nrockway

True

2 walks and a single for Hagen in the 5th...his season is ovah! well it's a rain delay, but he's probably not coming back.

...I'm agreeing with you that it's a bad contract, my guy.

he's the Cy Young winner after that Skubal goofiness, Detroit's collapse, and now what might be a CGSO

you seem to have entirely missed the point lol

Tie game lol. Stephenson 4-4, solo shot

Pagan gets out of a bases loaded jam. Reds go to bottom 9 down 1. Should be interesting!

so why ignore the previous two seasons? I'm not trying to make the point that Benintendi is good. The point was you don't pay guys for past performance. Or what qualifies as 'wasted money'. The Mets aren't paying Manaea $75mil for last season's performance, they're paying him for this year and the next two.

Cubs up 4-0 on Mets (more to come this inning probably, Tong is out of the game)

Salvy Perez by contrast has 36 bWAR vs 19 fWAR. Famously good defender Derek Jeter has more fWAR than bWAR. I think baseball-reference is the better website but fangraphs's stats are easier (free) to search.

I dunno about that. Fangraphs gives Grandal 40 WAR and baseball-reference gives him 20 WAR. Their calculations seem dubious to me.

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?