John Avatar is nothing more than a 4th OF, is he?

John Avatar is nothing more than a 4th OF, is he?

Who should they be starting?

Who should they be starting?
I'm not saying the Cards have a solution on hand, but a to-be 31yo Corner OF with below average offense (hitting and running) is a part to be replaced.

WELL, MAYBE NOT NOT IF DIAL'S DEFENSIVE NUMBERS ARE TO BE BELIEVED...

Thats a good article. I've never seen that blog before. Well done.

John Avatar is nothing more than a 4th OF, is he?

I've been working on an article combining Marcel projections with AROM's defensive projections to get a version of projected "PM-SLWTS" for 2007. Encarnacion projects for -3 RCAA (per 150 games), which is eight runs worse than the average RF. But Chone's numbers have him at +5 on defense, for an overall projection of -3. Now, that doesn't include baserunning, the point of the linked article, but even last year Encarnacion cost the team fewer than three runs on the bases--with regression, I don't think you can project him to be worse than maybe a run or two below average in that department, and that's probably a liberal estimate. He's not an especially good player, but he's not a fourth outfielder.

I like Dan Fox's work a lot, but this method definitely overstates the cost of SBAs in general (as I think he would agree). First, I'm pretty sure a player/team is debited for each pickoff, but doesn't get credit when an errant PO throw allows a runner to advance. I think you have to credit runners with the value of that advancement if you're going to punish them for getting caught -- if they hadn't drawn the throw, the error couldn't have happened.

More importantly, a significant number of CS are blown hit and runs, which are different from pure SBAs. So this is picking up some of the cost of blown H&Rs; (CS), but not capturing the benefit of successful H&Rs; in terms of extra bases gained and GDPs avoided. (The Cardinals, for example, had the 12th best DP/GB ratio last year -- admittedly a crude measure of avoiding DPs). To get a better measure of the impact of SBAs, we would need to omit the CS (and SBs) in cases where the batter swung at the pitch. Or, find a way to add the positive value of successful H&Rs;.

How these adjustments would impact the rating of Encarnacion specifically, I have no idea....

This article is blasphemy! LaRussa is a genius! Everyone knows it.

<i Johnny Clash Posted: December 19, 2006 at 09:15 PM (#2265446)

This article is blasphemy! LaRussa is a genius! Everyone knows it.</i>


considering that every single poster on this website believes that tlr is the derek jeter of managers(or even the posednik-sp) I doubt that is a viable comment.


for the record, the single most overrated manager in history is whitey herzog, this guy got lucky for 7 seasons(well not really 7 seasons, more like 4 seasons over a 15 year career or whatever) and blogs like this that worship the steal and do a study that overrates the steal like this guy did are only perpetuating the myth that rob neyer bought when he somehow thought whitey was a better manager than tlr in cardinal history (If you lead the cardinals to their only last place finish since the cubs lost to the red sox in the world series, you by the very defintion can't be anything better than dusty baker as a manager)

I guess payroll and such have nothing to do with win/loss, eh? I also guess you didn't happen to read Jaffe's very nice manager evaluation articles? Seems they disagree with your Cardinal bashing.

and do a study that overrates the steal like this guy did

Overrates? The study says one of greatest running teams in history, in their very best years, gained a measly 15 runs -- less than 2 wins -- from their running. Whatever else you want to say about the study, it certainly doesn't overstate the value of SBs. If you want to bash Whitey, you should love this study.....