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Post by fenwaythehardway on Nov 27, 2019 12:00:35 GMT -5
I might argue that Johnson's curve is above average. Not going to confuse with Clayton Kershaw's but he commands it well and can throw it to righties which is a real advantage for a lefty. At least, that was true in 2018 and in previous viewings, I actually didn't see him a lot this year. Which - the "didn't see him a lot" is kind of the problem. He doesn't/hasn't seen his stuff move forward in shorter stints, which makes him basically a swing-man/5th starter type and the biggest value a swingman/5th starter type can have is availability. Johnson's injuries suck and feel so random rather than chronic, and it's compounded by the fact that his profile kind of necessitates durability. He might be someone who just needs a clear path to establishing himself as a 5th starter on a bad team and see if he can put things together from there, but he's also 29 next week. He's probably too many years and reps removed, but picking up a bat and trying to catch on as a two-way 26th man wouldn't be a terrible idea. He really could hit at Florida, .324/.383/.492 in his three years there. That's a funny comp since one of Johnson's problems is that he's four seam, curve, slider, no change. Which is not what you'd ever want from a pitcher, and also exactly what Kershaw does. As far as the curve being above average, maybe, but overall the stuff just isn't really there.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Nov 27, 2019 8:08:18 GMT -5
I don’t really get this move. Isn’t BJ exactly the kind of pitching depth we need? I know Johnson has had a long road to the majors, and I'm glad he got his moment to as a real contributor for an amazing team in 2018, but I don't honestly see anything in his profile that makes him more than a replacement-level guy. The statistical track record isn't better than that, and on a skills level, he doesn't have an above average pitch.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Nov 25, 2019 20:00:00 GMT -5
I took this in the spirit of: what was the worst contract, given what the team could reasonably foresee at the time? Fielder isn't so bad by that metric; Davis, Crawford, and Ellsbury aren't completely awful; but Pujols, boy... they signed him for his age 32-41 seasons, following a year where he had already shown significant decline. What did they think was gonna happen? I think there's a pretty good chance Bryce Harper ends up in this conversation at some point. Not technically a free agent signing, but Ryan Howard has to be got to be the greatest "we tried to warn you" contract of all time.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Nov 25, 2019 14:52:55 GMT -5
Jorge De La Rosa pitched until 2018, and accumulated roughly 1500 league average innings. Might have been a lot better than that had he not spent most of his career in Colorado.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Nov 24, 2019 12:20:21 GMT -5
The Rockies don't trade pitching away in general, and certainly not for Chavis, a player they have no particular need for.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Nov 24, 2019 9:36:30 GMT -5
Red Sox (foolish, overconfident): We're going to pay Carl Crawford like he's a five win player.
Me (wise, skeptical): Crawford's hitting skills still aren't that great and he's probably more like a three and a half win player.
Carl Crawford (*signs contract*): I'm actually a zero win player now.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Nov 24, 2019 9:16:37 GMT -5
David Price shouldn't be in this conversation, and if Steve Pearce wasn't walking around with Price's WS MVP Award then he wouldn't be. Even outside the dominant playoff run, he has 10.8 bWAR in the regular season. Far from the worst FA contract of all time, I'd say that's really close to a wash. Even if he's a zero in the last three years he's a foolish inclusion. David Price for Albert Pujols, who says no?
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Nov 23, 2019 14:25:57 GMT -5
Completely agree. If I were running the union I'd have a wish list like: - 5 years of team control, 2 pre arb and 3 arb - if you spend 1 day on an mlb roster that counts for half a year of service, more than 1/3 of the season on a roster gets you a full year of service. - double the league minimum - all players on the 40 man roster make the league minimum (teams have to carry at least 35-37 so there is no gaming the system)- fix the system for relievers. 6 years is a career for a relief pitcher, they need to make money before free agency. - some sort of informal understanding that the percent revenue paid to the players is expected to remain within a certain range The concession the union gives up is to allow a max length on contracts, 5 years for pitchers and 6 for position players.That would be a system that worked better for how the game is now rather than the current system that was built for how the game was in the 90s. I might quibble with some of the particulars but I do think that the basic outline of what the MLBPA should go for is basically this, a reduction in year control, a raising of the salary floor, and a widening of the player pool, in exchange for some kind of max contract or other mechanism that does away with Pujols/Cabrera type contracts. I think that's the right thing to do for the players (career mostly-minors guys are the worst off and this benefits them the most), the right thing for the game (I want the players to get their fair share but the insane lottery for high end free agents is actually a pretty unfair mechanism for achieving that), and it's the best thing for them in the PR battle.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Nov 21, 2019 21:07:13 GMT -5
I don't think any WAR calculation adjusts enough for catcher defense. Hopefully they can get that fixed before the robo zone obviates the entire concept in a couple years.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Nov 21, 2019 20:48:42 GMT -5
Baseball-Reference disagrees strongly: Machado 23.4 Harper 21.6 Grandal 12.1 Now I am wondering if there is any position player with as big of a gap between bWAR and fWAR. Pithers can have big differences if they consistently over-perform or under-perform their FIP, but with position players you don't really see that. As far as I can tell it's Fangraphs giving him credit for his framing and BR not. I know that Prospectus has framing included in catcher defense, and they give Grandal about the same defensive value as Fangraphs.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Nov 21, 2019 10:57:47 GMT -5
Yankees also DFAed Greg Bird who might be a decent minor league flyer. One of the all time great fantasy baseball sinkholes.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Nov 21, 2019 10:51:01 GMT -5
I fully support an unlimited length strike for the players to get what they want, as long as they fight for anyone other than the top 1% of player salaries. This is an even bigger reason for the Red Sox to go for it this year. Also, this is another indication that Manfred is completely worthless. Yup. I kind of miss Bus Selig. Much like the way he told us all the playoff ball was the same as the regular season ball in the immediate wake of Rob Arthur using MLB's own data to conclusively prove that it wasn't, Manfred seems like he doesn't respect us enough to even provide convincing lies. Like he can't even be bothered to come up with a decent fig leaf about the good of the game or whatever, his statement is basically incoherent past a general sense of "we're going to squeeze the players because we feel like we can".
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Nov 21, 2019 10:47:18 GMT -5
This reminds me of nothing so much as the constant Breaking News chyron adopted by just about every TV news source, crying wolf at every opportunity. Not much meat on those bones, either on this story, or on Duffy for that matter. I'll admit that Duffy is a pretty low tier of interest as far as players go but he still makes contact and has good plate skills. Steamer has him at .267/.335/.378 which is good for a 95 wRC+. He's... probably more interesting that Chris Owings?
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Nov 20, 2019 13:48:40 GMT -5
Until I hear otherwise, I'm going to assume that Manfred won't do a damn thing to the Astros. He just doesn't care about this stuff unless it was the Red Sox. And it's already making me furious. If I were the Red Sox, I'd only use pitchers that can speak a new imaginary language that they come up with when playing in Houston until the end of time because the Astros are clearly always going to cheat. There is zero reason to think this. They've straight up banned executives from other organizations from the game. Baseball is taking a lot of heat (rightfully) for their mishandling of the ball and their inability to give us any honest answers about it. They're also getting a lot of criticism (again rightfully) for their enabling of non-competitive franchises and the resulting weak free agent market. On top of all that, the Astros just had one of their executives majorly embarrass the whole sport during the damn World Series. All of which is to say MLB is maybe looking for a way to re-assert itself as a good steward of the game, and making an example out of the Astros seems like the most obvious way for them to do that right now.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Nov 20, 2019 8:46:11 GMT -5
Contraction of any sort, especially by reducing proximity to the local game, is the antithesis of local marketing and of expansion. Cutting 40 teams removes 40 local fanbases, which is stupid and shortsighted. An alternative would be for MLB to wake up and spend the relative pittance to upgrade player wages and bennies; and to create and enforce a model to improve the facilities, the product, local marketing and the fairly easy job of deeply involving each local community in the process. (Worcester baseball fans and the community in general are excited, Pawtucket and now Lowell are rightfully hurt and angry.) Instead of fearful “the game is dying” memes, this is an important opportunity to improve the game locally for the purpose of enlarging the base. Contracting and fixing do not belong in the same sentence.I basically agree with everything you're saying about the minors, except that contraction has no role to play in improving the system. It seems pretty unanimous among the people who know the minors best that we have too many teams. There's so much filler on these rosters. Even before you get to the bad facilities and the towns that just don't have the population or the economy to support these teams in any real way, seeing two or three guys on a team that have any chance of making the majors isn't a great baseball experience. (PS. If you really want to grow the game by going local, eliminate the minor leagues entirely and use a relegation system instead.)
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Nov 20, 2019 8:05:29 GMT -5
According to the comments it's about a third Florida team Literally, and I mean literally, the last thing anyone ever wanted. There's gotta be some mistake here.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Nov 18, 2019 19:51:47 GMT -5
Joel Sherman was on MLBN today and was talking about the best fit being Betts for Alex Verdugo and Keibert Ruiz. By even the most conservative estimation of Verdugo's value, the Dodgers would be paying well over $50m for one year of Mookie Betts. I still don't understand why people think they would want to do this.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Nov 16, 2019 8:07:49 GMT -5
Xander Bogaerts extension: doesn't have the qualifications to run a baseball team. John Lackey trade: give this man another baseball team to run. I don't hate Ben Cherington, but there's only 30 of these jobs and I don't know why he needs a second chance at one. Don’t a lot of guys get better the second time around after the experience they gained the first? I think it’s a positive that he’s been away from the position for several years; it lets reflection sink in. As James pointed out there were a lot of good things he did. Look, Ben Cherington is fine. My complaint is less about him and more about baseball's diversity/gatekeeping problem. Of the 30 job holders, how many have won a World Series ? Dayton Moore has one, you want him running your team?
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Nov 15, 2019 11:04:50 GMT -5
Xander Bogaerts extension: doesn't have the qualifications to run a baseball team. John Lackey trade: give this man another baseball team to run. I don't hate Ben Cherington, but there's only 30 of these jobs and I don't know why he needs a second chance at one.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Nov 15, 2019 10:38:24 GMT -5
Really curious about the spin/movement on his fastball. It looks really straight in this video, but kind of in that way that a fastball with a lot of rise can look straight sometimes?
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Nov 13, 2019 18:37:03 GMT -5
I just read the Abrham article and my god it hurts my brain. Frazier in Fenway's RF? Andujar at 2B? Not even a 50 FV prospect coming back AND they're selling as low as possible on Groome? Red Sox fans deserve better writers. And the CHB article about how Mookie is overrated is even worse. Betts for Andujar (and I don't know why he needed to make it more complicated than that) is a trade that... I think both sides say no to? The Yankees need pitching, not a $30m rental outfielder.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Nov 13, 2019 7:29:02 GMT -5
But Cora's mentor!
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Nov 9, 2019 11:58:24 GMT -5
No one knows how certain players will age, but so much of Betts value is in being a 5 tool player. You have to worry about decline when your talking 10 plus year contracts.I don't understand why Mookie's athleticism is held against him so much when all the really bad contracts are Price Fielder and Miguel Cabrera and Chris Davis. Look at how long Ichiro held up, and Betts is basically the same guy except a much better all around hitter. Hell, Brett Gardner is still a good player and he was never remotely in Mookie's class. I guess the idea is that small guys don't age well, but I think that's actually a middle infielder thing, and that's just where most of the smaller guys end up playing. As an outfielder, I think being smaller probably just means less weight on your knees and your back and less momentum for when you crash into a wall or make a diving catch. Predicting the second half of a player's career is one of the hardest things to do and I make no definitive claims about Mookie's future, but don't think you can convince me that anyone besides maybe Trout has significantly better odds of aging well than Betts does.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Nov 9, 2019 10:48:11 GMT -5
Trout, Harper, Machado and Arrenado all have one year of their current deals under their belt so I agree it’s too early to judge. But look at some of the current deals. Pujols, Cabrera, Stanton, Votto, Cano, Fielder, Scherzer, Greinke, Heyward, Posey, Kershaw, Chris Davis, Tulowitzki, Price, Tanaka, Ellsbury, Lester, David Wright, Upton, Freeman, Choo, Cueto. How many of those have worked out?Depends on your definition of "worked out" but probably something like half of them? Which is pretty encouraging since Mookie would be younger, better, healthier, and more athletic than most of the really bad players on this list.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Nov 7, 2019 12:20:10 GMT -5
Plan should be to get under after 2020, not before. Or during. Price and Sale are the guys who you'd most like to get off the books, and they're both depressed assets right now because they ended their seasons hurt. If one of them can show they're healthy for a minute, you might be able to move them in a deal that doesn't suck. Even if they're too good to be full sellers, I could see them doing some kind of face-saving trade deadline where Sale or Price get shipped out, but they buy a few smaller pieces at the same time and say they think they're more competitive with the added depth or whatever.
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