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Overrated = Brian Roberts?


Pruke

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Because he is one of the best all around second baseman in the sport and is signed to a very reasonable 2 year contract.

That'd be it.

For the record, any explanation involving the words "leadoff" or "all star" isn't likely to be correct.

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For the record, I don't think Dave or I is trying to make the argument that Roberts is not a very valuable ballplayer. The only debate going on here is why he's valuable.

I think the two of you came in the mindset that you would have to correct people who think the "all-star" designation was the reason he is valuable. No one is arguing that thats why he is valuable, just that its not a meaningless designation.

Lets stop conjuring up the other side's arguments and get back to discussing whether we accurately appraise his value or not. I, for one, think that he is one player that we have a pretty good read on, as a board.

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You didn't answer my question.

If Roberts had been snubbed, which guy would the Cubs get to keep: Gallagher, Marshall, or Cedeno?

You are being obtuse, and frankly, obnoxious.

No one is saying that being selected to an All Star game, by itself, increases a player's value. Being selected in the past, and having a substantial probability of being selected again, makes a player valuable. Danys Baez is not valuable because even though he was an All Star before, there is around a zero percent chance he is ever selected again. Brian Roberts has pretty good odds of being an All Star again. When people say "all star player" around here, they are generally leaving out the word "caliber." Brian Roberts is an All Star caliber player.

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I think the two of you came in the mindset that you would have to correct people who think the "all-star" designation was the reason he is valuable. No one is arguing that thats why he is valuable, just that its not a meaningless designation.

Lets stop conjuring up the other side's arguments and get back to discussing whether we accurately appraise his value or not. I, for one, think that he is one player that we have a pretty good read on, as a board.

Actually, this is precisely what I'm suggesting.

Some folks here do think (or at least they imply) that part of Roberts' value lies in the All-Star designator.

If you don't believe that mindset exists, then we'll simply have to agree to disagree, because I believe it does.

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Uh oh - this should be an interesting thread.

I was casually reading through a Rob Neyer perspective on the best second basemen and he evaluated them using a variety of stats, but finalized on WARP values.

Here's what he came up with:

Player Age OBP SLG OPS+ WARP

Chase Utley 29 .410 .566 145 9.3

Robinson Cano 25 .353 .488 120 9.2

Kelly Johnson 26 .375 .457 117 6.7

Dustin Pedroia 24 .380 .442 112 5.3

Ian Kinsler 26 .355 .441 109 5.4

Howie Kendrick 24 .347 .450 108 2.0

Dan Uggla 28 .326 .479 108 7.9

Rickie Weeks 25 .374 .433 108 3.5

Brandon Phillips 27 .331 .485 105 7.6

The one caveat is that he dismissed anyone 30+ in age.

With this in mind, and taking into account our collective love and respect for a homegrown kid with heart and guts, have we overrated Brian and are expecting too much in return on a trade?

Let loose...

http://insider.espn.go.com/espn/blog/index?name=neyer_rob

for subscribers...

His list is obviously one based on potential. As far as one for one trades the only ones I would definitely take straight up for Roberts are Utley, and Cano. Pedroia and Phillips are also very good but right now, not better than Roberts.

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Not that I don't love Brian Roberts, and think he's one of the best second basemen around, but anyone with 50 stolen bases is going to be overvalued on the market. People attach way too much importance to that statistic.

Did I mention I still love the guy?

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His list is obviously one based on potential. As far as one for one trades the only ones I would definitely take straight up for Roberts are Utley, and Cano. Pedroia and Phillips are also very good but right now, not better than Roberts.

Depends what you're trying to do. If you want to win right now, I can see an argument for Roberts over Pedroia. But if you're building a team to compete for more than one year, you take Pedroia for Roberts every time.

Phillips, eh. I can go either way on him. Yes, he looks like a good player and he's a few years younger than Roberts, but he had a year much better than anything he's ever done and he also reached some "magic numbers" (30/30) which may have made him seem more valuable than his rate stats show he really is. Even with 30 HRs he was an .816 OPS guy.

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You are being obtuse, and frankly, obnoxious.

No one is saying that being selected to an All Star game, by itself, increases a player's value. Being selected in the past, and having a substantial probability of being selected again, makes a player valuable. Danys Baez is not valuable because even though he was an All Star before, there is around a zero percent chance he is ever selected again. Brian Roberts has pretty good odds of being an All Star again. When people say "all star player" around here, they are generally leaving out the word "caliber." Brian Roberts is an All Star caliber player.

You hear all star caliber player and golden glove caliber defender...you never hear silver slugger caliber hitter.

they ought to do a better job marketing that.

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I think my door is still basically shut to the importance of D stats, but maybe I'm just being ignorant and painting with a wide brush.

If you're "ignorant", then perhaps Bill James belongs in your company?

As Bill writes in his introduction to John Dewan's The Fielding Bible,

Fielding statistics in baseball ... are kind of a mess. Batting statistics in baseball, on the most superficial level, point large red arrows at the best hitters and allow you easily to identify the weakest.... When it comes to fielding statistics, a superficial look is nearly useless and even a sophisticated analysis is not spectacularly reliable.... In my 30-year career in sabermetrics, I have spent far, far, far more hours studying fielding than I have spent studying hitting or pitching. I just don't have as much to show for it.... Fielding statistics, in short, are a failure--and despite our great efforts, we have done embarrassingly little to correct this.

I genuinely believe that The Fielding Bible methodology is the best tool out there for evaluating defense and comparing the fielding skills of different players, but it's still incomplete. It doesn't evaluate many aspects of a players defense, such as the strength and accuracy of his throws, the ability to catch and relay throws and to deter opposing base runners from being adventurous. It makes no attempt to evaluate catchers' defense at all. Plus, it's not normalized for the amount of playing time a player gets. If Adam Everett only gets 37 percent of his team's playing time at SS because he's such a pathetic hitter, then Adam's +/- rating drops into a tie for 4th among major league shortstops. Adjust Adam's rating to reflect the number of innings that Troy Tulowitski played, and Adam easily takes over the lead among shortstops by an 11-point margin!

Obviously, Tulowitski was a much more valuable player than Everett, not just because of the runs generated off his bat but because he was able to stay in the lineup and prevent runs on defense where Everett wasn't able to do that.

But if you adjust for playing time and want to evaluate players on defensive ability alone, without factoring in how much a weak bat prevents them from applying their fielding skills to the fullest, then the +/- numbers are the best tool that we have. The Fielding Bible team reviews the videos of every play in every major league game, assessing every ball that's hit by the vector, velocity, and elevation it's hit on, and then record the results. As the system is summarized at the Fielding Bible website,

A player gets credit (a "plus" number) if he makes a play that at least one other player at his position missed during the season, and he loses credit (a "minus" number) if he misses a play that at least one player made. The size of the credit is directly related to how often players make the play. Each play is looked at individually, and a score is given for each play. Sum up all the plays for each player at his position and you get his total plus/minus for the season. A total plus/minus score near zero means the player is average. A score above zero is above average and a negative score is below average. Adam Everett turned in the highest score we’ve had in four years of using the system with a +43 at shortstop in 2006. That means he made 43 more plays than the average MLB shortstop would make.

I can't imagine any better way to evaluate defensive contributions, for the portion of defense that the +/- system covers. Yes, it's unfortunate that the +/- system doesn't include the runs a strong-armed, accurate right fielder prevents or the errors that a fabulous first baseman prevents by scooping throws out of the dirt, but it's still a great beginning. I'm sure that the sabermetricians at The Fielding Bible are working on ways to incorporate those factors in too, as well as assessing what a catcher brings to his team, but they aren't satisfied enough with what they've got up to this point to be willing to publish it.

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