MSG T

They won't screw up Soriano's development keeping him out there. They very well could with Jackson. I'd be perfectly fine keeping him in AAA all season, even if the alternative is Campana playing every day.

We're gong to have to eat the contract...and the sooner the better so others can come up and start our rebuild. The biggest mistake our new masterminds are making is hanging onto Sori trying 'to get something for him' Its retarding the progress of Brett Jackson, who needs to get on-the-job training at the MLB level. The money is gone...we cant get it back. Release Sori. Should have been done last winter. I'm one of the biggest B Jackson fans around and even I'm scared of what that 31% K rate will do in the majors. He doesn't NEED OJT in the majors, he needs to improve his contact skills in AAA. Like Castro and Campana and Cardenas... what's the difference? /.we're dead last ? On the job training for all.....cant be scared of them failing....we need to know what we have Seriously...why is he different from our other rookies..>? Castro has never had contact problem. Taking a walk is a different issue. His K rate in AA was roughly 9.5%. It's been mid teen's since his callup. Jackson would be in serious trouble if it jumped to 35+% in the majors. He needs to get it under control first, before he's called up.

We're gong to have to eat the contract...and the sooner the better so others can come up and start our rebuild. The biggest mistake our new masterminds are making is hanging onto Sori trying 'to get something for him' Its retarding the progress of Brett Jackson, who needs to get on-the-job training at the MLB level. The money is gone...we cant get it back. Release Sori. Should have been done last winter. The last month Soriano is at .270/.337/.640 (.997 OPS). You want him released right now? In favor off a guy that isn't doing that in AAA?

We're gong to have to eat the contract...and the sooner the better so others can come up and start our rebuild. The biggest mistake our new masterminds are making is hanging onto Sori trying 'to get something for him' Its retarding the progress of Brett Jackson, who needs to get on-the-job training at the MLB level. The money is gone...we cant get it back. Release Sori. Should have been done last winter. I'm one of the biggest B Jackson fans around and even I'm scared of what that 31% K rate will do in the majors. He doesn't NEED OJT in the majors, he needs to improve his contact skills in AAA.

Why didn't the actual post show up?

They didn't need Uthoff for that. They could conceivably have Gesell, Oglesby, White, Meyer and Woodbury on the floor together this season. All of those guys other than Oglesby are pretty darn homely. Uthoff will certainly fit in.

McDaniel seems to have some irrational love for Almora, I love the pick, but wow. I'd like to know what specific tool(s) he and others are most enthralled with other than just his makeup and other intangibles. All his tools grade out above average (including his plate discipline =P~ , which isn't really a "tool" per se..)except his speed... and the speed doesn't seem to be a big deal as he grades out as very good defensive CF and a good basestealer anyway. Add the makeup and work ethic and all that, and you have the love. I think the quote I saw about Almora's range was that it was fantastic despite having average speed. Said he has great instincts and gets a better jump than almost anyone. Saw another that said he was nearly, or was, ML ready defensively, sorry can give names (I think it was a BA tweet). Far too many tweets yesterday while watching my younger son pitch one game then my older catch a second game. Going off of memory, so I'm paraphrasing, and (unfortunately) probably combining different tweets into one statement.

I think it was Goldstein, and I haven't seen his roll up of the first round yet to verify it, but he said everything but Almora's speed was around a 60 rating, which is really good.

Would have killed the excitement to get the call right.

That last part was aimed more at WSR. Sorry TT, badly worded agreeing with you.

GMs are not going to get suckered into a bait and switch impulse buy where they call about Starlin Castro and wind up trading for Reed Johnson. How do you think these things work? That conversation would be more like... Other GM - Hey Jed, I see you willing to listen on Castro, what would you think of this (a couple of decent names). Jed - you know, we're really not interested in dealing him unless we can get something along the the lines of a Strasburg and Harper combo for him. However, we would be interested in talking about Campana and Johnson. Other GM - Uh, well, ah, hmm, ah, sorry about taking up your time, Jed... click In reality, I doubt many (read that as any) GMs would call based off some anonymously sourced newspaper article. They would have gotten a pretty good sense of who's available and for what, roughly, from within the industry. And they ain't calling about Castro or Garza and getting suckered into lesser players.

We shouldn't have any sort of replay because the rare bad call isn't worse than the cheapening of virtually every cool sports moment involving a close play. Rare? I've seen bad calls, going both ways, in pretty much every game I've watched this year. Something that happens every game, or most every game, isn't rare. A close play that ends a game is rare, but not a bad call. And how much excitement would have been lost if Dekinger would have made the Orta call correctly? I'm thinking none.

Sports excitement shouldn't come from a referee on a microphone. I can live with the effect of the bad calls on the W-L column. It's not ideal, but acceptable. Considering you're not the one getting paid to play the game, or manage or build the team that does, that's pretty short-sighted. Is there a tipping point of where it's not worth it? Sure, but given where technology is and the built in stoppages, it's rare that it would get to that point. How hard would it be for an extra ump or third party to be in the press box watching a monitor see a close play and take an extra look? On most bad calls, they could have it fixed within 15-20 seconds, not five minutes. The reason the NFL model takes forever is because of the procedure they use and the fact that many times you're not just trying to see if it was a catch, but where the ball should be marked, what the guy covering was doing, etc. and trying to make those calls with 3 or 4 people blocking half of the views. Baseball is a much different animal in how replay can work.

Your excitement doesn't effect the W-L columns, bad calls can, and often do. Besides, how many times have people gotten up in arms when a bad call is made that is obvious using replay and is easily overturned but nothing can happen. Yeah the excitement might be taken out once in a while if a catch is overturned, but how about the excitement gained when a batter is called safe, though is obviously out, and that call is corrected. You're only looking at one side of the coin.

To me this is the biggest thing. They'll have to sort through all of the ramifications of what to do with base runners that might have done something different if the call was made differently. The biggest issue there should be coming up with some standards, similar to what runners do on balls thrown out of play.

Instead of 5 minutes of a manager kicking dirt on the ump, throwing his hat, and chucking a base across the field? Yes. You don't think there's a difference between: "Something cool just happened, now let's waste five minutes on some stupid manager arguing tradition." vs. "Maybe something cool just happened, or maybe it didn't, but let's wait five minutes to find out." Maybe the latter doesn't bother you as much as it bothers me, but you can't say there's no difference. Considering the number of times broadcasts are able to show if a call was correct or not before the next pitch is thrown, I think you're seriously overestimating the time effect this will have. Most overturned calls will happen rather quickly, and the ones that aren't as quick still won't take as long as the arguments generally last.

As Len and Bob have pointed out, games are delayed by arguments over calls all the time. With an extended replay system, you circumvent the argument and go straight to replay. In the final equation, it probably won't make any difference with regard to "ruining moments". There's no need for it to be instant. Moving past a bad/disputed call is never instantaneous. When has the delay ever resulted in an overturned call, though? I vaguely remember one time, maybe, from when I was a kid. The opposing manager can argue till he's passed out, but once the umpire calls safe on the game-winning run in the Cubs' pennant clinching NLCS win, I can be fairly confident that it's decided. Well, maybe not "ruined for me," but I'd enjoy it more without it. I enjoy the games more if they get the calls right.

While not the worst record I remember, 2006 is easily the worst season I can remember. It just sucked the life out of me as a fan. This year has been nowhere near the bad. It started in the offseason with the thought " we traded actual living, breathing players for Pierre?" and went downhill from there.

Consider this, if you would: Your concern about BABIP alone is very well-founded. By itself, there's no way to know if a guy has a low BABIP because he's hitting soft stuff everywhere or if he's getting unlucky. However, that's where line drive percentage (LD%) comes into play. LD% basically tells you how hard a guy is hitting the ball - how many line drives he's hit. If his LD% is high, then he's hitting the ball very hard and the low BABIP means he's been unlucky. If a guy has a low LD%, then he's not hitting the ball very hard and his low BABIP is well-earned. Now, if we look at Ian Stewart, his LD% is currently at 17.9%, which is just a little bit off of his career 18.8% LD%. So he's hitting the ball about as hard as he normally has throughout his career and you would assume that with normal luck, his BABIP should be around his career average. However, his current .221 BABIP is 68 points below his career .289 BABIP. So what that tells us is that he's hitting the ball almost as hard as he ever has in his career, but that he's having a lot of those hard hit balls go right at defenders. Thus, the belief that he's had a lot of bad luck this year. I think he already addressed this well-stated argument by saying Stewart was hitting soft line drives, not hard hit balls. But I'm not going back through all of these pages, and his ramblings, to verify that. Oh, and I agree with what you said.

It was turned on dimly when I was in HS back in the mid 80's when some friends and I would kill our days off from baseball with Strat-O-Matic. After playing a couple of seasons on the easy side of the cards, we flipped them over and tried the advanced side. About that time, one of my friends got Bill James' book and we started keeping a few stats he mentioned in there. It actually cooled somewhat after that, had far to much going on early in my career, but was rekindled when I found this place, which lead me to fangraphs, b-r, hardball times, etc (thanks guys). I'm still trying to get my comprehension level caught up and what stats apply to what situation, but it's getting better.

Part of me wants to continually open these two thread to see the greatness within. Part of me thinks I should avoid them for the good of my sanity. Oh, and jersey, don't you remember, lead off is a position. You have to keep that thought in mind when dealing with people like this.

What's even more impressive is the number of people that are normally at odds with each other making legitimate (re. sane) arguments that Neely is completely ignoring/not buying. When Mojo and Kyle are on the same side of the argument, there is something seriously amiss in the Force.

And his BABIP the last month is still only .217. What happens when it gets closer to his career norm, .290?

do you know anything about him? or just guessing? He was the Phillies first round pick in 2006, and has been traded by the Phillies and released by the A's before the cubs claimed him. This is the first trip to the majors for him. So I am saying that a 24 year old former 1st round pick, who as a top prospect at 1 time, is a retread, when a team so bad on offense like the A's can't use at AAA or the majors. I mean can see that a team that has an OPS 50 points lower than the cubs can't use a quality player. When you their 2b hitting a robust .233, and your 3b is hitting .133 or your LF is crushing it at .194..of course there's no reason to keep a former high pick in AAA, or heck on your roster because you have so many good options there. No reason at all to think the guy can't play. But then again our roster is a bit of a AA/AAA look to it. Huh?

Why mention their OBP last year but ignore this season and the previous seasons? DeJesus this year - .360 OBP (career .356) Barney this year - .322 OBP (career .312) Campana this year - .356 OBP (he's fallen way off after a hot first 30 PAs or so) (career .322) DeJesus is better at getting on base, both this year and historically. Getting on base is the #1 objective for a lead off hitter, not getting steals, not a high BA but getting on base.