Mookie4ever wrote:Unless an injury is chronic, the player is very old, plays a style that is condusive to injury or has shown that he cannot play through pain then you just have to take injury out of the equation. There is no way that you can predict it.
As for Beltre, it was a medical procedure/illness that was not baseball related. He had an emergency appendectomy in the DR that was botched and had to be fixed months later. He lost a full year (and I would say even regressed) because of the damage that it did to him. It's kind of like Greg Ostertagg when he donated a kidney - you can't call him injury prone because he donated a kidney.
Simply not true. Injuries are highly correlated from year to year. Look at DL days from year to year. You'll find the same names.
That appendix operation was in January 2001. What's his excuse in 2002? 2003?
I do not believe that there is a pattern and none has ever been shown. Unless, as I said the injury is chronic, the player is very old, plays a style that is condusive to injury or has shown that he cannot play through pain, there is simply no way to predict injuries.
GTWMS wrote:I don't know whether he's injury prone or not. Others brought that up as an excuse for his poor performance. I find that not a credible excuse.
Give the guy a break, he almost died in 2001. If you know the story at all, his appendix burst and he did not get immediate medical attention. When he did get attention the operation was botched. At spring training, they found that he had holes in his stomach. He lost a lot of weight and probably should not have played at all in 2001. I would say that this could put a little bit of a crimp in a young player's development.
Erboes wrote:Why don't we cut to the chase, Agnes. Where do you think Beltre should go in a mixed draft considering he was a top 5 hitter last season? Which players would you take ahead of him?
The funny thing, Agnes, as a general rule I agree with you. I have a range that I work with aroung a player which I consider his norm. There's nothing uncommon to have a player be +/- .100 in OPS, for example, and I base my projections accordingly. I think where we differ is when a player breaks out of that +/- .100 norm. I tend to look to see what has changed with that hitter whereas you assume it was an aberration. In the case of Beltre, I find it hard if not impossible to claim an aberration since his OPS jump about .300. This does not happen often and when it does it is rarely a blip. You disagree, so let us see how this plays out.
I'd like to see your evidence on that, Erboes. Show me the data that indicates that +.300 OPS jumps are highly likely to be sustained over time. And again, remember that I am supporting the notion that Beltre is likely to be about 150 points or so higher than his career OPS next year. So, by sustained, I mean that +.300 OPS falls by less than, let's say 20% in the following year.
In other words, suppose year 0 OPS is labeled OPS0.
Then OPS in the blip year (OPS1) would be OPS1>=OPS0+300.
I want you to show me the evidence that OPS in the year after the blip (OPS2) is likely to be greater than or equal to the following:
OPS2 >= OPS0+240
My argument, on the other hand, would be that OPS2<=OPS0+180; in other words, I would bet that the evidence shows that players with a +300 blip in OPS fail to sustain more than 60% of it.
That's equivalent to you projecting a .940+ OPS for Beltre and me projecting an OPS of less than .900.
In a mixed non-keeper draft, I'd rank him somewhere between 30 and 50 among hitters. In a keeper, I'd bump him a bit higher because of age.
Mookie4ever wrote:[quote="GotowarMissAgnes Simply not true. Injuries are highly correlated from year to year. Look at DL days from year to year. You'll find the same names.
That appendix operation was in January 2001. What's his excuse in 2002? 2003?
I do not believe that there is a pattern and none has ever been shown. Unless, as I said the injury is chronic, the player is very old, plays a style that is condusive to injury or has shown that he cannot play through pain, there is simply no way to predict injuries.
Give the guy a break, he almost died in 2001. If you know the story at all, his appendix burst and he did not get immediate medical attention. When he did get attention the operation was botched. At spring training, they found that he had holes in his stomach. He lost a lot of weight and probably should not have played at all in 2001. I would say that this could put a little bit of a crimp in a young player's development.[/quote]
As far as injury patterns, are you talking about Beltre or players in general? If about Beltre, I'd agree that he doesn't have a real pattern of injury. But, that was never the reason why I felt he was unlikely to repeat last year. Others were trying to explain away his three years of below average performance by injury. I simply think his record speaks for itself. Great players almost never have a pattern of three consecutive years of below average performance, injury or not. Beltre does...conclusion?
If you are referring to players in general, then your exceptions provide a hole that permits a fleet of tractor trailers carrying wideloads and driving side to side to fit through.
I am sure his 2001 performance is impacted by his illness.
What's his excuse in 2002?
In 2003?
Again, injured or not, great players almost never have three consecutive years in which they perform below league average. Show me a list of great players that had three below average years prior to age 28.
Pogotheostrich wrote:Just wondering what everyone else predicts, assuming he stays in LA? Here is the James projection: Beltre .287 34 .866 I'd bump it up to around .310 35 .900 but that is based more on a guess than any formula.
I don't know, Agnes. I am not about to dig as deep as this subject requires, but I did go through the players who had big jumps in OPS (from about .120 on up of a jump) since the beginning of the '01 season and how they did the following season and I came up with this list. Obviously, I did not include those from this season since we do not have a comparison yet.
2003 and 2004
Ortiz .961 .983
Mora .921 .981
M. Giles .917 .821
Mueller .938 .811
Jose Guillen .950 .849
Javy Lopez 1.065 .873
2002 and 2003
Huff .884 .922
Soriano .880 .863
2001 and 2002
Luis Gonzalez 1.117 .896
B. Boone .950 .801
Even though this is by no means conclusive, but I do believe that it at least hints at that the younger you are the better chance you have of repeating that success if not bettering it. Furthermore, if you throw out the players who were injured the following season (Mueller, and Giles), it leaves you a list of four players who dropped significantly, Boone, Gonzalez, Lopez, and Guillen. Of these five, two of them had their bumps in that freakish offensive season of '01, which at least partially explains their jumps. And with Lopez his advancing age for a catcher is likely to be a factor. I believe if someone else went farther back we would find a similar pattern. I should point out that none of these players slipped back to their pre-bump days either.
Erboes wrote:I don't know, Agnes. I am not about to dig as deep as this subject requires, but I did go through the players who had big jumps in OPS (from about .120 on up of a jump) since the beginning of the '01 season and how they did the following season and I came up with this list. Obviously, I did not include those from this season since we do not have a comparison yet.
2003 and 2004
Ortiz .961 .983 Mora .921 .981 M. Giles .917 .821 Mueller .938 .811 Jose Guillen .950 .849 Javy Lopez 1.065 .873
2002 and 2003
Huff .884 .922 Soriano .880 .863
2001 and 2002
Luis Gonzalez 1.117 .896 B. Boone .950 .801
Even though this is by no means conclusive, but I do believe that it at least hints at that the younger you are the better chance you have of repeating that success if not bettering it. Furthermore, if you throw out the players who were injured the following season (Mueller, and Giles), it leaves you a list of four players who dropped significantly, Boone, Gonzalez, Lopez, and Guillen. Of these five, two of them had their bumps in that freakish offensive season of '01, which at least partially explains their jumps. And with Lopez his advancing age for a catcher is likely to be a factor. I believe if someone else went farther back we would find a similar pattern. I should point out that none of these players slipped back to their pre-bump days either.
Well, I appreciate it what you've done here. I haven't checked your data, but maybe I'll do that over the break. For example, we'd want to make sure that none of the bumps were due to things like changes in park.
First of all, let me caution against throwing any observation out of any reason. It's simply too easy to rationalize things that contradict a prior opinion. Injuries, for example, are part of the game. Beltre, like every player, has a chance he may get injured and that is one reason why every player can suffer a decline in performance. The issue is not whether an uninjured Beltre is likely to repeat. It's whether or not he is likely to repeat PERIOD.
Furthermore, no one is arguing that Beltre is likely to drop down to his pre-bump days. As I said before, the most recent year IS meaningful, not simply a freak event. The question is not whether it should be weighted, but how much. Even more important, the question is not whether it should get close to zero weight, but whether it's weight should be something like 50 or 60% (as most sabr projections would suggest) or 80 or 90%, as you and some others seem to suggest.
Finally, a sample of 10 is REALLY small for drawing conclusions, so anything derived from this should be very suspect.
But, this group had, on average a 212 increase in OPS. In year 2, they held on to 136 points of that increase, or about 64% of the increase.
In Beltre's case, that would be about 180-190 points, which would put him in the low 900s.
But, like I say, a sample of ten is too small. It'd be nice to see a comprehensive study of it. If anyone knows of anything or sees it, I hope they will let us know.
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