Flanalysis on Pablo resigning

[klaiggeb]

If you haven't seen this yet, it's worth watching.

www.csnbayarea.com/video/flanalysis-does-pablos-reported-return-giants-really-make-sense

Roger will love it. Lots and lots of numbers and they ALL tell a tale; a fat, overweight tale, and that's a shame.

I remember when Pablo came up in 08.

I watched his quick feet and realized he could play 3B and play it well.

I was bashed on the board; bashed!

"You don't know what you're talking about! How could you say that; You don't know!"

But he was quick and he was nimble, and he could HIT!

Flan tells it all, the good and the bad.

He was good, really good.

And then he stopped caring about his weight.

He stopped trying to keep it under control and he ballooned.

IMHO, HE felt he had it made... buthe didn't.

As Major Leaguers always say; it' hard to get there, and even harder to stay.


This is a bad, bad, foolish signing.

It sends the wrong message.

The message I see it sending is attendance is what WE care about, nothing more.

Sad.

boly

[Rog]

Thank you for providing the link, Boly. I enjoyed watching it, and so MANY things came to mind.

First I thought about Tim's using or referring to several important stats and hoping that we are learning from them.

Second, I noticed that Tim made a lot of mistakes. An example is where he pointed to Pablo's "amazing" .991 fielding percentage in his rookie season of 2008. I'm glad that Tim was trying to take a closer look at the situation than most of us do, but he was using Pablo's fielding percentage AS A FIRST BASEMAN and comparing it to his fielding percentage the past two seasons as a third baseman. Even poor first basemen have higher fielding percentages than third baseman. (As a side note, Pablo's fielding percentage that season in his 85 innings -- small sample-- was even BETTER than .991. He actually didn't make an error as a third baseman.)

Third, it was great that Tim did get into the depth that he did, and the errors he made were more irritating than substantive.

Fourth, he pointed out that Pablo stopped hitting as a right-handed batter. That is something the Giants should ave considered more when they were prepared to offer $100 million to what was essentially a platoon player.

Fifth, Tim made no comment about whether the Giants should sign Pablo or not.

Regarding your being bashed for saying that Pablo could play third base, I don't remember your being bashed, but I know you're telling us the truth. What I do know is that Pablo was originally a third baseman in the minors and had been moved because he hadn't played the position well. Pablo's original fielding percentage at the position was .922. That's not quite Jack Clark-ian, but it's pretty bad.

I guess the bottom line on Tim's NBC Sports Bay Area segment was that I had high hopes of learning a lot from Tim, and in fact he didn't tell me much I didn't already know. I was impressed though that clearly he is learning about analytics. We should follow his lead.

You were right, Boly. I DID enjoy the stats Tim presented. I would have enjoyed them more though if Tim hadn't accompanied them with quite a few errors and if I had learned more from them. There were some stats he mentioned but didn't get to that I might have learned from. I guess at the very least though, it was a good start.

And my son still has the foul ball Tim hit that was signed shortly thereafter by Juan Marichal. I don't claim to be a great athlete, but I did managed to cleanly catch Tim's foul line drive. My favorite foul ball came when Willie McCovey fouled one straight back. I had time only to run to the spot 20 feet to my left. When I got there, I looked up, and the ball was right at my chest, where I caught it like a football.

Kruk and Kuip say we should bring gloves to the park. I certainly should do so when I attend games now. But if someone in his 40's or younger has played the game and plays even softball, he should be able to catch most foul balls without having to use a glove.

I'm interested to hear others' foul ball stories. Go to enough games and sit within reach of the field, and it's likely you'll get at least a chance or two. Isn't the record something like three balls in a single inning by some guy? I know it's at least two.

I didn't get all that many chances at foul balls, but like Pablo as a third baseman in 2008, I didn't miss any. That's the advantage of a small sample!