I understand what you’re getting at – and indeed appreciate pointing out how the game was portrayed at the time so influenced your perception. That is an indication of how the game was seen by the media and the fans and also how the owners tried to publicize their stars to the max (kind of Jeff Wilpon when he referred to that deep right field being exciting because it could create inside the park home runs).

That was, however, not reflective of those inside the game of course. Far from it.

For example, fans came out to see Sandy Koufax strike out everybody in sight but Koufax said strikeouts look good in the record book but a pitcher is better off throwing less pitches and letting his fielders do the job – and that the strikeout was deemed necessary in certain situations only. In fact, I believe he said there was only one time when he was actually trying to strike out batters for purposes other than that reason – that being the last inning or so of when he was going after his perfect game back in 1965

Kind of like watching a football game – how many of us really understand the complex strategy behind those plays and notice the little things that make them work?

“That’s because pitchers also became aware of the importance of obp so they countered the hitters efforts to increase it.”

Does that mean before then pitchers felt those who got on base due to a walk had less of a chance of scoring than one who got a hit? Or that hitters thought those who get on base more due to a hit had a better chance of scoring than if they got a walk? Or that batters would rather record an out and see their batting average go down than take a few pitches for a free pass?

I think that Cap Kirk can be our long range solution in CF, he has awesome opposite field power also, just have to fix his swing and then he can be one of the OF anchors many years for Mets.

I also look at it as trying to settle the age old debate of which player at a position was “better” when you are looking at different eras, or type of player.

so, I googled and this is on the Wiki page, which seems to agree:

“sabermetric measures are usually phrased in terms of either runs or team wins. For example, a player might be described as being worth 54 offensive runs more than a replacement-level player at the same position over the course of a full season, as the sabermetric statistic VORP can indicate.
Sabermetrics is concerned both with determining the value of a player or team in current or past seasons and with attempting to predict the value of a player or team in the future.”

Most important is that I’m sorry you came down with the flu – what a way to end one year and start the next one. Rest it and don’t try to get back to doing things too quickly. We all know what you’re going through.

Did you know that a rule on walks was changed as a direct result of Ted Williams? At the time, to qualify as a batting leader one had to accumulate a certain amount of at-bats – not total plate appearances. With Ted’s great eye and pitchers just wanting to walk him in any event, he was leading the league with walks and thus often would fall short on the amount of at-bats to qualify in the official leader records.

What you said about sabermetrics is completely correct. it helps people look at statistics differently when evaluating players and what causes what to occur during a game. Same with fans appreciating other stats as opposed to other stats such as RBIs and and BA. It is a primer for fans but not a continuing education unit for professionals. And to apply such stats to validate new approaches in the game really shows a superficial knowledge of what the game is all about.

That is why I gave the example of Brian Kenny contesting an 8th place hitter with a poor batting average but with an extremely high OBP would better help the team batting leadoff. Larry Bowa and Mitch Williams explained to him no way that batter would be pitched the same way batting lead off as he is batting eighth and getting on base anywhere near the way he does in the eighth hole.

Advanced stats are something that professionals need limited reference to as was the case decades ago when all teams still had a statistician on the payroll. Yes, it helps in evaluating the opposing team but that is also the reason for advance scouts – and if it found that a guy is suddenly having trouble with an inside breaking pitch that is of more importance than any stat can reveal. All the stat does is show he is in a slump – not the reason for it.

Take care of that flu!

That’s because pitchers also became aware of the importance of obp so they countered the hitters efforts to increase it.

A couple things.

First, I’m not a fan or a non-fan of sabermetrics. I was just acknowledging that Alderson has been along with a fan of other stats when evaluating talent trying to mold a team. Second, I think a lot of people misunderstand sabermetrics. It was not intended to reinvent the game, it was just designed to help people look at statistics differently when evaluating players.

I agree, there hasn’t been an appreciable gain in OBP over the years. But what there has been is a significant increase in how that stat is evaluated and ranked as opposed to other stats such as RBIs and and BA.

And your absolutely right about Williams. Not only was obviously a lethal hitter but, and this is the part that so often gets overlooked, he was deadly patient hitter. Rarely if ever did he swing at a pitch that was out of his zone and that as much as anything made him great. And that is at the heart of Hudgens system. No, its not new, Not much in the game is with the exception of polyester. But that doesn’t mean its not a good system.

And, if being patient worked for arguably the best hitter of all time, a guy who opposing pitchers feared to the point of abstraction, how can anyone make the case it can’t work for a guy like Kirk who pitchers aren’t exactly having night sweats over?

Anyhow, the flu is starting to kick my butt so have a nice night. I’m out.

Again, taking strikes early in the count is not part of Hudgens philosophy. Taking pitches to get to your pitch is. No system is perfect and adjustments probably have to be made on both sides but there is no denying that every hitter has hot and cold zones even in the strike zone. All Hudgens system is designed to do is break down where each hitter’s hot zones are and have them attack pitches when they are in that zone regardless of the count.

Guys shouldn’t be fighting off high inside pitches, they should be taking them because they are balls. Kirk hasn’t been the most patient of hitters and was always known to hack away. Sometimes you get away with being undisciplined for a while but it catches up to those who aren’t gifted hitters like Reyes.

As to the team’s OBP going down, no doubt. But I also attribute a lot of that to the players and not the strategy. The Mets finished the year with a team OBP of .316. Position players below .316 include Kirk, Ike (who had a really rough start to the year and while his power numbers came around he still wasn’t the hitter he was before getting hurt), Hairston, Thole, Nickeas, Valdespin, Bay and a handful of others who had spot duty.

The Mets, with a much more potent and healthy lineup in 2011 finished second in the NL in OBP at .335. As of now I’m writing off 2012 as an aberration due to a young lineup and one full of injuries and frankly, bad players.

But as always, the proof will be in the performance going forward.

Thanks for the attachment about Hudgens but remember one does not usually get the pitch he wants to hit – its the job of the pitcher to make sure that he doesn’t – but in my case it wouldn’t have mattered even if hitting off a tee-ball.

But being selective is something I’m sure the batting coach would admit isn’t a new idea – it’s being able to teach it properly and the ability for the player to learn – based on each individual’s strengths and weaknesses. When that article referred to Ted Williams, it reminded how he was able to turn Ed Brinkman (a shortstop for the Washington Senators) who couldn’t hit even .190 in three of his last four seasons (and had been in the majors for six years) into a .266 hitter. That was 43 years ago.

Which comes to another important point.

Hudgens was absolutely correct when he said, better discipline would naturally result in getting on base more often and getting on base should be the goal. But what is so new about that?

I’ve attached this many times before, however, if one looks at OBP over the course of many decades, the range in percentage over that of simple batting average has been relatively steady. For example, look at 1969, when the strike zone became smaller and the height of the mound decreased by six inches as it is basically now, compared to 2012. In the year of our Miracle Mets the league batting average was seven points lower than this past season which meant less hitting yet the OBP for that season WAS ACTUALLY ONE POINT HIGHER than this past one. 43 years ago and the players of that era who didn’t produce the hits players today are were managing to get on base a lot more ways other than a base hit than those today.

If one looks at the OBP there have been no big jumps the past three decades other than the steroid era and that the highest percentage range of getting on base above batting average actually was for a small period between the late forties and early fifties – more than sixty years ago. The lower range in the mid-sixties was a result of the enlarged strike zone which was unfair to hitters.

This is what many of us are trying to get at and which even Bill James hinted in that interview – too many are getting crediting for revelations in the game in which there has been no revolution.

So I think fans of sabermetrics have to remember that the game wasn’t invented a few decades ago and neither was the way it should be played and taught. OBP – considered so important today – was seen as part of the game. It didn’t need to be drummed into players as much as it was the fans so they could better appreciate the finer aspects of the game.

And maybe that is why Sandy Alderson placed so much emphasis on how OBP formulated his thinking in his early years as a baseball executive – he came across something that might have been seen as a revelation for him but something those inside the game already knew.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/bat.shtml

>>In the process, the team established the sort of offensive identity lacking in years prior. The misconception about improving on-base skills is the process relies on passivity, on cowards willing to pass on pitch after pitch in search of the almighty walk.
Hudgens shakes his head at that notion. He traffics in aggression. His players verify this.

>>In 2011, for example, Hudgens gave succinct instructions to free-swinging shortstop Jose Reyes: Don’t chase high fastballs or breaking balls in the dirt. Blessed by mostly good health, good luck and his own freakish athleticism, Reyes recorded the highest OBP of his career, getting on base at a .384 clip. He did not do so by taking walks. He attacked fastballs.

http://www.nj.com/mets/index.ssf/2012/03/mets_hitting_coach_dave_hudgen_1.html

Kirk’s problem appears not to be trying to walk to much but swinging at bad pitches. In fact, I would love to see a stat on how many Ks Kirk took last season that were actually balls.

>>Hitting coach Dave Hudgens noted teams have exploited Nieuwenhuis by putting breaking balls in the dirt, then throwing high fastballs above the strike zone that Nieuwenhuis was prone to chase.

>>”He chased some a little bit. He’s got to learn to lay off that fastball up,” Hudgens said. “It’s a ball for the most part. They’ll try some soft stuff down, and then they try to elevate the fastball. It’s just an adjustment he’s going to have to make. They try that on a lot of guys, and you’ve got to be disciplined. It’s tough, because you see that ball so good. It’s close to your eyes and you see it good, so you react. You just have to learn to lay off it, because you can’t catch up to it.”

http://espn.go.com/blog/new-york/mets/post/_/id/52904/kirk-demoted-for-baxter-return

Guys like Reyes, a notorious free swinger, Wright, who got off to the best start in his career in 2012 and Beltran all thrived under Hudgens instruction. Let’s see what Kirk does this year before making any calls.

A friend correctly pointed out that Kirk’s K-rates, month to month in 2012 and even comparing his minor league K-rates to his major league rates, really don’t give us much information (they’re fairly steady), and that I’d have been better off looking more closely at his batting average relative to pitch count. Namely, how Kirk hit .125 after working the count to 3 – 2 (for the season), he hit .138 on 2 – 2 counts, and (perhaps most telling) on the ultimate hitter’s count, 3 – 1, he hit a measly .231. On the other hand, he hit .417 on 0 – 0 counts, .611 on 1 – 0 counts, and .522 on 1 – 1 counts. Clearly this is not a guy you want going deep into counts. There is no getting around how poorly this kid does when he takes a lot of pitches and how good he can be when he’s aggressive early in the count, and it does fly in the face of SA’s presumed “obp edict” so there was no help for him on the coaching end in Flushing. Kind of sad when you think about it considering it’s a MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL TEAM!

Looking forward to more friendly disagreements on this subject – should be fun. I think that is what Joe D. wants MMO to be – not something resembling the Hatfields and the McCoys!

Oh, and I agree it was more than just Bill James – in an article I posted a few days back Sandy also spoke about studying psychological methods and began determining how they could be used in sports along with other areas of analysis from other writers as well when he first came on board in Oakland. Bill James was the foundation for his attempt to learn cause and results and we all know that sabermetrics has since been tremendously expanded by others since that time and Sandy has been a part of that. That’s why I referred to James more than to sabermetrics since I was referring to Sandy’s roots.

But James was the one that planted the seed that Sandy and others have expanded on – though I do think one should also heed his warnings about the limitations of its usages which I think Sandy is guilty of not doing.

As far as the Mets minor leagues, remember, Sandy said he wanted to hire a manager that fit into his mindset – and that was Terry Colllins. But don’t also forget that Terry was the Mets minor league field coordinator – hired by Omar Minya no less – in 2010 and it was what Sandy saw that Terry was doing as the field coordinator that made him want Collins at the helm. So the changes in the way the Mets approached their minor league system began with the arrival of Terry in 2010 – not Sandy.

I don’t think Omar, however, deserves credit for hiring Terry as that was more the result of being forced to fire his former former vice president of player development.

http://newyork.mets.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20101122&content_id=16173778&c_id=nym

http://www.nj.com/mets/index.ssf/2010/05/qa_with_mets_minor-league_fiel.html

No my find THIS is the best baseball website out there.

Sabermetrics IMO is just an over complication of baseball…and gives some whom love math or have advanced mathematics skill a false sense of baseball knowledge….

WTF is war,fwar,uzr pure non-sense…it is impossible to determine how good a player is defensively using statistics lol….trajectory of the ball lol…ever heard of wind? Or playing in a little rain, wet grass, sun in the eye on a fly ball(with glasses)…

I have nothing against GM’s utilizing some stats when deciding whether to dole out a ton of money to a player….But this SABR business is overkill and for the most part useless

if you really want to knowledge up on this stuff, baseball prospectus is the way to go. Even if you don’t, baseball prospectus has articles for everybody so you should read it anyway. Easily the best baseball website out there.

Well you and I are just going to have to agree to disagree on a couple things. No, I do not agree that James is in any way Alderson’s mentor. I believe that Alderson took a couple of statistical ideas from James and incorporated them into his philosophy of how to evaluate talent, mold talent and build a team. But there is much more to being a GM than just running a spreadsheet. Hell, it would be a lot cheaper to just higher James or better yet his spreadsheets if that was all there was to being a GM. Clearly, its not. And Alderson does have a record of success that also incorporate ideas that are not part of the James philosophy.

And I do think you are misinterpreting Hudgens’ hitting philosophy. Yes, as part of instructional batting he teaches his hitters to take pitches including not swinging at breaking or off speed pitches early in the count. But the idea isn’t just to teach them to take pitches for the sake of taking pitches. It is to teach them plate discipline with the idea of going after hitters pitches and not going after pitchers pitches.

For example and from the article I linked to earlier:

>>On Monday night, Daniel Murphy offered at a 1-1 changeup on the outside. The pitch was probably a strike. No matter. When Murphy came back to the dugout, Hudgens pulled him aside for a refresher course in “the one area he needs to make progress on.”
“He will get some hits on that (pitch) — because he’s a good hitter,” Hudgens said. “But he’s not going to do any damage on it. And early in the count, 1-1 is early, you want damage.”
Some hitters, like Ike Davis and Lucas Duda, practice patience at the plate with ease. Others hack with abandon. The goal is not to remodel every player. Hudgens’ job is to nudge everyone in the same direction: Isolate a hitter’s strength — a location he likes, a pitch he prefers — and persuade that hitter to focus there.

Some player adapt to plate discipline much quicker than others. Free swingers like Kirk can find it more difficult because they are used to hacking away. Often, guys like this have success at the lower levels because the pitching is not as good. But when they get to the bigs they struggle with pitchers who have much better accuracy and better off speed stuff. The only way he will be a consistent major league hitter is when he learns to be patient enough to swing at his pitches. Easier said than done and not every player learns to do it but if Kirk is going to be a major league player he needs to learn to be more patient, one way or the other.

Finally, I do disagree that teaching plate discipline is not an organizational goal. Look at the stats I provided you showing you the improvement throughout the organization since Alderson took over. That is not a coincidence, it is a strategy. Alderson is not just in charge of the MLB team he is in charge of the entire organization and it makes no sense to say that he is focused on plate discipline at the major league level and it is just a coincidence that it is happening at every level and with every manager he has put in place.

In any case, Happy New Year to you as well.

Happy New Year to ya.

While we of course differ in the way we see things please know much I appreciate how you present your side of the debate and understand where I am coming from without calling me a liar, a manipulator and pathetic – which I know you would never ever do!

But I do believe you are under-emphasizing the impact of Bill James on Sandy, who has been coined by many as the “grand father of sabermetrics” as well as the financial situation which has been well documented.

Both trying to tell hitters how to hit and Alderson emphasizing a certain approach goes directly again what James believes. Whoever is correct one could argue, but the fact is that Sandy is doing things his mentor wouldn’t. Has Sandy evolved beyond James? It’s possible too.

But we must take into account that Sandy is also instituting an organizational mind-set instead of letting his coaches and minor league personnel concentrate on the unique characteristics of each hitter. Terry and Hudgens told Ike to go back to his aggressive style of first pitch swinging when wanted to – despite whatever his first pitch swinging stats might show (they were presented and though my recollection might be wrong, I think it showed he was a poor first pitch hitter compared to others) the point is allowing him to go back to his aggressive type of hitting allowed him to be more comfortable and confident at the plate in his overall at-bat – it wasn’t what he did on the first pitch but how it got him to feel. I won’t get involved with the Kirk issue because I am only an “observer” and don’t how much of what has been said is from knowledge or innuendo – but that, along with Ojeda’s emphasis on how the Mets were telegraphing to the opposing pitcher they were not going to be aggressive on the first pitch – I believe shows a misunderstanding of what James through his statistical analysis wanted to show – which is what causes things to have happened but not an athletic training primer on how to get that to happen. He said, each individual is different.

That is different than being taught plate discipline – to be able to distinguish as best as possible those deceptive pitches that are going to drop out of the strike zone – or even fall in – , etc. Your guess is as good as mine but I think better minor league coaching throughout the system in that form of batting eye discipline could very well be the cause of the increased walks – not a team methodology.

>>Now Bill James knows the limitations of one going by statistical analysis and his responses to those last three questions are the complete opposite of what Sandy is taking it upon himself to do. James knew not to interfere in areas he wasn’t qualified to – should not Sandy – who admitted he knew nothing of the game when he came to Oakland (and learned through the study of James and others) heed the same advice?

………

>>And that is the point many of us have been making about Sandy’s lack of professional expertise – and something Bill James has no problem recognizing in himself. Thus the questions about Sandy’s qualifications and the credit attributed to him for the past. Bill James has NEVER been a general manager or an assistant general – only a special assistant – so there are limitations to what he can and cannot do (as admitted above).

With all due respect, the problem is not with Alderson, it is with many of you who frankly haven’t taken the time to understand what is happening with the Mets or in the case of some would just rather rage than look at the facts.

As I mentioned up above, Alderson admits to reading and approving of much of what James wrote but he never hired him or said he based his philosophy on him. Indeed, I said that Alderson hired his own stats guy, Eric Walker, who put a premium on OBP as a key to success.

Far too many people misinterpret that to mean that all Alderson cares about is walks. That would be, stupid. Not to mention wrong. Do you want proof? Okay, proof you get.

One of the first moves Alderson made when he got to the Mets was to install Dave Hudgens as hitting coach. Do you know where Hudgens got his start as a hitting instructor? Under GM Sandy Alderson of the Oakland A’s in 1991. And his philosophy was to “hunt” for your pitch and not swing at pitchers pitches. Guess what, it works and the players by and large like it.

>>“Hunt your pitch,” he tells his players.
“We want to do damage in the middle of the plate.”
“If he doesn’t give you that pitch? We’re walking to first base.”

>>In the first year of Alderson’s reign, the Mets offense raised their collective on-base percentage 21 points from the year before and vaulted from 14th in the National League to second in that category. They went from the team third-most prone to swing at a pitch outside the strike zone to the second-least. Both Alderson and manager Terry Collins had lauded Hudgens for his influence.

>>In the process, the team established the sort of offensive identity lacking in years prior. The misconception about improving on-base skills is the process relies on passivity, on cowards willing to pass on pitch after pitch in search of the almighty walk.
Hudgens shakes his head at that notion. He traffics in aggression. His players verify this.
“We never sat down and had this ‘Moneyball’ discussion, like we’re going to walk and we’re going to take,” outfielder Jason Bay said. “It was never brought up.”
Instead, Hudges looked to train hunters. One day recently, a reporter mentioned the practice to second baseman Daniel Murphy.
“Hunt? Is that what you said?” Murphy’s eyes almost twinkled. “That’s a very good description.”

http://www.nj.com/mets/index.ssf/2012/03/mets_hitting_coach_dave_hudgen_1.html

As the kids say, read it all. Its interesting and unlike a bunch of guys arguing on the internet, factual.

What’s even more important, this approach is being spread throughout the Mets organization, from A to AAA ball. For the first time in a long time the Mets are taking a consistent approach on to prepare their players from the day they enter the organization right through the majors. This means they don’t constantly have to redo their approach as they progress through the system for each new manager and by the time they hit NY they are well groomed in the approach and need to concentrate only on executing. As we have seen year in and year out, many players are overmatched when they get to the bigs because they have to learn a new approach as well as a new league. Not anymore.

>>Here is a chart of all non-pitching prospects that were ranked in the top 25 of the Amazin’ Avenue Preseason Top 50 Mets prospects, mapping 2012 BB% versus their 2011 figure. Note, players who have appeared in less than 40 games were not included:

>>Of the ten hitters, nine have improved their walk percentage thus far through 2012. And what’s more, that list includes many known free-swingers (e.g. Valdespin, Flores, Lagares).

>>Even more enlightening is that same split, viewed on the team-wide level. For example, in 2009 the Triple-A Buffalo Bisons walked a grand total of 335 times. This season, as they prepare for All-Star festivities they’ve got 339. And they’re not the only ones.

You get that? The Bisons walked more times by the All-Star break than they did in all of 2009. That’s incredible. In fact, if you go to the link you will see that the Mets minor league affiliates from A ball on up have all increased their on base percentage dramatically. That doesn’t happen by accident.

http://www.amazinavenue.com/2012/7/9/3144890/mets-minor-league-walk-rates-on-the-rise

Now you can argue that this is a bad approach and you don’t like Alderson’s approach. Fair enough. But to say he doesn’t know baseball, at least not as well as bunch of knuckleheads like us arguing on the internet, it absurd. He built one of the most iconic franchises in the last half century in the Oakland A’s and also enjoyed great success leading the San Diego Padres. He has been in MLB for nearly 30 years and been has been voted as an Executive of the Year for his success in Oakland.

Alderson’s focus on OBP is just one, albeit a very big one, of his desires. He also brought in some big hitters and stud pitchers in Oakland to augment his teams. Of course, they had money and as we all (hopefully) understand by now, we do not.

But you have to start somewhere and almost any player can learn to be more patient and selective at the plate. Those that do become better players for the most part. Those that don’t will probably not stick around.