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1. tfbg9 Posted: September 29, 2007 at 02:11 PM (#2549718)He's a badas$ who's all class who simply finds a way to kick as$.
WOO-HOO!!!
1) Ortiz added a lot of batting average as well as exchanging HR for 2B. That suggests a real change in approach, and it is backed up by statements from the manager and from Ortiz about he hasn't been able to drive the ball because of his knee problems. That's not decline, it's adjustment to a temporary problem.
2) Very rarely is power the first thing to go for a hitter like Ortiz, certainly not a decline in power paired to a high batting average. A decline into high-BB, high-K, medium-HR seasons is the most likely. You're really grasping at straws here, which is why I took it as fanboy wishcasting.
I doubt that was SJ's intent. I think his post was derailed by a misplaced "is," changing his intended question into more of a declaration.
next year he'll probably be healthy and put up a season that looks pretty close to an average of his 2005-2007 years which is of course great
I think it might be Papelbon. Doesn't look like Pedroia to me.
Last year he was relatively unlucky on balls in play - PrOPS has him hitting around .308 last year. This year was relatively lucky. The combination of being unlucky one year, and then lucky the next gives the false impression of a progression. The underlying elements just aren't there however. His K rate just didn't decline by enough to make us think that he's really become a .333 hitter. PrOPS suggests pretty strongly that it's not like he was just hitting the ball better this year either - the underlying elements of his batting average dropped, not rose.
The hope is that next year, as he probably settles back to being a .300-.310 hitter or so, that he's healthy, and 20 or so of those doubles go for homers. It is not that he settles into being a .333 hitter. It's just not going to happen.
I told you all y'all look the same, but nobody ever listens to me. EVER
I think it is Beckett. He was looking a little scruffy in other photographs.
Maybe it's luck and maybe it's not. It could be because last year he was hitting everything into the shift, and lately he's intentionally going the other way more.
Here, for example, are Carl Crawford's and Ichiro Suzuki's PrOPS / OPS over the last four years:
Crawford
707 / 820
768 / 830
736 / 800
720 / 781
Ichiro
722 / 826
747 / 786
792 / 786
752 / 869
Obviously Big Papi isn't exactly all that similar to Crawford or Ichiro, but wwb offers a possible connection - intelligent hitting against the shift could increase the BA value of groundballs and line drives without shifting the underlying ratios that much.
David Ortiz beat his career average BABIP by a good amount, and usually weird things like that don't stick. (The same being true of the drop in HR/FB). But reducing all of it to luck and not searching out underlying causes doesn't make any sense to me as an analytic move.
On another note, he must absolutely love Boston because he could have gotten so much more money if he had tested free agency.
1. Nobody has offered any evidence of underlying causes.
2. Nobody has claimed that PrOPS is a true and near perfect measure of reality.
3. What the hell do Crawford and Ichiro have to do with Papi? Do we have any reason to believe that any of the three of them are "intelligent" hitters?
4. This is the first year that Ortiz has beaten his PrOPS. Did he just this year become an intelligent hitter?
God, this thread is about to get miserable. We love Ortiz, so naturally, people want to find some reason to ignore the single most obvious explanation... Obviously there could be more than just luck involved, but the intro and the first three posts didn't make any mention of the possibility of luck, when in fact, all else being equal, it's the most compelling explanation.
prOPS fails for high-speed hitters because they convert GB's into hits at a higher rate than the population as a whole. I wouldn't worry too much about that problem when it comes to Ortiz.
EDIT: and it also fails for hitters that convert GB's into hits at a super-low rate...but I'm not convinced that Ortiz is one of those, since he's a lefty. Actually, my hunch is that Ortiz's GB hit rate is all fouled up because of the Williams Shift.
2) I never said that unpredictable variation wasn't a part of Ortiz' success. (It should be noted that the "pessimistic" case on Ortiz, that PrOPS is perfect and the difference is luck, puts Ortiz at 970, sixth in the league.)
3) Oh my god, look at the leaderboard! It thinks Jack Cust is a .300 hitter.
4) Back to my point here... what wwp and others are suggesting is that Big Papi is a weird player because almost every opposing defense does the full shift on him. In a year when he wasn't able to drive the ball for home runs like he used to, it seems reasonable to think that he focused more on hitting for average, and he'd have some weird opportunities for hits because of the shift, if he chose to take advantage of them.
EDIT: link to PrOPS doesn't work - it has a bracket in it that screws up the coding. Here's the stats page.
I thought the simple most obvious explanation was that he has been hurt all year and has zapped his power.
2 - You certainly didn't mention the possibility of luck when you endorsed the optimistic intro in post 3. Your post in 6 also said: "Ortiz added a lot of batting average as well as exchanging HR for 2B. That suggests a real change in approach" - not mentioning the possibility that the increase in batting average was at least partly due to luck.
4. That's an interesting theory. At this point, I don't see it as anything else however. I've seen no evidence to support it presented at all.
That does explain his homer run decline, but it doesn't explain the .333 batting average.
I'm not denying the effects of randomness. I'm questioning our certitude that we know how to measure the effects of randomness, and I'm arguing that we're only doing so by assuming things about the game of baseball (all groundballs are created equal) that everyone knows aren't really true.
Nobody has claimed any certitude here. In fact, everyone, including the creator of PrOPS, has discussed its shortcomings.
We have affirmative, albeit not conclusive evidence that luck played a big part in Ortiz' performance. I have yet to see any evidence presented that Ortiz using the shift to his advantage had anything to do with it. Did Ortiz hit significantly better against the shift this year that he did in previous years for instance?
are you serious
if his supposed new approach is so great that he can have his best season ever with it despite being gimpy all year, then why would he revert back to his old ways next year
Random variation. How often does a 295 true talent level guy hit 330?
Over the last 2000 PA's he has been a 295 hitter.
It's somewhat reasonable to expect him to be a better than 295 hitter if he cut down on his swing in some circumstance as evidence by the press clippings, lowering of K rate from 21 to 18.5 and reduction of infield flys from 8.2 to 4.4. Not 330, but better than 295. And some of it is normal variation.
I see no reason to think Papi is in decline. Manny, I'm not so sure about.
I'll bet you if David Ortiz has 650 PA's next year he will hit more HR's than this year. The question is if Ortiz is in decline. Like always this Props conversation is a redherring. Ignore it.
Wait, you're making my case for me. Do we even disagree?
nobody is going to give u action on this one sorry
The null hypothesis is that Ortiz is an outstanding hitter whose record isn't identical from one year to the next. As to predicting a decline, he will be 32 in a few weeks and is most uncommonly fat. The safe money is on him not being this good at 37, but at 32, I wouldn't bet against him being right in the same 160-170 OPS+ range again.
Edited typo
Am I saying he's a "true" 1070 hitter? Of course not. "True" talent is a chimera, wholly non-existent, and thus never knowable. My bet is that if Ortiz tried to keep hitting this way, eventually other teams would adjust their defenses - how best to hit into a shift is a massively complex problem, and its outcomes just aren't particularly predictable. I don't understand JBH's belief that Ortiz can keep doing this forever - new scouting reports will arise, new adjustments will have to be made.
I was responding to SJ's decision to read 2007 as a possible decline. This requires (a) fully accepting PrOPS despite all the problems that bibigon keeps acknowledging and (b) reading a 970 OPS as a sign of decline, or making assumptions about luck that go even beyond PrOPS.
Unless you are retracting this we disagree signifigantly.
I see no reason believe their is any decline here. You have a guy who has changed his approach, due to injury that has resulted in a different shape of the output.
The fact that he is hitting 330 is variation,to some extent, but who cares. You don't need crap, I mean props to determine that. Look at historic performance and it tells you that. Then look at the composition of his output - less K's less pop ups and you see that it looks like their was some cutting down on his swing. Which leads credence to the lip service we are hearing.
I see no reason to buy into he is beating the shift more, look at his hit charts. But their is evidence that ortiz cut down his k rate.
Good. So you agree that David Ortiz isn't in decline.
Ok, I called it a hope that he'd come back healthy and bring back another 20 HRs - you seem to have more confidence. We don't disagree with regards to the shape of the data. The relevant question for me is whether the batting average increase was real (and I agree, we don't need PrOPS to determine that - but it doesn't hurt).
The larger question of if he's in decline depends on his health. That's a question I didn't intend to wade into, since it's sort of an unknowable.
Anyone have any idea how many of Ortiz's balls to left would have been a) out in most parks, b)homers in most parks?
A-rod is still the MVP by a good margin, but in most years Papi would be the most deserving player in the AL when you look at the totality of his output.
Ortiz is having a great year, but I will take a guy who caught 136 games with a OPS+ of 160 over a guy who played 7 games in the field with an ops+ of 174.
If you ask most nonpartisans on this board, I think they would agree with me.
It's probably closer than a straight OPS+ comp implies. Ortiz has an offensive edge of about 25 runs, which is just about in line I believe with what being a catcher is worth in something like SLWTS.
Posada hasn't been nearly the hitter that Ortiz has been. Not to take anything away from Jorge who has been a beast, but they really have been at completely different levels. Ortiz has played nearly 20% more often, has produced at a considerably higher rate and his performance has been leveraged at almost 3x more by WPA/LI.
I disagree with this statement. He might have that many more ABs, but catchers play more. Most DHs are measured as defense neutral, which I don't think is fair to players that play the other half, in this case, Ortiz is being compared to a player who plays the most demanding of all defensive positions. To get that level of production from that position is enormously valuable.
Your quibbling. Ortiz has nearly 20% more PA's. The point of my statement was the value with the bat Ortiz provides over Posada is larger than you implied. Sure Posada gets extra credit for standing behind the plate, its just not enough IMHO. But anyway it's irrelevant, and not relevent to the discussion at hand.
In other words, the offensive drop-off from Posada to all other catchers this year is enormous.
Who are the other MVP runner-up candidates in the AL this year?
I think the concerns raised by bib and others about Ortiz's high BA being luck are valid. From watching Ortiz, it seemed to me that early in the season he was doing his usual thing, but when he kept coming up short on his HR swing, he tried to alter his style, opting to hit more linedrives. But that's certainly what I would have wanted to see, so it could have just been my biases. Probably somewhere in between.
I'm not sure why MCOA is reacting so strongly against the using PrOPS in a common-sense manner. I mean, it's intuitive to me that: a) linedrives/flyballs/grounders/etc tend to a pretty good job of predicting the results of BIP; b) fast players get more hits on certain types of BIP than you'd expect and slow players usually get less; and c) guys who perform way over expectations are likely to come back down. No one is making out to be a perfect stat, just a piece of evidence in one direction.
and congrats, Sox fans.
Still? He'll certainly be up there, but I suspect Detroit's disappointing finish will hurt him bigtime with the writers. It'll be interesting to see whether Ortiz passes him. Posada probably gets hurt in the voting by being on the same team as A-Rod.
Edit: I hadn't noticed that Ortiz is now third in the AL in home runs. And I knew Carlos Pena had had a good season, but... wow.
Which year was better?
Of course, I don't think anyone would reasonably expect Ortiz to hit .330 next year, would they? Besides, even if you dock him the 35 points to his "baseline" of .295 and the power remains at this year's level, he's hitting what, .295/.420/.570? I'll take it.
The fact Ortiz hasn't been mentioned by ANYONE in the media for MVP, or at least as the runner up to A-rod, is completely ridiculous. Those guys really do love the long-ball. Ortiz has had a superb season, and has heated up in September, as explained above for the team with the best "record" (w/ tiebreakers) in baseball. I am thrilled with Mike Lowell's contributions this season but can't anyone with a microphone look who has been on base for all of his non-HR RBIs.
The big negative difference was on HR to straightaway center: something like 7 last year, 2 this year. Maybe some of the doubles off the right end of the LF wall are some of his old HRs coming up short in '07, but they could also have been high off the wall, and thus HRs in any other park. If anything, though, looking at everything near the wall it looks like he made a greater effort to take pitches the other way in 2007 - and he took 'em deep.
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