Brewers player grades

[MNBrew]

Its a slippery slope when you argue that Prince should have had more RBI like the other guys on the team. While Prince was taking walks from the cleanup spot, Casey and Corey took advantage of him being on base 40% of the time and knocked in all those clutch RBI hits. If Prince had a .400 OBP guy in front of him, he might have been a little more "clutch" himself.

 

Also, I find these two points to be a bit confusing. The first point seems to imply that Prince's year should be evaluated with his role as cleanup hitter and 1b as one of the main criteria. The first point seems to totally dismiss the fact that Kottaras is being evaluated in his role as backup catcher. The fact that offensively he "contributes little positively to the team through his performance" BESIDES walks and homeruns doesnt seem relevant. If he walks enough and homers enough to positivley contribute offensively, we can't be too upset. Walks and homers are a big part of scoring runs, so a backup catcher capable of these two things is a nice commodity. His defense is another story.

1. It's not a slippery slope at all. What I was getting at was that he hit very poorly w/ RISP and he drove in 58 fewer runs than in '09, and for your cleanup hitter, that kind of dropoff isn't good at all. Simply put, when Prince didn't draw walks, he was failing at a high rate to drive in runs. RISP totals & walks are mutually exclusive except when you walk w/ the bases loaded.

 

Stereotypically, the primary job of the cleanup hitter is to drive in runs. Prince's poor RISP means he didn't do as good of a job at that as he should've. His 32 HRs and 114 BBs (and consequent .401 OBP) were strong numbers. But his .261 BA is very pedestrian. . . . Prince basically wasn't very good in the clutch, so I don't see how you can suggest that would've changed w/ a .400 OBP guy in front of him.

 

Bottom line: Prince's offensive year had great & bad in it. His defense wasn't very good. Net result: I can go along w/ the JS guys' B- grade.

 

2. Kottaras' 9 HRs and 33 BB helped the team, to be sure. But otherwise the guy was a black hole on offense. I'm not going to be satisfied at all if the best the backup catcher can hit is .200 -- esp. when he still starts nearly 25% of the games (Wolf's starts plus a couple other games here & there). My point was that there were more far things that Lucroy did well than Kottaras, which is why I think it's ridiculous to suggest that Kottaras deserved a better grade than Lucroy solely because he had a better OPS.

 

But a point you're missing is that when Zaun went down, Kottaras was the starting catcher. His poor

offense couldn't offset his terrible defense, so much so that he lost

his starting job to a guy essentially just up from AA. Kottaras' overall offensive totals aren't that far off from Henry Blanco's last year in Milwaukee, which the team viewed at the time as so lousy that, in spite of his great defense, he wasn't worth keeping around. Blanco had about 350 PAs that year compared to Kottaras' 250.

 

Also, what I said was, "other than hitting a few HRs and taking some walks, Kottaras contributes

little positively to the team through his performance both offensively

& defensively." I was talking about the sum total of his performance. You misconstrued it as an evaluation just of his offense. Even if I meant just his offense, I still hold that a little power without a major-league worthy BA is not good enough, regardless. The whopping 9 HRs were nice. But all in all, I believe the grade of a D that the JS guys gave Kottaras is very appropriate.

[MNBrew]

Homer & I have stated different things to prove our respective positions. You disagree but don't support your position. So in the spirit of good discussion -- and using your logic -- prove it.

 

What position do you think I hold? I already stated that anything that happens in a baseball game is going to be reflected in a stat. I didn't say that Player A's stats will reflect their entire contribution to the game. If you thought I did, you made an assumption.

 

If Hoffman helped others in the bullpen, it would be reflected in their stats. If the journalists see this, than it should be documented and referenced. If the Brewers recognize this, they should try to put a value on it and offer Hoffman a salary commensurate with his value as an assistant pitching coach/traveling consultant.

You're saying that everything can be found in stats. It comes off that you're implying that since you have stats, there's no additional credibility to the perspective the beat writers have by watching the players play everyday -- or no perspective to be gained that's not already evident in stats. Maybe that's not what you mean. But if it is, I simply think that's a flawed perspective.

[Ennder]

Homer & I have stated different things to prove our respective positions. You disagree but don't support your position. So in the spirit of good discussion -- and using your logic -- prove it.

 

What position do you think I hold? I already stated that anything that happens in a baseball game is going to be reflected in a stat. I didn't say that Player A's stats will reflect their entire contribution to the game. If you thought I did, you made an assumption.

 

If Hoffman helped others in the bullpen, it would be reflected in their stats. If the journalists see this, than it should be documented and referenced. If the Brewers recognize this, they should try to put a value on it and offer Hoffman a salary commensurate with his value as an assistant pitching coach/traveling consultant.

You're saying that everything can be found in stats. It comes off that you're implying that since you have stats, there's no additional credibility to the perspective the beat writers have by watching the players play everyday -- or no perspective to be gained that's not already evident in stats. Maybe that's not what you mean. But if it is, I simply think that's a flawed perspective.

The perspective that beat writers have are so flawed that they are useless. Things like hitting with RISP are borderline random as has been proven over and over with stats. When you start judging players by things like RBI you have lost all credibility and your opinion becomes moot.

[MNBrew]

The perspective that beat writers have are so flawed that they are useless. It isn't a flawed perspective it is simple truth. Things like hitting with RISP are borderline random as has been proven over and over with stats. When you start judging players by things like RBI you have lost all credibility and your opinion becomes moot.

Your passion is admirable but your intolerance toward viewpoints other

than your own comes off as sheer arrogance and discredits you.

 

There's more than one way to look at things. "Deeper" or more sophisticated stats prevalently are "the thing" on this board. That's fine. But the notion that some people feel you have to be an uber-stat-head around here to have any credibility is narrow-minded and limits some opportunities for thoughtful & intelligent discussion.

 

Success or failure in RISP situations, regardless of their

somewhat-random nature, is still clear fact and therefore is

indisputable. Prince hit .233 in 146 ABs w/ RISP. 146 ABs is substantive enough to reflect a legit trend. Those numbers are just plain bad for your cleanup hitter. If Prince hits better in those situations, the Brewers score more runs, which is ultimately what matters. Then Prince is also on base more, still giving the guys behind him nearly the same RBI chances. Prince's RBI total, while somewhat secondary, inevitably improves accordingly.

[TooLiveBrew]

Prince hit .233 in 146 ABs w/ RISP. 146 ABs is substantive enough to reflect a legit trend.

 

Fielder's OPS w/RISP

 

2007: .968

2008: .890

2009: 1.049

2010: .753

 

Career overall OPS: .919

 

There's absolutely no trend, just that in this season's small sample of RISP PAs, he didn't hit as well as he has in years past. The OPS w/RISP list is a Sesame Street "One of these things is not like the others" skit. You can find severe underperformance or overperformance for any player in the league if you seek out a ~150 PA sample.

 

I haven't looked into this at all, but Prince's .451 OBP w/RISP this season suggests pitchers may have been pitching very, very carefully to him & not giving him pitches to drive. If he hadn't gotten on base at an insane clip, I'd have a bigger problem with Prince's results w/RISP. But I'm never going to believe that it's not a very good thing to get on base 45% of the time when there's already at least a runner on second.

[Kricket755]

1. It's not a slippery slope at all. What I was getting at was that he hit very poorly w/ RISP and he drove in 58 fewer runs than in '09, and for your cleanup hitter, that kind of dropoff isn't good at all. Simply put, when Prince didn't draw walks, he was failing at a high rate to drive in runs. RISP totals & walks are mutually exclusive except when you walk w/ the bases loaded.

 

Stereotypically, the primary job of the cleanup hitter is to drive in runs. Prince's poor RISP means he didn't do as good of a job at that as he should've. His 32 HRs and 114 BBs (and consequent .401 OBP) were strong numbers. But his .261 BA is very pedestrian. . . . Prince basically wasn't very good in the clutch, so I don't see how you can suggest that would've changed w/ a .400 OBP guy in front of him.

 

Bottom line: Prince's offensive year had great & bad in it. His defense wasn't very good. Net result: I can go along w/ the JS guys' B- grade.

 

2. Kottaras' 9 HRs and 33 BB helped the team, to be sure. But otherwise the guy was a black hole on offense. I'm not going to be satisfied at all if the best the backup catcher can hit is .200 -- esp. when he still starts nearly 25% of the games (Wolf's starts plus a couple other games here & there). My point was that there were more far things that Lucroy did well than Kottaras, which is why I think it's ridiculous to suggest that Kottaras deserved a better grade than Lucroy solely because he had a better OPS.

 

But a point you're missing is that when Zaun went down, Kottaras was the starting catcher. His poor offense couldn't offset his terrible defense, so much so that he lost his starting job to a guy essentially just up from AA. Kottaras' overall offensive totals aren't that far off from Henry Blanco's last year in Milwaukee, which the team viewed at the time as so lousy that, in spite of his great defense, he wasn't worth keeping around. Blanco had about 350 PAs that year compared to Kottaras' 250.

 

Also, what I said was, "other than hitting a few HRs and taking some walks, Kottaras contributes little positively to the team through his performance both offensively & defensively." I was talking about the sum total of his performance. You misconstrued it as an evaluation just of his offense. Even if I meant just his offense, I still hold that a little power without a major-league worthy BA is not good enough, regardless. The whopping 9 HRs were nice. But all in all, I believe the grade of a D that the JS guys gave Kottaras is very appropriate.

1. I realize the stereotype of a cleanup hitter is to drive in runs. I am not sure that stereotypes carries a lot weight in a baseball argument. Production seems more important. My point was that you may have to step outside the stereotype to realize the positve Prince had on the offense. The slippery slope comes in because Prince was supposedly not as successful due to the small number of RBI in relation to the guys around him. There is logic to that argument, but he created many of RBI oppurtunities for those around him by being on base (Prince scored 94 runs to Casey's 70), so it doesnt seem fair to base an argument on that. A .400 OBP placed directly in front on Prince in the lineup might not have had a direct effect on his performance in the clutch, but he would have had more RBI and we wouldnt be having this discussion. Corey wasn't especially "clutch" this year, but enough chances mean we dont worry about his clutch performance.

 

I don't think anyone was happy with the power Prince put up with RISP this year. He needs to and will improve his power in those spots. With that being said, Prince gets pitched around like few other hitters in baseball. Teams do not pitch to him with RISP. Maybe Prince did labor and chase pitches with men on base. But he could have done far worse than the .450 OBP he put up with RISP. A run is a run. If Prince sacrifices knocking in a few to score a few more, I can get past the stereotype and appreciate that.

 

I would probably put Prince at a B, while understanding a B+ or a B-. The original argument pointed out his B- as one of the few to be overrated on the team. I struggled to see that one, so I am too just stating my opinion. With no criteria for the grading system, I realize we are all just arguing semantics.

 

2. Well, it appears your problem with Kottaras are largely batting average based. If he hit .250 with a .280 OBP, he wouldn't have helped us score more runs, but you might feel a little bit better about that? That argument has been had a million times, so we won't get into that. The triple slash line of .210/.290/.334 with 6 HR's that Blanco put up in 357 PA's is a pretty solid jump down from the .203/.305/.396 with 9 HR's in 250 PA's. Also, in reference to the Blanco situation I dont think that example is relevant in him being so "lousy" that we needed him gone. Paul bako was our starting catcher the following year. He was as bad offensively and significantly worse defensively. The catcher spot was a blackhole since then. I think the organization would bring back Blanco 10 times out of 10 if they could replay it so the argument holds little weight.

 

Time and time again, OBP and Slugging% have been proven as better predictors of runs than batting average. I am not sure why your batting average comfort level is such a big concern. I am not saying I think Kottaras is an upgrade over Lucroy. Defense can not be overlooked. I think the margin may be closer than the D vs. C+ that was given. My point was simply to try to show that Kottaras did have some value, in my opinion. Especially considering low expectations before the year from the catcher spot.

 

Again, these stats are not my way of trying to state this as fact. Its just me trying to show why I have my opinion. Everyone has an opinion on what is valuable/expected of a player in a given year, which is why these grades are fun. I enjoy the thoughtful response. I am looking forward to the off-season.

[danzig6767]

Homer & I have stated different things to prove our respective positions. You disagree but don't support your position. So in the spirit of good discussion -- and using your logic -- prove it.

 

What position do you think I hold? I already stated that anything that happens in a baseball game is going to be reflected in a stat. I didn't say that Player A's stats will reflect their entire contribution to the game. If you thought I did, you made an assumption.

 

If Hoffman helped others in the bullpen, it would be reflected in their stats. If the journalists see this, than it should be documented and referenced. If the Brewers recognize this, they should try to put a value on it and offer Hoffman a salary commensurate with his value as an assistant pitching coach/traveling consultant.

You're saying that everything can be found in stats. It comes off that you're implying that since you have stats, there's no additional credibility to the perspective the beat writers have by watching the players play everyday -- or no perspective to be gained that's not already evident in stats. Maybe that's not what you mean. But if it is, I simply think that's a flawed perspective.

The perspective that beat writers have are so flawed that they are useless. Things like hitting with RISP are borderline random as has been proven over and over with stats. When you start judging players by things like RBI you have lost all credibility and your opinion becomes moot.

They don't write just for guys who spend lots of time reading graphs, spread sheets, studying the 5 new sabermetric stats created, and the countless other data out there that the sabermetric community finds interesting. Even the limited advanced stats they used likely had at least half of their readers looking with partial blank stares. Beat writers aren't going to submit grades followed by a paragraphs full of abbreviations and stats that many fans don't understand nor want a tutorial on what looked like it came from whatever are the popular saber sites of today instead.

 

Those baseball fans that find the stats angle to baseball as interesting as the game itself, they shouldn't be expecting or looking at local papers for that kind of information given local beat writers aren't paid to analyze stats all day so as to get accepting from the advanced stats are everything or you're else you're in the stone age folks. The net already seems to have numerous sites dedicating to studying numbers 24/7 and creating new stats.

 

I have couple of friends who love the Brewers as i do and so does my daughter boyfriend. We go to games sometime or talk the Brewers. While i personally understand some of the countless advanced stats put on this site, none of the other Brewers fans i know are interested in sabermetrics at all. At games, they never talk or debate about FIB or UZR. I gave my best friend the addy to this site and when i asked him what i thought of it, he said it was unreadable because he often had no idea what the hell people were talking about with abbreviations and stats he never heard of and wasn't interesting in reading up on. I'm not saying that makes this site bad in the slightest, just that there still are a ton of baseball fans that don't read Hardball Times and have no idea what is DER, FIP, UZR, WAR, or the many other abbreviations. Here it's everyday commonplace where most fans understand what's being said, to those other fans, many of which are more inclined to just read the local paper, that stuff is a foreign language.

 

Beat writers can't ignore that fairly large base of baseball fans that still follow RBI's and how a guy bats with RISP just to appease the saber crowd and instead fill the grades piece with what the pitchers FIP, VORP, and WAR was. Not that i regularly spend my time reading the comments section under Brewer articles in the paper because when i have it's usually been eye bleeding painful even thought i'm not much into sabermetrics either, but that's largely the crowd the beat writers are writing to. There won't be a bunch of comments/arguing about what the FIP was for each pitcher instead of their ERA.

[davego]

"I find the first sentence funny. They've been doing these season-ending player grades for a long time, possibly since I was in college, and that was over 20 years ago. This is just an annual thing they do. It's a way to put the team & individual performances into a perspective. It's also a clever & effective way to "put a bow" on the Brewers season coverage in the paper, much as a report card presents the summary of a kid's performance in school for the term."

 

...MNBrew...my point was these grades are done because most fans (I suspect) like to read this stuff. The bow is a good way to put it. I don't put a lot of vaule into them now, but 20 years ago (more like 30) I did. Now with BF, we have been able to find "better ways" to evaulate players.

 

Glad a could make you laugh, however.

[greeg35]

If Prince would have had 1 more texas leaguer fall or get through the shift per month with a runner in scoring position his BARISP would have been about .290

[valpocrewsader]

Things like hitting with RISP are borderline random as has been proven over and over with stats. When you start judging players by things like RBI you have lost all credibility and your opinion becomes moot.

If you're trying to project future performance, sure. But if you're just talking about what kind of year a player had, isn't this pretty relevant? "Player X struggled the whole year to convert RISP to RBIs, it was out of the ordinary and probably not an indicator of future performance, but it's what happened in 2010 and it hurt the team so Player X gets a B." I don't know, it just seems like a perfectly fine criticism to factor into a season evaluation.

 

To another point in the thread, I think there are many aspects of the game where stats can't tell the story -- one of which is referenced just a few posts up. Someone looked at Prince's OBP with RISP and speculated that maybe he wasn't getting good pitches, thus the low BA/SLG in that situation. It's not fair having to speculate on this, and that's probably all we can really do without watching game tape of every Prince at bat from the season to see if he missed more hittable pitches than years past. (And hey, maybe the beat writers have a better mental game tape than most of us? Maybe not, but maybe....) If there's a "good pitches to hit not taken advantage of by the batter" stat out there, I'm not aware of it. I imagine it would have flaws, too.

 

I think base running, especially first-to-third, is probably another example. If a player has X number of Runs, how do you measure how many more he could have had with better speed and/or instincts that would have put him on third instead of second? Or a player turning a single into a double to avoid a double-play on the ensuing grounder? Or a player who goes to bat in sac fly situations and plates that run with sacrifices vs someone who swings through a couple good pitches and doesn't plate the run. Or a player who's batting with a runner on second and successfully keeps the ball on the right side of the field vs one who does the same thing on the left side of the field? Or, how the speed of the runner on first and the threat of the steal affects the pitcher. For that matter, how the protection the batter gets by who's on deck actually impacts his numbers beyond his actual ability. There might be some holes in my examples, but I don't think it'd be difficult to come up with a healthy list of baseball nuances that stats don't fully explain. I'm sure the day will come where a few comprehensive statistics can summarize every single aspect of value a baseball player has, normalized and adjusted for all factors, but I don't think that day is here yet.

[Paulus88]

Danizig, to me you're arguing in a circle. Most Brewer fans get their analysis from the paper and the paper doesn't use advanced statistics. The paper doesn't use advanced statistics because people don't understand them. But if the paper used advanced statistics wouldn't people eventually become more familiar with them?

 

I guess, to me, the paper generally, and beat writers specifically, are hired to convey information and make sense of the world around us by using the best sources. Using BA and RBI to evalaute players is like quoting the North Korean News for world politics.

[Menotti80]

i think peoples' disdain for the JS writers must have something to do with all the negative comments. i suspect many people on here heard these grades were from TH and AW and were just waiting to see how bad their grades were.

 

i disagreed with a few things on there, but overall i think they were right on.

 

rickie should have been a little higher. maybe kotares too.

 

braun, gomez and trevor were graded a touch too high.

 

i also think nareveson was graded perfectly.

[endaround]

My problem isn't the letter grades as such its that they have no sort of scale to give an idea how they grade. Is an A an MVP-type performance? An All-Star performance? Based upon the limitations of the player? Fielder and Hart's grades suggest the last one but then Narveson should have gotten an A too because he maxxed out his talent. That's the problem and then the grades might as well be random.

[hawing]

Perhaps the JS team could supply season predictions in March or April, and then could use the end-of-season grades to measure how much (or little) each player lived up to their hopes. Of course, the pre-season predictions would probably also be flawed, and it wouldn't give them a basis for comparing players called up or acquired during the season.

[kramnoj]

It comes off that you're implying that since you have stats, there's no additional credibility to the perspective the beat writers have by watching the players play everyday

 

You should stop trying to figure out what I'm implying and actually read what I wrote. You choose to call Ennder intolerant, but you can't read what I write without your own biases reading things that I didn't post.

[MNBrew]

Prince hit .233 in 146 ABs w/ RISP. 146 ABs is substantive enough to reflect a legit trend.

 

Fielder's OPS w/RISP

 

2007: .968

2008: .890

2009: 1.049

2010: .753

 

Career overall OPS: .919

 

There's absolutely no trend, just that in this season's small sample of RISP PAs, he didn't hit as well as he has in years past. The OPS w/RISP list is a Sesame Street "One of these things is not like the others" skit. You can find severe underperformance or overperformance for any player in the league if you seek out a ~150 PA sample.

 

I haven't looked into this at all, but Prince's .451 OBP w/RISP this season suggests pitchers may have been pitching very, very carefully to him & not giving him pitches to drive. If he hadn't gotten on base at an insane clip, I'd have a bigger problem with Prince's results w/RISP. But I'm never going to believe that it's not a very good thing to get on base 45% of the time when there's already at least a runner on second.

Please forgive my lack of clarity. Prince's lousy BA (& OPS, as you point out) w/ RISP were a season-long trend. I was not referencing other seasons.

 

A .450 OBP w/ RISP is great. I wouldn't begin to argue that. But his .233 BA w/ RISP isn't good. That's all I was saying.

[greeg35]

Prince's lousy BA (& OPS, as you point out) w/ RISP were a season-long trend.

 

 

Its impossible to distinguish "trends" in 150 PA's

[MNBrew]

It

comes off that you're implying that since you have stats, there's no

additional credibility to the perspective the beat writers have by

watching the players play everyday

 

You should stop trying to figure out what I'm implying and actually read

what I wrote. You choose to call Ennder intolerant, but you can't read

what I write without your own biases reading things that I didn't post.

I worded my response carefully, which is why

I said "It comes off that you're implying..." as opposed to "you

implied" so as not to directly assume your intent here. However, your "but you can't read what I write . . . " doesn't seem to extend the same courtesy. The intolerance of others' viewpoints seemed rather apparent based on Ennder's word choice.

 

In any case, valpocrewsader's post better articulates several examples of what I was trying to get at in terms of not everything being represented by stats. Sorry for the unproductive digression.

[kramnoj]

I think base running, especially first-to-third, is probably another example.

 

People who research this try to account for much of your thoughts here. Look at the baserunning info found on Week's page at bref for example: http://www.baseball-refer...rs/w/weeksri01-bat.shtml

[logan82]

Danizig, to me you're arguing in a circle. Most Brewer fans get their analysis from the paper and the paper doesn't use advanced statistics

 

I think if they just started using at least OBP and OPS instead of batting average and strikeouts that would be enough to keep most people happy. OBP and OPS are not advanced stats. They are however leaps and bounds better than BA and strikeouts. I feel that continuing to use BA and strikeouts along with RBI's is doing all their readers a disservice.

[rluzinski]

We don't know the sale of the grades and we aren't even sure what they represent. It's certainly not just an estimate of a player's skill, relative to the rest of the league. The basic foundation must look something like this:

Grade = Performance - Expectation

GRADE: If a player matches his expectation (performance - expectation = 0), I'm not sure what grade that would result in, though. My gut says a C but that seems a bit harsh. Who knows?

PERFORMANCE: How do they quantify performance? How a player impacted a game, in terms of runs and wins, is my guess, which is why RISP splits ARE relevant. I think something along the lines of WPA (win probability added) would be an excellent tool to use, to gauge offensive performance. It lacks some important information but it would be a good place to start. Anyway, here are the Brewer WPA's:

http://www.fangraphs.com/winss.aspx?team=Brewers&pos=all&stats=bat&qual=0&type=3&season=2010&month=0

Offensively, Braun and Hart's offensive contributions impacted their respective games the most. If you want to adjust for opportunity (if a player gets to bat with the bases loaded and 2 out in the bottom of the 9th every game, his WPA will be higher), you use WPA/LI. That shows that while Fielder did not get as many opportunities to impact the game as hart did, he did more with them.

For fielding, there's no WPA for fielding atm, so I would just use some mixture of UZR, general scouting and situational defensive performance. This is also where I would hope that a SS would get weighted more for his defensive contributions than a 1B.

EXPECTATION: The expectation part of the equation is as important as anything else I've talked about so far. I would be fine with setting expectations proportional to the player's salary (feel free to make adjustment for pre-arby guys). I think that Tom and Witrado just make up expectations as they go, though. I doubt there is any real science to it. I mean, many questioned whether Hart should have even started and he ended up going to the All Star game. He still "only" got an A- though, so I have no idea what an A+ would look like. Of course, I don't know what a B, C, D and F look like, either.

[MNBrew]

Prince's lousy BA (& OPS, as you point out) w/ RISP were a season-long trend.

 

 

Its impossible to distinguish "trends" in 150 PA's

If there's a "proper" sabermetric usage of "trends," I blew it off in favor of the "everyday" or dictionary definition. The importance would be clarifying the context or parameters, which I did.

[greeg35]

If there's a "proper" sabermetric usage of "trends," I blew it off in favor of the "everyday" or dictionary definition. The importance would be clarifying the context or parameters, which I did.

Prince's lousy BA (& OPS, as you point out) w/ RISP were a season-long trend. I was not referencing other seasons.

146 ABs is substantive enough to reflect a legit trend.

 

 

From the dictionary: "trend = the general course or prevailing tendency; drift"

and no, 146 AB's is not enough evidence to support a trend.

[olliegjw]

Prince's lousy BA (& OPS, as you point out) w/ RISP were a season-long trend.

Its impossible to distinguish "trends" in 150 PA's

They aren't basing grades off of trends. They are basing them off of performance THIS year. Therefore, the stat is totally relevant to Prince's grade and performance during the 2010 season. Nobody is claiming that he will do the same next year, and it is a red flag for his future performance.

 

 

[Outlander]

^

Agreed, when giving out season grades it is valid to bring up his poor run production with RISP. If they can't bring up things like that there is no point in giving annual grades and might as well wait until his career is over before evaluating his performance. It's not like they are saying they shouldn't resign him because he can't hit with runners in scoring position.