First Antoine Walker, Now Eddy Curry

[Vyse]

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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?

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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.

[Triumph36]

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one?

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[Vyse]

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.

[THAY3R]

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

[Vyse]

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.

[NT!]

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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?

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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. 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.

[THAY3R]

This just in :

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

[Vyse]

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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

[NT!]

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.

[kidcolin]

NT!,

maybe sit the next few plays out.