2023 Guardians Spring Training Thread

Wham with the Right Hand said:

For anybody who worries about spring training stats for pitchers, Quantrill came into this game with a 9.90 ERA and then retired 17 in a row. Why was the ERA so high?

Asked what turned it around for him Friday night, he said, “I’ve been working on a lot of stuff and maybe I lost track a little bit of just making sure I was still establishing my strengths.

He was working on a lot of stuff.

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We all want ST stats to have meaning, but they mostly just don't.

CDAV45 said:

We all want ST stats to have meaning, but they mostly just don't.

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It depends on the player. A guy who is locked in to the rotation like Quantrill can afford to work on expanding his arsenal or whatever. But young prospects battling for a spot like Freeman and Arias have to go for results. In this case Arias outperformed Freeman and apparently will make the team.

CDAV45 said:

At what point do the saber metric gurus realize that Cal operates outside of those desired stats? He's at 450 IP and counting of success.

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His lower K rate is a source of 'concern', but as long as the dude is effective, why knock him? He doesn't need to be replaced in any way. He remains in the rotation when some of these young starter prospects earn their recall.

"But... but CBS says Amed is a Top 100 player!!" When the hell was the last time anyone gave a crap about what CBS says? When was the last time you even heard anything worth a crap from CBS?

I just posted ESPN's Top 100 and *spoiler* Amed didn't make it. No one here is saying he's a BAD player, but let's cut the crap thinking he's one of our three best players. That's hilariously foolish.

33Y0 said:

"But... but CBS says Amed is a Top 100 player!!" When the hell was the last time anyone gave a crap about what CBS says? When was the last time you even heard anything worth a crap from CBS?

I just posted ESPN's Top 100 and *spoiler* Amed didn't make it. No one here is saying he's a BAD player, but let's cut the crap thinking he's one of our three best players. That's hilariously foolish.

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CBS is part of the Fake News Media - a real enemy of the People!

33Y0 said:

"But... but CBS says Amed is a Top 100 player!!" When the hell was the last time anyone gave a crap about what CBS says? When was the last time you even heard anything worth a crap from CBS?

I just posted ESPN's Top 100 and *spoiler* Amed didn't make it. No one here is saying he's a BAD player, but let's cut the crap thinking he's one of our three best players. That's hilariously foolish.

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BSTV just ranked Amed Rosario 33rd among starting shortstops in MLB.

Personally, the only ranking I care about is the one from Butthole Sports.

KluberSociety said:

CBS is part of the Fake News Media - a real enemy of the People!

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Please reassure me that you are trolling.

33Y0 said:

"But... but CBS says Amed is a Top 100 player!!" When the hell was the last time anyone gave a crap about what CBS says? When was the last time you even heard anything worth a crap from CBS?

I just posted ESPN's Top 100 and *spoiler* Amed didn't make it. No one here is saying he's a BAD player, but let's cut the crap thinking he's one of our three best players. That's hilariously foolish.

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Precisely. It's like folks conveniently forget about Myles Straw.

CDAV45 said:

At what point do the saber metric gurus realize that Cal operates outside of those desired stats? He's at 450 IP and counting of success.

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Unless he starts striking out a bunch of hitters or cuts his HR allowed rate in half or turns into Maddux and never walks anyone, never.

Sabermetric stats are all about predictability, using a players previous track record to predict what their future track record may look like. The only thing that is predictable to a higher degree of accuracy about what a pitcher can do year in and year out is strikeout guys, walk guys, or give up home runs.

High contact rate pitchers who rely on generating weak contact, low BABIP numbers, and more grounders than fly balls and line drives are less predictable because you can't predict the results of every ball projected to be put into play against that pitcher. Baseball is too unpredictable when balls are put into play that stay in the stadium. So naturally, sabermetrics doesn't like those kinds of pitchers because they are hard to predict.

Why sabermetric based WAR models don't like Quantrill as much as his actual production over the last 2 seasons, like Fangraphs who use FIP as a determining factor for their WAR stat. Cal has been worth 4.2 fWAR over his last 336 IP of 3.16 ERA pitching. Which doesn't seem as bad as it sounds, but he is 65th amongst all pitchers in fWAR over the last 2 seasons while posting the 15th best ERA over that time frame.

On the other side, BRef uses the actual runs against production in a given season as a determining factor in their WAR stat, using ERA+ as opposed to FIP. So Cal has been worth 6 bWAR over his last 336 IP of 3.16 ERA pitching. They don't use a stat that is determining how predictably good or bad a pitcher has been pitching, they use one that shows how good or bad you are at allowing runs vs the league average for that given season.

So Roberto Perez may, or may not make the Giants roster. He is NOT on their 40-man. IF he is cut, would you want him back here as Zunino's backup?

CDAV45 said:

I have to ask what you think the advantage of having Amed at SS is? He's not as good defensively as Arias or Gimenez and he may or may not be better offensively as Arias. Regardless, if defense is the reason to have Straw as the starting CFer then should that apply to SS as well? I'm not trying to be argumentative here. I'm just trying to understand the logic and when/how it is applied.

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I'm not as convinced on Arias's defense as you are and offensively I'd take Amed due to his ability to make more contact (and Amed actually hits the ball quite hard, he is over 70th percentile in max EV, but he also makes a lot of bad contact). There's a lot of "mays' though and replicating 3-ish WAR isn't an easy task. I like Arias in the utility role for now personally, as long as he keeps getting his reps and maybe he will show he's worth more than I think with the bat. But I think his bat is still perceived as risky with a pretty low floor so we run the risk of ending up with somewhat of an unnecessary hole in the lineup by swapping him in there.

BimboColesHair said:

There is a difference between stats that favor your opinion and stats that are flawed.

You, and a handful of others, are using flawed stats to favor your opinion.

What does that say about your opinion then?

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Well, lets see....

My early opinions were correct on 'power' and 'tools' prospects, like Zimmer, Bradley, Chang, Johnson, Jones, and Benson. My early opinions were correct on Gimenez and on Josh Naylor.

Generally, my opinions on 'contact', 'hit tools', and 'skills' prospects...going back nearly a decade...were correct, beginning with a young, unknown kid in the Southern League by the name of Brantley.

Almost all..if not all...were minority opinions.

And, beginning in about 2016, this org made major changes in its talent acquisition parameters that mostly agreed with me. Now, what do we have? A n active roster, consisting of nearly nothing, but high contact batters with bat to ball skills.

And so far the decision makers have put Amed and Straw in the starting lineups and Plesac in the rotation.

More than anybody else on this forum, I pay attention to health histories. Two most recent examples in this org are Espino and Morris. When Espino didn't come back by June last year, we were assured that there was nothing wrong and that it was merely a matter of being overly cautious...which was total BS. Many on this forum were sure that Morris was gonna begin the season in the rotation, in spite of the fact that he has never thrown even 100 innings in a season.

Many point to the key players on the Twins and White Sox as better than ours, while consistently ignoring the major fact that they can't stay healthy.

More than most on here, I am particularly cynical about prospects and their likelihood of being major, consistent upgrades the moment they get to Cleveland. It seldom works that way.

More than many on here, I value defense very highly. I ignore position 'profiles'. I dont care where offense comes from, and what position it comes from, but I do care about defense. Give me Kwan as a corner bat over Eloy Jimenez every day of the week.

I have been VERY wrong about two Cleveland players over the last decade.

Franmil is still a total mystery to me.

And I still am mystified that over several years McAllister was never able to master a third pitch.

The only problem I have with this org...and I have been vocal about it...is its refusal to trade prospects until they lose all their value. We've watched that happen multiple times. This, in spite of the fact that when it has made such trades, they've hit home runs.

So, go ahead, keep telling me I'm wrong.

A prophet is without honor in his own land.

Mott the Hoople said:

So Roberto Perez may, or may not make the Giants roster. He is NOT on their 40-man. IF he is cut, would you want him back here as Zunino's backup?

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Tito outside the Giants facility:

CDAV45 said:

At what point do the saber metric gurus realize that Cal operates outside of those desired stats? He's at 450 IP and counting of success.

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Yes his actual ERA should have some weight but so should his sabermetric stats... ultimately I see him as kind of a 4 ERA guy which is between actual results and sabermetric predictions. He hasn't pitched for long enough to ignore what the saber stats say though, nor has he not provided significant evidence that he is better than the 4.5 ERA guy that the saber stats say.

There's a concept in actuarial statistics called credibility theory which weights actual results more and more heavily with the more observations that come in. You could do a similar concept with ERA and predictors and keep assigning more "credibility" to the fact that Quantrill keeps overperforming the ERA predictors, with the more and more innings he pitches.

No one is talking about all of your opinions.

We're talking about your opinion that Amed is a plus SS defensively, a top 10 defensive shortstop because flawed stats say he is and you basing your argument around those flawed stats.

I can promise you, no one in baseball views Amed as a plus SS defensively, a top 10 defensive shortstop. Including the decision makers putting him in the lineup every day.