General Baseball Chit-Chat Thread

[CubinNY]

1 hour ago, Tim said:

Hopefully he's in jail

 

That too.

[champaignchris]

3 hours ago, UMFan83 said:

The piece of horsefeathers did it again

 

Dude cost himself 10s of millions of dollars. 
 

Have fun in the Mexican League, dirtbag. 

[CubinNY]

Baseball owners are by far the worst in sports. The Nationals are refusing to pay Strasberg’s salary when they told him they would if he retired. 

[Irrelevant Dude]

5 minutes ago, CubinNY said:

Baseball owners are by far the worst in sports. The Nationals are refusing to pay Strasberg’s salary when they told him they would if he retired. 

I suspect there is more to it than that.

[CubinNY]

MLB is probably going to have three 100-loss teams this year and maybe a fourth with the White Sox sitting at 88 with 18 to play. That's pathetic. 10% of the league.

[soccer10k]

21 minutes ago, CubinNY said:

MLB is probably going to have three 100-loss teams this year and maybe a fourth with the White Sox sitting at 88 with 18 to play. That's pathetic. 10% of the league.

That’s been the trend for a few years now. More extremes on both ends. There were 4 100 loss teams in each of the last 3 full seasons. There were also 3 in 2018. Of those 15 teams, 7 lost 105+. There was only 1 100 loss team total from 2014-17. Prior to 2019, there had been only 1 season with 4 100 loss teams (2002).

Prior to 2017, we’d had 3+100 win teams in a season 5 times, and never with 4. Last year was the fifth straight full season with 3+ 100 win teams including 4 in 2019 and 2022. Last year nearly had 5 as the Yankees won 99. Arbitrary numbers but the 2016 Cubs were only the 2nd 103+ win team since the 04 Cards (the 09 Yankees also win 103). There have been 10 103+ win teams in the last 5 full seasons.

[17 Seconds]

 

[Ding Dong Johnson]

Not the old basketball commish?

[UMFan83]

Definitely feels very Friedman.  The Mets will find some way to horsefeathers it up though

[Transmogrified Tiger]

53 minutes ago, UMFan83 said:

Definitely feels very Friedman.  The Mets will find some way to horsefeathers it up though

Maybe it's me being a hater but I think it feels like Friedman because Friedman worked.  Chaim Bloom has been underwhelming in Boston, Zaidi didn't revolutionize the Giants, Jed probably could've taken any number of jobs a few years back and hasn't set the world on fire yet, and that's just the big market teams coming from some level of past success.  Stearns isn't exactly equivalent to all of those, but I do always wonder how moving from a small market to a big one makes some things harder(e.g. if you never spend money you don't have sunk costs and you take fewer risks), and Cohen is probably going to have *opinions* that will test their ability to stay the course too.

[17 Seconds]

who was right?

 

[UMFan83]

It's not the route I would take, but there's 2 outs.  I don't think its crazy to not hold the runner and give the 1B a better chance to make that final out.  But I'm sure someone in here will make an argument for otherwise.  Basically I think its the wrong move, but the announcers didn't need to be ridiculously animated in their disapproval.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

I'd like it as a move more if the batter were more of a pull hitter than Nimmo, but he's a good hitter so I at least understand the impulse.  If holding the runner makes you more likely to give up a double, then the benefit of holding the runner goes down a fair amount.

[Derwood]

P.S. Arizona won the game 4-3, so the steal cost them nothing

[soccer10k]

If you took Matt Olson and his 51 HRs off the Braves, they would still be leading the league in home runs by a team. Braves have 282 and the Dodgers are second with 227.

[soccer10k]

At the River Cats game today and they’ve got the ball strike challenge system. It works pretty well. Challenge comes right away, it takes maybe 10 seconds to confirm or change the call, and then it’s on to the next pitch. The announcer says how many challenges the challenging team has left.

[soccer10k]

Ryan Howard nearly won the 2008 MVP with 1.8 WAR. I thought I was looking at it wrong when I noticed it.

Edited September 18, 2023 by soccer10k

[Derwood]

8 hours ago, soccer10k said:

Ryan Howard nearly won the 2008 MVP with 1.8 WAR. I thought I was looking at it wrong when I noticed it.

Kyle Schwarber has an outside chance of hitting 50 HR and 100 RBI this year and he’s sitting at a 0.4 bWAR 

[CubinNY]

2 hours ago, Derwood said:

Kyle Schwarber has an outside chance of hitting 50 HR and 100 RBI this year and he’s sitting at a 0.4 bWAR 

Maybe WAR needs some remodeling? Especially for position and defense. Everything needs to be set to 0 by position so you aren't comparing position players playing different positions by defense value. 

We all know a SS is a more valuable defensive player than say a 1B, it doesn't need to be baked into the system. A guy like Swanson should be compared to other SS, not a RF. 

Schwarber is an incredibly valuable player. 

Edited September 18, 2023 by CubinNY

[Transmogrified Tiger]

22 minutes ago, CubinNY said:

Maybe WAR needs some remodeling? Especially for position and defense. Everything needs to be set to 0 by position so you aren't comparing position players playing different positions by defense value. 

We all know a SS is a more valuable defensive player than say a 1B, it doesn't need to be baked into the system. A guy like Swanson should be compared to other SS, not a RF. 

Schwarber is an incredibly valuable player. 

We should be careful not to falsely equate a big HR number with that person being top of the scale in offensive production.  Schwarber has a 120 wRC+, and is doing it with a roughly 2/1 LF/DH split and not adding any value on the bases(0/2 SB).  That's a shade better than what Happ is putting up exclusively as a LF(116 wRC+), while Happ is 14/17 in SB.  So even before we consider anything about defensive quality, you have Happ providing more offensive value and doing so higher up the defensive spectrum by not being DHed a third of the time.

And then you get to the defensive value, where Schwarber gets hammered.  -10 by UZR, -17 by OAA, -21 by DRS.  It's unanimous that he's a horrific defender this year, at a position very low on the defensive spectrum.  This wasn't always the case with Schwarber btw, as a Cub metrics disagreed on the depth of his badness and sometimes even had positive values(largely driven by his arm).  If there is a case for reform I think it might be useful if defensive extremes in WAR had a ceiling, simply because I think the potential for value has a harder cap and more limited information than a season of plate appearances.  That would help Schwarber, but it would still make him an averageish player.

Lastly, and maybe most importantly, WAR absolutely is trying to and should adjust for positional value.  To not do so would make it pretty pointless as an individual metric, doubly so in a world where folks are often playing multiple positions over the course of the year(even Schwarber has 40+ games at 2 spots!).  Quibble with the specific positional adjustments, sure, but the idea that we maybe don't have them perfect so we should just have LF WAR and 2B WAR and 3B WAR instead is less helpful.  If you want to look at players at the same position you can just pair your fielding eval of choice with your offensive eval of choice, you don't need WAR to get a sense of that comparison.

[CubinNY]

3 minutes ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

We should be careful not to falsely equate a big HR number with that person being top of the scale in offensive production.  Schwarber has a 120 wRC+, and is doing it with a roughly 2/1 LF/DH split and not adding any value on the bases(0/2 SB).  That's a shade better than what Happ is putting up exclusively as a LF(116 wRC+), while Happ is 14/17 in SB.  So even before we consider anything about defensive quality, you have Happ providing more offensive value and doing so higher up the defensive spectrum by not being DHed a third of the time.

And then you get to the defensive value, where Schwarber gets hammered.  -10 by UZR, -17 by OAA, -21 by DRS.  It's unanimous that he's a horrific defender this year, at a position very low on the defensive spectrum.  This wasn't always the case with Schwarber btw, as a Cub metrics disagreed on the depth of his badness and sometimes even had positive values(largely driven by his arm).  If there is a case for reform I think it might be useful if defensive extremes in WAR had a ceiling, simply because I think the potential for value has a harder cap and more limited information than a season of plate appearances.  That would help Schwarber, but it would still make him an averageish player.

Lastly, and maybe most importantly, WAR absolutely is trying to and should adjust for positional value.  To not do so would make it pretty pointless as an individual metric, doubly so in a world where folks are often playing multiple positions over the course of the year(even Schwarber has 40+ games at 2 spots!).  Quibble with the specific positional adjustments, sure, but the idea that we maybe don't have them perfect so we should just have LF WAR and 2B WAR and 3B WAR instead is less helpful.  If you want to look at players at the same position you can just pair your fielding eval of choice with your offensive eval of choice, you don't need WAR to get a sense of that comparison.

I don't necessarily disagree, but the way it is calculated now leads some people to make posts or think like Dereood apparently does. More to my point, hitting HR is an incredibly valuable skill that is extremely important in the current MLB environment. I think there is a some amount (maybe a lot in some cases), of measurement error when it comes to defensive value. Schwarber is a bad LF, there is not doubt about that.

I don't know what to do about guys who play significant games at multiple positions. There is value in that ability in itself (except for if DH is the other position). 

[Derwood]

1 hour ago, CubinNY said:

I don't necessarily disagree, but the way it is calculated now leads some people to make posts or think like Dereood apparently does.

I didn't offer any opinion on it, just pointing another player who looks he has big offensive numbers who has a low WAR

[chopsx9]

Somewhat related fun fact Bill Buckner had 15 career bWAR over a 22 year career.

[17 Seconds]

let's capitalize by getting one of those bats

[Irrelevant Dude]

I wonder if there are any tweaks that can be made to the waiver rules?  Regardless of whether or not these guys can play in the playoffs, it doesn't seem right for late-season salary dumps to be potentially impacting playoff races.

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2023/09/marlins-claim-matt-moore-from-guardians.html