First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

Apparently, the robbers are targeting wealthy African Americans that are unable to pass out of the double team.

Masked Men Rob Eddy Curry at his Chicago Home

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

lol, both in chicago

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

Lets be fair. Antoine Walker was an above average passer for a big man.

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

[ QUOTE ]
Lets be fair. Antoine Walker was an above average passer for a big man.

[/ QUOTE ]

in the same way that david ortiz is an above-average bunter?

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

btw, does anyone have any good jokes about curry coz the ones with walker were great when he got jacked

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

there's gotta be a joke in here about curry's heart, but i can't quite find it

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

Good thing the robbers didn't fire a shot, because Curry wouldn't be able to block it.

Meh.

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

[ QUOTE ]
Good thing the robbers didn't fire a shot, because Curry wouldn't be able to block it.

Meh.

[/ QUOTE ]

well, on the plus side, there's not much danger of him getting hit with the rebound.

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

boo, i'm a knicks fan and i can't even think of one about this loser... [img]/images/graemlins/mad.gif[/img]

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Lets be fair. Antoine Walker was an above average passer for a big man.

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in the same way that david ortiz is an above-average bunter?

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Stick to baseball. Antoine was a pretty good passer. That's one of the reasons the Mavs wanted him, so he could be their "point forward".

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Lets be fair. Antoine Walker was an above average passer for a big man.

[/ QUOTE ]

in the same way that david ortiz is an above-average bunter?

[/ QUOTE ]

... Yeah, you have no idea what you're talking about. Unsurprising.

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Lets be fair. Antoine Walker was an above average passer for a big man.

[/ QUOTE ]

in the same way that david ortiz is an above-average bunter?

[/ QUOTE ]

... Yeah, you have no idea what you're talking about. Unsurprising.

[/ QUOTE ]

lol, vyse ragging on people

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

[ QUOTE ]

lol, vyse ragging on people

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lol, randoms

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Lets be fair. Antoine Walker was an above average passer for a big man.

[/ QUOTE ]

in the same way that david ortiz is an above-average bunter?

[/ QUOTE ]

... Yeah, you have no idea what you're talking about. Unsurprising.

[/ QUOTE ]

the point of the analogy is that he doesn't do it nearly as often as he should. last time i checked, toine is still hucking up plenty of ill-advised 30 footers, so STFU if you are too dense to understand my high-level inter-sport humor, ok?

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

^^lol, when it comes to this forum, anyone >> vyse, including randoms like me

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Lets be fair. Antoine Walker was an above average passer for a big man.

[/ QUOTE ]

in the same way that david ortiz is an above-average bunter?

[/ QUOTE ]

like the same way ryan leaf is an above-average reciever?

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Lets be fair. Antoine Walker was an above average passer for a big man.

[/ QUOTE ]

in the same way that david ortiz is an above-average bunter?

[/ QUOTE ]

... Yeah, you have no idea what you're talking about. Unsurprising.

[/ QUOTE ]

the point of the analogy is that he doesn't do it nearly as often as he should. last time i checked, toine is still hucking up plenty of ill-advised 30 footers, so STFU if you are too dense to understand my high-level inter-sport humor, ok?

[/ QUOTE ]

really, so you're claiming ortiz doesn't bunt as much as he should?

you're a regular lou piniella. nice analogy. you're too good.

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

the way he's hitting lefties this year, with the shift on and the bases open he should absolutely bunt a bit more in that situation, especially with nobody out.

but count on vyse to turn this into a retarded argument instead of a funny thread about antoine walker, who is like an endless font of jokes

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

lol, y are we arguing with one of the worst posters in this forum??

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

one?

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

[ QUOTE ]
the way he's hitting lefties this year, with the shift on and the bases open he should absolutely bunt a bit more in that situation, especially with nobody out.

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uh, yeah, let's have the guy with a .988 and .894 (not to mention .823 career) OPS with lefties start bunting more. i mean, why wouldnt' the red sox just want to help other teams neutralize their best or second-best hitter?

[ QUOTE ]
but count on vyse to turn this into a retarded argument instead of a funny thread about antoine walker, who is like an endless font of jokes

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lol @ me essentially reiterating what kidcolin says and you and some other random getting butt hurt about it. i suppose i should apologize for hurting your feelings for calling out your silly "analogy."

now where did i force you to reply again? take accountability for your actions sir.

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

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one?

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Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

Ah, the ad hominem. Nothing more preferable than actually defending the validity of your words using logic and all that fun stuff.

EDIT: And just because everyone jumps on the road to derailing a thread doesn't make me the one responsible. Obviously the one-word posts and posts quoting the one-word posts are quite profound.

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

Actually I was just questioning the non use of plurality as I feel NT is a pretty bad SE poster as well.

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

No, I don't mind; your acerbic blend of wit and bluntness actually dearly entertains me, nevermind who it is aimed at.

It's a bit humorous to note the use of "we" in Suigin's post, as if whenever I question the logic of one post, the whole of SE's emotions rise to defend, illogically or logically, the poster I quoted. You'd figure after so many tries some really entertaining insults would arise, but no dice.

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

[ QUOTE ]
uh, yeah, let's have the guy with a .988 and .894 (not to mention .823 career) OPS with lefties start bunting more. i mean, why wouldnt' the red sox just want to help other teams neutralize their best or second-best hitter?

[/ QUOTE ]

yeah, career .823 OPS vs. lefties, which is skewed by two seasons where he was excellent against them, and the other 4.5 since 01 with only one (04, .784) over .740. this year he's putting up a .694 and having some terrible ABs vs. lefty specialists in particular. looking at his career numbers, those last two years look like an aberration, not the norm. he hasn't hit a home run off a LHP yet this year and is slugging a monstrous .330 vs them. so yeah, let's just keep letting them overload the right side against him and take away like 10 hits a month with the shift, not like it seems to be hurting him or anything. wouldn't want to waste his alex cora-like power by having him try to slap the ball to the opposite field once or twice a week instead of striking out on a slider a foot off the plate.

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

This just in :

It's pretty hard for left handed batters to hit left handed pitchers.

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

wow, a post by NT that can actually separate the person from the issue? you mean some... logic? i'm strangely excited for what will materialize.

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yeah, career .823 OPS vs. lefties, which is skewed by two seasons where he was excellent against them, and the other 4.5 since 01 with only one (04, .784) over .740.

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the context in which you apply the "other 4.5" seasons is not proper. the context of the David Ortiz of now is one of baseball's best hitters. it is therefore unfair to pull numbers of seasons when he WASN'T that.

Since 03 Ortiz has been great. Here's his OPS v lefties starting since 03:

03: .674 in 116 AB
04: .784 OPS in 196 AB
05: .894 OPS in 205 AB
06: .988 OPS in 205 AB

Notice a trend? Ortiz first sucked hard against lefties, but his OPS rose in every single year since arriving in Boston. That is a downright inarguable indicator of progress -- Ortiz has performed better against lefties as he has seen more and more at-bats against them, reaching the point in the last two seasons where he was awesome against them.

So therefore you can reliably reach the conclusion that, yeah, Ortiz first was horrible against lefties, but as he saw them more often and since his time as a premier MLB hitter, he got better and better against them. So therefore he is now a "great" hitter against all types of pitchers.

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this year he's putting up a .694 and having some terrible ABs vs. lefty specialists in particular.

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The problem is it's a very small sample size -- hell, the year isn't even over yet -- combined with the fact that Ortiz is already having a down year by his measures. It's jumping the gun to definitively state that Ortiz is suddenly horrible against lefties again after four consecutive years of SUBSTANTIAL improvement that not-so-coincidentally coincided with Ortiz's arrival as one of the best hitters in the game.

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looking at his career numbers, those last two years look like an aberration, not the norm.

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When I look at his career numbers, I see a strong four-year trend of Ortiz learning to conquer and dominate lefties, and four months of "slumping" Ortiz in 07 isn't enough for me to change that opinion and start suggesting such a drastic alternative like bunting.

[ QUOTE ]
he hasn't hit a home run off a LHP yet this year and is slugging a monstrous .330 vs them.

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You could also argue he's having bad luck. His contact rate this year v lefties is 77%; last year it was 76.5%, and in 05 it was 81.4%. So he's putting about the same amount of balls in play but is only hitting .259 against them as a result after hitting .278 and .302 against them the two previous years. There's a very large margin of error in your assessment simply due to the small sample size at play, and my example of contact rate is one such example of how. And I'd still take a .364 OBP over Ortiz randomly bunting against a shift.

[ QUOTE ]
so yeah, let's just keep letting them overload the right side against him and take away like 10 hits a month with the shift, not like it seems to be hurting him or anything.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, hurt him a ton in the past three or so years that he started dominating lefties over a much larger sample size.

[ QUOTE ]
wouldn't want to waste his alex cora-like power by having him try to slap the ball to the opposite field once or twice a week instead of striking out on a slider a foot off the plate.

[/ QUOTE ]

And just when I was ready to give up the condescending snotty tone to actually legitimately debate something, you have to throw in the typical "Yeah, bitch!" tone at the end. Congrats, you still kept your image up. You're still that tough guy NT! that I love.

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

of course it is, and i'm not saying you need to platoon him with WMP vs LHP or something, just that knocking the occasional pitch over towards 3B wouldn't kill him. if he could execute even a swinging bunt at anything near the efficacy of hitters who rely on that kind of thing, it would definitely be +EV. virtually anything that gets past the pitcher becomes a hit.

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

NT!,

maybe sit the next few plays out.

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

sure, you can argue that his rising OPS against LHP is indicative of actual improvement. you can also just as easily argue that it represents a peak, and for a power hitter on the wrong side of 30 who is carrying about 40 extra pounds to the batter's box, it's not at all hard to argue that he's in decline, and his numbers vs. LHP are going to be among the first areas to go.

there is no doubt that he's having some 'bad luck' or running bad or whatever you want to call it. his BABIP vs. LHP is 60 points below what it is vs. RHP. he's hurt, too, and there's no reason not to think that's playing a part.

and when you're running bad, you're hurt and you're missing some of the physical tools you once had, you make adjustments. there must be a certain point where the likelihood of executing a swinging bunt against the shift is preferable to whatever approach you are using, the argument is whether, right now, it's optimal for ortiz to mix it in. i think it's worth a shot, not just because it's +EV in a vacuum if he can execute it with some consistency, but also because it may force pitchers and defenses to change their approach and shake up a routine against him that seems to be working.

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

[ QUOTE ]
sure, you can argue that his rising OPS against LHP is indicative of actual improvement. you can also just as easily argue that it represents a peak, and for a power hitter on the wrong side of 30 who is carrying about 40 extra pounds to the batter's box, it's not at all hard to argue that he's in decline, and his numbers vs. LHP are going to be among the first areas to go.

[/ QUOTE ]

How can you "just as easily" argue that, essentially, 112 AB is more indicative of his true skill against lefties than 605 AB? If Ortiz is in decline -- more specifically, if Ortiz is in a precipitous decline, which would be needed to explain away his poor performance versus lefties this season -- why does he still have a 1:1 K/BB ratio, a .433 OBP, and is otherwise hitting righties better than he ever has in his career?

Really, the more I look at the numbers, the more it seems probable that this season isn't necessarily the beginning of a decline phase, because the only part of Ortiz that has "declined" is his power against lefties, and even to that end we don't truly know because the sample size is so small and he's been victimized by a bit of bad luck. The truth is probably somewhere in between his 04 and 05 numbers (I'd lean more towards 05), but I don't see how, presented with the evidence at hand, one could seriously "just as easily" argue that not only has Ortiz hit his peak (maybe), but right after hitting his peak he is flat-out horrible against lefties all of a sudden (almost a definitive no).

[ QUOTE ]
and when you're running bad, you're hurt and you're missing some of the physical tools you once had, you make adjustments.

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in this case i think occam's razor has a place: there's no need to look beyond the obvious answer here that it's simply a small sample size problem and he will regress to his established mean of performance against lefties from the last three seasons. anything else seems like an unnecessary leap of faith.

[ QUOTE ]
there must be a certain point where the likelihood of executing a swinging bunt against the shift is preferable to whatever approach you are using

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obviously there must be, but i don't think there's any reason to think this is the point you can reliably make that decision. there aren't a ton of things one can "reliably" say about baseball even four months in, and when an even further diluted sample size is called into play, you definitely can't make such a statement about a topic such as this. and anyway, as I said earlier, a .364 OBP is still quite fine and above averag, and even if you accept his power is dead against lefties, given "normal" batting average luck that OBP would be even higher, probably around .380, which is decidedly above average.

[ QUOTE ]
the argument is whether, right now, it's optimal for ortiz to mix it in. i think it's worth a shot, not just because it's +EV in a vacuum if he can execute it with some consistency, but also because it may force pitchers and defenses to change their approach and shake up a routine against him that seems to be working.

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seems being the key word. i don't know why it should or would bother you or ortiz or whomever any more than any other defensive alignment, as one has to expect the defense to use the best possible defensive alignment to impede the potential of a batter getting a hit. when you start playing back simply to fight a shift is where i believe you enter dangerous territories -- you're coming dangerously close to blaming ortiz' poor performance this season against lefties due to the shift.

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

You guys are both morons.


Also, if Ortiz is at a point where a bunt is more effective than a proper at bat, he shouldn't be DH'ing against LHP.

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

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You guys are both morons.

[/ QUOTE ]

Too basic, Thayer. Try harder.

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

definitely not blaming his poor hitting vs lefties on the shift. the affect of the shift when facing RHP or LHP probably doesn't differ much, and he's hitting RHP as well as ever.

what i had in mind was that it might force pitchers to change their approach against him if he can take those outside fastballs or breaking balls the other way from time to time. watching LHP approach him now, it seems like they are all doing roughly the same thing, and it's working.

basically suggesting that, if he continues to put up a sub-.700 OPS vs LHP for much longer, hitting against the shift becomes less and less -EV if he can execute it properly because his expected performance in that scenario isn't good enough that you're giving up much. i think it's a mix of running bad and being hurt. despite what he says, i expect him to keep being somewhat hurt until he gets surgery on that knee, so it wouldn't surprise me to see him fail to improve much. if that's the case, a swinging bunt from time to time becomes more and more attractive.

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

[ QUOTE ]
You guys are both morons.


Also, if Ortiz is at a point where a bunt is more effective than a proper at bat, he shouldn't be DH'ing against LHP.

[/ QUOTE ]

thanks for your contribution, i'd love to hear your advanced opinion about this one thayer

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

if he's so hurt, why is he still raping RPs?

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

The Red Sox are a pretty smart organization. You guys can both use tiny sample sized data to support your arguments but the bottom line is Ortiz would be bunting if it were more effective.

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

this thread came up a while ago while power hitters like ortiz and delgado don't bunt against the shift..from the arguments, i think ortiz had to be insanely effective at bunting in order for it to be +EV and for the most part, he was playing into the other team's favor...

that being said, i would love to see delgado drop more bunts down, don't know how honest it would keep the defense, but the shift [censored] pisses me off

Re: First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry
 

[ QUOTE ]
The Red Sox are a pretty smart organization. You guys can both use tiny sample sized data to support your arguments but the bottom line is Ortiz would be bunting if it were more effective.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's really not saying anything at all re: me being a moron.