TruffleShuffle

he's good but i don't completely understand the chubb that some people have for him. that being said he sure as hell is better than the trash we have in the high minors right now.

Have a look at the AL Central and West teams' performances versus the AL East and then versus the other two divisions. it's insane. Twins: 14-18 vs AL East, 55-29 versus other AL teams White Sox: Twins: 11-17 vs AL East, 47-40 versus other AL teams Tigers: 15-17 vs AL East, 41-45 versus other AL teams Royals: 15-16 vs AL East, 33-52 versus other AL teams (don't really get this one) Indians: 17-24 vs AL East, 32-43 versus other AL teams Rangers: 14-23 vs AL East, 47-31 versus other AL teams A's: 18-24 vs AL East, 39-34 versus other AL teams Angels: 13-26 vs AL East, 41-36 versus other AL teams Mariners: 15-19 vs AL East, 28-54 versus other AL teams (only the dregs of the league can beat the AL East apparently) now here's the AL East teams' records versus their division and then the rest of the league: Yankees: 28-20 vs AL East, 46-23 versus other AL teams Rays: 34-20 vs AL East, 42-20 versus other AL teams Red Sox: 29-28 vs AL East, 34-25 versus other AL teams Blue Jays: 30-25 vs AL East, 32-29 vs other AL teams (odd) Orioles: 12-40 vs AL East, 30-35 vs other AL teams so the AL East is 184-132 against the other divisions, and no team in the other divisions has a winning record against the AL East. and the top teams in the other divisions have fared terribly against the AL East. suffice it to say, boston and maybe even toronto would be serious division contenders in the other two divisions, while no other team in the AL would be all that competitive in the AL East. and the orioles probably are not as bad as their record would suggest.

marshall had stronger K/9 IP and H/9 IP rates in the minors and he was coming out of a smaller baseball conference as a junior, not a senior.

waded through some of the pitch time stuff on fangraphs. he's rated as below-average against sliders and cutters but above average against everything else (fastball, changeup, curveball, splitter). he sees sliders more frequently than all but seven hitters, and also sees a lot of curveballs, so obviously he sees a lower number of fastballs than most of his peers. as far as plate discipline, he swings at a relatively high number of pitches outside the zone (31.7% - by the way, vlad guerrero is just shy of 50%!), but oddly enough is a little below average at swinging at pitches in the zone (66%). as far as putting the ball in play, he's in the top 35 in making contact with pitches outside the zone (76.2%) and inside the zone (92.0%). he sees a high rate of strikes with first pitches of the AB (61%) and is just outside the top 35 in lowest percentage of swinging strikes (6.0%). i suppose all of that confirms what we already knew, he needs to work on hitting sliders and needs to be a little more patient, but he's extremely good at hitting the ball when he does swing (esp. for a 20 year old). also, he reached the necessary # of PAs to be part of the batting title race a couple of days ago - he's third trailing carlos gonzalez (.331 - thank you coors) and votto (.323). starlin's splits are kind of crazy: .355/.418/.485/.903 home and .276/.293/.389/.682 road. the weirdest part is the K/BB ratio: 23/20 at home and 35/4 on the road.

wtf cubs, stop blowing this

these unwritten "playing the game the right way" things are the worst. who gives a [expletive] if he wants to steal? either throw him out or don't; stealing bases is part of the game and there shouldn't be a time when it's not okay to do it.

lol what a joke. retaliating by stealing bases? give me a break.

prior, wood... i don't want to think about this any more :x the cardinals are pretty much just as good with jaime garcia's miracle year. as for other great rotations in the last 10-15 years, there were all the braves rotations (maddux, glavine, smoltz, sometimes millwood, hell even john burkett had a great year in 2001) hudson, zito, mulder with the A's. 2002 red sox with pedro, lowe and wakefield. 2005 chemically enhanced astros (oswalt, pettitte, clemens) side note, the braves had a team ERA+ of 133 in 2002, which is [expletive] insane. unfortunately brandon webb started getting good right when randy johnson went downhill.

i don't think i would have made it to the interview since i would have automatically changed the channel upon seeing jim rome's face.

brett jackson hit a game-tying triple with 2 out in the 9th inning. the great david patton lost the game for daytona. his line: 2.1 ip, 0 h, 1 er, 5 bb, 3 k. seriously, why is he still in the organization? he's 26 years old and has an era over 5 in single-A, with a BB/K ratio of 42/35. he's terrible.

yeah i think marshall was a significantly better prospect than rusin.

reasonably good outing by carpenter: 6.0 ip, 3 h, 2 er, 3 bb, 5 k, 54 strikes/36 balls, 9 go/2 fo. gave up the two runs in the 6th inning. mcnutt was less bad than some of his other AA starts: 6.0 ip, 8 h, 3 er, 1 bb, 4 k, 1 hr, 12 go/2 fo. raley was pretty good: 5.2 ip, 7 h, 1 er, 1 bb, 7 k brett wallach kinda sucked: 4.0 ip, 2 h, 3 er, 3 bb, 0 k, 1 hr junior lake hit a game-tying 2-run homer against an opposing pitcher who was one out from a complete game shutout. brett jackson hasn't struck out in 4 PAs, so that's cool. steve clevenger has 3 doubles - he hit .397/.463/.658/1.121 in august. i still think he's a pretty good backup catcher prospect because of his contact skills, solid defense and lefthandedness. we seem to have a lot of those now (backup catcher prospects).

and i don't really care if he plays or not, i just wanted to get omc wound up again since it was funny.

lol, yes, until Jeremiah Masoli criminals had to transfer to another school to continue playing college football. Are you high? no... masoli might be though

moral of the story, you can rob people and keep on playing as long as you can find a school that will let you transfer in.

his point was that it doesn't have any impact on how the guy actually produced. gonzalez could be the luckiest player in the world with a 1.000 babip and yes, that would be completely absurd and unsustainable, but that wouldn't change the fact that he's been remarkably productive. to put it another way, austin jackson has a .418 babip this year, which is absurd. granted, he's a fast runner, hits a lot of line drives and ground balls and keeps his fly ball rate low, so he profiles as a high BABIP guy (which he has been throughout his minor league career). but he's very unlikely to hit over .300 again if he keeps striking out 27% of the time. but he's been the most productive position player in the AL this year, even if he's unlikely to reach this level of success next year. side note, aaron hill's babip is .201, which is just awesome.

Thanks for the welcome. :-) Yup, this next year will be my first year as a grad student. I'm studying meteorology. good choice. didn't know mizzou had a meteo program... is it new?

if he gets drafted early then more power to him, go for the nfl... but if he's a 7th round draft pick, he's more likely to make a career in baseball, even if he ends up just being a AAAA-type guy. a lot of late round draft picks don't even make an nfl roster, and if they do they just hang around on the practice squad for a year or two andn then disappear.

0-4, 3 K's for brett jackson. yuck. jose ceda pitched against tennessee today; his line for the season is 39.1 ip, 24 h, 9 er, 20 bb, 48 k, 4 hr.

consistency has been a problem for guyer but not for smith. marquez has had similar numbers all through his minor league career (though this year he's well above them)

pretty good deal for huet, he gets paid $5m and gets to play close to home. though to be fair, he's an nhl goaltender who is probably best suited as a backup, or a starter on a non-championship caliber team. it's not really his fault that the hawks chose to badly overpay him.

yeah considering that the cubs were throwing him under the bus and strongly implying to the press and all their trolls in the media (paul sullivan) that there was nothing wrong with him, i don't think he's too interested in joining the cubs again.

i guess the marlins were peeved that he plowed into one of their catchers and separated his shoulder in the previous game, but too damn bad, that's what happens if you're playing catcher and the ball beats the baserunner. so then they drill him in the next game, he steals a couple of bags and they decide to drill him (or, as it turned out, try to drill him) again. the marlins can thank volstad (and their manager if he ordered the pitch) for the fight and then another one of their teammates getting hit in the 7th inning. they took their pound of flesh in the 4th inning. but because of this meathead "unwritten rule" of not stealing bases when the game is a blowout, they chuck at a guy for a second time in as many at bats. screw you, marlins. i blame jeffrey loria.

25 and 24 are certainly not too old for those levels, but you should take things other than this year's stats into account when evaluating a guy's prospect status.

the other problem is that a lot of voters probably do not realize that the padres exist.