Monday, May 13, 2013
Segura NL Player of the Week
(mlb.mlb.com)
The Brewers have lost nine of their last 10, but shortstop Jean Segura’s outstanding play during the past week earned him National League Player of the Week honors for the period ending May 12.
In five games last week, Segura hit an NL-best .500 over 20 at-bats while leading the league in slugging percentage (.950) and on-base percentage (.545).
translation: the brewers pitching stinks but they have some guys in the field who can play.
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1. PASTE Thinks This Trout Kid Might Be OK (Zeth) posted on September 22, 2012 at 11:32 PM # hit 0 | hit 0It's the same thing going on in the American League, just less extreme. Braun rakes like hell, but Posey actually has a better OPS+ (171 to 160), and while Braun is actually a very good defensive left fielder (at least +/- thinks so), that's nowhere near the defensive value of a good catcher, such as Buster Posey.
Posey is the MVP. If you want to make a vigorous case for both the defensive value of catchers and the large gap between Yadier Molina's defensive value and Posey's, you could argue for Yadier Molina. Braun is lining up behind those guys at least, and also behind Andrew McCutchen, who also (a) has a higher OPS+ than Braun and (b) plays a much more important defensive position than Braun.
Good point. You know how Ryan Braun's .599 slugging dwarfs Posey's? Well, Mike Trout slugged .592 and OBP'd .471 against National League pitching. Q.E.D.
Posey's positional advantage is mitigated by playing a lot of first (26 games), not all that well - and OPS+ underrates Braun v. Posey (particularly wrt SB, DP). B-ref has Braun as part of a three way tie for the league lead in WAR (6.8 with McCutchen and Molina(!), Posey's next at 6.4) - he also outperforms Posey (setting aside that all this stuff should be used w/ error bars) in situational measures, like WPA-WPA/LI. (Posey looks better in base-out metrics.)
There are loads of reasonable candidates this year.
c'mon. braun is a legit candidate though i freely acknowledge he won't win
why the need to write obviously wrong statements?
As to Braun -- people leaving him off their ballot entirely would be evidence of roid resentment. I'm hoping somebody has the guts to slip Melky a 10th place vote. :-)
No way. I'm not big on voting over 'roids resentment, but suspension resentment is another matter entirely.
Braun's still in a position to make a run at it. If he hits .600 these last few games and the Brewers nab a wild card it could make for a verrrrry interesting MVP vote indeed.
Where's your sense of entertinment? There's at least 5 bags of microwave popcorn worth of fun in it.
Alas, he's not even top 10 in WAR so I can't imagine I'll see it.
Wow, there's a 3-way tie for the NL WAR lead -- Braun, Molina, McCutchen. Wright and Posey right there.
And I never thought I'd be saying this but ... those of you who pooh-pooh bWAR's defensive numbers, you, ummm, can't vote for Braun because he's picking up more than a full win on defense alone.
Nitpick: if the baseline for dWAR is league average, shouldn't it be dWAA?
you are just being contrary.
both players are having wonderful seasons but to state that one is definitively better than the other is unfounded
andrew has an edge because braun is regarded as a cheater
i will be glad for andrew should he win
but nobody can make a reasonable case that the best slugging player in the league who is also a fine baserunner and now solid defender was clearly inferior to other players in the league
it's not rational
I think there's a very reasonable case that a Catcher who puts up a similar offensive line to a LF (Posey 158 wRC+, 169 OPS+, 165 wRC+, 159 OPS+) is FAR superior.
Voters seem to have forgotten how hard it is to catch, and hit. It's pretty ironic that they had a much better feel for this positional adjustment back in the old days, when Berra and Campanella were winning all those MVPs.
People on this site seem to forget this as well.
Catching is systematically undervalued in WAR, due to the framework.
True. The defensive number misses a lot, and it doesn't capture the fact that a C just can't play 160 Gs.
I'd agree with that. Unless somebody tells me that McCutchen is actually a fantastic CF who's under-rated by the stats.
I don't really watch NL ball, so, I won't even hazard a guess on Defense, beyond quoting the stats.
I don't know about fantastic, but I certainly think of him as average to above average. I'm not confident enough in that to challenge his defense rating in WAR.
Luckily, this doesn't matter most years, as most years there aren't catchers who hit as well as Posey. We only seem to get a year like that (Mauer, McCann) every few years. It just annoys me that sometimes on this board, people pretend that this bias doesn't exist.
And even at that, Yogi Berra (the most egregious example) caught 141, 149, and 145 games in his three (154-game) MVP seasons, while finishing between 7th and 9th in the league in WAR each year.
One thing that the 1950s award voters were certainly picking up on was how much better than average Berra and Campanella were. Of the top ten catcher seasons (still by WAR) between 1951 and 1955, Berra and Campanella had nine of them, the only exception being Campanella's 1954 season, when he hit .207 and only caught 111 games. Sherm Lollar in the AL and Del Crandall in the NL were the next-best catchers of the era, well above the rest of their league, while Berra and Campanella were as far above them. The typical decent everyday catcher of the time was somebody like Clint Courtney or Sammy White, who was certainly earning his pay but was nothing to wire Cooperstown about. The voters were responding to the extreme rarity of the two great catchers among their peers.
and the giants are fifth in the league in runs scored which is highly impressive in that ballpark. and posey is the anchorpiece to the offense.
no issue with posey being named nl mvp. it's a story that flow pretty naturally.
Randy Hundley says hi.
This is interesting--do you believe an elite left fielder provides about the same defensive value as a slightly-below-average defensive center fielder? Do the various WARs suggest that is the case? I'm inclined to think that, like catcher (but less so), there's a lot of value in merely being able to play shortstop or center field semi-competently every day. But I'm open to being proven wrong about that.
Ryan Braun being an elite defensive left fielder is nothing new, says +/-, which has rated his glove highly for three years now.
Mila Kunis might be calling me the next time she is in town.
Yes. Generally an elite LF (e.g. Brett Gardner) will also be at least a good CF.
I still remember Braun has having an iron glove rep, but Harveys is right, it's pretty amazing that he's worked himself into at least a plus glove in left.
True, but Braun is more like "good" than "elite". BRef has his rField as +9, +3, +10 the last 3-years, UZR has -9, -5, +5.
So, he's pretty far from "elite", which is more like +20. I'd guess almost every +20 LF can play CF.
i know braun is perceived as a jerk but he hustles constantly and works on his game. as a fan of the team it's hard to not like your best player showing such devotion to his craft
Really? I think of guys like Chris Carpenter as a 'driven jerk'... I didn't think that people looked at Braun as anything other than a relatively nondescript superstar.
ha, ha
Catchers can't play as many games as left fielders - true. Nor can relievers (in a more extreme example) pitch as much as starters.
Why do some of the people who freely penalize for the latter willing to make excuses in the case of the former?
Why do some of the people who freely penalize for the latter willing to make excuses in the case of the former?
Because if a relief pitcher is good enough, they make him a starter. Pitching is pitching.
Catcher is a crucial role. You don't willingly move an excellent C off the position, and the defensive skills (especially game calling) don't readily transfer to other positions.
I wouldn't give a catcher bonus for playing time, but it's my feel that a linear difference between average and replacement undervalues players at the harder defensive positions.
he is a VERY good baserunner and a VERY good basestealer
he's leading the NL in OPS (>500 PA)
there is zero excuse for leaving him OFF a 10 person ballot except for personal reasons - the "not a ryan guy" type excuse
i have never seen ANY evidence that braun is a jerk and although i don't watch him as much as harvey, he sure doesn't act like a jerk in any game i've watched. not a Hot Dog, the other players like him. he's no AJ pierogi
I'm inclined to think that a non-linear replacement level is advised, I actually think it's "bowed" - lower at the ends of the defensive spectrum and higher in the middle. Part of that is a set of exemplary corner spot bats raising the average, part of it is leakage of options to other spots/foreign ball.
There is the potential issue of the game calling learning curve to deal with - replacement level options are more likely to be inexperienced / at deficit here. Countervailing that, I suspect, is a tendency for the position to be "stickier" than most - where players keep their roles for longer than their play warrants for various reasons ... this would cause us, absent further investigation, to overestimate their replacement level.
Anyone who leaves Braun off their ballot because of last year's drug test should be stripped off his/her voting privileges forever.
Is Molina not in the conversation?
So what would this mean in practice? C, SS and 1B Replacement is too high, 2B, 3B and CF is too low and RF and LF is about right.
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