Saying that something is flawed is not the same thing as saying you have no point at all. You have to factor that bunting does not have a 100% success rate. It doesn’t make a huge difference in your argument, but it is a flaw.

Also, I disagree with the idea that having a negative run contribution with runners on is anything remarkable (your emphasis on it leads me to the conclusion that you are inferring as much, though its just my interpretation). The 80% number I was guessing was not the number of batters who are the same level or worse than Vidro, but the % of batters that would post a negative run contribution score with a man on and less than 2 outs. 80% is a total guess, it might be 70% or 60% or 50.1%, but I’d be shocked if a majority of MLB players posted positive average run contribution in that scenario. How many hitters do the Mariners have currently that would post a positive run contribution average in that scenario? My guesses: Guillen, Johjima, perhaps Ichiro. (excluding back-ups like Broussard, Ellison, and Burke)

What I meant was 40 and 41.

I completely agree about this, but based on his past, my guess is that he won’t continue to be so bad, but that’s just a guess. I’d be willing to posit that he ends the season at better than 17% GIDP/opportunity.

I wouldn’t deny that his 2007 GIDP rate may be too high, but I think there’s enough evidence that it’s if anything a little low. If 2006 stats make it seem like he should be a little better, well, okay. But the 2007 stats show that he’s not so far. You can say “small sample size” if you wish… or we can acknowledge that it is what it is, and wait to see if more information this year helps.

If nothing else, we should be able to say that so far this year, he’s certainly done nothing to show that the team’s optimism about his speed was warranted.

The problem I see is that his 20% GIDP for ‘07 so far is actually lower than it really should be. He’s been pretty lucky with a lot of his singles getting through (the anti-Sexson), and Ichiro has been stealing or being sent on hit-and-runs a lot more than usual as of late. So assuming 20% is unsustainable doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not going up instead of down.

I don’t really want to go through all the calculations again for GIDP with one out, but I was trying to demonstrate that, despite his lack of speed, I don’t think he’s quite the liability on the basepaths that your analysis painted him to be. Keep in mind that I tried to remain very conservative with my numbers and I still came out with significantly better run expectancies per plate appearance than you did, mainly because of this season’s small(er) sample size compared to 06.

I’m not saying Vidro should be hitting in the 2 hole, or even that I disagree with most of the points of your argument, I just think it’s overly pessimistic in terms of his GIDP rate and performance in general.

If you remove absolutely every other facet of my analysis, you still get his GIDP at about 14% of the time he had the opportunity. While still not ideal, this is significantly lower than the 20% he’s posting so far this season (and I bet that number has already dropped a little after last night’s game). I just don’t think that 20% is sustainable and I also don’t think GIDP is THAT much more of a problem for him than a plethora of other players out there.

The average AL hitter’s about a 1.2 G/F rate, Vidro’s historically been way over that and this season is at 1.49

The average hitter gets fewer hits, but there’s a lot more power, and the outs are less likely to be GIDPs. They also walks more often than Vidro.

And as to your other argument – no, you can’t say that about 80% of major leaguers.

The analogy with the pitcher’s bunt (-.19) was interesting and thought provoking, but flawed because we’re comparing a player to a “productive out,” and it also assumes that a pitcher can get the bunt down 100% of the time. It does reveal however, how NL ballclubs are still able to score a decent amount of runs every year even with a .100 hitter in the lineup every day.