Olerud363

Agreed here. Can he handle short and/or second?? Holy crap. I just looked at Andy Burns fangraphs page and noticed the Oliver 5 year projections. I didn't know these existed. I guess for players with mlb time there is a lot of other crap on the page so you have to scroll way down to find these. So of course I looked at Ryan Goins... and his best season is projected for next year. Then he starts dropping. So it looks like they have players peaking at 24/25 then holding steading for 3 years or so. Then bam... decline. I looked at Bautista, Reyes, EE. Not pretty. And this assumes 600 plate appearances. Which won't happen obviously. But if the injuries increase as they age... a reasonable assumption. This is an absolute disaster by 2016 if not sooner.

Yes. This. The problem is that if Ryan Goins is a starter then what happens when Reyes goes down?? Or Lawrie?? Or Ryan Goins?? So at some point there will be Ryan Goins and Gertz or Kawasaki hitting 1 and 9?? If we signed Drew, between Lawrie, Reyes, and Drew there would still be 400 at bats for Goins to enjoy. And that is optimistic health for those guys. There is about 2000 plate appearances for 3 positions. Lawrie, Reyes, and Drew would be projected for 1500 or so. So now we have Lawrie, Reyes, Goins, still projected for 1500, and 500 plate appearances of playing time going to the next guy down,.

But he has a lot of playing time in Japan, some in the majors? Should be enough data for a projection. Not that I expect your system to handle everything.

So who is plan C again?? Brett Carroll?? Brent Morral?? Kawasaki I guess. Getz? A quick glance at these guys show them all projected around the same level as Goins. Maybe a bit less actually.

What about Kawasaki?

Mccoy I don't like because of his age. Negrych?? As a hitter a step above Goins obviously. Along the same lines as the Goins predictions, the optimistic (but realistic) Negrych projection would be .280 .340 .370 or so... Something like Joe Inglett?? I'd be fine with Negrych over Goins. 2 years 11 months older, but if he is better take him. If they choose Goins I assume a) The Jays have some reasonable data that shows Goins defense is REALLY projected to be good. The Jays are idiots. They aren't looking at stats or any advanced methodolgy. They view Goins as a athletic, defense-whiz, who will learn to hit, and view Negrych as a shiftless, worthless minor league scrub because... well no reason really the scouts just like to spew s*** around and AA believes it. If AA should be fired right now.

McCoy is 32. And didn't start doing anything until hitting Colorada Springs and Vegas in his late 20s. I know wRC+ is adjusted for that. At age 25 he was actualy behind Goins. Which brings up another point. The next 2 or 3 years may be Ryan Goins at his very f***ing best. Which again isn't that good. But if you're ever going to play Ryan Goins 2014-2016 will be the years to do it. Not 2020 after he's gone through a couple of aaa west coast cities and tore it up but lost his D.

The only system that has him negative is Steamer and just slightly at -0.1. Oliver has him at 0.7 (600 plate appearances), Zips 0.4, baseball prospectus 0.3 (250 PA). So the projection systems don't see him as "not an above-replacement player". So that's an argument you'll have to take to the projection system guys and offer them suggestions on how to rectify this error. It's a coin flip because the bet also has a plate appearance criteria, which Goins will only reach if he's playing well. It's a coin flip because Goins projects as a defense first player, and I doubt the projection system or the geniuses on this board know exactly how to predict a future WAR for that type of player.

He is allready in his decline phase. I think the concensus is that he's hit into a bit of bad luck the last couple of years. Based on k-rate he should of hit .300. So the two factors may cancel out. He'll lose a little as he gets into his 30s but might have better luck as well.

This entire bet is a coin flip. If Gruber is crazy overconfident on his view then he is wrong.

Actually I don't. I got trashed in the Hech thread for predicting a Goins line of .260 .305 .340 or so. Some f-bombs were dropped. "Thanks for the laugh" by JFAS, "f***y wilding optimistic" by Gordie Dougy. It's all in the context of a larger stupid argument and in the end I conceded this was an optimistic prediction. BP has Goins at .244 .286 .354... the average of the projection systems (BP, Steamer, Oliver, FANS, ZIPS) is something like .240 .280 .330. So I am basically predicting a few extra singles fall in and maybe a couple more walks. This could easily happen. People aren't thinking straight on Goins. The negative equivalent of my prediction would be .220 .260 .300. It's about the same distance from the concensus of the projection systems. I have a feeling nobody would blink an eye for that projection. People are not thinking straight on Goins.

I predicted that Goins could hit .260 with a .305 on base percentage and have a 1 WAR or maybe 2 based on defense. I said this was an optimistic prediction and conceded the downside is huge for Goins. I was told I was basically deranged, delusional, crazy, incompetent. I got flamed and trashed. I think the Gruber guy is a bit aggressive, but the other side is just as agressive. They are the ones saying "bring it on". Basically if you do not predict Ryan Goins will suck, if you do not predict he will suck the suck you are trashed on this board by some people. If you do not predict Ryan Goin will be a pile of poo you are trashed. If you predict Ryan Goins will be the 7th worst hitter in baseball you are trashed. The only way to not get trashed is to basically predict he will be the very worst hitter in baseball by a large margin. So I am not sure the Gruber guy is at fault. The other side is strongly confident Ryan Goins will be an absolute disaster and are happy to take bets on it. The plate appearance is needed because it is always possible he breaks an ankle, or the Jays make a move in May or something and through know fault of his own Goins doesn't get enough playing time.

What happens if he gets 1+ WAR in less than 500 PA like last year?? I am not sure if this is a great bet. If he gets 500 plate appearances he's playing well. Whatever the case he'll start out hitting 9th, possibly be platooned, get pinch hit for... so if he's starts hitting as bad as you think he will he won't get 500 PAs. It would be hilarious if you guys agree that he HAS to have 500 plate appearances to avoid a short sample size flukey season of 1+ WAR kind of like last years 35 games. Then he is awesome with a mid summer injury. Hits .288 .344 .412, ridiculous D, but 497 plate appearances.... 5 WAR !!! But you win because he didn't get 500 plate appearnaces.

Brendan Ryan has never gotten 500 plate appearances and has a couple of 3 WAR and a 4 WAR season. If Goins gets 550 plate appearances he has to have more than 1 WAR. They aren't going to give him time unless he's playing well... And I mean well for him would be .250, .260 with an on base hovering around .300. If he hit .186 or something... or if his D falls apart they stop playing him.

Brendan Ryan. He doesn't really hit but puts up 2-4 WAR a year, mostly with defense. Cranks the on base percentage over .300 occasionally. A light hitting second basemen (as opposed to ss) would probably max out at 1-2 WAR. But people are acting like it's impossible. Also Goins Buffalo numbers were a bit off what he did at New Hamphsire.. that itself could be just a bad year. If he's the absolute worst hitter in baseball... then he will not be a positive. If he's just a sucky hitter. .260 .305 oba... something like that. He could be OK if his D is exceptional. So there is still kind of this range from J.P. Arencibia suckitude... to just acceptable. And we don't really know where he will end up. Now that being said I think he has enough downside.. huge downside like worst hitter in baseball in the last 5 years downside... that it is real risky awarding him a job.

Projection systems are basically the average of what would happen if you played a season 100 times over. Most teams are 70 to 90 true talent, which translates to 55 to 105 in one season luck. 2002 Mariners regressed by 23.

Just an fyi... for most people, especially when they are interacting in an informal context like a message board this kind of thing is mostly a result of slight dyslexia,. I am well aware of the difference between "there" and "their" and "should have" and "should of"... but they still pop up in my messages, I often catch them if I re-read one of my own message but hardly ever see it while typing. So nobody is trying to ruin your day. Hope that makes you feel better. Sorry for the distress I caused. Hopefuly (if you have kids) you don't go beat the crap out of them because of this. If you did I wouldn't feel like it was my fault for having bad grammer, it would be your fault for being a psycho and over-reacting.

AA despairing Navarro's agent - Your player's worthless. You're worthless too. I wouldn't of paid the minimum for him... I wouldn't of even signed him to a minor league contract and let him rot in Buffalo. I wouldn't of gone near him or you other than the fact that our last catcher was J.P. Arencibia. Better then Arencibia?? I'll give you that much, But otherwise the two of you are worthless dog s***.

Apparently according to AA they did not even try to despair Navarro's agents. The BEST must of liked him a lot.

Using that criteria for me it would be Olerud, McGriff, Alomar, Delgado.

Steib, Hallady, Fernandez, Delgado in terms of bbref WAR. Everybody would agree that Alomar needs to be mentioned. And if you mention Alomar you almost have to mention Clemens. He had almost as much WAR as Alomar in only 2 years. 11.8 WAR in 1997!!!! Joe Carter is not the top 50 of blue jays career WAR according to BBREF. Yunel Escobar and Zaun among many others are ahead of him. Carter > J.P. Arencibia though.

I'm no insider but I am guessing one of the problems with the bad organizations is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of prediction. AA talks like he is predicting good health for Reyes, Lawrie, Bautista. I look at their career stats, eyeball the averages. These 3 are going to play about 115 games each, hit .265. .340 .450 as a group. I haven't even used a calculator. You use a calculator probably do a bit better. Use unsupervised clustering and a database of lifetime stats of every mlb player ever... better still. Proprietary batted ball data, even better. But all these systems will tell you roughly that these guys will play 115 games each at their career averages. But AA talks like their going to play 150 games at their best... and damn he might end up being right about 2/3. But one of them will play only 40 horrible games. Or one of them will be MVP and the other Aaron Hill 2010. Or they'll all be great and 5 other guys won't. And at the end of the day AA will say "I was right about this guy and nobody could of seen what happened to that guy." The guy who predicts an average of 115 games is right when they play 150, 150, and 40. But the guy who predicted good health for all of them gets to say, "I nailed 2/3 and no one could of seen that X would get Herpes".

No idea. Was not revealed in Davidi's article.

To be fair AI was my wording not David's. Davidi describes it as "an analytics database" that was "in development for 2 and a half years before going live". Obviously more than a simple database. Sounds like an expert system or atleast the Jays attempt at one. Or maybe they are just so dumb it took them 2 and a half years to get a simple database set up.

There's a story about it on djf. But the info probably appeared somewhere here first. Angrioter posted some translations about Jays negotiating tactics. Are These The Jays’ Terms? by Andrew Stoeten A tweet from earlier this afternoon out of the Dominican Republic from a man named Roosevelt Comarazamy has been circulating, suggesting precisely what the the Jays have — allegedly — offered free agents Ubaldo Jimenez and Ervin Santana. Translated — thanks kindly to @Angelo_riot — it says “Toronto is playing to despair Ubaldo and Ervin’s agents. The Blue Jays will offer $27M for 3 years.” First, some background: Angelo_riot added that Comarazamy is the play-by-play man for Santo Domingo-based Dominican league club Tigres del Licey, and that he has ties with Jimenez, Santana, Jose Bautista, and Esmil Rogers. “He’s legit,” Angelo_rio adds.