With pat in the line up the phillies made the playoffs the last two seasons and won the world series last year, I wouldn’t say he was a ‘drag’ on the line up bringing everyone even ryan howard down.

So what you’re saying is that Pat would be bad for the line up because ryan howard strikes out so much (which I believe if a false argument anyway) – but isn’t that ryan howards ‘fault’?

Rofl, really?

Hmmm…chase utley, jimmy rollins, shane victorino, I would say this team already has quite a few ‘work ethic’ examples…

It’s been 19 games and those who were glad to see pat go want to use it to justify his exit – not to mention the esoteric analysis from some – personally since the team hasn’t ‘done’ anything better than last year nor have the playoffs come, it means very little in either direction.

Plus – like they said above – 19 games

THEY WON THE WORLD SERIES WITH PAT LAST YEAR!!! How can the chemistry be better that that?

Shame on you for posting from class ;)

Second, I’d be very curious to see that “AL pitchers are better” statement quantified. Burrell certainly had some tough in-division pitching matchups every year with the likes of Pedro, Smoltz, Hudson, Santana last year, Willis in his heyday, the other good Marlins starters when healthy, etc. Ibanez over the same period had to face a good Angels rotation, but could feast on the Rangers and, for the most part, the post-Big Three A’s.

Make note that I didn’t say Pat was a better hitter. I made no reference of who was the best, just consistency. Safeco will consistently effect Ibanez’s numbers, for better or for worse.

“I remember tens, if not hundreds, of times of Pat being at bat and striking out w/ that "dumb" look or walking when we needed a hit.”

See, this is what makes me believe that the “Ibanez is better than Burrell” refrain is driven more by personal animus than any sort of reasoned objective analysis.

As someone mentioned in the last Ibanez thread, practically every batters’ statistics drop drastically when they swing at pitches outside of the strike zone. By walking, it means that Burrell was not swinging at pitches outside of the strikezone — this is not a bad thing, it is a good thing and a skill that many players DREAM of having. However, only though a completely subjective argument like “I watch the games and…” could a players strength be turned into a liability.

And I believe that evil space aliens came to earth 65 million years ago and ate all of the dinosaurs and planted robots deep beneath the Earth’s surface that are going to break out in 2 years and bring about our demise.

But alas, given that there is no evidence to support this belief, it cannot be considered to be based in reality. Much like the evidence that Raul’s baserunning makes him more valuable than Burrell does not exist.

You are making a point that I didn’t include the last 18 games of this year even though I posted the previous 4 YEARS of data? All I am showing is consistency here and Pat has been more consistent that Raul.

whose just are we talking about?

We know your point. Your views on baseball are not especially unique, and the argument that you attempt to make is one that we have heard time and time again. Many people have come to this blog with your point of view, and most of them have converted to our way of thinking over time. The reason is that we know additional facts and have done additional research and read other research discussing these types of things in detail. I will address a few points that are very important that I want you to consider.

You said that Ibanez gets more hits, less stirkeouts, and better averages. There are actually two points you made in this list of four things. More hits and Less strikeouts is just the way by which Ibanez gets better batting averages. Batting average is only Hits/(Hits+Outs). So the point you are making is that Ibanez hits for a better batting average. This is true, and is a credit to him. However, there has been much research into what types of statistics actually measure run scoring— which is the whole point of batting average. Batting average is a personal statistic, and teams win by having more runs and not more hits. Runs come about because people get on base, and people knock those people in. Most people think that walks are the pitcher’s fault, but walks are actually largely a result of decisions that hitters make. They foul off two strike pitches, they avoid swinging at pitches out of the strike zone (which helps your average and avoids popouts and dinky groundouts— swinging at pitches out of the zone is terribly unproductive which most people don’t realize). Getting walks is incredibly useful. As a result, the actual correlation throughout over a hundred years of baseball history is higher on-base percentages are much more important to run scoring than batting averages. That’s not to say batting average is not important. Walks don’t advance guys who aren’t forced to the next base, after all, and you can’t go first to third on a walk. But those types of things aren’t enough to make a huge difference. Over hundreds of years of baseball history, a single increases your expected runs scored by 0.5 and a walk increases your expected runs scored by 0.3. That is not a huge difference. Now, the issue with batting average is that it treats singles the same as extra base hits. That’s ridiculous. The difference between a homerun and a single is 0.9 runs on average. That’s huge. As a result, slugging percentage is also way more useful than batting average. So there are three main statistics that affect a player’s value. AVG/OBP/SLG. AVG is still important because two singles is better than a double and an out— so it’s not like SLG is better in all forms. But in order of importance OBP is more important than SLG which is more important than AVG. This isn’t a point worth arguing, because you will sound silly. Looking at the team OBP and team SLG and team AVG of all the teams over the past few years and compare it to total Runs. The point jumps out at you. When it comes to OBP and SLG, Burrell has been better than Ibanez (even adjusting for park, there are smart people out there who do that, you know) for a few years.

You say that Ibanez gets more RBI’s. Well, that’s true but it’s only because he gets more at bats. That’s worth noting, but keep in mind he gets more at-bats despite making less use of them. RBI’s are actually a very silly statistic to evaluate a player on, and it’s important to understand why. I love the RBI. It tells you the STORY of a game, which is awesome. I love baseball, and there’s something magical about knocking in a run. But in reality, the reason that it was started in the first place is because it was easy to keep track of. You probably don’t know this, because the mainstream media doesn’t like to ruin the story (after all, most sportswriters don’t know a thing about how to play baseball or analyze numbers, making them storytellers in reality)— but there is almost no such things as CLUTCH hitting. Obviously that is something I refused to believe when I first heard it, but it’s pretty much true. If you compare batting averages to batting averages with RISP or any other “clutch” situation you can dream of (believe me, everyone has tried to prove this wrong for decades), they are about the same. Obviously it’s mathematically impossible for them to be exactly the same, but if you take the list of guys who outperformed their average in important situations in one year, and look at them the next year, half of them are “unclutch” the next year and half of them are “clutch” the next year. If you look at the list of supposed chokers, half of them are “clutch” the next year. In reality, each and every one of these guys is clutch. I’m an anxious guy at times, and I’d probably choke in the clutch, but if I were good enough at baseball that scouts bothered coming to my games, I would have choked then. Every guy on that field came through when their dream and the weight of their family’s wellbeing was on their back. Against each other, they tend to cancel out. In reality, the gurus who predict RBI totals every year so well have a trick. They look at the guy’s slugging percentage and the on-base percentage of the guys before him. It turns out that predicts RBIs. So if you want to see who adds the most runs to your team, you look for the guy who has the highest OBP so that guys after him can knock him in and the guy with the highest SLG who can knock the guys in front of him in. So, you won’t get far arguing RBIs since most people here know about the difference between the RBI and predicting future runs.

Now, as I’ve mentioned a few times, I like Ibanez. I like him because he is good at OBP and SLG, and hits for a good average which is important too. I was happy the Phillies signed him, even though I would have preferred Burrell slightly (and mostly because he was cheaper).

You also mention Ibanez is better on the bases. It sure looks that way, but Burrell actually isn’t much different than Ibanez on the bases. There are really three ways to be good on bases, (1) moving the extra base on a hit while avoiding getting thrown out, (2) moving the extra base on an out while avoiding getting thrown out, and (3) stealing bases and avoided being caught. The website BaseballProspectus.com finally got fed up with all the guess work, and added it all up. They tried to see how much people really differ. Some guys certainly are awesome baserunners and some guys stink. But the difference is only a handful of runs per season. Neither Burrell or Ibanez has a career history of doing so well in this, but both guys are only about 1-2 runs below average per year. This year, Ibanez has looked awesome but he’s been running bases since he was 5 and there’s a track record for his whole MLB career. He doesn’t do very well with this stuff no matter what situation you put him in. He has some good moments, but Burrell really was fundamentally solid despite his slowness and he avoided making outs on the bases. The result is that they have been the same and our eyes have been deceiving us.

At fielding, Ibanez is a different kind of player than Burrell. Ibanez doesn’t get very good jumps and he’s got a bit of a noodle arm if he doesn’t line it up right. As a result, he’s good once he comes on the TV screen but not really beforehand. Both guys have a track record of not getting to many balls. Pretty much all ways that people track this and scout this show it. I like Ibanez, and I don’t care if his defense isn’t great— it’s actually much better since he’s very good at getting the balls he’s slow on by diving well. But I like Ibanez for his hitting. His defense has been decent this year, but it gets old.

I read a Mariners fan say something pretty important about Ibanez. He has stretches where he hits like Babe Ruth and he’ll annoy you by being barely average the rest of the time. We started off with a Ruthian stretch, which is great. It gave him a lot of leeway in my book. But he’s not Babe Ruth and don’t get too sour on him if he starts to look goofy out there. Burrell did too, but without him, we wouldn’t have won the World Series last year. And we have a much better shot with our new LF out there this year too.