nrockway

I'd want to see Shuster, might as well try to get the most out of the Bummer trade ?! Although, Soroka was throwing his fastball a couple MPH faster out of the bullpen, right? Did he keep that up through 4 innings? If he can sit 95, Soroka might be an OK 5th starter. Flexen did that for one start, touching 97, then came back to Earth.

Shewmake was just....bad. I'm disappointed, I thought he might show that he's at least a useful utility player. The bat is one thing but his fielding is also way worse than I expected. Remillard is straight up better than him, which is not saying much, but there's worse AAAA fodder. He's trying to be too cute with the baserunning lately but I think that's a top down initiative: take the risk for an extra base (though who knows what the hell happened at third base today). I think that's dumb baseball personally, but I guess this team has to manufacture runs in any way it can. BTW, Remillard's compiled 0.5 WAR and is sitting at .867 OPS through 8 games while playing above average defense. That's about the best you could ask for for a AAA player who gets called up every so often due to injury. I'm a fan, plus I like his batting stance.

I don't think it makes that much sense for position players outside of catchers and maybe CF/SS. They already do it with starting pitchers, it's called a 5 man rotation. Maybe, if anything, you give a guy two days off in a row occasionally and it's good for his morale. Making millions of dollars or not playing a ball game, everybody likes a weekend.

hey are we still mad about the Julks trade

Well, do you think it's gonna stay like that? Judge was under .700 OPS less than a month ago, now he's close to 1.000. It does change fast, like caulfield said. Burger has a 2 home run game and where does that put his OPS? Clearly Burger is a better player than .500 OPS. Watching him play prior to the injury, I think he's actually improved his game. Of course, I was happy with trading him and this is one of the reasons why. He's a very good hitter but I imagine you don't hit too good when you're constantly in pain. My back is starting to hurt on a semi regular basis and I don't hit too good either, in this way me and Burger are brothers.

Is Edwin Diaz cooked? They gave him $100mil to miss an entire season due to an injury he sustained celebrating an exhibition game victory, now he's pitching to a 5.5 ERA and giving up like 100 homers a game. He has a blown save in 4 of his last 6 outings. He just gave up 4 runs to 1 out against the Marlins. It's funny to me when bad things happen to Steve Cohen even though I kinda like the Mets. They seem to think they're making the playoffs this year, maybe they want to sell their farm for Kopech and Fedde.

He's looked pretty good to my eye even if the ERA doesn't match up. I still think it's a fine trade even if Burger returns to form and Eder never becomes anything. Take a risk on top end talent, Burger, an oft-injured DH, wasn't leading this team anywhere. Look how well that's worked out for the Marlins, they could use some young arms. I think it would be hilarious if we traded back for him. Eloy replacement/Ramos sub. I'd be hesitant to swap Wilfred Veras for him, but that should get it done. I think the Cubs might actually be interested in him if he starts hitting the ball again.

That’s awesome, kudos ?

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...