JJ Hardy optioned to AAA- Latest: Per McCalvy, JJ will be left at AAA and add another year before free agency

[TheCrew07]

"Not Ready" is just an opinion that cannot be proven. It's pretty clear that Escobar has the talent to hit MLB pitching, people turned readiness into a debate about production when compared to Hardy, and one has nothing to do with the other. X's take about Escobar being more valuable at 28 than he will be at 22 is a valid concern that the team should address via contract extension.

 

If Young can move to 3B for Andrus, then Hardy could have been moved in favor of Escobar. Alcides wasn't rushed to the big leagues and is plenty capable of putting up a similar line to what Andrus did. If Hardy hadn't struggled most would probably still be on the "Escobar isn't ready" bandwagon, even though one has nothing to do with the other. If Hardy performed or didn't perform all that was going to happen by him playing in Milwaukee this season would be that his trade value goes down the closer he gets to FA. The same thing that will happen with Prince unless a bidding war breaks out for his services.

[Eddiehitsthefoulpole]

This argument reminds me a bit of the Brett Favre argument, it is becoming emotional. There are big JJ Hardy fans who post on this board who would like to see JJ here for the next 10 years. Then there are people who are anti-JJ or are Alcides Escobar fans who want to see Alcides start for the next 10 years. The arguments are starting to de-evolve from the provable. I think that we are lucky to have both shortstops. I like JJ, but I think it is time to go with Alcides because, for the time being, it will save us money. I also like that Alcides provides a dimension of speed that we lack. Next year, if we bat Rickie lead-off and Alcides 2nd we could force pitchers to throw a lot more fastballs to Ryan and Prince because of our speed on the bases in front of them.

[brewizard]

I blame Melvin for this whole JJ situation for this reason, it was obvious that a decision had to be made between JJ and Escobar before this season and Melvin never made that decision. JJ has been looking over his back for Escobar and has not been able to focus due to this. Melvin needed to sign JJ long term and trade Escobar or trade JJ before the season. Now we have Hardy knowing he is a goner and that cant help his play. Therefore my only logical conclusion is to blame Melvin for JJ having a bad year.

 

I agree wholeheartedly! This is what I've been saying since last offseason when Melvin failed to make a move.

 

Hardy has sucked this year. I find his lousy play to be sort of pathetic.

 

But I find all the schadenfreude from the fan base to be much more pathetic.

[Invader3K]

I don't get why Hardy moving to 3B keeps getting brought up...sure, I guess it was a possible option, but it's not like we haven't gotten great production from McGehee and Counsell over there. Plus that would have blocked Gamel down the road.

 

As far as "shadenfreude", I don't think anyone genuinely hates Hardy or wants him to fail...it's just his season has been quite disappointing, as noted, and people were tired of seeing him struggle. I would personally be happy for him if he turns his career around and becomes productive again, but it may as well be with a new team at this point. Kind of like the situation with Bill Hall.

[sheethead]

I'm not sold on Hardy's misfortune.

[Teatoe993]

I blame Melvin for this whole JJ situation for this reason, it was obvious that a decision had to be made between JJ and Escobar before this season and Melvin never made that decision. JJ has been looking over his back for Escobar and has not been able to focus due to this. Melvin needed to sign JJ long term and trade Escobar or trade JJ before the season. Now we have Hardy knowing he is a goner and that cant help his play. Therefore my only logical conclusion is to blame Melvin for JJ having a bad year.

 

If Weeks struggles next year I will blame Melvin for drafting Lawrie and putting him at 2B. Poor Rickie the adult professional baseball player won't be able to focus on his job at all because of the accumulating pressure that his boss put on him by drafting another person who has the potential to take his job. What Melvin should have done was to sign Royce Clayton and Delino DeShields to minor league deals so Rickie would have the confidence that he was never in danger of being replaced. Because personal feelings should always outweigh improving the ballclub.

[jhart05]

Blame Melvin for the Hardy situation? Essentially blaming Melvin for Hardy forgetting how to hit the ball?

 

I don't understand that at all.

 

So Hardy is so fragile, he couldn't hit because he was worrying about Escobar taking his job? Which I really doubt that he was, but let's just say he was. If that was the case, then I don't think I want a player that mentally insecure of his own abilities on my team in the first place.

 

 

Hardy lost something this year. Whatever that was, I hope he figures it out for his own sake. But he's going to have to do that on another team. Because like it or not, Escobar is here to stay. If for no other reason than he's something like $4M cheaper. (That's $4M they can hopefully spend on pitching.) It's a bonus that he's one of the top prospects in baseball.

[bigredrobbo]

I blame Melvin for this whole JJ situation for this reason, it was obvious that a decision had to be made between JJ and Escobar before this season and Melvin never made that decision. JJ has been looking over his back for Escobar and has not been able to focus due to this. Melvin needed to sign JJ long term and trade Escobar or trade JJ before the season. Now we have Hardy knowing he is a goner and that cant help his play. Therefore my only logical conclusion is to blame Melvin for JJ having a bad year.

I know they say that rationalization is the second strongest human urge, but come on! Millions of us have had jobs with colleagues who drive you to improve yourself, so why should ballplayers be any different? Are you on speaking terms with JJ and he admitted this, or is it another example of opinion, presented as fact that we see so much? JJ has underperformed, and the new "Higher Fan Expectation Brewers" had to do something about it whereas the "Warm and Fuzzy, Just Happy To Finish 4th in the Division Brewers" of 2004, might have treated him differently.

 

This whole situation has created some major dilemmas for some here. You can't have a winner's mindset and a small-market, everyone's family here, mindset without causing some conflict IMO.

 

As a Hardy fan, I'd prefer him to think "Escobar's not getting my job, let the Brewers trade HIM", by playing like the player we know he can be. He's also the slowest non-chunky guy I think I've ever seen, which is maybe something he could work on, if, as he claims, his arms are feeling the brunt of all these extra cuts he's been taking.

[Invader3K]

Hardy lost something this year. Whatever that was, I hope he figures it out for his own sake. But he's going to have to do that on another team. Because like it or not, Escobar is here to stay. If for no other reason than he's something like $4M cheaper. (That's $4M they can hopefully spend on pitching.) It's a bonus that he's one of the top prospects in baseball.

 

This is exactly how the Brewers need to operate going forward. They need to be more ruthless with their players and more efficient with their salaries. Hopefully keeping Hardy down the minimum of 20 days, and trading Hall to the Mariners, signals a change in philosophy for the organization as a whole. While the fans may not like it, more frequent roster turnover and promoting young cheaper players, then spending the savings on pitching and the like, may be the only way the Brewers can compete in a division with the Cubs and Cardinals.

[Brawndo the Thirst Mutilat]

 

Cabrera's oppourtunities have been fairly consistent during the timeframe as have his innings played and have varied nowhere near as wildly as the UZR rating or UZR/150 rating.

 

I guess I needed to make the point of my post much more obvious. What I'm trying to say is that volatility is not, in and of itself, a reason to dismiss a statistic as though it isn't measuring anything. Once you account for the fact that in a given season, a position player gets countless more ABs than he gets non-routine fielding opps (the kind that differentiate between good and bad fielders), you see that batting average is at least as volatile as UZR, but you don't hear anybody arguing it's a useless stat as a consequence of that volatility.

[sgtcluels]

And Hardy gets another start today.

[MJLiverock]

 

Cabrera's oppourtunities have been fairly consistent during the timeframe as have his innings played and have varied nowhere near as wildly as the UZR rating or UZR/150 rating.

 

I guess I needed to make the point of my post much more obvious. What I'm trying to say is that volatility is not, in and of itself, a reason to dismiss a statistic as though it isn't measuring anything. Once you account for the fact that in a given season, a position player gets countless more ABs than he gets non-routine fielding opps (the kind that differentiate between good and bad fielders), you see that batting average is at least as volatile as UZR, but you don't hear anybody arguing it's a useless stat as a consequence of that volatility.

Volatility of that magnitude makes me question how accurate the stat is or how good the information really is, espeically when it is as subjecitve as defensive ability which in reality isn't likely to vary huge amounts from year to year. These defensive metrics are used to compute things like WAR which throws a whole other layer of subjectivity by using a mythical replacement level palyer and a fudge factor for position played. All of these non empiral "measurements" lead to a dilution of the accuracy of the stat and its predictive nature. Batting average is pretty simple hits or outs. The only thing open to interpretation is the occasional error vs. hit in the scorekeeper's judgement a much more observable measurement than all the guess work and fudge factoring going on with WAR calculations and defensive metrics. That is the crux of my problem with the use of WAR as a the be all end all of player evaluation or saying who is better or what to pay a guy that some of these arguements delve into. Stats like WAR and UZR get thrown around like they are the gospel of valuations and in fact have plenty of holes and do not definitively prove anything.

 

Cabrera's UZR rating has vacilated from being the worst (or very near it) in the league, to the best, back to the worst, back to good. That would be like a players's seasonal batting average going from .350 to .220 to .360 to .230 back to .300

[Ennder]

WAR is a result based stat, not a predictive one, that is the biggest flaw with it if you are trying to use it to actually compare the 'true' talent of players.

 

UZR does require more than one full season to really represent talent levels though. Of course so does AVG, I find it very strange that someone would point to AVG as a meaningful stat over one season considering it fluctuates wildly year to year for most players and is as much a function as BABIP as anything else over a single season worth of AB.

[MJLiverock]

I didn't bring up AVG, it was used as a strawman against my point. I did say it is actually measurable and will say it doesn't fluctate nearly as much as the UZR rating in my example of Cabrera. Sure batting average moves around but Jason Kendall isn't going to suddenly hit .350 next year no matter how much we hope. Players batting avereges don't move from league leader to worst in the league to best in the leage to worst in the league back to the top of the league from year to year.

 

I know WAR isn't predictive but it is used sometimes to say player X is better than Player Y or we can get rid of this guy and add this guy because the WAR only changes by half a win. Those are the comparison I meant.

[brewjihad]

Over 200 at bats, average fluctuates just as much as UZR-- and if you accept that based on opportunities it takes 3 years for accurate defensive data, you're looking at about 200 "at-bats" worth of defensive stats. Further, you're comparing to an average. So the average batting average is .260. If a guy hits .240, .280, and .260 over the first, second, and third set of 200 at-bats he's an average hitter for the season. Think of defense that way-- if a guy is -5, +5, 0 over three years, he's probably about average.

[Brawndo the Thirst Mutilat]

I didn't bring up AVG, it was used as a strawman against my point.

Like fun it was, or I don't have the foggiest clue what a strawman argument is. Your point, if I'm not mistaken, was that one particular player, out of the hundreds of players in MLB, has had wildly fluctuating UZRs from one year to the next. All I did was point out that if that is your standard for the validity of a metric, you'd better throw batting average out the window right quick.

 

Anyway, I'm done trying to defend Fangraphs' WAR or UZR on this site. For half a decade, it's been somewhat of a tragedy that cutting edge valuation measurements weren't freely available on the net. Dave Cameron & co. have done a wonderful thing by making the best of them freely available, and by making their derivation more transparent and peer reviewable than BP or anybody else ever dreamed of doing, and yet citing these numbers still illicits heaps of indignation and scorn even on a site with as relatively intelligent a level of discourse as this one.

 

If you want to talk about a strawman argument, howsabout the idea that anybody stated that WAR was the "end all be all" of anything? I don't think anybody other than its detractors described it in any such fashion anywhere in this thread.

[TheCrew07]

I don't get why Hardy moving to 3B keeps getting brought up...sure, I guess it was a possible option, but it's not like we haven't gotten great production from McGehee and Counsell over there. Plus that would have blocked Gamel down the road.

I wasn't talking about "moved" as in to a different position, I meant moved as in traded for pitching. I still find it odd that I'm defending Escobar yet again... where's a true Escobar supporter like Mass Hass when I need him.

 

The point is Escobar is going to give us all he's capable of. Right now he doesn't hit for enough power or walk enough, but he'll hit .275-.300, steal some bases, play good D, and has a cannon for an arm. He has his warts, but he's a pretty fantastic 4 tool prospect. He'll likely struggle early here, but he'll come around, he always makes adjustments... Looking at his frame he could add 25-35 LBs of muscle pretty easily without affecting his quickness or speed, in fact he could actually pick up a step if he trained properly. Will he work in the weight room to become a better all around hitter/player? I have no idea, if he doesn't then he was as ready as he's ever going to be this off season, he just hasn't made significant strides with his BB rate nor is he ready to hit for power. He may need to be humbled a bit by MLB pitching to change his ways, then again, maybe he never will.

 

Escobar doesn't have to hit like JJ did in 2008 to be a viable alternative, he never did. Both Escobar and the mythical pitcher Hardy would have been traded for just needed to provide more WAR than Hardy did by himself to make trading Hardy worthwhile. I had no idea Hardy would stink, I thinking he was a 4ish WAR player, so both Escobar and the pitcher had to be a little bit better than that combined for the team to be better. The offense wouldn't have been better, but the team could have been, and sometimes I think people around here get way too hung up on player vs player comparisons instead of comparing team vs team. Maybe I'm way off base here but shouldn't we be building for the best possible team? Getting the best possible player at each position doesn't necessarily provide the best the team, and I think this situation illustrates that point perfectly.

 

For example, for the sake of argument, say Escobar is a 2 WAR player and Hardy is a 4 WAR player. Hardy is 2 WAR upgrade over Escobar... let's say Hardy is traded for a 3 WAR pitcher. Escobar and the pitcher would be worth 5 WAR together. Hardy is clearly the superior player at his position, but isn't 5 WAR better than 4 WAR? It's entirely possible to down grade 1 position but become a better team overall.

 

I'm honestly not sure how else to explain it, I'm not one to get caught up in player vs. player at any given position, I'm interested in the best possible team WAR. I'm not talking about moving players all over the diamond and playing them out of position, I'm talking about making strategic moves here and there that don't look like much on the surface but improve the overall quality of the team. I think comparing Hardy to Escobar is extremely superficial, and in doing so people miss the big picture.

(edit: fixed small font --1992)

[Diskono]

One of the big limitations of UZR is that it adjusts to new season averages every year. Here's an article that talks about this (which mentions Cabrera):

 

http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2009/8/15/990174/uzrs-and-most-other-defensive

[Thurston Fluff]

You know how sucky Hardy played this year? Basically his complete fall off? That's the expectation for Escobar right now.

 

So on one hand you say Hardy was worth 6ish Million because his defensive value is so high but on the other Escobar is not going to be any better because he will not be any better than Hardy on offense? IF Hardy is worth 6 million this year Escobar putting up the same offensive numbers would be worth more.

 

you see that batting average is at least as volatile as UZR, but you don't hear anybody arguing it's a useless stat as a consequence of that volatility.

 

I think the person using UZR in his claim about Hardy's worth would be the first to tell you batting average is pretty much a useless stat. The use of batting average level stats int he calculation of a players worth is partially why I think the value using it to tell us he was worth 22 million last year and 6 this is off base.

[endaround]

No Escobar wouldn't be better then Hardy defensively.

[olliegjw]

No Escobar wouldn't be better then Hardy defensively.

Does this mean all Escobar's are better than Hardy defensively?

[Thurston Fluff]

No Escobar wouldn't be better then Hardy defensively.

 

Thank you for the insight but I'll go by the people in baseball including Melvin who has said Escobar is a once in generation type of defensive shortstop and the plethora of scouts, including Jack Z., who say he is top notch over your personal opinions if you don't mind. I might even take my own sight over yours if that's all right with you.

[MJLiverock]

One of the big limitations of UZR is that it adjusts to new season averages every year. Here's an article that talks about this (which mentions Cabrera):

 

http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2009/8/15/990174/uzrs-and-most-other-defensive

Thanks for the link, excellent article and underlying comments pointing out basically my contention with the use of UZR and WAR.

 

And Brawndo-

A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.^{[1][/sup] To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.[1][/sup] [2]}

[/sup]

This is basically your very argument of brining in Batting Average and using claims against it to refute my arguement about UZR. You introduced a totally other stat that I never even mentioned to argue my points on UZR.

 

 

As I was driving home last night I thought of this final point on the matter and the article above seems to bring it up as well as a few posts here. If UZR and defensive metrics are so limited by small samples why does anyone take small samples like this seriously? And finally, why are the samples so small? In the Cabrera numbers his put outs and assists were around 600, certainly not that small of a sample. Is the stat then measuring only certain plays like out of zone? or great plays? or limited by the number of chances at OOZ plays? If so isn't the real output of the stat then a function of chances of OOZ plays or for great plays and not really a measure of true defensive ability but a measure of converting tough plays into outs varying by the sheer luck of number of chances?

 

That article and subsequent comments certainly pointed out a number of questions with the stat and made me feel fine with my belief that I still don't trust the stat all that much which was were I started until the whole, "how can anyone question the reliability of a stat" thing started. I picked Cabrera because he was the guy that jumped off the page when I was looking at SS UZR from year to year. I found it odd a player would fluctuate between being the best defender at his position and the worst defender from year to year given defensive ability isn't really luck driven unless of course you are measuring chances at great plays or OOZ plays. In Cabrera's case his UZR wasn't going -5 to 0 to +5 he was going -19 to +19.

[Thurston Fluff]

I think out of zone plays made has some value but it is so limited that using it to tell us the defensive value of a player is akin to using batting average to tell us the true value of a players offensive value. Out of zone plays can also be deceiving. It tells us the relative range a player may have but a player who continually has more out of range plays might just be poor at judging where to be in the first place. Defensive measures are fine in a narrow scope and all taken together may tell us something of the overall defense but I don't think any of them are nearly as comprehensive as some of the offensive stats are that we can use any single one of them to get anywhere near true value like we can by eyeballing a single stat like OPS and get a general idea.

[kramnoj]

In the Cabrera numbers his put outs and assists were around 600, certainly not that small of a sample

 

Jason Giambi could play SS and get some of those outs. The sample decreases because the amount of meaningful plays is smaller to a significant degree.

 

Why do people who use it treat it seriously? Because even flawed PBP data is better than the anecdotal evidence of "I saw this guy a couple of times and he made some bad plays".

 

I like to look at UZR, but it is by no means definitive. Tango has an article where he talks about UZR and WAR, and in the comments section he mentions that WAR uses a mixture of UZR, Dewan's stats, and the Fans Scouting Report. I don't know if that's the same WAR that we see at fangraphs or an end of the season one, but that was news to me.