Sorry for the lack of posting, I haven't had the time/energy/anything worth writing about recently, but I'll do my best to pick up the pace. Anyways I was reading Tom Verducci's list of all-stars for his offcial ballot and while its not bad it inspired me to give my list of all-stars just the starters and the reasoning behind it.
American League
1B. Mark Texiera - I realize that he may look lacking in areas such as batting average, as he only is batting .276 but when you're OPSing over .980 it kind of makes up for it a bit. More importantly, despite his really awful start to the season the raw numbers don't show precisely how utterly dominant this guy has been since then, as someone who's seen him everyday he's carried the yankees with his bat and at least as importantly with his defense.
2B. Aaron Hill - I'll agree with Verducci here, I knew he was hitting well but 19 home runs with a line of .302/.340/.506 from second base, well that's pretty impressive. Especially when you consider that his career was seriously derailed by a concussion that he didn't get over for a very long time its been remarkable. Indeed, you watch them enough its plain to see that Hill has basically carried this team, and this is down from where he was a few weeks ago.
SS. Jason Bartlett - God help me I pick a freaking Tampa bay Ray over my man Derek Jeter and I almost did pick him over Bartlett given that he's missed a good chunk of the season the DL but the guy's numbers are still better, .368/.404/.566 with 17 stolen bases and 6 home runs compared to the Captain's .309/.384/.455 with 19 stolen bases and 9 home runs. To Jeter's credit its still good and an improvement from last year but its hard to argue with those numbers and his stellar numbers. All that said I still want Jeter to win and I'll vote for him because he's a yankee and damnit what would an all-star game be without Jeter?
3B. Evan Longoria - Man I feel like I'm copying Verducci here but you can't argue with Longoria the disussion begins and ends with Evan this year. Sure A-Rod is playing better but he's hardly been all-star caliber its not even worth discussing.
OF - Adam Jones, Nelson Cruz, Jason Bay - a lot of deserving guys for sure but these three stand out for me for various reasons, all having career or breakout years and seem to me to be great overall players
Pitchers - Zach Greinke, Roy Halladay, Felix Hernandez, Mariano Rivera, Joe Nathan, John Lester, Justin Verlander
I could list more but I won't just two reliever and five starters is adequate, all of these guys have been absolutely lights out all year.
As you can see I suprisingly thought the fans did a decent job with the all-star teams, with some exceptions like Pedroia over Hill who's clearly having a better season, but for the most part the fans will get to see the best of the best.
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About me
Just an out of work lawyer looking for work and spending the rest of my time reading, writing and taking everything I can in about the game I love, baseball.
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Some Key Terms to Know When Reading
I throw around a lot of numbers and stats so I figured I should probably explain some of them:
wOBA - a new one I'll be using, short for weighted on-base average is essentially an improvement on OPS. Scaled to average OBP (with .330 the league average) wOBA more properly weighs on-base percentage higher than slugging percentage and more accurately weighs extra base hits (a double isn't worth double of that of a single which is what SLG does) to give a better picture of a batter's worth.
.000/.000/.000 is the industry shorthand for the split stats for batting average, on base percentage, and slugging percentage, in that order, these are some of the more commonly used stats to indicate how productive a hitter is.
OPS - shorthand for On-Base Percentage Plus Slugging is becoming more in vogue in the mainstream media to get a better idea of the raw production of a hitter, instead of saying how often they get a hit OPS shows how productive those hits are.
BABIP - Batting Average on Balls in play, its pretty much what it says, how often that a batter puts in ball in play that it becomes a hit, its a stat that shows if a hitter is just having a lot of bad luck or a hot streak is just fluky. For instance a BABIP of .200 is considered unlucky its not that he's not hitting, he just isn't hitting where the fielders are not there.
OPS+ - as the name implies, OPS+ is OPS but with adjustments to park effects and other outliers to normalize the data. Indeed, as most people know some parks are harder to hit at than others, which this stat compensates for, 100 being the baseline of league average
wOBA - a new one I'll be using, short for weighted on-base average is essentially an improvement on OPS. Scaled to average OBP (with .330 the league average) wOBA more properly weighs on-base percentage higher than slugging percentage and more accurately weighs extra base hits (a double isn't worth double of that of a single which is what SLG does) to give a better picture of a batter's worth.
.000/.000/.000 is the industry shorthand for the split stats for batting average, on base percentage, and slugging percentage, in that order, these are some of the more commonly used stats to indicate how productive a hitter is.
OPS - shorthand for On-Base Percentage Plus Slugging is becoming more in vogue in the mainstream media to get a better idea of the raw production of a hitter, instead of saying how often they get a hit OPS shows how productive those hits are.
BABIP - Batting Average on Balls in play, its pretty much what it says, how often that a batter puts in ball in play that it becomes a hit, its a stat that shows if a hitter is just having a lot of bad luck or a hot streak is just fluky. For instance a BABIP of .200 is considered unlucky its not that he's not hitting, he just isn't hitting where the fielders are not there.
OPS+ - as the name implies, OPS+ is OPS but with adjustments to park effects and other outliers to normalize the data. Indeed, as most people know some parks are harder to hit at than others, which this stat compensates for, 100 being the baseline of league average
WAR - Wins Above Replacement, as its name suggests, provides an exact number of wins a particular player is worth above what your average AAA player, or replacement player would provide in his absence. Although this is a very difficult stat to explain (I don't totally get it personally) the stat is beautifully simple in that it provides a precise value of either a pitcher or hitter to his particular team, which enables teams to monetize their worth and properly assign a dollar value.
ERA+ - similar to OPS+ its a more highly sophisticated way of evaluating a pitcher's performance adjusted for park effects, this also is on a numerical basis with 100 as league average.
FIP - short for fielding independent pitching, FIP measures the only aspects of the game that a pitcher has total control over, strikeouts, walks, and home runs. Scaled to ERA, FIP gives a truer indication of a pitcher's true talent by removing the luck apparent with balls in play.
WHIP - Walks and Hits per innings pitched, a little more well known stat, but a good indicator of how effective a pitcher is. Chances are if a guy is walking a lot of guys and giving up a hot of hits, he's not pitching all that well.
xFIP- a variation of FIP which normalizes home run rates as a way to discount aberrational home run rates that are either too high or too low to reasonably sustain.
UZR- Short of Ultimate Zone Rating, this is the number of runs above or below average a fielder is in both range runs and error runs combined. This is a difficult stat to understand because it's not one of those stats you can figure out at home, because it includes a bevy of factors including park effects and speed. As a consequence, its not a perfect stat, but its the best defensive stat we have. Also seen as UZR/150 is the Ultimate Zone rating per 150 games.
RngR - Range Runs is defined as the number of runs above or below average a fielder is, determined by how the fielder is able to get to balls hit in his vicinity. Also not a perfect fielding stat, but one of the many fielding stats that help as as fans get a fuller picture of a player's defensive prowess.
ERA+ - similar to OPS+ its a more highly sophisticated way of evaluating a pitcher's performance adjusted for park effects, this also is on a numerical basis with 100 as league average.
FIP - short for fielding independent pitching, FIP measures the only aspects of the game that a pitcher has total control over, strikeouts, walks, and home runs. Scaled to ERA, FIP gives a truer indication of a pitcher's true talent by removing the luck apparent with balls in play.
WHIP - Walks and Hits per innings pitched, a little more well known stat, but a good indicator of how effective a pitcher is. Chances are if a guy is walking a lot of guys and giving up a hot of hits, he's not pitching all that well.
xFIP- a variation of FIP which normalizes home run rates as a way to discount aberrational home run rates that are either too high or too low to reasonably sustain.
UZR- Short of Ultimate Zone Rating, this is the number of runs above or below average a fielder is in both range runs and error runs combined. This is a difficult stat to understand because it's not one of those stats you can figure out at home, because it includes a bevy of factors including park effects and speed. As a consequence, its not a perfect stat, but its the best defensive stat we have. Also seen as UZR/150 is the Ultimate Zone rating per 150 games.
RngR - Range Runs is defined as the number of runs above or below average a fielder is, determined by how the fielder is able to get to balls hit in his vicinity. Also not a perfect fielding stat, but one of the many fielding stats that help as as fans get a fuller picture of a player's defensive prowess.
About Me
- burnsie77
- Morristown, NJ, United States
- I write and read everything I can about baseball and have some thoughts about it.
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