Add new comment

1
Anonymous's picture

"especially if in a community that has a friendly atmosphere, it is better to introduce yourself and shake hands."
I would prefer not to.   Besides, my exerience from one thread is that the atmosphere is more, let's say, spirited than 'friendly' per se.   
"Looking at a guy's results vs. "power" pitchers isn't enough in itself, but it's suggestive, sure."
Again, Langerhans has two walk-offs versus 'power' pitchers, Howell and Breslow.   That they threw sliders and have so-so FBs is precisely my point.   It does not address velocity or pitch type.   By the way, Mark Lowe?   Not a power pitcher this year.  He's in the middle grouping.
The hypothesis may be right, and maybe you should sit Langerhans against high velo guys, I don't know.   But using a metric that thinks JP Howell is a 'power' guy and Edwin Jackson or Mark Lowe aren't is going to obscure more than it'll clarify.  And yet again, Branyan seems to be a decent counter.   If you looked to this metric to see who's likely to struggle vs. power pitchers, Langerhans wouldn't be close to the top of the list.   You'd go to Branyan.  
The same is basically true with using the pitch type linear weights.   These are greatly affected by small sample size BABIP swings - and this isn't single-season BABIP (which isn't too reliable), it's a fraction of that (as it's single-season broken down by pitch type).   This is exactly why they vary so much, and why drawing conclusions about batspeed may not be advisable.   For examples, look at Robinson Cano or Ian Kinsler.   Great years versus fastballs, catastrophic years against FBs side by side.  
The same is true for Jose Lopez.   He's had two full MLB seasons of disastrous results versus FBs, a very good year in 2008, and then a merely awful season in 2009.   What conclusion do we draw from this?   Personally, not much of anything.   If you think this DID prove something, you'd be much more likely to bench Lopez against anyone throwing hard in 2008 (coming off two years of around -15 runs each on FBs), and that wouldn't have been the right move.   Similarly, benching Langerhans this year versus 'power pitchers' would've cost us the two walk-offs.   The counter from SABRMatt seems to be that you'd ditch that definition and sit him against high velo guys.   Obviously, this means using one group of pitchers to show that he may have weakness against a different group, and probably isn't very helpful.  What we need are are the league averages against power pitchers and/or the league average LW versus FBs for a hitter of Langerhans' caliber.   That would still not give us a whole lot given the variability of these stats, but at least we could actually see if they point to something.  
"He did not say that he has proven anything; he's called our attention to something.  "
Well, if the claim was that it was based on visual evidence, and was something to watch, I'd never have made the comment.   The initial post was that Langerhans was DONE as an MLB player once people stopped throwing him sliders.   The fact that he's done well this year versus FBs and power pitchers was dismissed as small sample size, while the small sample size of visual evidence is still paramount.   It's a crazy ol' world.   
Again, I DO NOT KNOW if Langerhans has a slider speed bat, and until we go to the pitch fx data, neither does matt.   Just watching his performance against FBs going forward is great, and I suspect we all will given that we're Mariner fans.   I'm just asking for some humility and and to really think about what we can prove, what constitutes evidence, etc.  
Sorry for the breach of netiquette.   
FYI, he hasn't faced Weaver as Matt notes, but he's got a very solid OPS versus Ubaldo Jimenez, the flame-throwing righty from the Rockies.   Is this counterevidence?   I'd say no, it's noise, but do with it what you will.   

Filtered HTML

  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd><p><br>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

shout_filter

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.