FanGraphs Chat – 8/15/12
Dave is a co-founder of USSMariner.com and contributes to the Wall Street Journal.
11 Responses to “FanGraphs Chat – 8/15/12”
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.Click here to view comments in a non-threaded output.
Leave a Reply
|
|
What’s wrong with Brian McCann and would the Braves benifit by using David Ross instead? Would blinking more or less help (for Brian not me watching his at bats)?
Thanks, daily podcast listener.
McCann – matching his career walk rate, matching his career ISO, matching his career K%.
He’s hitting a few more groundballs than usual, which I’d assume has a worse effect on him than a typical hitter since he’s usually playing against a shift.
BABIP 68 points below his career average. He’s fine.
Dave where is your radio spot going to be?
The Joel Guzman thing seems to go up by roughly 1 pageview per minute, which suggests that someone, somewhere has a computer program set up to do just that. I wonder what Joel Guzman is up to right now….
Dave,
I have seen you answer a lot of different variants of the “Can Mike Trout sustain this pace?” and you generally answer something to the effect of – “no, he will be a very good player, but he is probably at his peak because he has skills that peak early (and what he is doing is all-around exceptional)”. All this makes sense in addition to his generally unsustainable BABIP.
But honestly, your insistence on someone being at their physical peak at 20/21 doesn’t seem to line up with everything I’ve heard about human anatomy. I thought men peaked physically at 25/26 and we say that the general baseball player peaks around 28/29. I don’t see any reason to think that between the ages of 21 – 26 that Mike Trout is going to get significantly slower. Additionally, he has already shown good power and every other 20 year player is given room to develop power into his mid 20s. Additionally, we assume players will improve their plate discipline and walk rate. One might also say that his defense will improve as he gets more experience and take better routes on balls.
Overall, it seems lazy/incorrect to just say “skills that peak early, he’ll be a good hitter, but not a great one”. Do we have proof that his skills peak at the age of 20/21? Wouldn’t it be more reasonable to say those skills peak at 25/26? Isn’t reasonable to project significant improvements in power / BB rate for a (barely) 21 year old baseball player like we do for most every 21 year old that is minor league ball?
Anyhow, it goes without saying that I think all your analysis on here is great. For that reason, I have been befuddled by this sentiment that you have been expressing. Overall, I’d be interested to read a more developed analysis of what you have been saying (if there are studies that show we should expect players like trout to regress significantly after their 20/21 season.) Because logically I see a player that does everything well with room to grow in the 2 categories where growth can most easily be projected (BB% / power). Factor in BABIP regression, and you still have one of the best hitters in baseball.
(To be even more long-winded, I’m not simply talking about the question: “Will this be Mike Trout’s best season?” I understand why answering “Probably” to that question is rational.)
i don’t think he has ever said trout will be merely a good player.
shit, my bad, just saw that he did, in fact, say that.
To further specify, he and I said good hitter, not just player. I am sure Dave thinks higher of him as an all around player, given the position scarcity of CF, his defense, and Dave’s placement of him on the Trade Value series.
I was mainly speaking on him comments about Trout as a hitter.
whoops, I was not signed in. The above comment is from me. Sorry for any pronoun confusion.
Without looking at the player pages I have to disagree with Dave on the Zimmerman/Kennedy comparison. I believe Zimmerman has a higher velo fastball and is a ground ball pitcher. AND he plays in a more hitter friendly park. I’ll take Zim over Ken any day. Unless of course Dave is simply speaking of strand and hit rates.
Ok, read all of the chat and see Dave was talking about strand rates with Zim and Kennedy. My apologies. Dave also said Zim is a good AND BETTER pitcher than Kennedy. Read the whole question before answering in the future.