Taro

We're still looking for a SS... I guess we hope Luis Rodriguez breaks out (which is possible).

Rodriguez is Dr. D's starting SS going into March.  But I'm afraid that the Mariners would prefer a -10 bat, =0 shortstop to a +15 bat, -8 glove shortstop.

Let's hope that the Mariners got Schick-Shadel'ed* out of pretty defense and 500 runs.  But I'll believe it when I see it.

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CS

Everything I've read sees him as a needing to move to second-base. Which is incidentally where the Twins see him, too.

Huge bias in America towards power and away from precision.

Back in my day, they used to be okay with SS's who had minus arms; they played shallower and got rid of the ball quicker.  Nowadays that's just considered too embarrassing.

As James would put it:  the day will come when the pendulum swings back, because it didn't swing for any legitimate reason.

But yeah.  CS aptly notes that an ML club is corroborating here.

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Matty follows

Which is my polite way of saying that scouts are intellectual bigots.

They think he's got to move to second because his arm is not strong.  But he's got phenomenal range from all the video footage I've seen in the run-up to this posting.  Just because he doesn't have a strong arm doesn't mean he's not a good fielder at short.  But to scouts...it's an absolute rule that he's no good there if he doesn't have a cannon arm.

This is why I generally don't much care for scouts.

:cpoints:

Dr. D does care for scouts, and they might well be right in this case... but the paradigms do get to be rather reflexive sometimes... have to wonder whether that's the case here...

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Taro

The fact that Nishioka led the NPB in putouts and assists weighs higher to me than the fact that he has a below-average arm.

Ya.  Scouts will go, "That's on turf.  And he could play in on those little hitters."

Scouts also went, "Ichiro's a 4th OF in the real majors."

Not sure who's right, but the fact that Nishioka was a good NPB shortstop weighs most heavily to me, too.

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The essence of SABER is not in statistics.  It's not in dogma, and not in formulas, and it's not in pseudo-scientific pretension about "analyzing sample sizes" when, in fact, nobody understands science or math well enough to know that they don't have samples.  (We mean that in a good way.)

The essence of SABER is simply the use of (1) past performance as opposed to (2) physical projection when trying to (3) predict future performance.

NPB baseball, whatever it is, is baseball that is played at a higher level than AAA baseball.

Nishioka has played short, and played it well, in a real good league.  That fact comes first in the discusson.  Maybe not last:  but it definitely comes first.

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Nishioka is a great opportunity lost.  But those interested in analyzing baseball can benefit from recalling the fact that ---- > past results matter.  A whale of a lot.

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