I wish they would put him back in the supersub role someday.

Preceded by:

Anyone who says they know what will happen is a wishful thinker– Adam.

Believe me Adam, I would love to say something once Inge starts getting hits, I just hope your ‘wishful thinking’ starts happening soon and for extended periods. But that didn’t happen in the spring, it happened too infrequently last year, and it didn’t happen enough to make up for Inge leading the team in strikouts and errors last post season.

Debating with double speak like yours is shouting against the wind. I’m wrong and you are right. Ok, Adam? Your wish is granted, for you I will give it a rest.

Bilfer, I was not faulting the Santana home run. I was faulting his lack of meaningful homeruns from August on. Though, he did hit a HUGE home run against Zito in the playoffs. He hit it early in the game and was a difference maker in that game. But otherwise his average in the playoffs was something like .280 and his strikeout rate was .340. Combined with his three errors in the World Series and I don’t see a “star” player, or even a player who is overly helping the team on the field.

Treading water is about the best way and highest level I could use to describe Brandon’s play. Clearly you think more highly of him.

And there it is. We agree to disagree.

I do know that he was essentially neutral in terms of win probability added in 2006. Because it is a statistic it will probably be derided, but it is a statistic that does take into account context and situation (at least in terms of score, time of game, runners on base – it doesn’t look to see if Craig Monroe hit a home run in the same game).

And as for defensive metrics, the ones I site are completely independent of the official scorer. They look at where the ball is hit, the type of hit, how hard it was hit, and whether or not an out resulted on the play. It’s not about deciding whether or not an error was committed. Granted, somebody has to decide all the qualities, but those are done by individuals watching games remotely who are employed by a seperate stat company. These aren’t locals trying to make the home team look good.

And really, faulting the Santana home run because the Tigers had a big lead in the division is pretty weak. The Tigers had a big lead because of the cumulative efforts leading up to that game. Which of those efforts were irrelevant?

And just to highlight all the facts in your research:
22- Inge was batting 9th, Monroe 2nd. Probably not avoiding Monroe.
23- Solo shot that began a 3 run inning which the Tigers came back and tied the game in the 8th
24- Inge hitting 8th, Infante 9th, Monroe 3rd. Don’t think they were pitching Monroe to get to Inge.
25- Inge hitting 8th, Perez hitting 9th, Monroe hitting 2nd. Don’t think they were pitching around Monroe to get to Inge.
26- I got nothing here. This meant nothing.
27- Inge hitting 8th, Monroe hitting 2nd. Tigers ultimately blew the lead (with Inge’s help on defense) so maybe the runs were important.

Anyway, yesterday’s win left me more nervous than Monday’s loss. Fortunately Jonesy pulled their chesnuts out of the fire and avoided a major embarassment for the team.

No one has to apologize for Brandon Inge, and I’m not going to. I’m just going to point out that you’re inherently and utterly wrong. Fault my logic? Why, for saying you’re wrong? Ha. Inge is a game loser, eh? Tell you what, EZ. Without Inge, the Tigers don’t get to the World Series last year. Got it? I mean, What other star 3B do you have up your sleeve? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Do us all a favor and come back in a month with the Inge-hating rhetoric. Maybe then you’ll have a sliver of evidence.

Your sabermetrics does not take into account naunce, situation, and approach.

The same problem exists with Walewanders splits. It treats every pitcher as equal and every situation the same. Sabermetrics can’t take into account items like the “unintentional intentional walk”. Or “pitching around” a batter.

They do if the sample size is sufficient. When you’re looking at hundreds and thousands of at-bats, most of the randomness is ironed out.

But even that is only the first step in a statistical analysis. What does X at-bats per home run mean? Diddly squat, until you see that the league average over the same time period was Y. Now you’re starting to learn something about the player. You should still dig deeper to control for things like park, division, and position averages, but league average is still a good, simple starting point.

you seem to say I use no stats at all

I think what Billfer was trying to say was that your argument rests almost entirely on anecdotes. To qualify as a statistic, you need to use either every data point in the selected timeframe or a random sample of those data points.

Sabermetrics is a handy tool, but can’t possibly be treated as gospel

Indeed. If you stick around, I think you’ll find that few, if any, of us fall into that trap. Our statistical analyses are tempered by a healthy dose of anecdotal observation.

Now, let’s remember we really are rooting for the same team. Go Tigers.

Hear, hear!