Rosenthal's Latest: Gross, Rios, Perez

If the Blue Jays don't want Alex Rios, they can ALWAYS trade him to the Reds for Adam Dunn. As a Reds fan, I would LOVE to have Rios instead of Dunn.

As a fan who watches every Blue Jays game, there are no problems with Alex Rios. His long strides make him look a bit lazy, but he always plays all out. Theres no concern about him from the Jays front office, or they wouldn't have signed him. He has always been a guy who gets frustrated after bad at-bats breaking plenty of bats over his leg. I have no problem with that kind of passion.

What a silly line. You add a word that conveys weight and one that doesn't. It would make more sense to say he wouldn't be hitting his weight if he was Tracey Gold's after a three week purging. Convey as pathetic as possible. He wouldn't be hitting his weight if he were a 8 year old Ethiopian boy in middle of a four year famine. He wouldn't be hitting his weight if he were made out of Balsa wood.

This doesn't work

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lionscavern/1557821463/

This does

http://hollywoodbackwash.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/skinny-model.jpg

This is part of the reason why players like Eckstein or the Cubs Ryan Theriot benefit a club beyond the numbers. This is the part where the statheads (i.e. Baseball Prospectus) just don't get it.

Odd that "no talent" Eckstein has been a key component to two World Series championship teams, one of the best strikeout rates in baseball and plays on winners all the time.

"Now, if he can only find a pitching coach who can teach him to throw strikes -- he has 12 walks in those innings, which is less than a 2:1 ratio."

Wow someone that writes a Yankees blog impartially examines the Mets. If it wasn't for Rick Peterson there's a great chance Oliver Perez wouldn't be back on track in his career.

Just 18 months ago he was heralded as one of the "Worst Game 7 Starters of All Time" and now look where he is. Foolish comment.

Get over OPS. OPS is a stat for evaluating power hitters, not spark plugs. Eckstein isn't going to ever get much on the S part of OPS. What he will do is not strike out, which means a good BA and moving people over, as opposed to giving the pitcher a freebie. He is also a better than average defensive player.

Oh, and you fail to mention that your postseason stats are disproportionately affected by 3 series' as opposed to the 6 good series' and 2 amazing World Series'. You also fail to mention that his age 27 year was only his second in the majors, as he had no chance of breaking the Boston line up with Nomar in front of him.

"Oh, and you fail to mention that your postseason stats are disproportionately affected by 3 series' as opposed to the 6 good series' and 2 amazing World Series'."

No I mention all of his post season stats because its more indicative of his abilities than cherry picking the WS series in which he slugged .500 in 22 ABs.

"Get over OPS. OPS is a stat for evaluating power hitters, not spark plugs."

Awesome.
Use whatever metric you wan't. He's still has a negative value.

" You also fail to mention that his age 27 year was only his second in the majors, as he had no chance of breaking the Boston line up with Nomar in front of him."

I'll start judging his major league career from the years he was blocked by players with talent on fictious numbers I come up with in my own head then.

Yup he is still bad.

I live in my dad's basement thank you very much.

Eckstein is an overrated guy that you love to root for, plain and simple.

Defensively, he tends to cleanly field most balls he gets to, but he doesn't get to near enough balls to justify his position. His arm is terrible, meaning he can't play deep in the hole and is hardpressed to turn a quality double play.

Offensively, he gets on base just enough to make him appealing, and his woefully inadequate slugging percentage discounts the nice OBP.

He's all those cliche's that fit a guy who tries hard and gets the most from his God-given ability, but that ability is limited and largely negates the intangibles.

Eck is a sparkplug,he's feisty,scrappy,blue collar, hard nosed, and I have no idea what any of that means! I've seen rios enough to see he runs out most every play just because he can control his body when he runs and glides instead of scraps his way to bases does not mean he's lazy. If someone who is a "stat nerd" please find out how many times ecktein has gotten on on errors and compare that with someone with similar amount of atbats. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say the difference is almost 0. Ops doesn't matter? Dude read up a little and if you still are not convinced go check up Vorp. Eckstein is so average to below average it's crazy. Oh by the way he's really tearing it up!

I seriously doubt your education even approaches mine. But, hey, like I said, it makes the insipid feel smarter than they really are. As does this cut and paste style of posting...does that come out of some "debating for dummies" book?

Sarcasm...sigh. I suppose that's an example of being "intentionally" hilarious? The bottom line really is that sabermetrics is helpful but anyone who thinks it explains the whole game is limiting themselves. In the end, the game is played by human beings in social organizations. To think that people's effort, leadership, personality, intelligence and other factors have no effect on the success of any such organization is nothing less than foolish.

The distorted comment above is exactly what I mean when I say it makes the insipid feel smart. Thanks for the illustration, joemorgan. You are the posterboy for what I was talking about.

Isn't that your second response to the same post?

Isn't the kettle on the receiving end? (the pot calling the kettle black?) Anyway, I don't really think you live in your mother's basement. It was just my way of saying that such a pure reliance on sabermetric data seems a little removed to me. Same thing with the Strat-O-Matic reference. I think if you use sabermetrics as a piece of the puzzle, it works. But if you try to use it for the whole picture, it sterilizes the game into non-human elements. I don't know if you played baseball or not, but to me the personalities, the smarts, the leadership, the guys you look to, etc. make a difference. It's a social game. It isn't played in a vacuum (or on a computer). And it's not just the Ecksteins or scrappy players, I think David Ortiz has that same kind of influence on his team. I think he's worth more than his offensive numbers too. Then on the other end of the spectrum, you've got your Frank Thomas's and Albert Belle's who put up great numbers but add a certain tension to the environment. That's the part of the equation that sabermetrics experts leave out. They dismiss it because they can't quantify it, but it doesn't mean it isn't there.

Crunchy well I did play college baseball and I am currently preparing for tryouts right now for independent leagues. So I can tell you right now I have been on all kinds of teams. I've met guys with grit and without. I've been on good and bad teams. I've been on teams with great chemistry andothers without. It all depends on the the situation. But no matter how much chemistry you have it doesn't beat numbers. The oakland A's in the 70's fought all day and they won. Other teams like the yankees of the late 90's got along and won. So I don't think you can really label this as reliable information. Now will there be exceptions to the rules, sure. But at some point statistical probability is going to catch up with you. There is just so much information out there and I know you are not stating it's false but you are kind of taking it less serious then it is. We are in a golden age in baseball right now and it's fun as hell.It does not take away from anybody's love for the game it just adds to it. I know my last comment was a little much but I'm an fjm man all the way.