Abreu has led his team to a 17-17 start, Rizzo has his team at 11-20. Combined with the RBI numbers I think it demonstrates Rizzo is a natural loser.

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

But no one other than Frank thinks its Far Superior or even a wide range between the two.

Let's not go crazy here. Rizzo is pretty good. I mean, if we didn't have Adam Dunn who is roughly just as good I'd want him on the Sox.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

We are just arguing semantics here, and as Frank has pointed out, it was "in time" and not "one month in".

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Same reason Abreu's HR number don't equal is PA number.

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Rick Hahn is the best GM in baseball.

Pretty sure Frank has labeled the stats already compiled as far superior a few times.


Im glad this is an argument. I wouldnt have predicted this pre season.

I'm not claiming Abreu has developed the ability to place the ball right where he wants to like you seem to be doing.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Of all the stats mentioned in this thread, THIS is the one that should be the first dismissed.

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

They are trending that way, but in my opinion, it's way too early to do that.

If Abreu ends up with about 60 home runs(his current pace is 59) then I think it's fair to say he was far superior.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

very well played

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"That's what the internet is for. Slandering others anonymously." Banky
“Been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey ‘He said for you to give me your fuckin’ share.’”

I hope everyone understands that there is an implied "Cubs suck" in each of my posts. Even if it is explicitly stated, consider it to be implied as well for emphasis.

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

The funny thing here is that Rizzo is closer to Adam Dunn than he is to Abreu, statistically.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

so the whole conversion to a cubs fan was a SHAM?

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"That's what the internet is for. Slandering others anonymously." Banky
“Been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey ‘He said for you to give me your fuckin’ share.’”

Why?

It reconfirms that both players play in homer friendly ballparks. On average, Abreu's home runs would only be a home run in 22.17 ballparks.

For comparison, on average, Stanton's 10 home runs would be home runs in 29.30 ballparks.

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Rick Hahn is the best GM in baseball.

The OPS is what it is. The guy with the higher OPS is probably better.

Depending on what stats you use.

OPS is pretty hard to argue against. It's a really good stat.

Im not sure why you think a .14 difference is "trending toward far superior"

if the queen had stones she'd be king

That stat, quite literally, proves NOTHING other than the distance a ball was hit. It has no value for extrapolation.

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

Okay.

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Rick Hahn is the best GM in baseball.

So if Rizzo is adjusting to places where there aren't players and that explains his very high BABIP, then why isn't Abreu adjusting to where the wall is?

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Rizzo is becoming an especially refined hitter.

Abreu is a masher with good pop.

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Rick Hahn is the best GM in baseball.

Good work IMU, except that Abreu has 7 HRs on the road, and 5 HRs at the Cell. Having seen two of his "home" HRs in person, I can attest that one was absoultely crushed to dead center and would have been out of any ballpark in MLB except perhaps Houston and Detroit.

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This should clear up any confusion...


Bernstein: Abreu Story Obscuring Truth
May 7, 2014 10:30 AM

By Dan Bernstein-
CBSChicago.com Senior Columnist
(CBS) It has been quite a season so far for the young Chicago first baseman, and he’s well deserving of all the attention.
He has already compiled a full 1.1 Wins Above Replacement, and his .397 mark in the illuminating category of wOBA (weighted on-base average) is 17th in all of baseball — identical to that of Angels great Mike Trout. Even more impressive is his .415 on-base percentage, good for seventh in MLB. His offense alone has accounted for 24 runs for his team, per wRC (weighted runs created).
So yes, give it up for the Cubs’ Anthony Rizzo.
Talk of White Sox first baseman Jose Abreu’s historic hot start has dominated the airwaves and our timelines, and for good reason. Home runs are sexy, and the old-fashioned counting stats are still more easily comprehended and consumed by the masses. That Abreu is an exotic newcomer inserted into the drama in deus ex machina style makes it even more fun.
That doesn’t excuse the fact that his 12 homers have allowed Rizzo’s equally impressive start to 2014 to be largely ignored and underappreciated, nor the bizarre unwillingness to recognize that Abreu hasn’t even been the best offensive player on his own team.
Not trying to foment argument here in either case, because success isn’t in any way zero-sum. Everybody can enjoy all of it. But some objective facts need to be pointed out in the midst of some real silliness in our local sports pages and elsewhere.
First the Chicago Tribune declared grandiosely that Abreu somehow represents that vis-à-vis the White Sox, the Cubs have “fallen behind organizationally.” Um, OK.
Then the increasingly strange Chicago Sun-Times issues yet another communiqué from the abandoned missile silo in which it awaits the government-engineered zombie apocalypse, now ranting that Abreu’s success is just the latest proof that Tom Ricketts and Theo Epstein are carrying out an Illuminati plot to manipulate the Federal Reserve System, to precede their plan to put mind-control drugs in the water supply. And that they have yet to provide evidence showing they weren’t born in Kenya.
Abreu apparently means all that so far, so let’s look at some numbers.
Jose Abreu: 1.1 WAR, 143 wRC+. .254 BA, .317 OPB, .608 SLG, .386 wOBA, 12 HRs.
Anthony Rizzo: 1.1 WAR, 150 wRC+. .292 BA, .420 OPB, .500 SLG, .397 wOBA, 6 HRs.
It matters further that Rizzo is not only more than two years younger than Abreu but considerably less expensive and under team control for two seasons longer. Rizzo’s deal was seven years for $41 million, Abreu’s six for $68 million.
Now check out this mystery player. He’s been pretty good, too:
Player X: 0.6 WAR, 149 wRC+. .269 BA, .405 OPB, .495 SLG, .395 wOBA, 5 HRs.
His WAR is deflated by his poor defense and baserunning, but that wOBA is 21st in MLB, ahead of the likes of the Dodgers’ Yasiel Puig and the Reds’ Joey Votto and six slots ahead of his teammate, Abreu. Per wRC+, which measures individual runs created while adjusting for park and league factors, this guy – talking purely offensively – has outperformed Abreu.
Say hello to Adam Dunn, who is back to doing the things that made his 2011 signing so intriguing. It’s that combination of walks and power that puts him in good historical company, through age 33 now most statistically similar to Harmon Killebrew.
It’s early for all of this, regardless, and we could geek out further with BABIP and line-drive percentages to predict future likelihoods for these three guys, but that’s not the point right now. Let’s just work a little harder to see what’s actually happening in front of us before convenient narratives run wild.
Instead of allowing highlights and simplistic use of comfortable statistics to cloud the way we look at these teams, we should be curious and intelligent enough to do better.

One of the worst things to come out of the SABRmetric revolution is the silly idea that people were stupid in the past and had no clue what they were doing.

Coincidentally, the rise of advanced statistical analysis in baseball happened to coincide with the most prolific era for offense since the 30s. Understandably, much of the analysis focused upon strategy within this unprecedented offensive paradigm. Thus, the idea that the running game is foolish has been taken by many as an absolute rather than within the context of a particular scoring environment.

There is a good reason there are certain traits that have been see as valuable for a leadoff man, e.g. speed, bunting, etc. And it isn't because the guys in charge were dumb or didn't know any better. Ferris Fain may well have been a superior candidate to lead off for a team playing at the height of the steroid era than Luis Aparicio. But in all other eras of baseball that is not actually the case.

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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

Abreu has 2 home runs at Coors Field, 1 at Arlington, 2 at Comerica, 2 at Progressive, and 5 at the Cell.

All of those except Arlington are in the top half of HR friendly ballparks....and Arlington only barely misses the cut.

Looking at box scores for both of his 2 home run games at the Cell, the wind was blowing out to left field at 10+ mph.

edit: If you go back to 2011-2012...Arlington was Top 5 for homers.

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Rick Hahn is the best GM in baseball.

berntein's advanced statistical analysis: Going to Baseball Reference to see who is "historically similar".

_________________
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

Imagine if a caller was to say "Everyone is talking about this guy on the Cubs, why aren't they talking about this guy on the Sox?"

Bernstein would blow up his phone, tell him that it isn't always about the Cubs/Sox stuff, and call him a jealous meatball.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

That means he really hit them, because one HR was to dead center and the other was to RF.

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Yep.

Also, Bernstein as per usual gives way too much power to one stat. The whole idea is to get a bunch of numbers and find the middle.

Junior Lake hit balls further than Abreu this year, but that doesnt get him anymore runs, even withn Franks Personally Witnessing Abreu CRUSHING it.

_________________
"That's what the internet is for. Slandering others anonymously." Banky
“Been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey ‘He said for you to give me your fuckin’ share.’”

Ah, the April 25th game.



Including his game winning GS that barely got over the wall:

http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/gameday/index.js ... mode=video

And his April 10th game.

http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/gameday/index.js ... o&c_id=cws

Left field and left center.

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Rick Hahn is the best GM in baseball.