Tiger337

31 minutes ago, chasfh said:

They may end up doing so, but they may also be saying this in part to prime the market for an unexpected move on a bat. It's Negotiating 201 to make it look as though you're committed to zigging, so you can spring a zag on people if the price is right.

This is not Dave Dombrowski!  I was surprised that Harris said that because he usually doesn't say anything, but management speak which is fine.  Regardless, after signing Torres, I am not expecting a big offensive acquisition.    

6 minutes ago, TcFlint said:

Without adding to the offense and addressing the strikeouts, this is still a fringe wildcard team.  We will again be shutdown by quality pitching opponents.  I can appreciate the Mets, Dodgers, and Red Sox trying to improve their rosters.

I would definitely like to see them add a quality bat, but they have already said they are going to focus on pitching and I don't see them spending big money in both areas.  

8 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

Is there any evidence about smaller pitchers being more fragile? In the past regime the Tigers almost had a fixation about not bringing in anything but big pitchers - 6'3" and up and I've wondered if that was their reasoning, but that didn't help Faedo, Skubal, or Fulmer - all on the bigger side and TJ victims anyway.

I have asked that question many times about both pitchers and hitters.  Big people tend to be stronger, but I feel as if they are just as likely or even more likely to get injured.  They have to carry around more weight than a smaller person which I think would create more force in every movement and puts greater stress on their bones and joints.  

38 minutes ago, Toddwert said:

So is Torres coming back a bye bye to Bergman?

I am not expecting them to sign any significant offensive help.  I expect them to sign a couple of legitimate relievers.  I am hopeful they will also add a good starter, but not confident about that.

9 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

I'd never even noticed the arrows.

They say "Toggle this category". 

I don't think anyone over 60 can see those arrows! 

But thanks again Edman.  

1 hour ago, kdog said:

Tigers 40-man moves Added: IF/OF Trei Cruz IF Hao-Yu Lee C/1B Eduardo Valencia C/1B Thayron Liranzo LHP Jake Miller

DFA'd: RHP Dugan Darnell RHP Jason Foley LHP Sean Guenther RHP Jack Little RHP Tyler Mattison RHP Tanner Rainey

Lots of 40-man turnover already.  

I like Trei Cruz's .411 OBP! His offensive grades are not good, but is supposed to be an asset defensively.  Might be be a good bench player.  

Petzold says: Cruz, Valencia, Miller have been added.  

52 minutes ago, Shelton said:

I don’t think we need everyone to get it, but I think if you pay enough attention to baseball stats and have heard of WAR, and care enough about it to pay a modicum of attention to it and discuss it, you aren’t the person making that claim at the end of your post. That person should be left alone, and possibly shunned. 

Among my online friends, pretty much all of them meet this definition. In real life, most of them still use pitcher wins to evaluate pitchers. This is why I am online so much! 

1 hour ago, chasfh said:

Player's individual accomplishments do contribute to run totals, runs do contribute to wins, and there's good research indicating that ten marginal runs contributed by a player results in a win, so I think it's valid to express it in wins.

But I think the correlation between production and actual runs is higher than the correlation between production and wins.   

48 minutes ago, chasfh said:

I view this as a question different from, "how many wins did he contribute to?"

I would assume that a two-win player contributed to a lot more than two wins.  The Tigers theoretically won two more games because Baez was on the team rather than Kreidler, but surely Baez contributed to a lot more wins than two.  I am not sure everyone gets the distinction or even thinks about it, but I have heard people claim things like the Tigers would have lost 100 games if Skubal was not on the team.   

How can I hide this forum.  I had it hidden for a few months, but now it's back again.  Somebody sent me a message (on twitter) showing me how to do it, but I no longer have access to that message.  Politics just gets me pissed off now and my life is better when I get away from it.  

Harris needs to shake it up!

41 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

Good point. If you are going past 1 sig fig you ought to also add the C.I.  🤔

With the uncertainty around fielding statistics, I would be afraid to see the CI's!  

43 minutes ago, Shelton said:

Sure, but you could also just multiply by 10 if you want runs. Wins feels more user friendly and tells a better story for what is already a shorthand stat. It’s easy to point to McKinstry and his 1 war and Bregman and his 4 war and consider the value of adding three wins all things being equal. Wins may be a team stat at the end of the year but it’s a team made up of interchangeable pieces, and we don’t care too much what a team’s run difference is at the end of the the year if the team has the necessary number of wins (even if they are intertwined).

For the casual fan, I agree wins sounds good, but then I can imagine someone asking: "which games did he win"? 

Another thing I like about runs is a wider range of integers.  With wins, you have 1, 2, 3, ... wins and there is a big difference between each integer and most of the players are either 0, 1 or 2.  Somebody could have 1.5 wins or 2.6 wins, but that doesn't make practical sense.  With runs, you have more integers, so you can make a leaders list without decimals. 

It's not really a big deal, just a preference I have.  

4 hours ago, chasfh said:

I did not realize that. OK. If they could spool that out to tenth of a point, I could see it being paired with something like oRAR to arrive at something close to what I'm looking for. There may be some fatal flaw in this but I'm probably done thinking about this topic for a while.

I actually would like to see RAR rather than WAR regardless of how the stat is constructed.  I think of Wins as more of team stat.  Players don't win games by themselves.  They win partial games by producing and preventing runs.  And it's pretty easy to translate into wins if someone favors that.  It's basically just dividing by 10 (as you suggested in your post).  

1 hour ago, chasfh said:

I think you're right on this although I would bet that average minor league fielders are a lot closer to average major league fielders than average minor league hitters are to average major league hitters.

I agree, but the difference is still noticeable.  It might be because I can follow fielders better in person which is the case when I go to a minor league game.  It's hard for me to judge hitters in person.  

2 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

It's a funny thing though, it certainly is true that good fielders are a dime a dozen compared to good hitters, but just because that is true, we (well at least 'I'..😉) tend to think they should be more common than they are -- so I'm always a bit surprised when a minor leaguer with a weak bat or a utility guy gets called up and their glove is only mediocre at best. If you don't have a big bat and can't field how do you even get to AAA? 🤷‍♂️

I think we may underestimate the difference between fielding in the majors and minors.  When I see minor league games, I notice the difference in fielding between majors and minors as as much as I notice the hitting and pitching differences.  It's a whole different game in the majors.   

2 minutes ago, chasfh said:

WAR is replacement based and DRS is average based so that’s a mismatch. It would be closer to say WAA = oWAA + DRS. I dont know whether that would be the answer either. 

Average DRS is considered replacement level.  The reasoning is that a terrible hitter who can field his position at an average level is not hard to find.  If your starting player goes down with an injury, you can usually find a find a weak hitter who can field reasonably well.  

42 minutes ago, Edman85 said:

I am sad I missed out on a lot of the nitty gritty talk last week. I probably won't have much nerd time until after Christmas though 😀 

I don't have time either, but nerd time is a priority!

So, who wants to talk about Park Factors today?😃

3 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

I like that. For me it just goes back the idea that I find it nonsensical for an above average defender at any position to be considered as having cost his team runs/wins. That part is only a matter of the semantics of what the unit is called. If you are going to call it Wins above replacement, than no above average D player at any position should be rated as costing his team wins, because they didn't in any reasonable sense. He may not field like a SS, but his contribution was not negative. So if you call it something else that goes away. 😉

I would have been happy to just keeping fielding separate from hitting and not trying boil everything down to one number.  If you do want to arrive at one number for a player's value though, I do think you need to consider the position they play.  If a DH goes into the Hall of Fame or wins an MVP, he should have to hit better than his peer who plays a position.  

He was

40 minutes ago, Arlington said:

I looked at Edgar Martinez' stats and, unless I am reading things wrong, and I probably am, he appears to have been a better defending DH than the replacement DH.  https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/martied01.shtml

He was a good defender early in his career.  Then he started having hamstring problems and became a fuill-time DH.  

I hope that Torres accepts the offer.  There may be a couple of more interesting options in free agency, but it sounds like the Tigers will be pursuing pitching more than hitting and I wouldn't want them to lose Torres and not replace him.  

6 minutes ago, IdahoBert said:

If I were drinking man, which I’m not, I would be reaching for a drink right now to drown out the sound of the crickets because of the inactivity in baseball news affecting roster changes. 

It starts getting interesting on Tuesday:

November 18 is the deadline for players to accept or decline qualifying offers and the deadline for teams to set their 40-man rosters to protect players from the Rule 5 Draft. 

Speaking of the Rule 5 draft, has anyone seen Liston lately?  I don't think he has posted since the summer?