At Fanfest, KT got up on stage and talked about the teams problems in Late & Close situations, talking about having poor at bats, expanding the zone, etc. Go the 1:55 Mark of THIS VIDEO

Then of course Gibby made some comments which I discussed in THIS POST

In 2011 they had a .348 BABIP in L&C, vs. league avg .297. The next highest BABIP in L&C was .315

In 2012 they had a .239 BABIP in L&C, vs. league avg .297. The next lowest BABIP in L&C was .258

And while their 2012 K Rate of 24.5% was a little higher than lg. avg 22.8% in such situations, the number 1 & 2 teams in L&C OPS, the Reds and Brewers, both had K rates higher than lg. avg too. (Reds 23.9%, and Brewers 23.3%) And the D Backs 2011 L&C K Rate of 22.5% was higher than league average 21.3%!!

Making more contact, expanding the zone late in games was NOT THE ISSUE !

It's amazing to me that they built an entire series of off season moves based on completely misunderstanding what was happening, and thinking they could address it by getting Gritty clutch players. I know I shouldn't be surprised, but in this day and age, there should be somebody in the front office pointing this out to them, no ????

What a terrible process.

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74th out of 6,434 players through age 24 in WAR since Integration. Thats top 1.2%

Here's another example of how terrible the Kevin Towers process is. Deciding that signing Cody Ross was the way to go because both KT and Kendrick wrote down Ross' name when asking themselves which remaining free agent player they'd like to sign.

What an awful mess this organization is in right now.

You're expecting a good analysis from the guy who drafted Matt Bush?

What happened to David's post. Here is the link he cited that shows that Matt Bush at 0war is the median for Tower's first round picks while at SD.

http://www.dbacksvenom.com/2010-article ... owers.html

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Just because it may be a non-repeatable skill, doesn't mean you can't appreciate clutch hitting.

Do you think this is the process or coming up with a justification after they decided who they liked personally.

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Just because it may be a non-repeatable skill, doesn't mean you can't appreciate clutch hitting.

Could be either one, or more likely a bit of both.

Do you think it's better to be executed by a bullet to the head or lethal injection ?

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74th out of 6,434 players through age 24 in WAR since Integration. Thats top 1.2%

And I was looking forward to this season starting to take my mind off of other things. Haven't pulled the trigger on MLB.TV yet so that's good.

Hey Mav, you know the phone number to that truck driving school?

We're all screwed in 2013. Maybe next Spring Training, guys. NFL in 160 days or so.

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I am an expert on our national defense and bringing bad guys to room temperature--not baseball.

This thread is really very sad.

The irony is the expected regression to the mean in L&C situations means that the team should be better, not worse. They might be a team that finishes over .500 in 2013, and who knows...with the crazy wild cards these days, playoffs are not "out of reach"....(poll results notwithstanding

I'm thinking more of opportunity lost. This team could have been poised for a real nice run of division titles and playoff appearances.

Instead we got:

Trading Parker for Cahill instead of a Shortstop or Catcher.....therby forcing their hand with Montero's extension and moving Young and Bauer to get shortstops.

Spending a lot of money on "depth:" and league avg or below players when that money could have been directed at higher impact players more likely to be part of a championship team.

Selling low on Upton and giving up the chance for another high impact player.

etc etc etc etc

This is still potentially actually a pretty good team. But it could have been so much better.

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74th out of 6,434 players through age 24 in WAR since Integration. Thats top 1.2%