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Recent Posts
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Post by James Dunne on May 11, 2021 18:38:18 GMT -5
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Post by James Dunne on May 11, 2021 10:51:14 GMT -5
Everyone in Boston knows you always take the Indiana State guy.
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Post by James Dunne on May 11, 2021 10:00:43 GMT -5
Is this the first time the Sox face Manaea since the no-hitter he threw against them in Oakland in 2018? Looks like he's all the way back from his injury. Nah, he beat the Sox again like three weeks later at Fenway.
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Post by James Dunne on May 10, 2021 16:33:49 GMT -5
Duran doesn’t have 80 grade speed, but your point still stands. Very fast OF if they can hit enough to start James Dunn says he does and he knows everything. Not quite what I said about Duran but your post is otherwise accurate.
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Post by James Dunne on May 10, 2021 12:41:09 GMT -5
So what I was really saying was that I have never seen a player with his ability to hit tough pitches in the zone so freaking hard. Think about how useful that is with two strikes. I compared Devers at one point around the time he came up to Gary Sheffield. They both had hands so quick and such good hand-eye coordination that they were able to take those violent swings and just totally punish even good pitches.
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Post by James Dunne on May 10, 2021 10:29:57 GMT -5
I think it's clearly Dunn - the higher OBP means he's turning the lineup over more often, and the much higher slugging means that there are more mass run-scoring events, more than enough to make up for potential RBI outs and the advantage of a single vs. a walk.
I'll raise you: 2000 Nomar Garciaparra .372/.434/.599 61 BB, 40 K
vs.
2017 Aaron Judge .284/.422/.627 127 BB, 208 K
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Post by James Dunne on May 10, 2021 10:17:28 GMT -5
So it's not clear if you all are talking about hit tools among home grown players, but I'd like to humbly submit:
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Post by James Dunne on May 10, 2021 9:35:47 GMT -5
Duran has an 80-grade "don't get in that dude's way when he's running full speed" though.
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Post by James Dunne on May 7, 2021 10:42:53 GMT -5
Does it really feel so weird that Ryan Braun's MVP season was about in line with Ted Williams' 9th best season? There's an implication in your post like "WAR thinks Braun was better than Williams" that isn't there? WAR doesn’t think anything. But if one creates a list that says (or implies) best to worst and uses WAR as the measure, then Ryan Braun’s *season* would be listed ahead of Williams’. And I pulled those entirely arbitrarily (and didn’t look to see how much defense played a role).... so if the example is off putting, I can go back. But, yes, it *does* feel weird to say Braun’s MVP season was better than Williams’s 9th best season, when Braun could carry Ted’s jock. Add: I hope I’m being clear: my objection is narrow... it isn’t against WAR used in specific ways. It is just that using it to compare guys from different eras strikes me as a problem (so putting McGuire ahead of Ernie Banks, for example). B-Ref's WAR, which is far superior for career value than fangraphs, has Banks 5.5 WAR ahead of McGwire (so about 8.8% better for their careers). Banks is weird though, because he went from being a shortstop who was one of the best players alive in his 20s to a barely average first baseman at 31. He simply wasn't that good anymore after he moved off of shortstop, .258/.306/.448 with a 12.7 WAR in the last 10 years of his career. Banks' career had a more traditional arc peaking with the MVPs at 27 and 28, whereas McGwire had basically two peaks - he fell off in his late 20s, then went back to the pigeon-toed stance and, uhhh, got stronger. As far as Braun, he roided up and peaked as an MVP who was roughly as good as a third-tier Ted Williams season. Mike Greenwell had a 7.5 WAR season in 1988 where he stayed healthy and everything came together, and he never sniffed that again. It was basically as good as Henry Aaron's 10th best season. That stuff happens.
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Post by James Dunne on May 7, 2021 10:22:47 GMT -5
Does it really feel so weird that Ryan Braun's MVP season was about in line with Ted Williams' 9th best season? There's an implication in your post like "WAR thinks Braun was better than Williams" that isn't there?
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Post by James Dunne on May 7, 2021 9:50:25 GMT -5
Also, McGwire hit 583 homers. His WAR total, like his HR total, was built up over a few incredible seasons. Contrast that with guys with similar career value like Eddie Murray, Joey Votto, and Todd Helton who were much more consistent but never as dominant for a short time. WAR doesn't care what his batting average was in his 20's, just like it doesn't care that Dwight Evans' bat didn't break out when he was in his 30s.
By JAWS ranking (an average of career WAR and the seven best seasons of his career) McGwire ranks 17th of all time. That... feels almost exactly right to me? Short of Helton and Votto. Slightly above Hank Greenberg, who missed three seasons in his prime due to the war, and Harmon Killebrew, who was probably borderline statistically but someone who everyone had great memories of so he got into the Hall of Fame. Sort of like Vlad Guerrero or Kirby Puckett, WAR shows the value and then there's enough narrative to build context on top of that.
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Post by James Dunne on May 7, 2021 9:40:55 GMT -5
Just FYI, we used "classic" box scores to refer to the old formatting milb used for their box score pages. They switched over to the gameday boxes in 2019, but the old boxes were still accessible once you had the link format by swapping out the team, level, and league. It appears they took those all down and discontinued that formatting on Tuesday. The gameday ones take longer to load (especially if you're on an old device) and are more buggy. But the most egregious problem with them with what I'm using them for is that there's no longer a single-page play-by-play so that you can do a quick Ctrl-F search. Now you have to click through, inning by inning. Just awful.
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Post by James Dunne on May 7, 2021 8:04:44 GMT -5
Very excited to see Ward, he's been flying totally under the radar.
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Post by James Dunne on May 6, 2021 23:47:51 GMT -5
With regards to Dalbec being a little slower to the majors, it's also important to remember that he was seen as something more of a project than a normal college junior because he'd been a two-way player until then. Both the team and Dalbec both said outright that the amount of attention he needed to put into pitching had his bat behind where it otherwise would be if he could've focused on it. And considering his gradual improvement and ability to make adjustments as he climbed the ladder, I'd say Boston's evaluation there turned out to be pretty correct.
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Post by James Dunne on May 6, 2021 23:42:51 GMT -5
I'd never really taken time to think about it in these terms, but Pujols is the best post-integration first baseman by a long-shot, right? Like Murray, McCovey, Bagwell, Thomas were all no-question Hall of Famers but also definitely a tier below him. Am I forgetting someone?
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Post by James Dunne on May 6, 2021 14:45:24 GMT -5
Having watched the first 12 years of Pujols career, it is wild that he was bad enough for long enough to end up with a sub-.300 career batting average. His batting average with St. Louis was 17 points higher than his OBP with Los Angeles.
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Post by James Dunne on May 6, 2021 14:42:01 GMT -5
As bad as Bobby D, Franchy etc. have been we still have been putting up 5+ runs a game. These are games we shouldn’t be losing but the Offense isn’t the issue. I mean, if you're losing 6-5 and there are two guys in your lineup that are automatic outs, then yes that's part of the issue. Dalbec is better than this, but this is sort of what we were all talking about for the last few years with taking the slumps with the hot streaks. We're really not to the point in the season where bWAR is particularly meaningful, but he entered today tied with Eugenio Suarez for worst in the majors. www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/2021-value-batting.shtml#players_value_batting::15
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Post by James Dunne on May 5, 2021 22:45:35 GMT -5
MILB has him as Nicholas but I think he prefers Nick? MILB can be slow on some of that stuff. They use Andrew for Politi's first name, stuff like that.
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Post by James Dunne on May 5, 2021 22:12:59 GMT -5
They are obviously easier to separate in my head than the Basabes, Bogaertses, and Joshes Smith, but I'm uncomfortable with the number of Nicks in Salem's lineup.
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Post by James Dunne on May 5, 2021 22:04:12 GMT -5
1. That's ridiculous. So apparently he's healthy, knock on wood. 2. The Chattanooga Lookouts will always have the best classic cap in minor league baseball, I am so happy they didn't get contracted as was rumored. 3. If I ran the Chattanooga Lookouts twitter account I would overuse the heck out of the eyes-wide-open emoji, it is the perfect union of team and emoji.
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Post by James Dunne on May 5, 2021 18:51:14 GMT -5
The thing with Dalbec is that he's crushing lefties and getting eaten alive by righties. And even if it continues to play that way, they have enough positional flexibility to bring in a LHB first baseman and make Dalbec a lefty-mashing platoon guy and pinch hitter. He's making the minimum and the value in bringing in all these dudes who can play 8 positions is that you have the roster space for a first base platoon. If Logan Morrison is still upright he's a better use of a roster spot than using Philips Valdez twice a month. The Tigers starting lineup has 6 players hitting under .200! Wow, can we still blame this on DD....the $30 million for Miggy would have gone a long way toward other players.... I mean, find me the combination of free agents who have signed for $30 million who would make this Tigers team good? Like... they're not Bryce Harper away. They're not a $20 million guy and two $5 million guys away. If they were a 78-win team, you could blame the Cabrera contract. But it isn't a real difference-maker right now.
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Post by James Dunne on May 5, 2021 8:16:44 GMT -5
A lot of people quick to jump on the “Benny trade was an awful trade” train on Twitter today. Obviously Franchy hasn’t worked out (so far) but I think proclaiming it a bad deal after ONE good week from Benny and still not knowing the PTBNLs is a little rich. Also think that Sox over performing expectations has slanted people’s opinions. Easier now to say we shouldn’t have done in. At the time we were looking at the expectation of a mediocre team which obviously factored into the deal (pick up prospects and a guy with similar range of outcomes with an extra year of control). It was the right deal *at the time* AND I still maintain it was a good deal *period* (pending PTBNLs coming in at expectations). I can understand the frustration, though. They traded a low-salary left fielder who is hitting .278/.352/.412, and all they have to show for it right now on the MLB roster is Franchy Cordero, who isn't even trusted to pinch hit against a righty. Meanwhile, Boston left fielders are hitting .221/.289/.337. They have a hole on the roster because of a trade they made and didn't fill adequately. Like, there's a good argument that Benintendi for the package they'll get back for him is the right move in the long term, but I'd also argue Bloom didn't do what was necessary to bridge the gap in the short term.
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Post by James Dunne on May 4, 2021 20:27:41 GMT -5
I just checked Miggy's Fangraphs page and I didn't realize the production was so bad for a while now. Starting in 2017 he's totaled -0.2 fWAR....yikes. He's signed for two more years with vesting options in '24-25. And compared to Pujols he’s a bargain I know you're being cheeky, but Pujols has an OPS 200 points higher and is in the last season of his deal. Cabrera is signed through 2023.
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Post by James Dunne on May 4, 2021 19:12:07 GMT -5
Buffalo/Trenton is like 8 for 10 on balls in play. Minor league baseball is back, baby!
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Post by James Dunne on May 4, 2021 18:44:28 GMT -5
If Devers can't play and Cordero isn't good enough to play then the bench is Plawecki, correct? They're playing with a one-man bench so that they can pitch Austin Brice and Philips Valdez once a week? You’re not wrong, but the positional flexibility of Hernandez, Gonzalez, Arroyo and Verdugo does mitigate it somewhat. I get what you're saying, but part of the advantage of positional flexibility is that it enables you to carry a bench guy or two who don't have that. Like "we can carry a Steve Pearce because we have Brock Holt and Eduardo Nunez who can slide around the field" is of limited utility if you don't have that backup who necessitates moving everyone else around the field. "We're going to slide Renfroe into right field even though the bat's a little soft because he's good at it defensively and it lets us get another bat in the lineup" is fine. "We're going to slide Renfroe into right field because the other choice is the backup catcher" is bad roster management.
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