I know exactly what our bench should look like

to ignore those comments for the idiocy they contain. As Ron White says, you can’t fix stupid.

Again, if I am guilty of using a SSS of saying that he doesn’t deserve a spot, then it is an extremely small sample size that says he does deserve a spot.

I don’t even know what the hell to do with this. I told you to look at the most recent data, namely, his full last season, in which he had 177 PAs. That’s not a smaller sample size than you’re using, it’s bigger. And it’s a good offensive season, especially for a 25th man.

I am not sure what your standards are, but a .243 average with a .303 OBP is not really that sexy.

Now you’re just being intentionally dense. That .545 SLG is the real key, and it does make up for the OBP deficiency. Again, not something I’d want for a starting first baseman, but for a bench player to come in with that? Hell yeah! That’s approximately a WRC+ of 120, meaning, well above league average offensive value for a major league hitter. If you don’t want that, you’re placing ridiculously high standards for usage of a bench spot.

I split his innings up to thwart the perception that he is ZOMG GOOD in late innings.

Again, not at all making your point because you’re pretending like those are NOT good numbers. They are.

By the way, I know you’ve used Fangraphs before, so why didn’t you look at their splits for, say, high leverage? Possibly because it doesn’t support your point: .324/.390/.730 in high leverage situations for his career. WRC+ of 209. Admittedly, he’s been pretty awful in medium leverage situations. If there were an easy way to combine his medium/high leverage numbers and look at those numbers, I would. For what little it’s worth (these things fluctuate year to year), his clutch rating on FG is 1.54, which is among the best in the game, for those not familiar with it.

I don’t care about his minor league numbers, as they are not all that impressive for a late-20s (at the time) player.

You’re intentionally ignoring data, instead choosing to focus exclusively on the smaller sample of his major league hitting. Which again, is league average, but you also seem to be ignoring that.

I’m not going to respond on this topic any more until you have something else that’s reasonable to say. It’s taking too much effort to show every way in which you’re being wrong.

No such thing as clutch players? Please explain because I’d say Jason Heyward is a clutch player. He doesn’t have to get a hit in every single clutch moment to remain clutch, but multiple game winning hits seems pretty clutch to me. Last year Brooks Conrad was clutch. He came through on a number of occasions when we needed someone to step up. Brooksie may not remain clutch for the rest of his career but he was clutch last season. Sure he made some backbreaking errors and has gone through his share of slumps at the plate, but to say he wasn’t clutch last season is ignoring how many times he excelled and even won games for the Braves.

Michael Jordan missed over two dozen game winning shots but he was the most clutch basketball player of all time. Kobe Bryant misses a majority of the potential game-winning shots he attempts, but he’s still known as a clutch player. If there are clutch moments then there are bound to be clutch players. There are stats for clutch situations; simply compare the numbers and you’ll see which players are more clutch than others and a line can be drawn at some point to determine clutchness. Clutch situations may happen three days in a row, three times a game or once week; their appearance is inconsistent so players may go weeks without hitting in a clutch situation. The sample size will inevitably be small but that’s not to say it doesn’t exist just because its not as cut and dry as the simple metrics like BA, OBP or SLG.

for arguments sake…

Brooks COnrad’s WPA last year was 2.24

his WPA/Li was .23

both those numbers are pretty solid…FYI…and both to a relative degree measue a player’s clutchiness.

BTW Justin…again you are entirely too fascinated by OBP (which is really important but there are other needs). And you continually make the factitious argument that whenever someone mentions a higher SLG all that matters is “DINGERZ”…that is not the argument the argument is that player X provides value by hitting the ball really hard, occasionally those balls end up on the other side of some fencing that was set up in the OF, but more often it just implies that extra bases are had…Extra base hits score runs more often than singles..

the argument should be is the increase in SLG (or ISO) worth the lack of OBP…it seems to you that no player could possibly have a high enough SLG to justify a low OBP…but that isn’t a good way to evaluate talent… I’m not saying SLG is more importnat than OBP (no one would suggest that), only that you need a solid balance in a player and if a player has enough SLG he can make up for deficiencies in OBP.

wOBA is supposed to make that calculation (the balancing scale of SLG v OBP) for us. if a player provides a solid wOBA (and there doesn’t appear to be a significant amount of luck in that wOBA, which is a standard assumption with basically any stat), then said player is useful.

last season Brooks’ wOBA was 356…now I don’t pretend to believe he can maintain that level of production over a full season’s ABs, but its not out of the realm that his true talent level is around a 330wOBA, which is more than serviceable from a bench player.

also, Ross should (read SHOULD) be our nbr 1 option as a pinch hitter, the dude is a beast…but seeing as we refuse to carry another C to allow for this (which in part i agree with)..that won’t happen….i just felt it should be mentioned.

We’ve got 6 ML pitchers sitting in the bullpen, surely on any given day 2 of those middle relievers are capable of giving you 2-3 innings each to bridge the way to the regular late inning guys.

Worst case scenario you send the next day’s starter out there, after the game you can call up Beach, Lopez, KK, or whoever from the minors to step in for a start.