Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Barry Bonds: Detroit Tigers’ Miguel Cabrera ‘the best’ ... but not better than me
(www.usatoday.com)
Seems as if The Barry Bonds Family Foundation has welcomed a new member.
Read More...“I don’t try to compare me to anybody,’’ Bonds said. “I was the best on the field. I did more things than he did. My game was different than his game. So comparing him, to me, there’s no comparison.
“He doesn’t have my MVPs. He doesn’t have my numbers. Well, not yet, anyways.
“But does he have that ability? Yes, he does.
“Does he have that gift? Yes, he does.’‘
...“Winning a Triple Crown is amazing to me,’’ Bonds ...
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1. Walt Davis posted on February 26, 2013 at 06:27 AM # hit 0 | hit 0Cabrera is the better player
These are not necessarily mutually inconsistent propositions. The first, however, is undeniably true. The second is an interesting question.
Now, how do we define "playoff spot on the line"?
In the last 7 games of the season, Trout hit 379/471/793.
In the 7 games before that, he was down at 217/379/391 -- lousy BA, excellent OBP, fine ISO
In the 7 games before that, he hit 308/438/346 -- good BA, great OBP, lousy ISO
In the 7 games before that, he hit 259/355/519
So over the last 28 games, he hit 295/413/524. Prior to that he hit 333/396/573. So 17 points of OBP for 49 points of SLG ... that's not fading.
Now Cabrera was ridiculous in Sept so, absolutely, he outhit Trout by a bunch over that stretch -- 159 points of SLG for 38 points of OBP.
Cabrera didn't play in game 162 but in the 27 before that the Tigers went 16-11. Over those 28 games, the Angels went 18-10.
Ummm ...
As we all know, the Angels had more wins than the Tigers on the season. The Tigers won because they made up 3 games on the White Sox, being tied to start the month. The Angels picked up .5 on the A's and 4.5 on the Rangers but were too far back to take the division. Unfortunately for the Angels, the O's and Yanks went 19-10 and the Rays 17-11.
In case you aren't keeping score, the uber-clutch Tigers went 16-13 down the stretch. The O's, Yanks, Angels, Rays, and A's all had better records than the Tigers down the stretch and for the season overall. They even only went 2-2 against the Sox down the stretch. They did manage to go 12-4 against Cle, KC and Minnesota.
This myth needs to die. The Tigers made the playoffs not due to some clutch drive but due to being in a crappy division and having the Sox struggle to a 13-16 finish.
Walt dismantled this in enough detail that I don't feel any need to add to that. What I want to say is that the above sentence is false as a piece of writing. Trout is about potential; that part is true. But Cabrera is not about "reality." Cabrera is about previous accomplishments that more strongly indicate that he will have more seasons like 2012 than Trout's previous accomplishments. That is, both players are about "potential." It's just that Cabrera has more history behind his potential, so statistical projections of Cabrera's have more statistical confidence in them than projections for Trout. The only "reality" question involved in comparing the players is how well they played last year. Most analysts say it was Trout. Reality is in favor of Trout, not Cabrera. -Brock Hanke
Wait til he turns 21!
Seriously, has Trout really put on 30 pounds? Is it muscle? He wouldn't be the first rookie to believe the press and slip a bit in effort and performance. Has anyone seen his ST appearances?
If he is really carrying 245 pounds on his 6 foot frame though, better look somewhere else for steals.
If they are talking about from the end of last season, then I seriously doubt it. Typically the rule of thumb is that with a dedicated weight training and nutrition regime, you can gain a pound a week max. But virtually nobody keeps that up those kind of gains over long stretches. Now Trout is is young, so there could be some added natural growth in there pushing things along. But my guess would be that a large chunk of that 30 lbs is just additional fluid retention, which is typical.
This strikes me as unnecessary pedantry. It's pretty clear that Caputo's saying that Cabrera's track record indicates that he's a guy who puts up seasons like this with some regularity and likely will continue to do so for another couple of seasons before he enters his decline phase. I don't think anyone would object to saying Cabrera "is" someone who's going to put up a 315/390/550 line with 30-35 homers, 40 or so doubles, and over 100 RBI unless he gets injured. Trout's an unknown quantity. He's put up one transcendent season, but without the track record, we don't know to what degree he was playing over his head, playing to his true talent level, or (least probably of all) has room to improve. It wouldn't shock me to see Trout put up another season that was more valuable than Cabrera's of course, but it shouldn't shock anyone to see him never play up to his 2012 season again, either.
People seriously underestimate the importanc of lower body strength for sprinters. As long as he isn't disproportionately gaining upper body strength (or fat obviously), there is no reason to expect a huge dropoff in acceleration or velocity.
Lower body strength is huge, but it's all about relative strength. Elite sprinters tend to weigh around 170, with squats around 600. If Trout brought his squat up a little over 100 pounds with the extra 30 pounds of mass, I'll buy that he MIGHT not be any slower, but I still wouldn't bet the farm on it.
Yeah. Also, Trout DOES have a big upper body. He's built like a NFL running back, with broad shoulders, a massively thick neck, and huge Popeye forearms. Of course, bulky strong guys can still be very fast, especially when they're very young. Considering the vast wiggle room in "official" baseball player weights, I wouldn't worry about it unless his physique actually looks significantly different from last year.
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/fantasy-roto-arcade/angels-lineup-now-7-percent-more-mike-trout-124013301--mlb.html
Trout at 241 is 30 pounds heaver than the media guides generally list him, but he's been listed around 210 since he was drafted at 17. He's only 10 pounds heavier than he finished 2012.
Roids.
Yep. No Hall of Fame for you, kid.
Yeah but he always had that. And he did just fine with it last season.
All I heard about Trout last year was the Angels kept him in the minors in April for standard "service clock" reasons which cost him the MVP because he only played 140 games. Are you saying they had a good reason to not have him start the season in the majors?
Trout made his debut and played about 1.5-2 months of the 2011 season. Had he started the 2012 season in the majors, he would be a free agent after the 2017 season. Since he spent last April in SLC, he now has 1 year and 70 days of service, putting him on track for free agency after 2017. I don't think his super 2 status would be any different either.
Trout starting in the minors last year was due to 1. Illness caused him to miss most of spring 2. Angels thought people like Abreu and Wells had more in them than they actually did 3. Nobody knew Trout would be that great so soon. After all, he only hit .220 in 2011. Service time had nothing to do with it, unless they thought about keeping him in the minors for about half the season, which is what it would have taken to delay his free agency on more year.
That said, I think this column is another in a long line of "methinks the author doth protest too much" columns that we've seen from Detroit area writers over the last six months.
Mostly whether or not the speaker likes the player in question, coupled with whether or not the player in question has a squeaky-clean image that seems genuine.
Nope you need 6 full years of service time to go FA. They would have had to keep him down for more time than he was up in 2011 to affect his clock. He'a an FA after 2017 whether they held him down or not. (He'd have 1 year and 100 days of service time if they hadn't put him in AAA.)
Trout's 2012 ZiPS were 267/338/414, 106 OPS+
Trout's 2013 ZiPS are 282/364/507, 371 wOBA, 7.4 WAR, top comp Matt Kemp
Cabrera 2013 ZiPS are 313/397/561, 399 wOBA, 6.5 WAR, top comp Eddie Mathews
As I've mentioned before, Kemp as the top comp for Trout suggests to me that Trout just doesn't have any good comps. Kemp was still in A+ ball at 20 and didn't make the majors until the last third of his age 21 season, wasn't full-time until 23 and his monster 2011 (age 26) is only 1 win better than Trout's age 21 projection.
Mathews' decline started sometime around 30-32 but I'm guessing he's only the top comp here because ZiPS likes position matches and is counting Cabrera as a 3B. That's fine but I suspect that a list of 1B comps would give us a better sense of how he might age ... or if fangraphs gave us more than his top comp.
Why the nope? If you're not repeating what I just said, then I can't tell the difference.
Player Rfield PA OPS+Eddie Murray 37 5837 144
Jimmie Foxx 33 6608 167
Boog Powell 0 5506 137
Orlando Cepeda -23 5684 142
There aren't many hitters in Cabrera's exact range, but those are four first basemen with somewhat similar career length and offensive ability to Cabrera, through age 29. (He doesn't appear on his own list because he's played less than 50% of his games at 1B.) Murray still had his typical star year at 39, but the others were greatly diminished after the age of 33 or so. Not a lot of useful data here, but if I expand the list any more, it picks up most of the really good long-career first basemen, which is perhaps still less informative, because it's a list of everybody you can think of :)
The clean-cut All-American white guy golden boy image probably has a lot to do with it. Given that we all assume NFL linebackers are roiding out of their minds, Mike Trout at 6'1" and 240 lbs. of muscle with insane, blazing speed would fit quite neatly into an NFL linebacker core. Even Mike Trout at 230 would be no slouch.
That being said, as noted above Trout has said he expects to lose a lot of the weight during spring training, which would indicate that the extra 10-20 lbs. he's carrying is mostly water with some bulk/fat that he's put on to lose when the more intense conditioning begins - if he lost 10-20 lbs. of muscle in a month it would be pretty dire conditions to begin a baseball season in.
Compared to not running at all, baseball is a fairly intense cardio workout, especially for an outfielder.
I think it's mostly the sweating in the sun all day in Arizona/Florida thing, plus they are doing a fair amount of windsprints - baseball coaches love windsprints for some reason. The David Ortiz's of the world are probably mostly taking it easy, but Trout seems like the kind of guy (and is young enough) that is probably still bouncing all over the place.
Personally, I don't begrudge Cabrera his MVP. I don't think he should have won it, and I wouldn't have voted for him, but he certainly had a great case, and traditionally the award has gone to guys with the types of numbers he put up. It just seems like there have been about 5x as many columns from Detroit sportswriters defending the selection than there have been LA writers saying Trout really deserved (come to think of it, it hasn't even really been the local press backing Trout).
I hope you're not serious. Do you honestly believe professional baseball players sit around the entire off season doing no physical training? They're lifting weights, sprinting, doing sport specific conditioning and skill work, working on mobility, agility, speed and quickness. Heck, college players are doing this. This is not the 50's and 60's where players took off season jobs and did nothing baseball related for months, or where resistance work was though to make you "musclebound."
And there is nothing about baseball which is "cardio," assuming you're using it as the common shorthand for aerobic exercise. Nothing a baseball player does is of enough duration to tap into the aerobic energy pathway. The longest effort a player could possibly put out is a full sprint around the bases, appoximately 120 yards. A 120 yard sprint lasts nowhere near long enough to push someone out of the anaerobic energy system and into the aerobic. Baseball is all anaerobic and primarily speed strength (moving a relatively light object such as a bat or a ball as fast as possible).
Agreed. Outfielders have to accelerate from a standing position a few times a game, but how many meters are they running each time? And they're not trying to win a race, just tracking a baseball and indeed trying not to overrun it. This fact is one reason why I go nuts when someone excuses a major-league player for not running out a ground ball. Very few major-leaguers actually dog it down the line, but those who sometimes do puzzle the hell out of me. You're being asked to sprint 30 yards possibly once or twice a night, and being paid many thousand dollars to do so. So DO it.
Being a professional athlete is not a day at the beach, physically or mentally speaking, but there's a reason they play baseball games every night and football only once a week.
I have zero problem with an established starter dogging down the line on a routine play. A hamstring injury can ruin a season, and if it's not necessary for the play, no reason to risk it. Mind you a guy trying to get a spot in the lineup, I don't accept them dogging, you have to prove yourself.
Edit:By dogging, I mean not going 100%... a fast jog or better should be expected at all times(unless you are injured and under instructions not to even do that)
Maybe so. OTOH a guy who can't run out a routine ground ball (but somehow can run out a deep grounder in the hole) is simply not as good a baseball player as other guys.
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