Ozzie's improvement, as I recall, was from being coached to change his swing so that he would hit more line drives, ground balls past the infield, and infield hits (given his speed), rather than fly balls (weak and easy to catch, usually, since Oz had little power).

The chances of Izturis hitting respectably (.320 to .340 OBP) are not one in a million. It is the most likely possiblity, based on his past performance under the same conditions (healthy and playing often enough to keep his timing as a hitter).

and we can't rely on one-in-a-million results. That's why (for Cardswin) so many of us are so disappointed in this signing.

But I'll pass on Uribe . . .

Look at Izturis' 889 consecutive AB's over one and a third seasons in 2004 and 2005, before his physical problems began (elbow, hamstring, etc.). Izturis' AB's in this period amount to 33% of his career total of 2751 AB's, a very good sample size.

In that large sample of AB's, Izturis has an AVG of .301 and an OBP of .344.

It is highly improbable that performing at that level over that long a period was a fluke. Only a player with solid hitting ability could maintain such performance over that long a period.

Agreed. Izturis will save enough runs scored (as he did vs. the Mets yesterday with three outstanding fielding plays and one spectacular fielding play) to add much more value defensively than Eckstein. Even if Izturis has an OBP around .320, he'll contribute more on balance than Eckstein.

Larry,

With all due respect, I am surprised and disappointed that you would arbitrarily exclude someone's comments because they have been repeated in other versions earlier (in this case, a month ago and a month before that).

I had no intention of posting this again anway. I understood that the purpose of the FanPost was to put a viewpoint out there for everyone who wished to follow the thread for more than one day, so there wouldn't be the need to repeat similar comments in various daily threads. (I hadn't realized that a FanPost was an option on this blog until it was recommended to me a few weeks ago). My reason for making this a fan post is precisely because OTHER PEOPLE HAVE REPEATED THE SAME TIRED DECLARATIONS AND ASSERTIONS about Izturis over and over and it seemed that some of them had not seen my earlier analysis (like Tewk, below). I sometimes post very late in the day, as I am doing now, because I'm two time zones later than most VEB members, so it seems that my comments may often be read by very few people, because by the time I post them people have moved on to the next day's topic.

I certainly don't want to fill up space on this site with redundant posts. Again, I had no desire or intention to repeat this again, in fact, having made it into a FanPost . I had held off from writing the FanPost for several weeks until the topic came up again. When I saw the several reports and columns assessing Izturis' projrected performance and spring training performance in the last few days in the Post Dispatch and in the MLB.com site, I thought that converting my earlier remarks into a FanPost would be timely.

In asserting your censorship of repeated comments, are you going to ban everyone else in VEB from reiterating over and over again how awful a player Izturis is, without any new data, insights, or other information? If not, that is your choice, of course. It's your site. It is entirely your prerogative, of course, to make whatever rules you wish. "It's your ball." But if you apply a double standard by continuing to allow the redundancy of so many postings on VEB while you have publicly prohibited me from posting again on a question others keep raising, then, I'll be disappointed. I would expect a more evenhanded policy from a professional with your background and reputation.

I appreciate your remarks, Tewk. There's no question that Izturis has looked very bad to the observant fan, in addition to having very bad performance statistics, over the last two years (actual playing time in the last half of 2005, then the second half of 2006, and all of 2007, not counting the first half of the 2006 season he was not playing while he recovered from Tommy John surgery).

But are we to discount or exclude the implicit and explicit observations of Cardinal scouts? Surely they have been observing Izturis carefully, since last year at least, and evidently they have seen something in Izturis, on the field, that leads them to believe he can regain some approximation of his gold glove fielding and his respectable hitting. LaRussa himself, who is constantly observing every key player, has given his assessment of what he sees, as reported in the media recently: a player with very good hands, good range, a strong arm, who is rusty from lack of regular playing time and, as Oquendo added, who seems to have developed some bad habits during that irregular playing time (much like Mulder is now rebuilding his arm slot and delivery after developing bad habits the last couple of years as he compensated for the weakness in his shoulder, according to Dave Duncan). If we're going to talk about how Izturis LOOKS then those comments need to be included, and I would hope that they would have at least as much weight as the assessments of fans who have seen a very limited sample of Izturis in action this spring (we know how important sample size is to the VEB community).

It might also be useful and interesting to include in the discussion the direct visual observation of sportswriters, announcers, coaches, scouts, and fans who saw Izturis play the last time he was both healthy and playing regularly, in 2004 and the first two months of 2005. They have great praise for the quality of his fielding and they describe his hitting, hustle, alertness, instincts, work habits, and demeanor with nothing less than respect. I would post some of the comments I have posted earlier, but I dare not, in light of Larry's admonition of me for repeating comments I've made before. Suffice it to say that Izturis didn't win a gold glove and get elected to the All-Star game with smoke and mirrors. People voted him those honors based on what they saw on the field as well as what they saw in the numbers.

Izturis might not regain his former level of play, of course, even though his hamstring is healed now and he has totally recovered from TJ surgery, just as Carpenter might never be himself again either, nor Mulder or Clement or Rolen or Glaus, etc.

But it seems to me that a truly rational, unbiased analysis of the likely performance for Izturis this season, taking into account his patterns and trends over his career and the multiple factors that might have affected his performance, leads to the logical conclusion that it is most likely that Izturis will perform this year as he did the last time he was playing under the same conditions: healthy and full time. That suggests that he can reasonably be expected to have an OPS of .330 or better and a level of fielding that is excellent.

I will say no more about the matter from now on, until I get Larry's clarification about the parameters for picking up the thread of earlier discussions (as happens regularly on VEB) and his clarification about the boundaries around my continued participation in the discussion, in particular.

Thank you again for your comments.

Recognizing data sets that are skewed because of factors that are no longer part of the conditions under which a player performs is a well established, proven technique in making performance projections, in the most advanced application of the principles of statistical and probability analysis. NOT to filter data in this way is to bias one's analysis and very likely make it invalid.

For example, assessing Kile's performance in Colorado without considering the effect of his ballpark would have led to gross mistakes in projecting his performance in St. Louis. Rejecting the possibility of signing Chris Carpenter's because one did not take into account the probability that weakness and injuries hindered his most recent performance would have deprived the Cardinals of a Cy Young award winner. Not drafting Brian Barton in the Rule V draft, as 12 teams chose to do, because of concerns about his knee surgery, when, in fact, the most credible information indicated that that factor was very likely to have no effect on his performance, would have deprived the Cardinals of a player who appears on the field and by the numbers to be the righthanded outfielder and occasional lead off hitter the Cardinals were looking for. Etc.

Jeff Luhnow analyzes performance statistics for a living, and he evidently concurred with the signing of Izturis. Keeping his job depends on making projections reliably. Do you think you know more than Luhnow does?

Those who predict performance based merely on a simplistic, linear extrapolation from previous data, ignoring variations in the factors that affect performance, do so at the risk of their own credibility. Looking at patterns and trends in performance data and taking them into account in the analysis, without bias, is, in fact, the way the most reliable and powerful predictions are made.

because there are several people that have posted "Izturis Sucks!" in some form or another. Is it so bad to possibly try and find a silver lining? The argument he has posted is sound and the SS position is obviosly the biggest question mark on the team. Is it because he compared him to Ozzie that has everyone so up in arms? This is a legitimate debate that should be repeated. It's easy for someone to say Izturis sucks without backing it up, but this poster has taken time out of his day to give us a well thought out, data-derived fan-post that has sparked a good debate.