Klapsich: Everything's Wrong

Apparently Klapsich doesn't believe in bad luck or aberrations.

about 2 years ago squid92 27 comments 0 recs |

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Does Klapisch ever write anything positive about the Mets?

by Syler on Dec 4, 2009 2:34 PM EST reply actions

It's funny that despite their being mountains of concrete

evidence that can explain these mysterious phenomena, many writers would probably rather consider them unexplainable than except answers that come from progressive stats.

by Gina on Dec 4, 2009 2:37 PM EST reply actions

He’s one writer I seriously would like to punch in the face… especially after his “Reasons to Watch Phillies-Yankees World Series” column in which several of his reasons were Mets related (i.e. Phillies are not the Mets, Matchup makes Omar and Jeff squirm, etc.)

That column made me want to cancel my family’s subscription to the Bergen Record.

by DC4Three on Dec 4, 2009 2:49 PM EST reply actions

Nice reading comprehension skills there , Bob.

According to SI.com, which rated all 30 minor league systems this week, the Mets ranked an uninspiring 21st

by acerimusdux on Dec 4, 2009 5:18 PM EST reply actions

It was hard to figure out it was in alphabetical order

Took me almost half a second to get that. And if it actually is the ranking, then that’s just a huge coincidence.

"We must win and we must know how to win rather than win because we have statistical people."

by Evan_S on Dec 4, 2009 10:05 PM EST up reply actions

"Clearly, something was amiss with Wright"

Yeah, look what he had around him…

"Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!"
Gil Hodges IS a Hall of Famer.

by Brooklyn Dodgers Mets Fan on Dec 4, 2009 5:31 PM EST reply actions

It's kind of impressive

That Klapisch can be blatantly wrong on just about every point.

1. SI.com didn’t rank anybody’s farm systems
2. Pelfrey didn’t really regress this year

Then there are his “facts” like Wright hates Citi, etc. Well done Bob

by Bieser's Balk on Dec 4, 2009 6:33 PM EST reply actions

wait

do you guys just find something wrong with every article written about the mets by anyone ever?

wright had a pretty mysterious power drop last year, and pelfrey did struggle after a promising 08 season…. why do we criticize members of the MM here when they say things that are ENTIRELY FACTUAL?

A "Zeile" for avoiding outs

by metsguy234 on Dec 5, 2009 10:26 AM EST reply actions

Pelfrey struggle because he had the worst defense behind him

not his fault.

"We must win and we must know how to win rather than win because we have statistical people."

by Evan_S on Dec 5, 2009 11:45 AM EST up reply actions

Because they are ENTIRELY WRONG

Wright’s drop in power wasn’t mysterious. Pelfrey’s struggles weren’t particularly mysterious either. Making up facts (the aforementioned David Wright hates Citi Field, or that Citi Field “eats” home runs) makes you look like a hack.

"Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!"
Gil Hodges IS a Hall of Famer.

by Brooklyn Dodgers Mets Fan on Dec 5, 2009 12:56 PM EST up reply actions

explain wright's drop in power for me then

A "Zeile" for avoiding outs

by metsguy234 on Dec 5, 2009 1:55 PM EST up reply actions

drop in FB rate, bad luck.

"I dunno. I never smoked any Astroturf"
-Tug McGraw

by squid92 on Dec 5, 2009 2:08 PM EST up reply actions

but why the drop in FB rate?

I agree that the article was bunk, but Wright’s power outage WAS mysterious.

"[The Giants] beat us down. We were beat by a grown-man team, a team we want to be like one day. They came in here and took it to us. Out-manned us, out-gunned us. ... It wasn't even close." - Raheem Morris, 9/27/09

by cjmulrain on Dec 6, 2009 12:24 AM EST up reply actions

His FB% didn't really drop that much

I kind of wish it did, that would make a slight adjustment seem like a potential quick fix. But his career mark is 38.9%. It was 35.9% in 2009, 38.2% in 2008, and 37.5% in 2007. So while the number was below expectation, its not nearly enough to explain his drop in power. It wasn’t even the lowest mark of his career (35.1% in 2005).

Much more troubling is that just 6.9% of the flyballs were homers, as opposed to his career mark of 13.9% and rates over 16% in both 2007 and 2008. His HR/FB dropped by greater than 50% between 2007-2008 and 2009. That’s really troubling, to the point where the hope has to be that there was some physical problem he was having that just wasn’t made public. Something obviously changed, that is, its really really unlikely the power drop was just a product of bad luck. Lets just hope it wasn’t permanent.

"All energy flows according to the whims of the great magnet

What a fool I was to defy him"

-HST

by Mark Himmelstein on Dec 6, 2009 7:22 PM EST up reply actions

didn't he hit the ball the opposite way a lot more?

i think that could be the reason, combined with a few homeruns that could’ve been out a shea, bad luck, and fewer games

by EtSuKe on Dec 6, 2009 7:38 PM EST up reply actions

Maybe, but I still don't think that explains enough of it

If you assume his career rates for FB% and K%, he’d have only a couple more homers (I get about 11.6). Even if you’re assuming CitiField robbed some too, Its still not enough to explain losing so many HR. First of all, he hit the same number of homers on the road as at home. And according to Hittracker, in 2009, Wright hit just 6 homers that would have been homers in all 30 ballparks. He hit twice as many in 2008, one that would have been gone in 28 ballparks, and one that would have been gone in 27. The other two would have been out in 16 and 10, both of those being on the road. If we go back to 2008, he hit 12 homers that would have been out in all 30 parks and 14 more that would have been gone in at least 20. In 2007 he hit 8 that would have been out in any park, and 11 more that would have been out in at least 20. It seems pretty clear that he just wasn’t hitting the ball as far in 2009 as he was in 2007-2008, or ever before in his major league career. The deviation is too extreme for the sample size to just write off as a standard deviation on the other end of a mean.

"All energy flows according to the whims of the great magnet

What a fool I was to defy him"

-HST

by Mark Himmelstein on Dec 6, 2009 7:54 PM EST up reply actions

Whoops

Proofread fail. Take out:

He hit twice as many in 2008,

And it makes sense.

"All energy flows according to the whims of the great magnet

What a fool I was to defy him"

-HST

by Mark Himmelstein on Dec 7, 2009 10:45 AM EST up reply actions

Wright's drop in power:

-No protection in the line-up, giving him less “good pitches” to hit.
-More strike outs, meaning less balls in play
-Dramatically fewer flyballs than normal, barring his rookie season.
-Citi Field DOES have larger dimensions, and at least two balls that Wright hit that I can remember would have been home runs at Shea, but that doesn’t mean that Citi Field is an anathema to home runs as is often claimed, as evidenced by empirical evidence collected on the matter.
-Bad luck
-Playing the fewest games in his career, barring his rookie season.

"Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!"
Gil Hodges IS a Hall of Famer.

by Brooklyn Dodgers Mets Fan on Dec 5, 2009 2:31 PM EST up reply actions

Protection has pretty much been debunked

but everything else I can agree with.

If he has another year with around 10 home runs, I’d be very worried, but lets see how he plays in 2010 before we all say he can no longer hit for power. I’m confident he’ll hit around 25 homers next season.

"We must win and we must know how to win rather than win because we have statistical people."

by Evan_S on Dec 5, 2009 2:46 PM EST up reply actions

I don't buy that protection is "debunked".

I think it’s been proven to not be a major impact, but I still think that could subtract a couple of runs off a player’s total value over a course of a season. And I think there is a psychological aspect to it somehow, like how losing teams tend to be really bad due to poor morale. That said, of course, I can’t say it’s true or not, but the analytical evidence is plenty big enough to suggest additional factors.

"I dunno. I never smoked any Astroturf"
-Tug McGraw

by squid92 on Dec 5, 2009 5:37 PM EST up reply actions

That's why I said pretty much

It’s a factor, but a very minimal one. Maybe with Beltran, Delgado and Jose around him all year, David hits 12 home runs instead of 10.

"We must win and we must know how to win rather than win because we have statistical people."

by Evan_S on Dec 5, 2009 5:52 PM EST up reply actions

Agreed.

We pretty much know that when a guy starts pressing, 95% of the time, it makes him worse. When the team is dropping like flies around you, and you’re the ‘golden child’ of the franchise who everything is looking towards to turn things around, I can see how you’d press.

"Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!"
Gil Hodges IS a Hall of Famer.

by Brooklyn Dodgers Mets Fan on Dec 7, 2009 12:16 AM EST up reply actions

I can buy this a bit

But the idea behind protection is that when a lineup is barren, the line threat or threats likely won’t get pitched to. So in this case, aside from a drop in HR rates, wouldn’t you also expect:

A. An increase in BB%

and/or

B. A decrease in LD%.

If he’s getting pitched around, he should walk more. If he’s pressing, he should square fewer pitches up. Unfortunately, Wright’s BB% dropped from his his 2007-2008 level, and his LD% was a career high. So I’m still left with the same conclusion I drew above, that he was still “squaring up” just as many of the balls he put in play, but for some reason, he just wasn’t hitting them nearly as far.

"All energy flows according to the whims of the great magnet

What a fool I was to defy him"

-HST

by Mark Himmelstein on Dec 7, 2009 10:54 AM EST up reply actions

I wish it were this simple to explain the drop away

But its just not. A 4% drop in FB% really isn’t that strange. Its not like his HR/FB was stable and his K% and FB% just dropped, the biggest delta is still in his HR/FB.

"All energy flows according to the whims of the great magnet

What a fool I was to defy him"

-HST

by Mark Himmelstein on Dec 6, 2009 7:24 PM EST up reply actions

I think it's a mistake to go from the general to the particular in this case.

Without studying the issue we can’t say that, because it’s generally true that lineup protection or its lack has no significant consequences for hitters, that this is therefore the case with one David Wright.

Pelfrey does seem to have been a little worse as a pitcher in 2009 v his performance of 2008, but it looks to me like he was nowhere near as bad as his ERA would make you think. Iirc his FIP increased by only about a third of a run while his ERA jumped well over a full run. I don’t know why his HR rate nearly doubled, though—that doesn’t portend well for 2010.

by SeanSchirmer on Dec 5, 2009 6:07 PM EST reply actions

Btw, I used FIP instead of xFIP because

the latter is still a little too speculative. I can’t assume that batters weren’t turning more flyballs into HRs against Pelfrey in 2009 due to bad luck, as opposed to the possibility that he was serving up more meatballs that were getting crushed.

by SeanSchirmer on Dec 5, 2009 6:11 PM EST reply actions