Astros: Could it get more depressing?

Of course it matters. It just (the stat itself) does a very poor job of doing what it attempts to do.

There is some "truth" out there and other statistics (ERA, DIPS, K/IP among many) do a much better job at getting to that "truth" than saves do.

 

I know but basically as a throw in.....they probably could have given them another project......I don't know...I just like Luke Scott....

I would have prefered a Pence, Lee, Scott outfield, as bad as that can be defensively.

DD

 

Say what? Scott was a very important part of that trade -- you absolutely could not replace him with another "project." Again, no one valued Troy Patton particularly highly except for a few Astros fans.

 

Did anybody see the Diamondbacks game today? Wow...

Astros need to switch their mentality to young, and black.

 

Valverde has had four seasons of reasonable sample size (50 IP). Three have been great, one was bad. I have a hard time believing the one was the norm. If you take the aggregate, at worst, he's equal to around the best year Qualls had.

Also, I don't think the argument you make about limited appearances is particularly relevant because Qualls, had he stayed with the Astros, would've had his appearances greatly reduced by virtue of moving to the closer's spot. It shouldn't be that way, but of course it is.

 

like Bourn and Wright?
it will be interesting to see how ed wade does in the draft.

 

I don't think there's a significant distinction between the 30 innings in '04 and the fifty innings in '03 and '06. The '04 season for him looks roughly like a lesser version of the disaster '06 was.

And I'm not sure you can just average that year into the other three good years because then the aggregate doesn't tell the whole story. The aggregate for Carlos Lee and Adam Everett hits 20 homers, drives in 75-85 runs and plays mediocre defense. That's not an accurate representation of either.

At his worst, he's got a 5.84 ERA, sees his appearances dwindle due to poor performance, and gives up two or more runs every fourth time he hits the mound. That's his worst. No need to average it, we've all seen him at his worst. It doesn't have to be the norm, but it did happen.

At his best he's better than Qualls, at his worst he's worse than Qualls.

 

This reminds me of a dude posting in last nights game thread vs the Suns that the game was over for the Rockets after the first 5 minutes of action.

 

Again, you are verifiably wrong about this.

 

Link or evidence, please.

 

Go back and look up my post the first time I responded to this canard, whenever you said it a couple of months ago.

 

You provided one source -- hardly overwhelming evidence -- and that one source you clouded by mixing your dates. Yes, Patton was considered the third-best prospect in the Orioles system -- in December and early January. At that point, when the ranking was made, the Orioles system was nearly as bad as the Astros. (Baltimore's farm system was ranked 29th by a couple of services in 2007.) Again, Patton was the mediocre best of an awful bunch, much like in Houston. The point in which the Orioles' farm system took a leap up, as you said, occurred after those rankings came out -- when they dumped Bedard for five prospects, including one elite one. I haven't seen Patton ranked anywhere nearly that high since.

Furthermore, anyone with a pulse who watched Patton regularly last season knew something was very wrong with his throwing arm that would lead to a bigger problem down the line -- which it did, and it's why he's out for the season. Even the Orioles acknowledged knowing this before the trade -- which should tell you how much value his inclusion meant to them (not a lot). But the Baseball America's of the world are much more statistically-based than they are observation-based, and thus injury concerns are often undervalued.

 

Actually, I quoted three sources, IIRC, and that is exactly three more than you. But if you want it from the horse's mouth, you could start with this, where McPhail was quoted at the time of Patton's surgery:

[rquoter]
MacPhail noted that he's known about the injury since before he swung the trade and indicated that the recommendation for surgery isn't as bad as it sounds. The doctors are optimistic, he said, that Patton should return to health. And as one part of a five-player haul for Tejada, MacPhail said he'd do the trade all over again even if he knew the extent of the injury.

"It's pretty much, again, what I expected," he said. "Sometimes you've got to go the high-risk, high-reward type deal. I could've had a different player in there, but [Patton is] 22, left-handed and already worked his way to the big leagues. I can wait. I'm alright with that. And I think sometimes you need to swing for the fences as part of a deal. I'm obviously very satisfied with the way the other guys from that deal have handled themselves so far in spring. No regrets from my standpoint."

...

"That's the beauty of getting five players. You can take some chances," said MacPhail. "I could've substituted somebody else. We moved a lot of names around. But in the end, if he comes back next year, he's 23 and left-handed and Baseball America's 78th best prospect in the game. I'll take it."

[/rquoter]

If you are more circumspect, you go through any of the 1,000,000 other stories available on MLB.com and elsewhere on Patton that describe him as 'one of the key pieces of the Tejada deal'. Do you want me to look those all up?

As long as we are asking for evidence, you could supply some shred of evidence of your own that he is a piece of trash mediocre throw-in that only is valuable in the minds of Astros fans? As you point out last year he was injured. If we judged people on injury performance, then just about every pitcher signed to a big deal this offseason would be standing in line at a soup kitchen this summer.

 

What's the freaking GM of the team supposed to say? "Oh, he's trash, we just took him because he might be a not terrible back of the rotation starter? He'll have injury problems the rest of his career." Come on. Of course he was "one of the key pieces." It sure as hell wasn't Sarfate or Albers! Outside of Scott, the Astros gave complete mediocrity at-best in that deal, so being "a key piece" out of that haul doesn't mean much.

From Lookout Landing:

Project Prospect:

http://www.moundtalk.com/prospects/baltimore-orioles-top-10-prospects-2008/

Baseball Prospectus 2008:

http://forum.orioleshangout.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1246203

Note that these are all after the trade, not based on expectations before the 2007 season started. They're also before the revelation of his season-ending injury, making it likely his value has gone further south.

Patton's a good kid. I don't think he's trash. But his stuff is extremely mediocre at best, his velocity has consistently dropped with a regular workload and he's had regular shoulder problems at the age of 22. He's a tough-minded pitcher with a good head on his shoulders, and with a successful recovery he could be a mid-level No. 4 or No. 5 starter. That's not useless, but it is mediocre. Scouts generally agree he has a floor that's not terrible, but a ceiling that's not very high. He is what he is -- when healthy, potentially an average back of the rotation starter.

 

If it was one injury for a couple weeks, sure. But last I checked, most of those pitchers aren't out for the season with serious labrum injuries. Also, last I checked, those pitchers haven't been on a regular downward trend in velocity for years. Actually, one is -- Barry Zito -- and he has a lot of the same questions about him as Patton does. I'd say the current Zito is a fair comparison for what to expect out of Patton when he returns.

 

I'm not sure what you want. You ask me for information, I provide it from as close to a core source as is possible, and you dismiss it as propaganda. I provide you information from the most respected publication in baseball in Baseball America (btw, I can't believe you've ever read it if you say they rely on stats. Which other publications give multiple-game in person scouting reports on High School prospects?) , and you respond with 'Lookout Landing' and another 'blogish' internet source.

The Baseball Prospectus report is fine, but it doesn't speak at all to his him or his pitches, which based on everything I read from respectable sources is very good. ('Plus-plus' control, plus curve, and sometimes plus change.) It only says that he has a big injury red flag. McPhail said as much. I would think that this would help validate what else he said, when he talked about what a potential gem he is. Further, the Baseball Prospectus report doesn't talk about things like is incredible bulldog makeup, or the super coachability that all his coaches have raved about. In this case, if someone is only looking at numbers on a page, it is Baseball Prospectus.

 

As strange as it may sound, one of the statistics Baseball America writers are frequently hung up on is their own. I can tell we'll disagree on this fundamental point, but there are some situations (and this is one of them) where I trust blogish sources more than I do Baseball America. The reason for that is that incredibly mainstream sources like BA often take the middle of the road to protect themselves -- both from their own prior rankings as well as to prevent committing a huge gaffe. As a scout, people always remember missing when you expect too little more than they do when you expect too much. Patton was a very good prospect prior to 2007, and as a writer I understand their professional apprehension to go very far (this early) in predicting his decline. That said, I can tell we have a fundamental difference in approach to this, so I guess we'll have to agree to disagree here.

As for his pitches, I read the same reports -- about this point last season and heading into last summer. At that point -- his velocity dipped significantly again (although much moreso last year), and his strikeout rate was reduced to almost nothing. When velocity drops and injuries occur on a frequent and repeated basis at such a young age, I have a hard time seeing an above average major league SP. I briefly did some digging on this last summer, and Pence said Patton's off-speed success was based on having a similar release point to his fastball, but of course being able to pump in the fastball in the low to mid 90s to keep hitters off-balance. I'm skeptical as to whether he'll be able to do that with a fastball that now tops out in the upper 80s and isn't nearly as different in speed from the off-speed stuff.

 

Tigers are the only team that makes our start look alright.