No. JORR and I always do this. I don't think it ever really gets disrespectful. The first time we met argued QB's for hours.

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You cannot make that argument; you can't stress game situation and "clutch" You were extremely against the idea of Addison Russell as an All-Star.

Russell has a. .847 OPS with at least one runner on base. His clutch stats like "Late & Close" and "Tie Game" are also higher than his standard BA / OPS.

In "High Leverage" situations (93 PA) he is slashing .400/.462/.638 with 37 RBI.

You should be Russell's biggest fan. And you aren't. Why? Because YOU'VE looked at averages just the same as we have.

Find a mirror before you discuss consistency in an argument.

_________________
Rick Hahn is the best GM in baseball.

Sounds like Neal is one of the worst pitchers in baseball. Too bad Quintana can't go up against more of his kind.

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I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
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In limited starts, he has been.

But the Sox offense has shown they also have trouble with medicore to bad pitching.

_________________
Rick Hahn is the best GM in baseball.

I can and I will make that argument. You're taking about 400 plate appearances. Do you believe he is going to continue that throughout his career? Maybe he will, but I wouldn't get too excited over such a small sample. And who is defining "high leverage" situations? Anyway, I am a fan of Russell. I don't know where you got the idea I wasn't.

_________________
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

The problem with Zach Neal is that he has two first names. You can never trust a guy like that.

_________________

That's better.

_________________
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

From your numerous posts calling Russell undeserving of the All-Star spot. In situations you dictate as most important, he was pretty much better than everyone else (at the SS position).

This isn't about predicting Russell's career. This is about if he was or wasn't deserving of being named an All-Star in 2016. And based on his clutch stats / performance within a competitive game, he was well deserving.

_________________
Rick Hahn is the best GM in baseball.

He was a borderline All Star. He absolutely did not deserve to start.

_________________

He was undeserving of an All-Star spot and he was not "pretty much better" than every other NL shortstop.

_________________
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

- Pitchers need to be competitive and are pitching against the other pitcher. What they do only matters in the context of the current game situation.

- Hitters do not matter, and the fact that Russell has a ~1.100 OPS in high leverage situations is immaterial.

Got it.

You're a board treasure.

_________________
Rick Hahn is the best GM in baseball.

Baseball is a funny game.

_________________
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

Yup.

Wins and losses don't matter for pitchers ever.
Wins and losses don't matter for teams in the playoffs.
Wins and losses mean a great deal in the regular season.

I'll stick to sports like football and basketball where things matter.

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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!

What is a "high leverage" situation? Whatever you say it is?

Regardless, Russell is not having a better season than either Crawford or Diaz or Seager or probably a couple other guys.

Anyway, you're arguing with the wrong guy on this. I believe in clutch performance.

And I know I'm a board treasure. You're a board fabricator and obfuscator. If you had better arguments you wouldn't need to be.

_________________
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

http://www.fangraphs.com/library/misc/li/

And keep trying to sell that narrative. Maybe it'll take.

_________________
Rick Hahn is the best GM in baseball.

I guess I never understand why on this Quintana issue, you don't just chalk it up to a set of facts that has applied to a pitcher who has been a good pitcher for 147 starts that are clearly an outlier. It happens, there are a lot of games that get played and a lot of players over the history of baseball, strange things are going to happen. Instead of just acknowledging this, you go back to this thing that Quintana isn't competitive, or doesn't make pitches with games on the line or some nebulous concept like that. A concept that in the threads I've seen you write about this issue, you have NEVER backed up with a single stat. The numbers are out there for stuff like stats of a pitcher with RISP, after inning x, etc. If what you say is really the case, you should be able to produce the numbers to back it up.

If Quintana continues pitching like this for another 147 starts, he'll pile up a lot more wins that losses. A statistical aberration like this can't sustain a larger sample size. There are plenty of good or very good pitchers over small sample sizes that will look like just as big a loser, or non-competitive pitcher as Quintana. Here are four guys, trust me they are all good pitchers, and over a sample size, guys A and C can look like Quintana losers, while guys B and D are the competitors who win.

Guy A: 135 starts, 60-59, 3.27 ERA, 1,015 IP, 1,114 K's
Guy B: 148 starts, 71-62, 2.86 ERA, 1,094 IP, 1,216 K's
Guy C: 158 starts, 56-56, 3.18 ERA, 1,000 IP, 1,053 K's
Guy D: 122 starts, 53-36, 3.17 ERA, 836 IP, 964 K's

Objection. Speculation.

_________________
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

If Quintana continues pitching like this for another 147 starts, he'll pile up a lot more wins that losses. A statistical aberration like this can't sustain a larger sample size. There are plenty of good or very good pitchers over small sample sizes that will look like just as big a loser, or non-competitive pitcher as Quintana. Here are four guys, trust me they are all good pitchers, and over a sample size, guys A and C can look like Quintana losers, while guys B and D are the competitors who win.

Guy A: 135 starts, 60-59, 3.27 ERA, 1,015 IP, 1,114 K's
Guy B: 148 starts, 71-62, 2.86 ERA, 1,094 IP, 1,216 K's
Guy C: 158 starts, 56-56, 3.18 ERA, 1,000 IP, 1,053 K's
Guy D: 122 starts, 53-36, 3.17 ERA, 836 IP, 964 K's

Statistical aberrations can happen over small sample sizes, they even can happen infrequently over growing samples. The guys above are all good pitchers who had long careers, when you select a small sample size, they can look like non-competitors or losers, whatever you want to call Quintana. That's not the case, the pitchers are who they are but the statistics are outliers. It's just magnified with Quintana because his outlier profile is occurring at the beginning of his career.

The above Guys A-D are all good pitchers, but you can select portions of Guy A's career and Guy C's career to make them look like a non-competitor or whatever you want to call Quintana. But they all have similar overall career winning percentages.

Okay, I'll say a couple things about this and trust you to be honest.

First and foremost, I suspect that had we had this conversation 47 starts ago you would have said the same thing, that he was going to have better results over his next 100 starts. Am I wrong about that? Well, we're half way there and he's exactly the same as he's always been. Additionally, I believe he will pitch to his W/L record over his next 147 starts rather than to any other number(s). But that will be an argument where we just go in circles because you will simply state that he has "gotten worse", which certainly could be the case, but maybe a .500 pitcher is just who he is, all other numbers aside.

Second, I like to talk about baseball. I don't think it's life and death and I'm not gonna get rude or personal about it. But some people here enjoy that kind of thing, insults and personal jabs, snide remarks, etc. I won't start that shit, but I'm certainly not above engaging in it if someone comes at me that way. And I don't really have an issue with your statement about the next 147 starts. If I were having this same discussion with, say, leash or Favre Fan, I would say, "hmmm, yeah, maybe". But when I'm arguing with guys who are wrapping themselves in the pseudoscience and pseudo-statistics of Fangraphs and Baseball Prospectus and beating me over the head with it, you can understand why I'm not just gonna let some pure speculation like that go.

_________________
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'm not using anything other than W-L, IP, ERA, and K's to describe these 4 good pitchers. I'm not referencing any article, or any BP or Fangraphs piece. I'm pointing out these 4 pitchers as incredibly similar over 140 starts, the biggest difference between the 4 is that A and C you would call losers, and B and D you would call winners. When you look at the incredible similarity between their numbers aside from W-L, it just becomes more apparent that statistical outliers do occur.

These 4 guys are incredibly similar, yet you would call A and C non-competitive or something like that, a Quintana, and would say that Guys B and D were competitors or something like that. I just don't buy that, well I'll buy it if you show me some numbers to back it up. I'm simply looking at the guys below and saying, yeah, all 4 of those guys were good pitchers. And over a small (ish?) sample size, even good pitchers can run into a statistical oddity where they don't have a favorable W-L %, but they still pitched as well and as competitively as similar pitchers. I think that's what happened to Guys A and C below, they were just as competitive as Guys B and D, but they ran into a bad statistical anomaly. It happens.

Guy A: 135 starts, 60-59, 3.27 ERA, 1,015 IP, 1,114 K's
Guy B: 148 starts, 71-62, 2.86 ERA, 1,094 IP, 1,216 K's
Guy C: 158 starts, 56-56, 3.18 ERA, 1,000 IP, 1,053 K's
Guy D: 122 starts, 53-36, 3.17 ERA, 836 IP, 964 K's

Who are the 4 guys?

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It really doesn't matter does it? Isn't that sort of the point of the exercise. Look at these 4 guys.

Guy A: 135 starts, 60-59, 3.27 ERA, 1,015 IP, 1,114 K's
Guy B: 148 starts, 71-62, 2.86 ERA, 1,094 IP, 1,216 K's
Guy C: 158 starts, 56-56, 3.18 ERA, 1,000 IP, 1,053 K's
Guy D: 122 starts, 53-36, 3.17 ERA, 836 IP, 964 K's

The whole principle is that in a shorter sample size, there can be statistical outliers where similar pitchers achieve different results in the W-L column. That's the point, is these guys should have similar winning percentages based on their statistics, but they don't. JORR would attribute that to Guys B and D being competitors, and Guys A and C not being competitors, or whatever Quintana is. I'm simply saying that over a short(er?) sample size, you can have statistical outliers. I don't know how else you could differentiate between the above similar pitchers to account for the wide swings in W-L record.

I wouldn't have asked if it didn't. I understand the points you're making but I was just curious.

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They all have absurdly high K/9 rates.

_________________
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

Quintana has allowed more than 4 ER only twice, which is tops in the AL as far as I can tell (I ran a search on all of the usual suspects, and I couldn't find anyone that either matched or bested him).

_________________

My biggest beef with Quintana was him going deep into games. He's gotten better but I expect 7+ innings regularly from a guy who doesn't give up a lot of runs. Other than that I love him.

_________________
Be well

GO BEARS!!!

Yeah, like I said all four guys are similar, that's why I picked them.

This gets back to the original point. Instead of just accepting that Quintana, or Guy A, or Guy C has a situation where over a smaller sample size there is a statistical anomaly, you try to shoehorn some narrative about Quintana not being a winner or not being competitive or something. I don't know how you could look at Guy A and Guy C and not say that they are basically the same pitchers as Guy B and Guy D. I mean can't it just be that Guy A had a stretch where he didn't get awarded a few wins that he generally pitched well enough to normally be awarded the win for, and Guy D pitched well and got awarded the wins that were commensurate with his performance and/or maybe a few that weren't? Doesn't this seem bit more realistic than saying Guy A isn't a winner, or doesn't make the pitches he needs to in certain spots, or isn't competitive, or is a Quintana, yet Guy D is a winner.

Some viable explanation would be appreciated.

Again, not to stress this but I think not knowing the names gets more out of the exercise. If Guy B was Tuffy McCompetitor, the narrative would be "See, Tuffy was known as a competitor who grinded out every inning, of course he wins more of the time." On the other hand if Guy A was Pussy DelGiveup the narrative would be "Of course Pussy was a .500 pitcher, he was known as a guy who quit on himself and his team."

So looking at the numbers other than W-L, other than a statistical oddity, I don't know how you can explain Guy A and Guy C having such poor winning percentages compared to Guy B and Guy D.

I agree, he is weak as hell.

_________________
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