Al Zarilla said:Funny quote on NESN after the game: "I'm proud of my arm. I work on it, doing a lot of long toss. I'm willing to throw with the best of them." I think he wanted to say I can throw with the best of them but a bit modest.
He has 6 assists, tied for the MLB lead for center fielders with A.J. Pollock of the D-backs. Cespedes has 9, all from left field. Puig only has 4, but maybe they don't run much on him any more.
I heard that one too, on NESN from Big Papi himself. He said Bradley told him he could throw a ball over the RF wall (I thought he said from home plate, could be wrong). Papi said no way, then he did it.Red(s)HawksFan said:
Can't remember which beat guy it was, but one of them tweeted the other day about JBJ throwing a ball from the third base line over the RF fence and on to Eutaw St while the team was in Baltimore. Clearly, his arm is no joke.
Al Zarilla said:I heard that one too, on NESN from Big Papi himself. He said Bradley told him he could throw a ball over the RF wall (I thought he said from home plate, could be wrong). Papi said no way, then he did it.
Toe Nash said:Except he came in on the ball at first and shouldn't have doubled off Aviles if Aviles had read the ball better? Nice recovery, but what am I missing?
He's a great defensive player but I'm not sure this is the best example.
Edit: Oh, the throw? OK, nice throw for sure.
JE made a great catch at the wall in Seattle last night and left the game with a bruised hip. As for other guys with great OF arms, I suggest a look at Brett Gardner.LuckyBen said:
Not to mention, Ellsbury would have left with a few bruised ribs. Great play by the kid, I think yesterday is going to act as the turning point in his season.
absintheofmalaise said:You can use Google maps to calculate the distance.
Excellent. In defense of Ellsbury, though, whenever that point was made about how outfielders play, people weren't buying it for long, and went right back to knocking him when he started in first on a ball over his head. Let's see how it plays out with JBJ. Because no Boras with JBJ?someoneanywhere said:People. People. Can we stop with the stuff about misreading the ball? Major-league outfielders -- the good ones -- read swings first: that's how they get great jumps. They react to the ball in the air. If you watch the swing, it reads like a jam shot, as it especially must have looked to him almost 250 feet away. Note then that he took the only route to the ball -- once he read it in the air -- that allowed him to catch it. This is a way of saying: he played that ball the way he was taught, and the way he practices. It might look mistake-filled to us, but there's a lot less mistake in that play than people think.
Have you tried on baseballsavant.com yet? You can search the pitch f/x db using pretty much any criteria that you want.kieckeredinthehead said:Anybody know where I can easily acquire pitch-by-pitch data for JBJ? I'm curious about his patience. When he puts the ball in play on the first pitch, he's hitting 364/375/500 (875 OPS) (note that includes 1 HBP). He does that about 10% of the time. The other 90% is split pretty evenly between a first pitch ball and a first pitch strike (looking/swinging/foul, with about 75% of those looking). The only time he's a better hitter is when he gets into a 2-0 count (1050 OPS, 36 PA). As good as he is in that situation, he's even worse after 1-2, and that's happening a lot more often (301 OPS, 68 PA). As far as I can tell, he's not getting more aggressive. He's taken basically the same approach all season.
absintheofmalaise said:Have you tried on baseballsavant.com yet? You can search the pitch f/x db using pretty much any criteria that you want.
Al Zarilla said:Excellent. In defense of Ellsbury, though, whenever that point was made about how outfielders play, people weren't buying it for long, and went right back to knocking him when he started in first on a ball over his head. Let's see how it plays out with JBJ. Because no Boras with JBJ?
Didn't know that. Boras has a large stable of ballplayers, huh?Andrew said:
Bradley's agent is Boras too.
Did Lynn have a cannon arm? I don't know. Jimmy Piersall did, but then, another case of a guy hurting himself in a stunt: In 1954, he was moved to centerfield and was selected to the All-Star team. Despite injuring his arm irreparably that season during a throwing contest against Willie Mays, Piersall became a top fielder who made up for his lack of outstanding speed with exceptional anticipation.MyDaughterLovesTomGordon said:Who's the last centerfield the Sox have had that can throw like this? Fred Lynn?
I don't know either. I was six by the time he left the sox. I just can't think of anyone in between and i know he was considered a great fielder.Al Zarilla said:Did Lynn have a cannon arm? I don't know.
BannedbyNYYFans.com said:Tony Armas had a pretty great arm IIRC.
Edit - Beaten to it....
It also seemed like Ellsbury's speed would allow him to eventually get to the right place and he'd fail to catch the damn ball... particularly near the wall.glennhoffmania said:The problem with Ellsbury, if I recall correctly, was that he would take the wrong route to the ball but he was often able to make up for that with his speed. Bradley seems to take almost perfect routes once he adjusts to the flight of the ball.
I can't think of any Red Sox center fielder with an arm like JBJ. My brother says Reggie Smith, but that was slightly before my time.MyDaughterLovesTomGordon said:I don't know either. I was six by the time he left the sox. I just can't think of anyone in between and i know he was considered a great fielder.
Ellis Burks? I don't remember him being a thrower.
Evans threw bullets - used to be a prerequisite for playing right in Fenway.
Bone Chips said:I can't think of any Red Sox center fielder with an arm like that. My brother says Reggie Smith, but that was slightly before my time.
Too early to dismiss JBJ's bat, but the noodle arm's of the past led to unabated 1st to 3rd advances and does anyone have a tally of the noodle arm gun outs at the plate?The Mort Report said:The arm is good and all, but how many chances does a CF get an opportunity to throw someone out? I was trying to look it up, and I couldn't find any data to support any of my thoughts, but isn't get all excited about his arm like getting excited about Adam Dunn and his HRs? Bradley has 6 putouts in 61 games, so lets say he plays 150 gsmes, you are talking about 15 putouts on the season. Dunn in 2012/2013 averaged 37.5 homers, with roughly the same average Bradley has produced. Every one of those homers resulted in at least one run. And this is were my lack of found data I'm coming up short, but how many runs do those 15 putouts save? Certainly not 37.5.
As everyone has said, his arm is not that of Damon or Ells, but wouldn't every person on this board take either one of them and their noodle arms over Bradley? I am not questioning his arm, it is one of the best in baseball, but it almost feels like the discussion has turned to his arm because we have nothing else good to say about him at this point in time
MuzzyField said:Too early to dismiss JBJ's bat, but the noodle arm's of the past led to unabated 1st to 3rd advances and does anyone have a tally of the noodle arm gun outs at the plate?
This. There is significant value in having a CF who not only gets to everything but has an arm that opposing players and coaches will hesitate to challenge. I don't think that we're grasping at straws here as much as admiring a phase of the game that JBJ is pretty damn good at.MuzzyField said:Too early to dismiss JBJ's bat, but the noodle arm's of the past led to unabated 1st to 3rd advances and does anyone have a tally of the noodle arm gun outs at the plate?
williams_482 said:The "ARM" component of UZR and DRS includes baserunner kills as well as runners who did or did not attempt to advance. UZR says his arm has been wirth +1.4 runs to this point (which may or may not include his play last night, I don't know how often that gets updated) while DRS believes he has been roughly average in that respect (zero runs).
EDIT:
For some context, the best CF arm ratings in 2013 according to UZR were Leonys Martin (+6.9), Adam Jones (+6.0) and Carlos Gomez (+5.3). The worst were Jon Jay, Coco Crisp, and Jacoby at -5.7, -5.4, and -4.2 respectively.
Overall, a center fielder's arm is a pretty small part of their value, but it is definitely useful.
That's a very good question. The only thing I could find online was a ball-parked correlation between OPS and runs created, where someone in the Oriole forum was using 50 points of OPS equating to 10 runs created. That feels about right to me, but maybe one of the stat gurus in here has something more definitive.Plympton91 said:
Thanks for looking that up. So, the best arms are about 10-15 runs better over a full season than the worst arms.
So, what's that translate to in OPB / SLG? Is it like having a 10 point increase in OBP and a 15 point increase in SLG? Or is it twice/half that?
Is the demeaning tone really necessary? The guy asked a very reasonable question - what does the value of JBJ's arm translate to in terms of OPS? I'm sure there's limitations and imperfections in such an approach, all of which could be disclaimed upfront by anyone inclined to offer a helpful response. But it doesn't seem like a stretch to equate runs prevented on defense to runs created on offense, especially when runs created does have a correlation to OPS.smastroyin said:It's not a good question. There is almost no point in trying to equate defensive metrics with some offensive measures. Not only is it a fool's errand, but it creates this stupid thing where you try and create equivalence of players through just their offense. If you want to look at the whole player value then learn how to do that, don't force square pegs into round holes just to use terms you are comfortable with. At least WAR attempts to normalize these things by bringing everything to run equivalence.
MuzzyField said:Run prevention/defense is even more critical given the decline in runs scored, so far, in 2014.
Jimmy Piersall was the best CFer I ever saw.Al Zarilla said:Did Lynn have a cannon arm? I don't know. Jimmy Piersall did, but then, another case of a guy hurting himself in a stunt: In 1954, he was moved to centerfield and was selected to the All-Star team. Despite injuring his arm irreparably that season during a throwing contest against Willie Mays, Piersall became a top fielder who made up for his lack of outstanding speed with exceptional anticipation.
http://espn.go.com/classic/biography/s/Piersall_Jim.html
Googling around, I think I found a Stengelese I'd never heard: ""I thought Joe DiMaggio was the greatest defensive outfielder I ever saw," said Stengel, who managed DiMaggio from 1949-51. "But I have to rate Piersall better."
Cool, someone else that saw Piersall play (I assume you're not going off some old Red Sox film or books). That one camera they used for TV back then, up high and behind the plate, well, it gave us all it could. We didn't get down to Fenway too often from NH. Piersall did play so shallow, but didn't get burned by balls over his head, as you say. Another old fave of mine that unfortunately also didn't last a long time with the Sox was Jackie Jensen, MVP 1958. I used to have a neighbor that was at Cal with him, and she said Jackie would sit on the steps at his fraternity house and all the girls would walk by gazing at him and his blonde locks. Ted, of course, was #1 with me.Mike F said:Jimmy Piersall was the best CFer I ever saw.
He played as shallow as Paul Blair and never had a ball hit over his head that didn't reach the CF wall. The howitzer that was his right arm went "pop" during that throwing contest with Willie Mays. It was a bit above average after that.
smastroyin said:In order to derive an equivalent value of OPS you have to back out of runs created. In order to do that, you then have make a guess as to the ratio of OBP and SLG that creates the same runs and of course if you know all of that you already have all of the information you need to compare the players.
But the whole point is if you already have the runs information you don't need to torture everything and make assumptions. You can just say that Jackie Bradley's arm makes him the equivalent of another player who is 6 runs better offensively assuming everything else balances out. And since it normally doesn't balance out, by the way, once you are at this point you may as well consider baserunning and total defensive package.