I wore my Foolish Baseball hat running errands and a cashier at CVS said “is that a foolish baseball hat? I made fun of him on Twitter and he blocked me” so I just laughed and said “that’s hilarious”
The military shouldve developed and implemented a WAR type stat long ago. I yearn to know how much value Ted Williams added over a replacement level soldier.
Growing up he was my brother's favorite pitcher. So I was aware of him and thought he was better than he was (he had some phenomenal seasons). I thought Sabermetrics was his way of teaching baseball or something for at least a year.
Well, i saw a guy commenting on Ohtani vid "it's not fair to compare Vlad with Ohtani by total WAR, since WAR pitching is easier to get than batting." Blown my mind. So I asked, "Damn. I wonder why other batters didnt figure this out and also pitch like Ohtani does???" Didnt get the reply though, what a shame.
After a major injury, like TJ, ACL, MCL, some of the should stuff, if the player will spend the entire time using it they should be allowed to take HGH. That's my hot take
That one lamenting the aesthetic consequences of sabermetrics while still acknowledging it's superiority is 100% right, I just think I would've worded it as "The Sabermetrics revolution and it's consequences have been a disaster for the human race."
I know the value is likely negligible but I hope that Hawkeye allows the opportunity to create a "Stretch metric" for 1st basemen. The idea that baseball is truly a game of inches could be determined by how many outs a 1B saves by simply stretching better than others. I also think this might be where 1B finally accrue their ultimate defensive value.
I’ve played first and it is super important on stretching and also trust. If you can stretch far forward or to the side. Especially side to side where you can’t/or won’t be able to scoop. Especially when you have a worse infield.
True. Luck is an under appreciated element in all sports, honestly. But baseball is tailor made for luck, whether it good or bad. Just look at the MLB playoffs each year. It’s truly the only professional sport where all you need to do is make the dance, and whoever gets the hottest wins a world championship.
“The single can score the runner from second which the walk can’t do” lowkey that’s a great argument for batting avg being more important than we let in nowadays
Not really cuz its super conditional. A home run is a run every-time. A single needs multiple things to happen before it or after it to hold any real weight in a game. Look at arraez and schwarber. Identical OPS. Both hit leadoff. Ones a contact hitter and ones a power hitter. Schwarber produces wayyyy more runs and his WPA is far higher. Power will always be king
@@ruloez5587 his point is that singles are better than walks which is why batting average is important. Nobody reasonably questions if a single is better than a home run.
My hot take: obp(and all the sabermetrics based on it) is inherantly biased against contact hitters because of an old statistic: errors. Reaching on error should absolutely count positively towards your obs rather than negatively impacting average and obp. If the error is a mistake that the batter supposedly contributed nothing to, then you could extend that same logic to walks or hpb, but that's obviously not the case. Making contact and having speed absolutely contributes to reaching on more errors.
id agree but i dont think it would be enough to make a severe impact in a players obp. its not happening to them like 20 times a year so the difference would be really slim.
I’m not sure that there are enough batters reaching on an error enough times per season to see any serious increase in OBP if they were counted toward it. Like, I was trying to think of guys who would benefit the most from something like this. I came up with Luis Arraez, he’s got a contact hitter sort of thing going on. I counted 5 times he reached on an error in 2022. I don’t think that’s moving the needle on his OBP much.
I'm not one for overemotional hot takes, so I really appreciate the nuance you bring in discussing and considering each one. I'd love to see another if you're in the mood!
The Ohtani WAR argument is strange because if he keeps his pace for the last quarter of the season he’ll finish with 10.8 RWar which would be the 20th best season ever. Now is not the best season ever in terms of WAR, but it’s in the conversation
Yeah I feel people are paying more attention to the hitting overall but his pitching really caught up. He's been doing very well the last two months. It's unreal.
The pursuit of efficiency has taken away the speed tool from players, so really it's just a 4 tool player with some peripheral athleticism yo want nowadays, rather than dynamic, disruptive players. I feel like baserunning as a whole is being devalued, which is such a shame because the footraces are what make baseball exciting
I’ve always felt that when it comes to sabermetrics; they’re so awesome because they give love to some guys who previously didn’t, but also it makes me sad because I look back on guys like Ichiro, my favorite player ever, and it makes me want to add an asterisk to his success. But then I remember the great Jon Bois who said “who cares?”
There’s no asterisk to Ichiro. WAR was friendly to him thanks to his defense and baserunning. He had a whopping 9.2 in 2004. 60 total WAR despite starting at age 27. Could have easily had 80-90 WAR if he started between 19 to 21 years old. He was an incredible player.
@@LorianandLothric WAR is friendly thanks to the defense and baserunning but his hitting isn’t valued that highly because of how often his batted balls stayed in the infield, and his low Slugging % for a corner outfielder. But I simply don’t care about his “inefficient hitting” because he’s cool and infield hits are fun.
@@jarrodschulz9611 That still doesn’t mean there’s an asterisk. There’s more to a player than slugging. He also rarely grounded into double plays, which helped his WAR.
you really don't need to dive into sabermetrics to appreciate Ichiro, and doing so is overanalyzing. 200+ hits for 10 straight years including his age 36 season is historically great, even if he didn't walk much and had no power outside of BP.
@@niceguy909 That’s exactly what I’m saying. I love using sabermetrics to find out cool stuff about niche players but I try to never use them to nitpick players that are really good because that’s never any fun.
Your pujols steroid era argument was great. I could never quite make sense of his steep decline until you just helped me figure it out. Go cards! We miss ya big Al
I agree with the batting average one. Ever since Moneyball came out, there has been an obsession with OBP as if one point of OBP is the same as one point of BA, which is not true. BA is not an extension of OBP, and if anything it is the other way around. Walks are important, but not nearly as valuable as hits.
I watched a mariners game where the entire opposing team was shifted from the bunt line. Mariners were 8th in the lineup with no outs and 1 man on base while 5 down. No bunts to get on base with a near guarantee for success. Two outs later we got to the top of our line up, we loaded bases and lost the game on a pop-up. This is where three true outcomes fail.
The fact that saber metrics has revealed strategies that make baseball less exciting to watch...is the best proof there is that baseball needs to be changed. Subtly! Nothing crazy! But I feel like it's the impetus to change the ball to make it less energetic, or to raise the seams so it slows down more (and moves more) in flight. Maybe push the mound back as well. Possibly change up the balk rules so it's easier for runners to get a good jump (put down the pitchforks! It will make sense if you just think it through!) I reject the notion of restricting strategies though (ie., getting ride of the shift). Give the players *more* options and make the task *more* difficult so it's hard to stop the offense. Don't make the game *easier* and then *restrict* choices. That only leads to anger, and anger leads to hate, and hate leads to..... I dunno, Ichiro will be sad folks. Don't let it happen!
I love everything that you said. I would like to add that keeping the shift in the game encourages hitters to learn to put the ball in different places. The shift never could keep down players like Tony Gwynn and Joey Voto who know how to hit the ball in opposite field when they have to. Allowing defenses to keep the shift encourages players to learn to contact hit. We should also consider shortening the base paths to give a higher average to players who put the ball in play and sprint to first base
What would you think if we had a baseball Diamond where the paths to first base and home plate were shorter than the paths to second and third base? Sure, the diamond would be a weird shape, but more players would be willing to try to get hits out of ground balls and you might even successfully resurrect a stolen home plate.
@@metalhammerm6903 in my head that looks super goofy, but I do like the logic. I feel the big reason it may work is it would pull the corners up which might leave a little more space for hits to land in short left/right. But here’s the real blasphemy…how about just having 7 on the field? 2 outfield and 3 infield. That should drive BABIP through the roof. Plus, bonus, even just a threat to steal would have an effect. Suddenly the middle infielder would have to decide between being ready to cover the bag on a steal, or play into whatever shift is required for this batter.
@@TheActualJae they have 7s rugby, why not try out 7s baseball? i’d definitely be interested in seeing how a test league for something like this would go
Disagree to a certain extent. I think its the commissioner and MLB's job to make the game aesthetically pleasing to watch, however Manfred is going at it very incorrectly by over correcting on the fly. The NBA changed the defense to open up offense because there were series like the late 90s Knicks-Heat which were overly physical and ended up with 67-58 scores with tons of bricks. The average fan would rather watch high scoring games. This is also why I would ban the shift. I would rather watch a lefty get a base hit than a 2nd baseman become a softball outfielder and throw him out.
As an Australian who has always enjoyed cricket I honestly found myself adoring baseball and found sabermetrics really interesting. Honestly I wish cricket applied these principles particularly to the T20 format which I feel is the most comparable to baseball.
They sort of do. Lots of interest placed on strikes rates against boundaries these days. Someone who has 18 off 12 balls with three 4s and a 6 has wasted eight balls for example.
@@ahogg5960 I was also thinking about fielding and what makes for good "defensive" fielding. Also stuff with hitting and pitching in baseball could kind be applied to cricket as well.
Hot take: peak production/WAR should be valued more highly than bulk WAR/stat accumulation when considering HOF cases. Also I love this video format and would like to see more hot take vids like this, especially if they can be produced on a bi-weekly basis in between other videos
Hot take 1: peak production is overvalued when considering HOF cases these days. Hot take 2: if peak production advocates believed what they were selling, Ralph Kiner would be their patron saint and not considered a borderline HOFer.
This isn’t really a hot take, as JAWS already balances peak vs bulk WAR. So yeah, not a terrible thought you had there! :] en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffe_Wins_Above_Replacement_Score
@@JosephGualtieri Ralph Kiner ranks 9th on the left field JAWS leaderboard... which is pretty good. The only reason he's a borderline HOFer is because he fell off so fast. If he could've put up the kind of production he did over his last 2-3 years for another 3-4, he ends up hitting a lot of the counting milestones - 2K hits, 500 homers, etc, which would make him seem like a much more solid case I also can't think of any contemporary players who had such a great but short peak as Kiner and then stopped playing entirely. The closest would be someone like Grady Sizemore, but he wasn't as good as Kiner. Also noteworthy that basically every player in this category didn't retire under normal circumstances, they were pretty much all forced out due to injuries.
@@dkroll92 Kiner played 10 years, which is the minimum required for induction. He won a HR title in 7 of those years. If you believe peak production is more important than compiling totals, you have to consider him one of the best players ever. How many other players won HR titles in 70% of their seasons?
Batting average isn't just important in terms of on base percentage - it's also important because a hit can score a run where a walk can't. If someone has a terrible batting average but a great OBP, that guy is worse with a man on second or third than a guy with the same OBP but a better batting average. If you get a hit, there's also always the possibility someone screws up in the field and lets you take an extra base, so I'd argue hits are actually far superior to walks. Sluggers with terrible batting averages also are more likely to strike out which makes them even worse with men in scoring position. A guy with a high BA is more likely to put the ball in play so they can at least advance runners or score a guy from third without even getting the hit.
i would agree with u but thats super situational. in a 162 game season. a low average, high obp high slugging guy is gonna produce more runs then a high average high obp low slugging guy. power is a game changer. literally. entire games, series, seasons are changed by extra base hits. singles are good, but it takes so much before them and after them to hold any value. schwarber for example is more likely to impact a game then say luis arraez. the ability to walk replace batting average in a player’s ops. and slugging will always produce more runs. always. especially with hits being so scarce in mlb.
I can see both sides where having a high obp is better long term but having a higher average is better situationally most likely. I am one of those fans that still values traditional stats like average for sure, a player hitting .220 with a .400 obp is way different than a guy hitting .280 with a .400 obp. I also value bat on ball skills and contact way more than pure slugging which is the opposite of what the metrics want. I'll take a player that can put the ball in play over a guy that is a three true outcomes hitter.
4:13 I created a stat called BRPA (bases plus runs per plate appearance: [Total bases via hits + walks + HBP + reaches on error + RBI] / PA) that is a lot like OPS except the common denominator it uses is plate appearances and it factors in RBI. Plus then you get an almost reverse stat for pitchers which I called BRBF (bases plus runs per batter faced)
(Speaking of Mattingly as a great example) Mattingly is the player that exemplifies how stupid WAR is. He added more defensively to the mid-80s Yankees than any player. But WAR makes his defense look like a liability, because it couldn't measure that he turned so many errors and infield hits into outs. Instead, it sees him as a first-baseman and says, "meh."
My sabermetric hot take is that sabermetrics says to swing for the gaps, not the fences. Not every athlete has the raw power to put fly balls over the fence, and line drives are good for both OBP and SLG.
Love this content. Would like to see more like it! Also I would love to see a baseball bits on Andruw Jones, similar to the most recent one you did about Yadier Molina. I would love to hear you breakdown your reasons why you think he should, or should not be in the hall of fame. Either way it’s a controversial subject that I think is deserving of your analysis. I would love to see that, and I think many others would as well
I love this format. It’s like smart baseball popcorn. It’s perfect for having on in the background while I do house chores and want to rev up my brain but don’t want to listen to shouting talking heads on the news or a podcast that will like *really* make me think about stuff. Plus, it’s an approachable way for people like me to interact with your content if we want to. Maybe I have a hot take in me for next time! -sincerely, a patreon supporter who has never commented on one of your videos before
This video was good. Glad you decided to do this when you realize baseball bits was coming out later than expected. Also idk if you've heard this or not, or whether you'll care, but releasing videos on wednesday yields the best results. So maybe aiming to drop Bits on Wednesday would benefits. Even if you're here for the long terms fans, improving long term viability of this as a job would benefit us too.
I don't really know what to say but I just want to tell you that I appreciate your content, your sense of humor, and your videos are really enjoyable and interesting
Yeah that "Sabermetrics make my favorite players look worse" part, you showed me who Jeff Mathis was, you showed me who Tim Locastro was and I adore both of those players because of you.
‘Making your favourite player look worse’ - sabremetrics could make a Jeter, Ichiro or Gwynn look a bit eh. Even Griffey Jr to a certain extent (though I don’t believe that)
Here's the thing about stats, they attempt to use a proxy of something measurable in place of how good a player is. Over time, as they are adopted by those who dole out contracts, people who perform better on those measures than their actual skill will become overrepresented and the stats will become less useful over time. For example, the best players tend to have higher batting averages. So they hire players who have higher averages, even if they aren't getting walks. Then, they realized that OBP accounts for those players too, so more and more players who walk and hit less started coming in. Then, OPS became more popular because walks were not as productive as hits and OPS accounts for productivity. So more and more 3 true outcome players came in. And if you have too many of those, they can't string together hits and win close games or beat top pitchers. As the saying goes, all models are wrong. Some, however, are useful.
Great video. Reminds me of Fantano let's argue videos. Would definitely watch future installments. -an avid baseball bits viewer and occasional foolish Bailey viewer
Love the break down of using saber to prop up maybe forgotten players vs tearing ppl down! Perfect example of how the eye test can be both rose colored and blind sometimes
I believe Batting Average IS more important than On-Base Percentage. Yes, OBP correlates better with run production, but the causality flows the WRONG way. When a guy is fantastic at creating runs, pitchers avoid throwing to him. This means his OBP goes up, and his batting average goes down. Absent that effect, however, how could anyone argue that it is more important to get a walk with a runner at 2nd then to get a hit? A guy like Don Mattingly, in his prime, was SO valuable and drove in so many runs, because he could AVOID getting mere walks when there were runners on base. That's right: when he drove in 145 RBI it was because he was getting hits instead of walks. That makes him MORE valuable, the way a closer contribute more value per inning pitch than a starter.
Love the versatility question. I think about this often with Tony Phillips (as one does). Every time he filled in in the outfield, his positional adjustment would take a hit. But it also means his team didn't have to employ a shitty extra outfielder.
