Whoa, it's getting very confusing in here.
In the Rocchio discussion I pointed out that he has made a ton of progress since last year based on:
Walk% up from 4.7% last year to 11.4% this year
Strikeout percentage declined from 31.4% to 18.1%
Out-of-zone swing percentage down from 44% last year to 31%
Expected slugging percentage up from .237 to .327.
xBA from .184 to .233.
Hard hit percentage from 16.4% to 26.0%.
Launch angle has improved from 1.5 to 4.9 degrees
Ground ball percentage down from 60% to 48%
Line drive percentage jumped from 18% to 24%.
wRC+ up from 65 to 89
I referred to all this as "steady improvements across the board". The response I got was:
Your “steady improvements across the board” aren’t that, not right now….His OPS has gone from .600 to .628. That is an incremental improvement we are globbing a lot of hope onto.
And improved K and BB percentages and contact rates are great, but contact rates and K and BB rates don’t dictate success in the MLB.
OK, I got it, don't worry about more contact, harder contact, more line drives, fewer ground balls, less chasing of bad pitches, all that stuff. OPS is where it's at and if the improvement there is "incremental", then no reason to get excited, especially about better K rates and BB rates, which don't dictate success.
But when the discussion turns to Rodriguez and I pointed out that his all-important OPS is actually down from last year playing at the same level, now OPS isn't important; it's all about higher contact rates.
....a 7% drop in his K rate and a 7% drop in his swinging strike rate with contact rates up all across the board, I would say that is progress.
Wait, what? This is sounding like a "heads I win, tails you lose" situation. What happened to the almighty OPS that tells us Rocchio still sucks despite ten other metrics improving? At least Rocchio's OPS is going up (while the league average is lower). JRod's is going down but we're supposed to be encouraged about an "incremental" 7% drop in swinging strike rate? By the way, Rocchio's swinging strike rate dropped from 16.9% to 10.4% since last year, a 6.5% drop.
I'm not arguing that either of these guys will turn out to be every day players. I doubt either will. But how about some consistency here? Sure seems like cherry picking to me.