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Post by fenwaythehardway on Sept 27, 2019 8:10:56 GMT -5
I mean Tim Cook's quality of life could not possibly be improved by making more money at this point but he keeps showing up to work every day. I don't know why people only notice how weird that is when it's an athlete. Show up for work? Of course. I'm sure Mookie loves playing, loves being one of the best at it, and all that. Why, I bet he'd do it for a mere $1 million a year if that's what the market was. (Same all goes for Tim Cook, I suppose, though what he's good at is far worse for human society than what Mookie's good at.) But if someone gave you the option of a guaranteed $270 million or a mere likelihood of $350 million, wouldn't you take the bird in hand? My point though is that people are motivated by money beyond their own personal needs constantly. You can assume that Mookie has blown every dollar he's ever made as a baseball player and he's still set for life on next year's arb money alone. Quality of life doesn't enter the question. But again, when does that ever stop anyone? John Henry doesn't need more money either but he still seems interested in having more of it. It's total normal human behavior, if not necessarily our most noble trait. Plus, it's not like money is only useful for improving one's own quality of life. Maybe he wants to buy a piece of a pro franchise someday. Maybe he wants to do major philanthropic work. I don't particularly want to live in a mansion, own a fancy car, or any of that stuff... but give me $270m and I'll for sure find plenty of useful stuff to do with it. Give me $350 and I'll find $80m more worth of stuff to do with it.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Sept 26, 2019 19:54:22 GMT -5
I have no problem with Betts making the decision however he wants to, and I do appreciate his being straightforward about what how he's making his decision. But the decision itself strikes me as a little unpragmatic or irrational. Suppose, conservatively, that the Red Sox offered him $270 million this off-season. He'd probably do better than that in free agency; but on the other hand he could suffer a career-ending or career-threatening injury or illness in the next year and get way less than that. And what on god's green earth could the difference between $270 million and like $350 million possibly be, in quality-of-life terms? Why take any risk at all at passing up the former just because you could *probably* get the latter? Seems to me the main reason would be your emotional investment in getting top dollar. (Of course, no one ever said "business decisions" were completely unemotional in the first place.) I suppose the counterpoint would be that he and his children are all already set for life just thanks to what he's made through arbitration, so might as well go for the powerball, right? I mean Tim Cook's quality of life could not possibly be improved by making more money at this point but he keeps showing up to work every day. I don't know why people only notice how weird that is when it's an athlete.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Sept 26, 2019 15:17:12 GMT -5
"No emotions" doesn't mean he won't weigh the things you are talking about in his decisions. It just means no hometown discount for purely nostalgic, emotional reasons. Factors like where he wants to live, who he wants to play for and with will certainly play in. I just think you're assuming without reason that his answer to those questions must be "the Boston Red Sox." I think umass has a point. I get the sense that Mookie is a more emotionally-driven guy. That whole article, he’s talking about how he’s always had strong emotional reactions and how he’s had to learn to focus on a quantitative metric to avoid getting swept away. I’m not saying the off-the-field stuff won’t factor in at all, but he’s literally saying, “I’ve got very strong emotions and I can’t trust them when it comes to business, so I’ve learned to shut them off.” People who are naturally hyper-rational don’t talk like that. I think there’s absolutely an element of overcompensation there and I think that’s why Mookie is going to make his decision almost exclusively based on $$. I think he wanted to answer a question without really saying anything new and move on with his day.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Sept 26, 2019 13:16:12 GMT -5
1. (and only) Electronic strike zone. It could be as complicated as a rectangular cuboid which adjusts to each batter or as simple as a rigid rectangle which remains the same for all batters. There are many judgement calls in sports which could never be called by a device. Football is full of such interpretive calls (holding, interference, etc.) but the strike zone is one that should be easy to implement. I'm convinced that even the simplest system would be a vast improvement over what we now have. And I'd love to see the front office discussion if it was being seriously considered by MLB. I hope you all love chest-high curveballs called for strikes.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Sept 26, 2019 11:43:42 GMT -5
The interesting thing is that we aren't having any notably freakish individual home run years, like we did in the juiced-body era. We just got our first 50 home run player in the past week, and we're probably going to have only one more. It isn't that the best HR hitters are back in the stratosphere hitting home runs. It's that everyone and his cousin is hitting 30, and everyone, his cousin, his blind uncle and his dead grandmother is hitting 20. Which sort of supports fenway's contention that everybody is going all or nothing to counteract more dominant pitching, and the juiced ball is enough so that lots of guys can hit more than the occasional HR. This came up before and without rehashing my whole post, I went back and looked at all the pitchers that Bonds hit home runs off in 2001... and I came to the conclusion that Mike Trout would hit about 85 off those clowns. It's astounding how much of the league's pitching used to be guys who had blown out their arms six years prior and hung around forever as junkballing back end guys. I get the theory that you saw more deviance from the mean by certain players back then because some guys were using and some weren't, but... that's obviously still the case now, right?
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Sept 26, 2019 11:33:07 GMT -5
“Rival executive”prob works for NYY or Rays. “Yeah, I think they should blow it up and tank for five years...” It's also kind of interesting how in an article that talks about how all these executives don't want to come to Boston because Cherington was treated so poorly, it is presented as totally reasonable that the hometown discount that Bogearts gave Boston should be immediately leveraged for prospect capital, before the no-trade kicks in. Rosenthal is pretty openly dissatisfied/uncomfortable/whatever with modern front offices that he seems to view as these bloodless, value-obsessed suits who just want to trade anyone who makes any money for prospects. Which is not totally untrue, but presenting a speculative Bogaerts trade as an obviously reasonable path for the next Sox GM makes me think he's wound a bit too tightly around that particular axle.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Sept 26, 2019 11:07:10 GMT -5
Don't have a sub but not a good look based on the description! Anyone with the Athletic want to summarize? Sox Stats is overselling a bit. The "trading all of Betts, Bogaerts and Benintendi" part is just this: Yeah, I also don't believe the Sox would do such a thing, because despite one unnamed MLB exec suggesting it, the plan makes no sense. It's weird that Rosenthal presents this "trade everyone who's good" strategy as though it's something that a reasonable GM might want to do.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Sept 26, 2019 9:00:44 GMT -5
I'm from a different era eating hot dogs, drinking Coke and believing in the holiness of mom's apple pie, and that may have implanted a naivete, but I don't see a conspiracy behind every bush. The ball will be corrected next year for the good of the game as we've come to know it and as the stewards well know. Too many homers make a cheap pinball mockery and will contribute to declining, not increasing, attendance. 1. I don't think it's a conspiracy. I think it's a league that's done a lousy job maintaining the consistency of its equipment, has consistently lied to us about it, and has not even felt it necessary to come up with convincing lies. 2. Without the bouncy funball, run scoring is going to collapse. Just because the ball doesn't fly as well doesn't mean that we're going to revert back to 1980s strikeout rates. You want those, you're going to have to bring back 1980s pitchers as well. Hitters have gone to an all-or-nothing strategy because you can't chain singles against modern pitching. Too much velo, too many exploding breaking balls. If you take the air out of the ball, you're going to have to do something like shrinking the zone or moving the mound, because otherwise you're going to be left with a home run derby that's lacking in home runs.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Sept 26, 2019 7:45:55 GMT -5
Porcello may have had first inning troubles historically and a poor year, but the guy always gave an honest effort and had uncommon class. He took the mound every fifth day, and if he hadn't, it would have been someone considerably worse. As rough as his season was, he still finished comfortably above replacement level. Is this America? I thought this was America? I need to shut up? Cool. This is a message board that you haven't been banned from for reasons passing my understanding. You're a guest in someone's house and they can throw you out whenever they please. Act like it.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Sept 26, 2019 7:28:28 GMT -5
War is peace, slavery is freedom, and Manfred definitely hasn't been playing dumb about changes to the ball that everyone could see for the past three and a half seasons.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Sept 25, 2019 11:31:23 GMT -5
The thing about banning the shift is that hitters are all optimizing for hard contact anyway; the kind of contact that yields good results no matter where the defenders are standing. The value of a home run versus every other possible outcome is just too great for hitters to care about anything else. It's hard to show that the shift even does very much. League-wide BABIPs have essentially not moved at all from the pre-shift era. And that's been the case for a long time, but the calculus for who is in the league is altered if that best possible outcome is also a too-likely outcome. There have been 6,590 homers this year, as opposed to 4,186 in 2014, and there are too many players out here who just aren't so good if you take 33% of their homers away. If you bring Kole Calhoun's homers from 33 to 22 but stabilize his BABIP he goes from .235/.326/.476 to .220/.313/.399. And then maybe the guy you replace him with is also trying to hit homers, but is maybe better at not striking out and it makes him a better overall baseball player as well as making the game more fun to watch. Or maybe Calhoun sells out for power a little less with two strikes and ends up with 25 fewer strikeouts and like four fewer homers but is an overall better player.And the huge increase in Triple-A homers in one year just with the change in the ball they're using says to me that this doesn't have anything to do with "launch angle revolution." They're just using a baseball that's too easy to hit out of the park. I wonder if that adjustment is actually there to be made, though. Look at the Jose Ramirez saga this year: blogs.fangraphs.com/the-old-school-approach-failed-jose-ramirez/I don't see how this adjustment goes any better for Ramirez with a less lively ball. It's possible (likely in my view) that hitters are taking the approach they are because it's the best adjustment they can make to modern pitching regardless of the ball. This implies a much trickier situation for baseball, because "fixing" the ball could end up taking us back to the lowest levels of run scoring since the mound was lowered.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Sept 25, 2019 10:34:23 GMT -5
The thing about banning the shift is that hitters are all optimizing for hard contact anyway; the kind of contact that yields good results no matter where the defenders are standing. The value of a home run versus every other possible outcome is just too great for hitters to care about anything else.
It's hard to show that the shift even does very much. League-wide BABIPs have essentially not moved at all from the pre-shift era.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Sept 22, 2019 7:31:34 GMT -5
Kimbrel is signed for two more years at a minimum $14.3M AAV. It may be more since he was signed late. He now has a -1.37 WPA, 24th worst in MLB, but his first appearance was in Cubs' game #81. If you pro-rate it to a full season, it would be the worst I'd like to know whether that was Theo's idea, Jed Hoyer's, or both. Whoever's idea it was, you could see this coming all the way. Keuchel notwithstanding, the track record on guys who don't sign until after the comp pick expires is pretty miserable. Meanwhile, Drew f'n Pomeranz is blowing 96 from the left side and striking out 15 per nine as a reliever for the Brewers. You want a good reliever, go get a bad starter.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Sept 21, 2019 9:59:56 GMT -5
If it works out, they might be thinking of trading Benny. Or, a hedge if Betts is traded. I don't understand why people keep trying to trade away Red Sox outfielders when the Red Sox have a severe lack of outfielders past the first three guys. That's why they're trying him in the OF. Trading away Benintendi off a down year in order to install an untested outfielder who strikes out about 35% of the time seems... unwise. If you look at the "super teams" right now, they're all about depth. That's what the value of Chavis is, or should be, to this organization, a guy who gives you a reasonable option at a bunch of positions, but isn't penciled in for any of them.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Sept 20, 2019 15:29:15 GMT -5
I'm not really worried about losing Bane. He was the scout who found Mike Trout, i give him all the credit for that. However that was part of his credentials when they hired him 7 years ago, I don't think we have heard of anybody notably attributed to him here in the last 7 years People should look at the oral history of the Mike Trout pick that Keith Law put together. It's a really fantastic article, and Bane comes off well, but signing Trout was the personal crusade of Greg Morhardt. Someone should make a movie: Morhardt works for the Red Sox, at least of the publication of this article. www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/26864123/draft-heist-century-how-mike-trout-fell-angelsOk, one more detail I cannot get over: People missed on Trout because they couldn't believe the magnitude of what was staring them in the face.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Sept 20, 2019 8:52:12 GMT -5
The Yankees are on the same win pace as the 2018 Red Sox, and just clinched the division. If the Yankees win this year, 2019 will officially my worst year as a fan watching baseball. 2011.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Sept 20, 2019 8:46:13 GMT -5
When he came in they talked about how he'd be an advisor/mentor to Cora and help develop the minor league coaches. Not sure if that's how it went down, but in that role, as Cora said at the time, it's Tony La Russa - why wouldn't you want him around? It's not like he's some dimwit lacky Dombrowski brought in from the street. That's sort of a weak endorsement (ie he doesn't actually say why you would want TLR around), and while I doubt Cora meant to imply anything, I find it interesting that he posed a question... ...which is not THAT HARD to answer, really.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Sept 17, 2019 8:26:34 GMT -5
Interestingly, there are different people who question every move. Then, if they are right, we hear about it over and over but people are never incessant about when they were wrong. Throw enough against the wall and something is going to stick. Here's the bottom line though. Show me one poster, just one, who thought last spring that the Red Sox biggest weakness was going to be the starting rotation. That's the big picture. There was a good amount of people who questioned the Sale extension. It's not like people who are right about signings, trades or b extensions don't beat their chests. I think owing less than 30 million against the luxury was fair value, but would have liked to have waited on the guy who breaks down every year. This is a lot different than if Xander got hurt. I doubt anyone questioning giving him an extension. The only weakness this rotation seemed to have going into the season was a lack of depth. Velazquez is the human white flag. Here's the thing, part of the reason people didn't question it at the time, and part of the reason people didn't think Sale was hurt at the start of the season, was because most of us inferred that the Red Sox would not have signed that deal if they weren't very confident in his health. A lot of us were worried about Sale's health after the end of last season but were reassured by the contract itself that he must be fine. Now that you have a hurt pitcher and a fired GM... yeah, maybe the medicals on Sale weren't so clear-cut after all. Sometimes hindsight shows you the stuff that should have been obvious all along.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Sept 16, 2019 20:37:04 GMT -5
Do the dodgers want to use their depth to push some of their chips in to win now? All available evidence suggests that they don't.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Sept 16, 2019 14:05:48 GMT -5
You're not "risking everything", you're risking like a couple top 100 guys at best. That's not going to make or break the future of the org. A couple of top 100 organizational prospects could indeed make or break a future. It's not likely, though.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Sept 16, 2019 13:58:44 GMT -5
Seems pretty clear to me. We should be looking for a GM with 20/20 hindsight. Maybe one with 20/50 vision then? I mean, Sale has had arm issues at some point every year in Boston. Last year he finished the season with a shoulder injury. Was it that hard to see this was a risk? Go back to the signing thread and you can see about a 50/50 split of concern there, kind of high for getting your ace under contract long-term. I remember my personal reaction to the news literally being one of excitement because I knew he had to pass a physical to sign and, coming off the injury last year, figured it'd mean a great year for him. This is the thing that gets me. I've always pushed back on the idea of Sale being injury prone just because of his frame or his delivery, for the most part I think "injury prone" is a myth and you can't really predict who's going to get hurt. HOWEVER, there is a world of difference between injury prone and currently hurt. However well the offseason was going for him, the last time that guy was on a mound, he was closing because he wasn't healthy enough to start. You don't get to cry "no one could have predicted" on a guy like that. The guy was hurt last year, he's hurt now, this was not unpredictable.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Sept 16, 2019 13:48:16 GMT -5
YOLO, better give up now. Better to not risk everything (including the long term health of the organization) on one year, you mean? You're not "risking everything", you're risking like a couple top 100 guys at best. That's not going to make or break the future of the org.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Sept 16, 2019 13:45:11 GMT -5
Who would you rather have as the GM/PoBO tomorrow, Billy Beane or Brian Sabean? Is neither an option? I apologize as I'm missing part of the point your trying to make. I'm saying that World Series rings are not the be-all and end-all of GM evaluation. Especially for Dombrowski, who wasn't even around when most of the key pieces of that team were being acquired and developed. If anything it seems like he's out because he wasn't working well with the people who were.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Sept 16, 2019 13:37:17 GMT -5
It's a shame. I think in the year of the liveliest ball, he might have been the only player, at least in the AL, to reach the 50 mark. I think Alonso has a good shot of making it to 50 in the NL. What's interesting to me is how this varies from the steroid era in which even though there were a (high?) number of cheaters, the obvious ones stood out with their ridiculous amount of HRs, their nintendo numbers, while this year, EVERYBODY is hitting HRs, but nobody really has nintendo numbers, so maybe the number of cheaters is on the very low side? Perhaps it really is just the ball. I think it's just a talent compression thing. The difference between the best player and the worst player in the league is smaller than it used to be. The thing everyone likes to forget about the "steroid era" (or really never noticed in the first place) is that the peak of the peak, when most of those true videogame seasons happened, was in the immediate wake of a two-team expansion. The best players stood out more because the league had to suck in so much garbage in order to field two more teams. Ever since then, the flow of talent has increased (improved development and scouting, plus good old fashioned population growth), while the league has stayed the same size, creating a more uniform talent pool. A great illustration of this is if you look at peak Pedro versus peak Kershaw in a league-adjusted context. Kershaw at his peak was about twice as good as the average pitcher, while Pedro was closer to three times as good. And while I do think peak Pedro is (pretty easily) the better pitcher, I also think a big part of that is that the league average pitcher in Kershaw's prime was a lot better than in Pedro's. Pedro came up when there were no pitch counts and lots of Jose Lima. Everyone threw 130 pitch starts in A-ball and totally ruined their arm before they even got to the majors and no one thought a thing of it. If you had three guys in your bullpen who threw mid-upper 90s, it was the stuff of legends. Now it's table stakes. I went back and looked at all the guys Bonds hit home runs off of in 2001. It's amazing, everyone should go look for themselves. He hit one off a 33 year old Pat Rapp, who that season threw 170 innings, struck out 82, and walked 71. That's a whole different sport, and half the list is guys like that.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Sept 16, 2019 11:49:28 GMT -5
It's harder to make trades with a weak farm system than it is a strong one. Are you really disputing that? Nope, but that wasn't what you said or implied. Yeah, it was. Also, in the future, if what someone is saying doesn't make sense to you, maybe just ask them to clarify instead of going full lawyer mode on the semantics of something that probably wasn't meant to be taken entirely literally in the first place.
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