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Rob

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Everything posted by Rob

  1. Rob
    TT's opinions always slap. I always feel better about my hot takes when I find out they mirror his own. That said, there's been a lot of debate in the last decade or so about just how much time some of these guys may need to adjust. There was a short period where the true top prospects were coming up pretty young and playing pretty incredibly regardless. We had one of the biggest data points for that in Kris Bryant. Prospects have generally come back down to earth since then and do seem to require more of an adjustment period than was the case for that brief moment in time. But it's a terribly inexact science, and may be worth examining further. That said, about the only production I'm reasonably certain PCA would provide over Mastrobuoni would be on defense. If we had a bunch of butchers in the field, I'd be first in line saying he should get the call. But plugging him in CF as a late-inning replacement and shuffling people around is going to provide a marginal upgrade at best. Odds are good Mastrobuoni would make up that difference with the bat in the short-term. Given their roughly equivalent short-term production, I'd just as soon not call him up yet and force some difficult roster decisions. That said, if he is called up I'd be excited as hell.
  2. Rob
    Yup. In fact, I'd venture to say that defense is the area that sabermetrics has made the biggest strides in since Moneyball came out. I imagine most people here didn't know that the Cubs used to have agreements with some junior colleges to have exclusive access to their amateur TrackMan data so that they could get a better grasp on amateur fielding analytics before these guys were even in the minors. [MLB changed the rules as of 2020 to make these exclusive arrangements void, and all amateur data is now shared]. Teams are using all of this data to get far, far more accurate insights into players defensive qualities. Reaction time, sprint speed, pathing accuracy, etc... And that data is cross referenced with exit velocity and launch angle and even wind speed. Twenty years ago, our best approximations of defensive quality were something akin to "on average across MLB, most guys would get 'x' number of outs on 'y' opportunities. This player made a few more outs on a similar number of opportunities, so he must be pretty good." The improvements in defensive quantification have been frankly incredible. It's no surprise that smart teams have been able to make some serious headway with all this new information.
  3. Rob
    There's this misconception that sabermetrics was all about walks and homeruns. That was never the case, but a lot of people who read Moneyball missed the point. Billy Beane was operating on a shoestring budget compared to his peers. The whole schtick about Moneyball was that Beane needed to spend his limited funds very wisely. To that end, he utilized sabermetrics to find qualities that were undervalued by the marketplace at the time. And, at the time, OBP wasn't valued appropriately. So Beane found himself getting bargains on that type of player. Moneyball was just a philosophy to use sabermetrics to find something undervalued and snatch it up. Sabermetrics is still in use by just about every club in baseball today. But sabermetrics is, by its very nature, an evolving field. It's an attempt to understand and quantify a player's contributions on a baseball diamond. More than ever, teams are gathering all sorts of data looking for the next edge. We've moved on from OBP to average exit velocity, pitchers spin rates, and catcher framing metrics. And each team is trying to find undervalued qualities in the marketplace. I don't see that changing any time soon. Sabermetrics is here to stay.
  4. Rob
    Picking nits, but the site remains NSBB rather than NSB.
  5. Rob
    Yeah, Candelario is getting paid. He's not going to get $100M, but 4-5 years at ~$15M per season isn't out of the question. While it's a nice story having him back on the team, I'm not convinced it's a wise expenditure of our funds. I'm less than convinced he's going to age particularly well. You pay his contract demands when you're already a strong contender looking simply to shore up weaknesses and go far in the postseason, not to lock in as a foundational piece for a contender. It'd be like signing Ben Zobrist without already having the core players...
  6. Rob
    Hey Brock, any movement on the possibility of blocking whole threads? My anxiety goes through the roof every time I see the climate change thread, and even my brief attempt at ignoring the original poster (sorry Mojo) wasn't enough to kill the thread from my feed.
  7. Rob
    Which is what made it his lucky day. I'll see myself out.
  8. Rob
    Way back during my aborted attempt to write here, I remember hearing that something I'd written had been discussed on Boers and Bernstein. That was kinda fun. ETA: I just want to point out again that I was right about Jim Edmonds having something left in the tank.
  9. Rob
    Even if Hoyer has decided to sell, it's to his advantage to pretend otherwise at this point. That may help to get other GMs to come in with the higher offers necessary to "convince" Hoyer to sell out on a potentially-competitive team. While the Brewers and Reds have obvious issues, Fangraphs odds currently have us at just ~16% to make the playoffs. I'm inclined to think Hoyer has an eye on selling, as we'd need multiple significant upgrades to drastically change those playoff odds -- and that would come in the form of the young guys we need to come through to replace Bellinger/Stroman's production if we want to be competitive next year. Also, I think Hoyer's comfort spot is being a deadline seller. And with potentially the two best non-Ohtani rentals on the market, selling is going to hold a lot of allure for him. I'm guessing we unload.
  10. Rob
    Entire site, strangely enough.
  11. Rob
    Just FYI, I noticed that when editing an existing post, it forced my font back to the default. Then it reverted upon submission of the post. Not sure if it's a big enough issue to warrant troubleshooting, but it might be a fun project if you're in need of a silly little distraction.
  12. Rob
    I'm not sure what the current rule on accessing the social forum is, but might one of the admins consider relaxing that temporarily to let the influx of PSD users enjoy it? They don't seem like the type to abuse it.
  13. Rob
    A few years back, during the start of COVID, I remember there was a libel case that Lenny Dykstra had filed against Ron Darling. Apparently, Darling's memoirs had accused Lenny of saying some pretty heinously racist stuff, and Lenny thought he could get a payday by bringing a libel suit against Darling. The judge's ruling was essentially that Lenny Dykstra was such a notoriously awful person that it was legally impossible to libel him. But your post brings an interesting legal question... if you can say a wretched hive of scum and villainy such as NSBB is populated by "charming personalities," would it be possible to libel a ****heel like Lenny Dykstra by calling him a nice guy?
  14. Rob
    So what are our best case scenarios here?
  15. Rob
    horsefeathering Astros never put Zobrist in a MLB game…
  16. Rob
    To be perfectly honest, it's difficult to quantify. This version of Hoerner is likely a better version of a similar player with a ton more strikeouts. All those balls in play make him a little bit more likely to ground into a double play, but he's also far more likely to advance a runner. You may consider looking at something like RE24. Unlike most stats which try to strip context from what the batter does, RE24 relies heavily on the context. You can read about it here.
  17. Rob
    Today was a fun one! I ended up with a rarity score of just 37. And I got another 0.01% selection.
  18. Rob
    [expletive] Eddie Collins topped out at "only" 198 hits with the Philadelphia A's.
  19. Rob
  20. Rob
    Went 9/9 and with a 0.8%, 0.3%, and a 0.01%. I think that's probably the best I'll ever do. Debating early retirement from this game...
  21. Rob
    I just discovered the game today, and intentionally bombed the player squares because I was curious how the game works. It's fun though, I'm definitely gonna keep playing.
  22. Rob
    For whatever reason, I was able to pretty easily gloss over the whole thing with new ownership and major changes to the board itself. But seeing this place with a different URL really makes this feel like a different site entirely.
  23. Rob
    I got one for logging on 30 days in a row, and it just made me feel bad about myself.
  24. Rob
    Glad you enjoyed it. Also, sorry I called you Beau. I'm at home sick today, and in my feverish state I was sure your name was Beau Beauchamp -- which I thought was terribly funny. You should consider a name change.
  25. Rob
    I motion that each time he splits a thread, Beau is forced to title it "Guess what an idiot with administrator privileges did this time..." and the poster can change the title later. Can I get a second?
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