Tony's Team and Why "Going Rogue" Isn't the Answer

but I had Bernie on when he was talking about this on his show. My first reaction was “Why would sabermetric guys not like this team?” Value on this team has shifted a bit from defense to offense, but the value is still there. Does he not understand that one of the goals of these stats is to account for each player’s value as a whole?

the original article i disliked to a major degree. and he brought it back. bleh.

Lance Berkman is a sabremetrician’s dream offensive player. He is also a ton of fun to watch hit. Berkman is also consistently praised as a great clubhouse presence.

Matt Holliday is a sabremetrician’s dream offensive player. He is also a ton of fun to watch hit. He can hit for power and at a high average. He’s also a skilled defender, according to the models, even if he appears shaky out there to the eye.

Albert Pujols is a sabremetrician’s dream offensive player. Well, maybe not yet this season.

Colby Rasmus, Yadier Molina, and we could go on. This team is more easily liked by folks who are in tune with stats than last year’s.

Ryan Theriot may not hit for power, but he can draw a walk. He consistently takes tough plate appearances. He did so last night. But, he is terrible at defense. In fact, if you took a poll of guys the age of my dad and RB’s dad, they would probably find Theriot to be an unacceptable SS because of his poor defense. It’s only via stats that folks offset his poor defense with his offensive production, and this justifies playing him at SS. It isn’t how often he dirties his uniform so much as how often he gets a hit or a walk.

This is a baseless construction in Bernie’s mind of a disagreement. Basically, Mo and TLR gambled on Theriot and Berkman bouncing back and hitting enough to justify playing their respective defensive positions. This was the near-unanimous verdict on the offseason’s roster moves. Thank goodness their gamble has paid off so far.

Fund a way to post this in the P-D and rub Bernie’s face in it

I think Mo did a great job with roster construction this year. I love the bench. I now love the bullpen to a certain degree. Sure, mo probably got lucky that berkman and theriot remembered how to hit, but I still give him a lot of credit for this roster.

And, amazingly, TLR has kept his patented overmanagement to a minimum.

Once Albert stops leaving 4827481374 guys on base per game, this team is going to be the favorite in most every series they play

a lot of more traditional folks said “berkman just isn’t an outfielder,” because the traditional view is that people just fit into certain position spots, and not others. when you don’t try to assign some value to defense, it’s hard to weigh whether a player’s offensive advantages offset his defensive deficits.

but because we spend our time trying to weight defensive value and offensive value and see how they offset each other, we could look at him and say that he might be a crappy outfielder, but that if he regressed to his career norms at the plate, he’d be a pretty decent outfielder, because the offensive production would outweigh the defensive inadequacies.

bernie’s honked this horn before, and i think he’s way off.

if not great… considering the weird constraints he has to work with. admittedly, all GMs have constraints, but it seems like Mozeliak’s are a little more extreme?

The amount that Theriot is being marketed in St Louis is baffling to me… he’s on a few of the commercials already, he gets written about pretty often, and he is the preferred starting shortstop. all this makes me shake my head, it is very illogical.

the idea that Larussa “went rogue” is super hilarious…. he’s always had a couple of good hitters on each of his teams surrounded by a pretty good supporting cast. not every team has that. Dave Duncan has helped make his career, it would be interesting to know just how much over 50% that is. because having effective starting pitching and some hitters that can get on base is very important, not crappy fielders who exhibit intangibles because people say they do. anyways, great article robot!

six years ago, wasn’t Tony rebelling against the “stats guys” by insisting that defense was important? “Scrappy” used to involve being a fantastic defender.

“Narrative Fallacy”.

I think there are times where we apply false logic to decisions made by TLR and the front office when, in reality, there’s little of our “logic” that applies to the situation because there are many facts that we can’t possibly know. So we try to construct a narrative and then apply things to that narrative. The problem is that there are many times where our concept of the facts changes when applying to the narrative, creating a fallacy.

In this case, the narrative is that TLR is anti-saber and pro-“grit”, when in reality, as Az has pointed out, he’s simply trying to put the best possible players on the field and to win games. Which is what Jeff Luhnow is doing. And what John Mozeliak is doing. And what Bill DeWitt is doing. I don’t think that all of those guys all agree with each other 100% of the time (and I would certainly say that there’s quite a bit difference in what they term as “valuable”), but they are all committed to winning games.

That said, I DO think that TLR’s hand has been forced a bit this year (especially when it comes to using the young relievers), but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing. You have to give him credit for using those young guys in high leverage situations, which Bernie doesn’t do in his piece. He doesn’t give Tony credit for yanking Ryan Franklin when he did in favor of a guy who hasn’t closed games since college.

The Berkman acquisition is looking like a genius move at this point, but I don’t think that anyone expected him to be this good (and, in addition, if everyone thought Allen Craig was actually this good we wouldn’t have gone after Lance Berkman in the first place). The Yankees certainly didn’t, or they would have picked up his option year since he’s far better than what they’re running out in LF and DH these days. Theriot is doing Theriot things (getting on base, playing shitty defense, hitting .290+). K-Mac has been smoke-and-mirrors spectacular to this point, as has Kyle Lohse. Garcia has been brilliant. We have the #1 offense in all of baseball in terms of scoring runs all while the best hitter in the last decade is hitting .240. Anyone would look like a genius at this point, but the season is only a bit more than a month old, and depth is still a major problem in the rotation and the middle infield.

This club looked pretty amazing offensively through April last year, so, as Winston Wolf would say: “Let’s not start sucking each other’s Popsicles just yet, ok?”