Comments on: Balancing offense and defense

By: nova

nova — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 10:17:52 +0000

I was Surfing for something completely different, but got your page Balancing offense and defense | River Avenue Blues and found it Interesting.Nice Post on matt light…Thanks.

By: Is Strategy Baseball's New Market Inefficiency | Baseball by the Numbers

Is Strategy Baseball's New Market Inefficiency | Baseball by the Numbers — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 02:32:00 +0000

[...] inefficiencies can be an important ingredient for success. This offseason there has been some talk that the new market inefficiency is defense as some teams, most notably the Red Sox seem to be more accurately measuring defense and trying to [...]

By: RustyJohn

RustyJohn — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 05:34:15 +0000

I’d be very curious to see how Beltre does offensively- he is miles above ARod defensively and should take a huge leap offensively away from SafeCo. Tex is overrated defensively.

By: hikker

hikker — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 02:16:48 +0000

You forgot the ever important P.M.S.!

By: pete

pete — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 23:57:45 +0000

bro i’m sorry, but your arguments die quickly when you cite RBIs and batting average. When you can ops like drew can and play one of the best RFs in baseball, you’re a very valuable player, regardless of your batting average. Drew is a top 5 all-around RF in the game, IMO.
And beltre was nothing last year, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll be nothing next year in fenway. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if he’s a solid #7. Scutaro’s calling card is that he is a consistently somewhat above average hitter who consistently plays solid-good defense at SS, which makes him a valuable player.

By: whozat

whozat — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 23:37:49 +0000

…Which is what Winn is.

By: Yank

Yank — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 23:24:46 +0000

The Yanks are not the Mariners. Winn would make a good backup.

By: JAG

JAG — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 23:22:00 +0000

Precisely. It’s not as though Beane was going out and getting the best available OBP players. He was getting guys who were massively undervalued because OBP was their best tool, which was undervalued in the market. Do you think that he would have willingly replaced Jason Giambi with Scott Hatteberg? I mean, I’m no Giambi fan, but I think we can all agree which of those two players was better, if you ignore cost. It’s precisely cost, though, that was the key to Beane’s strategy.

-JM

By: Jack

Jack — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 23:14:10 +0000

http://www.buuurn.com/

By: Guest

Guest — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 23:05:57 +0000

Wow. That Borges article was all kinds of FAIL. I mean Martha Coakley bad. Articles like that make me miss the days of Ken Tremendous and Fire Joe Morgan. Every paragraph brought the stupid with authority.

He also missed the whole point of the book. Moneyball was about taking advantage of market inefficiencies. Namely, the fact that certain players were undervalued because the league did not give enough credence to the ability to get on base. When people started to wise up to its importance, guess what? The market inefficiency that Beane took advantage no longer existed. Guys who could get on base started to get paid and Beane couldn’t afford them anymore. I mean its that simple.

Seattle then found the next market inefficiency, which was defense. But once the market wises up to the importance of defense (and judging by Theo’s actions, it has), then that to will no longer be an inefficiency.

The idiocy in the article was one thing, but the unbelievably snarky and dismissive tone he took towards those who believe in rational thinking was even worse. He did everything but toss in the “mother’s basement” line.

The saddest thing though is that the Sox have a smart GM and Borges is only writing stupid columns instead of making stupid trades. If only Borges and Theo could switch jobs. I would be ecstatic.