The Measure Of Wakamatsu
Yesterday, Wakamatsu slotted Ichiro in the #3 hole in the line-up spot, and then said this about it.
“(Ichiro’s) been outstanding, coming in here and saying, ‘Whatever you need me to do to help this ballclub.’ It has been off the chart,” Wakamatsu said. “I’m trying to take the ego out of it with a lot of these guys and say, ‘Hey, whatever we feel gives us our best opportunity to win, we’re going to do that,’ and he’s been outstanding with that.
He talked a lot about mixing things up this spring to prepare guys to be ready to do whatever the team asks of them in order to help the team win. After years of the manager giving the veterans whatever they want for fear of upsetting those with an entitlement attitude, this is nice to hear.
The first measure of Wakamatsu’s ability to actually make this work, though, will be how he handles the Griffey scenario. As you’ll recall, I walked everyone through the math on Griffey as an LF, working on the assumption that the DH on days when Griffey was in the field would be Jeff Clement. Now, Clement is in Tacoma. That leaves Mike Sweeney as the de-facto backup DH. So now, the comparison isn’t getting Clement at-bats and upgrading the defense behind the plate, but instead is simply a straight across comparison of Endy Chavez’s defense versus Mike Sweeney’s offense.
Even if you think defensive stats aren’t accurate, there’s just no way – none, zilch, nada – to believe that the team is better with Griffey in left and Sweeney at DH than with Chavez in left at Griffey at DH.
Mike Sweeney, 2006 to 2008: 677 plate appearances, .322 wOBA
Endy Chavez, 2006 to 2008: 853 plate appearances, .315 wOBA
Over the last three seasons, Chavez and Sweeney have been comparably valuable hitters. The difference between a .322 wOBA and a .315 wOBA is 3.5 runs over 600 plate appearances. We’re talking a remarkably small difference in actual performance at the plate between these two over the last three years. On a per PA basis, the projected wOBA difference between Sweeney and Chavez is .013 runs. One one-hundredth of a run.
I don’t care how much you like Griffey, or how much you think Endy Chavez sucks, or whatever – there’s just no way to think that the defensive gap between those two is anything close to the offensive gap between Chavez and Sweeney.
In order to believe that the Griffey/Sweeney alignment is preferable, you’d have to think that Chavez is no better than +4 runs defensively compared to an average left fielder that Griffey is no worse than -4 runs compared to an average left fielder. Chavez’s career UZR/150 in RF/LF is +23. Griffey’s career UZR/150 in RF/LF is -27. You’d have to regress those back to +4/-4 in order to make the Griffey/Sweeney tandem equally valuable to the Chavez/Griffey tandem. Not more valuable – equally valuable.
There’s no argument to be made here. The team is categorically, undeniably better with Endy Chavez in left field and Ken Griffey Jr at DH than with Ken Griffey Jr in left field and Mike Sweeney at DH.
“I’m trying to take the ego out of it with a lot of these guys and say, ‘Hey, whatever we feel gives us our best opportunity to win, we’re going to do that,…”
Wak, if you’re serious about this, Endy Chavez and Wladimir Balentien will split the innings in left field. There’s no contest here – the team is worse every single time you put Griffey in left. Penciling Junior to start in left field will never give you your best opportunity to win with this roster. Never.
I understand that you’ll feel the need to give him some innings out there occasionally. There will be days when he pinch-hits for Chavez and you’ll have to send him out to left to finish the game. There will be days when one of the regular outfielders are under the weather and you’ll be playing with a 24 man roster. There will be a lot of pressure to stick him out there in the home opener, so the fans can give him a bunch of standing ovations and welcome him back to Seattle. We won’t hold those against you.
But, given the comments about ego taking a back seat to the team’s best chance to win, you have to limit Junior’s innings in left field. He really shouldn’t get more than 100 the whole year, and that’s generous, honestly.
So far, I’m extremely encouraged by what Wakamatsu has said. But, when the rubber meets the road, he has the chance to back up his words with one tough action. That action – make Ken Griffey Jr a full time DH. It’s the right move for the team. It gives them the best chance to win.
Hmmm, we still watched last year… =/
Having “delusions†may be their only avenue to a miracle season.
It seems to me that the FO isn’t really placing their bets on a “miracle Season”. It actually looks more like they are considering the season to be a balancing year. Read “balancing” as “rebuilding” (please don’t tell the fans, they might revolt)
Is it possible that the M’s have a “lightning” type season? Yes.
Is it likely? No
But it is definitely a step in the right direction. That is what we’re all excited about.
Dave, the chance of Chavez having a great hitting season are far, far less than the chance of Sweeney being a “lightning in the bottle” acquisition.
Chavez is 30, has never hit much, and is not bloody likely to start now.
Meanwhile, according to everyone down there, Sweeney is moving much better than he has in the past couple of years, has maintained his bat speed, and thus, if healthy, is very likely to repeat his past hitting performance.
On a side issue, about “watchable baseball,” people may have watched a bit last year, but the anger and nausea were likely to be pretty strong. It seems very likely those two feelings won’t be so strong this year, even if there is no miracle.
And strawman dude: it’s not a strawman to make a persuasive argument, however faulty, as Dave did.
It is a strawman to attribute a faulty argument to one’s opponent in place of his real, unassailable argument, and then destroy the replacement.
You guys by and large need a dictionary when it comes to the “strawman” thing.
Meanwhile, according to everyone down there, Sweeney is moving much better than he has in the past couple of years, has maintained his bat speed, and thus, if healthy, is very likely to repeat his past hitting performance.
Really? Tell me something: how many players in MLB history, after three consecutive years of being a (cumulative) sub-100 OPS+ player (below league-average) after age 30, go back to being a 120+ OPS+ hitter (All-Star)?
I think you’ll find the number is vanishingly small, which is why none of the projection systems are going to say “Oh, sure, Sweeney’s due to hit .300/.370/.500 again any day now”, since they take everyone’s MLB career into account when projecting people.
Also, Endy Chavez basically matched Sweeney’s performance with respect to league in 2006 (101 OPS+ vs. 102), and 2007 (84 to 86). Chavez outhitting Sweeney isn’t as unlikely as you think it is.
As for “Veteran X looks great”- this is the same spring training crap I’ve heard since time immemorial, with zero predictive value.
Mike Sweeney looks so great that he’s going to be the AL MVP this year. Bank on it.
(April Fool’s!)
I think you may be referring to me as the “straw man dudeâ€, so if you are, let me respond real briefly. First, I think Dave’s argument is persuasive. Second, dictionaries and other sites could easily be interpreted to construe the argument as a straw man. Here’s what one of them <a href=”straw man“>says about it:
Main Entry: straw man
Function: noun
Date: 1886
1 : a weak or imaginary opposition (as an argument or adversary) set up only to be easily confuted (emphasis mine)
2 : a person set up to serve as a cover for a usually questionable transaction.
Obviously, #2 does not apply in this case.
But entry #1 does. Bear in mind that I agree with Dave’s argument in general and it’s logically strong. I repeated that several times in my posts.
Where it does enter “a bit of a strawman†(my words) territory is here:
This implicitly creates an opponent’s position that assumes the M’s believe that that is Sweeney’s expected level of performance this year. My speculation is that the M’s do not believe this, and there is no evidence to suggest that they do expect this level. Dave’s point of argument uses his three-year performance to state that there is “no argument to be made hereâ€. By doing this, he has, in my opinion used an imaginary opposition as a position to argue against.
My intent in the post was not to insult Dave (hope you’re not insulted Dave), but simply to point out that in the original post, I believe the argument against Sweeney is based on a position the M’s do not likely hold. To Dave’s credit, his first response after mine gets much closer to arguing against a reasonable position the M’s might hold.
If you want to quibble about the use of the term straw man, feel free I suppose. Being a ‘dude’ on the wrong side of 40 myself, I’ve had plenty of occasions to put a dictionary to good use.
I’m only continuing this derail because it is my duty as a former philosophy major, but:
In order for this to be a straw man situation, we’d have to know what the Mariners’ position actually is, and that it differs materially from what Dave is guessing that it is. In other words, they’d have to be on record as saying they expect a .365 wOBA from Sweeney. Your guess that that’s what they’re expecting, especially with no reasonable data to infer that as their position from, isn’t enough.
The basic motivation of using the straw man fallacy is that you can’t easily refute the other person’s actual position, so you exaggerate or distort it into something you CAN easily refute. Since we don’t know what the Mariners’ actual position on Sweeney’s expected level of performance is, you can’t possibly set up a straw man to knock down.
Jeff, technically of course, you are correct, but in Dave’s original post, he did exactly that. He knocked down a position that it was assumed the M’s hold. And my exact words were “a bit of a straw man”. It was speculation on my part that the M’s position on Sweeney differed from the numbers that Dave used, because they would have to to provide any justification for giving him a shot in the first place. Dave’s argument against Sweeney being a straw man is implied, in the sense that he argued against a position the M’s never specified either.
In some sense we are both assuming the M’s hold a position they have not explicitly declared, so my assumption on where the M’s stand could also qualify I suppose.
I am not accusing Dave of constructing a straw man on purpose to support his argument. It’s really not needed. I very much doubt that it was intended that way. I also admit it to being somewhat of a stretch to call it that, but again, his post (and my response) rests on assuming where the org stands on expectation. That Sweeney has now made the team strongly suggests that they are not depending on a .322 wOBA performance from him. To me, that renders the comparison in the original post less meaningful. When Dave later added a couple of caveats as to how it may shake out to make things even, that bolstered his position significantly because the hopefulness of a strong year from Sweeney is the only position that makes any sense in the original scenario.
To quote from Futurama: “Bureaucrat Conrad, you are technically correct. The best KIND of correct.”
Again, something can’t even be “a bit of a straw man” until you know the other person’s actual position on a subject. Otherwise, you have no way of knowing that what you’re asserting isn’t your opponent’s actual position.
I guess that would make a lot of arguments very easily winnable then, wouldn’t it? Just assume the position you give your imagined opponent is correct because there is no actual position specified.
I would submit that straw man arguments are not always based on a distorted actual position just because the position is not specified. I think we can a lot of times use inductive reasoning to ascertain a reasonable position for the ‘opponent’. I could be way off base, but again, it’s not reasonable to conclude that the M’s are expecting .322 from Sweeney this year. It’s all well and good (and reasonable) that the projection systems all point to something maybe an insignificant tick better. But again, Dave argues against a position that he is assuming the M’s hold and then concluding that using Sweeney is a logically bad choice. My contention is that the premise is faulty because it assumes the M’s are using the same hitting criteria he does in his argument. The M’s came to a conclusion to include Sweeney as a DH or platoon 1B based on some premise or position. If that position does not match Dave’s assumption, then Dave’s assumption becomes a straw man, whether the M’s position it is explicitly stated or not. We may not know for certain that it is – that I have to logically grant – but we can assert it based on some inductive reasoning.
You’re way off base. The entire purpose of trying to use a straw man argument is that you know you can’t “beat” the opponent’s actual position, so you distort/misrepresent it so that you can then attack THAT position, and claim that you’ve countered their original position.
Dave isn’t saying anything about what he thinks the Mariners’ actual position is in any of his comments, except for this:
Dave’s explaining the level of performance that Sweeney would have to put up for Griffey in LF/Sweeney at DH to break even from a performance standpoint, and then saying that the Mariners aren’t expecting that, with the implicit point that they’re expecting something lower than that. For it to be a straw man, the Mariners would’ve had to actually have SAID what they expect Sweeney’s performance to be, then Dave would have to exaggerate or distort that, argue against the distorted/exaggerated version of their position, and then claim victory over the original position.
And regarding your point here:
Of course it’s reasonable to conclude that they are; and if as you seem to be thinking they’re presuming a much higher level of performance than that, they’d put Sweeney at DH full-time, because regardless of the outfield question, a .365 wOBA would be better than any of the other available options at the position. They’ve made no indication that that’s their plan, so it’s much MORE reasonable to expect that they agree with the projection systems than to be expecting some crazy good year out of him, based on the actions we’ve seen them take with regards to this situation so far.
Logical fallacies get used a lot online; but in a baseball context, it’s usually argumentum ad antiquatem or argumentum ad verecundiam. 🙂
I could be way off base, but again, it’s not reasonable to conclude that the M’s are expecting .322 from Sweeney this year.
Why would you think they expect a lot more out of him? Here, let’s look at a player of recent vintage we’re familiar with who played a similar role on another Mariners team, as well as in the major leagues (basically, PH/backup IF/DH), Dave Hansen. His career wOBA? .327.
At this point, Sweeney is now what Hansen was: a guy who is a warm body defensively, can pinch hit a little and draw a walk by working a count, without much power, and doesn’t deserve an everyday job, but won’t kill you as a bench player who PHs a few times a week, while starting a few times a month. Yeah, Sweeney was a much better hitter a few years ago, but you can say that about any number of players who are basically playing out the back end of their career, like Gary Sheffield- in fact, there’s a better argument that Sheffield would post a .366 wOBA in 2009 than Sweeney (he’s a better hitter and beat that wOBA as recently as 2007).
FWIW, I am not arguing that the M’s expect that specifically. (I’m sure they are hopeful of it). I am simply taking the position that if the M’s are planning to play Sweeney more than in the role you are suggesting (which was the original argument), then they would not do so with the expectation that he is going to be Hansen. They would do so with the hope of a bounce-back season. I personally don’t know why they would expect more from him, but if they are going to carry him and play him with any regularity, it stands to reason that they would do so with the hope that they would get more from him than what they would get from Hansen. That’s all I’m trying to say. Not that I expect more, or that it is even reasonable to expect more. (That is a separate issue). The only logical basis for running him out there and putting Griffey in left (that specific setup where Chavez sits) lies in what their hopes are for Sweeney. These guys read the net rats. I guarantee you they are aware of what sites like this are saying. They know what Sweeney’s last three years look like. I doubt if they are planning on 60 games with a hurt back and .322. That expectation is not logical in the context of providing a roster spot for him. It doesn’t add up. The very fact that they have provided a roster spot for him suggests that they either believe he will do better, or that they are hopeful for the miracle season, however unlikely it is.
If they are not planning to put him out at 1B with any regularity or if they are planning to use him in spots only, then I suppose they could project his numbers the same as the others and hope his ‘chemistry affect’ provides a boost.
If they are not planning to put him out at 1B with any regularity or if they are planning to use him in spots only, then I suppose they could project his numbers the same as the others and hope his ‘chemistry affect’ provides a boost.
Well, given that the M’s front office understands advanced sabremetric statistics as well as the best of us, and that those same statistics don’t project Sweeney all that well, and also say that the projected difference between Sweeney and, say, Shelton at that roster spot is maybe 3 runs over a season, why isn’t it reasonable to assume they are fine with a slightly more marginal player as a backup because they want less bitching and moaning in the clubhouse?
That’s the thing: the projections for Sweeney don’t say “well, he could break out as a regular”- not to mention the dude’s at the tail end of his career. If you wanted a regular with potential to have a surprise season, you’d go with Chris Shelton, who’s still young enough that he might pull a peak-performance season out of nowhere, like Ben Broussard did a few years ago at a similar age. Carlos Pena, while a better player, also did something similar. So did Ken Phelps, Mike Easler, and any number of guys who get a “AAAA” tag slapped on them and don’t really get consistent playing time until their late 20’s-early 30’s, but turn out to be decent hitters for a few years.
So I guess that’s my argument- if the M’s FO was thinking “I want someone to DH when Griffey plays LF for a lot of the year”, they’d be going with Shelton on the roster, given that taking a bet on a younger player who has been cycled through some organizations and shows some talent is more likely to pay off than thinking Mike Sweeney is going to hit like it’s 2005.