http://www.minorleaguebaseball.....pid=458589

http://www.thebaseballcube.com.....uris.shtml

Understood. I enjoyed your timely analysis on Renteria, and my comment was not a critique of any part of it. Rather, I took an example from it to express my view (in response to another exchange) that statistics are not meaningless, but some are more meaningful than others.

As for Edgar, in numbers I can see both the hope and the despair. I don’t have a “good feeling” about Renteria, so my comments are often negative, but I’m more balanced when it comes to reasoned analysis, as a number of my posts above show.

I don’t want to say numbers are meaningless or speak for Paul, but to the particular example above I would respond that it doesn’t mean Renteria is any less lousy at the plate than he has been. Reason? That PrOPS hasn’t translated into real, actual, consistent production or done much to help the Tigers win. He could continue to put up “good PrOPS” and still stink, still hurt the team with his presence in the lineup. Could. I also say “probably will” and “hope not.”

I’m not arguing that Renteria has been good. His production has hurt the team. The point is that the way he’s hit the ball hasn’t changed fundamentally as in past seasons. It’s reason for hope in the second half.

You’re right in that he could continue to put up decent line drive rates and still not see it translated into production. Or he could stop hitting line drives and his PrOPS could catch up to his actual OPS. He is pretty damn slow so he might not be able to beat out hits or take extra bases like he used to which is something that won’t correct itself. But the fact that he hasn’t become an infield pop-out machine and he can still hit the ball on the nose leaves me encouraged going forward.

I don’t remember who they were, but I imagine they’ve shrugged their shoulders and given up on understanding the mind of Leyland; that, or, faces painted Joker-like, they have no time to spare from dancing in leotards ’round the ruins of Tiger Stadium, chanting sonnets to the full moon.

Scientism has several definitions, but the one I was thinking of (with a gentle jab at our use of statistics today) is best described (according to Wikipedia) as a form of dogma: “In essence, scientism sees science as the absolute and only justifiable access to the truth.”

http://sports.espn.go.com/espnmag/story?id=3490998

For whatever reason, he has gotten more opportunities than should be expected to knock in runs (perhaps to balance his “bad luck” with his line drives?); I think the fact that with guys in scoring position the next guy due up is Edgar more than you would expect is why people are so frustrated with him.

I guess you could call this stat Opportunity Ratio or something; Edgar’s is high, his performance not great (he actually does OK in my numbers for RBI/AB w/RISP, but it looks a lot different when you look at the number of times he has RBI vs the number of RBI–since 8 of his 28 RBI were on his 2 grand slams).

AB RISPAB %
Magglio 300 92 30.7%
Renteria 307 91 29.6%
Carlos 324 94 29.0%
Cabrera 348 92 26.4%
Pudge 271 71 26.2%
Sheffield 198 49 24.7%
Polanco 334 82 24.6%
Joyce 94 23 24.5%
Marcus 185 44 23.8%
Inge 150 29 19.3%
Grandy 277 51 18.4%
Clete 116 21 18.1%

And speaking of dap, I look for forward to giving Magglio plenty of dap. Praise be, he’s back, and I think he’s gonna be raking in no time.

http://www.theonion.com/conten.....s_mustache