jerseyhoya wrote:the 1st place Mets

HUH?

smitty wrote:We suck in inter league pay which is in June. That is, until this year. Plus, at some point we get real players back and don't have to depend on the heroic but inept Castro; Exxon; and Hoover.

If we get lucky and Happ returns hale and hearty or they sign Pedro or something, we might get to see some serious $#@! -- like some DeLorean 88 MPH stuff.

That's the thing--it seems like they have wins in hand because they're doing this with so many missing pieces. It's kind of scary how good they've been with Kendrick and Figueroa getting so many starts, no consistent late-inning relievers and down to their third-string SS and catcher.

I'm sure it doesn't really work that way, but it's still fun to think about.

Barry Jive wrote:

smitty wrote:We suck in inter league pay which is in June. That is, until this year. Plus, at some point we get real players back and don't have to depend on the heroic but inept Castro; Exxon; and Hoover.

If we get lucky and Happ returns hale and hearty or they sign Pedro or something, we might get to see some serious $#@! -- like some DeLorean 88 MPH stuff.

That's the thing--it seems like they have wins in hand because they're doing this with so many missing pieces. It's kind of scary how good they've been with Kendrick and Figueroa getting so many starts, no consistent late-inning relievers and down to their third-string SS and catcher.

I'm sure it doesn't really work that way, but it's still fun to think about.

The other thing that's cool is the rest of the NL East is pretty much treading water. It's a long season and a lot can happen but right now you gotta feel pretty good about our heroes.

I know people like to over-play the heroic-ism from Exxon and Castor, but they are still both OPSing below .600. In reality, they haven't been very good at all.

Yeah, a couple weeks ago my buddy suggested that Castro was reaching Iguchi levels and I had to dismantle the crap out of that argument.

SK790 wrote:I know people like to over-play the heroic-ism from Exxon and Castor, but they are still both OPSing below .600. In reality, they haven't been very good at all.

OPS is great for evaluating a full season. But these guys have barely played and yet they have both driven in and scored some big runs and made a bunch of nice defensive plays and that's more than enough good things to get from a 2nd and 3rd string utility infielder.

Jimmy will be back soon and all will be well but meanwhile the Phils have a great record and are pretty far in front of the rest of the division and Castro and Valdez have helped and not hurt and that's a good thing.

smitty wrote:

SK790 wrote:I know people like to over-play the heroic-ism from Exxon and Castor, but they are still both OPSing below .600. In reality, they haven't been very good at all.

OPS is great for evaluating a full season. But these guys have barely played and yet they have both driven in and scored some big runs and made a bunch of nice defensive plays and that's more than enough good things to get from a 2nd and 3rd string utility infielder.

Jimmy will be back soon and all will be well but meanwhile the Phils have a great record and are pretty far in front of the rest of the division and Castro and Valdez have helped and not hurt and that's a good thing.

OPS > RBIs and Rs in any sample size, since neither of those depend on other players.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that they've gotten hits to help the Phillies win more games, but you can't help but think they're were probably(likely) to be lucky to get those hits when they did. I don't mean to be a negative nancy or anything, but some people(not on this board, obviously) think that they are good ball players, when they are nothing more than AAAA replacement players.

But on the telecast tonight, they called Valdez a major league shortstop.
I don't know who to believe.

It's a quick and dirty measure at this point, but by WAR according to Fangraphs Valdez has been worth -0.1 and Castro -0.4. And from your backup SS, you could do a lot worse. Valdez in particular has been a pleasant surprise considering he was a AAAA emergency type guy.

Hoover's already worth 600k by Fangraphs' player valuations. Highway robbery!

SK790 wrote:

smitty wrote:

SK790 wrote:I know people like to over-play the heroic-ism from Exxon and Castor, but they are still both OPSing below .600. In reality, they haven't been very good at all.

OPS is great for evaluating a full season. But these guys have barely played and yet they have both driven in and scored some big runs and made a bunch of nice defensive plays and that's more than enough good things to get from a 2nd and 3rd string utility infielder.

Jimmy will be back soon and all will be well but meanwhile the Phils have a great record and are pretty far in front of the rest of the division and Castro and Valdez have helped and not hurt and that's a good thing.

OPS > RBIs and Rs in any sample size, since neither of those depend on other players.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that they've gotten hits to help the Phillies win more games, but you can't help but think they're were probably(likely) to be lucky to get those hits when they did. I don't mean to be a negative nancy or anything, but some people(not on this board, obviously) think that they are good ball players, when they are nothing more than AAAA replacement players.

I think maybe it's just encouraging that they're not terrible, that they're actually fulfilling their duties as replacement players and maintaining replacement level. As opposed to Eric Bruntlett level.

Barry Jive wrote:Hoover's already worth 600k by Fangraphs' player valuations. Highway robbery!

Hoover, damn!

Barry Jive wrote:

SK790 wrote:

smitty wrote:

SK790 wrote:I know people like to over-play the heroic-ism from Exxon and Castor, but they are still both OPSing below .600. In reality, they haven't been very good at all.

OPS is great for evaluating a full season. But these guys have barely played and yet they have both driven in and scored some big runs and made a bunch of nice defensive plays and that's more than enough good things to get from a 2nd and 3rd string utility infielder.

Jimmy will be back soon and all will be well but meanwhile the Phils have a great record and are pretty far in front of the rest of the division and Castro and Valdez have helped and not hurt and that's a good thing.

OPS > RBIs and Rs in any sample size, since neither of those depend on other players.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that they've gotten hits to help the Phillies win more games, but you can't help but think they're were probably(likely) to be lucky to get those hits when they did. I don't mean to be a negative nancy or anything, but some people(not on this board, obviously) think that they are good ball players, when they are nothing more than AAAA replacement players.

I think maybe it's just encouraging that they're not terrible, that they're actually fulfilling their duties as replacement players and maintaining replacement level. As opposed to Eric Bruntlett level.

They're on par with 2008 Eric Bruntlett-level replacement.

Not making this up, the year we won the World fucking Series, Eric Bruntlett made 120 appearances. I guess it's less shocking when you realize he was basically PTBs personal caddy the whole year, but still....120!

EDIT: it's more shocking when you realize he had 238 PAs!

Yes, that's accurate. Bruntlett wasn't bad in 2008, but in 2009 he was fucking awful.

He was still pretty bad in '09 for a guy who got over 200 PAs....but I guess that's not really his fault, it's more of a managing problem.

SK790 wrote:

smitty wrote:

SK790 wrote:I know people like to over-play the heroic-ism from Exxon and Castor, but they are still both OPSing below .600. In reality, they haven't been very good at all.

OPS is great for evaluating a full season. But these guys have barely played and yet they have both driven in and scored some big runs and made a bunch of nice defensive plays and that's more than enough good things to get from a 2nd and 3rd string utility infielder.

Jimmy will be back soon and all will be well but meanwhile the Phils have a great record and are pretty far in front of the rest of the division and Castro and Valdez have helped and not hurt and that's a good thing.

OPS > RBIs and Rs in any sample size, since neither of those depend on other players.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that they've gotten hits to help the Phillies win more games, but you can't help but think they're were probably(likely) to be lucky to get those hits when they did. I don't mean to be a negative nancy or anything, but some people(not on this board, obviously) think that they are good ball players, when they are nothing more than AAAA replacement players.

See this where I start thinking of my essay on stats being"predictive" or "productive" which I've never actually written since I've only given it about two minutes thought and think it wouldn't make any sense if I really tried to do more. But the fact is Valdez has hit a perfectly respectable .286 with runners in scoring position and Castro has logged a remarkable .368. How valuable are these for predicting how they'll do in situations coming up? Absolutely worthless. But in the question of, "Well how did they do?" filling in for Rollins while he was hurt, it would be silly to overlook this or other positives. "Better than expected', I think , has to be the answer, along with, "Glad it didn't have to go on for much longer." The runs they scored or knocked in will always be there, along with the fact that the club played pretty well with them in there. Sure it would have been nice if they had gotten on more and come up with extra base hits in non-key situations, raising the old OPS. But to do that they probably would have had to be actually good players. Instead, they only seemed to come through when we were most certain they would fail and, like Timmy Lupus' catch, that's something that should be appreciated all the more, rather than dismissed.

swishnicholson wrote:

SK790 wrote:

smitty wrote:

SK790 wrote:I know people like to over-play the heroic-ism from Exxon and Castor, but they are still both OPSing below .600. In reality, they haven't been very good at all.

OPS is great for evaluating a full season. But these guys have barely played and yet they have both driven in and scored some big runs and made a bunch of nice defensive plays and that's more than enough good things to get from a 2nd and 3rd string utility infielder.

Jimmy will be back soon and all will be well but meanwhile the Phils have a great record and are pretty far in front of the rest of the division and Castro and Valdez have helped and not hurt and that's a good thing.

OPS > RBIs and Rs in any sample size, since neither of those depend on other players.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that they've gotten hits to help the Phillies win more games, but you can't help but think they're were probably(likely) to be lucky to get those hits when they did. I don't mean to be a negative nancy or anything, but some people(not on this board, obviously) think that they are good ball players, when they are nothing more than AAAA replacement players.

See this where I start thinking of my essay on stats being"predictive" or "productive" which I've never actually written since I've only given it about two minutes thought and think it wouldn't make any sense if I really tried to do more. But the fact is Valdez has hit a perfectly respectable .286 with runners in scoring position and Castro has logged a remarkable .368. How valuable are these for predicting how they'll do in situations coming up? Absolutely worthless. But in the question of, "Well how did they do?" filling in for Rollins while he was hurt, it would be silly to overlook this or other positives. "Better than expected', I think , has to be the answer, along with, "Glad it didn't have to go on for much longer." The runs they scored or knocked in will always be there, along with the fact that the club played pretty well with them in there. Sure it would have been nice if they had gotten on more and come up with extra base hits in non-key situations, raising the old OPS. But to do that they probably would have had to be actually good players. Instead, they only seemed to come through when we were most certain they would fail and, like Timmy Lupus' catch, that's something that should be appreciated all the more, rather than dismissed.

Your "predictive vs productive" argument is something I personally find interesting, actually. I've argued about this IRL and on the internet about the subject. IMO, certain stats are "productive", and certain stats are "predictive". Most "primitive" stats are productive, while most modern stats are predictive, at least IMO.

Anyhoo, segwaying, hopefully, into my main point, the "predictive" stats have shown that they have been pretty lucky with their production. High RBI and RS numbers despite bad OPSes. I said in my original post that I appreciate their timely hits and all, but overall, they haven't been very good. The "productive" stats have shown they've been great and all, but how long is it before they start getting their hits with nobody on rather than w/RISP?

Also, this is all based on an extremely small sample size.

They're both in the negatives for WPA, so there goes your "productive" thing, at least at the plate. There's no consideration for defense in WPA, so maybe combined with their D they'd be in the black.

Anyway, thanks to all this time they've gotten on the field and the team's success over that period of time, we (and more importantly, Charlie) got a free look at them, which I'm inclined to think will mean we won't see much Castro this year unless Charlie really needs to use a PH. And that's great.

SK790 wrote:He was still pretty bad in '09 for a guy who got over 200 PAs....but I guess that's not really his fault, it's more of a managing problem.

We don't have any managing problems.

mcare89 wrote:

SK790 wrote:He was still pretty bad in '09 for a guy who got over 200 PAs....but I guess that's not really his fault, it's more of a managing problem.

We don't have any managing problems.

Jimmy leading off and Lidge being the closer all last year doesn't concern me in the least....

I don't mean to get down on Charlie, because it's obvious he's one of the best managers in baseball, but I think it's fair to criticize...

@barry, good point. I guess I'm just taking an early precaution in case Rollins sucks when he gets back against the "START CASTOR" bandwagon.

Phillies currently hold the largest lead of any division leader - 4 games.