Your analysis was spot on, other than this. Granderson’s most productive season was 2007 in terms of run creation. Yes, his 26 stolen bases (and only 1 caught stealing - very impressive, why won’t he run more?) helps. But so does having Sheffield in his final year of excellence and Ordonez when he put up a ridiculous 363/434/595 hitting behind you. Similar things can be said for #2 Polanco, who got to see the best pitches of his life.
This is the key. You can’t make him into something he isn’t. Sure it would be nice if he struck out less, but if he changed his approach to do so, he may very well lose the power that makes him valuable. At 29 he isn’t likely to learn new skills. Accept him as useful, if flawed, baseball player.
Granderson is not going to bat leadoff for the Yankees. Jeter hit leadoff last year, and if he had that spot when Damon was on the team, it wouldn’t make sense to move him out for Granderson. Granderson might hit second or he might end up hitting fifth or sixth.
Heh. Aren’t you a Red Sox fan? Haven’t you heard about Jorge Sosa already?
Possibly lower, especially against lefties. They have Nick Johnson penciled in for the 2 hole.
I am glad I was wrong as apparently the Yankees signed him today for a 1 year contract at $1.2m.
Not even Red Sox fans have ever heard of Jorge Sosa.
And here’s why the Yankees win and the Mets don’t. The Yankees gave a contract worth a guaranteed $1.2M, with another 300K in incentives, to a solid reliever who will give them depth at a position that isn’t exactly a weak point to begin with.
The Mets, on the other hand, just guaranteed $500K, with an additional $400K roster bonus, to Rod Barajas, who makes an out more than 70% of the time he comes to the plate and will be the fifth catcher the Mets are bringing to spring training. Three of them will be Barajas, Coste, and Henry Blanco, who will be guaranteed a combined $1.7M and are all likely to produce at a level below that provided by the guy, Omir Santos, that they already had on the team.
Don’t sign Barajas, Coste, and Blanco, and use that money instead on Park, and Park would probably be the second-best right-handed relief pitcher on your team.
I kind of hate being a Mets fan this decade.
Park probably would have wanted to start on the Mets, though. I mean, you still have your point, but unless something drastic about Park’s mentality has changed, he’d prefer to be a mediocre starter on any team at all than a great reliever on most teams.
Except he eventually signed a contract to be a great reliever on a good team.
And it’s really more the principle of the thing. Signing three backup catchers for a total of almost $2M instead of committing that money to an even halfway decent relief pitcher is a sign of management that doesn’t have the first idea how to spend its money wisely. Hell, they could have committed all that backup catcher money to Chien-Ming Wang. I understand he was awful last year in 42 entire innings, but they went and gave $1.25M to a pitcher who hasn’t thrown a pitch in the major leagues since 2007; risk is apparently not that big of a deal to the Mets.
OK stat freaks lets explain something. I am aware of whet the new stats are, but I have trouble evaluating them. OBP is important, perhaps the most important offensive stat. But at what number is it good? Is a 350 OBP good for a home run hitter. Is it good for a singles hitter.
SLG is an advantage to power hitters. At what level is a leadoff hitter harmful? I know Bonds put up enormous numbers but what level is acceptable?
The same for OPS .
This is a good question. I think a large part of why modern stats haven’t become more mainstream is that the base lines haven’t been explained well.
The avg major leaguer hit 333/418/751 last year(obp/slg/ops). So you can consider a 330 obp, 420 slg, and a 750 ops to be roughly average. Of course all these numbers pretty position dependent, so an average catcher or ss has a ops only at about 720, while an average first baseman last year was nearly at 850. If a player doesn’t play a premium defense position you want to see at least an 800 ops for a player to be of value. A good defensive shortstop could still be a solid regular with an ops of 100 points less.
A 350 obp is a good, but not great number. An avg leadoff hitter will have about that as a obp. The really good ones will be closer to 370. If a player can combine a 350 obp with a slugging of over 450 and has any defensive value, he will be one of the better players in the game. A player who can do 400/500 is a star. A superstar can hit 1000 ops and a Pujols an 1100. His 443/658 last year is about as good as it gets outside of Bond’s crazy years.
I don’t know that slugging is ever harmful in a leadoff guy. Getting on base is more important, but extra punch is never a bad thing. If the Giants led Bonds off and put a solid on base guy in the ninth spot (moving the pitcher to 8th) I think they would have scored at least as many runs as they did.
- Where’d you get the league average numbers?
- Any chance that can be broken down by position? By batting order?
The problem is there are players with very little power but are major leaguers because they play great defense and can get on base. They will have a lousy slugging percentage. A 2nd baseman does not have an outfielders stats nor does he have to. A power hitting outfielder will lose a bit of OBP because he strikes out more and does not bunt.
Is there a stat for moving a runner along ? Coming up with a man on 3rd and nobody out or 1 out and leaving him on 3rd pisses me off.
You can always go into a player’s splits on baseball-reference.com and check out how well he does with Runners in Scoring Position. It has information for all baserunning situations.
Nice. That’s got everything.
I think you’ll find the exact opposite. You can have a very good OBP and strike out a lot *because *you hit a lot of homers - because you’re seeing a lot more balls as well for fear you’re going to crush the ball. See: Adam Dunn, Jayson Werth, Evan Longoria, Ryan Braun, Dan Uggla, Prince Fielder, Jason Bay and Carlos Pena.
Bunting as an on-base strategy doesn’t work. In certain circumstances, maybe. But few people are going to raise their OBP by bunting more. Thinking so is the result of a very strong selection bias - a successful bunt that lands the hitter on first base is going to be extremely memorable - much moreso than the guy that went 3-5 and a walk on a bunch of slap hits.
Right - the best team. What I’m saying is I think he’d be a lot more likely to demand an open competition, at least, for a rotation spot to sign with the Mets, and I wonder whether he asked for the same even from the Yankees. When he signed with the Phillies it was because they promised him that he’d get a fair shot at the fifth rotation spot, which is why he and not Happ started the first month of the season. But yeah, your point still stands.
I thought gonzomax was asking when too little slugging is bad for a leadoff hitter, and if that’s the case I’d say nothing is too low if the other numbers are good. The most important thing for a leadoff hitter to do is get on base. At the most extreme you have the Juan Pierre types, who might bat .330 and have an OBP of .380, and a SLG of .400. Even at those levels, where he’s getting very few extra base hits, the OBP is valuable enough that he’s a pretty good player – Ichiro is the same way.
Ideally, a singles hitter like that would also get a whole bunch of walks, and that would make for a great leadoff hitter (like Eddie Collins), because sometimes the batting average dips because the guy is slumping or injured or getting old or just unlucky, and when that happens a low-SLG, low walk player becomes pretty much worthless. See again Juan Pierre, in the years where he was hitting .280 instead of .300 or above. If your leadoff hitter walks all the time, he’s probably going to get on base much more consistently.
Your ultimate example of that would be Rickey Henderson when he was near the tail end of his career and kicking around San Diego and a bunch of other places - he couldn’t bat more than about .250 (except that one year with the Mets) and didn’t hit for any power at all, but he still walked enough to have a .370 or .380 OBP, and so he still had value as a leadoff guy.
If 333 is average OBP, then it would seem 370 or 380 is not that much better. Or is it?
How high do they get? How low?
40 or 50 points is a huge swing. Just think of it terms of batting average. Is 240 similar to 280. Is 270 almost the same as 320? The best players in the game can get a little over 400. Under 300 is terrible.