AJ Pierzynski DFA'd, CVaz being called up

Kottaras has long been a solid hitter and worth of a major league roster spot - 3hr in 10 games this season.

Rob Bradford ?@bradfo 1h

The A.J. Pierzynski problem was worse than anybody could have imagined www.weei.com/sports/boston/baseball/red-sox/rob-bradford/2014/07/10/aj-pierzynski-problem-was-worse-anybody-could …

The Red Sox might rattle off 10 straight losses, leading to many of the players celebrating the Red Sox' 5-4 walk-off win over the White Sox Wednesday night being shipped out of town. But the facts are the facts, and the facts are that this one player was identified by multiple members of what is perceived as one of baseball's most tight-knit groups as the dark cloud that has just been lifted.

Every bad team needs a scapegoat. In 2011 it was Beckett, in 2012 it was Valentine, and this year it's Pierzynski.

ADD: that said, the fact that he was just DFAed now rather than trying to shopped around right up until the trade deadline probably suggests that he was enough of a jerk or whatever that they wanted him out ASAP.

We all know what a 1-game sample means, right? Guy goes 0/3 or 2/4, doesn't tell you anything about him as a hitter, it's just whether he had a good or bad game.

I'll report Vazquez's pitch-framing numbers here (or in its own thread if the mods think that's wise), from BP, game-by-game and cumulative.

In his debut, CVaz had 68 framing chances for 22.6 predicted and 23 actual strikes. He added 0.1 runs in theory (ignoring count), 0.0 in actuality. Solid debut.

(For comparison, Ross in his career has added 1.6 strikes per 68 chances. This is not a number that's likely to be meaningful in a single game -- but we knew that!)

What those graphs show most of all is that ump, aside from being consistently generous with the low strike, called a really good game, which goes a long way to explaining the nearly neutral numbers.

Two things to keep in mind when comparing the BP totals to these graphs:

-- BP doesn't force the standard strike zone to be square, and has a probabilistic outcome for each spot. I believe they also vary the standard zone by count, e.g., it's much bigger on 3-0 and tends to shrink with 2 strikes.

-- The top and bottom of the zone as marked by pitch/fx data has always been problematical. BP and Brooks may be doing it differently.

Agreed. That's a very consistent umpiring job, the same for both teams.

John Tomase was on the radio this morning.

He said that when he wrote negatively about Pierzynski no one rushed to his defense.  Thought that AJ was more interested in preparing for an eventual national TV gig after his playing career than preparing to play.  Would become gregarious when Ken Rosenthal entered the clubhouse but sullen and distatnt all other times.

And Dent to Portland.

Interesting choice, and hopefully indicative that Asuaje will get the well-deserved call to Salem shortly. Not like Dent was blocking anyone but, with him gone, surely they can find at-bats for Asuaje amongst those for uber-prospects like Mike Miller, Jantzen Witte and Jose Vinicio.

As I said, they take every spot in and around the strike zone (1" squares or something) and have determined the historic strike probability by count and batter handedness. I presume they've smoothed the data by some kind of averaging algorithm. They may even control for umpire and for pitcher. It's BP; they usually try to do these things right.

And you are correct, natch.

WTF? Did Asuaje say something bad about Ben Crockett's mother?

What am I missing here?

22 years old in the SAL
Tearing the cover off the ball at 3 positions
No real prospects blocking him in Salem.

This is just weird.