nrockway

depends on the website I guess. -4.5 defensive WAR seems, I dunno, a little off considering he won a GG.

Bergolla has been awesome all month

Sox paid Benintendi after 2 consecutive 3 WAR seasons. It's still a waste of money. The Mets also paid Ryne Stankey $4.5mil after he pitched to a 6 ERA with them and now a 5 ERA rather than paying Vasil...$750k or whatever. That's harder to explain.

yeah but Hahn signed those guys and he got fired. Robert isn't wasted money.

I wrote that Sean Manaea got DFA'd which was wrong...Manoah did. Tomato, tomahto sort of thing...bad pitcher, baaaad pitcher. The point being they're paying the guy $75mil to pitch to a 5.59 ERA. That's actual wasted money, $2mil is pretty marginal.

wait i'm confused

and then Vargas strikes out on a pitch out of the zone...like what

Ump is squeezing both pitchers.

1,2,3. 2 Ks!

MAT has an OPS under .400 the last month and stopped playing defense. Why does he even play

"Perez won't need major surgery" "Will he need any surgery?" "no" stunning analysis

quick inning. Hagen Smith gets the start in the final game of the minor league season, game starts at 6:35 Central.

yeah, I bet Williams will be a fine player, I just think if I was a Rays fan I would be mad at the situation, especially in the middle of a close playoff race. They're likely still out of the postseason even with HSK but it's such a cheapskate move. Try to trade him in the offseason or DFA him then. ATL would've given up a player I'm sure.

Semi-interesting crop of players circled in blue. Bryce Harper, Hunter Goodman, Bo Bichette, Jeremy Peña in the close cluster. Josh Naylor, Julio Rodriguez Jackson Chourio just below (in order of OPS). PCA and Salvy are the two guys above the trend line with higher chase rates than Sosa! Goodman and Peña specifically strike me as interesting comps. Sosa will not walk like Harper (12 BB% vs 3.4%; 87th vs 1st percentile). Not a BABIP merchant like Bichette (.342 this season, 339 on his career). https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/hunter-goodman-696100?stats=statcast-r-hitting-mlb https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/jeremy-pena-665161?stats=statcast-r-hitting-mlb https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/lenyn-sosa-672820?stats=statcast-r-hitting-mlb Reasonably similar statcast profiles. The two guys made moderate improvements to their chase/bb% (and some BABIP improvement, possibly unsustainable) from previous seasons and elevated from .645/.702 OPSers to up near .840 this year. (121 OPS+ for Goodman, Rockies player, vs Peña's 131). I think Sosa is arguably as powerful as Goodman with better contact skills. More powerful than Peña and maybe a slightly worse contact hitter. I think there's a clear path for Sosa to be above that trend line and OPS above .800, be a reasonably effective first baseman/DH who can hit 25+ HRs if he simply stops striking out on junk out of the zone. More walks, less Ks, better contact if pitchers have to be throw at him around the zone. Peña and Goodman still chase a lot but nonetheless made pretty big improvements to their command of the strike zone over last year. Peña went from 4th percentile BB% to 26th, why couldn't Sosa do the same? Why couldn't he bat .280 and OBP .330 and make corresponding improvements to his SLG and ISO?

My favorite player Ha-Seong Kim is having a nice end to the season with the Braves. He's healthy and OPSing close to .800. Rays might've used him while pushing for the playoffs. His rookie replacement is sub .600 OPS, negative WAR. Rays save less than $2mil. Easy player to trade in the offseason. Gifted the Braves, who ought to be back to winning baseball next season, an every day player.

Precisely why they won't tank I think. The revenue for a consistently mediocre team is too much to pass up. People might actually stop showing up if they're a 20ish win team and considerably more people won't show up if they win 60 games (because they already lead the league in attendance every year somehow)...although what you say about the playoff revenue is very true. You'd think they'd be interested in that. The White Sox had to win a WS to eek into top 10 in attendance. I think that's the difference between the Bulls and Sox strategies...the Sox actually have to be good to get people to kinda show up...and being a bottomfeeder doesn't make a significant difference (what with the stadium contract). Even when they were "good" 15ish years ago for the first time since MJ, they were an NBA hell team that lucked into D Rose and hired a great coach. But also added Rose to a reasonably good young core and made some FA moves. The last time that team was worth watching arguably.

I agree and this is why the Bulls are unwatchable to me. Bulls went "all in", only won 46 games (.56 win %), got bounced out of the first round 4-1. Haven't made the playoffs since, treadmilling to 40, 39, 39 wins (.48 win%). Not good enough to make the playoffs, not bad enough to get good draft positioning. Compare to the Pacers in the same time frame who won 25 games (.30 win%), then 35, then 47 then 50. Made the conference finals and the nba finals. Those "bad" seasons were necessary to build a winning team. Meanwhile the Bulls are stuck in NBA hell. OKC Thunder is even more pronounced. Blew up a 'good' team, fired their bad coach (who the Bulls keep extending for some reason), won 22 and 24 games. Went to 68 wins and won the championship. If it was the Bulls, Chris Paul and Paul George would still be on OKC making huge money and leading the team to 38 wins. This is the way you build a professional sports team.

They're both kinda embarrassing, right. The Dodgers have had a bunch of injuries and spent silly free agent money on injury prone players, but seemed to nurse them along to be healthy by the postseason. That seemed to be by design. I'm not sure the same thing could be said about the Mets. Shohei, the all time best baseball player, has finally pitched his first quality start as a Dodger and went 6 innings scoreless. Snell is healthy. Glasnow will pitch. But yeah, they wasted a bunch of money on 'good' free agents because they don't evaluate talent very well...they signed players to big contracts that the most braindead baseball fan would know is a good player. Only a handful of organizations are able to do that. Like the New York Mets, they have an unlimited budget relative to most teams in MLB. It's the worst part about professional baseball. Add in the Yankees and Red Sox too. These mistakes would hamstring most teams. This disparity isn't an issue in NBA or NFL. I'd argue the Phillies and maybe the Cubs, Blue Jays, Padres, Braves spend 'biggish' money in an intelligent way. Phillies have actually built a consistently good team via free agency. I'd hope the Sox could spend money and be like the Phillies or Padres and evaluate talent like the Brewers or Guardians. They certainly tried in 2017-2022 but neither component made the cut. It'll be a decade later now, but the opportunity is there. There will never be the opportunity to be the New York Yankees even with a new owner. LAD, NYM, NYY, BOS seem like poorly run organizations to me. They're just lucky there's no financial parity in MLB. Boston's EPL analogue, Liverpool, spends a ton of money on transfers and rarely develops their own players. Euro football is even worse than MLB. Some teams can throw infinite s%*# at the wall and see what sticks. Look how Green Bay and Kansas City perform relative to the New York teams in football. Oklahoma and Indiana built the best teams in basketball. New York and California still have built-in advantages, particularly in baseball, where the best foreigners come from Asia and the Caribbean and foreign-born players are the bedrock of the league. If the Mets beat the Dodgers, thrilling, any team can win a 3 or 5 or 7 game series in baseball any time. Our 2024 Sox, worst team of all time, won a series 3-1 against the 92 win Guardians, a series against 89 win Braves, ended the season winning a series against the red hot Tigers. I would be genuinely surprised if the Mets do that though.

The pitching staff seems like something that could be compared regardless of resources. Mets are DFAing a pitcher they spent Benintendi money on ($10 mil more AAV though). Their owner will pay it. Mets let Vasil go to Rule 5. Mets have used at least 46 pitchers this year but are spending $60mil+ on relievers. Edwin Diaz is good, everyone knows he's good. David Peterson has collapsed, 6 ERA since the break. Senga, Diaz, McLean, Clay Holmes are their only good pitchers. The first 3 guys were acquired by the previous front office, 2 of them make big money. Holmes was a pretty good signing. All of their trades are busts. I can't imagine what the Mets would be doing without the 800 million dollar man Soto, Lindor, Alonso. The only good acquisition Stearns has made is arguably Clay Holmes who is basically Davis Martin being paid 12 times more. Their top prospect (who Stearns drafted, to his credit) OPSd .580 at AAA. The other 3 in MLB top 100 are from the previous regime. The Brewers are better since he left. I really can't imagine what the dude would've done with the dumpster fire Getz inherited. He could've hired Bannister or Venable or Fuller but didn't. He took a team that won 101 games and turned it into an ~83 win team despite being gifted Juan Soto.

yes we are. just like crochet, huh. you should actually watch the guy pitch.

It's gone fine for him tbh. He hasn't given up a run since August. .425 babip is obviously absurd. The ERA isn't important, he's been lights out, he's basically Mason Miller with fewer home runs against (zero).

The criminal owner and the overrated GM who everyone on this board wanted to replace Ken/Hahn, with an unlimited budget, not making the playoffs is objectively funny. We talk about our "bad pitching staff" but look at the fuckin Mets. They just set a record for pitchers used in a season and 90% of them are useless. They could've had any player they wanted. They have access to players who would never even think about either Chicago team. Juan Soto wouldn't have signed with the Cubs for any amount of money. And they might be in the exact same position as our White Sox come October.

Grant Taylor is a real closer who costs $750k. Spending $40mil AAV spread across several bullpen pieces is simply not a good idea, it's how you get an 81-81 team. Maybe the 2022 Sox spending was more like $36mil on those guys. Spend the same amount on one hitter.

I didn't watch the last several innings, but I look at the box score and say "who cares". I've now posted that 4 times because I genuinely don't give a s%*# if they win or lose these games. Tanner McDougal throwing a perfect 4 innings with 6 Ks seems like a much more important statistic in terms of building a winning team. Schweitzer being hard hit several times is...unfortunate. This evening, I am more disappointed that the Cubs lost.

I've been pretty consistent in saying the lefties are the issue in the bullpen going forward. Maybe it's less of an issue if Hagen turns into a reliever, but that would not be a good thing. Ideally, all of Schultz, Smith, Oppor are left-handed starters in the near future. But they'd have wild stuff out of the bullpen if it didn't work out. Ky Bush, Schweitzer, Shane Murphy are left-handed options likely to debut/come back from injury next season. Who knows if they'll be any good. I think Murphy will be a good 5th starter. Ellard, C Boozington, Eisert were the main lefties this year who might be around next year (Alexander is not good and I don't think he'll be in the org next year). The Sox could've signed Chapman, but would paying him $11mil have made a difference? He would've been traded, right? These guys are basically fodder who might show something is my point. Ellard and Eisert are definitely MLB players in some capacity. They're rookies and could improve. I wouldn't hold my breath personally. The Booser trade looks like a fail just straight up. But again, I'm also like "who cares". I think it's funnier that the David Stearns Mets have an even worse bullpen despite an unlimited budget. Like he would've done an even worse job with this team.