Edgar Renteria: a stat snapshot

1. True.

2. First part: not fully true nor fully false. If you look at the component stats and see a notably discrepant BABIP, you can mentally (or exactly, by calculation) factor it out. (For example, subtracting the difference between Renteria’s 2010 actual hits total and his projected-from-career-BABIP shows 4 “luck hits”; subtract those, and his 2010 line looks pretty much exactly like his career line.

Second part: not quite. Lost playing time, usually from being given a day game after a night game off, or a niggly litle thing that wants a day or two to go away, junk like that, that’s what erodes a player’s percentage playing time with age, and thus somewhat lessens his value.

3. No. H. L. Mencken, I think it was, said that when a young man misplaces his hat, he is understood to have lost his hat; when an older man misplaces his hat, he is understood to have lost his mind. Not a few younger players have serious injuries, and an awful lot of older players go on without serious injuries. Selective memory.

More generally, the bottom line in this particular case is that Renteria’s 2010 line to date, even (or especially) with the over-career-BABIP “extra” hits subtracted out, looks remarkably like his career line.

His “decline since 2003” is thoroughly spurious, since his 2003 was an unusual career-year spike, which no one ever thought was representative or sustainable. (Though he did it again in his somewhat-shortened 2007.)

And in fact, both of those spike years were the result of unusual BABIPs—though it is noteworthy that his career BABIP is .318.

In his last healthy pre-2010 season, which was 2007

Not to be a buzzkill to this whole discussion, but shouldn’t that point be about where this ends. The last time he was healthy was three years ago. He’s been hurt off and on since then, which has, presumably, negatively affected his play. He is hurt now. In fact, he’s hurt himself at least twice so far this year.

There’s no reason to expect a player who has performed poorly because of injuries to rebound at all when he’s still injured and the last three-plus years of history suggest that he’ll continue to get injured.

Power, in the sense of being able to impart force to a well-struck ball, does not go down with age with the age range of any ballplayer, even including Julio Franco. Human male muscle strength remains at a plateau into the early 50s{1}. Measured by TB/H, aging players who can scarcely break the Mendoza line stil, as a rule, have TB/H ratios equalling their career prime.

Power, in the sense of TB absolute (as opposed to TB/H), tends to go down with age because of the man’s inability to get “well-struck balls” into play as often. That usually shows up as declining BA, because it’s not just XBH that he can’t get, it’s hits, period.

What we might call Renteria’s “apparent PF” is down. But his BABIP is unusually high. He has 28 hits for 2010; if we apply his career BABIP, we find that 24 would have been expected. We thus feel that he “got lucky” on 4 balls that fell in somewhere (not necessarily true, but we’ll be conservative). If, as is reasonable, we assume those “over-ability/lucky” hits were singles and just look at the rest, we see a TB/H in line with his career stats. By denying that fact, one has to deflate his power with the same hits one is claiming he somehow “isn’t entitled to” owing to luck with BIP.

The complaint that all this is SSS is sort of a snake eating its tail. Yes, it is a small sample size. But it’s the only sample we have by which to judge his current (2010) ability. Since it aligns very well with what we would expect, the onus of demonstrating that this small sample is not representative is on the naysayer.

Let me make a clarifying (I hope) analogy: for some years, a paper-clip factory has been producing boxes of clips that have contained 100 clips each, give or take a couple. This year, we buy one box and discover that it has 99 paper clips in it. Yes, one box is a small sample size, but on what ground do we announce that the manufacturer is now getting stingy and only putting 90 clips in each box? Yes, our one-box sample could possibly be compatible with an average box content of 90 clips instead of 100, but which way would you bet in those circumstances?

And speaking of SSS, I would have hoped that the stats on another post I made here would have demonstrated something: that at these sample sizes, one or two events (hits, walks, strikeouts, whatever) can be a big difference. Right now, Renteria has exactly the career-projected number of walks (7) for his PA to date, and exactly 1 more SO than projected (14 vs 13); not what I would call a massive falloff.

And if you think his last two years are a valid part of his total career for evaluation purposes, then we must simply agree to disagree.

In short: we cannot prove that there is no deterioration in his performance from his 2010 stats, but neither can anyone prove otherwise; but such data as there are align with the no-material-deterioration view.

……………….

{1} “Muscle strength and speed of movement in relation to age and muscle morphology”, Larsson et al. [J Appl Physiol 46: 451-456, 1979; 8750-7587/79]

“Age, gender, and muscular strength”, Hurley [J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci. 1995 Nov;50 Spec No:41-4]

if Alfonzo was an average fielding SS instead of a poor fielding 3B, he would still have had value. In any case, Rent still has <100 PA this season, so any judgement of him is SSS chicanery.

One thing that owlcroft touched on that I think gets lost a lot by some stat minded people (myself included) is that when we’re dealing with things like LD% and BABIP in small samples, just a few balls getting counted as LDs instead of FBs, or finding/not finding the hole or w/e can change things dramatically. At this point in the season, if 4 of the 74 balls Edgar has put in play had been LDs instead of GB/FBs, his LD% would be the same as it was last year. One more BB or 2 fewer Ks, and his K/BB is right around his career norms. People keep talking about how cold he’s been after the first 4 games. That’s 20% of his games so far this year, and his best 20% at that. How do Pablo or Uribe’s numbers look if you take out the top 20% of their games?

To tell the truth, I am worried about the hammy problem, however, if Edgar is healthy, he’s pretty easily our best option at SS, and he should be playing.

1) After a peak WAY outside his career norms in ’03, a relatively stable K/BB rate since.

2) An ISO that’s been declining since his age 32 season. HOWEVER I think ISO is relatively useless, because it’s not independent of BA. PF (TB/H) is a much better indicator of power, IMO. In full seasons starting in 2004, his PF has been 1.39, 1.39, 1.49, 1.41, 1.41, 1.31. Looks pretty damn stable to me.

3) A relatively stable LD% that’s had a slight drop the last 2 seasons, and has fallen off a cliff so far this year, but again, before this year had been pretty damn stable

Yet they constantly change all kinds of other things that either don’t matter or are a tremendous pain in the ass to re-learn if you’re used to previous versions of Office. Or add clunky “features” like auto-format which seem designed to get in the way.

Your sig is awesome. I keep on reading it as part of your comment which makes it more entertaining.

I think a bone spur free Edgar is more valuable to the team as a starter at SS than Juan Uribe. His D is better than Juan’s, and I really think they’ll end the year at about the same offensive production.