Keep Alou loss in perspective
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- March
- 6
Moises Alou in his prime would have been a big loss to the Mets. However, let’s not forget the Mets were hoping for 120 games from him. That’s tops.
So, to suggest it would be a huge loss to lose a player who in essence is a little more than part time, is taking it over the limit. The Mets will be fine in left field.
The guy I’m more concerned with is Carlos Delgado. Even his diminished numbers last year provided some threat in the middle of the order. Given the choice between the two, the Mets need a productive Delgado more than Alou.
My confidence level is high that Carlos Beltran will be OK, which is why I didn’t pick him.
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on Thursday, March 6th, 2008 at 12:56 pm by John Delcos.
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Delgado no doubt about it. He is the #5 hitter. Alou is/was the #6. By defintion, #5 is more important than #6.
be that said, w/o alou, a lineup of Delgado followed by Church, Endy and Scheinder is very vulnerable to lefties late in a game.
What is the official word on Beltran? Also Alou is not supposed to be out for that long. He should be back by mid May. He can still hit really well so I think its a pretty substantial loss that could cost the Mets a couple of important wins. Don’t forget that Pagan is a pretty good player though. He’s not a stiff. He’s not Joe McEwing or Chris Woodward. He’s much better than those two.
john,i couldnt agree with you more on this one. Delgado is the key. Whoever is out there in left field will automatically be better defensively than alou. And offensively? well that will be a downgrade,but i think the mets can get by with whoever plays out there in chavez,easley,and maybe some marlon anderson. But yeah,delgado is the key to the offense. Hes gotta drive in some runs when the oppurtunity is there
While I agree that Delgado is very important, I also think that the timing of the Alou injury is very bad for the Mets…
We won’t see him till Mid-May in my opinion and the early part of this season for this team is key because of the collapse… If this team falters at the start, I can’t see them getting themselves back into it… Then the problems will start, the calls for Willie’s head, etc.
I think this is a huge loss for them.
I think the reason why the Alou loss hurts more is that…
Alou is a player who is breaking down but has proven that WHEN he’s healthy enough to take the field, he can still hit the baseball and hit it where the fielders aren’t.
Delgado’s hitting stats are sliding off the face of the Earth, even when he can take the field, and ended last season injured.
I think everyone without a Pollyanna attitude about the reality of the Mets roster had kind of written off Delgado for ‘08 (and the rest of eternity) already…
But Alou still could clearly hit when healthy.
Delgado was already done in the eyes of anyone without rose-coloured glasses firmly planted in front of said eyes.
“Delgado was already done in the eyes of anyone without rose-coloured glasses firmly planted in front of said eyes.”
Because bounce back seasons never happen.
I’m cautiously optimistic about Delgado. His first half last season was awful, but he was able to pick it up the second half and could have been a little more consistent if he hadn’t been dinged up so much. I believe he did hit over .300 in Sept.
Bounce-back seasons almost never happen when:
a.) You’re that bulky a player, aiding the injury monster.
b.) You’re a pro-athlete on the other side of your thirties.
c.) You’re multiply injured in the recent-past seasons.
d.) You’re only getting older.
e.) You’re refusing to adjust your hitting style with age.
Any two of those factors would reasonably shrink the odds of a bounce-back season to… we’ll be charitable and say under twenty percent.
Delgado has all five of those factors against him.
At least Alou will be back.
Look at it this way. He was going to miss 2 months anyway, so instead of playing the first 6 weeks and then going down, he is just doing it in reverse order.
Plus, he now misses the nasty cold April nights, with is probably a good thing.
As long as the cast of fill ins (even if it is mix and match) holds things together offensively, it will be an upgrade with speed and D (well, at least with Pagan and Endy!), plus Alou would have been pulled for D replacements anyway.
Another reason it won’t hurt is pitching. The rotation is healthy (knock wood!), and pitching usually dominates in the early cold months. So, let the P carry the team for awhile. Alou can come back when the weather heats up, and the P might tail off a bit.
Delgado though needs to be out there, and reasonably (at least post-April 2007) productive.
They can get by without 1 of them, but not really both at the same time, unless they bring in a strong bat to cover the gap.
If your a Mets fan like myself you cannot have a good feeling going in to the season or the whole year. The mets have two many old players in key spots for my liking. It looks like Omar will have to pull off another miracle trade or two either
in spring training or during the season to fill the holes that
they have which are getting bigger and bigger by the day.
If you are right JD and the Mets were figuring on 120 games from Alou then… OMAR MUST GO because there was no basis in reality to believe that a guy his age who has even played 100 the last 2 would suddenly improve his health by 20% as he gets too old to play at all.
Omar made him a key part of the lineup when he went and got a lefty to play right field and now he has no balance in the bottm 55% of the lineup.
Alou only played 87 games last year. Thinking he could exceed that total this year was wishful thinking.
70-80 games was a more realistic projection—despite what Omar says. And that’s the most I thought they’d get from him in 2008. Which is why I was dead set against them re-signing him. But now that he’s out, perhaps the bulk of those 70-80 games will come in the second half. Which could be a good thing.
I think the Mets rotation is so improved over last year, that I’m not worried about the loss of Alou.
Do you really think that Omar would say that Alou is only good for 50, 60, 80 games? He is going to come out and give an overly optimistic #.
Wake up. Make your own evaluation. Hope for the best, expect the worst. Besides, with only 87 games last yr the team won 88 games. w/a poor performance from Delgado, team won 88 games, etc, etc….
There are only two things in life that are certain…...death and taxes.
Omar would never say Alou is only good for 50-80 games. Because I think it’s obvious he really believes Alou could have played in over 100 games. Otherwise why pick up his option? It would have been irresponsible for Omar to pay Alou that money if he thought he couldn’t take the field for the majority of games and would be on and off the DL all year.
Amd this points up one of Omar’s blind spots—the inability to see how older players are a DL stint waiting to happen. He shouldn’t be surprised at all at the number of injuries the team has had given the number of players on the team who are way past their primes.
JD – I agree with you. Pagan/Endy in LF is ok by me.
Jon I think your underrating Alou a bit here.. I wrote something like this at my blog http://www.metsprospectus.blogspot.com.
Put it in perspective. Alou is a RIGHT handed hitter who KILLS lefties. Without Alou the lineup is now
Reyes (S)
Castillo (S)
Wright®
Beltran (S)
Delgado (L)
Church (L)
Pagan (S)
Schneider (L)
Just take a look at this.. The 5-8 spots in the lineup contain 3 LEFT HANDER HITTERS, and a switch hitter who is much better from the right side. Not to mention that Carlos Beltran is a better hitter from the left side.. So as you can see this leaves the Mets with a huge weakness. They’ll be extremely vulnerable to left handed pitching.
Alou is a Huge loss
Alou’s not a big loss. Just ask the geniuses who thik advancing runners is stupid way to play the game.
Alou was huge for us last year, esp since Delgado was a no show for much of the year.
Alou is simply a very effective batter. So is Delgado. If both are not available this year we will have to play small ball and D. If we can do both well with Beltran/Wright/Reyes we have enough studs to pull us through games.
“Alou’s not a big loss. Just ask the geniuses who thik advancing runners is stupid way to play the game.”
A) I don’t see how these two correlate.
B) Alou is a big loss for reasons stated above by The Man.
C) Advancing the runners isn’t stupid, just an overused tactic. Giving up an out is not advisable. Over the course of 162 games, you’re better off conserving outs than giving them up. This is an irrefutable fact. However, in a do or die game, if you need a run, a sacrifice is not a bad play.
But hey, they’ve been doing this forever, so who am I to question stuff that’s been going on forever?
“It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of [baseball] than that it was laid down in the time of [King Kelly.] It is still more revolting if the grounds upon which it was laid down have vanished long since, and the rule simply persists from blind imitation of the past.”
– Oliver Wendell Holmes (in the brackets I substituted baseball for law and King Kelly for Henry IV, but the main idea still rings true.)
or maybe it keeps getting done because its the smart way to play and because it works. I know it hurts the precious OPS and OBP so why do it. Its hurts the fantasy league numbers so it must be bad. We need to keep the stats up to get a bigger paycheck. And by the way talk about correlations that are out of sync, how about your insane comparison of DVDs and VCRs to stats. That was an insult to yourself comparing technology to stats.
There are situations where moving the runners along with an out is critical and there are situations where moving the runners along with an out is a waste of an out, by an overmatched hitter trying to make his inability to safely reach base look useful.
If… oh, say… Reyes is on first with no outs and Castillo bunts him over to second when Reyes was about to steal second anyway, that’s the waste of an out.
If it’s the bottom of the ninth in a tie game, Beltran’s on second with no outs and Wright skies one to the right field warning track so that there’s a ton of scoring situations with the next batter, that’s a well-used out.
It varies.
Often useful but on the whole, overrated.
“I know it hurts the precious OPS and OBP so why do it. Its hurts the fantasy league numbers so it must be bad. We need to keep the stats up to get a bigger paycheck.”
Uh, no, it has nothing to do with fantasy baseball. Most fantasy baseball leagues don’t play with OPS or OBP as a stat because they’re not counting stats. It’s just common sense. You get 3 outs per inning. Giving up an out is just stupid. Taking a walk with a runner on first is much better than bunting that runner over. Infinitely better. And taking a walk is infinitely better than “expanding the zone” and popping out to 2B.
“or maybe it keeps getting done because its the smart way to play and because it works.”
It doesn’t work. It just doesn’t. There are millions of web sites you can visit that have run scientific experiments analyzing game data that show the sacrifice bunt is extremely overused. See the Holmes quote again. For some reason human beings loathe any kind of change. In law, in baseball, in life.
“how about your insane comparison of DVDs and VCRs to stats.”
Do you know what an analogy is? Because it’s different than a correlation. The point here was when it comes to technology we don’t just stick with something because it’s been around for a million years and works fine. If something new and improved comes along we jump all over it and the VCR goes to the scrap heap. And not DVD players will be joining VCRs now that we have Blu Ray. But for some bizarre reason, despite overwhelming statistical evidence showing otherwise, managers continue to call for the sac bunt.
Wait, let me correct myself. The sac bunt works on occasion, but not nearly enough to warrant the frequency it is used.
Check out this chart: http://www.tangotiger.net/RE9902.html
Notice how the run expectancy DROPS from 0.953 with man on 1st and no outs to 0.725 with a man on second and one out. Sacrificing a runner over to second decreases your odds of scoring a run.
Right.
The sacrifice has some use in certain situations but, on average, is a sucker’s bet.
The trick is knowing when the relatively rare situations where it is useful come up and not go around wasting outs in the situations where you’re just throwing a plate appearance out the window.
Oh Keith, I love the statement that its on the internet so it must be so. As soon as someone says that, it is a given that the person is very shallow on knowledge. Don’t believe me, look it upon the internet, its on millions of sites. And since you like to write down to us to feel the need to explain what you are saying, that keith is sarcasm.
And Keith, your analogy didn’t work because the two topics you compared aren’t viable comparisons. And calling it an analogy is just like saying its on the internet. But I guess the statement you can’t compare apples to oranges doesn’t work any more because its old and been replaced by the OAC stat.
“As soon as someone says that, it is a given that the person is very shallow on knowledge.”
So, because I read a variety of baseball websites, from those with a more traditional perspective to the more modern, stat based, perspective… not to mention that I played and coached baseball my entire life. But yeah, I have a shallow pool of knowledge.
And Tangotiger is a well known sabermatrician. He does a lot of good stuff with win and run expectancy. I don’t understand why you’re so hostile towards logic and math… you know, real ways of measuring something’s effectiveness. These guys sift through piles of numbers and have come up with some pretty cool thing.
And again, I’m not even saying your beloved sacrifice bunt is useless, just over used. This isn’t exactly a ground breaking discovery. Like I said, Davey Johnson HATED the sacrifice bunt. As did Earl Weaver.
“a·nal·o·gy: Logic. a form of reasoning in which one thing is inferred to be similar to another thing in a certain respect, on the basis of the known similarity between the things in other respects.”
Lastly, don’t come at me with this “And since you like to write down to us” BS. You’re the one who made a snide comment in this thread about “geniuses’ who don’t think advancing runners is a stupid way to play the game.” You then followed it up with “That was an insult to yourself comparing technology to stats.” So it was not me who started lobbing personal jabs my friend.
So VCR is to the sacrifice bunt, as DVD players are to not sacrifice bunting. The former are examples of outdated and antiquated means of accomplishing an end (playing video or theory on scoring runs in baseball) while the latter represent new advancements (in playing video/theory on scoring runs in baseball.)