A Mike Sweeney Poll
by Jeff Sullivan on Mar 31, 2010 4:52 PM PDT
in Seattle Mariners Polling
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It's your fault for giving them the option.
angels fan in seattle
by Eyebrows on Mar 31, 2010 4:59 PM PDT via mobile up reply actions
Posting a poll with an option like that one, right after you posted that podcast, was just asking for it
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by Griffin Cooper on Mar 31, 2010 5:00 PM PDT up reply actions
What, exactly, is it asking for?
Someone who takes joy in doing things he or she thinks will annoy us? Out of what? Spite? Because he or she thinks it’s funny?
Yeah, pretty much
There are a lot of people like that on the internet.
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by Griffin Cooper on Mar 31, 2010 5:15 PM PDT up reply actions
Fair enough
I just find that stupidity is even more prominent online than it is in the real world
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by Griffin Cooper on Mar 31, 2010 5:19 PM PDT up reply actions
Relative anonymity does tend to turn some percentage of normal people into assholes
in my experience.
by ChristopherA on Mar 31, 2010 5:45 PM PDT up reply actions
It's not really an anonymous poll, because you can see which option someone picked by viewing their profile.
Of course, that takes effort, and a lot of time.
But I realize you were speaking of the internet, as a whole, providing the relative anonymity.
And please don't take that to mean I'm the type of person who would do that, or that I think it's funny
Because it’s pointless and kind of annoying. This is just the type of thing stupid people do on the internet when they get bored
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by Griffin Cooper on Mar 31, 2010 5:18 PM PDT up reply actions
Seems like a good idea to put "worse" in there.
If you only had the option to choose “better” or “same”, the people that picked “worse” would have most likely just answered the opposite of what they really think to mess with the poll, only we wouldn’t know that they’re being a jackass. This way you edit out some of the jackass votes and get a clearer picture of what everyone actually thinks.
by Mind of no mind on Mar 31, 2010 7:56 PM PDT up reply actions
The guy only has so many hits in his bat, but he's wasting them all in Arizona...
I'd sleep at the Internet, but I've found servers don't make for good pillows.
by thehemogoblin on Mar 31, 2010 5:00 PM PDT up reply actions
Or maybe, before spring training, you expected Sweeney to bat .650 this year
And so he seems to be performing worse than original expectations.
angels fan in seattle
by Eyebrows on Mar 31, 2010 5:01 PM PDT via mobile up reply actions
If you believe in hot streaks
Then he’s on a hot streak right now which means he’ll be cold shortly, which means if you alternate hot-cold-hot-cold-hot-cold it’s now more likely he’ll both start and end the season on a cold streak. Thus, lower the projection.
Determined, Jonesing Commentor
Pretty much just what you expect him to do
Does Mike Sweeney’s spring training in any way change your opinion of him as a hitter?
by Jeff Sullivan on Mar 31, 2010 5:10 PM PDT up reply actions
Thanks for the clarification!
I have a weird compulsion to answer poll questions as honestly and accurately as possible, or maybe that’s not uncommon. Too bad the built in poll doesn’t allow for some depth to the initial question.
Basically, if your opinion of Sweeney has changed 1%, you should indicate as such
by Jeff Sullivan on Mar 31, 2010 5:20 PM PDT up reply actions
I was thinking more of a vertical score to accompany the answer.
I think it makes it better, but do I think it matters with the overall decision? Gives it a bit more of an up and down with something of that type. Rate the overall importance, I’m not sure of the best way to word that.
If this is about what we expect Sweeney to do in 2010 then you should have had an option for
“Ruptures a testicle doing a crotch chop after a Griffey home run”
I seriously do not consider myself qualified to answer
I agree with Dave Cameron that roster decisions based on spring ball can be/are capricious or unwise, but then again, aren’t they playing baseball? Even if the air is dry and the competition uneven? I think it’s reasonably fair for a ballclub to make decisions between a player that’s shown nothing and a one that’s hit the cover off the ball. But projections? Fuck do I know.
For me, his projection is unchanged.
If he manages to somehow translate what he’s done in Spring Training to the regular season, then he would be better than expected/projected, no? The average offensive projection for Sweeney at Fangraphs is .327 wOBA. Can Mike Sweeney provide pre-2005 level offense (+.360 wOBA) at this stage of his career? I’m a bit curious myself. Maybe he thinks he’s Shawn Michaels (defying age with performance).
If nothing else, tearing the cover off the ball in spring training didn't make Mike Sweeney a WORSE hitter
so I can live with his projection being a bit better than before. If he wOBAs like .345, then I really don’t even care about the whole Garko thing – it’s a difference of like two runs
There is no way his performance does anything but make his projections rise
Unless you already projected him to perform as good or better than he is playing now.
Doess 50 PA in spring training give us significantly less information about a player's talent level
than 50 PA during a season?
In general, the answer would be yes.
But a PA against Felix towards the end of spring training, when he’s throwing fire and has unrivaled movement, is more telling than a PA in May against Jason Berkan.
So, like everything else in baseball, there are tons of variables.
But, the short answer is obviously yes.
I would say yes
Offensive stats are inflated, players don’t really care about winning, etc. etc.
The opposing pitchers are frequently guys like David Pauley or are MLB pitchers working on specific stuff.
Mike Morse owns spring training. Who cares?
Definitely.
Pitchers are still getting up to speed and Sweeney faced poor minor league pitching on several occasions.
I should have asked if anyone has evidence or knows of somebody who has evidence.
by Edgar for Pres on Mar 31, 2010 6:12 PM PDT up reply actions
You don't need a detailed statistical report... worse players get playing time in ST than in the regular season.
Pitchers do things like throw 20% less fastballs than they normally would to work on other pitches.
Players play out of their normal position sometimes.
So you think that good hitters should do better during spring training than they normally would during a season?
I’m not sure that this is true.
Anyway, I feel like we assume that spring training is worthless for a variety of reasons (most of which make complete sense). I’m sure there is some information in there that is useful though. It would be interesting to see how much useful info a player’s spring training stats held.
Are 50 spring training PA worth 50 April PA, 25 April PA or less?
by Edgar for Pres on Mar 31, 2010 6:31 PM PDT up reply actions
I'm not saying that they should do better. Many of them probably don't do any baseball-related things for months before ST?
Others swing a bat every day in the offseason.
Yes, there probably is some value to ST performance, but I think it’s fairly obvious that ST PAs should get less weight than regular season PAs. It would be interesting to know how much weight to give them… but it seems like over such a small sample size, a hitter could have 80% of their PAs against replacement level or worse talent whereas another could have 80% against major league average talent. I mean yeah ST stats might be able to tell you something, but I don’t think that you can give it a constant weight like 5 ST PAs are as predictive as 1 regular season PA because it’s not the same environment.
Yeah its probably not simple
and probably has more noise and bias than a normal PA. There probably is some info in there if you went through and tried to correct for quality of opponent and all but in general its probably more trouble than its worth to figure out how useful they actually are.
by Edgar for Pres on Mar 31, 2010 7:49 PM PDT up reply actions
Which is hard to do because most people haven't seen him play.
And I don’t think there is quality data with advanced statistics during Spring training.
It does sound like Sweeney is locked-in on hitting, though. It’s not like he has hit 10 home runs into the Arizona jet stream, but has been hitting line drive singles and doubles, which is a good sign. With Wakamatsu making the decision to keep him on the roster, there might be some merit to him increasing his talent level just based on that.
But not if he's spraying line drives all over the field? That seems inconsistent.
I think that Sweeney’s hot spring has to improve his projection, if only very slightly.
Depends upon what type of projection you're doing.
And I think it goes back to a conversation we had here about the different types of projections when FanGraphs started the community projections system. If your projection was a weighted average of possible/likely outcomes (meaning it had accounted for the risk that he might just fall off a cliff, and deducted from the projection accordingly) I would think you would bump up the projection a little, as if nothing else he’s demonstrated he HASN’T fallen off a cliff or gotten worse. That risk factor can be reduced, like if we were projecting innings for Bedard this year and in his first two starts he dominated without any remote signs of pain – we’d reduce the risk factor of him getting hurt again and bump up his projected innings by 10-20.
However, if you’re doing a projection of his MOST LIKELY performance, then I guess it would depend upon what you projected him at. If you thought the most likely outcome was a .300 wOBA then you might bump that up a little. If you projected him with a .330 wOBA I wouldn’t change it, because he hasn’t really demonstrated his base talent level has improved, he’s just demonstrated that the worst-case-scenario is less likely to happen than we may have previously thought.
Well I thought he'd be terrible...
So while I don’t think he’s suddenly good, I feel like his production at least shows he’s in shape (which I was skeptical of) so I have to think he’ll be at least marginally better than what I thought he’d be, which, again, was dogshit.
Among the questions ST can answer
is whether or not a player is healthy. l recall an article last season in which Sweeney claimed to have learned to hit better with his recurring condition, and the numbers seemed to bear that out. The fact that his OPS is a bout a million strongly suggests that his condition either isn’t bothering him, or he’s able to play with it.
Granted he could develop an all new condition as guys his/my age frequently do. But his performance this spring suggests that he’s not being held back much by any injury, so assuming projections were based on his aggregate numbers last year, when he was held back, I would adjust the projection up.
So we're now up to 4% retards
Regression towards the true retard level.
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