February 2009

  • James Light Bulb of the Day - Hitters' Parks

    2 Comments: Join In!
    Submitted by jemanji on 2/10/09 11:00pm

    James was asked one time -- now we forget where --

    Q: In light of the Red Sox World Series victory this year, I thought it was interesting that you wrote in the 1981 Abstract "the lion's share of championships have been won by teams which play in pitcher's parks." Do you think that still holds true today?

    The Founding Father of Sabermetrics quoth:

    I think it is true. I think there are special challenges to winning a championship playing in a hitter's park.

    If you look at the last few years, I'm not sure. Read more

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  • Underrated Players

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    Submitted by jemanji on 2/10/09 10:38am

    Bill James called former Red Sox Darrell Evans "absolutely" the most underrated player in all of baseball history, pointing out that he hit almost all of the criteria on the below list.Here's that James list of criteria that cause players to be under- and over-rated, with a few more recent player examples...

    .....................

    1. Specialists (Omar Vizquel) are overrated; players who do many things well (Randy Winn, Mark McLemore) are underrated.

    2. AVG (Sean Casey) is overrated; BB, 2B, etc (Brian Giles) are underrated.

    3. Read more

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  • Great Catchers and Great Teams

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    Submitted by jemanji on 2/7/09 9:59am

     

    Did you ever count it up?  How many GREAT catchers were associated with GREAT clubs? 

    Just off the top of our heads here, just kinda thinking out loud … we remember who the Two Best are in baseball history:

    1. Bench … ok, Big Red Machine
    2. Berra … what was it, 13 rings?

    So the two best C’s are associated Read more

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  • Catchers Who Are Captain

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    Submitted by jemanji on 2/7/09 9:06am

    === Qwibbles and Bits Dept. ===

    Needless to say, the above list is not a controlled study, just a baseball chat. 

    If you did start trying to control a study, you’d run into major issues in defining the terms, and in isolating the variables …. how do you define which catcher is a leader?  How do you isolate his influence vs. that of his teammates? 

    Obviously many of the above catchers played with some loaded rosters.  …but how many "loaded rosters" — fell flat

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    === Catcher In The Wry, Dept. Read more

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  • POTD Brad Wilkerson

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    Submitted by jemanji on 2/4/09 7:44am

    Once you see Wilkerson for who he is, there's nothing debatable about him.  He's an easy file folder, as it were.   Healthy and in a role, he can help.  As a starting player, yowch.  It would be May, at the latest, before everybody was screaming for whoever the alternative was...

    In 2008, Wilkerson's back and hammy robbed him of power.  His K/BB, K rate, and everything else was as usual, but he left his fly balls on the warning track.  The Red Sox are no doubt stashing him in the minors, in hopes that some R & R will have his power stroke and torque back.  No harm in waiting to see.

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