Comments on: Uribe Bounces Back

By: wobatus

wobatus — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 12:46:11 +0000

Phd Brian, of course it is possible to be unlucky 4-5 years in a row P. It is also very possible to be lucky in one year after 4-5 years of normal/bad performance. How often will the guy in his mid-30s go from .275ish babips for 4 years to .325? His gb rate went up and fb rate went down. How predictable was that, or was that just luck (his o-swing rate also went down)? Oh, and he moved to the minor league NL from the AL. :)

Sorry for the delayed response, I was just scouting Uribe for 2010 and came across this dead thread.

By: Jeffrey Gross

Jeffrey Gross — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 07:33:51 +0000

The “resurgence” of 2004 offense Uribe is largely based on his late August+Sept production. Over the last 30 days, Uribe has hit .318/.389/.671 (1.060 OPS). Check the pre-august OPS by month — .733 (apr), .692 (may), .794 (jun), .723 (jul). 7 of his 13 HR have come in the last 28 days. 5 of them in the last 2 weeks. He’s just having an amazing 30-40 game stretch. The rest has been classically passable.

By: Joe R

Joe R — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 13:04:05 +0000

He gave up too many damn fly balls. It wasn’t working at Fenway. 12.66% of FB’s this season have left the yard for him, so it wasn’t even all that flukey a number.

And why should the burden of proof fall on me to show he was fatiguing? He’s 42. He just came back from surgery. Not exactly the makings of a guy who’s about to pull a ’91 Jack Morris.

By: Nick

Nick — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 07:36:30 +0000

Why would they?

By: Nick

Nick — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 07:35:49 +0000

Well, actually is was the fact that you offered no proof to show that Smoltz was “grooving pitches once he was fatigued”, or that he was even becoming especially fatigued for that matter.

By: PhDBrian

PhDBrian — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 20:30:23 +0000

Actually 4 unlucky years is statistically very possible for some player to have. In fact, statistically maybe 3-4 players in MLB are having their 4th or 5th unlucky year in a row. Who those guys are we can’t ever know for certain, but we can make educated guesses that may or may not pay off. Looking at low Babip guys with experience has a better chance of success than looking at high Babip guys. In all things, you only get rewarded if you buy low. Buying high is always a recipe for failure. Uribe was certainly low, so he was a great cheap gamble that happen to pay off.

By: B

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:58:54 +0000

That’s a good question, it’d be nice if there was a little more transparency in how some of these things are calculated (it would be easy enough to include info like this in the glossary, I’d think). Not that I would criticize a free service, or anything. :)

By: Joe R

Joe R — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:47:04 +0000

It’s just funny to me that out of all the Dave Cameron posts that could’ve ended in a shit show, it was this unoffensive one.

Actually anything about Smoltz will likely turn into one as well, but I think that topic’s been beaten into the ground on here when we had all caps mcgee equip himself w/ some pitch f/x numbers and go to war with the me’s of this website because we dared say that Smoltz was grooving pitches bad once he got fatigued.

By: Bhaakon

Bhaakon — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:31:43 +0000

Does IFFB% record all pop-ups prduced, or just the ones that are fielded or fall for a hit? Because if it the later, I’d imagine that the tiny foul territory in his home park plays a large role in the diminished IFF rate.

By: Alex

Alex — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 23:56:47 +0000

“Not all low BABIP guys are “unlucky”, but if you want to find a guy who can take a pretty big step forward in a hurry, look for players like Uribe who have established levels of skill and could be productive hitters with some better results on balls in play.”

Yeah, I mean, this does seem like “I told you so.” Except, not. He didn’t even say at any point that the White Sox could or should have expected this, his main point was just that Uribe’s a good example of the (correct) idea that players with very low BABIPs are pretty good bets if you want to look for value. And yeah, this season is probably a little fluky in the other direction for Uribe (he’s been a little lucky this season with balls in play) – I’m pretty sure Dave would agree with you there. I don’t know why there’s this reductionistic tendency to have to declare that players ACTUALLY suck, like there’s this threshold for sucking beyond which we don’t care about someone’s peripheral numbers. Obviously, this doesn’t exist, and I think Dave would also say that we shouldn’t have assumed that Uribe was a valuable major leaguer last year, just that the natural variation of BABIP should be taken into account when projecting him forward. But congratulations on your impressive combination of straw man arguments and aggressive, smug posting style: it was impressively infuriating.