To DMGM, DeJesus was never a

(1) True Center Fielder™, or a
(2) True Leadoff Hitter™

He just doesn’t run fast enough.

…is over the top, or RR is going through an emotion period—call it post-RomRam Syndrome (PRRS).

But, RR, do you really believe this: “While the Jacobs trade was a non-solution to a non-problem, on balance the Crisp pickup looks more like a half-solution to, perhaps, a half problem.” With regard to Jacobs, are you calling the Royals lack of power a non-problem? Well, you’re the—only—-one. You’re it. We couldn’t score runs last year, and getting an HR/RBI guy helps—-no matter his high SOs and low OBP.

And why can’t DDJ adjust to left field? Do you really, in your heart of hearts, believe that DDJ can’t become an above-average left fielder? – TL

I don’t think you were necessarily saying this, but I don’t think we should just assume everything would have been fine if we’d just kept DDJ in CF and then acquired a fairly cheap corner OFer. I would have preferred that, but it’s not like that would have been the big upgrade, as compared to this small upgrade. For instance, if the Royals would have just signed Rivera, Hinske, or Branyan, those players each come with their own offensive question marks and limitations, as well as poor OF defense.

And I thought I had detected a reflection on this website in recent months of what has been going on throughout sabermetric circles. And that is a recognition of the very large importance of defense. The Royals defense was, by all accounts at or near the bottom of all of major league baseball. Bad defense costs runs, and therefore wins. Better defense saves runs, and therefore increases wins. So while I think we need to recognize the opportunity cost of the Crisp trade (which is the lost OPS improvement the Royals could have gotten through a corner OF acquisition), we also need to recognize the very real value of improved OF defense (basically two of the three OFers are CFers).

b/c i immediately see the problems in what i’ve just written…

overall, I don’t think the crisp trade is horrible, we’ll just have to see how much the defensive upgrade really is there and how much it makes up for the loss of Ram-Ram, which isn’t negligible

there is some offensive upgrade as well (basically replacing Gator/Mitch with Crisp) but this comes at the cost of having a better bat in a corner

I know the C-OF options weren’t great, but we are talking about a relatively easy position to fill here, between retreads and minor league FAs

Instantly thought of president-elect obama.

With Nunez, ramram, and soria we might have had one of the best backends in baseball. Not the overhyped kardashian backside, but a nice tight Natalie Portman or something.

I know the swingman soria 100+ innings idea has come up here, and I agree that it should happen…we all know it won’t though.

What would have been really cool is to have three closing pitchers to pitch the 7th, 8th, 9th. And treat them kind of like starters in a rotation. Soria one night, ram ram the next, and nunez the third. And usually 1 in 4 games no one will be needed, and they will all have some pretty good rest.

ERRONEOUS! RamRam was dealt for Valerio de los Santos.

The only problem with your conclusion which says “So absent other trades, it looks like the Royals are planning on a DeJesus-Crisp-Guillen outfield.” is the unstated conclusion that logically follows. You don’t like this outfield but apparently are good with Guillen-DeJesus-Teabag.

Well, if that’s what you want. But, count me out. I want to dump Teabag as soon as possible and prefer the Crisp variant you stated in the article to last season’s lineup.

but things are moving too quickly, to on the off chance it will make a difference, chec, out Dave Cameron’s critique of position adjusted offensive stats.

IN summary:

We really need to get over this idea that guys like David DeJesus, Carl Crawford, and Ichiro Suzuki lose a significant amount of their value because they’re not playing center field. The difference in their value in CF vs a corner is pretty small, and there are many cases where it certainly makes sense to have a premium defender in an outfield corner.

We have to get away from this notion that a good defender is wasted in a corner. It’s just not true.

I agree. This is part of the reason to do position adjustments after accounting for offense and defense relative to average and/or replacement level.

And that’s also why Mark Teahen was an above average RF last year.

Man, I left dumb about getting that worked up over a trade I don’t mind all that much after I got into bed last night.

Crisp considered alone, none of his offensive projections alone are average — they aren’t horrible, but they aren’t good enough that he can be an average overall player without above average defense — which he has shown he can play in the past.

So later today I’m going take the PMR, Dewan’s, and UZR from the past three years, prorate for 150 games a season (because that’s what MGL does — not that it’s perfect, but I havec some of the older UZR stuff and that makes it easier for me to have e baseline), then do a weighted 5-4-3 average. The sample sizes from 2006 and 2008 aren’t great, but they aren’t uselessly small, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to do it that way. I’ll also do a version where I throw in some primitive regression to average if that might correct some worries.

I’ll get the individual results of each system, then I’ll do a version convertingn Dewan’s and PMR to runs and average the results. I wanted to post this now before I have much more of an idea what the result might mean. I don’t think it will be definitive, but I do think it will be helpful, at least to me. I’ll admit now that I think that PMR will like him best, followed by Dewan’s, then UZR. But we’ll see.

Let’s just see the guys play and go from there…

Michael Tucker 2.0.

and wouldn’t your home field tend to matter, especially in OOZ plays? for instance, will Coco have more opportunities to make OOZ plays at the K vs Fenway? In fact, I could see a situation where Coco outperforms DDJ in CF at stadia like the K (big centerfield) but vice versa at Fenway (smaller outfield). Not to mention that Coco should have lots of OOZ opportunities in Right-Center as he covers Jome Run Jose’s Jiney.

if you really want to value it in terms of what the individual years cost the Royals (unless he gets traded)

R’s on the hook for 1 year: 5.75M + 500k = 6.25M
R’s on the hook for additional year: 8M – 500k = 7.5M

If he only plays one year, he makes 6.25M; if he plays a second year, he makes an additional 7.5M

Are the Royals actively shopping Ron Mahay right now as well? If you’re going to blow up the bullpen, hecould probably get you just as much (or more, being a LOOGY) than the other two did.

As long as this is a clearing house for all CoCo-related material, might as well give the ProPS over the past 3 Boston years for him. ZeppelinDZ is the one who got me into it, and although problems have been pointed out with it, I do think it has some value as a “luck-neutralizer.” From playing with it off and on over the last month, I do wonder if it doesn’t overly favor patient power hitters like Cust and Dunn a bit unfairly as opposed to dude who rely more on speed like Granderson, contact, like Howie Kendrick, and both, like Crisp. Just putting it out there. More sophisticated people can argue about it.

As I undertstand it, PrOPS, for those who don’t want to read the links above, uses batted ball data and other stuff to neutralize “luck” and get at the “true talent” hiding behind a players stats. Yeah, OPS is pretty problematic, but that’s not the issue here. I’m just putting the info out there without endorsing any particular conclusion to be drawn from it — at least not at this point. It might help settle debates about whether a player has just been “lucky” or “unlucky” over a period of years, or might show that seasons that look very different are actually expressions of a fairly consisten true talent level.

I’ll give each player’s OPS, then PrOPS (with “three slash” in parentheses), then OPS-PrOPS “luck” factor — positive numbers mean he tended on the “lucky” side, negative that he was unlucky.

CoCo Crisp

2008
OPS: .751
PrOPS: .730 (.270/.332/.398)
OPS-PrOPS: .043

2007
OPS: .712
PrOPS: .686 (.262/.324/.362)
OPS-PrOPS: .026

2006
OPS: .702
PrOPS: .697 (.262/.318.384)
OPS-PrOPS: .005

David DeJesus

2008
OPS: .818
PrOPS: .810 (.304/.364/.447)
OPS-PrOPS: .008

2007
OPS: .722
PrOPS: .747 (.277/.367/.381)
OPS-PrOPS: -0.025

2006
OPS: .810
PrOPS: .774 (.292/.362/.411)
OPS-PrOPS: .036

Mark Teahen

2008
OPS: .715
PrOPS: .743 (.270/.326/.417)
OPS-PrOPS: -0.028

2007
OPS: .763
PrOPS: .706 (.265/.334/.372)
OPS-PrOPS: .057

2006
OPS: .874
PrOPS: .807 (.269/.337/.471)
OPS-PrOPS: .066

Jose Guillen

2008
OPS: .738
PrOPS: .750 (.275/.309/.441)
OPS-PrOPS: -0.012

2007
OPS: .813
PrOPS: .787 (.270/.336/.451)
OPS-PrOPS: .026

2006
OPS: .674
PrOPS: .752 (.258/.318/.434)
OPS-PrOPS: -0.078

Remember — PrOPS is not universally accepted, from what I’ve read, although I think there are some clear indicatations that in many cases it is telling of… something.

Still take it with a several grains of salt.