UZR/150:

castro - first in league
barney - first in league
rizzo - first in league (for players above 150 IP)

yeah, it's like i just don't know anything.

what like a net negative for his career? of course i don't think that. i said as much. so ike doesn't get lost, what i said exactly was:

i said he's currently a net negative defender (he is) and he's no where close to a gold glove (he's not.)

we can wager lots of money on him winning the gold glove this year if you'd like, cuz that's what you said before.

uzr/150 isn't accurate for 90 games. sabermatricians want 3 years for that stat, so quoting it for half of a season is pretty useless. esp rizzo's 150 innings. 150 INNINGS. lol.

like soriano, you're watching them run hot in the short term, and that's affecting your judgement

ikes has taught me, its all about sample size, sample size, sample size


...unless it doesnt fit with your argument

I said they're gold glove type players right now. That would mean to a normal person that as of right now, they are playing defense at as high a level as anyone in the league. Try to disprove that. You won't be able to. Instead, you try to handwave away the facts with comments like:

Umm, yeah, he's a replacement player b/c of his defense, which is what we are talking about.

Or this doozy:

how could i overvalue defense in a discussion only about defense?

And now sample size is so important with Rizzo, huh? I guess we can't go by the fact that his defense has been raved about in spring training, again all year in AAA, and then he shows up in the bigs and puts up an outstanding UZR in his first three weeks, has scooped every ball at first, hasn't made an error, and every throw that he has had to make to second, third, and home has been perfect.

I'm just wondering, is it even possible for a Cub to play good defense in shifteye world?

also make sure you ignore rizzo's 40 games last year too. I forgot, though. Who gives a **** about 1B defense? Another sound argument there, shifteye.

I'm not claiming the sample is awesome yet, but it's better than his eyeballs. Infield Uzr converges a lot faster than outfield as well.

But csb, can't wait to see the butthurt tonight.

butthirt will be had


Lold

what does 'right now' mean? 5 games? 10? 90? what i'm telling you is that you're looking at short term when defense must be looked at long term. otherwise let's just watch web gems and crown a gold glove winner every night.

pretty easy for you to ask me to disprove something after i've basically said short term defensive metrics are ****.

that was in response to coming itt (again) to talk about defense. which is about 1/10th as important as run production if you're concerned about winning.

when did i ever say sample size wasn't important? i'm pretty sure that's been the crux of my argument. he's 22. give it time before you're all like ZOMG first in the league in uzr!!

OMG 3 weeks? it's like you didn't read anything i posted. i never said he wasn't playing well RIGHT NOW.

of course. don kessinger.

haha ok. it's not insignificant. but see my point above about run production. that's a run producing position (like LF. remember that from our soriano discussion?) and i wouldn't care if rizzo was the worst 1B in the league if he produces. prince fielder got a whole lot of money to "play" 1B.

and please, my friends call me shifty

I think you just like to argue without really having anything to argue about.

No they're not.

castro is actually pretty terrible defensively, not sure about those other 2 but theyre prob being overrated as well.

as for castro:

• he makes a ton of errors. (remember those?)
  
• he is among the worst in turning double plays annually. i believe he had the lowest conversion % per DP opp last year among starting SS's. (cant find it right now, but regardless his rGDP is 2nd worst in the league to Dee Gordon right now, and was also 2nd worst last year.)
  
• his 2010/2011 uzr was -2.1/-8.7 over a 3x sample size vs his current 7.4 uzr this year, so you think suddenly he became omar visquel overnight? nope.
  
  Screwing up his UZR numbers is the fact that the cubs are now micromanaging his defensive positioning for every batter with pretty great success. (kinda like how lawries defensive metrics got all screwed up because the rays were using him in really unconventional ways)
  
  Soriano, for instance, is suddenly 4th in the league in OF UZR? yea.... no. does not compute.
  
  UZR ignores plays in which there was an obvious overshift, but it does not account for defensive positioning. basically all UZR does is chop each position up into little zones and sees how many balls you get to, it doesnt account for where you started from within the total area, because apparently that data isnt recorded(or at least not available to the public).

the cubbies all having these sparking UZR numbers prob has much more to do with Theo and the gang than some sort of defensive rebirth spreading throughout the club house.

he made a ton of errors in April. He isn't making a ton of errors currently. Is it possible he's just running hot at not making errors? Sure. Is it also possible that with some real coaching, he's now gotten tons better. I think that's more likely. Anyone that can't see the improvements Castro (and Soriano) have made defensively this year just isn't paying attention.

No, I don't think he's Omar Vizquel. What I have seen is a guy with very good range, a very strong arm, a guy who has stopped ****ing up the routine plays, and a guy who works hard every day on his defense. And I'll back up my thoughts with money on a UZR or DRS or error prop bet going forward.

says the guy who's arguing with me over the internet

i know it's tough to read someone's tone thru posts, but i don't really see it as arguing. i talk the same **** with my friends. it's all in good fun.

too bad the cubs couldn't defend themselves into a couple of runs this weekend

670 the score, reports Dempster traded to Braves.

they got randall delgado in return. yum.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/player/_/id/3...andall-delgado

inbe4 Ikes talks about fip

dempster is essentially a rent-a-player for atlanta and they gave up a top prospect.

and delgado is 22

this trade is awesome

Looks like a fantastic trade. Needs to lower walk rate, but that should be doable.

Hats off to Dempster, he was a great Cub. Wish him the best of luck and am anxious to see what the new kid do.

let's see if this thing actually goes through. bizarre if it doesn't.

Reports now that Dempster does not want to go to ATL.

3rd year in a row a no-trade/10-5 clause could burn us. Derrek Lee turned down that deal to LAA. Anyone remember who we could have gotten for him?

Aramis is a prick and doesn't let us deal him, even tho the draft pick was alright for compensation but I gotta think the haul in a trade would have been better.

Now Cubs are losing all leverage with teams they could deal with for Demp. I don't blame these guys for using these clauses, just sucks it could ruin the organizations plan A's for 3 straight years

Ugh, so much this. It will be such a ****ing suck fest if we have to take a lesser deal with LAD just to unload Dempster. Thank you, Jim Hendry?

hendry has nothing to do with this one. MLB rule for 10/5 guys.

Yeah, I know that. Sorry, I guess the sarcasm wasn't clear since Hendry is sort of the scapegoat when it comes to long and loaded contracts.