Will the real D Backs please stand up ?

by shoewizard on Jun 15, 2008 2:22 PM EDT Comment 23 comments

Sorry for the cross post, but I assume not everyone here reads DBBP

First 17 G,, 13-4, .281/.364/.496 .860 OPS, 112 runs, or 6.6 R/G

Next 24 G, 13-11 .265/.336/.425 .761 OPS, 116 runs, or 4.8 R/G

Next 28 G, 11-17 .216/.302/.378 .680 OPS,, 99 runs, or 3.5 R/G

Obviously some of this has to do with schedule. (.819 home OPS, 689 road OPS) But not all of it. In the first stretch they had 8 home games and 9 away games. In the second stretch they had 16 home games and 8 away games. And in the most recent 28 G stretch they've had 11 home games and 17 away games. Overall they've played 35 home, 34 road.

They've slowed down hitting at home too.

In the 3 Game Detroit series they scored just 10 runs and had a .579 OPS
In the last 6 Game home stand they scored just 22 runs and had a .740 OPS
And of course in the last 2 games vs. KC they have scored just 4 runs in 19 innings.

***In their last 11 HOME GAMES the D backs have scored just 34 runs, or barely over 3 per game, and have scored more than 4 runs just 1 time in their last 11 home games.***

So much for home sweet home.

Last years team had one comparable offensive slump, from April 21st through May 18th,

25 G, .232/.304/.376 .680 OPS, 85 runs, 3.4 R/G
However that team managed to go 12-13 during that stretch. And I don't see a Mark Reynolds on the Horizon to come up from AA to jump start the offense.

But.......... maybe Eric Byrnes will come back in the next few days, rejuvenated and on a hot streak, and jump start this team. Seriously.....it's up to him to be the sparkplug. If there was ever a time where this team needed to look to their inspirational leader and highest paid position player to help pull them out of a funk, THIS IS THE TIME.

As goes Eric Byrnes, so go the Diamondbacks. This is his team.

Go Eric!!

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Is there a date yet on his return?

"D'backs" means seatbelts! "D'backs" means crash positions!

by soco on Jun 15, 2008 2:27 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

My guess is Tuesday

But still no official word. Definitely not playing today.

by shoewizard on Jun 15, 2008 3:11 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

You guys bash Brynes all day long, and you want him to save us?

I do what I can, sometimes more, depends on the situation.

by srdmad on Jun 15, 2008 5:40 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

at this point

I’d pee on a spark plug if I thought it would help the team win.

A baseball game is simply a nervous breakdown divided into nine innings. ~Earl Wilson

by unnamedDBacksfan on Jun 15, 2008 6:39 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

We bash him

because he wasn’t performing. If he’d perform, we wouldn’t bash him. Shoe wants him to perform. It’s that simple.

There’s nothing inherently contradictory about it. Byrnes isn’t paid in our adoration, he’s paid in dollars, and he’s going to be making the dollars either way.

Have the Dodgers lost yet?

by DbacksSkins on Jun 15, 2008 11:13 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

To be fair

there seems to be signifcantly more for him than any other player. Part of that will be the salary talking, but if there’s one guy people love to shit on around here besides Melvin, it’s Byrnes.

Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads.

by soco on Jun 16, 2008 12:08 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I know why you guys bash him. But asking him to save the team is stupid, because you do bash him.

It would be like hating Bill Gates and then wanting him to give you money.

I do what I can, sometimes more, depends on the situation.

by srdmad on Jun 16, 2008 9:20 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Actually it's not Byrnes I bash

It’s the extension. Byrnes is just a ballplayer doing the best he can. Many fans overrate him, and are unable to differentiate style from substance, so many disputes arise when discussing him, and those that overrate him call those with a more realistic viewpoint of Byrnes names such as “bashers” and “haters”, or even better….”stupid”.

The fact is he was considered by the organization to be a key player, a main cog, and so they gave him a 3 year extension. I am a D Back fan, and I want them to win. Wanting Eric Byrnes to prove me and all the other people who felt that signing him to that 3 year deal wrong is not stupid at all. I’d rather be wrong about Eric Byrnes, and he hit a ton when he comes back, and propels the D Backs to the playoffs. Thats a lot more fun than being right about how stupid a move it was on the part of ownership to sign him for PR reasons.

by shoewizard on Jun 16, 2008 9:50 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Bash the extension, fine,

but if someone is going to bash Brynes, then I think you should be ripping on some other guys too.

I do what I can, sometimes more, depends on the situation.

by srdmad on Jun 16, 2008 10:40 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

It's all about expectations

We all have different expectations, and we view, debate,and argue these matters through the lens of our own expectations. No wonder we all debate so much. If we all expected the same things going in, it really wouldn’t be hard to determine later whether an individual player or the team as a whole were meeting expectations or not.

Of course I believe that some of us are better able to set realistic expectations that have a chance to somewhat resemble future reality better than others. ;-)

Based on MY expectations, the only other hitter on the team that has seriously underperformed expectations that I had is Chris Young. His year to date numbers are well below what I expected in terms of BA/OBP/SLG .
But he is still young enough to improve, and even though he got a long “buyout” contract, his contract is never going to be “unmovable” if they decide to trade him. So I am inclined to be a lot more patient with him.

Take a look at my post in this thread, Projected vs. Actual

http://www.azsnakepit.com/2008/6/15/552460/will-the-real-d-backs-plea

by shoewizard on Jun 16, 2008 11:17 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

How many others

are paid 30 million dollars though?

A baseball game is simply a nervous breakdown divided into nine innings. ~Earl Wilson

by unnamedDBacksfan on Jun 16, 2008 11:30 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

The only reason the young guys

are not getting paid as much as Brynes is because, they are still on those cheap contracts they got when they were prospects.

I do what I can, sometimes more, depends on the situation.

by srdmad on Jun 17, 2008 9:02 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

And if...

They have as average a career as Byrnes had at the point when we signed him to a long-term extensions, I trust we will not repeat the mistake and sign them for $10m/year. That said, the Chris Young lock-in is looking hardly a great deal better than the Tulo deal right now, is it?

by Jim McLennan on Jun 18, 2008 2:34 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I don't know, what were the years and money?

I do what I can, sometimes more, depends on the situation.

by srdmad on Jun 18, 2008 7:29 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

If my tongue was any further against my cheek wall

It would have popped through the other side.

by shoewizard on Jun 16, 2008 2:14 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Stats to this point

Not including today’s game, so comparing the first 69 games this year and last:
2008: .249/.330/.424, 327 runs
2007: .249/.316/.402, 288 runs
So, we’re batting exactly the same, but are taking more walks and slugging a bit better. This has, to no great surprise, resulted in Arizona scoring 0.57 runs/game more.

Now, on the pitching side:
2008: 3.74 ERA, 1.25 WHIP, 296 runs, .245/.312/.378
2007: 3.73 ERA, 1.36 WHIP, 281 runs, .255/.331/.397
We have basically the same ERA, a significantly lower WHIP, and opponents are doing less well right across the board. But we have still conceded fifteen more runs.

This is explained almost perfectly by the much greater number of unearned runs allowed – 41 so far this season, only 25 last year. While I can’t find fielding logs to check the exact errors, I do note that our fielding percentage of .980 is only three-thousandths down on last season’s .983. Atlanta have made almost the same number of errors as us (one more, at 107), but those have resulted in…yep, 25 unearned runs. I think our defense has, to some extent, been unlucky with the errors they’ve allowed, which appear to have more chance than you’d expect of resulting in additional runs.

One final point. Stolen bases. At this point last year, we had 25 successful attempts, in 36 total. So far in 2008, we have 24 in 34. So, despite what it seems, and despite the injury to Byrnes, we are thus far almost matching exactly the pace from 2007. It remains to be seen whether Melvin will turn up the accelerator after the All-Star break, as he did last year, where then number of successful SBs increased every month from April until the end of the regular season.

by Jim McLennan on Jun 16, 2008 12:49 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

If only they could hit their season averages

The problem is they have not hit anything resembling their season averages for over a month.

by shoewizard on Jun 16, 2008 2:15 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

They weren't far off in May

.244/.328/.402 – and if you add the April 30th game, it improves to .248/.330/.413. Do agree that the past month has been dismal [.214/.299 /374], but I just don’t see Upton batting .114 the rest of the way, as he did the past month. Getting rid of the two-headed Burke-Romero monster [10-for-58, or .172, in the past four weeks] will also help. Byrnes can’t be any worse, can he. Can he? Hello? Is this thing on? ;-)

by Jim McLennan on Jun 16, 2008 3:22 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Projected vs. Actual

Here is how they stand against my OPS projections so far

Starters

Player Projected Actual +/- Projected
C-Snyder .749 .799 +50
1b-Jackson .877 .903 +26
2b-Hudson .778 .841 +63
3b-Reynolds . 797 .840 +43
SS- Drew .785 .775 10
LF Byrnes .763 .673 90
CF Young .806 .729 -77
RF-Upton .708 .796 +88

Bench

Montero .787 .692 -95
Tracy .772 .746 -26
Ojeda .643 .816 +173
Burke .713 .489 -224
Salazar .672 .729 +57

Team ttl .753 .750 -3

Projected Runs per game: 4.70, Actual Runs per Game 4.71

Projected runs allowed 4.38/G, Actual Runs per Game 4.34/

Projected Wins 84. Current pace: 85.6

So, we’ve gotten here by a far more circuitous route than I would have imagined, but if I am to remain true to my own projections and expectations, this team is virtually EXACTLY where I expected them to be, with shocking accuracy. (In aggregate….even though many of the individual projections are off at this point)

Normally as the summer progresses, league wide run scoring goes up. So we should expect both the runs scored and runs allowed to increase going forward, which would put my projections out of whack with reality. I don’t expect my projections to remain this “accurate” by the end of the year…....

by shoewizard on Jun 16, 2008 4:41 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Selective beging and end points

We are all guilty of using them of course. However, personally, I prefer to look at the game logs and see where actual performance started to shift in one direction or another, and use that as my demarcation point, as opposed to the line in the sand that the “month by month” dictates.

If you go back to the first post, there really are 3 distinct “periods” of performance so far this season, that don’t necessarily line up with with the months. The first period was great, the second period was pretty much league average, maybe slightly above, and the third period has been piss poor. The third period does indeed span a month….it just happens to be from mid May to mid June. So looking at the numbers for May doesn’t tell me as much about how the team is both performing and trending, as it does to look at the numbers from when the shift in performance actually occurred.

Does this make sense to you? I’m not sure I am explaining it right.

Let me give another example…...

If you look at last years month to month won loss record, one might assume the 2007 D backs were a remarkably consistent team. In fact, they were anything but. They were streaky as hell. The streaks just didn’t happen to line up “properly” with the calendar months.

by shoewizard on Jun 16, 2008 11:25 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Yeah Jim, it's a pretty advanced concept

Let me see if this illustration helps you understand better.

Let’s say someone, we’ll call him “S”, published 2008 seasonal projections and then trumpeted those derivitive projections less than halfway thru the season, at the EXACT moment when the aggregate rate stats happened to most closely resemble his seasonal guesses.

That would be an example of a ‘selective endpoint.”

I hope I’m explaining it right :-)

by Diamondhacks on Jun 17, 2008 3:23 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Cue

Dhacks vs. DBBP sniping.

Have the Dodgers lost yet?

by DbacksSkins on Jun 18, 2008 3:19 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

For such a smart guy, why can't you read

So here is the last paragraph of my post above, once again, for you, since you seem so challenged in your ability to read an entire post and avoid parsing words and distorting content:

Normally as the summer progresses, league wide run scoring goes up. So we should expect both the runs scored and runs allowed to increase going forward, which would put my projections out of whack with reality. I don’t expect my projections to remain this "accurate" by the end of the year…..

I mean seriously…........must you go THIS far out of your way to pick a fight….........again?

by shoewizard on Jun 17, 2008 3:31 AM EDT reply actions 1 recs