the broad statistics are in place not to evaluate an isolated event but to analyze trends. a K is an out either way, and over the course of the season, each out is more or less the same...the object of hitting is essentially not to make outs, which is why OBP has become a more popular stat. that being said, a hitter who hits .300 will probably have a higher OBP than a .280 hitter, unless the player is like juan pierre (who never walks). he may have been a good player a few yrs ago like the cat said, but now he is quite possibly the most overrated bad player in the major leagues i agree with the cat and hammer that, by itself, BA is quite possibly the most overrated tool to analyze a batters performance. same with runs scored, which is largely dependent on # of ABs and the hitters hitting behind the player in question. theres not really any one single way to statistically find a "valuable" hitter. OPS+ normalizes the stats across the board (for example, adjusting for the ballpark the player plays in), but it might skew the data towards slugging a bit; without offending too many of the anti-"stat geek" crowd, the most effective tools, in my opinion, are equivalent average and value/wins over replacement player so to steer back to the original topic of the thread, i loved willy while he was here, but he showed marginal (if not negative) improvement from his first to his second year here, and he was a subpar MLB hitter. i didnt have a problem with dealing him (especially bc luke scott is a better player) as long as we got something valuable in return...like, say, john garland. jason jennings was a slightly below average MLB pitcher for all 3 seasons before his career yr in 2006. i hated that trade bc we brought in jennings for 3 cheap, young players (who might have improved in the yrs we owned them..and either way would have likely been better than jennings)...oh and juan pierre sucks
If the point of your thread was to celebrate willy and his success on the rockies... (a) don't post it in the Astros forum (b) don't write in the first post that "we should have never traded him" because you sound like you're trying to start an argument about that instead of only celebrate his success on the rockies.
Rockies record when Taveras played (regular season) 50 - 50 Rockies record when Taveras didn't play (regular season) 40 - 23 Willie had a good year (although he missed around 60 games due to nagging injuries). I am sure the Astros would love to have not made the Jennings' trade, but the past is the past and trading Taveras (along with a crummy start) did allow them to get Pence to the majors sooner than planned. It is still incredible to me that a player with his speed has only 45 doubles and 11 triples in 1600+ plate appearances. He will be this generations' Otis Nixon.
So being better than Jason Jennings makes you "the man"? If that's true, Woody Williams is the man too! You should make a thread to celebrate his success.
Of course, about 16 of those 40 wins all came in the last three weeks of the season when their 3 best hitters all went on a tear. I think it's pretty much become clear that neither Taveras nor Spillboroughs nor any other individual piece is responsible for that kind of run. Even A-Rod hitting a HR a day isn't going to lead to that level of success. I've never understood this argument. Why does having Willy T prevent them from getting Pence up? Why couldn't he have simply replaced Jason Lane and then worked his way into the lineup? Scott struggled early on and Pence could have played there if need be and then played for Taveras if he got hurt or struggled. Ultimately, it's always better to have more talent than less and then figure out how to fit the pieces together. Had they not had to play freaking Jason Lane and other scrubs in the outfield, maybe the Astros aren't so many games out early in the season and on the downward cycle. The Rockies are a perfect example of that. Having Spillboroughs there to take Willy's place during his injuries let them continue along without having to plug some scrub into CF.
You are correct, it SHOULDN'T have prevented them from calling up Pence, but it very well could have. We know for a fact, that the lack of a quality centerfielder the first month of the season, sped up Pence's promotion. Had Taveras been here, who knows what would have happened.
I think that is the point that most folks are trying to make. It is not the fact they traded Taveras, Hirsh and Buchholz, but the fact that they didn't do better than free agent to be Jason Jennings.
In his 3rd year, at 25 years old without the benefit of a year at AAA, Willy T had an OBP of 0.367 and an OPS of 0.748. Somewhere between Pierre's 2003 and 2004 seasons. His stolen base pace this year was a bit below Pierre's 2003 pace and a bit higher than Pierre's 2004 pace. I think Pierre at his peak is a pretty good comparison to Willy T now. The expectation would be that Willy T would continue to improve based on his age and level of experience, but we'll see.
Absolutely - I think that's more of a problem with the organization's decision making this past year than anything else though. That's the same bad organizational planning that led them to make the ludicrous Jennings trade, in my opinion.
Absolutely - nothing wrong with trading talent, upcoming or not. The problem was trading that talent for a one-year wonder that you only control for one year. If he sucks, it was a waste (as happened). If he's good, you have to pay him $10-$15MM a year to keep him. In the process, you gave away 3 cheap players that could have been used more wisely, whether in the lineup or in trade for other players that could be more useful long-term. That kind of trade makes sense on a team on the verge of huge success. Not on a team that was 0.500 last year, lost 2 of their 3 superstar starting pitchers, and is relying on comeback seasons by Ensberg and Lidge, along with trusting Burke to be good at CF and hoping Scott/Lane can take care of RF. Too many questionmarks on a team that wasn't good to begin with to assume that a #2 pitcher was going to be the difference maker.
Problem is, he essentially played half of a season. I wanted to see post-ASB if he could maintain his numbers or if they were the outliers they appeared to be. For the most part, we didn't get an answer either way because of injuries. Pierre had that kind of production for two seasons... I want to see that kind of production a bit longer with Willy before I declare him on par with Pierre in his prime.
Yeah - I'd agree with that. The injuries were disappointing and definitely leave in question whether this is a trend or a fluke at this point.
1.) It's not. However, you cannot contruct your lineup in favor of a situation that is relatively rare. The goal of any lineup should be to get your best players the most AB possible, regardless of situation. Take, for example, Pierre vs. Dunn with the bases loaded and 2 outs. In any single AB, Pierre is much more likely to make contact with the ball and possibly score that run than Dunn is. But you have to look at it in a larger context. Pierre is most likely to either hit a single or make an out (which may or may not score the run). Dunn, however, will strike out a lot, but he will also draw a walk, or get an extra base hit. So, while Pierre may provide a better chance of scoring one run, Dunn gives you a greater ability of scoring multiple runs. It's all about the probabilities. 2.) Shaji answered this point well, but I thought I'd give it another take. Juan Pierre's is good at getting hits, I don't think anybody will dispute that. But he does not draw walks and he does not hit for any power at all, so his average is an empty one. A player with a 0.300 average, but only a 0.330 OBP, and a sub-0.400 SLG simply is not very valuable. Luke Scott hit 0.250 this year, but had a 0.350 OBP with a 0.500 SLG. That is markedly more valuable than a guy who hit 50 points worse than he did. There are good players who are similar to Pierre, Ichiro being among them. The difference is that Ichiro hits about 40 points better than Pierre, draws a few more BB/PA and hits 10 HR/yr instead of the 1 that Pierre hits. IMO Ichiro is not as valuable a player as a 0.350 hitter should be, but his AVG is high enough to offset his lack of patience and pop.
Unfortunately, the organization made a couple of commitments awhile ago that precluded a lot of the decision making -- A.) Keeping Craig Biggio, and B.) Hanging on to Chris Burke the last two years. You can pretty much get a chain reaction of events that went through their heads (included with that the need for quality pitching, which is still their biggest weakness). Additionally, I had no problem with Pence getting some time in AAA to actually play CF on an everyday basis. The AFL and Spring Training weren't likely enough reps to know that he'd be comfortable enough there. The Astros would be wasting resources/time if they focused strictly on speedy CF'ers with little pop... Pence is adequate, and isn't costing them games out there. (Hell, Josh Anderson filled in just fine, and had plate presence to back it up). The main problem is that Jennings wasn't anywhere close to "improving" away from Colorado... but given that the same trade wasn't good enough to acquire a laterally better pitcher in Jon Garland, it speaks volumes as to how most of the league percieved the Astros' "talent". One thing that may be alarming is the fact that this organization has been unable to produce a reliable above-average every 4th day starter since Oswalt... that's now going on 7 years. You'd figure just one of the plethora of mid-tier young pitchers they've thrown out there the last three years would have found a way to stick. When the organization isn't going to be acquiring future HOFers to pitch for them, they need to find other venues... There will be tons of pressure on Albers/Patton/Guitierez to show something, or else they will likely have to part with a Berkman/Lee type hitter to get the prospects who are more likely to develop.
This is one thing I wish someone would do a study on (or maybe it's been done and I just haven't seen it). I wonder how much impact standard deviation of runs scored has on winning. A team that scores 6 runs every single game will win more games than one that scores 12 every other game and 0 in the alternating games, despite both teams scoring the same number of runs. So consistency has value there. My question is whether that translates to individual hitters. Intuitively, relying on the big inning will result in a higher deviation of runs scored as opposed to scoring one run at a time here and there. But I don't know if that really translates in the grand scheme of things. Perhaps someone has some free time and wants to do a study...
