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The Polaroid Random Thoughts Baseball Thread

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Start now using the computer thing for balls and strikes calls. It is there - it is accurate - it is instant. It's better.

It's going to happen eventually. The technology is just too good. It's inevitable. Do we really have to go through a prolonged period of navel-gazing and whining first? The answer is yes of course but I'm saying just skip the crap and do it.

I know it will disappoint people who like their baseball games to be heavily influenced by the unnecessary mistakes of people not even playing, but I'm saying START IMMEDIATELY
 
But then we'll miss out on great moments like this

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Daft
I'm definitely in the camp of people who don't think he should be in the ASG. Ridiculously small sample size.
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I agree with you. Here is Joe Sheehan's newsletter from Sunday in regards to AS Voting -

The Joe Sheehan Newsletter
Vol. V, No. 63
July 7, 2013


Jean Segura - 438
Troy Tulowitzki - 309


We can take the players, coaches and managers out of the All-Star process now.


For what I believe is the first time, the results of the player balloting (h/t Maury Brown), which includes the uniformed non-playing staff as well, were released. With any luck, it will end the farce that is the player balloting. Pretty much across the board, the players voted as if channeling Thomas Boswell, as if time began on Opening Day, and nothing that came before mattered. They voted as a child would, looking at baseball-card stats on whatever day they got their ballot, and adding absolutely nothing to the process beyond that. Troy Tulowitzki is one of the best players in baseball and has a track record of being that dating back five years. Jean Segura is a sophomore with less than a full season in the league who hit .367 in April and .345 in May, The voters picked Segura, who had a gaudy BA on the ballot and then posted a .296 OBP in June.


Matt Harvey - 287
Clayton Kershaw - 231
Patrick Corbin -- 222
Adam Wainwright - 215
Jordan Zimmermann - 207


Two of the NL's top three vote-getters had a combined 27 starts prior to 2013. The players made themselves heard on the Matt Harvey/Clayton Kershaw question, which as I pointed out last week reflects a spectacularly small-minded approach to the problem. Patrick Corbin finishing ahead of Adam Wainwright and being voted on to the team in lieu of Cliff Lee is short-sighted enough to run for election to the House of Representatives.


What savvy is being shown here? What are the players adding to the process that couldn't be added by putting a reasonably bright eight-year-old in front of baseball-reference.com for an hour on June 14? The argument underpinning the player vote is that the players bring a knowledge set to the table that the fans or media does not possess. Yet the players never, and I mean never, elect someone to the team who has poor stats. Martin Prado got picked the year he hit .356 in April, and only that year. No one put Michael Young on the team in 2010 or 2012 or 2013 -- in between, when he .341 through the end of May, that's when he made the team.


Brandon Phillips - 409
Matt Carpenter - 343


Paul Goldschmidt - 508
Joey Votto - 347


The players have made it clear that their definition of "All-Star" is "guys who have a high batting average and a lot of RBIs and wins and saves to start the season, irrespective of how those numbers were assembled or how well the player actually played". It's an utterly ridiculous definition of the term, given what we know about the variability of player performance over a couple hundred at-bats or a dozen starts or, mercy, 25 innings of relief pitching. It's how you vote Brandon Phillips to the team rather than Joey Votto, by channeling the wisdom of Marty Brenneman. Four hundred nine players thought Brandon Phillips should be an All-Star, while 347 thought Joey Votto belonged. With due respect to Paul Goldschmidt, he's never been a better player than Joey Votto, and he isn't now. (If you cite a half-season of defensive statistics at first base to object to this point, explicitly or implicitly, go to the back of the class.)


Note, also, the Matt Carpenter vote totals. Carpenter wasn't even the Cardinals' regular second baseman until the beginning of June, and his track record is just slightly longer than that of Jean Segura. Where are the votes, at a thin position, for the guys who do the little things? The players should know that better than anyone, but they gave us 1) the guy with all the RBIs and 2) the guy with the high batting average.


Carlos Gonzalez - 557
Carlos Beltran - 441
Michael Cuddyer - 338
Domonic Brown - 335
Andrew McCutchen - 256


This is where you see the deep problems the players create with their ill-informed voting. They have no idea what they're doing even with the Triple Crown numbers and they get distracted by shiny things, which is how you end up with Carlos Gonzalez leading the outfield voting, Michael Cuddyer finishing third and Andrew McCutchen far behind both. Less than a third of the players recognized Andrew McCutchen as an All-Star. Less than a third of the players recognized Andrew McCutchen as an All-Star. Domonic Brown got more votes than McCutchen entirely on timing; he's hit .245/.303/.408 in the month or so since his home-run streak ended.


Don't get me started on Ryan Braun, who was the league MVP two years ago and who finished second last year, but not in the top five of the player voting. Braun is one of the best players in baseball who happens to have been injured for part of the first half. For that, suddenly Michael Cuddyer is an All-Star. Biogenesis effect? Nelson Cruz finished third in the AL player balloting. David Ortiz has long dominated the DH vote. Braun himself made the team as a player selection a year ago, after an offseason riddled with accusations that he used synthetic testosterone.


The results of the outfield balloting show that defense plays no role in the player voting. None at all. You see this in a few places, but McCutchen's rank in the NL, behind four corner outfielders, two of whom he's miles better than, makes it explicit. The players never spit up Brendan Ryan or Andrelton Simmons or Peter Bourjos. The players never, ever, ever surprise in a way that makes us smarter about a player or the game.


Max Scherzer - 351
Felix Hernandez - 253
Clay Buchholz - 234
Yu Darvish - 222
Hisashi Iwakuma - 147


No more than 146 players voted for Justin Verlander. No more than 146 players voted for Chris Sale. You should remember this when you're watching studio shows dominated by former players to the exclusion, by and large, of non-player analysis. You should remember this when players drop something like, "You have to have played the game to understand." You should remember this when you're hearing about the importance of bunting and hitting behind the runner and pitching to the score and how some players are clutch. You should remember that no more than 146 players thought that Justin Verlander and Chris Sale belonged on the American League All-Star team.


Torii Hunter - 280
Alex Gordon - 228


Torii Hunter in April: .370/.411/.500, with a .429 BABIP. Torii Hunter since: .279/.320/.405 with a .319 BABIP. If Hunter has his season in reverse, producing exactly the same amount of value, he doesn't sniff the All-Star team. Actually, Matthew Joyce pretty much has done just that. Joyce has roughly the same OPS (785 to 782) as Hunter for a higher OPS+ (117 to 108). However, Joyce hit .225/.286/.451 in April before improving to .251/.343/.460 thereafter. Joyce didn't have a gaudy batting average when the ballots were distributed, so he's not an All-Star. We talk about weak All-Stars having big "half seasons" when in fact, it's more like 50-65 games, and has to be the right 50-65 games. Giancarlo Stanton slugged .701 in the second half last year. Players didn't care. Aramis Ramirez batted .331/.377/.613 in the second half last year. Players didn't care.


The players are adding nothing to this process. They're putting players on the All-Star team based on eight weeks of good play, and sometimes not even that if the timing is right. They're reducing All-Star qualification to big numbers in stat categories that don't reflect value. They're ignoring defense. They're ignoring everything that we know about the players' track records, and in doing so, snubbing some of the biggest stars in the game for playing slightly below their level to start the season. And they're not adding any information that they, as players, might have that the rest of the baseball world can't get itself. It's been a decade, and the player vote remains the weakest part of a flawed process. End it already.
 
He will probably be a decent player but he will certainly slow down. I also don't base that on the kind of stats being discussed there (nor his numerology nor horoscopes nor the configuration of bumps on his head.) He will slow down. There are a lot more guys that hit 25 home runs in the first half of a season than hit 50 for a whole season. Same principle here. Things settle and regress. That's just the way it goes.
 
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