Baseball noob

[TNBT]

I live in Australia, so as you would expect, I know bugger all about baseball. I find the game interesting and tried to teach myself about it online using Wikipedia and such, but it confuses me. My girlfriend is a huge baseball fan and she's tried to teach me too, but that confuses me as well. I was hoping that you guys could maybe give me a real idiots guide to baseball. Basically if an alien from another planet landed and had never seen baseball before, how would you explain the game to them?

Oh, for the record, I'm a White Sox fan but I like the Yankees too.

[nitetrain8603]

You said the magic words for my information and that's White Sox fan.

Ask anything and I shall answer for you.

[TNBT]

Thanks for the help. I'll get together a list of stuff I don't understand and get back to you.

[TNBT]

One thing that I have found to be strange is the amount of stats. How would you judge how good a player is in different areas of the game from looking at stats? Which stats are the important ones in rating a player?

[studcrackers]

i dont think ive ever seen you post outside the OTB

but on the stats question, there are countless # of baseball stats that different people like to use it depends on who you ask. a 75 year old man may think batting average is important whereas i tend to think On Base Percentage (batting average plus however many walks you have) is more important.

these are just on the surface stats though that anyone can follow. if you go more in depth there are people called sabermetricians who have stats called VORP, BABIP all of which i havent really discovered yet etc...

also another important thing to judge a player on is OPS (on base percentage + slugging percentage) it shows not only how much a player can get on base but how much power he hits for.

[TNBT]

I post a fair bit on the Bulls board, a little on the Red Wings and Bears boards and now I'm starting to try and learn baseball so I can post here. Hope I don't bother too many people with questions to which the answers are probably pretty obvious to everyone else.

Anyway, this is slightly off topic but I figured I should keep all of my questions in this one thread so as not to fill the board with my threads. I was wondering if someone could give me a breakdown of our pitchers? I know that there are different types of pitchers too (starters, relief guys, closers, etc) so it would be great if someone could sort of give me a ranking of the pitchers, what they're good/bad at and what role they play.

[nitetrain8603]

For your first question. In looking for a good play on the surface, you must seperate the hitters from the pitchers.

For a good hitter, I will usually look at OPS first. That is your On-Base-Percentage + Slugging Percentage.

A good player would usually have at least a .900 OPS. Great players have 1.000+ OPS

For pitchers, it's a little tougher. I look at strikeouts or "K's" per 9 innings aka K/9 ", BOB(Base on balls), and WHIP (Walks and Hits per Inning Pitched). WHIP is one of the best universally used stats for pitchers. If a pitcher is walking guys left and right and gives up hits as well, he's pretty bad. For a starter, anything below 1.40 is good. Best guys are 1.20 or less.

Rankings of our pitchers:

Starters:
Javier Vazquez
Mark Buehrle
John Danks
Jose Contreras
Gavin Floyd

Relievers:
Closer - Bobby Jenks
Setupman - Scott Linebrink
Dotel before injury a couple of years ago
And nobody else is really worth mentioning as they are all pretty equal.

[TNBT]

Thanks for the info guys.

[TNBT]

Does anyone here know of a site that gives profiles of MLB players? I mean something like what HoopsHype does for NBA players or what TSN used to do for NHL players. Something that gives the positives and negatives of a player and an idea of their potential would be great.

[TNBT]

Does anyone here know of a site that gives profiles of MLB players? I mean something like what HoopsHype does for NBA players or what TSN used to do for NHL players. Something that gives the positives and negatives of a player and an idea of their potential would be great.

Is anyone able to help me out with this?

[nitetrain8603]

Does anyone here know of a site that gives profiles of MLB players? I mean something like what HoopsHype does for NBA players or what TSN used to do for NHL players. Something that gives the positives and negatives of a player and an idea of their potential would be great.

Is anyone able to help me out with this?

I really haven't seen such. Usually I google their name and you get a scouting report that way. I think Baseball America may do it though. I'll research and get back to you.

[TNBT]

Thanks for the help. I'm trying to judge how good players are based on stats, but when you don't really understand the stats that much then it makes it sort of difficult, not to mention that there are also a lot of different factors that influence stats.

[TNBT]

By the way, who do you guys consider to be the best player(s) on the current White Sox team? Carlos Quentin, Joe Crede and Alexi Ramirez are my favorite players, and my girlfriend said she thinks Quentin is probably the best player on the team, but she's a Tigers fan so I don't think she knows a lot about our team.

[Shootdabull]

By the way, who do you guys consider to be the best player(s) on the current White Sox team? Carlos Quentin, Joe Crede and Alexi Ramirez are my favorite players, and my girlfriend said she thinks Quentin is probably the best player on the team, but she's a Tigers fan so I don't think she knows a lot about our team.

Thats actually a pretty tough question. The sox don't have that dominant ball player. I would go the pitching route with MB and then Jenks, Dye is our best hitter but I would choose Crede as a position player - I know he has a bunch of error this year, but I have seen him make some really good defensive plays and he seems to be getting some of the old form back. I do like some of the new guys Alexie, Carlos, Danks, and Floyd. Out of the new guys I really like Alexie he looks in in field, he can run and he has been hitting great after he adjusted to the pitching.

[TNBT]

By the way, who do you guys consider to be the best player(s) on the current White Sox team? Carlos Quentin, Joe Crede and Alexi Ramirez are my favorite players, and my girlfriend said she thinks Quentin is probably the best player on the team, but she's a Tigers fan so I don't think she knows a lot about our team.

Thats actually a pretty tough question. The sox don't have that dominant ball player. I would go the pitching route with MB and then Jenks, Dye is our best hitter but I would choose Crede as a position player - I know he has a bunch of error this year, but I have seen him make some really good defensive plays and he seems to be getting some of the old form back. I do like some of the new guys Alexie, Carlos, Danks, and Floyd. Out of the new guys I really like Alexie he looks in in field, he can run and he has been hitting great after he adjusted to the pitching.

You rate Buehrle and Jenks as better than Vazquez?

[Shootdabull]

I do rate Buehrle and Jenks as better than Vazquez.

Buehrle has been a good pitcher for several years. He has a better era & obp than Vazquez, even this year he is better in those stats. Vazquez has the better stuff, which shows up in the number of strike outs but he also has a tendancy to give up the big inning. He is a good pitcher, I just think Buehrle is better.

Jenks is coming off of two 40 plus save years and has looked good this year. I like watching him crank that fast ball up there an bringing the victory home. I think he is one of the best closer in league.

[nitetrain8603]

Honestly, the Sox have a lot of good players, but their best player could change any day. I'd say on the season, Jermaine Dye, Carlos Quentin, Alexei Ramirez, Mark Buehrle, and John Danks can all have strong strong cases for our best player.

As for Jenks, I think he's a bit overrated. He puts himself in wayyyyy too many jams and that's because he doesn't crank that fastball back anymore. Rumors are because he has that screw in his elbow so the Sox don't want to risk him and some say he's giving up velocity for control. The thing is, he was way more dominant when he was throwing 101mph as opposed to the 95mph he throws now.