How’s that trade working out? (VIII)

But if Arroyo were still here, there’s no way he’d be making advertising magic such as this: http://www.deadspin.com/sports/baseball/bronson-arroyo-rockin-pitchman-176542.php

hahaha, that arroyo ad is hilarious.although, I believe arroyo has almost as many home runs as willy mo did in the same span…

Not to be mean, but did you notice Derek Lowe’s fine performance today?

it’s worthy of note that Theo’s number one trade, BK Kim coughed up the 715th HR to Barry Bonds. About 12 hours earlier Shea H. won the game with a walkoff. Bronson had no decision today.

Uh oh, DK. Caution is advised when it comes to simple common sense.

Bryan — And now Timlin’s hurt. Again, utterly predictable, given that he’s now 63 years old. No, Arroyo isn’t Clemens, but neither is he Seanez or Tavarez.

Specks — Time to brush up on the Evelyn Wood. I wrote, “And now Timlin’s hurt. Again, utterly predictable, given that he’s now 63 years old.” Who is 63??? Uh, that would be Timlin. Got it?

Timlin’s DOB Mar 10, 1966.

[Same Anon. as 11:03]Back with a couple of quick points:- As alluded to above, Pena will now miss at least 2 months for surgical repair of the broken bone in his hand that is causing his wrist problem.Could happen to anyone, you say? Yes, but – it’s a pre-existing condition. Pena missed time last year with the Reds because of the same ailment. Due dilegence regarding his medical records combined with a medical examination before the Arroyo trade should have revealed that Pena would need surgery.- Dan, about your comments on Kim – that whole deal was a complete disaster. Theo immediately signed him to a 10 million dollar, 2-year extension, rather than waiting to see how he’d do in the AL East. The Red Sox wound up having to guarantee a large portion of his salary as well as give up multiple prospects in order to move him.

Anon 2:07 — I don’t recall anyone shedding any tears for Shea Hillenbrand when he was traded. He often gets off to a great start. Let’s see how he’s doing in August. The point is, would you rather have seen Hillenbrand or Bill Mueller in the line-up? Theo had to unload Hillenbrand so that Grady would be forced to play Mueller. I thought getting Kim was a decent gamble, although you’re right that re-signing him after the season was a boneheaded move. Maybe Theo was impressed with the way Kim gave the finger to the fans.Mike, if the Sox weren’t aware of Pena’s wrist, that’s pretty sad. If the Reds were hiding something, maybe we can get this trade reversed right now!

Anon 4:42: You’re wrong. Kim signed in Jan. ’04. See this. And yes, a mighty moronic signing it was.That said, the Hillenbrand-for-Kim deal was widely hailed at the time. Hillenbrand was not highly regarded. Kim had blown up in the World Series, but otherwise was thought to be a real up-and-comer. I recall someone from ESPN (not Gammons) popping up on one of the talk shows and laughing about how the Red Sox had pulled off a theft of the highest order.

Ok, last post in this thread, I swear. Here are some of Hillenbrand’s numbers so far this year – how unfortunate if he actually was not “highly regarded.” Was he not highly regarded by the same genius who thought Kim was a steal? BA SLG G AB R H TB 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB CS ES.Hillenbrand .337 .536 46 166 27 56 89 10 1 7 25 7 21 0 1 2

Quick question:You have a 24-year-old pitcher who for his career has averaged 11.1 K/9 and a BB:K ratio of 2.65 (363 IP). He just came off a season where he turned in this line: W L SV ERA G GS IP 8 5 16 3.18 49 5 79.3 H R ER HR BB SO 70 38 28 6 18 69 He is now a free agent. Do you re-sign him? And for what price?

By Kristie Rieken, AP Sports Writer  |  June 3, 2006HOUSTON –Cincinnati pitcher Bronson Arroyo went 3-for-3, drove in a career-high four runs and pitched six strong innings to lead the Cincinnati Reds to a 7-5 win over the Houston Astros on Saturday night . . .Arroyo (7-2) struck out six and allowed no earned runs with eight hits for the win._________________I’m glad Mike is back from wherever he has been, so he can explain why we shouldn’t get too excited about this.

The pitching stats look pretty good, too. Of course, I probably don’t understand math and stats and all.

I guess you think batting average is a really important stat for a guy like Ortiz.

Mike, so what you’re saying is, the Red Sox couldn’t use Arroyo’s arm right now?And a follow-up: If you agree we could use him right now, shouldn’t the potential for that need have been obvious at the time he was traded? It was never a given Wells would be able to pitch this year. He’s overweight, in his 40s, and there is a limit to how many more injections he can have for his lower back problems. And that’s before we evne get into his knee.Then there were the questions about Clement. The ones we’re still asking today. And no one was sure Schilling could stay healthy on his ankle.

Mike — You know your stats, but this is silly. The issue with Wells wasn’t his age and his weight, although those were issues; it was his off-season knee surgery. Matt Young — sorry, Matt Clement — may be untradeable, but, after last year’s playoffs, he was also undesirable. Do you keep running him out there all year no matter what?Arroyo is somewhat better than an average pitcher, and was a reliable starter for the Sox last year. I, for one, am certainly not going by what he’s doing this year. I’m going by what he did for the Sox the last two years, and I’d have gladly taken another season like that.The reason people are worked up about this is that it was obviously a dumb, dumb trade, and it showed that Theo can, on occasion, be so arrogant that he believes things will work out just because he’s Theo, as well as so mind-boggling disloyal that it may well hurt the Sox’ future dealings with players.And let’s not forget that Wily Mo’s out with an injury that first cropped up last year. Where was the due diligence?

Wow.

First of all, I see what you are leading up to and it’s silly. You make decisions based on the best information you have at the moment. But to answer the question, if I were him, yes I would turn them down. Do you really think BA has joined the ranks of the elite MLB pitchers? I don’t. I think he’s an average guy on the longest hot streak of his life. And I don’t know of any reason why WMP won’t recover and continue on his path of becoming an outstanding player.

Mike — I’ll give you a trade I’d make again in a second despite current stats: Hanley Ramirez for Josh Beckett. (Leave Lowell out of it for the moment.) I don’t care of Ramirez wins Rookie of the Year and MVP, and Beckett turns out to be a huge disappointment. It was a trade made with the idea of winning this year. Hey, maybe David Pauley will win 10 games. Maybe Lester’s and Hansen’s development won’t be screwed up by calling them up now. But, good Lord, how anyone could have felt confident about Arroyo’s being traded away given Wells’ and Clement’s situations coming into spring training is beyond me.

Mike — I’m well aware that the Sox weren’t high on Hanley Ramirez. The evidence suggests they might have been wrong. Oh, sorry — I know, we’re supposed to wait 10 years and then check his career stats. As for the Sox’ “superb” pitching, they’re eighth in the AL in ERA.

Dan, re Hanley Ramirez: you don’t need to wait 10 years. But I would reserve judgment until for longer than 200 or so at bats.And re Boston’s pitching, runs allowed is far more important than ERA, don’t you think? (ERA is the byproduct of what some guy in a booth thinks a fielder should or should not have caught.) They are 4th in RA.http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/standings

My mistake: They are now 5th in RA.

There you go again, trying to change the subject. I’m hardly cherry-picking. The official scorer is “some guy in a booth,” and there’s way too much subjectivity when it comes to determining what’s an error and what isn’t. As Bill James noted years ago, baseball is the only sport where a watcher tries to assess “what should have happened.”Either way, it’s the pitcher’s job to keep the other team from scoring. And the Red Sox’ staff is doing that better than they did last year.

I have no idea how many 4- and 5-out innings the Red Sox had last year, and neither do you. You’re simply guessing; raw observation may be OK in journalism (yes, I remember what Mark Twain said) but it’s a freshman mistake in stats. That said, the defense is better this year in terms of outs made on balls put into play (that’s something that can be measured; BP tracks it, among others). In fact, the most important metrics in terms of measuring a pitcher’s likelihood of getting a batter out are their K/9, BB/9 and HR/9 rates. Voros McCracken’s landmark 1999 study proved this. (In that regard, opposing hitters struck out in 14.9% of the time when facing RS pitchers; this year, the number so far this year is 17.2%. Arroyo was 86th in K/9 of the 93 pitchers who qualified for the AL ERA title last year, and his BB/9 and HR/9 rates both rose year-over-year.)The hands-down best metric for predicting a team’s success is run differential (again, this has been demonstrated by Baseball Prospectus and others. The Red Sox this year began a shift from mainly a run-producing team to one that was more focused on run prevention. That meant upgrading the defense. In that sense, they were shifting from being a team modeled on the Red Sox of the late 70s to one that resembled the White Sox of last year.Why change the model? The Red Sox made clear going into this season was that they felt the offense was going to be weaker. That was due to aging of its core players, and the lack of available offensive talent among the free agents. Still, they have certainly exceeded their own expectations thus far. The team OBP is .364, good for 3d in the league (last year they led the AL at .356.) The team is just a few runs behind last year’s at this time, thanks to the (over)performance of Lowell and Youkilis and yes, Wily Mo Pena (OBP: .370, substituting for Coco Crisp, whose career OBP is .331 and is just .317 this year), which have helped to offset the dismal Alex Gonzalez. But the Sox didn’t know how those former two would pan out (I think they had a pretty good idea that AGone would be an out machine). Hence the signing of J.T. Snow, and Red Sox advisor Bill James’ publicized study into how players like Lowell historically rebound after crappy seasons. I don’t think anyone anywhere foresaw Lowell and Youk doing what they’ve done thus far. And should they slip (which Lowell will almost certainly; it’s harder to forecast for Youkilis), I guarantee the Sox won’t maintain their scoring pace. Bottom line: The pitching performance this year could be predicted and is in line with past results. The hitting performance has been out of line with past results and can be expected to regress to the mean.Dan, the main problem with this entire string is that your original statement was based on emotion and (incorrect) observation, but wasn’t backed up by the data (and you dug yourself deeper with your wild, unproven accusations about Theo Epstein’s ego). And you’ve now spent who knows how much time trying to defend it. Indeed, like most of the media you’re guilty of a staunch refusal to apply the central tenets of science, namely stating the hypothesis, determining and correcting for variables, developing procedures, and determining results and conclusions, as opposed to just blasting out whatever pops into your head or using a handful of anecdotes as “proof” of a trend. Great work, professor.

He’s a professor at Northeastern and a media critic. I think he can take it.Insofar as whether he’s right, neither you nor Dan has offered one shred of evidence to support his original statements. If and when you ever do, I’ll be here.

*eye roll*

Dan, speaking of sports and journalism – something is bugging me about the coverage of the Jason Grimsley strory. Here for instance is Gordon Edes today:http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/articles/2006/06/08/drug_revelations_a_grim_situation_for_baseball/What's bothering me is Grimsley’s reported allegation that amphetamine abuse is so widespread throughout Major League Baseball that teams actually have coffee pots in the clubhouse labeled “leaded” and “unleaded” to indicate which one has speed in it.This strikes me as a perfect example of the kind of allegation beat reporters and other sports writers who have been around for a while ought to be able to pretty much immediately confirm or debunk, based on their own experiences and access to the clubhouse. Yet no sportswriter I’ve read so far today is saying anything. If amphetamines are routinely added to clubhouse coffee pots for mass consumption by the players, and reporters who have daily access to the clubhouses and the players don’t know about it, something’s wrong.

Mike — You’re confusing “more important” with “more relevant.” Runs allowed is more important, but it’s a measure of pitching + defense. Team ERA is more relevant, because it only measures pitching. But, of course, you’ve already dismissed that because you don’t trust the official scorers.

I wonder if Bill James tuned in to WGN tonight during station breaks from the Red Sox game and caught any of Arroyo’s start. 7 innings, 5 hits, 1 run, no walks.Seriously – ERA is not a “disproven metric.” That just betrays your ignorance about pitching. There are pitches a hitter can do something with, and there are quality strikes that are tough to hit for anything other than a weak ground ball or pop up. How many truly arguable error vs. hit calls by official scorers happened today? This week? This season so far. What a ridiculous argument. Real baseball people know what is and is not a playable ball.

8-2. 7 innings, 5 hits, 1 run, no walks. That’s pretty good in the bigs.

Seems to be your standard response, Mike. Look. He’s now 8 and 2. He gave up one run in the first inning (solo homer), then shut them out for the next six. That’s good pitching, against any major league team.But enough about numbers – did you look at his pitches? Would you even know what to look for if you did?

Have you per chance noticed the excellent location of his curve, and the way he sets up the curve with excellent location of his fastball?Stuff. That’s what I’m using to assess his worth. His stuff. He’s pitching really, really well this season and you can’t even see it because all you know about is a bunch of stuff in a book by Bill James.

Stuff is only partially subjective. When a pitcher is getting good late life on his fastball, is locating it well along with his offspeed stuff, gets ahead of batters a lot, and gives up very few walks – those are things people with an eye for the actual game of baseball can recognize and agree upon.It is ridiculous that you dismiss the notion that Arroyo’s location is much improved this year and that his stuff looks good, while admitting that you have not watched him pitch.You like numbers, right? Here are some numbers for you. In 89 and 2/3 innings this season, Arroyo has struck out 68 while walking only 18. That ratio is a strong indication that he is in and around the zone quite a bit these days.But these are not BP strikes he’s throwing. They’re quality strikes, i.e., good stuff. More numbers: in 89 and 2/3 innings, he has given up 81 hits, and only 8 homeruns; 23 earned runs, and only 27 total runs.

More on “stuff.” The path to the Hall is littered with guys with “stuff.” Likewise, Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine are both headed for the Hall of Fame. No one ever said they had “stuff.” Just good location and good changeups.If you know “stuff” so well, perhaps you should have been instructing the Red Sox on what was so wrong with Arroyo’s “stuff” last year. You should take your knowledge of “stuff” and become a scout. You could make good money picking out future stars, instead of hanging around blogs with us dopes.You wanna see “stuff?” Check out my basement sometime.”Stuff.”

“I’m not attempting to. I’m just saying Arroyo is pitching very well this season and that his control is much improved.” Q #1: David Ortiz is hitting .257 this year. Is Ortiz a .257 hitter? And will Ortiz end the year at .257?Q #2: I’ll ask again: How many strikes were in the strike zone vs. pitchers that were out of the strike zone that the hitters swung and missed? And why won’t NL hitters learn to lay off them as the AL hitters did? Answer the question.Q #3. Name one scout that calls “good changeups” and “good location” good stuff. Name just one. Any one. And give the reference. Q #4: Should the Red Sox trade for Paul Byrd?P.S. Good luck.

Answers:1: David Ortiz is not a .257 hitter. He will improve to his typical level, which is much higher. Likewise, Arroyo is not a .800 WP/2.30 ERA pitcher. He will return to his .500/4.50 ways and will look very ugly doing so).2. You don’t know; you are just talking out of your a**. But NL hitters will learn to lay off those pitches. And then BA will look like he did as a Red Sox.3. There are none.4. Paul Byrd = Arroyo. They are the same pitcher. And no one is saying the Red Sox should go get Byrd.Enjoy your meeting. Be sure to bring extra diapers.

This is my last comment on the subject.Dan brought it up awhile ago with his trite shot that you two are talking about baseball and I am talking about stats.What he and you miss is that without the data (i.e., the stats), you can’t even keep score: runs, after all, are a stat.Moreover, those stats need to be the proper one. You both act as if all the ways to describe what is going on on the field are already known. That’s simply wrong. Using a pitcher’s W/L record or ERA (especially over a handful of innings) are lousy ways to describe what has happened. It’s like trying to write a novel while limiting yourself to eight words. Like the wanna-be scientists who claimed to invent cold fusion, you’ve made up your mind as to the outcome and are using the wrong methodology to try to make it work.I have to wonder if you guys have any clue as to how major league teams are run. Every team — every one — employs several individuals whose specific role is to determine how to value a player. These persons are outside of the traditional scouting operation. You both simply disregard all of that and say, “I know better.” So how do you know how to objectively rate a player? You seem to think that all someone has to do is watch a guy throw and they will be able to tell whether the person is a good pitcher. That’s like saying that all a person has to do to become a good architect is to look at a few buildings. Or, it would be like trying to determine who will win the presidential election by asking your mom and dad who they are going to vote for. If you want to keep fooling yourself, be my guest.Finally, it doesn’t really matter whether I’d be a fun person to watch a game with. I know what I’m seeing on a ball field. You might as well be watching soccer.

Mike. You have attempted to reframe or redirect the debate in many ways. This was never a debate over whether or not statistical data and their analysis play an important role in baseball. Since you don’t always seem to get irony or sarcasm, l will try to be clear: I already knew that, and I bet Dan did, too.This was never a debate over whether Bronson Arroyo’s career numbers indicate that he is destined for the Hall of Fame.This is not about semantic differences over the use of the term “stuff.” It is not about how pitchers go about getting outs, or whether NL players, coaches and scouts are somehow too dumb to figure out how to handle Arroyo’s curve.It is not about whether or not I know enough about pitching to be a scout, anymore than it is about whether you know enough to be GM of a big league club.This is a debate about the merits of the trade that sent Bronson Arroyo to the Reds and brought Wily Mo Pena to the Red Sox. A trade that was made by the Red Sox at a time when the future of a key pitcher in their rotation, David Wells, was in serious doubt.As you have probably noticed, the Red Sox are now in the position of having to bring up young and still developing pitchers from the minors to make starts and to fill the hole in the bullpen left by MikeTimlin.Bronson Arroyo is a solid 4-5 starter who has demonstrated that he also can, unlike, say, Matt Clement, contribute from the bullpen.Wily Mo Pena has had surgery for a pre-existing condition and will not swing a bat for at least a couple of months. Before that, he showed us where those rumors about striking out too much and shaky defense came from.Bronson Arroyo is 8-2 with a 2.31 ERA. Yes, in the NL, which as of yesterday, still counted as the majors.If your crystal ball tells you that Pena will eventually be the real deal, that’s great. But right now, the Red Sox could really use a guy like Arroyo, and they should have seen it coming.This was a terrible trade.

i just read this this whole thing (not sure why) and came away with this:1.dan and his little anon buddy (probably also dan) don’t know jack about baseball. 2.in political debates dan demands everyone else prove their statements, but here he not only is guilty of making statements that can’t be backed up, he belittles the guy who provides evidence to support a different point of view. real mature.3.mike_b should learn not to get into a pissing contest with a bunch of dicks.