Carlos Lee is Jennifer Aniston....in a sense. He's in the top group of "least trade-able" players in the majors, which is something we knew since the day he signed his mammoth contract with the Astros before the 2007 season. Our best bet for ever trading this guy: the KC Royals. They just traded for Yuniesky Betancourt and his ridiculous contract. Who's to say that they wouldn't be hankering for an overweight Panamanian DH in the next few seasons??
Steve Campbell penned a nice article about Jeff Bagwell, and his life after retirement from baseball. When asked about possibly being inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame:
It would be great, but it’s not going to change me, Bagwell said. It’s not going to change what I did or how I’m viewed by people. Do I think my numbers are good enough? I think there are a lot of great players out there who have crazy numbers that are better than mine, so I don’t know how that’s going to play out.
First they tell us that throwing curveballs is harmful for youth pitchers, now they tell us it's not.
Doug Brocail is on the comeback trail. He made his second consecutive scoreless appearance Sunday for the CC Hooks. With LaTroy Hawkins set to receive results about his recent MRI, we may end up needing him at some point this season. It's painfully obvious that there are few options in AAA that could help out of the pen....except for that one Norris guy.
Perhaps the Cards gave away more than they bargained for to get Matt Holliday. Clayton Mortensen and Shane Peterson both have value, says Fangraphs. I wouldn't be too sad to see those three prospects they traded away never return to the NL Central.
Regression towards the mean is a concept that we at TCB use quite a bit when talking about a player who is performing either above or below their heads. Are we using the term correctly? One blogger seems to think most people do not.
0 recs | 6 comments
Tal Smith on statistical analysis in baseball...
This Q & A with Zachary Levine:
clack - July 28, 2009
He's a grumpy old man
Timothy De Block - July 28, 2009
The article about regression towards the mean was very interesting.
It’s seems like a fairly basic intuition (most players are probably worse than their statistics look, and so “regression towards the mean” is just the product of greater sample size), but it’s something that is actually pretty unclear.
Only_A_Lad - July 28, 2009
the comments are rather lengthy, and some of them are off target (talking about MGL’s personality, style, etc.), but wading through the discussion, it became clear to me that this concept of “true player talent level” is rather esoteric and hard to identify.
clack - July 28, 2009
sorry, my post above was discussing the BBTF comments on the article.
clack - July 28, 2009
well, they talk about it in the Tango Tiger comments, too.
I think the “true skill” thing is fairly easy to accept, really. Each PA is simply a sample, the result of a combination of true talent and luck. We can’t ever know a player’s true talent level, but batting/pitching results are indicators (and probability suggests that any one player is simply worse than he appears).
It’s like the difference between “the thing we see” and “the thing-in-itself” in Kantian philosophy.
Only_A_Lad - July 28, 2009
You must Login with your SB Nation account and be a member of The Crawfish Boxes to post a comment.