. An extremely small number of strikeouts become passed balls or wild pitches with first base open. In other words, all hits proceed from contact.
I can see the difference as being small, perhaps even not worth mentioning. But Ks are not equivalent to GOs or FOs.
I like what Derek Jacques wrote in 2007 for Baseball Prospectus:
Statheads and strikeouts…it’s an age-old romance. For pitchers, we’ll tell you that strikeouts are the biggest predictor of a hurler’s future success. When batters go down, though, while we acknowledge that the whiff is an out—a negative result—it’s an out we put on a pedestal as one of the Three True Outcomes (along with the walk and the homer). A noble out, I guess. Where does this love for the breezy out come from? Part of it is certainty. One big reason that dissecting baseball data is so rewarding is the peculiar one-on-one matchup between pitcher and batter, a rarity in team sports…Remember all that trouble we have measuring defense? It’s largely academic when the only fielder involved has a catcher’s mitt….Now, glovework does still come into play on the strikeout, and it’s possible for the batter to reach base even on a humiliating whiff. However, it’s exceedingly rare—over the past 47-plus seasons, the batter reached base safely on 0.3 percent of all strikeouts. By way of comparison, this season a batter who hits a ball in play has a more than 30 percent chance of reaching base safely.
yes. many of the best players strike out a lot but they also swing a lot more than shoppach and are overall much better hitters than him. shoppach also gets a fair amount of swinging strikes. that means he is making contact less. his career average on swinging strikes as a percentage of all strikes is almost double the MLB average (and much higher than dunn). this doesn’t say much except that he doesn’t make contact with the ball as often as a good player would. his contact percentage is sub par. who cares if when he hits it he hits it well, if he doesn’t hit it that often, it doesn’t really matter.
he also takes less strikes looking. while this may seem like a bad thing, what that is more saying is that he is too aggressive. he swings at too many pitches and doesn’t wait on enough. he also sees less than average 3-0 counts, 3-1 counts, 2-1 counts and strikeouts looking as a percentage of strikeouts. strikeouts looking are not a bad thing. it is the batter making sure the pitch is a strike. much better than being over aggressive like shoppach.
he is similar in style one might think to dunn (power, lots of Ks, Low average) but dunn is a very patient hitter. Dunn in fact sees less strikes than the league average. he also sees many more 3-0 counts, 3-1 counts, and 2-1 counts and strikes out looking more than average. this is because, although the basic stats do not show it, he is a very patient hitter, he just isn’t a good contact hitter. shoppach might be a little better of a contact hitter but he is a very impatient hitter. this is oftentimes common among younger players (wanting to prove themselves by being aggressive) but he is going to be 30 this season and by this time, most hitters have grown out of that habit.
he is similar in style one might think to dunn (power, lots of Ks, Low average) but dunn is a very patient hitter.
I think only a very primitive baseball fan would think of Dunn this way. Any halfway sophisticated fan would know that you have to look at walks as well as strikeouts.
although the basic stats do not show it, he is a very patient hitter,
Dunn has ranked in the MLB Top 10 in walk percentage for basically his whole career.
2009 back to 2004, MLB rank: 3rd, 1st, 9th, 9th, 3rd, 10th.
yes.
I was looking at it from only a strikeout percentage. I did forget about the fact that he does draw a lot of walks. I was also saying that his strikeouts are “good” strikeouts in that he takes a lot of pitches, is patient, and gets into a lot of favorable counts.
Why would you look at strikeouts if you are talking about a hitters patience? And why once you decided to do that, would you conclude that more strikeouts is a typical indicator of less patience? People who see more pitches strike out more – look it up.
if you read what I was saying is that shoppach doesn’t take many pitches. he has below average percentage of strikes looking and much higher than average strikes swinging. he also gets into less than the league average percent of favorable counts. my point was that he swings too often and isn’t patient. adam dunn however sees a lot of pitches. ryan howard sees a good amount of pitches.
Right. And both of them are well below average at marginal defensive positions. Shoppach is a catcher. He doesn’t have to hit as well as Howard and Dunn.
true..but i wouldn’t consider shoppach that much better than average as a fielding catcher. he is decent but nothing special…that is his game IMO…he is decent but nothing special and not really worth this long back-and-forth about.
It doesn’t matter (for this comparison) if he’s nothing special behind the plate. He’s still a catcher, and a catcher is a lot more valuable than a first baseman or left fielder.
yes.
but is he that much more special than redmond?? does he have that much of a superior bat?? does his bat help the young indians catchers mature? we have a ton of young catchers with basically no significant MLB experience (about half a season played between 4 players, including santana). at this point with our young talent, I would trade some bat, for a lot more experience. the move makes sense when you look at the big picture.
yes.
but is he that much more special than redmond?? does he have that much of a superior bat?? does his bat help the young indians catchers mature? we have a ton of young catchers with basically no significant MLB experience (about half a season played between 4 players, including santana). at this point with our young talent, I would trade some bat, for a lot more experience. the move makes sense when you look at the big picture.
I’d say Dunn’s consistently appearing near the league lead in walks (a pretty basic stat) told us he was a patient hitter. This entire rambling thing doesn’t really address the actual problem with Shoppach last year, a BABIP 50 points below his career number and a dropping fly ball rate. Strikeouts aren’t that bad, you need to accept that.
I know strikeouts are not horrible in of themselves but that is not the whole point. he gets a lot of “bad” strikeouts. he doesn’t take as many pitches as he should and gets into too many unfavorable counts. I am more pointing to the fact that if he improved his patience at the plate he could be a good hitter, but he swings at too many pitches and even when he doesn’t strike out. he doesn’t often get into favorable counts and I remember him being in the hole 0-2 a lot more than a good hitter should. the guys that lead the league in strikeouts, they are fairly patient hitters and when if they aren’t, they can make up for it with superior talent. shoppach does not have that superior talent.
No, but Shoppach is a catcher. The bar is not as high for a catcher. You’re evaluating him as though he needs to outhit someone better than Bengie Molina.
and do you really think he will outhit bengie molina? my opinion is, even for a catcher, he is an average hitter at best…
I would not go with “has always”. bengie molina has had some pretty good hitting seasons. while shoppach isn’t a bad hitter, he isn’t the top 5 (and probably not top 10) catchers in hitting…he might just barely crack the top 15 for his career. molina is also more consistent and has produced over a long period of time. with molina you know what you get…what do you get with shoppach…the ’08 shoppach, or the ’09 shoppach??
I think you’d find that maybe seven or eight active catchers have ever hit 20 home runs in a season. Shoppach did it in only four months as a starter. He’s a genuine threat for 25 HR, and despite his other flaws, that makes him a a threat to be the league’s best-hitting catcher. Will he actually do it? Probably not, but he has that potential.
I am not denying he has potential. like you said, he probably won’t live up to his potential.
do we need another catcher with potential? I think looking at our catchers we need experience. the indians also want to get santana up and develop marson to be a servicable catcher. having shoppach just created a logjam. do we need a 30 year old catcher who probably won’t live up to his potential, when we have talented young players at the position?? probably not.
you do not keep a 30 year old at a position when you have younger, more talented players coming up JUST because of his potential.
I do think we could have gotten more for shoppach, but I think shapiro just was seeing a logjam at the position. with redmond, they really aren’t paying for his bat. they are paying for his experience (which even with shoppach, the position didn’t have a lot of) and for him to be able to sit on the bench and not complain. they are also paying for him being a veteran leader on the team.
People aren’t arguing with you because they think we should have kept Shoppach. People are arguing with you because you said Shoppach was bad, and you were wrong.
But he was not mediocre, and there’s no such thing as not that wrong. You either are wrong or you aren’t, and you are.
Everybody should get ice cream every day.
I was not wrong then. I never said he was bad. I think (and really have stated) that he is probably an average player at the catcher position…possibly better (but it is hard to tell how he’ll produce in 2010).
what was he?? was he good?? was he great?? he was pretty good at best. pretty good is not that much above mediocre in my book.
There is a reasonable argument that Shoppach is mediocre. It’s not where I’ve placed my own chips, but it’s not ridiculous.
For those who want to argue he’s mediocre, it would help if they acknowledged the facts, which are that his offensive output has been well above average among catchers.
Thanks. That was helpful. “The correlation coefficient between strikeouts and runs was .075, which means the relationship is so negligible there is no relationship.”
Actually, what’s interesting is that the very slight correlation is a positive one, i.e., more strikeouts mean more runs, to a very tiny degree.
Then I don’t understand Passan’s article. He later cites positive correlations as evidence of connections:
“The same rule does not apply to pitchers, for whom strikeouts are often the best-case scenario. The correlation between strikeouts per nine innings and ERA from 1999 to 2008 was .459, not as strong as that of walks per nine innings to ERA (.573) and strikeout-to-walk ratios to ERA (.668)—and not all that strong period—but significantly moreso than with hitters.”
Correlation coefficients go from -1.0 to 0 to 1.0.
The higher the absolute value, the stronger the correlation. The closer it is to zero, the weaker the correlation.
Positive numbers mean a positive correlation, which we tend to just call “correlation.” Negative numbers mean a negative correlation. That is, if striking out more meant scoring fewer runs, then the coefficient would be negative, rather than a very tiny positive number.
Since the coefficient is very close to zero, that means the correlation is very, very weak. That is, there is almost no relationship; it’s essentially a scatterplot if you map K-rate on the X-axis and run-scoring on the Y-axis.
The very low absolute value (that is, regardless of whether it’s +0.075 or -0.075) means a very weak correlation, effectively no real correlation at all. But to the extent that there is some tiny tendency, however insignificant, it is a positive one.
Thanks for the refresher course. It’s helpful.
I really would like someone to explain to me why strikeouts can be neutral to the batter (which they are) but positive to a pitcher.
I think Passan omitted negatives from his article (either that, or he was using r-squared instead of just r). He said the correlation between K/9 and ERA for pitchers was .459. There’s no way it should be a positive number unless he just left off the negative sign.
And if he was ignoring negatives in some situations, he may have been ignoring them in others. So I’m not sure we can draw a conclusion on the relationship between strikeouts and runs for hitters, or at least not from this article.
I have always rejected the idea that a “three true outcomes” hitting profile was necessarily a good thing to have. In fact, I think it’s ridiculous, and I don’t even know where that supposition comes from. I guess it comes from placing too high a value on things that we can measure with statistical confidence, and not enough value on things that may be highly productive but are statistically foggy.
I agree with your last sentence. There is a bias in favor of strikeouts—and we can point to the old-timers who think you need to be aggressive at the plate and we can shake our heads at their foolishness, unsupported as it is by statistic—and this attitude over-corrects the value of the K.
It’s fun to point out that Pete Incaviglia was actually better than people think. Strikeouts? They don’t bother me—an enlightened fan—in the slightest!
I personally wouldn’t go that far. Strikeouts aren’t good, but they’re not necessarily bad. I think you need to look at each individual batter and try to understand what he is and isn’t doing well. Strikeouts may be symptomatic of a bad approach, but just as often they may be symptomatic of a good approach.
I really couldn’t care less if a guy piles up a bunch of strikeouts. I know how everything aggregates in the end. But when that guy walks up to the plate in a situation where we could really use a sac-fly? No, I’m not happy about it. Just not the best skill set for that situation.
What this discussion is missing is the Shoppach context. It’s easy to say strikeouts are OK in January, but his strikeouts just looked so bad. However good he actually is, I’m almost happy I don’t have to watch him anymore.
Though I look right at home, I still feel like an exile
by Manhattan Tribe Fan on Jan 16, 2010 9:59 AM EST up reply actions
I think you need to look at each individual batter and try to understand what he is and isn’t doing well. Strikeouts may be symptomatic of a bad approach, but just as often they may be symptomatic of a good approach.
This is exactly what I’ve done in the case of this catcher. His swings were often terrible, lunging, out of control and in counts where you knew the next pitch was going to be outside and in the dirt.
And yet his WPA was about identical to Carroll’s, and Carroll is pretty much his opposite as a hitter.
I won’t deny he could be painful to watch, but I think the main debate here has been over his productivity, past and future, and not over whether we’re just sick of watching him even if he’s an All-Star. We seem to be able to keep the two separate with Betancourt, why can’t we also with Shoppach?
Oh I don’t disagree. I just wanted to say that he was painful to watch.
Though I look right at home, I still feel like an exile
by Manhattan Tribe Fan on Jan 17, 2010 12:39 AM EST up reply actions
I have always rejected the idea that a "three true outcomes" hitting profile was necessarily a good thing to have. In fact, I think it’s ridiculous, and I don’t even know where that supposition comes from.
D Jacques is mistaken. This was never considered a good thing to have. The TTO idea, as far as I know, was coined in Rany’s fantastic column on “Prophet Branyan.” BP has had fun with it, and there are hitters who fit that profile, obviously. Every once and while people would test on the edge to see how the correlations with hitters’ Ks worked out (and others may have simply misunderstood the TTO bit), but I’m pretty certain there was never a significant belief that you would choose a package of high HR/walks/Ks over high HR/walks with low Ks.
Two things: You still have to hit, even if you strike out a lot. So the neutrality of this is somewhat of an illusion. A guy having 150 strikeouts is tolerable if he hits 25 home runs, but not if he has an eqa of .210.
Also: if a strikeout is the best thing a pitcher can do—if strikeout rates are the best correlation to ERA (excuse me)—why would a team want to contribute to another team’s success?
You could be right. Strikeouts can be bad if you can’t hit. Strikeouts are okay if you can hit. Guys who strike out a lot and can’t hit are out of the game (cf. Shoppach). So Ks are neutral only if you are able to compensate for them otherwise.
But, as an astute rhetorician, you neglected the more important question: If strikeouts are so good for pitchers (which they are, as they correlate to success for pitchers), why are they considered to be neutral to hitters?
I don’t ask this as a challenge. I don’t really know, and it doesn’t make sense to me. Wouldn’t it be good not to strike out so that it wouldn’t benefit the pitcher?
If I may make a hasty attempt: strikeouts are bad for both hitters and pitchers. In both cases, the other things you do contribute to your overall profile. With hitters like Shoppach, we are essentially saying that the rest of the hitting profile makes up for the strikeouts, so we don’t care about them. If you are only making 200 outs all year, it doesn’t matter if every one of them is a strikeout.
Likewise, for pitchers, strikeouts are a good indicator of success, but other factors can make them moot. If you give up a home run to every third batter, it doesn’t matter if you strike out the other two.
When you hear somebody say that a hitter’s strikeouts don’t matter, it usually means that he hits so well and/or has such good plate discipline the rest of the time that the strikeouts are moot. Naturally, if somebody struck out in 70 percent of their at-bats, they would be terrible.
but I feel his BABIP of about .280 this year is much closer to what he really is than his .380ish in ’08
Your feelings don’t matter on this, unfortunately. His career BABIP is .330, that’s good. You then argue that he puts the ball in play consistently but strikes out too much, which is a contradictory statement. And, of course, strikeouts aren’t that bad.
I don’t think I said he puts it into play consistently. he consistently hits it hard…he strikes out about 1/3 of the time, so 1/3 of the time, he doesn’t even rely on his high BABIP. they might not be that bad to you but I see them as an out where there is no chance at moving the runners. the only advantage I see is that it is an at bat that is at least 3 pitches.
yes. that happens but rarely so it is not at all a logical argument for keeping shoppach b/c of his strikeouts.
It is not just his strikeouts but his low VORP, his low batting average and his decrease in power. 2008 was more of an aberration. yes 2009 was probably more of the pendulum swinging the other way and he is probably better. I feel that if he played for us in 2010, his numbers would be a little worse than 2007. bettter than 2009, but a little worse than ’07. honestly, liking shoppach is like those dumb browns fans still on the DA bandwagon…
I am not saying that Ks are the only factor, but that he had one standout season in an average career.
It’s arbitrary and invalid to look at each individual season as though each one is an equivalent “sample.”
2008 may be an aberration, but it may not be. It also represents 40% of Shoppach’s entire playing career, and 90% of his career as an everyday player.
It is more likely that 2008 represents Shoppach’s true ability as an everyday player than that it’s an aberration.
The Shoppach haters struggle with basic math. If you want to remove aberration as much as possible, then just look at his career numbers.
I looked at his career numbers. they are somewhat better than Mike redmond’s but not by leaps and bounds. shoppach has a higher OPS+. he is a solid power hitter an better than redmond but what you get in power, you lose in contact, plate discipline, and OBP. Honestly, if shoppach became a more patient hitter I would say he could perform even better than in ‘08. in ’08 he was a fairly patient hitter but not great. that is his biggest weakness. he gets a first pitch strike almost half the time. it doesn’t seem like a lot but he always seemed to be working from being down.
I do agree with you that I can’t ignore it. I do feel he could be good but he has probably reached his peak development wise (since he is now 30) but if he can get a good batting coach to help get him some discipline, he can be a solid ballplayer. as it goes, he is more of a stopgap kind of player.
what you get in power, you lose in contact, plate discipline, and OBP
If that were actually true, then he wouldn’t have the higher OPS+.
redmond is a little better at getting walks. that is all I am saying. he has minimal power which contributes to the not as good OPS+, but power is not everything in baseball…
I am not saying that redmond is amazing, but that he is somewhat servicable replacement to shoppach.
Redmond just signed a contract for $850,000 to be a backup catcher. He was a free agent, available to all 30 teams.
Shoppach was just acquired at the cost of a marginal (though advanced) pitching prospect, plus his new team guaranteed him $5.5 million, and they clearly valued controling his rights for a third year.
Are the Rays and the rest of the teams that far off in judging the value of these two players? You say they’re roughly the same, but why does the market think they’re far apart?
because some people think shoppach has upside and might returne to 2008 form. that is possible but is questionable in the likeliness. you are also talking about a veteran who has about 10 years on shoppach. if they were the same age, they would probably go for similar contracts. a 39 year old backup catcher would likely go for the minimum league salary but he did get more.
You were talking about Redmond replacing Shoppach’s production, right now, present tense. Don’t go changing the argument.
I am not talking past tense or future tense at all. neither one is nothing special offensively….I didn’t say he was as good as shoppach but that basically, the indians will not miss a beat without shoppach. i said “somewhat servicable replacement”. that does not mean I am saying he will put up as good or better numbers, just somewhat nearly as good.
I am not changing the subject either b/c you were using how teams pay for players as their value and how good they must be. so if shoppach is payed more, you think he obviously must be better. he is payed more b/c of his age, period.
You are simply wrong. Redmond’s offense is insignificant. Shoppach has been solidly above average among catchers as a hitter.
As for age and contract value, this is where you’re just confusing the argument. Yes, age is part of the puzzle in projecting performance, but bringing it up here just confuses the issue. We were making a straight-up comparison.
honestly with those question marks, i would rather give marson some experience. I just see how shapiro saw not having shoppach as being a good move for the whole team so guys like marson and maybe toregas and gimenez could get experience they need.
Just stop. You obviously don’t know what you’re talking about, barely know what you’re trying to say. You don’t have to post every time. Stop.
by Jay on Jan 17, 2010 9:36 AM EST up reply actions 1 recs
bross … your grasp of BIP issues is simply wrong. Pitchers tend to regress to the major league average BABIP, almost without exception among major leaguers who stick. The same cannot be said for hitters, and it isn’t just speed that makes the difference.
Some hitters simply hit the ball in such a way that it is somewhat more likely to fall for a hit. (Keep in mind, if Shoppach’s true BIP ability is .330, that’s only 10% more balls falling for hits than the average major league hitter. It’s unusual to have even that much variance, but it’s still only a difference of three percent of all BIP.)
Shoppach may not be able to sustain the .330, but then again, he may. His true ability probably lies somewhere around .320 — keep in mind, Shoppach doesn’t even put all that many balls in play in the first place, but when he makes contact, it’s rarely weak. The strong probability is that his BABIP is going to remain somewhat above average rather than regressing completely to the league average, unless he hits a patch of exceptionally bad luck.
You seem to be under the conception that your sophistication with stats is well ahead of the average user here — in fact, you act like you’re ahead of the moderators. Let me assure you, that is far from the case. You actually have some catching up to do, and most of us have been holding our tongues while you “explain” things to us. You are, at best, among peers here, and your attitude perhaps should better reflect that reality.
Okay.
I agree he puts in in the field hard and he might hit BIP better than some, but I would say that about .370 ish he hit in his best season is more of an aberration. I do agree his skill lies about a .320ish, but I still was never that big of a fan. He just strikes out way too much and even though he puts BIP for hits very well, he put them in at a rate (before this year) that was up there with ted williams. All I am saying is that this fall from grace in 2009 wasn’t something completely unnatural. For the rest of his career I see him being the kinda guy that hits .235ish and hits maybe 12-15 homers in a yr. All I was attempting to do is point out that 2009 was probably closer to the real kelly shoppach then 2008
yeah…he didn’t hit that much above the mendoza line. he also dropped in extra base hits as a percentage of hits (worst in a full year in a hitting rotation). his AB per RBI is below average (and always has been). technically he was slightly better with his eye (a little better at BBs and a little worse at Ks) but a .214 average when you strike out 30% of the time is never good…even if you hit some home runs. his run production has always been below average (runs and RBIs). his neutralized batting average is slightly higher but in general, he is nothing special. even if we kept him and didn’t get marson, he would just be a stopgap until santana…I would not honestly want him starting. he is not like brad ausmus in fielding ability (and not even as reliable as an offensive player).
You quote like five idiot stats here. Your whole paragraph is basically meaningless when neutralized for meaningless things.
Everybody should get ice cream every day.
wait…how is it meaningless…It has a lot of meaning. for a power guy he does not drive in a lot of runs. he also strikes out 1/3 of the time which means 1/3 of his at bats, you are guarenteed he will not put it in play or advance a runner (except for rare circumstances). he is nothing more than an average starter at best who has very little upside left (he will be 30 this season) and once pitchers adjusted to him after a surprising ’08, he struggled greatly in ’09.
It’s meaningless because those are all idiot stats, they don’t tell us anything of import. Shoppach’s wOBA was .329, 13th for catchers, and his Eqa was .258, 11th for catchers. In short, he was slightly above average at his position last year.
but his VORP was quite a bit below average….
some stats might put him above average, and some put him much below. either way, he is a bit above average at best, and below average at worst. his production is nothing that much better than marson can give us…plus marson is 7 years younger.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/web/COM1143737/index.htm
In this article, written by someone from baseball prospectus, it talks about shoppach’s ‘08 season. while he praises shoppach, he does admit that shoppach will probably eventually fall from grace and said if he does, shoppach’s average would be about .233 with a .291 OBP. I am not saying he is a horrible player, but that he is average at best and easily dispensible which is why I do not mind the trade.
I’m glad you have changed your story. Now you admit he’s average (at least) and say you merely “don’t mind” the trade. Before you said he was a bad player and you were glad to get rid of him.
Citing AVG as a stat for your projection of Kelly isn’t a good way to get taken seriously.
Everybody should get ice cream every day.
yeah, he has power but at what cost??? a .214 batting average? 1/3 of at bats are strikeouts?? I would rather just get a guy in free agency. with the kind of production he puts up, I would hope he was a gold glove winner.
the sum of his production is not. his VORP was at about 6.5, the lowest in a full season with the indians. he had about a 6.6-6.7 his first year (in ’07) and then over a 28 VORP in ’08…so what is the aberration here…Here are some guys with similar VORP…
Laynce Nix
Andruw jones
Ryan Domuit
John Buck
Josh Johnson (as a batter…even better than shoppach)
Russell Martin was better
Carlos Zambrano as a batter was better
Now I know this is not the ultimate stat either, but the more I look at it, the more 2008 looks like an aberration where an average player played great. I doubt if he can repeat it. H has not come anywhere close before or after.
All I was saying from the beginning about him is that I do like the trade, trading him away. It makes sense. not only is he an average player at best, but he has probably reached his ceiling and he is just creating a logjam in the backstop that might hinder santana coming up. I honestly like Marson who in the last 2 seasons in the minors has averaged a VORP of about 15.
with marson, we don’t get much of a downgrade IMO and we get a player in return.
Yes, VORP is a counting stat, like runs or RBI or hits for that matter. It is in fact measured in runs. You may want to compare players based on “VORP rate” instead, as a start.
He had much more VORP in 2008 mostly because of playing time. If you had any clue what you were talking about, you wouldn’t have mentioned VORP. If I have to choose which season is an aberration, I’ll choose the one with 173 PA instead of 403 PA. The larger sample alone indicates higher confidence in the results.
You really need to stop throwing stats out there that you don’t understand. It’s wasting a lot of time.
by Jay on Jan 15, 2010 11:10 AM EST up reply actions 1 recs
I agree. I think Shapiro concluded that, regardless of whether Shoppach is a good or even great value on a generic roster, the Indians at this time were better off without him (and his salary) than with him. Once you conclude that, then you take whatever the market will give you, and in this case, that just wasn’t much.
The true bottom line is that if Shoppach is a good value on a contending team for 2010, then it’s just a shame that we aren’t one.
Really, I meant “misjudge the market for players in trades”, although I guess he’s been fine in FA as well, excepting massive financial market upheavals.
I think there’s sort of a misconception going on here. You can’t “misjudge” the market if you’re disciplined about talking to all 29 other teams, or at least the 25 who aren’t your divisional rivals. If there’s one thing this front office does well, it seems, it’s having the discipline and hustle to investigate all trade avenues thoroughly.
This is why I basically scoff at those who criticize Shapiro’s trade returns. I think he’s thorough and a tough negotiator. I think we saw that with Victor, whom it made no sense to keep. The blogosphere wants him to get Buchholz, and if he could do that, that would be the safer move in terms of PR. But Shapiro wants both Masterson (pretty good right now) and Hagadone (very high upside for later).
My impression is that he would not have pulled the trigger on the deal without both of those two in it, but ultimately, what really matters is that the Red Sox had that impression.
My point, again, since I’ve wandered away from it a bit, is that you can’t misjudge the market if you’re having conversations with every single player in the market. I believe Shapiro and Antonetti are quite devout about not ever skipping a conversation that might have made a difference. I think, in short, that they get the best offer just about every time.
I’m not sure what inspired this post but I agree.
by afh4 on Jan 13, 2010 6:02 PM EST via mobile up reply actions
I do like your praise for Shapiro. Although he always seems to trade away guys when they are good…maybe that is a good thing. he always seems to get great value (dunno yet on the 3 biggies in the last 2 yrs…but they have revitalized a weak farm system that was once strong)
Although he always seems to trade away guys when theyare good
Although he always seems to trade away guys when they become financial liabilities.
Fixed
Although he always seems to trade away guys when theybecome financial liabilitiesare about to leave anyway.
Further fixed.
I think we should trade only bad players, but get the same return we get for trading good players.
Also, I’d like a pony. And a flying car.
by FredOx on Jan 14, 2010 11:31 AM EST up reply actions 1 recs
Although we actually do this fairly often … Diaz, Perez, Broussard, Blake … stretching the definition of “bad” here, but still …
but he seems to be shrewd about these things…when we traded away blake we got great young value for an aging player. we got a better player than broussard was (choo) in that deal..and we got asdrubal for eduardo perez. these trades look like complete steals now..
It boils down to trying to get equal or greater return than what you’re trading, no matter what that may be. So when trade a Broussard or Perez and get a Choo or Droobs, you’ve clearly cleaned house. When you trade a Sabathia, who is of elite status, and have several returns coming back, it is much harder to judge your returns, since none of them are likely to ever achieve elite status. But, that doesn’t mean you can’t still have received the greater return.
Welcome back, Sandy! ATALECG...
That was my whole point. Those players were nothing special, and yet the return we got for them, in terms of big-league productivity, has been akin to what you would hope to get from a superstar.
I’ve vowed not to enter into any more Shop discussions, but please forgive me for doing so.
I am amused by the emotion involved in defending Shoppach. In 2008 he was heralded on this site as one of the premiere power hitters in the American League. Look at his position and his OPS and you could be forgiven for concluding so. But is such irrational exuberance merited? Is Kelly really so great?
Look a bit more closely at his 2008 performance, and the numbers aren’t as solid (at least to me). Shop had a good July (a month in which he hit six HRs), driven by two great games (against Minnesota on Independence Day and against Detroit on the 30th). He also had a great week at the end of August. Apparently pitchers spent their winter watching video and adjusted, and Kelly didn’t. He kept swinging with that looping swing at pitches eight feet out of the strike zone.
The excuses for Shop’s shortcomings are legion. If someone says he seems not to be hitting well, and has periods in the past (not in 2008) when he didn’t hit well, we are told it is because he isn’t getting regular playing time. If one says he doesn’t seem to be playing good defense, an uproar goes up that says where are the numbers to support such an outrageous statement. If one says he is kind of old to turn into Johnny Bench, the response is that he doesn’t have to be Johnny Bench to be good, and that he actually hits well for a catcher. Okay, this is just a backup catcher. So why such vehemence?
I suppose I qualify as a Shoppach hater, though I wouldn’t like to think of myself as such, and I will confess to struggling with math, but why are the 400 plate appearances in 2008 valid indications of his talent, and the other 600 major league PAs (which aren’t too bad) invalid because he doesn’t play enough or he is being treated unkindly by persons of no mathematical aptitude?
I suspect there is emotion involved in this defense of Shoppach, which is fine. But why hide it under a veil of supposed rationality.
Shop gets traded for not much, and people here are baffled at how he could be so undervalued. How could Shapiro get so little value for such a player? Is it possible that he has been overvalued? Is it possible that Shapiro and other GMs don’t see him as a valuable player?
In 2008 he was heralded on this site as one of the premiere power hitters in the American League.
This is a classic Chuck move, take those defending a player and then assign the extreme position to “this site.”
by Roger Dorn on Jan 16, 2010 2:32 PM EST up reply actions 1 recs
On May 13, 2009 Jay wrote this:
Once he assumed an everyday role around June 1 last year … Shoppach led the American League in Isolated Power. Let that sink in for a moment. He led the league in power hitting for four whole months. Now of course he’s unlikely to do that again, not at that level. But anyone who could even do that once obviously is a good enough hitter to be an everyday catcher.
(Italics added)
The statistical note is a fact, not an opinion, and it is accurate. How can a fact be motivated by emotion? I think I went out of my way to emphasize that that I did not believe Shoppach would be a premier power hitter (among all hitters, not just catchers) over the long haul.
I think overall you make some good points, although I have some questions.
How is it “emotional” or invalid to assume that a player’s performance off the bench doesn’t necessarily reflect what he can do as an everyday player? In particular, where that player has never been an everyday player in the majors before? Where is the bias in that supposition, which I have applied consistently with regard to all players?
Have I not written, many times, that it’s reasonable to assess Shoppach’s major league performance in the aggregate, and not based only on those 400 PA?
Is there, in fact, any reason at all to believe that emotion has affected my assessment of Shoppach? What reason is there to believe that my opinion of Shoppach has not been formed based on my interpretation of the facts, rather than the other way around? What biases do you believe are betrayed in my evaluation?
I think you make an interesting note about the reactions to defense, but in general, it is a healthy skeptic that says, “prove it.” Catcher defensive ratings are tough to figure. The best evidence we have that Shoppach is considered sub-par is the lack of demand for him. Some clubs simply insist on having a strong defensive catcher; probably many clubs over-emphasize this to their detriment, but the point is, that’s one element of the market. (More on this in a minute …)
by Jay on Jan 16, 2010 6:45 PM EST up reply actions 1 recs
I realize I’ve done you a disservice by lumping you in with other champions of Shoppach. While you are not without discernible biases you are more objective than some others when it comes to assessing Indians baseball.
As I recall, in the triumphalist exhilaration that followed 2007, claims were made (not by you) that Shop could start for most MLB teams—and the Tribe was so stocked in talent and brawn that a guy who would start for any other team couldn’t even break the everyday lineup. As a skeptic of the Cleveland school, I took exception to such exuberance.
Facts are facts, but how and when they are deployed can be motivated by emotion. To cite four months of isolated power—which is impressive enough—to suggest that Shop is (or even could be) a top-shelf power hitter, an elite hitting catcher, even in the face of his minor league and previous major league experience could be evidence of bias. The four months are not conclusive. They are interesting, certainly, but they don’t prove the point.
Of course a player’s performance off the bench doesn’t reflect what he can do as a full-time player. He might get better, or his limitations might be revealed. You argued that Marte never got a chance to play full time, and I agree with it. Ben Francisco got a chance and he was shown not to be an everyday player. If I were to argue that Jordan Brown or Trevor Crowe just need to get reps in order to become better, you’d laugh at me, and for good reason. Some players are useful when kept to fewer than, say, 300 plate appearances. Put them out there everyday, and pitchers figure out ways to get them out.
Shop’s minor league numbers are odd. He’s a strange player, with lots of intriguing positive signs and almost as many questionable signs. I looked foremost at his age, but when I cited it as possible indication he might not be a premier catcher, I was told many catchers mature later. This is true, but so is the fact that most premier catchers (Ivan Rodriguez comes to mind, and I know I’m comparing a future HOFer to a backup) aren’t putzing around Pawtucket at the age of 25. Kelly put up good minor league numbers (.260/.349/.474 over five years) but he had a few baffling seasons. If I asked why Boston kept him down on the farm, a Shop advocate could say they had Varitek and Shop wasn’t going to play (and that would be accurate). I would say because they had some questions about his ability (and that too could be accurate).
I believe you champion Shop because he is a great example of a player who looks bad if you focus on strikeouts and batting average. A perfect example of the sort of player an enlightened fan sees the value of. You have some investment in making such a player into a good player.
I am trying to point out how these statistics are used. Anything negative is ignored or challenged, while anything positive is hailed as confirmation of what appears to me to be a bias.
I could say, even in your final paragraph you reveal some bias. Sure, maybe Shoppach is sub-par defensively (and the best evidence is not in other teams’ lack of interest but in observation), but that’s just because teams are now over-emphasizing defense.
Isn’t it possible that Shoppach isn’t that good, and that his four-month stretch was an impressive aberration? Isn’t it possible that the lack of interest by other teams is not an injustice but a more accurate reflection of his true value? Isn’t it possible that people were wrong about Shoppach?
As a Shoppach “champion” I searched my post history on him and the best I could find was suggesting we trade him last offseason to sell high and that I thought he could start for a lot of teams. That he can start for a potential playoff team like the Rays supports my belief.
yes…they didn’t have a great catcher to begin with. I would not call him a definite starter but he would probably play the majority of the time.
The kid had a tremendous 2008, posting a career-best .295 AVG, but beware. His batting average on balls in play was .321 (compared to a previous career number in the low .280s), which means he was very lucky
this sounds like shoppach. career high BABIP in 2008 and hasn’t been able to repeat it before or since. granted, I will admit that BABIP is more than luck, but at the same time, their catcher from before will still get some playing time. navarro is shoppach with a little less power, and more avg and OBP.
I would not even say that shoppach is better enough than navarro to warrant a vast majority of the playing time…
just saying about him starting.
I have a hard time taking anything you say seriously. This is not a value statement about the validity of what you say, merely an observation of my own bias, borne on the opinion that you might be a moron. You assertion that Redmond is an equal replacement for Shop and your reliance on idiot stats cast your opinion in a weak light.
Everybody should get ice cream every day.
well..I am of the opinion that you have no Idea anything about my intelligence.
I never said he was an equal replacement for shop. I said he is a somewhat servicable replacement. what this statement means (and I can’t believe I have to explain it) is that there will be some drop off, but it will likely not cost the indians any wins.
You want an honest appraisal, in public?
by Jay on Jan 17, 2010 10:15 PM EST up reply actions 2 recs
well, your opinions are subjective, not objective! you can believe whatever you want but it is still just an opinion. If someone here would use subjectivity to win an argument, they would be torn apart, but you can be subjective about my intelligence and you seem to think you are spot on?
Well, I think you’re intellectually lazy at best. You write and write and write, but you don’t think critically. You especially lack the ability to assess your own ideas critically. You make your conclusions and then look up stats to support them.
You have a rather poor grasp of statistics with regard to baseball, but you don’t seem to realize that at all. That does not bode well for your intellect overall. A strong intellect can recognize gaps in knowledge and comprehension and will be hungry to fill those gaps. Not to feel smarter and win arguments, but purely out of a hunger for understanding.
You react emotionally to reasonable challenges, and then you use your emotional over-reaction to mask the fact that you can’t answer the challenge effectively. You let your ego run the discussion rather than your intellect. That could stem from a lack of intellect, but then again it could just be insecurity or a generalized anti-social tendency.
You also have a unique gift for drawing otherwise intelligent people into very stupid discussions. You’ve posted about 25 comments a day here in a handful of threads, provoking and sustaining a dozen different arguments. This might be a good thing in general, but in your case, every one of these arguments has been stupid; not one of them has been meaty or edifying or illuminating. I don’t know if that makes you a genius or an idiot or both, but it sure makes this site dumber.
by Jay on Jan 17, 2010 11:45 PM EST up reply actions 3 recs
and on here, i do not put my whole thought every time in what I post which is probably a mistake.
to judge my character based on what I post though is inaccurate though.
I do not think you can target me for making this site dumber singlehandedly.
I am of the opinion that you have no Idea anything about my intelligence
Well, you capitalize words that aren’t proper nouns for no apparent reason.
Everybody should get ice cream every day.
this sounds like shoppach. career high BABIP in 2008 and hasn’t been able to repeat it before or since
Completely wrong. 2006-.387, 2007-.357, 2008-.369, 2009-.286. Which one of those doesn’t fit?
The last one, because it’s even and the other ones are odd.
Everybody should get ice cream every day.
Wrong, 2008’s .369, because I entered it incorrectly. It should be .359.
by fwembt on Jan 18, 2010 1:32 AM EST up reply actions 1 recs
I searched my post history on Kelly Shoppach and found this.
by fleerdon on Jan 18, 2010 7:54 PM EST up reply actions 1 recs
I think you correctly gauged the site’s valuation of Shoppach’s talent in your second paragraph: “Shop could start for most MLB teams.” That’s as much as we thought of him, and it’s still true.
Then, a paragraph later, you go back to that weird straw man argument: “to suggest that Shop is (or even could be) a top-shelf power hitter, an elite hitting catcher… could be evidence of bias.”
Nobody was saying that. We were saying that he could start for most MLB teams, as evidenced by his above-average hitting and average (as far as we could tell) defense. I don’t think this argument is too far out there.
Also, I don’t know how many people are making excuses for him. He has an above-average career OPS+ and has shown that he can hit for crazy power over extended stretches. And he’s a catcher. That sounds pretty good, no excuses necessary.
I wish I hadn’t signed that charter that stated anytime someone said “the site thinks” I was included in the group known as “the site.” I wouldn’t have to constantly look back and regret things I never said or thought.
You know, I really don’t give a rat’s arse about Shoppach. I like the way he became a dissident in the waning days of the Wedge regime, but mostly I thought he looked terrible at the plate. I have no desire to become the resident Shoppach contra.
The claim made on this site was that KS could start for 20 MLB teams. It’s not clear yet what the intention is in Tampa (platooning with Dioner?), but the trade market suggests this assertion was a bit optimistic.
One man’s straw man is another man’s rhetorical device. When it is pointed out that he led all AL hitters in isolated power, one could reasonably conclude he is being compared to other elite AL hitters. I know he’s not Johnny Bench, and so do you, but that’s what it sounds like he’s being called. And where is the average defense?
I saw a different player than you guys did. And a few other teams saw a different player as well.
I don’t think his OPS+ will remain above 100 after this season.
It really makes sense to try to link opinions to actual users as opposed to some “you (plural)” of the imagination.
Both Adam and I are right up there in that second link advocating for the trading of Shoppach pre-2008 and questioning his ability going forward.
In other words, you don’t have the market cornered on contrarianism. This isn’t the monoculture you often imply it is. Acknowledging that occasionally would be, I think, gracious.
Note: if we traded Shoppach for Masterson, I’d be happy. But thrilled may have been an overstatement.
That’s Bendix from that thread. Weird.
The whole sidebar on Masterson is very odd to read in retrospect. Instead of trading Shoppach for Masterson, we gave them Vic!
Man, Bendix and I were really mixing it up! Some good stuff in that thread, I forgot all about it. I am so much more lazy now.
Wow. I wrote a lot about Kelly Shoppach in 2008.
by fleerdon on Jan 19, 2010 12:43 PM EST up reply actions
I really don’t need to cite chapter and verse for irrational exuberance regarding Shoppach. I’ve gone back and looked—it’s there if you wish to search for it.
More important, I don’t want to be ungracious. I’ve admitted committing (many) errors, and I’ve been far more polite to other than some have been toward me.
In no way do I believe I have the “market cornered on contrarianism.” That’s neither a desirable nor sustainable position to hold. (I also might point out that I’ve never claimed anything of the sort.) There can be plenty of contrary wisdom here, but there can also be pack mentality and monocultural thinking (again, out of courtesy, I see no need to offer examples). But over all, I wouldn’t define LGT as a monoculture even if it can be conformist.
I have a different viewpoint from many people on this site (no citations provided) and I am often wrong. Maybe I’m wrong about Shoppach. We’ll find out.
Well, I for one have been a Shoppach-supporter. I also thought he would have a lot of value on the trade market, even now. And when he was traded for Talbot, I came out and said I was wrong. Explicitly so.
What I do know is that I’ve heard you (odradek) go on and on and on about this multiple times in multiple posts, and am surprised that you need to dive into again. Or is it that you are so sure that you are correct (“I don’t think his OPS+ will remain above 100 after this season.”) that you just refuse to let it go. Dude – we heard you.
I think I coined “S.S. Keep Kelly,” odie, but I’d like to believe there was some nuance to my Shop-keeping philosophy. I’m here to answer for it if you feel otherwise. I’m no Sauerbeck.
by fleerdon on Jan 19, 2010 3:54 PM EST up reply actions
I really don’t need to cite chapter and verse for irrational exuberance regarding Shoppach. I’ve gone back and looked—it’s there if you wish to search for it.
And what I’m saying is there’s also a long tradition of long time users being cool on Shoppach: if you wish to search for it. So what is the point in characterizing optimism on Shoppach as something “heralded on this site”, as if the site were either A) an autonomous being or B) a group that had reached a consensus. Since I’m sure you don’t mean the former, I’m assuming the latter.
If your point was simply that it was heralded by somebody at some point in the millions of words on this site, then, well, that’s bizarre. Pretty much anything ever, including Jason Michaels, Metallica, and Lou Merloni, has been hearlded on the site under that definition.
Nearly all of the claims that things are obvious if one looks through the archives have a mirror image: that the contrary viewpoint existed at some point.
To put a finer point to it, I think there’s a community of users who sometimes, perhaps subconsciously, equate Jay’s writing and opinions as some kind of voice of the community. There is no doubt that Jay is persuasive and talented but he doesn’t speak for me, or Adam, or Ryan or many others (nor would he claim to). So, if your argument is with Jay (or any other specific user), for godssake, just use their name. None of this “the site” or “you guys” or any of the rest of it. I’m not going to go as far as to say those are rhetorical devices to allow you to take the ever popular “enlightened outsider from Hawaii” viewpoint, but I will say that it’s confusing. I am a big part of “the site” and more than likely one of some group of “guys” and I don’t want to have to figure out if you’re misrepresenting my viewpoint or just lumping me in with somebody else’s viewpoint that I never agreed with.
It is important to cite specific users because it makes it clear what is actually happening in the conversation.
When it is pointed out that he led all AL hitters in isolated power, one could reasonably conclude he is being compared to other elite AL hitters.
You know, I’ve said some variation of this a few different times now, but let me try once more.
An elite hitter would have more than four months of evidence.
An elite hitter would have prior seasons in the major and/or minor leagues to bolster the alleged inference.
I think I’m pretty consistent in recognizing the problems with small samples and appreciating statistical variation, i.e., flukes. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that I deserve the benefit of the doubt as to what I was and wasn’t implying here.
Especially considering I wasn’t implying it, I was coming right out and saying it, i.e., “He very probably can’t do this trick again.”
I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that I deserve the benefit of the doubt as to what I was and wasn’t implying here.
I agree with this statement.
He made me look like a genius in my fantasy league last year, though.
Welcome back, Sandy! ATALECG...
that isn’t a reason not to like the guy. as a player, I really like the guy…and if he isn’t an overachiever he is ridiculous…
go over to the sabermetrics SB page and check out his diamondview. it is ridiculous
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