[Jeffy25]

Originally Posted by Airdrop01

Mauer hasn’t caught an inning since 2013 I would wager. I don’t know. I haven’t looked it up. I’d be shocked if he’s caught ten games since then.

Well considering he's been playing since before 2013, that hardly matters, right?

He caught more games prior to 2013, than over 150 guys who came before him.

Just because he moves off the position doesn't mean he wasn't a catcher (in terms of Hall of fame discussions).

Joe Maurer isn’t close to the player Campy was... but that’s not what the metrics say, so you’ll never be convinced.

Well I didn't see Campy play, but I know his legend is strong. But outside of a 41 homer season, and several other good offensive seasons. What made him such a special catcher? He only played 10 years, Mauer is already at 15 and not done yet.

Campy had the peak, but let's not ignore what Mauer's peak looked like.

from 06-13 - .327/.410/.473 - 139 OPS+ - 4384 PA - 40.4 rWAR

Campy didn't have an 8 year peak. He had a 5 year peak with another great year in 1955 after being dreadful in 54.

During those 5 years, he hit .296/.379/.543 - 2686 PA - 141 OPS+ - 25.8 rWAR

Campy was more valuable during his peak, but it was very short. And durability matters.

We can discuss who was better. And certainly Campy was more talented. But Mauer produced significantly more value. Being on the field is important.



Mauer was an all-star catcher for 8 straight years.
Campy had 5 years where he was a little better than an all-star catcher/MVP level catcher.

Would you rather have the slightly superior catcher for 5 years? Or the slightly inferior one for 8 years?

You can’t compare one era to another with metrics.

Of course you can.

They have base line averages, parks, and adjusted for many reasons. And they are very vetted.

I mean, even the most ardent sabremetrics person should agree with that.

Well they don't, because it's nonsense to think you can't.

My point is that’s my opinion. Based upon what I’ve seen. I don’t need a made up stat to tell me what I’ve seen. I was young but not blind. Yes. I’m old. As has been pointed out.

Age or not, and I'm not that young myself. Your memory and brain are filled with biases.

I was a young Cardinal fan rooting on Ozzie Smith. I thought his defense was amazing and second to none.

But the metrics tell me that Andrelton Simmons is probably a better defender, or at least on his level.

I'm not so driven by my own ego that I can't recognize that probability. I know my memory is flawed. I watched a hero, believed he was infallible, thought he was perfect.

But he's not. And there will be defensive shortstops that will come along and be better. Ozzie has some perks though. Mainly his longevity and base running. But I think of him as a flawless defender at short. I forgot about all the times he made a mistake, and heightened the times he made an amazing play. My memory is flawed, my bias stout. But I can recognize that the metrics show Simmons to be superior or on the same level for a reason. And I can watch him and understand why.

My beef is that you guys, except Cobra and a couple others, seem unable to understand that the metrics you worship are totally subjective and created out of whole cloth because those who create them struggle to see the things a player does in the game itself

None of that is the case, and that's not why this stuff was created. It was created because traditional box scores gave incredibly inferior information about player evaluation.

Every thing in the sport is subjective and man made. Just because a stat is old doesn't make it superior.

....not just in a box score. It’s not even that they’re useless. They’re a tool. But they’re treated like the be all end all by most of baseball and it’s fans.

Again, NOBODY is doing that.

I have yet to see anyone do that, ever, on these forums. Maybe they have and I didn't see it. But anyone who uses this information properly knows better.

And then citing them for why a guy should be in the HOF, especially when it’s utterly made up, to sell books, is crazy.

WAR is a great snapshot tool. If a player isn't even in the WAR threshold, it's kind of pointless to dive further into more information because the other stuff isn't going to measure up.

If he’s a DH, or a 1B, or a RF, I could live with that. But the argument is being made that he’s a HOF catcher, which means a helluva lot more matters than whatever the heck stat you want to use, or metric, etc.

His position doesn't matter except for when he hit as a catcher.

He's either a Hall of Fame player, or he isn't.

So yeah, I’m old, and I believe in scouting, the eye test and distrust “stats” made up by fatty radio guys and Baseball writers who think guys like Pete Rose isn’t a HOF player and then cite me to their made up stats (which they made up to sell books...like JAWS) to support their arguments.

JAWS wasn't created to sell books, but go on.

You continue to show you have no idea why this information exists.

It exists because the information that was out there was incredibly inferior and this game is very very easy to measure.

And you don’t know anything about Dayton Moore if you think he agrees with sabremetrics or followed it in building the 14 and 15 Royals.

I do know all about Dayton Moore and his love afair with guys like Jeff Francouer and Yunesky Betancourt, etc.

He literally ****ed up the perfect farm system. Got lucky on the Wil Myers move and ignore sabrmetrics.

Holland, Davis, Herrera, etc. That's the kind of bullpen teams are trying to buy right now and build through data.

Maybe Moore walked into it ass backwards, but that's a sabr move. Over using a bullpen to sneak in wins in October.

Traditional baseball would be throwing your ace out there 8 innings.

I don't think a single Royals starter pitched into the 7th inning during their WS run, except for Cueto's 9 inning WS start, where he only allowed 2 hits.

But that bullpen was completely sabrmetrics, whether he realized it or not.

It's also probably because Ned Yost knew what he was doing.

Front offices assemble the 90 win teams. The managers win the post-seasons.

I know the man. The sabremetrics folks were all losing their minds when he traded Wil Myers, signed guys like Johnny Gomes, etc. Jarrod Dyson? Selfish player. Terrible metrics. But it worked because he has the athleticism for what they wanted to do. Hosmer? Terrible metrics player. OOTP is not his bag. Great baseball player though. The Royals were the anti metrics team. They made contact, were athletic, and ran like hell. Their WAR and similar metrics were terrible. Hoch, Holland, Herrera, Davis? Not metrics players. They got guys that could throw hard and threw enough of them at the wall they caught lightning in a bottle.

You appear to have no clue what sabrmetrics are or is.

Being athletic is not 'anti-sabrmetrics' lol.


You seem to think there are these divisions of sabrmetrics vs traditional baseball in how you assemble a team. That's not the case.

Sabrmetrics is just using advanced data and analytics.

Assembling a team is a completely different discussion and is often done with that sort of data in an attempt to find efficiencies.

You seem to be trying to correlate the two.

Know what they did this year? They tried to find market inefficiency and steal players. They used the metrics. It’s got them the worst team in baseball and it’s not close.

What?

No they didn't.

They are stuck rebuilding because Moore didn't blow the team up when he needed to. They are stuck sucking because Moore didn't move guys like Cain, Moose, and Hosmer when he needed to and tried, incorrectly, to go for another shot at it.

They didn't sign any hidden market players.

Jon Jay, Michael Saunders, Ricky Nolasco, Blaine Boyer, Alcides Escobar, Trevor Oaks.

none of these guys are hidden, sabr gems. At all.

If they had $240MM, it would work.

Actually, it wouldn't. This free agent class sucked, and spending money in free agency is remarkably inefficient.

No team has ever been able to assemble a team in free agency and it work.

They don’t. They have contracts tied up in non sabremetric players that got old. Partially because they had to because of injury and death. Partially because they were trying to go for one more year in 16 and that’s what they felt they had to do. Metrics got them a guy who looks good on paper, Danny Duffy, who doesn’t compete, has a soft head, and is always hurt. He’s a good dude. But metrics is how you get guys like him signed to long term deals.

What sabrmetrics told you or anyone else that Danny Duffy was anything special?

If healthy, you are looking at 200 innings of league average pitching.

He may have had some upside when they extended him, but it was an unnecessary extension. They should have started the rebuild halfway into 2016 when they were 12 back at the deadline and all the players had 1.5 years of control left and two post-seasons to give to the acquiring team.



I'm not trying to be rude here, but you are shooting off a lot of narratives from the hip, and they are pretty much all false.