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Predicting The 2024 Opening Day Roster
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Post by redsox04071318champs on Nov 8, 2023 21:48:33 GMT -5
I'm talking hitting for batting average, the hit tool. I'm not talking about the total offensive package including walks and power. Has Urias even managed to hit .250 in a season? That's what I was referring to. He can get away with hitting. 240 or thereabouts but he cant get away with hitting like he did last year. Mark Bellhorn was a lousy hitter but he had years where he was a good offensive player anyways. But when he stopped hitting almost altogether he couldn't keep his job. In 2021 the league batting average was .248 and Urias hit .249 so saying he never hit at the MLB level is not accurate even by this relatively meaningless definition of it. No, I merely stated that Urias has never managed to hit .250. Claiming a .249 as a career high is not something to brag about, even if it was only a point below .250 and a point above the league BA. The fact is that hes a .234 lifetime hitter in nearly 1500 ABs. That's not a good hit tool and last year he was less than that. Fact of the matter is when your hit tool is fringy you have to do other things to be useful which he can do,namely draw walks and hit for some power. But when the hit tool is fringy and the hitting is not there the other things dont make up for it. I think that's what happened to Urias last year. The Sox werent impressed with him. He was supposed to play every day but by September he had ceded time to Valdez, so it'd obvious he didnt impress and will likely not be the guy they turn to in 2024. I dont expect the Sox to tender him a contract. I'm not a Merrifield fan by any stretch, but I do think theyll head in that direction. Hes a better hitter but not necessarily a better offensive player but he's likely to consistently hit enough to be mediocre. Again, not an endorsement of Whitfield from me. I'd prefer to see Valdez get another look as I think his bat has more upside but understand why they dont believe in his glove. Based on that I do think Whitfield as the 2b is a realistic possibility in 2024 which makes me hope that Yorke gets to AAA soon and puts up gaudy numbers at Worcester and gets himself on the radar sooner than later, not that you can really count on that either. For all we know Yorke could be dealt. All this does is really make me miss Pedroia.
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Post by Underwater Johnson on Nov 8, 2023 23:11:49 GMT -5
For everyone clamoring for Emerson Hancock, I watched him when he was at UGA and he was the best starter on that team since his freshman year (on a team with Cole Wilcox). He had easy mid 90s stuff and was that dominant starter you looked for when you needed a win. He's floundered a bit with his walks since he got drafted by Seattle, but he's got Ace makeup. How 'bout them Dawgs!!
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Post by asm19 on Nov 8, 2023 23:38:23 GMT -5
Many are predicting Verdugo won’t be on the 2024 roster - Sean McAdams and Chris Henrique suggested via sources Yankees could be in play for him. He weirdly seems like a good fit for them, as they are lacking in lefty hitters, OF, and guys who avoid striking out.
Icandenza made a great argument for why Verdugo the player would still make sense to retain for next year. With that being said… what does it say about a guy that a team is willing to entertain trading him to their hated arch-rival?
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Post by redsox04071318champs on Nov 9, 2023 6:54:42 GMT -5
Many are predicting Verdugo won’t be on the 2024 roster - Sean McAdams and Chris Henrique suggested via sources Yankees could be in play for him. He weirdly seems like a good fit for them, as they are lacking in lefty hitters, OF, and guys who avoid striking out. Icandenza made a great argument for why Verdugo the player would still make sense to retain for next year. With that being said… what does it say about a guy that a team is willing to entertain trading him to their hated arch-rival? It says that the Red Sox might not value Verdugo as highly as incandenza does. It seems to me teams put up with issues beyond the playing field when a player is good but once they become ordinary, those other issues become enough that the team entertains the idea of trading the player. We know there are some issues with Verdugo with lateness but I wonder if there's more that we dont know about. Maybe there isnt and it's simply the fact that hes a free agent soon and there is zero reason to extend him for big money and they think Abreu could approach average and replace him this year. Could be a combo of factors. Either way I would be more surprised if he was on the roster in 24 than not on the roster.
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Post by alexcorahomevideo on Nov 9, 2023 8:54:32 GMT -5
For everyone clamoring for Emerson Hancock, I watched him when he was at UGA and he was the best starter on that team since his freshman year (on a team with Cole Wilcox). He had easy mid 90s stuff and was that dominant starter you looked for when you needed a win. He's floundered a bit with his walks since he got drafted by Seattle, but he's got Ace makeup. Hancock would be interesting. Seattle has a lot of good young pitching. Matches up.
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Post by trotman on Nov 9, 2023 15:11:44 GMT -5
For everyone clamoring for Emerson Hancock, I watched him when he was at UGA and he was the best starter on that team since his freshman year (on a team with Cole Wilcox). He had easy mid 90s stuff and was that dominant starter you looked for when you needed a win. He's floundered a bit with his walks since he got drafted by Seattle, but he's got Ace makeup. Hancock would be interesting. Seattle has a lot of good young pitching. Matches up. My biggest concern with Hancock comes down to health. He was drafted in 2020 but stayed at the M's alternate site because of injuries. 2021 he dealt with shoulder issues that caused him to miss the Futures Game. It was the first time I heard his name because Bello actually replaced him. He had a lat strain in 2022 which is fine but ended this season on the 60 because of another shoulder injury to the throwing arm. In his 3.5 (partially counting 20) he has started 56/56 games with 243 innings or 4 1/3 inning/start.
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Post by ematz1423 on Nov 9, 2023 16:23:44 GMT -5
Not sure where to put this as it's not FA related but is related to the 2024 team but from what I've seen it might be a hot trading market this offseason. Jon Morosi tweeted that at the GM Meetings a trend to watch was team execs telling him trade conversations for position players are more serious now than at this time last year and that buying clubs have more interest in players under club control than those available in FA. Which certainly makes sense to me since the FA position player pool is seemingly very lackluster. Doesn't mean trades will flying around this offseason but something to keep an eye on, I'd personally love a good offseason trade bonanza. www.bleachernation.com/cubs/2023/11/07/trade-talks-already-getting-hot-around-baseball/
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Post by kwodes on Nov 10, 2023 15:37:20 GMT -5
Rosenthal reporting that the Brewers are open for business. Adames and Burnes are the 2 guys the Sox should target. Both have 1 yr left of control.
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Post by Underwater Johnson on Nov 10, 2023 22:44:18 GMT -5
Rosenthal reporting that the Brewers are open for business. Adames and Burnes are the 2 guys the Sox should target. Both have 1 yr left of control. Not sure why we want a SS whose performance at the plate has declined steadily the past few seasons. We already have one of those...
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Post by incandenza on Nov 10, 2023 23:48:39 GMT -5
Rosenthal reporting that the Brewers are open for business. Adames and Burnes are the 2 guys the Sox should target. Both have 1 yr left of control. Not sure why we want a SS whose performance at the plate has declined steadily the past few seasons. We already have one of those... xwOBA trend:
2019: .320
2020: .307 2021: .325 2022: .323 2023: .341
This is not what I would call steady decline.
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Post by Underwater Johnson on Nov 10, 2023 23:57:44 GMT -5
Not sure why we want a SS whose performance at the plate has declined steadily the past few seasons. We already have one of those... xwOBA trend:
2019: .320
2020: .307 2021: .325 2022: .323 2023: .341
This is not what I would call steady decline. Wow, he must be the most snake-bitten guy in the league. wOBA: 2021 - .349 2022 - .325 2023 - .311 OPS: 2021 - .818 2022 - .756 2023 - .717 At some point, you have to look at what a guy actually did and not what he "should have" done. The last 3 seasons represent 1613 ABs, which is well over half of his big league career total.
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Post by incandenza on Nov 11, 2023 1:18:19 GMT -5
xwOBA trend:
2019: .320
2020: .307 2021: .325 2022: .323 2023: .341
This is not what I would call steady decline. Wow, he must be the most snake-bitten guy in the league. wOBA: 2021 - .349 2022 - .325 2023 - .311 OPS: 2021 - .818 2022 - .756 2023 - .717 At some point, you have to look at what a guy actually did and not what he "should have" done. The last 3 seasons represent 1613 ABs, which is well over half of his big league career total. I'm always interested to hear *explanations* for why a player might be systematically getting worse by actual production while continuing to look fine by expecteed stats. Sometimes there is an explanation. So... do you have one?
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on Nov 11, 2023 2:19:32 GMT -5
Wow, he must be the most snake-bitten guy in the league. wOBA: 2021 - .349 2022 - .325 2023 - .311 OPS: 2021 - .818 2022 - .756 2023 - .717 At some point, you have to look at what a guy actually did and not what he "should have" done. The last 3 seasons represent 1613 ABs, which is well over half of his big league career total. I'm always interested to hear *explanations* for why a player might be systematically getting worse by actual production while continuing to look fine by expecteed stats. Sometimes there is an explanation. So... do you have one? Counterpoint - do you have an explanation for why the expected stats don’t reflect the decline in actual production? Because this feels like way too snarky of a response following up your defense of his actual, measurable, real-world decline with “well yeah that HAPPENED but this is what should have happened”. Like, I’m not sure if you just stop reading or if you’re just so hell bent on trying to appear smart by overusing stats that fit your narrative, but “performance” means what, you know, actually exists.
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Post by bojacksoxfan on Nov 11, 2023 6:54:04 GMT -5
Wow, he must be the most snake-bitten guy in the league. wOBA: 2021 - .349 2022 - .325 2023 - .311 OPS: 2021 - .818 2022 - .756 2023 - .717 At some point, you have to look at what a guy actually did and not what he "should have" done. The last 3 seasons represent 1613 ABs, which is well over half of his big league career total. I'm always interested to hear *explanations* for why a player might be systematically getting worse by actual production while continuing to look fine by expecteed stats. Sometimes there is an explanation. So... do you have one? The simplest explanation is that expected stats like xwOBA are less predictive than actual stats. thebarkingcrow.com/the-predictive-relationship-between-woba-and-xwoba/That's a couple years old so perhaps xwOBA modeling has improved, but I'm not aware of significant changes to the methodology. Based on that link you consistently misuse xwOBA. My understanding of a few xwOBA persistent underpeformers like Isaac Paredes is that players who gain significant value from unusual spray charts like Paredes with his extreme pulled flyball tendencies can systemically undervalued by the metric. That the league wide data looks like it does in that link suggests there are a lot more than I think or the error is so big that swamps out the effect from many players who are sorta closer to xwOBA going forward.
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Post by kwodes on Nov 11, 2023 7:00:40 GMT -5
I'm always interested to hear *explanations* for why a player might be systematically getting worse by actual production while continuing to look fine by expecteed stats. Sometimes there is an explanation. So... do you have one? Counterpoint - do you have an explanation for why the expected stats don’t reflect the decline in actual production? Because this feels like way too snarky of a response following up your defense of his actual, measurable, real-world decline with “well yeah that HAPPENED but this is what should have happened”. Like, I’m not sure if you just stop reading or if you’re just so hell bent on trying to appear smart by overusing stats that fit your narrative, but “performance” means what, you know, actually exists. he's elite on defense and has been worth 3.3, 4.6, 3.4 WAR the last 3 years. You add him to the middle IF as a 1 yr rental (so the cost won't be a lot) and you drastically improve your defense and add a righty to the lineup. He's objectively a good fit. He also has 19.3/36/44.7 LD/GB/FB rates while having a 46.4/35.8/17.8 Pull/Center/Opposite field rate. So his most common hit is a pulled fly ball. I think his offense would only improve based on that and the fact that he's now in a deeper lineup with more protection and more traffic. I'm not saying he's some can't miss stud. All I said was I think the sox should target him.
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Post by scottysmalls on Nov 11, 2023 7:05:06 GMT -5
xwOBA trend:
2019: .320
2020: .307 2021: .325 2022: .323 2023: .341
This is not what I would call steady decline. Wow, he must be the most snake-bitten guy in the league. wOBA: 2021 - .349 2022 - .325 2023 - .311 OPS: 2021 - .818 2022 - .756 2023 - .717 At some point, you have to look at what a guy actually did and not what he "should have" done. The last 3 seasons represent 1613 ABs, which is well over half of his big league career total. Quoting both wOBA and OPS numbers to make your point is kind of silly when very obviously they are going to show the same trend (if they didn’t that would actually be the time to show them because it would display some material change in the hitter’s slugging vs OBP profile).
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Post by scottysmalls on Nov 11, 2023 7:35:23 GMT -5
Separately Adames’ trajectory is interesting. He went from a really high BABIP guy to a low one, and there are some indicators to why: his sprint speed has been declining and so has his infield hit rate, he is hitting more pop ups, and he is both swinging outside the zone and making contact outside the zone more often the last two seasons.
However, shouldn’t all of those things basically be captured by the xStats? And those have been stable so what are they missing? His horizontal spray distribution shows no consistent pattern at all. Maybe his acceleration has declined by more than his sprint speed. Maybe he’s gotten a little unlucky at least one of the past two years.
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Post by incandenza on Nov 11, 2023 8:24:49 GMT -5
I'm always interested to hear *explanations* for why a player might be systematically getting worse by actual production while continuing to look fine by expecteed stats. Sometimes there is an explanation. So... do you have one? The simplest explanation is that expected stats like xwOBA are less predictive than actual stats. thebarkingcrow.com/the-predictive-relationship-between-woba-and-xwoba/That's a couple years old so perhaps xwOBA modeling has improved, but I'm not aware of significant changes to the methodology. Based on that link you consistently misuse xwOBA. My understanding of a few xwOBA persistent underpeformers like Isaac Paredes is that players who gain significant value from unusual spray charts like Paredes with his extreme pulled flyball tendencies can systemically undervalued by the metric. That the league wide data looks like it does in that link suggests there are a lot more than I think or the error is so big that swamps out the effect from many players who are sorta closer to xwOBA going forward. I never treat xwOBA outside of any context. The request for an explanation above was sincere, as was the point that sometimes there is one. Whenever I look at xwOBA the first thing I look at is whether the player has a pattern of systematically overperforming or underperforming theirs. Xander Bogaerts is a classic case of consistent overperformance, for instance.
The link is interesting. I don't know anything about how statistics work, so I don't know what to make of the difference between an R-squared of 0.31 and an R-squared of 0.26. How significant is that?
But I see that they don't say anything about how predictive a combination of wOBA and xwOBA would be. My guess is it'd be more predictive than either stat alone.
Now back to Adames. Here's his wOBA, xwOBA going back to 2021:
2021: .349, .325 2022: .325, .323 2023: .311, .341
First reality check: does he have a pattern of consistent over- or underperformance of xwOBA in his career? Not that I can tell.
Second reality check: what is the trend of the average of the two stats? .337, .324, .326. Hardly a trend at all. [ADD: From fenwaydouble's link below: "As a simple rule of thumb, you won’t do too badly if you simply regress xStats a third of the way towards the actual ones." For Adames this gives a trend of .333, .324, .331.]
Third reality check: could this be a BABIP thing? Maybe - the BABIP trend is .331, .278, .259. And a .259 BABIP is very low - 126th out of 133 qualified batters last season - so all else being equal you'd expect significant regression to the mean. (Though scottysmalls gives reason for thinking his low BABIP is partly a predictable result of the change in batted ball profile.)
Fourth reality check: what do the projections say? We just have steamer to go on right now, and it predicts a 103 wRC+, slightly below 2022 (109) but above 2023 (94).
FIfth reality check: is he at an age where you'd expect decline? Not really; he just turned 28.
Finally: that link says that wOBA is more predictive of future wOBA than future xwOBA, but it says that even more than that xwOBA is predictive of future xwOBA. And Adames is coming off his best xwOBA season of his career. I'm confident in predicting that if he repeats his .341 xwOBA his actual production will be just fine.
Put it all together and I just feel it's a lot more likely that Adames comes in somewhere around his career average numbers (107 wRC+) than it is that his actual production continues to decline from last season's 94 wRC+. So that's where me and Underwater Johnson disagree. But like I said I'm open to being persuaded otherwise.
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Post by fenwaydouble on Nov 11, 2023 8:41:36 GMT -5
This article has some updated information re: stats vs. expected stats. xWOBA is now too good to ignore but still way too noisy to rely on without also taking a hard look at the actual numbers. The author proposes a specific way to weight xstats with regular stats like Incandenza suggests above. blogs.fangraphs.com/yes-hitter-xstats-are-useful/
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Post by wcsoxfan on Nov 11, 2023 12:19:25 GMT -5
I'm always interested to hear *explanations* for why a player might be systematically getting worse by actual production while continuing to look fine by expecteed stats. Sometimes there is an explanation. So... do you have one? The simplest explanation is that expected stats like xwOBA are less predictive than actual stats. thebarkingcrow.com/the-predictive-relationship-between-woba-and-xwoba/That's a couple years old so perhaps xwOBA modeling has improved, but I'm not aware of significant changes to the methodology. Based on that link you consistently misuse xwOBA. My understanding of a few xwOBA persistent underpeformers like Isaac Paredes is that players who gain significant value from unusual spray charts like Paredes with his extreme pulled flyball tendencies can systemically undervalued by the metric. That the league wide data looks like it does in that link suggests there are a lot more than I think or the error is so big that swamps out the effect from many players who are sorta closer to xwOBA going forward. I clicked on the link but that article doesn't do what it says it's going to do (measuring how predictive a hitter’s wOBA and xwOBA were of their future results) and includes a typo within the 3 very short lines of data which it provides. That doesn't mean the information is wrong, but indicates the writer is unlikely to fully understand what they're doing, and at the very least, is too lazy to edit a very short write-up.
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Post by beasleyrockah on Nov 11, 2023 13:43:12 GMT -5
Forget the underlying stats vs the actual production - are we really suggesting Adames wouldn't be a starting middle infielder on the Red Sox right now? He would've led the club in fWAR last year and been the second best position player to Devers by bWAR. As with any trade it's all about the acquisition cost, but suggesting the Red Sox straight up shouldn't want him on the team is absurd. If they hold both Mayer and Yorke it makes a lot of sense to acquire a one year stopgap rather than a multi-year option, and limiting themselves to a one year investment leaves a short pool of good options.
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Post by melvinhoggs on Nov 11, 2023 14:17:42 GMT -5
Forget the underlying stats vs the actual production - are we really suggesting Adames wouldn't be a starting middle infielder on the Red Sox right now? He would've led the club in fWAR last year and been the second best position player to Devers by bWAR. As with any trade it's all about the acquisition cost, but suggesting the Red Sox straight up shouldn't want him on the team is absurd. If they hold both Mayer and Yorke it makes a lot of sense to acquire a one year stopgap rather than a multi-year option, and limiting themselves to a one year investment leaves a short pool of good options. He's also only 28; not inconceivable at all that his offense rebounds a bit – but even if it doesn't, he plays excellent defense and he wouldn't be on the books after 2024 if he continued his slide. I like Adames as a target if the Brewers are listening and reasonable. A middle infield of Adames and Story would be terrific defensively – and while you'd definitely need to inject some life into the offense elsewhere, it's not like there are a lot of other great-bat alternatives (in FA or trades) for SS or 2B.
My main argument against Adames would be "are the Red Sox going to have a solid, playoff-worthy roster in 2024"? This is obviously contingent on the offseason and who else they get/sign, but I don't want to give up real prospects (which I think Adames will require, even with only a year left) only to see him walk after playing one year on a fringe-y team. It seems the MO nowadays is to trade for controllable players, even if they cost more.
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Post by kwodes on Nov 11, 2023 16:04:01 GMT -5
Forget the underlying stats vs the actual production - are we really suggesting Adames wouldn't be a starting middle infielder on the Red Sox right now? He would've led the club in fWAR last year and been the second best position player to Devers by bWAR. As with any trade it's all about the acquisition cost, but suggesting the Red Sox straight up shouldn't want him on the team is absurd. If they hold both Mayer and Yorke it makes a lot of sense to acquire a one year stopgap rather than a multi-year option, and limiting themselves to a one year investment leaves a short pool of good options. Exactly, I'm not sure how this spiraled to what it became. It started with me suggesting they target Corbin and Adames. He would be a perfect fit and wouldn't cost a huge amount to acquire. Could even be part of a larger package where you acquire Adames AND burnes, but that's a different conversation.
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Post by Underwater Johnson on Nov 11, 2023 21:32:41 GMT -5
Wow, he must be the most snake-bitten guy in the league. wOBA: 2021 - .349 2022 - .325 2023 - .311 OPS: 2021 - .818 2022 - .756 2023 - .717 At some point, you have to look at what a guy actually did and not what he "should have" done. The last 3 seasons represent 1613 ABs, which is well over half of his big league career total. Quoting both wOBA and OPS numbers to make your point is kind of silly when very obviously they are going to show the same trend (if they didn’t that would actually be the time to show them because it would display some material change in the hitter’s slugging vs OBP profile). I listed both because wOBA numbers in a vacuum are not as easy to digest as OPS. Everyone knows the difference between .818 OPS and .717 OPS. Not as much for .349 vs .311 wOBA. But the contrast between the wOBA and xwOBA was clear so I put both.
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Post by Underwater Johnson on Nov 11, 2023 23:28:07 GMT -5
Forget the underlying stats vs the actual production - are we really suggesting Adames wouldn't be a starting middle infielder on the Red Sox right now? He would've led the club in fWAR last year and been the second best position player to Devers by bWAR. As with any trade it's all about the acquisition cost, but suggesting the Red Sox straight up shouldn't want him on the team is absurd. If they hold both Mayer and Yorke it makes a lot of sense to acquire a one year stopgap rather than a multi-year option, and limiting themselves to a one year investment leaves a short pool of good options. Exactly, I'm not sure how this spiraled to what it became. It started with me suggesting they target Corbin and Adames. He would be a perfect fit and wouldn't cost a huge amount to acquire. Could even be part of a larger package where you acquire Adames AND burnes, but that's a different conversation. I don't know why Adames wouldn't cost much. For starters, the hole we're filling is 2B, not SS. Would it be great to have two top-fielding SS up the middle? Sure, it would be absolute luxury. But there are other teams who could be interested in Adames as a SS (e.g. SFG, CLE, LAA, TB, LAD) and this will drive his price up, particularly in a year with a light FA SS market. Throw in the mystery that is his bat and I just think there are better uses of resources than paying a SS price to fill a 2B hole.
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