Willingham has an insane BB/K ratio.

The goal is to find players who exceed 50% in dominance and are at 20% or lower in disaster fir the year. Those numbers mean that in 50% of the weeks you’ll love him and in 20% of the weeks he’ll kill you.

Bay is the clear winner here. He has a Dom of 67%, a Dis of 26% and a QC of +30. Willingham has a Dom of 52%, but a Dis of 37% for a QC of -44.

Despite the evenness of the season’s performance, There will be two more weeks that Willingham kills you than Bay. Some of the disaster from Willingham was due to personal issues and a virus in June and a low BABIP in September. He should get more at bats this year which could even things out.

I’m in a head to head, weekly scoring, snake draft league. Do you feel that Jason Bay will benefit more by a move from Fenway Park to Citi Field, a field that killed David Wright last year than Willingham will with a year free of the personal issues with more playing time.

In our league, Jason Bay is a second round pick; Willingham 27th. I’ll take my chances that Willingham will straighten out his disaster rate with more playing time. He has the rest of the tools.

That’s interesting. I would have been one to say that having Adam Dunn might have just as many positives as negatives. But, if what you say is true, then I would need to rethink that.

My primary train of thought is that a base-clogger gives the defense more options than if it were someone with reasonable speed. I was thinking in terms of middle infielders being able to play a ittle further from the bag in DP situations and/or 3B’s having 2B as an option for a force out on a ranging play where they might not have a great shot at the runner at 1B. But, those situations might not be very frequent.

There would also be the issue of wanting your big bat to hit the ball and try to score a runner on base, versus taking a walk on an open base. But that too has the potential to be a positive, perhaps more so than any negative that our/my perceptions might dream up.

The key factor would seemingly be the quality of batters that hit behind them. Regardless, neither a sped guy nor a base-clogger is going to score from 1st on a routine single, while both likely score on a double (especially if the throw is cut off to prevent the runner from going to 3rd on the throw home) may even make the difference even less.

Fast guys
Jeter, career: 96.28 Runs Scored / 600 PA
Damon, career: 94.33 Runs Scored / 600 PA

“Base cloggers”
M. Ramirez, career: 95.75 Runs Scored / 600 PA
Giambi, career: 85.48 Runs Scored / 600 PA
Dunn, career: 86.39 Runs Scored / 600 PA

And 1-2 hitters scoring is 8.4% higher than 3-6 hitters anyway according to 2009 MLB splits, because 1-2 hitters have better hitters to score them vs. 3-6 hitters. So, factoring that in and you get…pretty much no real difference.

Please tell me if this is a crazy comment, but could it be that the guys who score more runs are the people who bat in lineups that have really great hitters hitting directly after them (like, say, the three New York Yankees whose “speed” and “aggressiveness” you seem to suggest is the reason for their run totals, rather than, say, having A-Rod and Mark Teixeira hitting directly after them)?

And could it be that guys like Manny Ramirez, Jason Giambi and Nick Johnson have a hard time breaking 100 runs because they don’t always play that many games, and don’t hit in the middle of the order for the New York Freakin’ Yankees? Manny’s comfortably broken 100 every year since he joined the RedSox when he’s passed 600 plate appearances, whereas he’s been in the 80s in the years he’s only made 500-odd PAs. Spooky stuff.

“I have notice that people tend to view onbase in isolation, rather than to connect it with it’s end goal — run scoring”

Could you not have said “I have noticed people tend to view players’ solo accomplishments, instead of looking at factors that are heavily affected by the quality of their teams”?

1. The fact that Willingham has been exceptionally durable and Bay’s had a leg problem that derailed one of his most recent seasons (and there were murmurs about the RedSox losing interest in signing him long-term after some medical issues came to light) should definitely (at least to some extent) be held against Bay.

2. Willingham (from what I recall, without looking at his numbers) is a slightly better defender than Bay, so even if Bay is a true-talent 15 runs better than Willingham with the bat, recent UZR numbers would certainly suggest their total value will be much closer than that.

All that said, I probably agree with the basic premise of your argument(s), that Bay is possibly a good win or so better than Willingham, although it’s closer than people think…

Let’s see it in increments of .20 wOBA, instead of .50.

I’m surprised it to so long for someone to point out the misleading nature of the scale used in the graph. Go ahead and scale it using .20 and have .200 as the basement and .400 as the ceiling and see how “close the lines” are.

Maybe throw in the highest wOBA and lowest wOBA’s obtained by season-long starters for addition scale/reference.

I think fair points have been made on both sides, but the activity has to be running its course.

All that’s left is for Bay to have a big season in counting stats while being average or below in certain advanced metrics so that the repetitive discussion/debate continues into 2010-11. That’ll be great.

My interest focuses in on just how many “Jason bays” could be ‘mostly replaced’ with the Josh Willingham’s of the world? Certainly there are not that many Major League stars that have no peer equal that is relatively unknown. So, much of the general fan’s value of a player is based on things like all-star games, espn highlights, playoffs, etc …. that it just goes to show that Agassi was right and “image is everything” and as others have said throughout history “perception is reality”.

The situation occurs, and I see this first-hand quite a bit, because most fans don;t ralize when a player suffers a significant drop-off. Bay made a big name for himself in PIT and since then has “not sucked” (he’s actually been pretty good), so his reputation keeps going. There are likely A LOT of major league players that enjoy this type of situation … had a few big years, and then have been just pretty good, and enjoy all the bonuses that come from reputation. My guess is we could “pick on them” quite a bit if an author were so inclined.

Now, it’s time to get off Jason Bay. All that’s left to do is mine for stats where he and is Y.Betancourt are “similar” and then make that leap.

Since when are RBI stupid?

These comment reeks of irony.

David Ortiz had more RBI’s than Joe Mauer, Carlos Lee had more than Matt Kemp, Mark DeRosa had more than J.D. Drew, etc