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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jul 26, 2019 13:12:11 GMT -5
Unfortunately, none of them will win the player of the month barring Yuli Gurriel or Trout getting screwed. Those two have slugging percentages over .900 this month. Imagine what it's like to have an OPS of 1.327 with a .200 BABIP like Trout has had this month. It truly is a shame the GOAT is going to waste his career playing for a sh*t team. I don't really see why the Angels are fated to be terrible forever, or even terrible in the short term really. They basically should have been a pretty good team in recent years except for a miserable (and genuinely tragic) run of pitcher attrition, which can happen for an organization from time to time but usually isn't perpetual. Either it's just bad luck or if there really is a problem with something the coaches or trainers are doing, those guys tend to get turned over pretty quickly. They have some impressive core talent, they're not strapped for cash, the farm has been much improved under their new regime... basically I think if they can get any kind of good luck at all on the pitching side next year, they're a contender.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jul 26, 2019 11:42:01 GMT -5
What part of "scouting his stuff is paramount" don't you understand? Oh, and last year I was the only guy on the board who had an accurate sense of how good he was going to be. By looking at xwOBA.
Maybe the fact that Eovaldi has always had electric stuff, all the way back to his days with the Marlins. The results come and go with him. A big issue is he always gets injured which I'm sure messes with his ability to maintain a certain level of performance. A lot of us liked getting Eovaldi and unless you use ERA it was clear he was pitching well. His WHIP, strikeout and walk numbers told us that. Yet you breakdown his numbers to just act like his crazy bad rough stretch never happened and he was just this truly elite pitcher. When in reality he had two great starts, sucked for like 7 starts/ 1 relief appearance and then had two good starts to end the year. Was lights out in the postseason and then sucked this year. Even with Tampa last year he was crazy good and then crazy bad from start to start. That is who Eovaldi is. Sure your xwOBA data did a great job predicting Eovaldi's future performance when you litterally remove his bad stretches and only look at when he's good. Even in his dominant playoff run, Eovaldi had weirdly low strikeout numbers. He succeeded by severely limiting hits, walks, and power. I've been around long enough to have gotten excited about more than a few pitchers who had supposedly mastered the art of avoiding hard contact and succeeding without strikeouts, and while I'm not going to say it's never a real thing, it's much more of a high wire act than the guy who just gets a ton of swings and misses all the time. I think it's this practice of trying to separate luck from "true talent" that misleads us sometimes, because when Eovaldi was going well and getting all this soft contact, you can look at heat maps and how he's locating his cutter and all these things and figure out that his good results on balls in play is a skill rather than dumb luck. The crack in the foundation for me though is this: just because it's a skill, doesn't mean it's sustainable. This goes to my thing about people having unrealistic expectations for Betts this year. Because we could point to his exit velos and his barrel percentage and the types of pitches he was swinging at or nor swinging at and say, ah, this is real. But the old school sabermetic wisdom that guys tend to gravitate back to their established level isn't really about assuming that career years are all luck-based, it's that regression to the mean is just the way the world tends to work for whatever reason.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jul 26, 2019 11:23:08 GMT -5
So what do we think Hernandez is now? Obviously, right now, he’s a reliever, and pitches out of the bullpen for the rest of the season if he continues to dominate like he has. Do the Red Sox go back to developing him as a starter next year? A pitching prospect with so little experience could very well improve his command/control with more experience, and he’s still only 22 with a starting pitchers build. I think that it is a pretty tough call on how to use him/develop him going forward after this season. In a perfect world you don’t decide that based on need, however it’s happening right now based on need and could very well next year as well. It would be interesting to try him in the sort of power-swingman role that the Dodgers have put Urias in this year.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jul 26, 2019 8:55:46 GMT -5
Do we really need to pollute this board with politics? don't we disagree enough about the Red Sox games? Mods, please close this down. I'm perfectly happy to talk politics. What I'm not about to do is waste my time arguing with a terminally brain-poisoned proto-fascist old man who claims to have brought this up as a legitimate baseball story and yet somehow made his way to "actually, everything bad that happened at a white supremacist rally is Antifa's fault" in like two moves. Do not engage.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jul 25, 2019 10:19:10 GMT -5
The snowflakes sure seem to be taking losing everyplace hard... So bring me up to speed here, you've located the real racists and it turns out that it's all the people who disagree with your politics?
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jul 25, 2019 10:08:40 GMT -5
Seems that's exactly the case and let's use xwOBA to predict future performance when the people who compile the stat say that's not what it's designed for. What part of "scouting his stuff is paramount" don't you understand? Oh, and last year I was the only guy on the board who had an accurate sense of how good he was going to be. By looking at xwOBA.
I mean, yes, when you ignore the parts of last season when he wasn't as good, and also this entire season, you nailed it.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jul 24, 2019 15:08:30 GMT -5
My larger point here is that it's not a very good analogy.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jul 24, 2019 14:47:21 GMT -5
At some point, you have to go all in poker, especially if you're in a competition. I mean, this isn't even true in a lot of poker games.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jul 24, 2019 10:48:08 GMT -5
We're definitely at a healthy place in baseball fandom when people are essentially rooting against Mookie continuing as a top-five player in the game so that the Red Sox don't have to give him a "bad contract". I don't think that anyone has advocated that Betts play worse so that he fits into the salary box that Boston has drawn him into. Nobody is rooting against him, but when talking extensions and putting a dollar value on his potential future contributions there's obviously some debate to be had. However, if you want to frame the debate that way, I think the Red Sox have a dollar figure that they will not go over no matter Betts' performance level. Not every team will have that restriction. So, if your only goal is to see Betts in a Red Sox uniform for the next 10 years, he does need to dial it back a bit. Umm...
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jul 24, 2019 9:24:04 GMT -5
We're definitely at a healthy place in baseball fandom when people are essentially rooting against Mookie continuing as a top-five player in the game so that the Red Sox don't have to give him a "bad contract".
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jul 23, 2019 19:35:25 GMT -5
When did Eovaldi become a #1/2 starter? Gonna guess it had something to do with xwOBA in a small sample.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jul 22, 2019 20:37:40 GMT -5
One has nothing to do with the other. They're not dumping Blake Snell so they can use an opener. He isn't a stud starting pitcher. One great season doesn't do it, but best of luck to him going forward. I mean, I disagree on Snell, but either way it doesn't matter. You said the opener is doomed because you need great starters to win the World Series... ok, so a team has three stud starters and the other two days they go with an opener and a volume guy. What's so doomed about that? Why is this strategy that gets good results out of mediocre pitching "doomed"?
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jul 22, 2019 20:35:31 GMT -5
The Rays have the second lowest team ERA in baseball. Clearly they have no idea what they're doing. That's nice. Their arms will be burnt by September. No one in their bullpen has a particularly high innings total for the year. Who are they burning out?
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jul 22, 2019 20:22:33 GMT -5
Yeah, so that's not what an "opener" is. He has been used BEHIND an opener typically, and been quite successful doing it. Anyway, how is any strategy that allows your team to get good innings out of Jalen Beeks "doomed"? Whether he is the opener or the guy behind the opener is inconsequential, because you actually have to use an opener to use him second. I am sorry I got the order incorrect It is doomed because you need stud starting pitchers to win World Series. Over 100 years of baseball history shows that. One has nothing to do with the other. They're not dumping Blake Snell so they can use an opener.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jul 22, 2019 20:16:17 GMT -5
They didn't use an opener tonight. Tampa's bullpen is pretty worn down right now, the Tampa broadcast has been saying all game. Part of this problem is because they use a opener a lot and often. Jerry is right about this one. The Rays have the second lowest team ERA in baseball. Clearly they have no idea what they're doing.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jul 22, 2019 20:12:45 GMT -5
They didn't use an opener tonight. Is this where you get into a semantical argument ? In six starts since June he has averaged maybe 55 pitches and 3 or 4 innings. In some of those games, he didn't give up a run. Maybe it isn't a one or two inning "opener", but it sure feels like they aren't interested in him pitching 6 or 7 innings. Yeah, so that's not what an "opener" is. He has been used BEHIND an opener typically, and been quite successful doing it. Anyway, how is any strategy that allows your team to get good innings out of Jalen Beeks "doomed"?
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jul 22, 2019 19:52:58 GMT -5
The opener strategy...a favorite amongst saber minded folks...is doomed. If you don't have the horses...you can't wind the Derby They didn't use an opener tonight.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jul 22, 2019 13:04:34 GMT -5
I mean, I don't get why people think this is an impossible scenario. Imagine being John Henry and you're paying more than anyone else in baseball and you're team is 3, 4, 5 games out of the 2nd, not even the 1st WC spot. I'd be pissed if I were him. I could see him wanting to scale back costs if they're not even going to contend this year. You realize he's still making squillions of dollars off this team, right? This notion that we should all be grateful for Henry's generosity is so backwards. He makes money off of our fandom. He owes more than we owe him.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jul 21, 2019 14:40:33 GMT -5
The reason why women are not paid as well as men is because it's men who pay to watch them play. Most guys could care less about watching women play basketball, or hockey, or softball, or flag football. Unless they were naked, of course. Guys want to see men play because they are the far better at sports. It's the income that counts, not the gender. If they drew the same crowds for the same amount of money, then they should get paid equally. But, that's not the case. So, they're paid accordingly. That's why no one watches college football, right?
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jul 21, 2019 14:28:17 GMT -5
wait in what scenario would the Indians be sellers? They currently hold a wildcard spot, but they're also chasing down and just 3 games behind the suddenly vulnerable Twins. The idea is they trade Bauer for German and Frazier. It's not a terrible trade. The team that says no to that deal is the Yankees. German might be as good as Bauer at this point and he's damn sure a better value when you consider service time, which is a thing the Yankees do now.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jul 21, 2019 10:29:29 GMT -5
That's gotta be a legit screwball. Haven't seen one since Fernando Valenzuela. Jim Mecir had a good one. He's the last guy to regularly throw one in the majors. Most traditional screwballs are thrown slower than 80 mph. That pitch by Oliver Drake was clocked at 84 mph. It's unlike anything we have ever seen a pitcher ever pitch in the majors. First pitch of it's kind. Guy is a journeyman and then he comes up with that pitch at the age of 31. Mecir threw his from a relatively normal arm slot though. Drake is like bending at the waist to release the pitch from the opposite side of the mound that it should be coming from. It looks kinda like a lefty's slurve, except it's coming from a righty pitcher.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jul 20, 2019 19:47:50 GMT -5
Ugly. Last guy I would have expected.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jul 19, 2019 13:10:54 GMT -5
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jul 19, 2019 13:05:38 GMT -5
He has the 5th OPS, the 2nd highest IsoP while being close to drop out of the EL top 20 in K%. Even when you don't look to the Walk rate, you can see that he's been elite for his league. I get the concern regarding his BABIP issues and batted balls profile but it could be random luck considering that he's always been a high BABIP. I remember Benny hitting a high number of popups in Lowell then it went away. Those things seem random to me and could change from a level to the other and who knows what happens when his bat meets those ML balls in AAA? What type of balls in play profile he'll be getting? To me he did the most important thing from a development stand point: reducing whiffs without hurting his power production. Right: the optimistic-but-not-crazy view is that he's waiting through a ton of pitches and hitting more of the ones he is swinging at, and the contact quality is smallish-sample noise. That's very, very reasonable. I'm just mostly pushing back on the "he's walking a lot so that proves he's mastered the level" narrative. We knew he could wait out pitches. I just need him to punish more of them.(FWIW, the "without hurting his power production" might not be quite right either. His HR/PA is down from 7.03 to 5.08, and his HR/contact is down from 11.50% to 9.27%.) If anything I think it's more an issue of stagnation than mastery. Like yeah you could "master" the ability to walk 20% of the time against pitchers with no control, but is that just a developmental cul-de-sac? I'd like to see him in AAA. He's done his time in Portland, he's pretty old for a prospect, and I think the more MLB-ish environment of AAA would be good for him and good for us trying to figure out what he actually is.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jul 19, 2019 12:24:37 GMT -5
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