The impact of getting on base will never diminish. Neither will be hitting for extra base hits. The steroid era saw an explosion in this but getting on base and hitting for extra base hits has always been the best way to score runs and it always will be.
Nick Markakis' defense rated favorably by Inside Edge fielding metric
- Thread starter dak
- Start date
The impact of getting on base will never diminish. Neither will be hitting for extra base hits. The steroid era saw an explosion in this but getting on base and hitting for extra base hits has always been the best way to score runs and it always will be.
Sure...in a vacuum a hitter that can do that is great but there will be fewer of those and the hitter profiles that attempt to achieve these results will do so at a much lesser rate. To me, that will devalue those hitters that aattempt to tailor their offensive game for those results since it will be more likely that they fail at it.
I guess what I'm saying is those hitters will have high bust rates which will cause teams to look at other types of players and therfore devalue the profile.
zitothebrave
Connoisseur of Minors
Because it is a debate.
2 scenarios. Both are flyballs to RF. One scores a runner one happens with no one on base, are they equivalent events? wRC+ says yes they are they're both outs who cares if a runner is advanced. Should a deep flyout have a different run value because of a chance of advancing a runner then a lineout? Same with soft groundout vs hard ground out. Hard groundout is more likely to cause double plays. There's always subjectivity when it comes to putting valuations on statistics. We don't know what's closer because we don't know the truth. You'd like to believe that offensive numbers are closer, because we have more hard data, but no one agrees on run valuation offensively. Some people think RBIs are a run created. And I could go on with examples but I won't cause if you don't get the point yet, there's no real point in continuing.
As I've stated before either those hitters will be able to do hit that way or they won't. It won't devalue those that can actually do it. It will make them more valuable as there will be fewer people that can do it.
chop2chip
Well-known member
Okay. I think I get what you are getting at. It's a good counter argument, although I find it to be contrarian for the sake to be contrarian.
But the ultimate point is that we know far less about how to effectively measure defense. Sure, there is going to be some counter examples that illustrate areas where advanced offensive stats can be approved upon, but it's light years ahead of what's been done so far for defense. The fact that we have two defensive metrics that measure the same exact thing that have contradicting results speaks volumes for the work that needs to be done.
zitothebrave
Connoisseur of Minors
You're passing off a logical conclusion opinion as fact. We don't know the true value of offense or defense. We think we know we're closer on offense. But what if 100 years down the line they have everything mapped perfectly and find DRS or UZR were within a few runs while offense was off by several? Anytime you go looking for value in a stat you're applying a level of subjectivity. At what level? That's something that gets hammered out years down the line. Remember not even a decade ago, most sabermetricians thought a walk was as valuable as a hit, now they know that's ludacrist* and hits are more valuable than walks and a double and a triple is less valuable than a homer and a single (though by a pretty negligible amount, it's still more valuable cause a homerun is involved) we've learned the flaw in rate stats. Someone who's 1-1 with a homer and 3 walks is worse than someone who's 3-4 with a homer single and a double . even if they achieved the same "number of bases" in the loosest terms. We're ironing out all of the stats to get better information and things will keep getting better. UZR, DRS, IE, you name it all have flaws. Those flaws over time will be corrected and adapted. Just as the flaws in offensive valuation are constantly being corrected and adapted.
Metaphysicist
Not Actually Brian Hunter
This is a pretty cool dataset, but we need to be pretty careful about reading too much into it. This is an article from a (smart) guy tinkering with some numbers, and it hasn't been vetted at all. A couple of things that would give me pause:
1) Andrelton Simmons and Nick Markakis have essentially the same score over the past 3 years. I mean, I'm willing to buy that in theory Markakis is getting hurt by shifts, but... come on, now. Maybe they just need to do some work on the positional adjustments, but that gets my eyebrow going up pretty high.
2) This stat assumes that a players positioning is 0% under his control, and that's preposterous. Andruw Jones made plays that no one else did because he was able to shade to place that no one else was willing to go. This stat basically deletes that value from players (maybe this same issue is hurting Andrelton, who is an incredibly smart defender and who can play in more extreme positions?), which is thus gonna give you an inaccurate picture.
1) Andrelton Simmons and Nick Markakis have essentially the same score over the past 3 years. I mean, I'm willing to buy that in theory Markakis is getting hurt by shifts, but... come on, now. Maybe they just need to do some work on the positional adjustments, but that gets my eyebrow going up pretty high.
2) This stat assumes that a players positioning is 0% under his control, and that's preposterous. Andruw Jones made plays that no one else did because he was able to shade to place that no one else was willing to go. This stat basically deletes that value from players (maybe this same issue is hurting Andrelton, who is an incredibly smart defender and who can play in more extreme positions?), which is thus gonna give you an inaccurate picture.