Alfonso Soriano's Endless Contract

[poodski]

Are you and Captain Obvious the same person?

Are you Joe Morgan?

 

[Captain Obvious]

He said It's open to interpretation.



The orginal claim by CO was that Soriano was a top 10 player in 2007.




He'll learn, he'll draw more walks as his career goes on, but not to the numbers purists want. If hits for a high average, I'm happy with him starting.

How do you know he'll draw more walks? Why are you okay with him starting as long as he hits for a high average? That's just stupid. He has a .294 AVG now, but an OPS below 700. His BA-OBP differential is less than 30 points. That's worse than Soriano. Soriano at least can slug. Darwin Barney is pretty terrible with the bat. How can you not see this?

 

[poodski]

So I think the consensus is that Soriano is a bad defender, but the end result was that he saved more runs than he gave up because of his athleticism in 2006 and 2007. He was also halfway decent last season, but otherwise in his career has been a terrible defender. His value is in his bat, which has been declining as well. If you can get value out of his glove, it's gravy.

LF is the second-easiest position to play after 1B. You pretty much stick your worst defenders at LF or 1B. 1B is where players go to die before they get traded to another team to become a DH or a pinch-hitter. I know they originally tried Soriano as a CF but that idea was ill-conceived. I think Soriano has a reputation for being a hard worker even if his effort on the field doesn't show it, but he's simply not a good defender. But you can't discount the fact that even though it was ugly, he had good defensive ratings in those two years.

I would argue 2009 was really the only year he was negative with the glove.

2008 and 2010 was basically a push.

2011 not enough sample size, but so far pretty much a push.

I agree he isn't a pretty defender, but he for the most part gets the job done at an adequate level.

I mean Hunter Pence is one ugly ass hitter, but he gets the job done.

 

[Jntg4]

How do you know he'll draw more walks? Why are you okay with him starting as long as he hits for a high average? That's just stupid. He has a .294 AVG now, but an OPS below 700. His BA-OBP differential is less than 30 points. That's worse than Soriano. Soriano at least can slug. Darwin Barney is pretty terrible with the bat. How can you not see this?

False.

You don't use your bat to draw a walk.

With his bat alone, he hits almost .300.

What he does without his bat, or doesn't do for that matter (draw walks), is what he has been bad at.

 

[Captain Obvious]

Silva sucks.

You said it was Special person to release Silva, because you weren't sure Cashner was even better than him, and if he was, it wasn't by much.

Therefore, Cashner must suck.

Well I never said Silva sucks. You did. And releasing Silva was Special person. Doug Davis and Casey Coleman say hi. No one can really say whether or not Cashner is better than Silva or not because he got hurt, so this is going nowhere fast.

 

[poodski]

How do you know he'll draw more walks? Why are you okay with him starting as long as he hits for a high average? That's just stupid. He has a .294 AVG now, but an OPS below 700. His BA-OBP differential is less than 30 points. That's worse than Soriano. Soriano at least can slug. Darwin Barney is pretty terrible with the bat. How can you not see this?

Just for funzies I looked up the next worse OPS with that high of a BA. To no surprise it was Ryan Theriot who sits at 296/347/358 which is quite a bit better than Barney.

Outside of the obvious Theriot comparisons the next player was Placido Polanco.

 

[Captain Obvious]

False.

You don't use your bat to draw a walk.

With his bat alone, he hits almost .300.

What he does without his bat, or doesn't do for that matter (draw walks), is what he has been bad at.

Yet walks are still qualified under batting. Finding a technicality in my post, I believe this is qualified under the backed into a corner thing Po was just talking about.

 

[Rice Cube]

I would argue 2009 was really the only year he was negative with the glove.

2008 and 2010 was basically a push.

2011 not enough sample size, but so far pretty much a push.

I agree he isn't a pretty defender, but he for the most part gets the job done at an adequate level.

I mean Hunter Pence is one ugly ass hitter, but he gets the job done.

Yeah, I was thinking in the scope of his whole career, when they tried him at shortstop and then made him the full-time 2B as a Yankee and a Ranger, and that's why they ultimately just threw him in the OF. He doesn't have the consistent power to be a 1B but I think that's where he will eventually end up because he's Carlos Lee-bad in LF right now.

 

[Jntg4]

Well I never said Silva sucks. You did. And releasing Silva was Special person. Doug Davis and Casey Coleman say hi. No one can really say whether or not Cashner is better than Silva or not because he got hurt, so this is going nowhere fast.

So we should have kept Cashner in the minors because HE got injured, causing Davis to start?

You don't expect Wells and Cashner to be injured for elongated periods of time.

But now we are getting into old arguments, so let's forget that.

And if Silva was good, he'd be in the majors now. I mean, he's with the Yankees Tripe-A team, and their major league team could use some starting pitching, but they keep him down.

 

[poodski]

False.

You don't use your bat to draw a walk.

With his bat alone, he hits almost .300.

What he does without his bat, or doesn't do for that matter (draw walks), is what he has been bad at.

Batting avg doesn't correlate to runs all that well.

 

[Jntg4]

Batting avg doesn't correlate to runs all that well.

Explain chart please.

And I said that he doesn't suck with the bat, he sucks at taking walks, because you don't use your bat to let Ball 4 go by.

 

[poodski]

Yeah, I was thinking in the scope of his whole career, when they tried him at shortstop and then made him the full-time 2B as a Yankee and a Ranger, and that's why they ultimately just threw him in the OF. He doesn't have the consistent power to be a 1B but I think that's where he will eventually end up because he's Carlos Lee-bad in LF right now.

See I think his problem is he just has TERRIBLE reaction times. Hence why he didn't work out in the INF, and honestly why I don't think he will work at 1B.

We will see. I would at least like to see him over the rest of the season. I don't believe he is really this slow, but we will see.

 

[nwfisch]

Yet walks are still qualified under batting. Finding a technicality in my post, I believe this is qualified under the backed into a corner thing Po was just talking about.

You wouldn't be backed into corners if you didn't make crazy claims. Just own up and admit you were

Spoiler

WRONG

about Soriano being a top 10 player in 2007. That's what this whole argument was predicated over.

 

[Captain Obvious]

So we should have kept Cashner in the minors because HE got injured, causing Davis to start?

You don't expect Wells and Cashner to be injured for elongated periods of time.

But now we are getting into old arguments, so let's forget that.

And if Silva was good, he'd be in the majors now. I mean, he's with the Yankees Tripe-A team, and their major league team could use some starting pitching, but they keep him down.

*sigh*

We should have kept Silva because we have no 6th starter. You don't expect them to get hurt, but you should expect at least someone to get injured. It's baseball. It always happens.

That is such a terrible argument.

 

[nwfisch]

Batting avg doesn't correlate to runs all that well.

and walks are so much better?

 

[poodski]

Explain chart please.

And I said that he doesn't suck with the bat, he sucks at taking walks, because you don't use your bat to let Ball 4 go by.

Do you know what correlation is? That would probably be the first question.

Basically it takes all the stats and pairs them up against actual runs. So it says team A hit this and scored this. Team B the same and so on and so on for every team from 2000-2004.

Basically correlation is how well if you graphed it would it be a straight line upwards or downwards.

Basically the closer you are to 1.000 the more they correlate with each other. So for the most part the better batting average the more runs, but it doesn't translate as well as SLG or OBP, which doesn't translate nearly as well as OPS and some of the other more advanced stats.

Correlation is kind of difficult to explain over the internet.

 

[Jntg4]

*sigh*

We should have kept Silva because we have no 6th starter. You don't expect them to get hurt, but you should expect at least someone to get injured. It's baseball. It always happens.

That is such a terrible argument.

Great, put him in the rotation to be a 6th starter... he refused to work from the pen or minors.

And Coleman was supposed to be a viable spot starter if need be.

 

[Captain Obvious]

You wouldn't be backed into corners if you didn't make crazy claims. Just own up and admit you were

Spoiler

WRONG

about Soriano being a top 10 player in 2007. That's what this whole argument was predicated over.

The argument can still be made that he was a top 10 player. Even if he wasn't, he was still top 15. You have still provided nothing to say he isn't other than he sucks at defense now & your eyes tell you so.

 

[poodski]

and walks are so much better?

No but OBP is, as is slugging and OPS.

All three things Barney extremely lacks.

 

[Jntg4]

Do you know what correlation is? That would probably be the first question.

Yes. I do, but I don't know what the numbers mean or how they calculated it.

Basically it takes all the stats and pairs them up against actual runs. So it says team A hit this and scored this. Team B the same and so on and so on for every team from 2000-2004.

Basically correlation is how well if you graphed it would it be a straight line upwards or downwards.

Basically the closer you are to 1.000 the more they correlate with each other. So for the most part the better batting average the more runs, but it doesn't translate as well as SLG or OBP, which doesn't translate nearly as well as OPS and some of the other more advanced stats.

Correlation is kind of difficult to explain over the internet.

So how'd they calculate it. (AVG*1000)/R or something like that?