Greinke’s Frustration
Last week, Zack Greinke spoke pretty candidly about his thoughts on the Royals organization. Needless to say, he’s not a big fan of where the organization is currently at. Years of losing have a way of taking a toll on a player’s loyalty.
As I flew up to New York last week for our live event, I was pondering Greinke’s comments. As most people know, he’s part of the stable of pitchers that like advanced statistics, and will look at sites like this one to evaluate how well they’re performing. He quoted FIP at his Cy Young Award press conference last year. Odds are pretty good that not only does he look at his own stats here on the site, but he looks at some of the other metrics available and some of the commentary as well.
Needless to say, none of it has been very favorable towards the Royals the last few years. If Greinke is looking at his own FIP, he probably knows that Yuniesky Betancourt ranks as one of the worst defensive shortstops in baseball by UZR, and yet he had to sit and watch as his team traded for Betancourt to try and turn ground balls into outs. Imagine the frustration of a guy who is being told to pitch to contact believing that the shortstop his team is excited about acquiring has the range of a wilted fern.
So, when someone asked me at the event on Saturday what I thought the effects of sabermetric ideas and statistics gaining traction with players was, this was the first thing that came to my mind. It is certainly not our intent to cause discord between players and their organizations, but I have to wonder if part of Greinke’s frustration with the Royals stems from the fact that the advanced statistics that interest him paint a poor picture of almost everything that Kansas City does.
If more players begin to take an interest in evaluating themselves and their peers in this way, it will be interesting to see if there’s a trickle-up effect. In some sense, it’s easy for Dayton Moore or Ed Wade to dismiss the criticism of their moves as just the rantings of fans, but it is a much more delicate situation when that frustration is coming from your best player. Will owners be willing to continue hiring GMs who ignore UZR if their pitchers are using it to determine how good the defenders behind them are?
Perhaps Greinke, Bannister, and Scherzer are just outliers, and we won’t see any serious uptick in this kind of statistical usage by big league players. That’s certainly possible. On the other hand, though, if this becomes more prevalent in major league clubhouses, it could present an interesting dilemma for teams that don’t really want to use these kinds of numbers to make decisions. Pressure from your players is a lot different than pressure from your fans.
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From which MLB players do we have documented quotes that they refer to fangraphs.com or other similar websites?
Yikes – Dave is too good a writer to put something like this in print: “Needless to say, he’s not a big fan of where the organization is currently at.”
It’s funny that from this whole article, this is the only thing you find worth pointing out. Come on now. With all the columns, posts, etc Dave writes, there are bound to be some silly word mash-ups here and there. It’s not even that bad.
Dave, being a primary contributor to this site, should take more care in his writing. The state of writing on this continent is awful because we continue to make excuses for mistakes.
I will proudly admit, I have no idea what the grammatical (word?) mistake here is.
If by “awful” you mean “not perfect,” then you are correct.
Ending sentences with prepositions is a sort of behavior up with which we must not put!
Is that something up with which you will not put?
Damnit Churchill, you beat me to your own quotation!
I’m not seeing the problem. Do you actually think ending a sentence with a preposition is ungrammatical? It isn’t.
It is in that case, but not all cases.
Get a few arbitrators to pay attention to the newer stats and I guarantee you that agents, players, and any remaining organizations that don’t pay attention to the stats will change their tune.
decent article by #6org
Good point, I think this is a definite possibility. He can’t be happy about Mike Aviles at second or David DeJesus being lost for the season, either.
Maybe Zack Attack should give Dayton Moore a basic tutorial on sabermetrics?
(Note – I am an avid fan, supporter, and recommender of this site. I’ts awesome)
Trust me – 99.999% of athletes do not give a sh*t about anything to do with this/similar sites. No offense to the authors, fans, or participants, but these guys work outrageous schedules and spend any free time they have w/ family and friends. NOT frangraphs.com.
*fangraphs.com
yea, it’s not like they’re on planes for hours at a time with nothing to do but play around on their iphone/blackberry
Out of curiosity, how might you know what 99.999% of athletes do with their free time?
5 significant figures eh? Sorry, I can’t trust you.
They live out of hotels w/o their families for 82+ days a year. They’re also off usually 4 months a year. I think they can fit in checking out drudge or fangraphs.
Perhaps he is confused and is referring to frangraphs. Because you can trust me that 99.9999% (+/- .00004) percent of big leaguers have better things to do than visit that particular site.
We all have better things to do than check this particular website, yet we are all still here!
Interesting post Dave. In this case, I wonder if you’ve got the right player/scenario. To me, Greinke’s comments sounded like typical player whining about wanting established vets over a youth movement. Sure, he might have some residual disconnect with the organization, but he might also be mad that an awesome guy like Dick Ankiel ain’t around anymore.
I wonder if Ichiro! is into this. He seems to have a keenly balanced mind that would appreciate advanced metrics along with philosophy and traditional baseball views.
“Plus he’s Asian so he must be good at math”
lol @ lol
I think Zack will feel better over the next couple of years, if he is still around, with Moustakas, Hosmer, Gordon, Butler, Lamb, Myers, Montgomery, Kila all already there or on the way. Their farm system looks great right now.
What Zack said, however, is he has two years left on his contract, and he doesn’t think much of the farm system will make an impact in those two years. Montgomery, Lamb, and Myers are definitely not going to make an impact in two years. Moustakas, let’s see if he adjusts to a stadium that doesn’t give him ridiculous numbers (see Hosmer in the same stadium, a sudden jump in performance). Hosmer, I doubt will be up until late next year, if not 2012.
Yeah, which is why I said “if he is still around.” You are of course right about Moose and Hosmer needing to prove it (just like Gordon does). I think Hosmer will be called up by late 2011 if not sooner. Montgomery is in AA now, so he could be up next year at some point if healthy, too, and Lamb is also in AA. A late season call-up in 2011 isn’t that far-fetched.
Greinke doesn’t have to leave when his contract is up. My assumption is he’d go to the worst team with a horrid farm system and no grasp of advanced metrics if they pay him the most.
ML organizations seem to have a complex relationship with the saber-stats community (except the Mets and Royals who believe saber-stats is a reference to fencing)- If an organization like the Red Sox is using UZR (or an extremely similar system) the have to play it down or risk feeding the agents and arbitrators ammo or seeing their players devalued in the eyes of the less savy teams (see Theo’s “slam” on UZR this off-season in relation to Ellsbury). At the same time, wider acceptance makes it easier for them to operate intelligently without suffering backlash from their fan base. They have distinct monetary reasons to both praise and disparage sites like this.
Wasn’t Ellsbury’s UZR adjusted after Theo said that? or rather, there were some park adjustments made and Ellsbury’s went up somewhat?
Greinke’s comments came after the Royals traded Pods, Farny, Ankiel and cut Guillen so I doubt he was looking at advanced statistics. Greinke signed his extension with the reasoning that the org was bringing in the talent to compete after trading for Jacobs, Crisp and signing Farnsworthless again not the best example of a guy looking at advanced statistics.
Zack probably knows as much about the Chipotle menu as he does about UZR and I wish Bannister could actually prevent a HR as opposed to telling someone he is just unlucky. Bannister should lookout during the next lightning storm because he definitely will get hit by the Miguel Cabrera lighting strike.
Thank you! I can just hear it in the clubhouse: “Hey Yuni. These guys say you suck!”
“Uh huh.”
But really, how’s Dayton supposed to say to Greinke that the team needs to suck for one more year and then we’re gonna get real. I have no doubt that’s the plan, but you can’t say it to the players. And for that very reason, the Royals aren’t going to freak out about Greinke saying it. Proves he cares. And gives Dave another way to say players care about this stuff.
Yeah, I noticed that disconnect. I understand he may be gone by the time the prospects show any results, but if he gets advanced metrics he gets why getting rid of Pods and Guillen et al makes sense.
I think in coming years, advanced statistical/internet analysis will become more a part of the discussion. It will all be part of the cloud of perception around a FO. If a GM or manager becomes embattled and is criticized heavily in the media, you can bet that gets back to the players and can sometimes alter their perceptions. Eventually, analysis like that on this site will be so mainstream, it will be a significantly large part of the perception cloud.
No, not all athletes have “outrageous schedules.” Heck, Roger Federer took SIX weeks off between tournaments. A lot of tennis players are like this. (Juan Martin Del Potro has been out of commission for months, for example. He’s not doing PT all day) Pete Sampras said that he didn’t practice much in his last few years on tour. I’ll bet he spent about 2 hours practicing daily then.
Distance runners are putting in the time; elite marthon runners do about 110 miles a week (about 10.1 weekly hours of actual running time) plus daily cross training. (weights, plyometrics, etc)
Tell the medical resident that just pulled a 30 hour shift (80 weekly hours) that these athletes have it hard.
Chu Dog says:
August 12, 2010 at 4:50 pm
(Note – I am an avid fan, supporter, and recommender of this site. I’ts awesome)
Trust me – 99.999% of athletes do not give a sh*t about anything to do with this/similar sites. No offense to the authors, fans, or participants, but these guys work outrageous schedules and spend any free time they have w/ family and friends. NOT frangraphs.com.
I love how the typically pompous Cameron’s piece was little more than his stroking himself about how wonderful SABR and Fangraphs are. Given that this man knows more than every single baseball executive combined – remember how spot-on he was about his analysis of Robinson Cano? – it’s a wonder Dave Cameron doesn’t have a job with some MLB team.
No, I don’t remember. Got a link?
Here’s the link: http://www.minorleagueball.com/comments/2005/2/20/93945/3590/19#19
It’s near the bottom of the page.
Here’s the quote: “I guess I should have nominated Cano in the most overrated prospect thread the other day. That he still gets talked up as some kind of top prospect (not pointing at John here, by the way) amazes me.
I’ve seen Cano play a lot, and I’m not even sure he’d be a productive Triple-A player. Let’s start with his defense; it’s brutal. He has terrible footwork and simply lacks any kind of instincts around the bag. There’s no way you want him playing up the middle. He might have the raw speed to not be awful in left field, but that’s about as kind as I can be regarding his glovework.
Offensively, he’s a fastball hitter. He sits dead red on every pitch and waits for a mistake. Any good breaking ball or offspeed pitch will have him out in front. He’s mostly a gap hitter, lacking the power to drive the ball consistently over the wall. To add insult to injury, he’s also a terrible baserunner.
In his prime, I think he could hit .280/.320/.400 while playing awful defense. Yipee.”
Long story short, if he were half the genius he imagines himself to be, Dave Cameron would have a job with a MLB team. Cameron would do well to consider that people who are actually smart and knowledgeable don’t need to remind people constantly how smart and knowledgeable they are.
Sure is easy to pick one comment out of many to make someone look bad, no? Hindsight, she is…such an easy, easy lady!
This one is funny too:
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/morgan-dunn/
God forbid someone has the wrong opinion of a prospect 5 years ago.
The thing that bothers me with Cameron is how cocky and condescending he, along with many other SABR analysts, is. In this example, Cano, in 2005, was a touted prospect. But Dave Cameron just had to prove to the the world how much smarter he is than everybody. He sh*t all over Cano. Two months, Cano was in the major leagues playing solid defense and batting .300. (Somehow, Cameron is really the guy we’re supposed to look to when it comes to talent evaluation.)
If Dave Cameron can be snarky and dismissive of others’ opinions, I’m free to be snarky and dismissive of his opinions. I’m not nearly as impressed with his intelligence and baseball acumen as he is.
“If Dave Cameron can be snarky and dismissive of others’ opinions, I’m free to be snarky and dismissive of his opinions.”
You’re also free to not read his articles.
He’s also free to read them and comment.
Defending freedom is supporting another’s right to do something you can’t stand. Just sayin’,
When people complain about the content or attitude of the site/author, the solution isn’t always “leave and don’t let the door ..”. The result of that scenario is a narrowly-focused website that operates on agreed upon biases and self-fulfilling prophecies.
Well said, . I love baseball, and I love analyzing the game from as many angles as possible. I love this site. I love all the different statistical methods of evaluating a player’s skills and performance that have been developed over the years.
What bothers me is the overarching and draconian terms that I find present in many SABR analysts. Dave Cameron embodies that “either you agree with everything I say or you’re stupid” attitude that I find to be very off-putting. In this specific scenario, I don’t think one needs to be Bill James or Tom Tango to realize the Royals stink and are a dead-in-the-water organization. I certainly don’t think that Zack Greinke arrived at this conclusion after poring over this website and realizing that Yuniesky Betancourt’s UZR is terrible.
I think Greinke makes some adjustments based on the numbers, or at least what Bannister tells him about them. He has discussed HR/FB rate this year in pointing out his low HR allowed for a FB pitcher was fluky last year. Maybe SSS but it looks like after he gave up a large (relative to last year) number of HRs early in the season with a slightly higher than career average FB rate, he conscientiously moved towards throwing more groundballs (career high GB%), which is a strategy Bannister has discussed endlessly.
I suspect that FIP or at least something DIPSy will eventually catch on with pitchers, at least those that do look at their stats (I’m sure some of them are being honest when they say they don’t, I only kept track of my day to day stats and never totaled them until the end of the season). Hitters should like wOBA just as much. Some of the more advanced concepts might not catch on, while other things like gb%, pitch f/x data, and the like will and probably already do show up in typical scouting reports and game prep materials.
I agree. It will catch only …. with those pitchers that play on the bottom 50% defense teams. FIP will always make them look better than ERA.
Players will always gravitate toward stats that make them look good.
I thought Zach had some big anxiety problems and liked playing for a crappy team in a small market? I guess he ideally wanted a decent team in a small market but than probably shouldn’t have signed with the Royals.
As much we get a kick out of seeing guys like Greinke reference FIP, UZR, etc. I feel like players being stat-savvy has no positive impact, and I think there’s a possibility that it can have a negative impact.
Zac was never the same avter they traded Screech for prospects…that’s his best bud!! Plus Belding is ALWAYS riding his ass about this thing or that…
I feel that based on his talents alone Brian Bannister would not be in the big leagues if it wasn’t for his knowledge of advanced metrics. However, if most players paid attention then few could gain advantage from following advanced metrics, so for Bannister/s sake I hope few do for a while.
The question is should he be in the big leagues.
Brian Bannister could know everything there is to know about baseball statistics, and would be because of his talent as to whether he would be in the big leagues or not.
You have it backwards.
riveting analysis Dave
Yes, Dave, you are responsible for Greinke’s unrest.
This is an extremely fair article Dave. The Royals really make a lot of head scratching decisions.
When I saw Francouer of the Mets wanted traded, my first thought, was oh, Kansas City will take him. They seem to like low value players for whatever reason.
As illogical as that seems the track record of these guys isn’t very good.
As good as Greinke has been, it is pretty stunning to imagine how he would do on a great team. Sure, some say he will wilt under the pressure, but he is very talented, and that remains to be seen.
His value is at a massive high right now, but I almost feel like the Royals will trade him and get little in return. We will see.
His perceived value was probably at a more massive high before this season. He’s been pretty good, but not like last year, where, as he correctly notes, he had some hr/fb luck, but his K rate was higher.
maybe it can be a referance,but could not believe
I was at the NYC event and I asked the question Dave refers to in the piece. I think a trickle-down effect is far more likely than a trickle-up. Despite the glaring ineptitude of many GMs, they are being paid to spend the team’s resources as efficiently as possible. Savvy GMs will increasingly use advanced stats if it allows them to exploit the market or better evaluate players. I think this trend will increase as “lifelong gamers” retire and are replaced by executives who were born in the computer era.
Once GMs begin offering contracts based on sabermetric-based player evaluations, the players will have to start paying attention to those numbers. Nothing makes you care like something that affects your employment. Sure, some players like Greinke may take the leap themselves, but as long as players’ contracts are based upon average, RBI and wins, they don’t have that monetary incentive to pay attention.
Some high school kid who is reading fangraphs right now will grow up to work in a GM office. When he gets there, he’s going to use sabermetrics to evaluate and pursue players. At that point, if not beforehand, the players on his roster will start paying attention to their UZR (or whatever we’ve come up with by then).
You know “keen balanced mind that would appreciate advanced metrics” is code for “Asian”. It goes without saying.
Heck, just the other day during the game, Ichiro came up to bat, and one of the broadcasters said “Here’s Ichiro” and the other chimed in “you know he has a keen balanced mind that appreciates baseball metrics”, and both broadcasters winked and nodded at each other.
I find it amusing that everybody says that the Royals and Mets do not employ statisticians. How do you know this? You’re making assumptions based on outward performance and your own misguided belief that, if only sabermetrics were applied, these teams would clearly be improved. As a matter of fact, the Royals DO have statisticians on staff, and have for many years. I can’t speak to the Mets.
You know what team DOESN’T employ statisticians? The Twins. They have stated this publicly, and are known as a stat-averse organization. They believe 100% in scouting, and GM Bill Smith has been quoted saying things like “we know what our eyes see.”
As to what is normally referred to as sabermetric stats and stating that the Royals and Mets obviously don’t care about them, well, that’s true. But it’s true of all teams. Teams that do emply statisticians have their own proprietary stats; they don’t use those available at Fangraphs.
You are right, for the most part.
However, the Twins have began to utilize statistics and it’s analysis. In fact, they hired an individual to handle those duties prior to the 2010 season…and based on their moves and transactions over the last year or so, one would assume they have begun to utilize statistics on top of their scouting.
I think that is the best way to go about it, too. As much as I love and enjoy statistics, I do think you need to continue implementing a scouting side of things.
The Royals have a statistician on staff? Some Royals blogs have been trying to determine who, if anyone, this “statistician” is but have been unable to. How long has he/she been there? What are his/her credentials?
[1] You know who would appreciate these baseball metrics … NERDS … highly educated guys who went to academic colleges, and like to nerd it up. Ohlendorf and the like. Academic types that enjoy the details of a formula/scenario. You know how many of those guys are in MLB? Not many.
[2] I would also bet that guys tend to like sabermetric stuff when they lead in a category. Want me to speak on the wonders of FIP? Show me that I’m the best at it, and my other bad stats are due to team defense. I’m all over that. I’d bet right now, Cliff Lee really appreciates the K:BB metric. It’s probably his favorite stat. *grin*
[3] Not only do many major leaguers not pay attention to what we say … many of them think we have no right to say it. The whole not speaking from experience part. IMO, we’re like a homeless guy writing a book on how to make millions … in the opinion department. The value of sites like this are the extensions of the mega-research done and brought to the masses. But a lot of what is written here is just wrong opinion. If someone were to keep “individual W-L records” for the authors, what would the winning % be for each guy?
[4] The article says that Yuni has the range of a wilted teen. No, Yuni has the range of a major league shortstop, which makes him what? 1 out of 10 million people to have the skill/ability? You really think any athlete is going to come and read stuff like that and give credence to some keyboard jockey’s opinion?
[5] When Crash Davis gets a 5y/110M contract and for justification the GM states, “He has the most WAR of any catcher over the last 4 years.” THEN, Nuke will say, “Hey Annie, what’s all this WAR stuff.”
We drastically overestimate our influence and popularity in the mainstream. Growing, yes? Influential? No. Potential to educate lots of fans? Yes.
You lost me at
“CircleChange11 says:”
You further lost me at “Yuni has the range of a major league short stop”.
You’re likely interpreting that as “range of the average major league shortstop”.
I don’t mind altering the statement to say “he has the range of a professional shortstop”, which still makes him an elite athlete, and not just one who has the range of a withered teen.
I enjoy exaggerated comments in general, but the point I was making is that it’s not likely that a MLB player puts much weight on such comments or will tune in to read stuff like that … especially from a non-peer.
Not surprisingly, last year when Grienke was winning the CYA on a bad team … he was fine.
This year, he’s not happy. Funny how that works.
I’m guessing Mariner players are not thrilled with the direction the team is going, and I would guess that Felix is not thrilled that he’s pitched darn near identical as last year, but his W-L stats are very different.
Pitching is, inherently, a very selfish position. No other position gets assigned a Win or Loss.
One would have to ask, “Why did Grienke sign the contract with the Royals?”. Surely there was enough recent history of both MLB and the KCR to know that they’re aren’t going to compete any time soon.
No Greinke wasn’t happy last year either. He quite pointedly mentioned last September when the Royals went on a little bit of a run, that it was meaningless, they’d done it in 2008, and they still sucked in 2009. The winning record the team made in September 2008 was probably a factor in his contract extension, even some savvy Royals fans who knew that acquiring Farnsworth, Jacobs etc. were huge mistakes thought they’d perform better in 2009 than in 2008. (See this thread: http://www.royalsreview.com/2009/4/4/822885/optimism-and-anxiety-mingle ) A few members of the media even picked them to be “the new Tampa Bay” and to win the division. Greinke himself predicted in ST, when pressed by the media, that the team would win 85 games. There was actual optimism (however misguided that seems in retrospect) surrounding the big league team at the time. The other thing of course, is that Greinke himself has changed from some meek unknown middle of the rotation guy in a small market who’s just glad someone wants to give him a lot of money to play baseball, to a national media star who is well aware that there are at least 20 other eams currently better than the Royals who would covet his services at an even higher price.
I said he was fine, not happy.
The royals are trash. I’d probably have anxiety problems too if I had Y. Beta not fielding ground balls behind me.
If the Cowboys loose this Sunday in Houston, I think Coach Phillips deserves to get sacked by Jerry Jones.