Add in his defense and I think he’s an asset vs. lefties at 3B

On a different note…

Didn’t Thames make less than 500k this year? That seems dirt cheap for his production. As part of a platoon in LF with Jones he’d work out well. But I hear they’re trying to trade him. It must be because he’d get a huge raise with arbitration this year? Is he eligible for that yet?

Will be interesting to see how the Tigs will play this hand out with these options.

The Tigers could win upwards of 100 games if the team stays healthy…I’m worried about my team for this season. If Travis Hafner and Grady Sizemore don’t have bounceback years, if Garko and Gutierrez don’t have a breakout season and if Sabathia and Carmona don’t pitch like they did this past season, we could be in trouble.

At this point the Tigers’ biggest weakness is the bullpen; not enough depth, and the relievers they do have appear to be wild cards.

Holy crap – I had no idea my game was so valuable. Too bad I still like playing it.

I have a copy of the ’04 game – I’ll give it to you for shipping cost, if you want it…

Another thought, if the outfield is easier on one’s body, how about Cabrera at 1st and Guilen in LF?

In all seriousness, Miguel should play anywhere he wants. He should be very happy here and want to re sign long term with detroit. That has to be more valuable long term than the defensive gain that Inge brings. This could also depend greatly on what the market for Inge turns out to be. If we can find a team to give up a serviceable reliever and take on all of Brandon’s salary, I think he is gone. I really don’t think that 6M is that expensive for a starting 3B.

Joel – yea I’m looking to buy the game – I’ve played it on Gamecube for a ridiculous amount of hours – and want to join/am going to join a league

The sad thing is the game for PC is extremely rare, and I really don’t want to pay 130 for a 20bux game

Oh well

Well, let’s talk about Brandon Inge. Not a good hitter, and was actually sort of terrible this year. He had a few decent seasons there, in his late 20s, which is what they’re supposed to do. And now he’s headed toward irrelevance with a bullet. But the ex-catcher has somehow become an excellent third baseman. Cabrera is, by most accounts, a lousy third baseman. According to John Dewan’s +/- system, the difference between them was approximately 40 plays; roughly plus-20 for Inge and minus-20 for Cabrera.

Forty plays is a lot. Inge batted .236 this year. Give him 40 hits and he bats .315. Consider that Cabrera was in the weaker league, and the difference between them as players — in terms of overall value — wasn’t nearly as great as most would think.

This from a man who once went ape-crap over writers referring to 250 Mil as a quarter of a billion dollars as a meaningless rhetorical device–implemented to over-value that actual amount of money that was actually spent on a player.

A mere 40 hits? That’s all that stood between Inge and batting .315? Wow! Absolutely negligible when one puts it into the overall context which, based on a hypothetical reached through an un-explained calculation formed by the great John Dewan, indicates that Inge made 40 more plays at first than did Cabrera. In case any of you didn’t know, John Dewan is a genius on par with Einstein, Newton, Archimedes and Pythagoras! Infreakinfallible!

Here’s the news Rob…the number of hits that separates Inge from batting .315 is an absolutely, irrefutable, quantifiable fact, whereas the 40 plays that separating Inge from Cabrera is based on something that, for all practical purposes, amounts to nothing more than learned speculation.

In other words, a spurious comparison at best.

But here’s the best part! Cabrera hit .320 last year, which means that Inge, even with this spurious comparison in play, still hit 5 points lower than Cabrera. So, in order to make up for this short-fall, Neyer delivers this gem: “Consider that Cabrera was in the weaker league, and the difference between them as players — in terms of overall value — wasn’t nearly as great as most would think.” Right. Boy! That caveat sure seems like it’s based in some sound, statistically based reasoning to me!

Actually Neyer’s assertion becomes even more ridiculous when you consider who’s making it. This is from a man who for the last 8 years has been writing one article after another that marginalizes batting average as an anachronistic, unreasonable, and unsound statistical category. Amazing how, when the time comes to play the roll of contrarian, Neyer so quickly embraces batting average as a viable statistic for determining a player’s value. What he neglects to point out, while asserting that the difference between Cabrera and Inge (INGE FOR GODSAKE!) is not as, “nearly as great as most would think,” is that Inge had an on-base percentage 89 points lower than Cabrera and a slugging percentage 189 points lower than Cabrera. Do those numbers support his claim that the difference between the two isn’t as great as, “most people would think?” Even taking the 40 plays made difference as factual–which it isn’t–I think that we can come to the conclusion that Inge is nowhere near the player that Cabrera is in terms of over-all contribution to the team.

And really what is most telling here, is Neyer’s use of the term, “Most-people.” This is often the motivation of stats heavy baseball analysis. Throw a bunch of numbers at people, claim it’s superior ability to inform about the game of baseball, and claim superiority over “most people” who continue to watch the game based on what their eyes and ears tell them is true instead of making arguments based on numbers that are derived from mechanisms they can’t explain. Just because somebody cranks out a number based on a formula and tells us it’s scientifically sound, does not make it so. IQ tests have been nearly universally discredited as a means for determining human intelligence, but go back 30 years and it would have been sacrilege to make such a claim–this even though 30 years ago the majority holding to the veracity of IQ tests couldn’t tell you word one about the mechanism from which they operated. Just don’t tell armchair sabermetricians this…they’d prefer to rely on formula they can’t explain to make them feel superior to “most-people.”

Brilliant stuff all the way around. Rob Neyer can shove his inconsistent, hypocritical numbers where the sun don’t shine!