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HOG ILLUSTRATIONS posted:Can someone smarter than me tell me if the Cubs organization is headed in the right direction, and if so, when you think they will make the playoffs again? From my casual point of view, it seems like they're doing everything right, but it is very hard to separate the instinctive cubs nay-saying from the actual facts. Eeeehhhhhhhhh. From an organizational standpoint, there was probably nowhere to really go but up. They have some pretty good prospects and some young players that are at least interesting and the Alfonso Soriano Contract is finally gone. That said, the Cubs are one of baseball's biggest brands situated in one of baseball's biggest markets. I don't know if they should be on the Yankees/Dodgers level, but there's really no excuse not to be on the Red Sox tier in terms of spending and success. And in a division with the Reds, Pirates, and Brewers, that means the Cubs should be positioning themselves for basically permanent playoff entry starting in a year or two. I don't see much evidence of that. So the question becomes: are the owners simply cheap, raking in the profits from Wrigley while not really caring much about putting a winning team on the field, or is the front office not so good? I think there's reasonable evidence for both of these: on one hand, the constant whining about Wrigley Field as if it's not an unmitigated cash cow; on the other, questionable long-term extensions for Starlin Castro and Anthony Rizzo. I would say that if the Cubs are headed in the right direction, then they should make the playoffs (or at least win 90 games) by 2016 at the latest.
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Mar 19, 2014 10:41
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Red posted:This is a great post, and it makes me wish that SA kept a ranking of all the managers. It's hard to grade, but Ron Washington would have to be ranked the worst most of the time. This would really be unmanageable. Most posters overwhelmingly watch and care about just a few teams, so everyone will tend to be biased to overrate their own manager's mistakes. You'd really need to come up with some metrics, which is not a goon project I'd expect to see last very long. UncleCaveman posted:Subjective question (I suppose): Is Don Mattingly a bad manager? With the payroll the Dodgers have, the first half of last season (pre-Puig) was a joke and it seemed that the playoffs were filled with questionable managerial calls. As for Don Mattingly in particular, I did a study in 2012 to quantify my hatred of Clint Hurdle for bunting and stealing all the time, and Mattingly's Dodgers were the only team worse on the basepaths (by percentage of eligible baserunners that led to a bunt or CS). You would also want to factor in lineup construction, pinch hitting, and reliever use if you want an overall measure for manager quality. (I'd be interested to see a study of how often a manager's platoon players and LOOGYs face players of the wrong handedness.)
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Mar 19, 2014 19:05
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It seems like it ought to be so easy for managers to make good tactical decisions, that's why it's so drat frustrating when they don't.
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Mar 20, 2014 01:15
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LeftistMuslimObama posted:Does anybody track batters faced per out as a pitcher stat? I was thinking it might be useful in cases where a pitcher has a decent-looking ERA but actually lets a lot of guys on base and has a big potential to let situations blow up that's not revealed by stats that only track runs allowed. Now that I'm thinking about it, WHIP probably tracks the same thing in a slightly different way, but I wonder if anyone's using the specific construction I'm suggesting. Batters faced per out is basically equivalent to opponents' OBP, which is tracked.
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Mar 20, 2014 05:56
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tadashi posted:While you're here, do you remember people being down on Jacob Turner before he was traded to the Marlins in 2012? I thought most people around here thought something was very wrong with him (as demonstrated by his walking a lot of people and not striking out a lot of guys in AAA that season) but someone is trying to convince me people still thought of him as a top 20 prospect. I can't find a lot of coverage on him other than a Callis chat where he was still high on him in early June of that season. Baseball-Reference minor-league pages collect top-100 rankings from several sources. For Jacob Turner they show him with the following rankings prior to 2012: Baseball America #22, MLB.com #15, Baseball Prospectus #15. Is that what your friend is talking about, or are they specifically claiming he hadn't fallen at all between preseason and the trade? Tharizdun posted:Why are teams so terrified of losing a pick by signing a free agent. I can think of so many 1st-rounders who NEVER make the Show, or only as an innings-eater middle reliever, after sucking up endless signing bonuses. Meanwhile, once the BBWAA gets its head out of its rear end, a nepotism signing in the 63rd round will be in the Hall of Fame. The new CBA made it no longer possible to plow a lot of money into the draft or Latin America in order to build a team on the cheap. But free agency remained out of control, and many teams are not able to seriously bid on top players. So we have seen a dramatic rise in teams signing existing young players to extensions. But this feeds back into the free agent market, as good players will hit the market later in their career; with scarcer talent on the market, not to mention the insane TV money bubble, we've seen an explosion in the cost of even mediocre players. Which once again makes it more desirable to lock up your young players before they hit the market and prices balloon, and it's a vicious cycle. Escaping from this cycle requires a steady stream of talent from the draft, so teams are loath to give up a pick for just a year or two of a veteran. You're also seriously underrating the value of a first-round pick. Sure, a fair number of them never make it to the Bigs, but those that do are giving you 6+ years of production for below-market rates. You're categorically wrong to claim "endless signing bonuses": the #20 pick last season was signed for $2M, which doesn't begin to make up for the value he'll give back if he makes the Majors. Hence why the #20 pick was recently valued at approximately $23M. It's obvious that nobody is going to sign for $23M less than their true value just because of draft pick compensation, so it should be obvious why players with compensation attached have a tough time.
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Mar 20, 2014 21:48
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Drunk Tomato posted:Oh, man, so what's wrong with them? Haven't tried listening to them yet. I think the main issue is that Rany's work with Baseball Prospectus has given him a veneer of statistical credibility that he doesn't really merit and his status as "The World's Most Famous Royals Fan" gives his ideas a reach that they might not really deserve. It's my impression that there's a perception that he's bought into his own hype, as it were, though I don't personally read or listen to him so I can't say how accurate any of this is. He is definitely the kind of guy who likes to throw statistics around as the be-all end-all answer to problems that they may not apply to. So basically, if you enjoy listening to him then go for it, just make sure to take his opinions with a grain of salt.
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Mar 27, 2014 06:41
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ayn rand hand job posted:I would suspect his agents would have prevented him from being extended any further. Players in baseball tend to peak around 30-35, so Trout will be getting paid a ton more if he breaks his deal at age 29, instead of age 31. The peak in baseball is ~26-28, 30-35 is all decline for most players.
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Mar 31, 2014 04:19
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reflex posted:Is pitcher W/L record a dumb stat to care about? It seems weird how Stasburg on the Nationals started 30 games last year, but is 8-9 when it comes to W/L. W/L record, like RBI, tells you a lot less about an individual than about their team.
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Mar 31, 2014 18:31
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Austrian mook posted:So, the Seattle Mariners, truly the greatest of teams, for the greatest of people. I'm super hyped to watch some games this year, although I am a pretty huge newbie. What can you guys tell me about the teams chances? I figure it's not good since our pitching rotation is still bad, aside from the King. We signed that one guy who's supposed to be pretty good, and we've got some pretty good young players so hey, maybe things aren't that dark! yes they are They are competing with the Angels to be the 3rd-best team in their division on paper. They will probably be decent or even above-average, but a lot of things need to break right for them to make the playoffs. On a larger scale, they have probably the worst front office in the sport by a long way, and they seem to be less operating on a plan than flailing wildly trying to keep from getting fired. Most of the "pretty good young players" you're talking about are actually overrated, or at best made redundant by their weird offseason strategy of signing a million LF/1B/DH types. reflex posted:How many games do you people watch a season? I'm looking at the Nats schedule and there is a stretch in April of 20 days where there is a game every day. How the hell. Does baseball eventually degrade into highlight watching for 75% of the regular season or does it become your main time sink/you get really invested? I watched/listened a ton of games (probably at least 160) the last few seasons, mostly slacking off at work since my team is 3 time zones ahead of me.
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Mar 31, 2014 21:44
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Austrian mook posted:So do the Mariners have any young guys to watch out for particularly? (note: I am not a Mariners expert, and others can give you a better answer, so I'll just write some stuff and hope it's true) Taijuan Walker and Danny Hultzen are the two big pitching prospects, Kyle Seager seems legit to me, and Mike Zunino has a lot of potential if they didn't ruin him by rushing him to the Majors. It's the Smoak/Ackley/Montero/Franklin tier of dudes that is likely to disappoint, but even if Walker/Hultzen/Zunino end up as good players there's no guarantee they contribute anything this season.
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Mar 31, 2014 22:02
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ROSS MY SALAD posted:Why do people still hate the Angels even though they've been basically irrelevant for a decade They are a team from an annoying place that most of us associate annoying things (Rally Monkey, Mike Scioscia) with. Also, it's sports, hating people and teams for stupid reasons is fun. e: Also, expect this exact question to cause about 4 multi-page derails in baseball threads this year.
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Mar 31, 2014 22:59
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Craptacular! posted:I don't listen to the Diamondbacks announcer crew very much, but haven't had any options lately. "Miggy" is just one of those stupid nicknames that guys get because for some reason everyone in a sports clubhouse has to have a two-syllable nickname that ends in y.
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Apr 2, 2014 03:49
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Michael Corleone posted:I understand that OBP is better than AVG because you are not getting out. But, with a walk runners can only advance one base,if that, but a hit gives runners the chance to advance multiple bases and even score. How do stat geeks and fans consolidate this? HBP are also included in OBP. As for the fact that singles are more valuable than walks, this is why the best offensive stats are based on linear weights, which essentially means that statistics are run to find the relative correlation of each plate outcome with runs scored for a given league/year, and then these numbers are used as coefficients in a linear equation (so, something like c1*BB + c2*1B + c3*2B + ...). The most popular of these is wOBA (weighted On Base Average), which is scaled to resemble OBP (so .320-.330 is about average, .350 is good, .300 is bad, etc.). You can find it at Fangraphs, and if you want to check this page you can find the exact ratio of value between a walk and a single for every year since 1871! In general, Fangraphs is actually a really good site that people really ought to use as long as that use doesn't involve reading articles. Michael Corleone posted:Yep, that is my thinking too. It won't be around too much longer, so if I want a shirt, hat, or whatever, and it is an option I'll buy it because I like the tradition of the Browns and Indians, even if we haven't been good for decades. I can always buy new stuff later. I too appreciate the fine American tradition of overt and unapologetic racism.
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Apr 2, 2014 05:43
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Tharizdun posted:I still think that the city of Miami should have bought the Marlins from Loria when he threatened to pack up and leave, rather than give him a stadium gratis. Leagues would never allow public ownership of teams, because it would take away the existing owners' leverage to extract hundreds of millions of free money from taxpayers. Also, most ultra-rich people are ideologically committed to fighting against it regardless of their own short-term interests. e: To contribute to Brewers Chat, Yovani Gallardo is a big wildcard for them. If he's bad again, I think their rotation will be too bad to compete. Mornacale fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Apr 2, 2014 |
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Apr 2, 2014 23:07
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Medical Sword posted:what has happened since 2011 that i should know about other than replay reforms? Catchers aren't allowed to block the plate without the ball, the Pirates had a 94-win season, and steroid users are killed by pressing on their first offense.
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Apr 5, 2014 01:12
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Michael Corleone posted:Thanks. The RH things makes perfect sense. Catchers take off their masks to play pop-ups, usually when throwing it's more likely that it's falling off or being knocked.
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Apr 9, 2014 01:35
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AA is for Quitters posted:That said, what the gently caress happened to the NL? Last time i followed baseball was 06-07ish, and since then it appears the NL has turned completely on its head with the Pirates and Reds doing well, my Mets sucking (well, i stopped watching because they started to suck again), the Phillies doing abysmally, the Braves being middling, and the Nats doing well. Is there a quick rundown of what the hell these teams have done to turn around like they have? I'm guessing they all invested heavily in prospects and developed them, which is the problem with my Mets, we burned all our money between building Citi and investing the rest with Madoff. so we havent had any funiding to sink into talent. The Reds and Pirates have both had prospects turn into consistent MVP candidates, supplemented with other talented guys put together by pretty good front offices. The Nationals managed to pick first in back-to-back drafts with generational talents available, plus switched from being cheap to big spenders. The Phillies have one of the 5 worst GMs in baseball loving up their team. The Mets you seem to have a reasonable handle on.
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Apr 9, 2014 02:44
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AA is for Quitters posted:who'd the Bucs get? McCutcheon? Cause i remember seeing his debut season when i was living in WV and it was dirt cheap to see games (we got tickets behind home plate for like $30), and he was phenomenal from the start. Yeah. McCutchen was the NL MVP last year. They also have...actually, here's the post I wrote for the Meet the Teams thread.
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Apr 9, 2014 04:41
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C.C. Sabathia's starts every season throwing about 2-3 miles per hour slower than he finishes. This exact same discussion has taken place for at least two or three years now at the start of the season. Even right now he is only like 4 MPH below his career high season average (though pitchf/x has him on a lot more sinkers than usual, so maybe add another .5 to that if those are really misclassified 4-seams). I'd worry a lot more about him consistently missing his spots and leaving pitches elevated in the middle of the plate.
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Apr 14, 2014 09:20
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rickiep00h posted:Which actually gets me thinking: was Francisco Liriano's success last year a product of him figuring poo poo out or a product of getting away from the Twins coaching staff? (Or being a typical Liriano bizarro good year, or run support, or moving to the NL, or...) The Pirates were an elite defensive team. There is also evidence that the Pirates are good at coaching pitchers: the complete reinvention of Charlie Morton, A.J. Burnett's excellent time in Pittsburgh, Liriano, basically the whole bullpen, and promising early returns on Edinson Volquez. That said, it's not a 100% thing (see Erik Bedard & Jonathan Sanchez), and it's not like the sample size is enough to rule out luck.
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Apr 15, 2014 06:38
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If a 4-game losing streak is enough to send you looking for a new team to watch, you're probably going to have to pick either the Dodgers or Cardinals.
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Apr 18, 2014 10:49
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Ceteris paribus, a better pitcher will allow fewer runs than a worse pitcher in any ballpark.
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Apr 20, 2014 01:25
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Here's an idea, don't bend the brim of your cap
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May 1, 2014 22:36
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ManifunkDestiny posted:Oh so you're looking forward to this giveaway then That is both a bent brim and a fashion nightmare, so I'm not the poster itt who would be supporting it. e: At least it's not loving plaid, though.
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May 2, 2014 00:30
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Those fedoras are probably the cheapest hat you can buy, they are made of freakin paper. But you can't set them on fire easily, I tried.
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May 2, 2014 22:16
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Popete posted:What are the traditionally weak leagues in baseball or does it tend to rotate? Currently the NL is weaker than the AL, but yes it tends to rotate. However, it's widely believed that having the DH is a structural advantage for AL teams in inter-league play.
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May 3, 2014 01:25
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Politicalrancor posted:So, there are two things that could be happening here. Typically, ownership of minor league teams is somewhat autonomous, because the only thing that the MiLB ownership pays for and profits from is the stadium, concessions etc. They have no stake in the actual players, who are paid for by the parent MLB organization. There are some other considerations. For instance, the Pirates organizational philosophy resulted in their A- team, the State College Spikes, being really poor in 2010-2012. The Spikes ownership basically gave them an ultimatum to either try to win more games or find a new team, and that choice is easy. (Ironically, their new A- team the Jamestown Jammers went 43-32 in 2013.)
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May 16, 2014 22:33
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Badfinger posted:his K% is lower than average (which affects BABIP because he puts more balls in play which means more chances for hits), and he wasn't always 40 years old and could run a little bit. Ichiro is a similar profile. K% also works in the other direction sometimes - Ryan Howard has a career .325 BABIP because even though he's slow as hell and hits a lot of fly balls, when he's not busy striking out he hits the ball so drat hard (or used to) K rate does not affect BABIP in any way other than sample size. e: I should be careful to clarify that K rate may be an indicator of BABIP: a hitter who strikes out a lot may also be prone to more weak grounders and pop-ups. But this is strictly a correlation, not causation. It's also worth pointing out that league BABIP is probably going to see a significant drop as teams league-wide adopt better defensive positioning. Mornacale fucked around with this message at 21:40 on May 19, 2014 |
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May 19, 2014 21:34
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Everblight posted:Also google searching shows that he religiously wears his hat slightly tilted, which leads me to think sportswriters are constantly saying "that kid doesn't respect the game" and "he doesn't play the right way" and "he's a Nah, he has three 30-save seasons, the media loves dudes who gets Saves despite being terrible.
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May 19, 2014 21:50
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Phil here displays all the spelling proficiency of a typical St Louis native.
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May 20, 2014 22:42
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Both of them were always more valuable from a PR standpoint than as actual prospects. They were typically old for the leagues they played in and the learning curve is obviously immense. Rinku did throw 72 strong innings in A ball in 2012; you can take a look at his top-100-prospect-teammate Stetson Allie to see that even that is a pretty sweet achievement. (You could also look at the Pirates' Lithuanian project, Dovydas Neverauskas, who is currently blowing up there.) The remaining awesome-story foreign guy in the Pirates' system is now Mpho Gift Ngoepe, who is from South Africa. He's in AA as a 24-year-old, with a good glove and speed and a lot of walks, but strikes out a ton and has no power. He's a longshot to make the Show, but it's possible he could develop into a utility infielder. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnJZzGq11rU Mornacale fucked around with this message at 03:24 on May 26, 2014 |
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May 26, 2014 03:16
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Everblight posted:If the best possible batting order will always be OBP, highest to lowest, why hasn't Theo or Beane told their manager to write the lineup that way for a season, maybe updating weekly? Not only is that not the best batting order (your #3 hitter should be the 5th-best, breaking up same-handed platoon hitters is actually valuable, etc.), writing that in assumes that whatever subset of a player's stats you're using is perfectly predictive of their performance on a given day. While statistics are excellent at predicting performance over a long sample, discounting a lot of the "intangible" factors that form silly narratives, managers absolutely have access to information that can affect day-to-day optimal lineups.
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Jun 14, 2014 22:09
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Kittle posted:
Pretty much, if you can think of some kind of weird trick to get around the rules, someone thought of it 100 years ago and they made a rule.
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Jun 29, 2014 05:38
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Christ I thought I'd finally gotten to the bottom of all the convoluted minutiae in baseball's rules and could no longer be surprised by something, but sure enough, rule 6.05 (l):
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nwin posted:Lemme ask a random question: If you're just looking to attend one game, it is almost always cheapest to wait and pick up tickets on Stubhub.
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Jul 20, 2014 04:04
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VJeff posted:What positions does the most offense typically come from and what positions are typically more like "eh he catches the ball good, who cares if he's no good at the plate." The order of defensive difficulty is C/SS > 2B/CF > 3B > RF > LF > 1B > DH. The further you get to the right, the larger the talent pool that could fill the position, and hence in theory the better the hitting should be. (In practice, ofc, not so simple.) Which means that as you go left, 1) great defense stands out more, and 2) poor hitting stands out less. That said, a smart team is going to consider their options as individuals: Hanley Ramirez is a hell of a SS even though he's not a very good fielder, and if your options at other positions are better than your other SSes, then that's where he belongs. One warning: just because a position is "easier" than another does NOT mean that any player can move there. Catcher is an extremely tough position, but it doesn't require the range that SS/2B/CF do. 2B is "harder" than 3B but 3B requires arm strength that most second basemen don't have (if they did, they'd usually be shortstops). Bonus: 3B being in the middle of this continuum is why there are so few HoF 3Bs: they usually don't hit well enough to compare to the other corner players, but they're not really a "defense position" like middle infield.
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Aug 11, 2014 11:53
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rickiep00h posted:I'd have to assume most teams that make waiver claims are at least interested in making a deal. Most of the guys that get claimed and then pulled back are guys that just about any team would like to have (for the right price) and most teams would be willing to give up (for the right price). I know there's probably lots of administrative shenanigans that I don't know about or see when it comes to transactions, but I think trade waivers are a pretty straightforward sort of thing. Yes and no. It's my understanding that the waiver wire is one of the big areas of unwritten rules coming into play. There's a lot of "we won't block your guys if you won't block ours" unspoken quid-pro-quo that isn't fully captured by the actual rules alone. But on the other hand there's an understanding that if you try to aim too high someone's gonna get in the way. v  v
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Aug 12, 2014 22:24
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VJeff posted:So did Yusmerio Petit throw a perfect game and I just didn't hear about it? How did he get this 46 straight outs record? Six relief appearances plus the beginning of a start. e: Also possibly some outs at the end of the crappy start he had that got him sent back to the bullpen.
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Aug 29, 2014 12:48
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tarlibone posted:StubHub will often have dirt-cheap prices to not-great-but-at-least-you're-there tickets This isn't even necessarily true, I've gotten extremely good seats from StubHub (though of course I go primarily to Pirates games, so they're not the #1 in-demand tickets, but still).
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Sep 30, 2014 03:58
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Plus, StubHub gives you the extra fun of playing the "do I think the prices have hit rock bottom yet?" game if you want to.
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Sep 30, 2014 04:11
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Everblight posted:What's the difference between command and control, really? Control is the ability to throw strikes, command is the ability to locate precisely where you want. It's never been clear to me why there need to be two different terms for these things, and my guess is that someone made it up because they didn't want to admit that they were just synonyms.
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Nov 21, 2014 23:51
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