The Rainman Projections For The Franchise And Friends

Everyone has a ceiling. At some point you simply cannot strike out any more batters than you already do, or walk fewer, or allow fewer HR’s. When you consider the lack of control pitchers have over BABIP (not total, but a lot), that’s a lot that he simply cannot improve upon. It’s silly to think guys have a high probability of improving on 8.2 WAR seasons. The fact of the matter is they’re more likely to go down from that then up. He pitched 225 innings last year, that can go down, but how much farther up can it go? There are a lot of things that contribute to creating a ceiling for players.

And yes, it is the same argument. You used first half splits, you ignored what he did in the second half, and found a reason to dismiss it (fatigue driven), then made a definitive statement that he’ll get over that problem. That is EXACTLY what Sabean does, and EXACTLY why we get pieces of shit like Edgar Renteria. He convinces himself of bullshit reasons to ignore better information in favor of worse information, as you just did. It’s complete ignorance of probability theory, and frankly, it’s assuming you know more than you possibly can. Sometimes it’s best to understand the limits of your knowledge. There are never definites in projecting the future.

Looking at the past to determine value isn’t the only point to statistics, though. They are useful for predicting the future. There’s a reason many of the most successful clubs are statistically orientated, and use statistical techniques for predicting the future. There’s a lot of value in it. When you have players at the MLB level with large samples of production – there’s not a whole lot there to be scouted. Combine that with human’s inability to objectively form impressions of anything without systematically and objectively recording it (which turns it into statistics), and I just really don’t know why you think there’s some infiinite ability in scouting to determine the future. What’s watching a guy at the plate really going to tell you? Maybe you see they’ve lost some bat speed, fine, but how much, exactly, and what exact effect is that going to have on the future? It’s still a guessing game trying to play probabilities, and you’re still just looking at skills without a perfect idea of how that translates to “production”, and a lot of skills like plate discipline just really don’t change for most players over the course of their career. What does that tell you about what they’ll do in the future?

It’s not that I’m discounting scouting, I think it’s very, very useful for players without an MLB track record, I just don’t see what makes you think it can perfectly predict players talent levels (or not even perfectly, but just see changes in talent levels accurately at all) who have an established MLB track record? More information is better, scouting reports should be used, but they’re hardly an end-all for looking at these guys.

You know you can add “things not accounted for in said mathematical formula” INTO a mathematical formula, right? It’s really not that difficult, you just add in the thing not accounted for as a new variable…

The Phillies payroll was well above $120M. You are over stating the significance of the other loses by the other teams.

I don’t believe degree of trajectory should define the brackets. I believe degree of contact should. In my book home runs should be combined with line drives and screaming ground balls into the hard contact bracket. The next step down should be average contact (average ground balls finding or not finding holes and average fly balls finding or not finding gaps). These leaves weak contact as the final bracket (pop ups and squibs). The goal of a pitcher is to avoid the first and maximize the second. This can be done regardless of the trajectory the pitchers stuff and style is most suited to inducing.

Just as linedrives and screaming grounders are. Trajectory should not be determining the brackets we look at.