YOU start and end with numbers, and NOTHING you have ever said will convince me otherwise.
For you, it's always "definitive proof by NUMBERS."
If the numbers don't 'prove' it, it ain't so.
Rog -- Notice all the absolutes you put into your "argument" here. "NOTHING" "Ever." "Always." When one uses absolutes, he's almost always wrong. That's just life.
As for proving something, one usually needs numbers to do so.
For instance, if one says that Buster Posey is a good hitter, that's a matter of opinion. So how do we prove he's a good hitter? Well, .300 is considered a benchmark for a good hitter for average. He's achieved that over his career. His .300+ career batting mark is good evidence, and of course that's a number -- just as OBP, SLG and OPS are. When we've talked about Buster's not driving runs in this year, we talk about his 33 RBI's. That's a number.
When we talk about whether Jeff Samardzija has been a good pitcher for the Giants, if we don't invoke numbers, we're simply talking opinion. But numbers allow us to compare him to the average pitcher. It's not impossible to prove something without numbers, but it's tough. Because if it doesn't involve a number, it's likely simply opinion.
We agree that Buster has been a good hitter. But HOW good? When you said that the article which you said wrote that 25 players shouldn't be in the Hall of Fame (which it didn't say anywhere I saw), you said that the author hadn't played the game or seen the players play. The latter was probably true in most cases; the former, probably not. But does someone have to have seen a player play to know if he was good?
I never saw Walter Johnson pitch, but I know he was a very good one. How do I know that? From how his numbers compared with his contemporaries. We have testimony, of course, which is valuable, but how do we evaluate testimony when one testimony contradicts another? We do so with facts, and facts are often, perhaps usually, numbers (or at least can be indicated numerically).
You say you watch performance and then go to see if you're correct. That's what I do too (although, for instance, I don't get to see enough of a lot of players to know if they're good or not). But I would venture that my sources for checking my opinions are more comprehensive than most, and I try hard to be open-minded to them. I gave the example that I saw the decline in the fielding of both Brandon Crawford and Joe Panik before I saw it backed up by numbers.
You ask how many times people have accused me of cherry-picking data. That's usually because they don't understand the data and know what is most pertinent. Did I cherry-pick the data regarding Jeff Samardzija's 2017 season when I posted about it this morning? I don't think so. I provided a pretty broad spectrum, since there are many ways to judge a pitcher.
As for how many innings I watch, I usually speed through a game. But I try to watch what is most important, not simply volume. One thing I can tell you is that I've seen a lot more of Andrelton Simmons' defense than most and am far better prepared to compare it to Brandon Crawford's. IMO you don't realize how much better Andrelton's defense has been because you look at their defense fundamentally, not from the standpoint of results. And apparently you saw Andrelton boot a routine play or two, since you maintained that Brandon was better on the routine plays than he. Evaluations by those who have seen the plays made by both players state the opposite. You simply haven't seen enough of Simmons' routine plays to judge how good he is on them. Objective observers have shown that he's been clearly better than Brandon, booting only 1.3% of routine plays compared to Brandon's 2.2%. Both are good, but that's a HUGE advantage to Andrelton Brandon has booted more than half again more routine plays than Simmons has. That is backed up by their respective error totals.
Then you get defensive. You speak of the "ridiculous" metrics on Brandon's play at first base. Guess what, Boly? GM's USE those metrics as part of their evaluation process.
Then you say that if I watched all that many innings I would know that Brandon's defense hadn't declined, that's simply an opinion. When I made my original post, I in fact HADN'T seen Brandon play last night. But late last night I DID watch, and I think the point still likely stands that two plays -- exceptional as they were -- don't a season make. I thought his in-between backhand stab on the throw to first was an exceptional effort, especially since the throw came into his body a bit more than he expected. In addition, Gott's slipping on the play likely made the throw harder to track. I've made that play, and I know how hard it is. Even if I hadn't made it, it's pretty easy to see the difficulty involved.
Now, as for taking his defense over most first basemen in the majors, I'm right with you on that. But one can make an argument that from say 2016 through 2018 he was as good as any defensive first baseman in the game, I don't think he's played at quite that level this season. That you said you would take his defense over the vast majority -- not over virtually every other first baseman in the majors -- would seem to indicate the same.
I think we see Brandon's play pretty similarly, although you may not have given him quite as much credit prior to this season as I have and thus I may have been more aware of the drop off if it has indeed occurred. I'm also basing my evaluation not only one what I remember from what I've seen -- which we've shown here can be unreliable for us because of the difficulties of bias and memory -- but from the metrics and from the opinions of others.
We'll see at the end of the year how Brandon is judged by The Fielding Bible, but I'll be surprised if he doesn't drop down a bit. There's still more than a quarter of the season left though, and it's the quarter that will be freshest in memories, so maybe the drop won't be much. In addition, as I mentioned previously, there are other first basemen whose play is also dropping, in some cases likely more than Brandon's has dropped.
But what you posted here uses words that show bias. And I'm not sure you proved anything with what you said.
Look at the predictions I've made for players, Boly. They've been pretty decent. Not perfect by any means, but for instance I didn't get as carried away by Joe Panik's hitting as you did. I wasn't fooled by Austin Slater or Steven Duggar. Boagie says I was way off on Brandon Crawford, and in 2015 and 2016 he did hit better than I thought he would. But over his career, he's done just about as I expected. He's been more or less an average hitter for a shortstop. When I said Brandon wasn't likely to be a great hitter, his OPS was over 1.000. Boagie keeps ignoring that context.
Do I know everything there is to know about baseball? I certainly don't. But I've seen about as much baseball as anyone here, and I've studied it more than most. One thing too is that because I continue to study the game, I learn more and more about it as time goes on, whereas some seem to have plateaued in their knowledge and evaluations.
I love you, Boly, but seriously, if you know all this important inside stuff that is so important to understanding the game, why is it that you believed the 2016 Giants were the best Giants team in SF, even as I argued that they weren't? Not only were they not truly the best team, they weren't even close to the best. Have you ever asked yourself what it was that blinded you to that?
And doesn't it bother you that you were convinced that Brandon Crawford was better on routine plays than Simmons, when those who have seen all the routine plays each have faced calculate that Brandon has missed out on more than half again as many as Simmons? Because Simmons seems to make plays that Brandon hasn't made, it could be that Andrelton would be the better fielder anyway, but the routine plays make him better just as much as the really tough ones -- and probably even more so, since there are more routine plays than really tough ones.
When you said that Brandon was better on routine plays than Simmons, didn't it occur to you to check that opinion by looking at errors? Errors certainly don't show the entirety of fielding, but -- especially on fielding errors, not throwing errors (which might come from trying to make an overly difficult play) -- don't errors give a pretty good indication of how good a player is on ROUTINE plays? If a player makes a great play, then errs on a routine one, he hurts his team as much as the player who didn't make the great play but was successful on the routine play, but the difference is that the former player usually is charged with an error, while the latter player isn't. That's why fielding percentage doesn't tell the entire story.
I mentioned this before, but one of the best plays I have seen this year came from Phillies pitcher Vince Velasquez, who made a diving catch AS AN OUTFIELDER that had a 10% probability of being made BY A REGULAR OUTFIELDER. I mentioned that in that game he also saved a run by making what was about as close to a perfect throw to the plate as I've seen this year. It's understandable that he would have the arm, but his footwork as he charged the ball and set himself to throw was impeccable as well. On both plays, he looked better than most regular outfielders.
Anyway, your comments used words that showed bias, and you described my decision-making incorrectly.
Here's something that gets me. I've gone through plays step-by-step here, including pointing out what the players may have been thinking that contributed to their actions. I have done so in at least as much detail as others. Yet there is supposedly all this important stuff you understand because you've played the game beyond the high school level.
Former college and minor league players haven't been able to point out what that is, but you hold firm. I'm convinced there are things you know that I don't. I'm just not sure how important those things are when they haven't appeared to allow you to evaluate the game and the players better.
If there are things that I need to know to better evaluate the game, I wish you guys here would teach them to me.
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