Max, I understand you defending a player you like, but sometimes you gotta accept reality. This would be like me starting a thread saying Francis is a pure point guard. I will defend Steve Francis on a lot of fronts, but I will never argue that he's a pure point guard.
Here's an article that shows that Biggio cost the Astros 21 runs in 2003, which was the sixth-worse season by a CF in the last 4 years.
Dammit madmax, you may have just jinxed this thing. I was so hoping this would last long enough to start a crow eating thread.
wait...you just said before that he wasn't a liability getting to balls unless compared to ABOVE average centerfielders. oh...and you guys are completely forgetting that at the plate he's batting .329...OBP of .379..slugging .557...has scored 12 runs and has 14 RBI's. how much more of "reality" do you need there? those are the freaking numbers of the player that we heard all offseason was washed up. and i'm not saying biggio is a pure centerfielder. not saying he's even above-average out there. i'm saying he's not hurting us...and that his performance at the plate as a leadoff hitter more than makes up for any shortcomings out in the field.
how about some 2004 numbers. those are really the only pertinent numbers when considering arguments made in the offseason forecasting 2004. thanks.
yeah..sorry about making you stand behind your own words like that! hire me and i'll help you hide behind them.
Come on MM, you know the 2004 season, which is all of 3 weeks old, doesn't have anywhere close to a sufficient sample size. I would guess that by the end of the season, his numbers will have regressed to similar ones as last season.
and if they do, then i'm just flat out wrong. but so far, he's been a huge reason why the astros have been playing well early on. that's a far cry from the "he's washed up" talk we heard all offseason.
And here's a link to the article. I meant to include it above. There are also a few more Astros-related items. Hardball Times - Five Questions: Houston Astros
Hammer, that article is the biggest bunch of pure wildass fantacrap I've read in a long time. I'm not a scout (though I'd love to become one!) but I saw Biggio play two games... I bet he slept in a Holiday Inn Express as well. The man [Hidalgo] just covers a ton of ground out there. This is an utterly ridiculous statement to anyone with a basic knowledge and observational insight into Hidalgo as a ballplayer. Unfortunately Biggio's contract and status as a leader on the team make it impossible to trade him. Pesky little things like 10-5 rights hinder that as well. Defensive "stats" (even questionable ones like UZR and Win Shares) have a purpose, but without an observational critique (which this clown glosses over as insignificant) they are utterly meaningless.
what??? me and my fantasy league friends can't run a team on our own just using the yahoo real time stats???
Even if his numbers "regress to similar ones as last season", as Hammer said, he'll still be the best leadoff man the Astros could have (4th in the majors in OBP in the leadoff spot).
Well I watched far more than 2 Astros games last year, and Biggio looked lost to me as well. He wasn't using those observations to make his point, he was using them to add to his point, which is taken from cold hard numbers. As I said before, there is no one magical all-encompassing defensive stat, but when all of them say the same thing, it's tough to argue. Ultimately, you're saying you'd trust the handul of observations that you can make over the stats that encompass every single play of every single inning of every single game of the season. I trust my instincts, but not that much.
Max, you're a really smart character, I don't see why you let your homerism get in the way of your intelligence in this case. I'm also getting a little bit of a nasty vibe from you that I'm not sure is warranted. I'm just trying to discuss this topic, and have no vested interest one way or the other.
Hammer, I'm not saying Biggio is a good defensive CF'er, personally I think he's below average (I also think he's the best option they have, when you take the team's need for a leadoff guy into consideration, another thing the author conveniently ignores). I was just taking issue with the article, and especially with the reliance on defensive "stats" as a be all end all when evaluating performance, which is exactly what this guy did.
Hammer, you tooled him with the defensive stats. He had no answer for that and frankly was embarrassed for having posted what he did about Biggio's defense. That is why he got a little nasty there. Why do you think he's so desperate to change the subject to offense?
I think this says more for the differing styles of big league managers than it does for Biggio's stats. Biggio ranked 45th in the NL (out of 75 qualifiers) and 79th in the majors (out of 165 qualifiers) in OBP in 2003. Just because managers decided to only bat 3 of them in the leadoff spot doesn't increase Biggio's value any.
