phillipmike
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- Oct 27, 2009
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Good for him. Though Martin is off to a rough start. Still elite on base but below average slugging and batting average.
4 errors at SS. Playing most games at 2B
Blue Jays Discussion: Confirmed: Vladimir Guerrero Jr is still good at baseball
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Good for him. Though Martin is off to a rough start. Still elite on base but below average slugging and batting average.
4 errors at SS. Playing most games at 2B
Remember that complete game too. Such a good pitcher. Still my favourite one to this day.
tmlms13
Registered User
That is an option if the batter is deliberately delaying. But one of the other things they teach us in "game management" is don't create problems for yourself. What's worse, telling coaches at 8:30 we can't play anymore or telling a pitcher to pitch while the batter is standing outside the batter's box.
Maplebeasts
I See Demons!!!!!
I love Bo but the guy needs to learn to take a ball every now and then. Some of the crap he chases is unbelievable.
tmlms13
Registered User
As much as I like Bo (and his flow) he's really struggling, don't know what's wrong.
dredeye
BJ Elitist/Hipster
- Mar 3, 2008
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Swr turning it around. Looks like he’s adjusted to no tar. Good for him. Was a fun prospect to watch
dredeye
BJ Elitist/Hipster
- Mar 3, 2008
- 27,621
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Might be time to move him down a bit. But with the injuries already the lineup isn’t great. Even just swap him and Espinal for now. At least espinal can take a walk right now
Seath The Scaleless
Paledrake
I'm a bit more concerned with Bo's batted ball profile as he's killing worms at a much higher rate than last year and without much authority.
Seems like pitchers are pounding the zone with him so hopefully it's just a small tweak and he's back on track
Seems like pitchers are pounding the zone with him so hopefully it's just a small tweak and he's back on track
phillipmike
Registered User
- Oct 27, 2009
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Bo seems like a guy who gets in his own head a lot. The moment he feels off he starts chasing it way too much instead of letting it come to him.
To be fair it's expected. He's still a relatively young player and he even admitted he had the same problem last year before it finally clicked heading into June. He isn't the first pro athlete to try and fight his way out of a slump and he sure as hell won't be the last. He can hang his hat on his defensive game making big strides and I have full confidence it'll fall into place for him offensively.
He definitely is his dad's son though lmao. That unga bunga caveman swing mindset will never be totally gone. It's coded into his genes.
Same kinda thing for Espinal. This is the first time he's a full on every day player which gives pitchers plenty of data on where to attack him/where the holes in his swing are. I noticed he's chasing a lot more too but again, not something completely unexpected.
Edit: can't imagine the short spring training helped a guy like Bo either when he's obviously a guy that takes a bit of time to get into a groove.
To be fair it's expected. He's still a relatively young player and he even admitted he had the same problem last year before it finally clicked heading into June. He isn't the first pro athlete to try and fight his way out of a slump and he sure as hell won't be the last. He can hang his hat on his defensive game making big strides and I have full confidence it'll fall into place for him offensively.
He definitely is his dad's son though lmao. That unga bunga caveman swing mindset will never be totally gone. It's coded into his genes.
Same kinda thing for Espinal. This is the first time he's a full on every day player which gives pitchers plenty of data on where to attack him/where the holes in his swing are. I noticed he's chasing a lot more too but again, not something completely unexpected.
Edit: can't imagine the short spring training helped a guy like Bo either when he's obviously a guy that takes a bit of time to get into a groove.
On fangraphs, Yimi Garcia has a lower FWAR (0.0 fwar) then Merryweather (0.1 FWAR) despite the fact Yimi has 6 scoreless innings in high leverage, he hasn't give up a run. Merryweather has given up 4 earned runs... Literally makes no sense.
fWAR is based on FIP (Fielding Independant Pitching) not ERA.
ERA becomes valuable as the sample size gets extremely large. Some people argue that a low ERA over 200 innings might still be too small of a sample size, but over 300+, then it starts becoming a strong indicator of the performance.
On lower samples, we use predictive stats to determine how a pitcher has performed because they underline what the same performance would result in going forward. Merryweather has pitched like a quality reliever but got lit up, but if nothing changes in how he pitches, he is still a high leverage guy.
The other side of that is Richards, who has a low ERA but has gotten fairly lucky. The hope is that he cleans things up, but allowing baserunners dramatically increases the chances of runs.
Two things that are hurting Garcia's numbers (and will dramatically improve his fWAR if they rebound) are his K/9 and BB/9 (4.5 each). His career numbers are 9.37 and 2.11 (2 less runners per 9 and 1 extra strikeout every 2 innings means less runners on base in the first place and less balls in play to be left to chance).
Got it. Garcia has a lower WHIP as well, I thought that would factor in but FIP seems valuable to consider for fwar. Thanks for the explanation.
The alternative, Baseball-Reference uses their own bWAR which is based on runs allowed per 9, an adjustment for opponent, defense, role, park factor et cetera. Basically, their stat assumes that a pitcher isn't completely innocent when an error happens because he put the ball in play (and assuming it isn't a four base error, he also contributed in other ways to the runs scoring).
bWAR is usually seen as a better measure of pitchers because it gives credit for pitching effectively to contact whereas fWAR punishes pitchers for balls in play (ie, a pitcher who has a K/9 of 27 but gives up a HR per inning would be seen as better than a pitcher who gives up 2-3 hits every inning but gets DPs even if the ERA was dramatically different).
fWAR is usually taken as the better position metric, because it is based on a larger range of stats for defense (baserunning should be almost exactly the same), and hitting is largely based on wRC+ (which compares hitters to average).
bWAR has Merryweather at -0.2 and Garcia at 0.3 suggesting that Garcia is trading K's for easy outs.
One final point (not related to Garcia and Merryweather) is that both are counting stats. That means that Tapia being -0.2 in 32PA is better than Zimmer being -.0.2 in 9PA (even if Tapia's number is actually worse).
It also means that if Jansen managed his first 8 PA over 500 PA (which flat out wouldn't happen), he'd have a 25fWAR season (the highest fWAR season by a position player ever was 15 by Babe Ruth in 1923 (a year in which he graded out as a gold glove calibre defensive outfielder). Putting it another way, he'd be almost double Barry Bonds' best season lol.
What we saw last year was that bWAR tended to be very good at showing us what our starters were doing, and that as the season progressed and "chance" started demonstrably being skill, the two evened out.
Gausman has a high fWAR after two starts which means that he doesn't really give opponents a chance to score. If he keeps this up, he is likely to have a very good year. Manoah has a very good bWAR. That means that he is keeping opponents off the board (and likely doing more on an eye test). While it is impossible right now to suggest that Manoah is pitching better than Gausman (sample size issues), fWAR has a correction once the sample size grows that stops adjusting all the stats to an average pitcher which is what brought Ray's up dramatically for example.
Gausman has a high fWAR after two starts which means that he doesn't really give opponents a chance to score. If he keeps this up, he is likely to have a very good year. Manoah has a very good bWAR. That means that he is keeping opponents off the board (and likely doing more on an eye test). While it is impossible right now to suggest that Manoah is pitching better than Gausman (sample size issues), fWAR has a correction once the sample size grows that stops adjusting all the stats to an average pitcher which is what brought Ray's up dramatically for example.
Yes, I think I prefer bwar for pitchers. I especially like the fact they consider opponent and park factor as additional variables. Garcia has consistently been in high leverage, even coming in early during the 7th inning to face the middle of the lineup or coming in the 8th or 9th late. That has to be considered. I think FIP is a good metric but for pitchers i like bwar as it factors in more variables. I agree Fwar seems good for position players.
FIP's flaw over smaller sample size is that it cannot adjust to quality of contact.
Berrios, when he's on, gets a ton of weak contact (lazy fly outs and weak grounders). FIP can't differentiate between that and the first inning last night over small samples.
RA9Avg just doesn't care. It's essentially comparing what the hitter you faced should have done against an average pitcher to what he did against you.
Over a huge sample, ERA and FIP will normally approach one another which would justify fWAR as being better. But over a small sample, you see some huge differences between the numbers. RA9Avg could hypothetically have noise if a team were particularly bad on D (for example, Dickey's season opener that was caught by Arencibia would have had a massive amount of blame placed on Dickey for Arencibia's inability to catch).
I like FIP in some instances, but I usually prefer a combination of fWAR and bWAR for pitchers. fWAR is great in theory, but it just excludes way too much, especially now that we have so much in-depth batted ball data available. A version of FIP that incorporates batted ball data into it would be perfect, and I hope someone much smarter than me comes out with it soon!
With Garcia specifically... he's walking too many and not striking many out, but he's balanced some of that out by getting a lot of groundballs (not a bad strategy with the Jays infield defense). But he's also been lucky and/or helped by the defense, because there's no way he's going to keep up an .063 BABIP. So the FIP being way above the ERA makes sense. But at the same time, take a look at the Statcast contact quality metrics and you can see there's a lot more than luck and defense behind it so far, so something between a 0.00 ERA and a 3.57 FIP would probably make sense.
Gausman.
Also, I'd be shocked if Zimmer isn't playing CF today.
I expect something like:
Tapia
Bichette
Guerrero
Gurriel
Collins
Chapman
Biggio
Espinal
Zimmer
(Note: I'm not suggesting that I agree with this lineup)
Honestly, if Springer isn't available I don't know that there are any great alternatives. Maybe Espinal at leadoff since he at least sees a lot of pitches? Maybe Biggio as a high OBP guy, but he wasn't very good last year and has been worse than Tapia this year. Obviously just shifting everyone up and having Bo lead off would be ideal, but I mentioned last time this happened that some guys just don't like batting leadoff. That could be the case here.
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