Hot Stove Thread 2014-15

How am I ignoring a stat that I brought up?

Edit: Wait, that was the one that I dismissed.

I'm not ignoring Hernandez's lower BA this year. I'm flat-out stating it was the product of good fortune and not skill.

 

Edit because you caught your reading comprehension error.

And you are flat-out wrong in your assessment. Even if you could properly support the argument about defense (you can't because the metrics don't exist), that and park factor do not account for such a large difference in batting average against.

Thing is, you act as if the statistics back up your point and they do not. You just have a flawed opinion that is unpopular because anybody who understands baseball knows that getting an out when a batter makes contact is not just a matter of luck.

 

Yup, my mistake on that one.

 

Trout had 184 strikeouts, most ever for an MVP.

 

The Royals' entire offense is predicated on the fact that the inverse is true for hitters.

 

Sorry, I don't believe that was by design.
I think Moore put together a mostly shitty lineup that got hot at the right times, and suddenly everyone said it was built for contact and not to score a lot of runs.
Because having a guy with no power at a corner infield or outfield position is so optimal in the American League.

 

Hernandez was never particularly good at it before this year. It's mostly not a persistent skill year-to-year.

Things pitchers have a much larger degree of control over that impacts their performance consistently:
Missing bats
Not walking batters
Getting ground balls or fly balls when batters do miss.

 

The short answer, which again I know is going to be wildly unpopular because it goes against both natural assumptions and people's baseball upbringing, is that pitchers getting outs on contact behaves just like we would expect if it were mostly out of their control.

If it were mostly under their control, the pitchers who are good at it would stay good at it consistently. If it were entirely luck, it would behave highly erratically with no consistency over time.

It's *mostly* the latter.

 

It's amusing, and entirely predictable, that someone assumed that Hernandez was really good at inducing pop-ups and it was gospel until we actually looked it up and he was unusually bad at inducing pop-ups (and good at getting ground-balls).

 

It wasn't by design. Butler, Hosmer and Moustakas were all supposed to have more power. But in practice it turned out that way and it kinda worked. The reason they scored any runs at all was because of their speed and league-low strikeout totals as a lineup.

 

The narrative with that team got fking ridiculous when people started saying they don't need runs to win.
It got even dumber when people said an inefficient offense is the new market efficiency.
The Royals found out in the World Series how much a team needs its runs.

 

I don't recall anyone saying that, but I admit to not reading a great deal of dumb-shit baseball writing now that Fire Joe Morgan is shuttered. I recall some discussion of speed and defense being undervalued, but that's as far as I saw it go.