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Honest question bccran, have you ever had any kind of class or education in statistics, research methodology, or anything of that nature? I have when I was in grad school, and . . . .
Note to self. Don’t ever start out a post this this way.
Sure, if that came across as me trying to sound smart, that was not my intention. Grad school mostly taught me how much I don’t know about everything!
People can champion analytics all they want and they have their place but they aren’t the end all like they seem to be now. With stuff like that back in the 80s, we wouldn’t have had the running the bases teams we had. By having them now, people strike out way more than they should because analytics teaches you that striking out is better than putting the ball in play just because you might hit into a double play. Sorry no, that’s just pure madness. I’d rather have a coaching staff spread through the organization that can see exactly what each player brings to the table, where they excel, what they need to work on. People that just rely on these fancy stats, I don’t want them on the team, send them some place else. I want baseball people.
Every organization uses a combination of traditional approaches like scouting, teaching fundamentals, all the stuff that’s been around for 100+ years, in combination with using analytics and technology. This idea that it’s one or the other is not really true, it’s just how it is usually framed in sports talk radio. A lot of ideas attributed to analytics have been around for decades, like pitch tunneling or swing mechanics that increase power. It’s just that these things are much easier to teach and refine using things like sensors and high speed cameras.
I can see how people would find watching the game as it’s played today and find it less appealing than the 90’s or the 80’s. Frankly, pitching throughout the league hasn’t been this dominant since the sixties. Stringing several base hits together in an inning is much less common in part because nearly every pitcher throws 95+, has filthy breaking pitches, and pitchers have been cheating to increase spin rates. This led hitters to sell out for power and walks, not caring about strikeouts. Again, it makes sense because stringing several hits together hasn’t been this hard since the days of Gibson and Koufax. But it means there is a lot less action which is not satisfying.
I think the league needs to make changes that will make pitching less dominant, similar to when they lowered the mound. Any well run league should be making rule changes to encourage more offense. I differ from you in that I don’t think having hitters go back to old fundamentals like flattening their bat path to make more consistent contact would really change things in any substantive way. Pitching is just too dominant right now and until the league does something to address that, this is the game we will have. Hopefully Theo Epstein in his new role with the commissioner’s office can come up with some good rule changes.
dac – Brian has taken some personal shots at me out of the blue, and I’ve responded in kind. He’s done it in his role as a poster rather than in the role of a moderator. That’s all. His comments haven’t been about my breaking posting rules. Just baseball/Cardinals things in his opinion he disagrees with me about. Other posters have noticed it, and commented about it. I know him personally and don’t take offense with it at all.
And when there’s a problem on the Cards, like the outfield issue, I do tend to continue to refer to it. Other posters at times do the same thing without being called out for it.
Why is that, dac?Because when you debate things you tend to make straw man arguments and misrepresent people’s points, which is frustrating for people to deal with. You also move the goal posts a lot rather than refute a persons point. I made an argument about pitcher wins being a flawed stat, which you said nothing about, then made a comment about analytics being what’s wrong. I pointed out the most successful organizations in baseball also seem to be the best at using analytics, again you said nothing to that point, then made a comment insinuating that I don’t have the intelligence to understand the human element. Frankly, doing this over and over is frustrating. I wish you would just say what you really feel, which seems to be that you think the statistics you grew up with and your understanding of the game are enough, even if every front office in baseball would disagree with you.
To your point about TLR, he was a great manager of people, singularly focused on what it took to be successful day in and day out. But he was notoriously a terrible front office executive and did not last long in that role despite his reputation. It’s no surprise he is back at managing, as that is what he is good at. FYI, his organization famously prioritizes analytics and the front office has much more to do with the success or failure of a team than any manager does, especially a manager in his first season with that group of players.
dac – one of the rules that Brian insists on is not to put another poster down in a personal regard. I have also been a counselor (for many years) working with youth and people who are going through difficult times. It’s best on this forum to deal with a post and not with the persona of the poster.
That’s fine if you feel I went too far. Though I’ve seen you do the same thing to people on this board since I’ve been here, running topics into the ground and complaining when others challenge you, especially when Brian does it. You were being condescending towards me, you just didn’t say it directly to me and chose to say it to blingboy instead. There’s really not much of a difference.
blingboy – that story about Willie is going to go right over the head of some of the stat nerds on here. They just don’t get the human aspect of the game.
Do you know how to debate something without making strawmen arguments? FYI, my day job is in mental health as a counselor. I have a great appreciation for the human element as it is kind of my job.
I hope for your sake nobody in your life expects you to grow and change when presented with new information, as you seem to really struggle with that. Instead of arguing the topic, you and blingboy just move to a related topic, make another straw man, and just continuously move the goal posts of what is being talked about. We started talking about batting average, then moved to pitcher wins, then to analytics, now the human element. How much further should we go down this rabbit hole of baseball understanding? Tell me more about this great baseball wisdom you have access to that has been left behind by these front office executives who are obsessed with nothing but their fancy numbers and nonsense acronyms that could never tell you more about a player than what you can see with your own two eyes and know deep in your gut!
I’m sure Girsch has a background steeped in analytics, just like every other front office executive in baseball at this point. That doesn’t mean he knows how to apply this stuff as well as other organizations. Some organizations seem to be really good at it, others not so much. That is why I’ve been advocating we poach executives from the front offices that are innovating in this stuff. Clearly, every front office uses analytics but they are not all equally good at it.
Eurodandy, so because Mozeliak has been bad, analytics are meaningless? Should the Dodgers stop using them? The Rays? The Giants? The Astros? Or maybe should we just ask if Mozeliak knows how to apply this stuff as well as those other front offices?
Bling boy, was Jack Flaherty a better pitcher than Jacob DeGrom this year when Jack was healthy? He had good peripheral stats and had way more wins than DeGrom at the time. If you are attributing the wins Flaherty got solely to his skill and not at all to the fact he was averaging something like seven runs of support from the Cardinals offense per game, then I guess Jack must have the superior intangibles to DeGrom. The year Gibson set the era record, Denny McLain won 31 games. With Mclains superior win total, he must have been the better pitcher that year, correct?
Yeah, those “old school” baseball writers
didn’t know what they were talking about.
Naive guys like Red SmithI admittedly didn’t know who Red Smith was, so I googled him and apparently he was hugely influential in sports writing. I assume by choosing him you are saying essentially, “see, this important writer agrees with me, so I must be correct.”
Honest question bccran, have you ever had any kind of class or education in statistics, research methodology, or anything of that nature? I have when I was in grad school, and one of the biggest lessons you learn in those classes is that measuring things correctly is hard and people frequently look past the flaws of the metrics they are using which leads to poor conclusions. Over time, fields of study find better ways to measure things that improve upon the flaws of previous metrics, that is normal and a good thing. People who refuse to adapt tend to get left behind. It’s funny to me that in sports there is a large segment of people who think however things were measured 100 years ago is how we should measure things today, or that we’ve learned nothing new about what sort of things we should value in a sport since the days of Babe Ruth. That line of thinking makes no sense and would never be taken seriously in other fields, but with sports it’s ridiculously common. Red Smith can be a great sportswriter and still be very wrong about this particular topic.
When somebody says BA doesn’t matter I think to myself the same thing as when somebody says, as to pitchers, that wins doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter to whom?
Even this one is another poor example because it’s a flawed stat. Team wins is important but pitcher wins is inherently a flawed stat. It generally captures some things well, like if a pitcher is going deep into games and is able to keep his own team in the ballgame, but again, if you are trying to measure those things there are better stats to look at. The reason pitcher wins is flawed is because it also captures how much run support a pitcher gets, which has nothing to do with pitching. Should DeGrom or Hernandez not have won their cy young’s because they had pedestrian win totals due to poor run support? There were old school baseball writers who thought so and it was completely ridiculous.
It’s sure something to look at along with other stats.
I guess if you are going to look at several stats, sure, it makes sense to look at batting average. But there are much better metrics out there that incorporate and weight all the different traditional box score stats into one easy to understand metric, which also adjusts for things like stadium effects and league performance as a whole. In your post earlier, you just listed batting averages to make your point. If you are going to just use one stat, there are better ones to use is all I was saying.
Bccran, the reason front offices have moved away from batting average as the most important offensive metric is pretty simple, it treats a single the same as a home run and says nothing about getting on base via walks. There are much more useful metrics to look at that do a better job of capturing how good someone is at hitting.
gscottar, I’m kind of torn on what to think about Nunez. Clearly he has excellent hand-eye coordination and bat-to-ball skills for his age and level. That said, I was hoping for more power than what he has shown this year. Also, he is allergic to drawing walks, similar to Elehuris Montero. I wonder how that will impact him as he advances and faces better pitchers. Remember, Montero dominated A-ball but really struggled when he got promoted and pitchers had better stuff and command. It’s been a couple years since I saw Nunez play in person, but by looking at his numbers I wonder about his plate discipline. Also, if more power doesn’t come, how useful is he as a hitter given he will likely occupy a spot on the defensive spectrum that traditionally expects power, such as first base or corner outfield?
27, my dad and I will be going to see Walker on the 18th. Really looking forward to it! I’m hoping by then he has started to adjust to the level.
I’m more optimistic that there is going to be significant turnover this off-season. Maybe not any big name acquisitions, but we are losing four bad contracts that will free up a lot of money, in addition to guys like Kim, Wainwright and Molina that you will need to make decisions on. The pressure of Arenados opt out will also mean they need to make moves to fix the team. They should finally have an idea of which young players are worth keeping at this point and which ones they can move on from. I just hope they mostly use free agency to fill the holes rather than trading prospects, which has not worked out well for us the last several years.
They simply cannot bring Molina and Wainwright back.
Trade them to a contender for whatever you can get and let them have another playoff season or two.
Its time to say good bye and open up those spots for the rebuild.
As much as that might make sense to us, ZTR, we both know this organization with this ownership doesn’t do rebuilds. They might do a retool, but they will always try to be competitive, even if it is superficially. Dewitt isn’t trying to spend to build a superteam, he wants to spend just enough to have a realistic shot at the division. Something in the 88-92 win range by our teams internal projections. Once we do enough to get to that, we stop making moves. We don’t follow normal cycles of rebuilds, periods of contention, then another rebuild. Dewitt seems to think he would make more money being reasonably competitive every year rather than doing what it takes to build a superteam, which may involve tanking for high picks.
I think one of our organizations strengths is scouting and we are good at development, though not as innovative as some clubs. We are really good at producing major leaguers, guys that turn into two or three win players, and in general we have had a lot of players outperform what prospect evaluators thought they would be. The problem is that in the last few years, some of the most notable examples are doing it for other organizations because our front office didn’t realize what they had or couldn’t give them adequate playing time for them to demonstrate it.
I read an interesting Keith Law article that made me think of Thompson and the year he was having. Law did a study looking at average time to the majors for top 20 picks of the draft over the past twenty years. Basically, the conclusion of the article was that if a college guy picked in the first twenty picks didn’t make it to the majors in about three years, the odds of him being a useful major league player go down dramatically. It just makes more sense to err on the side of being aggressive with college guys if you look at the numbers. Now he did say that doesn’t mean you should promote them before they are ready, but that if they aren’t ready in about three years they likely won’t be important anyway.
I should note, he was only looking at guys picked in the first twenty picks, so those are obviously more talented and polished players, particularly if they are college guys. This also doesn’t take into account how Covid basically stunted the development of a lot of guys in ways that we are still understanding. But I could see why the Cardinals were trying to be aggressive with him if that is what the stats say you should do with college guys picked in the first round.
Bccran, I believe when we acquired Kim it was a two year contract, so he should be a free agent. I probably wouldn’t re-sign him in particular, as his peripherals last year showed that his ERA was a bit flukey, and his performance this year is more in line with his advanced stats. He was definitely a good signing, but I wouldn’t extend him as I think the league is catching up to him. That said, that is the type of signing I would like to see the Cardinals do. Some low-risk, value signings to build out our depth that won’t kill us if one or two don’t work out but could pay off big if they do. Make them short-term, have competition for the rotation in Spring Training and whomever doesn’t make the final five can be used to strengthen the bullpen.
Also, something I would like our organization to be much more aggressive with is acquiring minor leaguers from other organizations and stashing them at Memphis and Springfield. Basically taking flyers on guys that are intriguing but have run out of options from other organizations, just to rebuild some of our depth particularly at Memphis. The Dodgers and Giants are really good at this and it could really pay off huge. They take a lot of chances on guys and many don’t work out, but the ones that do can really help with depth and make your organization much stronger as a result. We should be taking a lot of flyers on guys and churning through them until we find some gems worth keeping, particularly with pitching spots.
Ztr, I’ll tell you what I hope happens. I hope we mostly focus on improving the pitching this off-season and also sign one or two Brad Miller types for the bench. Basically, I would be happier if they tried to make a lot of smart value signings rather than going for a big fish.
The thing I want them to avoid is trading prospects again to target some older star just to placate the fan base. Our system is being rebuilt and we seem to have done well our last couple drafts, but most of our prospects are still years away from contributing. Let’s just be patient, rebuild our system, and focus on making smart moves to build out or depth on the big league club. With the way our depth is at the majors and at Memphis, we may be a few key injuries away from our season getting derailed for the next couple years.
Bicycle mike, apparently Gorman told the front office he preferred to stay in the infield. I think Walker will end up in the outfield as I read he has a good 60 meter time and moves really well once he gets going.
dac, I really can’t argue with your logic on going after the best player available in the first round but it needs to be a slam dunk because that is where most of your draft money is going. I like college players because not only will they get to the majors faster they also have much more of a sample size, thus decreasing the risk in theory. Some of the elite college programs are basically playing at an AA level. High school players are not facing that kind of competition.
Having said that we have been burned by college pitchers like Gingery and Roberts so that plan doesn’t always work. Have to go with the percentages though. Lynn, Wacha, and Hudson all came out of college.
Gscottar, for most teams I think you are right that preferring a college player with your first round picks is the safer, smarter move historically. There are a lot of stats that back this up as it is common knowledge the bust rate for high schoolers is much higher, particularly for pitchers.
But if there is a difference in talent, I would err on taking who you think is the more talented player as the priority. The Cardinals under Flores have been going for high ceilings who fell in the draft with their first rounders, which for the most part has worked out well. Flores seems to care more about tools and upside than experience. That has served us well with Carlson, Gorman, and Walker. Hudson of course worked out well, but there is reason to be worried about Thompson. I like Flores approach of trying to swing big with our first round picks even if that means taking a high school player because we need young stars to populate our aging roster. I also think the elite high school talents have access to much more sophisticated development than they did in years past, so that bust rate difference may shrink with time.
Thanks for the link, GameCard! I will say that Bubba Chandler does seem to fit the characteristics of a Flores type pick. He’s high upside, a superb athlete with tools you can dream on, a high schooler so potentially more growth potential, seems to have excellent makeup. He seems kind of like the pitcher version of Nolan Gorman and Jordan Walker. I know he’s a two way player but he has apparently indicated in interviews he feels his future is on the mound. He will probably be a tough sign since he has a scholarship to play quarterback at Clemson, but he seems to love baseball, so maybe our intel is that he would sign. I’ve seen it reported in a few places that our higher ups have been seen scouting him in person which is why he’s starting to get mocked to us. I imagine we would have to go over slot to sign him.
My draft preference would be that with your first pick you should take who you think will be the best player regardless of how long it might take them to get to the big leagues. Basically, don’t pass on a Jack Flaherty (high school guy) to pick a Dakota Hudson (college guy) solely because a college guy should get here faster.
That said, I think they should prioritize pitching in the first ten rounds at least. If a bat falls that they really like, by all means grab it. But pitching should be the focus.
Yeah, you are probably right about it going against the organizational philosophy. We’ve traded bonus pool money in the past for prospects like Lane Thomas. But I don’t think we’ve ever done it in a trade for a comp pick.
The reason why I suggested trading ifa bonus pool money is that I suspect our current strategy of spreading the money around to a lot of players who are rated lower probably isn’t paying off. We have struck gold every once in awhile, most notably Oscar Taveras. But the strategy as a whole I wonder about as a lot of the star prospects that were ifa were at least ranked in the top 30 the year they were eligible.
