nrockway

somebody better at photoshop could have made this funny

They should make Keller pitch all 9 innings

To play him in a corner? Probably a good idea. Luis is a better defensive center fielder than Rodriguez IMO but he can't stay healthy. Less wear and tear in the corner. Pretty good trading partner for the Sox but I would think it takes at least Young, Emerson and a third player.

oh, there's a baseball game on. Brad Keller is pitching for some reason and has given up three home runs. might skip this one.

well this guy has a higher obp than anything in history

from the article I just heard about this guy again because apparently he's a knuckleballer now and has recorded 6 outs to 1 hit in AAA. Made Jordan Walker look pretty foolish. I don't think MLB can really give him a strong suspension without looking foolish in the process. They need to cut the gambling money entirely out of the product. It's sick and stuff like this and Mizuhara and that guy in the NBA is only going to get worse.

Wasn't this NASCAR thing a huge disaster for the city anyway? Why are they doing it again? Mayor "Let's Go" Brandon believed NASCAR's 'economic impact report'?

I'm in the boat that you shouldn't give real money to a first baseman unless it's somebody like Bryce Harper. By the time they hit free agency, they're probably done and are being paid for work they did when they were 26. You could go out and get Brandon Belt for the minimum and then spend the money on a position that's actually hard to fill. I'm with the poster that says Colson could end up at 1B. That would probably be a good thing because it means Ramos, Gonzalez, Baldwin worked out. Gives Vaughn maybe a season after this one to try to figure it out.

It depends. FIP seems mostly worthless to me, it doesn't really tell you anything that looking at "k/9, bb/9, hr/9" doesn't already, it just attaches arbitrary weights to certain outcomes. Its predictive value is basically useless as far as I can tell. Ostensibly because its prior assumptions are wrong or otherwise debatable, the main one being that pitchers have no control over balls in play. But we know that they do, two and four seam fastballs generally result in different types of balls in play. Consequently, they also result in different strikeout rates and so FIP rewards strikeout pitchers and punishes groundballers. This one thing completely invalidates FIP and I'd also quibble with how they assign the weights '13', '2', and '3'. it seems pretty arbitrary. I still like looking at it because it kind of tells you something interesting, just like OPS does. You can look at a guy's OPS, whether it's .600 or .800 or 1.150 and get a pretty good idea of how good a hitter he is. A good measuring stick. However, I'm not sure that FIP is actually more useful as a measuring stick than straight up ERA. We might assume Shota Imanaga is not going to finish the season with a 0.96 ERA. "well nrockway, his FIP is 2.27, so obviously his ERA is going to increase." Yeah, except it might be reasonable to assume it's going to increase well higher than 2.27 because the inputs into his FIP don't really tell you what kind of pitcher he is. Eight years pitching in Japan might paint a better picture, where he posted a 3.18 ERA and had much worse 'peripheral' (K/BB/HR) stats than he's demonstrated in the MLB. In this way, we see that the 'predictive' stat FIP doesn't accurately assess what kind of pitcher Imanaga is. So what's the point of looking at his FIP then? What does it tell me? I think common sense and standard stats are probably better than FIP specifically and most other advanced stats. I'm skeptical of most "advanced" stats, bWAR seems to be the only one that stands up to scrutiny and even that has many debatable components. I'm even more skeptical of the ones that claim to predict things which seems to be how Fangraphs is staying in business. The new Statcast measurements are genuinely interesting. This is new data that didn't exist before, not merely a manipulation of box score statistics. However, the analysis of them is probably pretty bad for now. Maybe a few MLB teams are doing interesting things with the data, but journalists are not and that's all I can see.

the worst thing about it is it isn't even the guy who was just in the booth giving an interview about nascar. tony robbins or whatever.

There are obvious differences between Rodriguez (whose first name I’ve already forgotten) and Fernando Tatis Jr. Frankly, between 20-year-old pitchers and position players. Someone posted an article here the other day that’s featured the quote “trade them [pitchers] before they break”. Also I don’t totally see what “the process” is that you refer to. Trading young players for older ones? That’s most trades.

statistics. watching him play. certainly, that's stronger logic than "well Chris Getz did it, a man whom I'm clearly in love with and whose face I dream of sitting on, so it must be wrong".

The Astros are incompetent and think Cabbage is a better fit. They also thought Jose Abreu would be a good fit. Or Cabbage is shiny and new, it's a marginal move regardless, and he might actually offer something they don't already have. Reminder, this is a marginal move and not every guy under the age of 22 is created equal as a "lottery ticket". This is basically cash considerations personified, it frankly seems like good practice to trade marginal pitching prospects. The difference between this one and Mena is that Mena isn't a marginal prospect.

I think people like to whine just for the sake of it. Julks is an actual good player who's proven to be and you've never heard of Luis Rodriguez until opening this thread. He isn't very good, he isn't Cristian Mena. This actually seems stupid from the Astros side of things but I guess they want to role with Cabbage as their fourth OF, a guy they got in a similar move as this one from the Angels. And bats from the other side of the plate which seems to be a weakness in the Astros lineup. I think Julks is better than Cabbage, just right-handed. Julks is probably a weak side platoon guy so I don't think this necessarily blocks Oscar. Kind of seems like the Sox just shuffled Grossman/Rodriguez for Julks/Hoopii-Tuionetoa. So a moderate increase in talent without really giving anything up. Fireable offense evidently

"I don't like the fact that he's the manager of the team [the Sox]. Ramos does a good job playing baseball and he is a terrible coach" - me on Grifol.

they should say something different. and hey, they did, check it out: "He’s coming along. He’s a little further behind Robert, but he’s also coming along good.” not "Yoan is at 49% while Robert oscillates between 70% and 110%" smartest thing Grifol has said all season.

I am indeed a "social justice warrior", my politics are proudly left-wing, I am in favor of a society that distributes its wealth to the poorest among us and that all of us are treated as equals. Which is why I'm critical of people masquerading as such, using left-wing slogans and talking points to better serve the needs of business rather than people. I'm sorry that you can't see a contradiction there and can't see what the material impact of neoliberalism is in the real world. Seemingly the forward-thinking world you want to live in is one where there are 15 female MLB owners shoving gambling down kids' throats and a proportional rate of transgender drone pilots bombing weddings and cafes in Libya. Sorry that this is another "long post" but not every idea can be boiled down to 100 characters. The twitter generation...

Apparently I missed this post, so I’m going to just say a week later: what a useless comment, why don’t you write something smarter. Nobody can even tell what point you’re trying to make except to be condescending and dismissive. So why don’t you try making a point, brainiac.

https://www.mlb.com/video/andrew-knizner-reaches-on-a-fielder-s-choice-out-second-baseman-brendan-r lul

even the ballboy's getting in on the s%*# show

"Gimenez in some pain" here we go again...oh it's the other one

It's a reasonable point, does holding onto those excess prospects help more in the long run in making the playoffs consistently? Maybe, the players are certainly under contract longer, but I'm skeptical. At least two seasons of Cease and Kopech isn't nothing and those prospects haven't actually proven yet to be major league talents that will help a team win a World Series. They might help more in the long run, but they might not, and those two pitchers fill an actual need on a team with championship aspirations for two years. One in the hand or two in the bush? I think the White Sox are in the bush and the Orioles are not. Two years of being the favorite or six years of being in it til the end? The latter sounds like a Reinsdorfian approach, and as you say, that method might sell more tickets and merchandise. What about in the short term, is it certain that Baltimore will be better than NYY and win the division? Will Craig Kimbrel set a Major League record in blown saves and will the starters come down to Earth? It would be a shame to waste their offensive firepower because they also wanted to have the best AAA team.

I don't think so, their time to compete is right now, not a while from now, and White Sox fans are probably still correct that they should've given up their utility players/AAA fodder (who might be good later) in exchange for Cease/Kopech. Their rotation is performing for now, but I don't think O's fans have a ton of faith in Means or Kremer. Certainly no faith in Kimbrel or the rest of their bullpen. Orioles would be the heavy favorite in the American League if they added Cease and Kopech as well as Burnes. I suspect the Orioles aren't going to win a World Series because they overvalued their prospects and didn't make the appropriate moves to compete when their window was open (sound familiar?). What happens if, two years from now, Henderson or Rutschman get injured and miss a season and never return to form? Maybe they should've been trying to win a World Series in 2024 when their stars were healthy and performing well. Inevitably they will trade some of those guys and it will almost certainly be selling short. We got good value for Cease, but I think we could have gotten better value from the Orioles and that both teams would have actually been better off making a trade. I put that on O's management as opposed to ours though.

12 games out of first place. The Royals probably aren't going to continue to play at a 98 win pace. I'm just saying.

he should be happy he's employed