I doubt OBP is ever brought up very early in contract negotiations.

OBP may help games. But hits and RBIs butter the bread.

there is a sabremetricist somewhere that falls down dead!

…he’s just sucking up to Dusty “get the bat off your shoulder and quit clogging up the basepaths” Baker.

that he’s really terrible at?

Wonderful. I hope there aren’t any NL pitchers that get a hold of this quote, because if it’s public knowledge that BP puts no value on walks, then why would you throw him anything worth swinging at?

i mean, hittin’s the name of the game. when you go up to the plate, they don’t call it “walkin” right?

his strength as a manager is supposed to be his relationship with his players, but all he has done in this case is be an enabler. i would say lack of walks is the one thing that is in fact keeping BP from being a big time impact player

you know what else doesn’t help? batting him fourth in the damn lineup. this will maximize the number of times he is at bat, when “the value of a hit is much, much better than the value of a walk” and will further hinder any potential development in that area

but, given his age, experience, and attitude i kind of doubt that is an aspect of his game that will ever develop much

who has the higher OBP? (as a Red)

EdE or BP?

then you better start hitting the ball more asshole.

you gotta get hits to get on base

AND

you gotta swing the ball to get a hit

SO

you gotta swing at every pitch, and especially that first one

also, if a young player with amazing potential does this, praise him for it. then say you will teach the other parts of hitting later. for now, just swing

1st he’s quoted that this year he’s going to be more disciplined at the plate, take more walks and that he understands that he’s not a prototypical clean up hitter

NOW he’s saying that OBP isn’t an important stat- ergo he’s going up to hit at the ball, swing that bat, that a base hit = base runners and RBIs

This guy is more incoherent than old Uncle Mads.

Maybe it was in fact BP who was seeing Dusty’s daughter… and it was arranged by the Dustman himself!

Yeah, I’ve been watching a lot of old games and clips from old games, and there is a surprising amount of talk about walks and OBP.

That said, I don’t really care if Brandon Phillips says he doesn’t like walks. That’s just him, and we shouldn’t think Brandon Phillips is going to give us anything more than he’s going to give us. And that’s not going to be very many walks. So swing away, Brandon. What really hurts is that Phillips’ manager doesn’t know what to do with hitters who don’t take walks.

Phillips (and Dunn!) get some run in an LGT FanBubble.

I don’t understand why hitting coaches and managers can’t teach hitters to compartmentalize. Why can’t Phillips look to take a walk when he’s leading off an inning or if there’s no one on base? I’m fine with being aggressive with runners on base, especially on third, because a ball put into play has a good chance of driving him in. But with nobody on base, what good is swinging for the fences going to do? Phillips’s line drive percentage was way down last year, likely because he was overswinging and driving everything into the ground. He needs to learn that he has linedrive power, not Donkey flyball power. With his pop and speed it’s rather startling that he only had 24 doubles last year, and has never had more than 28. If he learned to drive to all fields, he could easily have 35+ doubles and push 10 triples. His goal should be 65 extra base hits, not 30 home runs. If you get that many extra base hits, the RBI, and the next paycheck, will come much easier.

It was pretty great, but one minor point was the talk of how incentives for certain stats warps basketball players’ performance.

Say there’s a fast break. The point guard is headed down the court with a big guy trailing, and one defender. The incentives for a point guard highly value assists over points scored, so he wants to pass it back to the other guy, even though that lowers the probability of actually scoring.

Similarly, BP is aware of his incentives. He is rewarded for hits and HRs, and even stupid shit like RBIs, while he is not rewarded for walks.

This is why it sucks to have a management team that doesn’t believe in OBP. Of course that will filter down to the players…