Sammy Sofa
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Everything posted by Sammy Sofa
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Sure it is. Pitchers are usually good for stretches between their really bad starts. The fact that he had a cluster of those bad starts in the beginning doesn't absolve him of them. FFS, nobody is "absolving" him. It's been brought up specifically in response to people talking about him like he's been garbage over the course of the season, and that simply isn't the case. It's an issue of accurately analyzing a player's performance instead of just declaring "Dempster has sucked this year!"
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Nobody said it didn't. People bring up the poor start because of how dramatically better he was after that first month. It's not the kind of thing you just shrug your shoulders over.
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When a veteran-loaded team is at 21 games under .500 in the middle of July, he could call out a player a day. That's a stupid way to run a baseball team. Calling players out like Quade did almost never accomplishes anything, veteran or otherwise. Just cut to the chase next time and say "I'm a meatball and I want meatball things."
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Mickey Rivers, your table is waiting. Please explain how you possibly thought this made any sense. Are you really saying Soriano could play defense like Mickey Rivers if he just ran faster? Are you saying you never saw Mickey Rivers walk up to the plate, contrast that with the way he ran the bases and ran in the OF? Very telling. This still makes no sense. Mickey Rivers was a very,very good defensive OF (in terms of being an inverse Soriano; great speed out there and good routes and judgement, but had a wimpy arm). Soriano is not. Soriano running faster and leaping and diving trying to make catches in the OF isn't going to turn him into Mickey Rivers.
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Mickey Rivers, your table is waiting. Please explain how you possibly thought this made any sense. Are you really saying Soriano could play defense like Mickey Rivers if he just ran faster?
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Who isn't "paying attention?" Why should he have called out anyone?
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It is just you. A guy with shaky OF ability who is trying to not get hurt is just going to be even shakier if everything is being unnecessarily sped up. Look at it like this: let's say you have trouble not tripping over your own feet when just walking at a normal pace. Do you think you're likely going to be LESS clumsy if you're running instead of walking?
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I guess I have higher expecations for Aramis. An average OPS of .740 for the first two months actually isn't too bad considering how most third basemans have performed this season. Maybe horrendous wasn't the right word, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't concerned about his slow starts in back to back seasons. Well, they were very different starts. Last year he was just plain awful into June. This year he was still productive and basically putting up decent numbers except for the power.
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The Chicago Cubs Need Less Jim Hendry (And more Ari Kaplan?)
Sammy Sofa replied to idakepps's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
Yes, please. -
That's great that his defense is more than fine. The point is, it could be much better than fine simply with more effort. Imagine a guy is hitting .300 without watching a second of video, but could boost that up to .330 if he spent 30 minutes a day studying pitchers. Are you going to be satisfied with the .300, since that's more than fine too? That's a faulty point and comparison. The "more effort part" you want in the field is likely going to impact his defense negatively since he has limited ability as an OF. Having a 35-year-old non-OF who is wary about injuring his legs again bust his ass and try to make trickier catchers on the fly or diving and leaping for balls isn't going to end well. I don't know why you think it's as a simple as "he just needs to try harder," because it's not. The "more effort" you want is going to reduce his defensive ability because it's going to increase and further expose the flaws in his defensive game.
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A page ago we agreed that we're in the same ballpark on the probabilities. Not sure why you're going bananas about them now. Because they're totally [expletive] probabilities we were making up. The closest thing I came to "agreeing" with you was how close we actually were in our totally made up projections when guessing how many times in a week MLB players who try to make a diving leaping catch are successful.
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Yes, because storms in the Midwest tend to last 3 hours.
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$5 says he brings up sliding again in response to this.
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Stop using these made up probabilities; they just make you look ridiculous. You just posted without thinking twice that you think someone is likely to end up with a double on a ball that an OF played as a hit off of a hop that they had a 50% chance of catching. Read that again and think about what an insane scenario you've created, since apparently the OF has an arm even weaker than Juan Pierre. And your whole comparison is totally arbitrary and makes zero sense because it has no basis in anything except what you've made up to back up your point.
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It doesn't happen nearly enough to justify the added injury risk. Like you said yourself, most people know not to test his arm.
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No, it's really not. You've yet to show how sliding to avoid a tag or breaking up a double play is a similar risk/reward situation. If you don't slide when you can avoid the tag you're out and your value as a runner and ability to score as a result of that PA gone. If an OF doesn't choose to try to make a diving catch they can still play it and keep the runner to a single or a double instead of more.
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Because his "casual chasing" isn't typically resulting in runners taking extra bases or getting hits when they shouldn't be.
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Fine. Ryan Braun, Jose Bautista, and Matt Holliday dont do much of it either. All three have gotten their share of criticism for their less than ideal defense. And Im sure any manager in baseball would take any one of them over Reed Johnson, Sam Fuld, or Aaron Rowand slip and sliding all over the field to make a slightly non routine play. Since it's clear you're not following the debate, the issue at hand is what (if any) added value would come from Braun/Bautista/Holliday giving the sort of effort Johnson/Fuld/Rowand do. Preferring Holliday etc. to Fuld etc. is completely irrelevant. If that's the debate then it was over a long time ago. The added value of them busting their asses and leaping after balls in the OF is so negligible (since it's not an all or nothing situation and they can still play the ball well or adequately otherwise) vs. the increased injury risk and losing their bats.
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Sign Kosuke to a 2 year deal if possible
Sammy Sofa replied to Bowas temper's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
DON'T FORGET ABOUT KEMP. -
Other people have brought up the idea of hustle in regards to running out grounders in the thread. And those percentages are hardly the focus of the discussion, nor should they be, since we pulled them out of our butts.
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Well, yeah.
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Fine. Ryan Braun, Jose Bautista, and Matt Holliday dont do much of it either. All three have gotten their share of criticism for their less than ideal defense.
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Sign Kosuke to a 2 year deal if possible
Sammy Sofa replied to Bowas temper's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
Gotcha. -
And they all player corner IF positions.
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And I'd rather he not get hurt. He's going to have a better idea as to his physical limitations/vulnerabilities than us. There's a big difference between being lazy and not wanting to end up on the DL.
