Slow day because I can't make myself stay up late enough for publications to distribute their content:
There are worse things than Carlos Lee not running hard to first base. For instance, there's the owner, general manager and manager ignoring Carlos Lee not running hard to first base. (emphasis added)I have to give it to Justice on this. I kept waiting for someone to say something about it because I know was doing a lot of screaming at my television and I'm not footing the bill for Carlos Lee's massive contract, but it never happened. I don't get it. He has a weight clause in his contract, which if we remember the McDonald's Spring Training picture, clearly doesn't bother him, he's not hustling anywhere in the game, so why is the front office not up in arms about any of this? Or at least the manager himself? Shouldn't always running down the line come standard on a $18.5 million a year package? It's a pretty simple fix, it should go something like this:
Bull Durham's "Into the Shower" scene (via treborcram)
That's it. Enjoy you Saturday...hopefully the Astros will help us in that regard.
0 recs | 6 comments
Making the Carlos The Lollygagger thing even worse
is that he wasn’t even playing in the field that day. He was the DH. His entire job was to hit the ball and run, and he failed to do half of it.
AstroAndy - June 20, 2009
Yeah, I read that Catcher's ERA thing last night,
and that was my immediate reaction. Basically, RJ is talking about how backup catchers tend to be overrated because of their reputed defense and game-calling skills, so he busts out CERA to show that Varitek and Michael Barret are pretty close together in that regard. Then he reminds us that CERA is absolutely worthless (something we all knew many years ago; I don’t think there was anyone in American baseball who ever took CERA seriously).
I just don’t get what the post is about. If you want to say that CERA sucks, then just link to one of the myriad articles out there about how there’s practically no statistical variance between individual CERAs, because this post just gives you a single example of a player w/o hyped-up game-calling skills matching a player w/ that reputation. Anybody who believes that CERA means something will just say that either this is one odd exception or that Barret really is a great game-caller, we just didn’t know it.
Only_A_Lad - June 20, 2009
I agree with what you say....
and what didn’t compute for me is that I don’t see any relationship between disproving Catcher ERA and saying that back up catchers are overrated. (And, as you point out, he hasn’t exactly disproven Catcher ERA with his examples, but that was unnecessary anyway since most people realize that it’s a bogus stat.) Everyone knows that the range of stats to judge catchers’ defense and game calling skills are woefully deficient. The stats which are available to judge catchers’ non-hitting skills don’t allow us to determine whether back up catchers are overrated. That doesn’t mean they are overrated. (I didn’t realize that there was a wave of fan support for playing back up catchers more often.) However, if he is trying to use his example to suggest that most back up catchers don’t have any redeeming defensive or game calling skills, I disagree. Most of them have a place on the roster for the same reason that no hit/good defense utility infielders have a place on the roster (i.e., their defense gives them enough value to be the 24th or 25th guy on the roster as a specialist).
The whole mushy area of a catcher’s value in working with pitchers can’t be measured. But I think it exists. Otherwise you wouldn’t have pitchers all saying that they prefer throwing to someone like Brad Ausmus. Or even more damning, all pitchers on the Cubs’ pitching staff saying that they want someone other than Michael Barrett catching.
clack - June 20, 2009
I guess
what RJ is doing is preempting an argument that he believes supporters of guys like Ausmus will use (ie: “But he’s got a great CERA!” is addressed by (1) CERA not being very different between a “good” game-caller and a “bad” one, and (2) reminding everyone that CERA is bullshit) But it’s entirely a strawman argument, since I’ve never seen anyone ever take CERA seriously.
I don’t know about that. Players believe a lot of things, but that doesn’t mean that what they believe is true.
I think if we’re going to pin down whether or not game-calling skill really matters, we need to clearly define what the catcher is doing behind the plate:
1) He’s calling for the type of pitch.
2) He’s calling for the location of the pitch.
3) To some degree, he’s influencing the umpire.
Let’s assume that this is a Nuke-Crash situation: the pitcher always throws exactly what type of pitch the catcher calls, and he tries to throw it to the designated spot. He never shakes off the catcher.
Well, if that’s the case, the catcher still only has real control over #1 and #3 on the list. #2 is almost entirely up to the pitcher’s command of his pitches.
The catcher is, at best, influencing the pitcher in the same way a pitching coach can. He can remind the pitcher of a hitter’s tendencies. Other times, he can simply get a pitcher to throw a particular pitch more often (we’ve seen that with Wandy and Pudge this season; Pudge has gotten Wandy to throw his changeup more often, and that seems to have helped him a lot).
The effect of throwing that pitch more often should be measurable (remember that pitch-value thing they’ve developed at FanGraphs?), but it’s probably impossible to tell how much should be credited to the catcher and how much to the pitcher. So I think we actually can measure the effect of #1 on the list.
Only_A_Lad - June 20, 2009
That should read “the effect of #3 will…”
Only_A_Lad - June 20, 2009
I think pitchers know a heck of a lot more about they're craft...
than we do. So if you have many pitchers agree that X catcher is better to throw to than the typical catcher, I tend to believe them. And this goes down through the history of baseball…pitchers agree that certain catchers are better than others at receiving. Sometimes it is visible to us, like when a pitcher and catcher can never agree and alway have to confer. I also think the catcher can provide a comfort level for the pitcher, which can equate to better pitching. I would also mention that the catcher can act as a quarterback for the infield, telling the fielders who to throw to, etc. I always felt that Ausmus was good at that; he always seemed to know the right thing to do with difficult situations.
Yes, these things are next to impossible to measure. So we don’t know the magnitude of the impact. Perhaps it’s small. But I think this is one of the areas we will probably have to rely on the coaching staff to evaluate instead of pure stats.
clack - June 20, 2009
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