gtrower
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Just so I’m clear, you’re claiming that Colin’s batting average, SOs, BBs, and OBP from every game he’s played the last two seasons are cherry-picked stats?
Colin Hall
- Thread starter gtrower
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Just so I’m clear, you’re claiming that Colin’s batting average, SOs, BBs, and OBP from every game he’s played the last two seasons are cherry-picked stats?
jatchet
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About as cherry picked as a Tech fan saying we have an ACC winning streak spanning more than 2 seasons. You ain't wrong, but there's flaws in the argument.
JacketOff
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They’re cherry picked because you’re using data from 2 different seasons as a rationale for removing Colin from the lineup this year. It’s flawed data and you know it is. That’s like taking an MLB player’s stats from September of last year and trying to create a trend for their numbers in April of this year. It’s not logical, nor is it fair. Especially given the fact that there is an actual trend of Colin being a slow starter. If you wanted to actually look at trends you’d see that Colin finished last year hitting .275 over his last 40 ABs, and finished 2019 hitting over .300 after starting the year 5-28. Both of these points I’ve already mentioned multiple times, yet you choose to ignore them to fit your agenda. Colin is not a .179 hitter. Even though his average is currently atrocious, he’s still found a way on base every game this year.
As far as comparing his pitches/PA with the rest of the team, unless you want to go back and track every pitch that has been thrown to every hitter this year, then I guess you’ll have to either take my word for it or deny it. A stat that hasn’t been brought up though is BABIP. This is a stat that shows how “lucky” a player is, and as someone else mentioned, Colin seems to be very unlucky with hard hit balls. He had by far the lowest BABIP (Batting Average on Balls In Play) among starters in 2020 at .279. Standard MLB BABIP is about .300. Given that the D1 mean for batting average is about .270 and MLB mean is about .250, we can infer that the mean college BABIP is somewhere around .320. Tech’s team BABIP was .318 last year which adds up. Colin was basically 40 points below average BABIP, and 20 points below the next closest starter. That signifies that along with his slow start, Colin had some terrible luck last year.
Colin’s current BABIP is .227 which is even lower than it was last year, while the team’s BABIP is .335. Thats over 100 points of difference and is a significant outlier which should even out drastically as the year goes on.
2020 stats via Baseball Cube
BABIP explanation + formula
randerto
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Y'all are wearing me and everyone else out on this topic with the over-analysis. He's a strong CF defender, traditionally starts slow, tends to have good AB's, adds energy to the team with his D, and it's too early THIS season to worry much about BA. Ultimately it takes some faith in the coaching staff and what they've observed in Fall ball and practices relative to who they feel gives the team the best chance of winning - it can't be all stat/analytics driven with the relatively small sample sizes. I've also wondered why we dont see more CF development in weekday games but could have missed a bit. Heading to another thread now...
gtrower
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You’re claiming full data sets are cherry picked to support narrative while literally cherry picking subsets from that data to support your narrative.
I’m just looking at the games and the stats. I’m not picking certain stretches. I’m taking the most recent stats we have from the last 2 years. You’re cherry picking portions of seasons to say that we should all expect Hall to be unable to hit anything at the beginning of seasons and to end up an average BA hitter.
Again, I’m not emotionally invested in this argument. It still reads like you think I’m saying he should be cut from the team. I just don’t get the anger. He struggled at the plate last year. He’s struggling at the plate this year. Why is it controversial to suggest a shake up? It’s not like sitting him for 1 game so somebody else can get some reps ends his season. We should be trying to build some depth/experience anyway.
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JacketOff
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This is why your post is controversial:
I never said there shouldn’t be a time/place where other guys should get ABs. In fact I actually encouraged it during blowouts and midweek games:
The thing is, there haven’t been any of those games. Also, like I’ve said, DeLeo is the only OF that would be getting ABs outside of Gonzalez, Hall, and Reid. DeLeo is not as good of a defensive OF as Hall or Gonzalez are, but he is better than Reid out there. However, Reid has the best bat and will be in the lineup either in the OF or at DH. You also have Holland and Parada platooning at DH and C, with Jenkins competing for ABs at DH as well. With Reid and Parada penciled in the lineup at either C/DH or RF/DH respectively, that means that DeLeo is competing for ABs at DH with Holland and Jenkins on any given day, as well as Gonzalez and Hall for playing time in the outfield. Collin is the best OFer on the team, and is a proven hitter with experience regardless of his early struggles. He also brings an energy to the team that would be extremely hard to replace in the lineup.
The idea of getting others playing time and ABs holds merit, but it’s not nearly as simple as just “plug and play.” Taking Colin out weakens the defense, changes the dynamic of the team, and doesn’t give a guy who’s a slow starter valuable ABs to break out of it. Like I said, some other guys should absolutely get some game action when it becomes viable, but there haven’t been any opportunities to rotate guys in thus far. But I took exception to your post when you insinuated that CDH is playing favorites with his son by giving him opportunities that others wouldn’t see. That’s insulting to CDH, the rest of the coaching staff, and the rest of the program.
78pike
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OK I got sucked into this topic because I was thinking much the same as gtrower as I watched all the games so far this year. Maybe not so much if he was playing every game this year because of his last name but more because of his performance at the plate. I too am wondering why he is batting so high in the lineup given his plate struggles. Nick Wilhite started because he was a SUPERIOR center fielder. But his struggles at the plate had him batting at the bottom of the lineup so I think it is a fair question as to why Colin isn't batting further down the lineup. Speaking of his defensive capabilities....yes he made a great catch this weekend but I don't recall many other catches this year being much more than routine. But what I question most is why, after multiple years of experience, he continues to strikeout from breaking balls off the plate. That is usually an issue you see from a freshman. Also his high strikeout ratio is usually something you would see from a power hitter like Reid, not someone that is more of a contact hitter who occasionally hits the ball out when he happens to barrel it up. His offensive liabilities have been covered up because the rest of the lineup has been so solid. But I wonder what happens when we are in low scoring games like we may see this weekend.
I think maybe gtrower is wondering why we see a guy like Holland, who is known more for his defense, disappear from the lineup when he is not hitting but Hall still remains in the lineup and still bats 5th. If your argument is that defense keeps him in the lineup and you need to remain strong up the middle then why isn't Holland still in the lineup every day? Obviously the answer to that is because Parada has been amazing. But we only know that because he got the chance to prove himself. As the OP pointed out in his earlier post, why haven't we seen any of the other young highly rated prospects we have get that same opportunity in center. If they don't out perform Hall then at least that had the chance to try. They certainly couldn't do much worse at the plate than we have seen from that position thus far.
I think maybe gtrower is wondering why we see a guy like Holland, who is known more for his defense, disappear from the lineup when he is not hitting but Hall still remains in the lineup and still bats 5th. If your argument is that defense keeps him in the lineup and you need to remain strong up the middle then why isn't Holland still in the lineup every day? Obviously the answer to that is because Parada has been amazing. But we only know that because he got the chance to prove himself. As the OP pointed out in his earlier post, why haven't we seen any of the other young highly rated prospects we have get that same opportunity in center. If they don't out perform Hall then at least that had the chance to try. They certainly couldn't do much worse at the plate than we have seen from that position thus far.
Deleted member 2897
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Hall batted over 0.300 2 years ago. He’s off to a slow start this year but his defense is impeccable and some people are calling for him to be benched. We’re 6-1 and just swept a top 10 team on the road. With how superstitious baseball people can be, how about we let the coach and players just do their jobs?
