Beyond the Box Score - A Saber-Slanted Baseball Community

Shocking News: Mets Looking At Other Catchers

by Satchel Price on Feb 9, 2010 2:02 PM EST Comment 2 comments

I came across this report from Joel Sherman while doing my hourly scouring of MLB Trade Rumors.

The report outlines how the Mets can still save their offseason, but it slips in there word of the team's failed attempts to re-engage in trade talks with the Diamondbacks about catcher Chris Snyder because, according to Sherman, "The Mets obviously know they are best served with Santos and Josh Thole at Triple-A for depth."

Now, really? They're better served with Omir Santos being in Triple-A rather than the team's everyday catcher... to offer the team depth? Now, certainly nobody has been waltzing around claiming that Met fans won't miss the days of Mike Piazza soon thanks to Henry Blanco and Chris Coste. Pretty much everyone knows that the Mets need catching help. They had their eyes set on Bengie Molina, presumably to improve upon Santos' .290 career OBP, but he presumably didn't want to give up his status as a middle-of-the-order hitter, so he returned to San Francisco.

But frankly, Santos better serves the team by being in AAA simply because that means that he's presumably very far away from the big league team. At least with Thole there's a chance that he gives you a decent on-base percentage. I don't really agree with Sherman's assertion that they sign Rod Barajas to fix the catching situation, because for all of the solid defense and power that he brings to the table, there's a guy who's pretty much shown that he won't be an upgrade on the Santos/Blanco duo at the plate.

It's this kind of situation that makes you wonder why they didn't go harder after, say, Gregg Zaun, if they were so uncomfortable with Santos being the everyday starter in the first place. Ah, the bonanza that has been Minaya and company's offseason.

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A Golden Age of Third Basemen?

by Satchel Price on Feb 9, 2010 1:32 PM EST Comment 8 comments

More photos » Charles Krupa - AP

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With the exception of Scott Rolen, the early part of the previous decade was a relative down period for the hot corner. Eric Chavez, Corey Koskie, Eric Hinske, Hank Blalock, Aubrey Huff, Aramis Ramirez and Adrian Beltre were among those that were expected to be stars at the position long-term, but injuries derailed Chavez, Koskie and Blalock, and contact, consistency and defense issues forced Hinske and Huff to new positions while failing to totally maintain their breakout offensive performance.

Only Beltre and Ramirez really played as expected. But Beltre primarily only as a defender; his offensive performance has fluctuated from MVP-quality to league average, mostly closer to the latter. Ramirez, on the other hand, broke out with a monster season before the league figured him out, only to make the proper adjustments and re-emerge as one of the best third baseman in the game.

Other top third base prospects of the day either moved off the position, such as Mark Teixeira and Michael Cuddyer, or simply didn't develop as expected for whatever reason, such as Sean Burroughs and Drew Henson.

The position got some help when Alex Rodriguez moved to the position and Chipper Jones returned from his trip to left field, but more importantly, a major influx of quality young third baseman entered the league in the past five years. Headlined at the top are the superstars, three of the games most recognizable stars: David Wright, Evan Longoria and Ryan Zimmerman.

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The Pitching DiamondView is here.

by Justin Bopp on Feb 8, 2010 2:55 PM EST in Graph of the Day Comment 66 comments

The cost of all great combined statistics is both understanding and context. Gross Domestic Product, for example, offers a combined look of various economic measures of consumption, investment, and spending, but overlooks sustainability, quality, and distribution. It's a nice stat that those that understand can glean meaning from, but generally doesn't help the average person understand what is really happening, other than "bigger is better, right?"

Having exhausted what little knowledge my Economics for Administration class and risky use of wikipedia provides, we can look at any statistical approach and see somewhat glaring omissions or oversights in combined one-for-all statistics. Still, the natural human tendency is to look for the one combination of all things known into a single description that tells us everything we need to know about a particular subject. For the NFL, we have QB Rating (ugh), for Physics, string theory, and for social networkers, the still unnamed "# of unwanted comments from ancillary friends per post."

The same need exists for baseball fans. The conclusion I came to after some extended consideration (beer and videogames), is that perhaps the best way to describe some total package of talent is visually, rather than numerically.

Thus, the DiamondView was born.

The Pitching DiamondView tells exactly what kind of pitcher we're looking at.

The DiamondView, as you may already know, is a visual way of describing the classic 5-tool set of hitting, power, running speed, arm strength, and fielding. Combining arm strength and fielding into one point on the graph, the results are something that works for both sabermetricians and the average baseball fan as a single-view tool to understand the type of player he or she is observing. The benefit (and goal), other than looking at the pretty colors, is the ability to look at an unlabled DiamondView and be able to guess which position that player plays. The cost, and why we're here, is the glaring omission of the other half of the game: pitching.

The Pitching DiamondView is this author's attempt to fill that need.

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BtB's "Ball On A Budget" Fantasy League - Discuss Participants, Payrolls and Position Eligibility

by Jeff Zimmerman (TucsonRoyal) on Feb 8, 2010 2:41 PM EST Comment 38 comments

It would be nice to get the WAR draft started as soon as possible, but we do not have enough people signed up to do all the team payrolls, yet alone sending them to me finished (thanks Zach). I will now open up the draft to all the alternates. Just let me know which team you want and get me data. Here is a link to thread for how to do the payrolls. I will begin adding them as I get them to this location. Finally, we still need 4 more managers to help run the league that do not have to do the payrolls, but will have to do a few posts. Let's get the data done so we can get drafting. I know Sky is just itching to get Jose Guillen.

Also, anyone can feel free to join now and select a team to research.

List of participants, teams selected and status after the jump.

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On February 3, 2010, Deep Focus, Inc. withdrew its application to trademark the term "sabermetrics" for social media consulting services.

Sabermetrics was coined by statistician Bill James, who first introduced the word to readers of his Abstract in March 1980, writing: "Sabermetrics is the mathematical and statistical analysis of baseball records." Since that time, sabermetrics has become a ubiquitous part of the baseball landscape at all levels and by players, front office staff, the media, and fans alike. Most major league teams use sabermetrically derived statistics as part of their player evaluations. Members of the Baseball Writers Association of America and others who report on baseball refer to sabermetrics and its metrics on a regular basis. Recently James has said that sabermetrics is a "declaration of no ownership of knowledge."

From a press release by the Society for American Baseball Research, whoever they are.

1 day ago SFiercex4 4 comments 0 recs

Ramblings on WAR

The first part of a sorta series on WAR for Viva El Birdos. Really, I'm just going into the theoretical and not really getting too technical with the exact calculations.

2 days ago vivaelpujols 0 comments 0 recs

Another F-Lop Post

by Satchel Price on Feb 5, 2010 2:13 PM EST Comment 17 comments

More photos » Rick Scuteri - AP

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On Wednesday, I wrote about how Felipe Lopez wasn't getting enough attention in comparison to his positional peer, Orlando Hudson. Well, as pretty much everyone knows, yesterday the Twins made an absolutely excellent deal to sign Hudson for $5M over one year.

Now, I'm not going to talk about that signing. Low relative price, consistently solid player, fits absolutely perfectly into their roster's needs. It's your basic good one-year free agent signing.

Rather, I'd like to ask the question: Why the hell does nobody like Felipe Lopez?

A slightly above average defensive second baseman with legitimate offensive upside who's coming off of the second 4.6 WAR season of his career. His reputation doesn't come close to that of Hudson so he has not garnered nearly the same attention.

Now that Hudson has signed for $5M ~~plus incentives~~ (I knew that) on a one-year deal, what is Lopez going to ask for? Something similar to what Xavier Nady signed for (one-year, $3.3M plus incentives)? Because at something slightly less than the bargain price that Hudson signed for, Lopez could very well make Hudson look like an overpayment.

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DiamondView 2.010: Los Angeles Dodgers

by Justin Bopp on Feb 5, 2010 11:00 AM EST in Graph of the Day Comment 26 comments

If you've been paying attention to this series (or are somewhat of a masochist), you know that the 2009 DiamondView series ended with the Los Angeles Dodgers with calls for something a little less in the past and a something a little more in the future, predictive if possible. One thing lead to another, and blammo, the DiamondView 2.010 series was born.

Rather than go straight back to LA, the new series stayed in the NL West and began with the Colorado Rockies, and continued with the Arizona Diamondbacks, the San Francisco Giants, and the San Diego Padres. To make each of these even better, we invited our favorite writers from each team site to provide guest commentary for each highlighted player, and the combined results have been absolutely fantastic.

It is with that in mind that the final DiamondView stop in the NL West is with the Los Angeles Dodgers, and I couldn't be more proud of how this compares to the 2009 version. It really is impressive if you look at both side-by-side. On top of all that sweetness, I am excited to announce that one of my absolute favorite writers on all of SBN, Eric Stephen of True Blue LA, is here to offer guest commentary for the Dodgers edition. His comments follow each graphic. Let's begin.

CF - Matt Kemp

Batter-cf-kemp_medium

Kemp is the envy of mere mortals. He has power and speed, won a Silver Slugger and a Gold Glove, and topped off his offseason by dating a pop star. He made great strides in 2009, but 2010 looks to be The Year of The Bison, as Kemp moves up the ladder of stardom.

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