July 17, 2011:

Pierre: .334
Castro: .330

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Frustrating to see this is even a competition.

Castro has a .398 OPB hitting 1st, .367 hitting 2nd, and .251 hitting 3rd and guess where he has the most AB's? 3rd. Quade blows.

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Team Cutler.

You got some moxie there, JORR, and your quite persistent. I like the angle your taking with the Pierre being bad meme from the B&B show....

Many on here harp on all sorts of things from the show but really follow through on it, you on the other hand won't quit, won't stop, can't stop.

I'm not comparing Castro and Pierre but this is where obp is a hollow stat. I'll take a hitter like Castro or Michael Young who have a .300+ batting average and gets guys moving around the bases over a guy that hits .275 with some worthless walks mixed in. Hits create damage while walks just put the presssure on the next guy.

Cmon man.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

But do you think the positions in the batting order are causal or coincidental?

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Seeing as how BernStine has said numerous times that Castro should be batting 3rd because thats where you bat your best hitter, so does he.

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

I didn't realize everything is a "B & B meme".

Pierre is bad, period. And Castro can't hit in the 3 hole. Yet.

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1926-1931-1934-1942-1944-1946-1964-1967-1982-2006-2011

Pierre isn't "bad". He's a major league ballpalyer. He's hit safely over 200 times in a season four times. The whole basis for him being "bad" is that he "doesn't get on enough" or that he "makes too many outs". If that's truly the case, isn't Castro bad as well?

And there is absolutely no evidence that batting order position has any effect on performance. It's the same argument as the one against the existence of "clutch" hitting. If a guy is clutch, why doesn't he do it all the time? If a guy is a good hitter, why does it matter where he bats? The concept of "protection" has been largely debunked. Castro has a relatively small sample and I think it's highly unlikely that batting in the three hole is the thing that is causing him to be "bad at baseball".

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Pierre is not a bad player. When you steal more than 40 bases a year you are a threat. He has almost every year of his career. Unfortunately players start to decline eventually. Pierre is declining. He is not worth a high salary. I think a top prospect could easily put up the numbers Pierre puts up now all while forcing outfielders to play deeper than short LF, CF or RF. He has been hot of late and I give him credit but this overall slide in staats is only the beginning of the end for him.

Base stealing seems to be a dying art in baseball. I always liked Juan Pierre. Bernstein likes WAR because it's so complicated only a nerd would understand it. Like I said before: Hits,Hr,RBI's,BA,OBP,SLG should all be factored in to a players value. WAR my ass.

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favrefan said:"Chris Coghlan isn't gonna pay your rent, Jimmy."

I don't see what the Balck Frenchman does well anymore. He's supposed to be a top of the order speed guy, but he barely gets on base at an averagish MLB clip. His complete lack of power has been well documented. For a small-ball guy, his glove is terrible, as he takes some horrible routes to the ball and hasn't even been trusted in CF for a few seasons. His arm is about as strong as a wet noodle. He also gets thrown out stealing and picked off at an alarming rate. Whether you buy the advanced metrics or not, he is one of the few players in MLB playing under "replacement level".

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1926-1931-1934-1942-1944-1946-1964-1967-1982-2006-2011

Lead off tonite with a triple and scored...

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And yet, he gets on more than the great superstar Starlin Castro. As a baseball fan how can I know when .330 is "getting on enough" and when it's "making too many outs"? Maybe danny bernstein knows.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

at least with Castro, his uncanny contact skills and questionable defensive concentration suggest that he could improve quite a bit. Pierre is on the tail end of a decent career and can only be expected to get worse.

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1926-1931-1934-1942-1944-1946-1964-1967-1982-2006-2011

That's fair, but not what we're talking about. I've been told that Pierre is "bad at baseball" because he gets on at a .335 clip and Castro is "great at baseball" because he gets on at a .330 clip. This has left me utterly confused and no one has shed any light on the subject yet.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

What was Juan's MLB OBP when he was 21? I guess it really doesn't matter, as he was still in the minors at 21.

Going forward, I hope Castro learns to take more walks. His ability to hit anything thrown at him also manifests itself as as flaw. Plate discipline often comes with age. I am looking forward to watching him develop.

Juan Pierre is in the twilight of a mediocre career.

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We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.- Eric Hoffer

Again, fair enough. But if .335 is the thing that makes one guy "bad at baseball", doesn't it make another guy bad as well? See, li'l danny has decided Castro is good, thus, he isn't going to discuss his weak OBP or his ever-diminishing WAR. He hates Pierre so he's going to harp on every negative he can find. And that's the problem with most people who spout statistics. Like Vin Scully says, they're using them as a drunk uses a lampost- for support rather than illumination. bernstein's subjective opinion is that Castro is good and Pierre is bad. He's going to write his own narrative based on that rather than talking about how Castro makes too many outs. And I'm not even sure what "too many outs" is. But if Pierre makes too many outs, Castro obviously does too.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

I get your angle, Rodney. You and I are in agreement when it comes to Berns' baseball thoughts. I love the Skully quote, btw. Sums everything up perfectly. I have listened to B&B since the beginning and I only remember Berns' getting his statistical stiffys over players the last five years or so. He's a putz.

Numbers aside, if you watch them play, any person with even a modicum of baseball sense would rather have Castro. He brings more to the table.

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We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.- Eric Hoffer

I think you also have to look at the offensive expectations of their defensive positions as well. A corner outfielder generally has little impact defensively (although Pierre has lost 2-3 games for the team this year) and so more is expected offensively. The opposite is true of the SS.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

August 1, 2011:

Castro: .327
Pierre: .330

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

OPS+

Castro: 100
Pierre: 80

Is Pierre's lack of slugging what makes him "bad at baseball"? I thought it was his OBP and the fact that he made "too many outs".

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Outs Made s c a p y
1. Suzuki (SEA) 336
2. Castro (CHC) 334
3. Cabrera (KCR) 332
4. Pierre (CHW) 330
Phillips (CIN) 330
6. Hunter (LAA) 329
7. Kinsler (TEX) 328
Uggla (ATL) 328
9. Markakis (BAL) 327
Gonzalez (ATL) 327

Not to mention those worthless sods who take walks end up clogging up the basepaths, which we all know is NOT how you want to manage a baseball team.

* refreshes his chewable toothpick *

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Yet JORR won't concede that the Balck Frenchman is just plain bad. And he plays a corner outfield slot, while the other is a SS. The Balck Frenchman has also sucked for a few years with the glove. And he is getting mowed down with regularity on the basepaths as his speed declines... this guy should be a 5th OF/ pinch runner type at this point.

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1926-1931-1934-1942-1944-1946-1964-1967-1982-2006-2011

Because he isn't "just plain bad". He's a competent major league player with an OBP higher than most. Would I rather have Matt Holliday out in left field? Well, yeah. I'd rather have Elvis Andrus than Castro at short too.

I'm just trying to understand why .330 makes Pierre bad but .327 makes Castro great.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Because you are doing what many lesser observers of the game have done, cherrypicking 1 stat to make an argument without considering the entire repertoire of a player.

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1926-1931-1934-1942-1944-1946-1964-1967-1982-2006-2011

JORR is not dumb. He knows how much better Castro is. I believe he is criticizing how Bernstein lazily fights callers on the issue with the wrong stat.

Yeah, i don't take this topic too seriously. I get a "devil's advocate" vibe

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1926-1931-1934-1942-1944-1946-1964-1967-1982-2006-2011