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Post by soxfanatic on Sept 24, 2014 16:11:17 GMT -5
Yanks officially eliminated, marking the first time both the Red Sox and Yankees aren't in the play-offs since 1993.
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Post by taftreign on Sept 24, 2014 20:20:06 GMT -5
I wonder how Dave Stewart will do as GM and if he will try to make a splash trade to put his stamp on the franchise. Sounds like John Hart will be the guy in Atlanta. Probably trade for Matt Kemp! After all he does have the inside scoop.
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Post by jmei on Sept 25, 2014 11:19:36 GMT -5
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Post by mattpicard on Sept 25, 2014 11:25:55 GMT -5
Read this just a few minutes ago. Fantastic indeed, with some funny interjections from Adam Dunn. ---- Interesting exchange last night in the White Sox/Tigers game: m.mlb.com/video/topic/11493214/v36567853/Of course it's Ian Kinsler mocking Sale with the binoculars when he gets a hit later on.
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Post by pedroelgrande on Sept 25, 2014 17:10:51 GMT -5
Dave Stewart named GM of the DBacks he has a lot of grit and the #1 pick to work with.
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ericmvan
Veteran
Supposed to be working on something more important
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 27, 2014 3:31:41 GMT -5
Terrific article. What the Pirates are doing contrasts, of course, with what the Sox did with first Voros McCracken and then me, as documented last year by Peter Keating at ESPN Mag. Not that either one of us could have been as much in the loop as Mike Fitzgerald is with the Pirates, but we couldn't have been further from it; the Sox strategy was to isolate the statheads from the regular baseball people completely. This worked OK as long as the intermediary had a good sense of how to sell the analysis to the manager, coaching staff, and players, which Jed Hoyer did; but when he was promoted out of that job, his successor didn't. Francona's frustration with that is documented (not wholly accurately) in his bio. The case study I often think of is the Mike Lowell splits I discovered going into 2007 (IIRC). He was terrific his whole career after a day off, and terrible his whole career the first day in a new city after traveling after an off day. I figured out that if you gave him the first day off of most road series, he'd probably end with the same HR, the same RBI, but 20 or 25 extra points of BA (I figured that if they were going to sell this to Lowell, he'd be thinking along those lines; obviously his OBP, SA would be getting a big boost, and WAR a decent one). Now, I have no idea whether they ever approached Lowell with this idea, but I do know that they never gave him any extra time off despite the open-and-shit argument for doing so, and that at around this time I noticed he was using "Iron Man" as his walk-up music. I bet that if the team had had a Mike Fitzgerald, that guy could have sold Lowell on taking some extra time off.
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Sept 27, 2014 12:17:07 GMT -5
Dave Stewart named GM of the DBacks he has a lot of grit and the #1 pick to work with. Do you remember the incident with the hooker ? Funny stuff, true grit for sure. Speaking of funny stuff: Jon Morosi ?@jonmorosi 11m Brian Cashman said he's spoken with Alex Rodriguez recently; he won't play winter ball. Cash says he doesn't know if A-Rod can play 3B.
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Post by jimed14 on Sept 28, 2014 12:18:57 GMT -5
Dave Stewart named GM of the DBacks he has a lot of grit and the #1 pick to work with. Do you remember the incident with the hooker ? Funny stuff, true grit for sure. Speaking of funny stuff: Jon Morosi ?@jonmorosi 11m Brian Cashman said he's spoken with Alex Rodriguez recently; he won't play winter ball. Cash says he doesn't know if A-Rod can play 3B. Can't wait to see that drama.
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ericmvan
Veteran
Supposed to be working on something more important
Posts: 8,911
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 29, 2014 11:50:37 GMT -5
Final MLB standings, properly adjusted for strength of schedule.
The average AL / NL difference was 4.9 wins, which is to say that an AL club with the same record as as NL club was basically 5 wins better. By division:
+2.9 AL East +1.4 AL Central +3.0 AL West -2.1 NL East -1.8 NL Central -3.5 NL West
Over the last weekend, the Yankees passed the Pirates for 10th place by 0.1 wins, meaning that you can argue that seven of the 10 best teams in baseball were in the AL.
While you can't really bitch about the Pirates making the playoffs instead of the Yankees, the Giants get gifted into the post-season despite finishing 5.2 games behind the Mariners if they'd played the same schedule, as well as 1.2 to 2.0 games behind the Yankees, Indians, and Blue Jays.
The last column, Karma, is not included in the standings, but measures how much better or worse the club played than its underlying statistics. A positive number means that the team was an overachiever. While I don't believe in including this in final standings, it may have predictive power for the post-season. Or not.
Team Win SoS Adj Pct Kar LA Angels 98 3.3 101.3 .625 -0.1 Baltimore 96 3.2 99.2 .613 2.5 Washington 96 -2.0 94.0 .580 -1.1 Detroit 90 1.6 91.6 .566 0.8 Oakland 88 3.1 91.1 .563 -4.9 LA Dodgers 94 -3.1 90.9 .561 -0.9 Kansas City 89 1.6 90.6 .559 5.2 Seattle 87 2.9 89.9 .555 0.0 St. Louis 90 -1.5 88.5 .546 2.8 NY Yankees 84 2.7 86.7 .535 3.7 Pittsburgh 88 -1.4 86.6 .534 -1.1 Cleveland 85 1.1 86.1 .531 0.9 Toronto 83 2.9 85.9 .530 -0.5 San Francisco 88 -3.3 84.7 .523 -0.5 Tampa Bay 77 2.9 79.9 .493 -4.6 Milwaukee 82 -2.1 79.9 .493 0.4 NY Mets 79 -2.1 76.9 .475 1.0 Atlanta 79 -2.3 76.7 .473 1.3 Miami 77 -2.4 74.6 .460 0.4 Chicago Sox 73 1.3 74.3 .459 1.1 Cincinnati 76 -1.8 74.2 .458 1.1 Boston 71 2.9 73.9 .456 -1.0 San Diego 77 -3.4 73.6 .454 2.8 Houston 70 2.9 72.9 .450 -1.1 Minnesota 70 1.5 71.5 .441 -1.5 Philadelphia 73 -1.9 71.1 .439 0.7 Chicago Cubs 73 -2.0 71.0 .439 -1.9 Texas 67 2.9 69.9 .431 2.0 Colorado 66 -3.9 62.1 .383 -5.4 Arizona 64 -3.6 60.4 .373 -2.1
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Post by soxfanatic on Sept 29, 2014 14:10:49 GMT -5
/photo/1
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Post by ethanbein on Sept 29, 2014 17:00:37 GMT -5
Final MLB standings, properly adjusted for strength of schedule. How do you determine the strength of a team when you do these SoS adjustments? Preseason projections? 2014 record? 2014 run differential? Definitely a tough thing to figure out. These are still cool for sure though, thanks for posting.
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Post by jimed14 on Sept 30, 2014 17:37:00 GMT -5
Not liking the A's decision to pair Lester with a catcher who never caught him for the Wild Card game. I think we know better than most that he needs to feel comfortable.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Sept 30, 2014 18:19:37 GMT -5
Thank you for introducing me to this Twitter account, although I'll never get the last half hour back though...
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Post by soxfanatic on Oct 1, 2014 9:11:04 GMT -5
Rules to speed up the game are going to get tested at the AFL.
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Post by jimed14 on Oct 1, 2014 11:08:03 GMT -5
No pitch intentional walks - finally! I remember when I was about 8, I asked my dad why pitchers didn't just lick their fingers on the rubber 4 times in a row because they used to penalize a ball for that.
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Post by brianthetaoist on Oct 1, 2014 11:16:54 GMT -5
I've always enjoyed the fact that there was no clock in baseball, but something's gotta be done ... the "Three conferences" rule is maybe the most substantial to the actual playing of the game, though, no? That's really not that many when you consider catcher-pitcher visits to be one of them.
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Post by jimed14 on Oct 1, 2014 11:35:02 GMT -5
I've always enjoyed the fact that there was no clock in baseball, but something's gotta be done ... the "Three conferences" rule is maybe the most substantial to the actual playing of the game, though, no? That's really not that many when you consider catcher-pitcher visits to be one of them. Yeah, don't think that one is going to fly. I wish they'd stick to the no more than 4 people on the mound rule they used to have, though not for any real reason.
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Post by michael on Oct 1, 2014 14:39:31 GMT -5
No pitch intentional walks - finally! I remember when I was about 8, I asked my dad why pitchers didn't just lick their fingers on the rubber 4 times in a row because they used to penalize a ball for that. Because one doesn't know where those fingers have been
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Oct 1, 2014 17:10:03 GMT -5
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Post by rangoon82 on Oct 6, 2014 15:21:32 GMT -5
So the ALCS is the ... Royals vs Orioles? That feels weird.
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Post by Guidas on Oct 7, 2014 10:11:33 GMT -5
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Post by Oregon Norm on Oct 8, 2014 0:53:35 GMT -5
Beane could always push Bowden off MLB's XM channel. That would be an improvement. As for Biden, his stream of consciousness stuff taps into a mind that's like a closet that has all the items you forgot to get rid of. Open the door and it all comes tumbling out.
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Oct 8, 2014 6:54:22 GMT -5
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Post by sarasoxer on Oct 8, 2014 11:07:17 GMT -5
Is it time to make an adjustment and move the mound back?
Offense is trending precipitously downward as it did in the late 1960s. There are so many pitchers now throwing in the vicinity or in excess of 100 mph even as starters that MLB is becoming an adult version of Little League.... pitch and catch....swing and miss. The minors are brimming with the next supersonic arm generation. Growing up the game was truly never over until it was over. Back then when starters routinely went the distance and bullpens were for the guys not good enough to be starters, there was always the hope if not the expectation of a rally. It was much more of a 9 inning game. With the advent of super strong arms, teams with good bullpen arms (most) end the game after 6 or 7 innings...We all know the outrageously one-sided stats of team records in cases where they lead after 7. It is now a 6 or max 7 inning game in reality. Yes, the guy throwing 100 still has to control it but it is obviously a heckuva lot harder to square those pitches up. The old balance between pitching and hitting is being skewed and the game is changing for the worse IMO.
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Post by freddysthefuture2003 on Oct 8, 2014 11:52:33 GMT -5
Is it time to make an adjustment and move the mound back? Offense is trending precipitously downward as it did in the late 1960s. There are so many pitchers now throwing in the vicinity or in excess of 100 mph even as starters that MLB is becoming an adult version of Little League.... pitch and catch....swing and miss. The minors are brimming with the next supersonic arm generation. Growing up the game was truly never over until it was over. Back then when starters routinely went the distance and bullpens were for the guys not good enough to be starters, there was always the hope if not the expectation of a rally. It was much more of a 9 inning game. With the advent of super strong arms, teams with good bullpen arms (most) end the game after 6 or 7 innings...We all know the outrageously one-sided stats of team records in cases where they lead after 7. It is now a 6 or max 7 inning game in reality. Yes, the guy throwing 100 still has to control it but it is obviously a heckuva lot harder to square those pitches up. The old balance between pitching and hitting is being skewed and the game is changing for the worse IMO. Is lowering it not an option?
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