Tuesday Afternoon Astros Links and News

Your PitchF/X breakthroughs link isn’t working for me.

When I read the quote from Zach Levine about the Legends’ starting rotation being ready for the majors in early 2010, I was shocked. I knew we were going to be aggressive, but I didn’t think we’d even consider jumping some 18-20 year old guys from Class A to the big leagues in the course of a year, no matter how good the performance. Even Jason Castro isn’t projected to be ready that early.

So I checked out the source, and it looks like it’s been edited:

gives the Astros several shots at producing big league talent in the early 2010s.

http://baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=9183

It’s his typical stuff about the All Star Game (“blah blah blah more true stars blah blah Ben Zobrist blah blah cubs blah blah yankees blah too many royals”), and he manages to get a shot in about Hunter (at least I think it was a shot, it’s tough to tell exactly what he’s arguing here):

The player selections were once again hampered by the rule that requires their second choice be elected when they and the fans agree, so their selections always look a bit weaker. The players don’t seem to bring any specialized knowledge to their picks; they seem to be, by and large, to be voting on batting averages and RBI totals in the current season, and if there’s a defensive component or anything else being considered, it’s certainly not apparent from the results. In some cases, this means you land on the right answer—McCann, Adrian Gonzalez—and in some cases it means you get Hunter Pence and Ryan Zimmerman. Pence was probably the sixth outfielder in the player voting, and the three bench outfielders (with Pence joined by Justin Upton and Brad Hawpe) were all alternate player picks after they and the fans agreed on the starters. Zimmerman instead of Chipper Jones is just a mistake. In these cases, the All-Star process would be better served by turning the roster slots back to the managers. You’d get the same answers in many cases, but better ones in some.

1) If anybody is selecting Pence by RBIs, they’re doing it wrong. He’s on pace for about 69 RBI, which would be the same as his career high in 2007.
2) Pence is hitting .300, but that’s pretty close to his career average.
2) Is Sheehan seriously arguing that Pence isn’t a good fielder? (Actually, I checked, and FRAA doesn’t like Pence’s defense. Still, UZR loves him, as does Bill James’ fielding stats; so fuck you, BPro.) Same goes for Zimmerman, whose selection seemed obviously worthy, to me

But if you’re going to go into which of the three bench OFs was least-worthy, it certainly wasn’t Pence. Going by Fangraphs’ WAR numbers (which include UZR data, and I trust UZR a lot more than FRAA):

Pence: 2.2 WAR (and his defensive numbers have dropped to just above-average level over the past few weeks)
Hawpe: 1.4 WAR (-15.1 UZR/150 is killing him)
Upton: 3.7 WAR

Anyways, the commenters pretty much ripped him to shreds (particularly about his stuff on Zobrist), and it was awesome. My favorite:

If you want to argue that the ASG should use the criterion of “who has been the best player at their position over the past 4+ years,” you should recognize that a) that’s a radical change in how All-Stars have been selected since the game’s inception, and b) Ben Zobrist is hardly the worst offender even under that criterion. I get the sense that you — JohnHCh — would concede those two pretty basic points.

But Joe hasn’t done either of those things. He dismisses Ryan Howard as a bad selection despite the fact that Howard obviously qualifies under the “body of work” criterion. In almost the same paragraph, he bemoans the omission of Johnny Cueto, whose pre-2009 ERA is 4.81. Huh? That’s a hodgepodge of nonsense, culminating with the rash and hyperbolic dismissal of Zobrist as “one of the worst decisions I’ve ever seen.”

And the contradictions don’t stop there. Can anyone explain to me — under ANY criteria — how Ben Zobrist (career OPS+ of 97, 2009 OPS+ of 155) is an abomination while Aaron Hill (career OPS+ of 100 and 2009 OPS+ of 119) is a “close call?” I can’t come up with one that doesn’t defy basic rules of logic and common sense.

Look, we all know what’s going on here: Sheehan is pissy that the ASG isn’t stocked with Yankees this year. While I’ll cry few crocodile tears for that position, if he’d at least said that, I could have just laughed and moved on. Instead, I got nearly 2,000 words at a level that would get you voted off of “Prospectus Idol.” So yeah, I’m annoyed.

Okay, one more really good one:

First, you are arguing at the margins—the last couple roster spots. Buck up, Joe! There are plenty of stars to go around. And the presence of Jason Marquis is unlikely to affect how fans remember this game. We seemed to get through the Steinbach Crisis of ’88 pretty well. Plus, the margins themselves are set by Selig. So take the last 3 players from each roster and just put that on his tab.

But the real reason you stew in your outrage alone gets at something fundamental in how you watch and understand baseball. Your vision of the Joe Sheehan All-Star game is remarkably stale and uninspired. Quite frankly, nobody wants to watch your game. Nobody wants to watch a game whose invites are sent out before the season, its qualifications based on aggregate stats over a period of years.

Fans turn out each season—indeed, each night—with a sense of wonder, a belief that in any given year, on any given night, anything can happen. That’s why we don’t get outraged when a 28 year-old erstwhile utility guy gets a spot, or why we vote for a 37 year-old enjoying the best two months of his career. It is not because we (fans, players, managers) don’t understand what it means to be an All-Star, or that we think Ben Zobrist is superior to Alex Rodriguez. It is because having those players in there reminds us of why this game is so damn good. And why we keep turning out.

But “wonder” isn’t part of the calculus at BP. And that’s OK. Your unceasing cynicism is responsible for some real breakthroughs is how the game is understood. It just happens to be a liability here.