Holdover and outdated is exactly what it is. Same reason he keeps playing Julks. It's because he has had a higher batting average than Meyers despite Meyers being immensely more valuable to a team. I don't need to hear Dusty say it. It's an obsolete thought process from a bygone era.
My fear is that Dusty is now at the stage where he is trying to prove a point... and purposefully going against what is obvious so he can try to make himself look smarter than the herd. This the result of ego + stubbornness + need for recognition/respect. It's sad that a man of his age still struggles with these things.
It’s not speculation or unknowable - it is played out on the field and is perfectly objective. We’re not analyzing what the media says, or some magic stats no one has seen. It is just objective fact that everything Diaz does on the field is superior to everything Maldy does, and the pitchers and team perform better when he catches. Everything else is just noise based on blind faith in authority figures.
Díaz has 63 career plate appearances vs left-handed pitchers. That's a very small sample size. His expected stats are much better than his actual. VS LHP: 63 PA .169 BA/.274 ×BA 206 0BP/.307 XOBP .254 SLG/.509 XSLG 203 WOBA/.348 XWOBA 200 BABIP 91.3 EV 22.2 K% 4.8 BB%
He’s got an 815 expected ops v lefties. He can hit them just fine. He’s the victim of some small sample size bullshit/bad luck right now. Just like early in the season when his expected stats showed he was like the 3rd or 4th best hitter on the team and when kick normalized we found out he’s actually… the 3rd or 4th best hitter on the team (not counting Altuve who wasn’t playing at the time).
Maldy being overused and exhausted while Yainer having no experience with Framber or Javier is not an ideal setup going into the postseason
True, but if you're going to start Maldy, you.need to have all of your best bats in the lineup to compensate for Maldy. Can't do anything about Maldy's rapidly declining defense.
Dusty and his asinine lineups and dumb bullpen decisions have cost the Astros several games in the year. It's fine to have a throw away game here or there. Dusty is treating it like a personal vendetta to prove he knows best.
Now do the same with the much larger sample of minor league AB's that suggest the same thing? He's going to need to get better against lefties to be playable regularly there, that much is certain.
I think the silliest thing about this argument is that variation in hitter platoon skill is very small and requires a massive amount of regression (e.g., across 2200 PA against LHP for a RHB like Diaz). You can’t simply conflate a weird observed platoon split with the player’s actual platoon skill. Fans just don’t seem to get this for whatever reason, and Dusty doesn’t seem to either. Dusty’s knowledge on a lot of these topics wouldn’t surpass that of your average Facebook Astros group poster. Here is an explainer: https://baseballwithr.wordpress.com/2015/06/22/platoon-splits-what-is-the-platoon-skill-variation/ If you read the above you will notice that the vast bulk of platoon skill variance for hitters evaporates once you properly regress.
That's wonderful. But for now, when he's stuck in the backup C role... his AB's need to come via DH or 1B when he's not catching.
That’s due entirely to the entitled personalities of Dusty and Maldy. If Maldy were a better teammate, and/or if Dusty were a more competent manager, it would not be the case.
.883 expected OPS against lefties. Higher EV, barrel rate and hard hit% than against RHP. I don't care about his minor league numbers, his expected numbers against MLB pitchers are awesome. Just bad luck on a small sample (.209 BABIP) If he liked him it would take a much larger sample for and old guy like Dusty to assume reverse splits, but he's taken it and run because he never wanted to play Diaz.
