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2014 World Series gameday thread
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Post by James Dunne on Oct 22, 2014 20:51:20 GMT -5
If Jarrod Dyson is coming in for Aoki in a tie game in the top of the sixth then shouldn't Dyson just be starting?
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Post by James Dunne on Oct 22, 2014 21:35:14 GMT -5
I'm embarrassed for Hunter Strickland. Pitching like a bush leaguer is no reason to act like one.
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Post by Don Caballero on Oct 22, 2014 21:39:07 GMT -5
I'm embarrassed for Hunter Strickland. Pitching like a bush leaguer is no reason to act like one. I thought at first Salvador Perez said something to him before Strickland started shouting, the replays were weirdly timed. But, yeah, awkward moment.
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Post by James Dunne on Oct 22, 2014 21:41:24 GMT -5
He's faced 23 batters in the postseason and allowed homers to five of them. I know he pitched seven nice innings at the end of the season but there has to be someone more qualified for a postseason roster.
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Post by jmei on Oct 22, 2014 21:55:56 GMT -5
If Jarrod Dyson is coming in for Aoki in a tie game in the top of the sixth then shouldn't Dyson just be starting? If you think they are roughly comparable players, but Aoki is the better hitter and Dyson is the better fielder, putting in Dyson for Aoki right after Aoki has batted maximizes their individual strengths (Aoki gets two/three PAs but less than the equivalent amount of fielding, while Dyson gets four defensive innings but only one PA (maybe two)). It gets you only a tiny bit more advantage than just playing one of them the entire game, but that little bit can matter in the playoffs. I'm actually pretty impressed that Yost does it-- not many managers would, and it improves their odds of winning.
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Post by jmei on Oct 22, 2014 21:57:00 GMT -5
Strickland is basically the poster boy for the fact that throwing hard does not necessitate success. That thing is as straight as an arrow.
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Post by James Dunne on Oct 22, 2014 22:15:17 GMT -5
If Jarrod Dyson is coming in for Aoki in a tie game in the top of the sixth then shouldn't Dyson just be starting? If you think they are roughly comparable players, but Aoki is the better hitter and Dyson is the better fielder, putting in Dyson for Aoki right after Aoki has batted maximizes their individual strengths (Aoki gets two/three PAs but less than the equivalent amount of fielding, while Dyson gets four defensive innings but only one PA (maybe two)). It gets you only a tiny bit more advantage than just playing one of them the entire game, but that little bit can matter in the playoffs. I'm actually pretty impressed that Yost does it-- not many managers would, and it improves their odds of winning. That makes sense I guess. It's rare to see the superior hitter taken out in a tie game in this way but it certainly stands to reason that at that point Dyson would have more chances to affect the game defensively than Aoki would offensively.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Oct 22, 2014 23:10:03 GMT -5
Ned Yost picked a hell of a time to find religion.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 23, 2014 2:14:01 GMT -5
Strickland is basically the poster boy for the fact that throwing hard does not necessitate success. That thing is as straight as an arrow. According to pitch/fx, it had a little less movement than average (8.6 versus 9.2 inches). More than Felix Hernandez's average FB (2013-14), in fact. In my regression analysis of FB effectiveness, that movement plus his 98.1 velo grades out as second in all of MLB, to Aroldis Chapman. Ditto for all of Strickland's pitches thrown in MLB, so it wasn't just tonight. When someone as perceptive as you makes this error, it confirms my belief that we just can't see FB movement. It looks straight if it gets hit hard. Fixed: One might also guess that he has very little deception and is actually more like an effective 96 or even 95. Either that, or he's been unlucky with his mistakes, because that FB should be giving him more of a margin of error on them.
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Post by lonborgski on Oct 23, 2014 3:06:12 GMT -5
So, if you don't have command, would you rather have deception or movement? Or, would you rather have Vasquez behind the plate?
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Post by jmei on Oct 23, 2014 7:06:52 GMT -5
Strickland's fastball movement last night: -3.55 H-Break, 8.29 V-Break League-average fastball movement: -6.30 H-break, 6.96 V-break
So while Strickland's fastball has more "rise" than the average fastball, it has significant less horizontal break, which is what I was commenting on. I agree that vertical movement ("rise") is really hard to pick up with the naked eye, but horizontal movement is pretty easy to gauge.
(Felix Hernandez's sinker (his primary fastball) has above-average -7.63 H-break and below-average 6.03 V-break, by the way.)
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Post by Don Caballero on Oct 23, 2014 7:59:26 GMT -5
I agree that Strickland's fastball is on the straight side, but that was not the biggest issue for him last night IMO. His location was downright awful. I mean, 1-2 to Sal Perez and you throw a cookie in the strike zone? You make the same mistake pitch Peavy made against Infante? With his speed, he could get away with the lack of movement if he had the proper command.
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Post by James Dunne on Oct 23, 2014 8:34:09 GMT -5
I think a bigger part of the problem here, though, is that Strickland was put into a high-leverage situation in the World Series when his major league career consisted of seven shutout innings in September and then four homers allowed to 21 batters in the playoffs. He's never even pitched in Triple-A.
For a Red Sox equivalent of his usage pattern, he'd be like if Madison Younginer showed up next year throwing 99, dominated Salem for a couple weeks then spent the season pitching great for Portland. He's never promoted to Pawtucket but gets his contract purchased on 9/1, pitches seven shutout innings across nine appearances. He makes the playoff roster, but gets shelled in the first two rounds, but is still used in a one-run game in the World Series. With all due respect to Younginer, that seems a little crazy, right?
EDIT: I should make it clear that I chose Younginer specifically - because he's an athletic, talented pitcher who could still see an improvement in stuff, but is a long, long, long way from a high leverage situation in the World Series.
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Post by jimed14 on Oct 23, 2014 10:49:48 GMT -5
So what is the updated status on the James Shields trade? Is it back to being bad again? The Royals have been a lot of fun over the last three weeks or so but it's frankly embarrassing to watch so many analysts give themselves whiplash in reversing their evaluations of this organization. Initially I thought it was pretty bad. Now I think it was just bad. Imagine if Wil Myers were in Boston with the lower wRC+ than Bogaerts in 2014?
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Post by Oregon Norm on Oct 23, 2014 20:18:27 GMT -5
Initially I thought it was pretty bad. Now I think it was just bad. Imagine if Wil Myers were in Boston with the lower wRC+ than Bogaerts in 2014? Myers is part of a big crowd of prospects who struggled mightily this year (though Betts brought everybody to attention). No doubt that colors the perception of the KC/TB trade, although Shield's performance in post-season is muting those vivid tones to shades of gray. I do find myself wondering whether he can really be expected to pitch 200+ innings over the next five years of the contract he probably expects to get. Maybe the Yankees will just reward him for past performance. They've been very good at that for a while now.
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Post by slam761 on Oct 23, 2014 21:36:29 GMT -5
Am I the only one that had no idea Hunter Strickland was one of the guys we traded for Adam Laroche? I knew his name sounded familiar but I had no idea he was a former Sox prospect.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 24, 2014 7:04:46 GMT -5
Strickland's fastball movement last night: -3.55 H-Break, 8.29 V-Break League-average fastball movement: -6.30 H-break, 6.96 V-break So while Strickland's fastball has more "rise" than the average fastball, it has significant less horizontal break, which is what I was commenting on. I agree that vertical movement ("rise") is really hard to pick up with the naked eye, but horizontal movement is pretty easy to gauge. (Felix Hernandez's sinker (his primary fastball) has above-average -7.63 H-break and below-average 6.03 V-break, by the way.) I did check to see if there was any difference between H and V movement in effectiveness, and there wasn't; the total distance alone was significant. As you say, it's hard to judge movement of someone coming over the top. Okajima had no armside run but a ton of rise. Had he had poor FB command in the pre-Pitch/fx era, his epitaph would have been "nothing fastball: 88 and straight."
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Post by James Dunne on Oct 24, 2014 15:11:50 GMT -5
The Royals are starting Dyson in center tonight - something I previously advocated by jmei changed my mind on to where I am now indifferent. They are also batting Alex Gordon second, which is exactly right.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 24, 2014 17:02:30 GMT -5
Inspired by the Shields talk in the off-season thread ...
When I looked into post-season clutch pitching about 15 years ago, I couldn't find any predictive effect at all. But I would love to redo the study, since so much more data has accumulated, and we have since devised great new luck-removing metrics.
But I think the focus on this question obscures the evident reality, which is this: one of the biggest reasons the post-season is a crapshoot, and one of the most very interesting things about the post-season, is that your ace pitching is especially a crapshoot. El Duque was great until the year he was terrible, which was the same year Clemens ceased being terrible and was great. Kershaw was great for six innings and terrible in the seventh. The media loves to predict great pitching matchups, but the more exciting and much more accurate meme would be, this could be an awesome pitcher's dual, but one of these guys could blow up unexpectedly, and that happens often enough that we always have to consider it, and why it happens is a mystery and impossible to predict, and it seems as if it could happen to almost anyone despite their track record.
If I redid the study, I would include the days rest of the start, and career figures for how guys had pitched on various days rest; and IP total, and how they had compared to previous years. Because two good bets for why pitchers sometmes come up short is that they have worn down, and that they are not on their usual schedule.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 24, 2014 18:00:30 GMT -5
The Royals are starting Dyson in center tonight - something I previously advocated by jmei changed my mind on to where I am now indifferent. Aoki has four career games in RF there, with 1 in CF and 1 in LF. Cain has a lone game in CF, and Dyson has never played there at all. On paper, the revised OF alignment is 18 runs (per 150 games) better than the usual. It's unclear how the size of RF there, and the experience or inexperience of the players, alters that. FG has Aoki as a career +0 Batting plus Baserunning, and Dyson +3.7 in 977 PA, with the gap bigger this year, so there's a strong argument that this lineup should be the regular one anyway. What, batting your best (full season) or second-best (since July) hitter sixth is a bad idea? It's fuzzy-minded liberal thinking like that that gets you eaten. And then after fixing the first four spots, he elevates Moustakas to the 5 spot behind Hosmer, inviting Lopez to face them both (Hudson does have a bit of a bigger platoon split than usual, but certainly not large enough to warrant stacking a pair of LHB against him). And putting a plus base-stealer like Dyson in the NL park 8 hole makes no sense, either. Perez (whose bat may have come alive a bit with the time off), Dyson, Infante, Moustakas would make much more sense 5-8.
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Post by James Dunne on Oct 24, 2014 21:09:05 GMT -5
And then Hosmer gets an RBI single off Lopez, because baseball is crazy like that.
I actully don't have a problem with Yost batting Hosmer/Moustakas back-to-back against a righty starter, but his apparent unwillingness to pinch hit for Moustakas (only once in the last four months) is a little silly.
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Post by grandsalami on Oct 24, 2014 22:44:55 GMT -5
If I told you yost would be close to winning a WS ring. You would have called me______?
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Post by Don Caballero on Oct 24, 2014 23:08:07 GMT -5
WE'RE ALMOST THERE BABY!!
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Post by James Dunne on Oct 25, 2014 19:04:04 GMT -5
Carlos Santana rules.
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Post by James Dunne on Oct 25, 2014 21:43:36 GMT -5
Ned Yost's dumb moves in Game 3 worked and his sensible ones in Game 4 seem to have blown up. It's like baseball is laughing at us.
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