sneakypower

2007: fastball - 52.5% slider 37.3% 2008: fastball - 62.5% slider 32.4% he's throwing his fastball more often than last year for sure. he's lost a minor amount of velo on both but gained movement, which might contribute to lessened control. he's starting out hitters with FB 59% slider 31% was 73/27 last year

i too watch the games and think to myself what it would be like if he were playing CF hard to conceptualize, it's just such a maverick idea i wonder if any manager would ever try playing him there

the Joe Morgan obsession is even weirder than the cards & whitesox obsessions

battleyourtailoff looks like an ok one

he'll cure what ails them i bet you dollars to donuts they go on a decent run post ASB and his leadership is attributed for this

i'd wager pitchers would approach him differently if he had a park where he showed the propensity for hitting balls into the seats. if you're pitching in the Polo Grounds (with a decent CF), you'll probably try to induce guys into hitting flyballs into CF and won't care much if they go 400+ feet. i guess i'm saying i don't completely buy that you can just pick him up and move him into Wrigley and he'll be pitched to the same way. It'd be interesting to see if the SD pitchers induced more flyballs at home than they do on the road, but I don't know of anywhere where you can find splits on batted ball data. My guess is that there might be a slight slight variation, but its not like a pitcher has the ability to go from a GB pitcher to a FB pitcher or visa versa. If they DID have that ability, most likely it would come along with amazing control and a great repetoire of pitches and he'd be a ridiculously amazing pitcher regardless of what stadium hes in. oh no i agree with that, but my argument was not that you can change your batted ball type, but in this example you're not leery of pitching him inside because he'll just flyout deep to LF anyways, whereas you'd be less liberal about pitching him there in a park with a shorter fence in left.

this is kind of a weird argument. is the prevalent assumption that there should be no other factors considered when determining HOF status other than interpreted production? even looking squarely at his production, he makes a compelling argument for the HOF without factoring the rest of what he's brought to the game. he gets overrated compared to his production because no player in the game attracts more fans, and it's not even close. this is reminiscent of when Clemente gets called overrated, because his numbers don't quite match up with his legacy. it's not hard to understand how he transcends the game and also paved the way for other Japanese stars to make their way to the MLB and improve the quality of the game. and not to be overlooked is his dominance in Japan. the Baseball hall of fame enshrined Josh Gibson, who never played a game in the MLB. he'll be judged on the entirety of his professional career, and will be a sure-fire first ballot HOF.

i'd wager pitchers would approach him differently if he had a park where he showed the propensity for hitting balls into the seats. if you're pitching in the Polo Grounds (with a decent CF), you'll probably try to induce guys into hitting flyballs into CF and won't care much if they go 400+ feet. i guess i'm saying i don't completely buy that you can just pick him up and move him into Wrigley and he'll be pitched to the same way.

well if jocks in a locker room say it, it must be okay i dont know how you read my quote and interpreted my message as such. purposefully acting dense?

wait, all this outrage and offense over "What's the lucky groom's name?" i shudder to think of your guys reactions if you were ever on any HS sports teams, listening to the typical banter

i actually like Marquis' in that he stops in the middle of his motion Zito's is a bit bizarre, and I used to like Carlos Perez the most when he was in the league

he's got 95 rbis and #2 in the AL is 70 i think the media would be talking about him quite a bit if he wasnt a recovering crack addict

5 or 6 starts from now and he should have a 20 K game

Won't Hamilton be something like 32 when he first hits free agency? I don't know, I don't have the numbers in front of me. But I'll be interested to see what happens with Ryan Howard. He's got a lot of upsides, a ton of downsides, and he'll be sort of old when he hits free agency. Boras and Hamilton is an odd pairing Hamilton isn't even allowed by Narron to carry over 20 bucks in his wallet

i hate to beat a dead horse, but i really don't know why people persist with this fallacious nonsense. find me any statistician/sabermetrician who is willing to reconcile just simply throwing half of your sample in the trash. and if we're just not concerned with sample sizes, well then hell he's showing to have a 528 ops true talent level at this point in his career.

4 of the top 12 have already been traded

oh if he could actually play 3b theyd keep him for sure not sure why that article says that

no pitcher in baseball has thrown more pitches the past 3 years than Harang i'm not sure this is completely Dusty's fault

Jericho Jones

so Christina Kahrl likes the Scissor Sisters :-k

i too cannot wait for Carpenter to return thats one team quickly out of the race

not that i disagree that hendry could be a candidate for exec of the year, but i'm not sure what theriot and dempster have to do with it. there was basically zero doubt that they were going to make the 25-mean out of spring training, it was just a matter of how they would be used, which seems like more of a credit to lou than anything. fukudome, harden, edmonds i can agree with, and gaudin could probably be added to that list. re-signing wood for relatively cheap to be a reliever could also be a notch on his belt for exec of the year consideration. The overriding concensus on here (which I thought to be warranted but vastly overstated) were that Dempster and Theriot were simply unacceptable players that needed to be replaced with players who represented an improvement. And the whole offseason Hendry kept reiterating that the club was high on both players and ultimately stuck with both, to great results. The Edmonds signing is another great example of Hendry going against strong dissent from the fanbase to improve the team. And call me naive, but I think there really was something to MacPhail handcuffing Hendry in previous offseasons. As he has shown with Fukudome, Lilly, Soriano, Harden, etc. if he wants a player he'll do whatever it takes to bring them aboard. I strongly suspect he would have signed Beltran and probably Furcal without MacPhail pressuring him to stick to a budget. And he's forced to go halfway, and employ inferior options in Cedeno, Burnitz, Jones, which doesn't suit a big market team very well. Trading prospects for legit proven players is how a big market team ought to operate, and he seems to understand that.

if that defense and ballpark can seemingly turn Justin Duchscherer into a dominant ace, I like Gallagher's chances for success i'll be rooting for him to succeed the whole way

Dempster, Theriot, Harden, Edmonds, Fukudome... executive of the year if you ask me

i just got home and WOW \:D/ \:D/ \:D/ \:D/ \:D/ HAIL HENDRY