Robbie Grossman Keeps Hitting, Jarek Cunningham Having Huge Day

The study “look(ed) for evidence that catchers peak later than players in general.” It did not find that.

However, the study had a table of improvement/decline for catchers and all other players from ages 21 to 35. The author noted:

The 30 to 33 range is very volatile, with ratios jumping all around, but the average for the period is .974, comparable to the all-player average of .972, so the decline is about as quick.

I wouldn’t call this “cherry-picking”. However, RB noted that any other four year period after age 29 does show a steeper decline relative to all other players. That’s not cherry-picking, nor untrue.

So I took it as RB using evidence that was in a study to support a point he was making*. Perhaps he did so clumsily, but he made his point clear in subsequent posts. It was WTM who shifted the goalposts.

*Because RB’s initial comment was to answer “why did Snyder come cheap”. From there, the thread veered off into citing studies and stats and cherry-picking arguments.

As I said in that thread, the authors of statistical studies like this present tables for one major reason: So that others can review the data and can come to their own conclusions. That is exactly what I did. My conclusion, from the data, was that if you take only the four-year period from age 30-33 into account, the catchers appear to decline at exactly the same rate as other players. If you take any other four-year interval post-29 or consider the rate of decline after 29, catchers appear to decline considerably faster than others. (Snyder was 29 at the time of the discussion.)
 
Looking back on this I think I explained myself quite clearly. Only unquestioning people accept the authors’ stated conclusions without examining the methodology and the data tables to determine whether arbitrary pre hoc (or perhaps biased post hoc) choices made by the author allowed the author to find one thing (either no effect or an effect) despite the totality of the data pointing clearly in the other direction.

Besides, the authors themselves said this (presumably after reviewing their totality of their data rather than the arbitrary four-year chunk from 30-33):

Perhaps we should abandon the idea of catchers developing more slowly, and recognize that the physical demands of the position will tend to reduce both the length of their peaks and the length of their careers.

I think that statement — "the demands of the position will tend to reduce the length of their peaks and the length of their careers" — pretty clearly means that the authors view the demands of the position as causing a more rapid decline on the back end (as well as a longer time to peak on the front end).

Now, Vlad, do you want to see something funny?

Catchers, as a group, decline more rapidly after age 30 than any other position. 2B is second, IIRC.

— Vlad on BD, Feb. 8, 2010. Here:

http://www.bucsdugout.com/2010/2/6/1298006/locking-up-star-players-isnt-high#30460343

Hahaha. That’s where I got the idea in the first place.

That doesn’t seem to meet any definition of "cowardly" with which I’m familiar, but we’ll move past that for a while …

Refusing to submit to judgment by objective measures doesn’t fit your definition of cowardly?

If you’ve ever studied logic, you’d understand that an argument that isn’t true and/or valid is a bad argument, regardless of the truth of that argument’s conclusion.

I have studied symbolic logic. However, it is not an appropriate discipline for determining whether it makes sense to weigh Paul Maholm’s most recent 7 starts more heavily than his previous 19. It doesn’t tell us anything about whether ERA+ or FIP is a more appropriate measure for predicting future performance given a large sample size. It doesn’t tell us whether FIP or opponent OPS is a more appropriate measure for predicting future performance from small sample sizes.

It really has nothing to do with this discussion.

If you want an example of a move that is “shifting goalposts” to use in the future, re-read your post.

I think you’re going off half-cocked here.

You’re trying to spin the Heredia business as a win?

No. I said:

I think more like leapt to conclusions than "wild-eyed conspiracy theories."

In other words, I’m guilty of leaping to conclusions, not of believing in wild-eyed conspiracies.

you shot your mouth off when you didn’t know what the fuck you were talking about, and you are congenitally incapable of admitting it.

What does “leaping to conclusions” mean to you? To me it means (more or less) the same thing as “sho[oting] off your mouth when you d[on’t] know what you [are] talking about,” and so I think I admitted it.

It is true that when I admitted to leaping to conclusions I did it succinctly and without lacing the admission with drunken profanity, so I can see why you may have been left feeling unsatisfied.

So why should we believe you when (for instance) you say that you have some amazing insight into the flaws in every study that’s been done about protection so far?

When I get time, I mean to post a Fanpost on this subject, to call attention to and critique one of the leading studies that claims no effect of protection and to a recent study that finds an effect, and to invite BD members to find and post other studies for us to evaluate and critique. I think it’s a fascinating subject. For one thing, if protection is real, it suggests that certain hitters (the Barry Bonds types) are undervalued and others (the Van Slyke/Jeff Kent types) are overvalued. Sorting out which is which (e.g., Ken Griffey, Jr.) might be a hard task, but fun also.

For now, you can decide for yourself. Here is what I said in that other thread:

Same thing with Tango’s atrocious line-up protection study, in which he looks at potential IBB situations—exactly those situations in which, by definition, walks are worth less than normal, making contact is worth more than normal, and the gap between singles and X-base hits is less—notes that unprotected hitters do in fact walk more and strike out more (which should be the end of it: PROTECTION MATTERS), but then discounts the role of protection because protected hitters don’t do more in terms of singles or X-base hits when making contact. Yeah, but the situation was defined as one in which making contact itself is basically the primary goal and getting a single the ultimate goal (IBB situations, runner in scoring position, first base open).

And here is the article to which I was referring:

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/pitching-around-batters

I would add that one of the biggest flaws in this study is to use wOBA as the main outcome for determining whether protection matters. The situation is potential IBB situations (first base open, runners on second or third or second and third, one or two outs). Therefore walks are worth much less than normal; strikeouts are a bigger negative than normal (and aren’t factored into wOBA); in a common subset of them (one out, runner on third) making contact is worth way more than normal; making contact is always worth more when no one is on first because of no risk of double play; a single is worth way more compared to a double or HR (or worth less less) than normal (with runners in scoring position); and so on. In other words, the “weighted” in wOBA is completely off because this is not a standard situation, and the outcomes would actually be weighted quite differently if all PAs occurred in these situations — singles hitters would reign supreme, not striking out would be great, walking would be “meh” and hitting doubles would be not much better than singles.

I think more like leapt to conclusions than “wild-eyed conspiracy theories.” In fact, the Pirates did everything I said they did.

I still don’t see how my statements show wild-eyed conspiracy beliefs. Here:

If you follow the facts they lead you to the conclusion that Veracruz and the Bucs had this worked out in advance — the fact that Bucs brokered the deal and that Veracruz, in its turn, sold his rights to the Pirates for less than the offer from the Jays.

I don’t think this is disputed. It just happens to be the way things run in Mexico, not something peculiar to the Bucs and Heredia.

The family clearly trusts the Pirates’ scouts. The question is whether the Pirates betrayed that trust, not whether they’ve discovered it already.

Again, this falls into the "everyone does this; business as usual" category, not the "wild-eyed conspiracy" category. All teams evidently advise Mexican players to sign up with Mexican club teams, who then pocket most of the signing bonus. It isn’t in the players’ interests, but it is in the MLB teams’ interests (who otherwise might be frozen out of the Mexican talent market by the club teams).

Can’t [the Pirates] take care players without using their trust of them to generate windfall profits for their pals?

Again, the Pirates did generate a windfall for their pals, and no one is saying they didn’t. That it was kill or be killed (stash him with your club or let someone else stash him with theirs) certainly takes the sting out of criticism of the Pirates, but it happened that the Pirates used Heredia’s trust to generate a windfall for their friendly club’s owner, so it isn’t a "wild-eyed conspiracy" to say it happened. Heredia got no benefit from this, other than in the sense that he might otherwise have been frozen out by MLB clubs, in an act of collective unfairness rather than individual team unfairness.

Getting people who are in desperate situations to do things that they otherwise wouldn’t, because it isn’t in their interest to do so, is the very definition of exploitation. … And Heredia’s family certainly didn’t need a cool mil to get by in Mexico for eight months. A loan of $25,000 would have gone very, very far in Mexico over eight months.

And again, Heredia’s interest in this situation (as someone already identified as a multi-million dollar talent before he signed with a club team and agreed to give most of his signing bonus to the club team) was to remain a free agent and sign for market value. Not a wild-eyed conspiracy, but, again, leaping to conclusions to suspect the Bucs of behaving worse than anyone else in the situation.

There is a much greater chance for kickbacks and other corrupt goings on in this scenario.

I’m not sure what I was comparing it to, but it seems like the situation does create the opportunity for kickbacks and other "corrupt goings on."

And then after DG Lewis made this excellent post explaining how the transfer agreement between MLB and the LMP work, you mysteriously vanished from the thread.

Which is what you want, right?

Noticeably above replacement, since that "more than a year" isn’t actually a full season.

Congratulations for noticing it.