TaylorStSox

So sometimes they reflect what we see with our own eyes? That's great. They're also completely wrong a lot of the time. They're unreliable, at best.

Probably because defensive metrics are absolutely useless.

Baseball is one of the few games where "trying harder" will turn into bad results. You want guys out there relaxed and having fun. Pitching is contagious as well.

No, I take cinema way more seriously. ?

Honestly, I think baseball manager is probably the most overrated position in sports. Just make the line up card and get out of the way.

Yeah, like the last thing we need is a good manager winning a couple games this year with good decision making. Seriously. If we're gonna suck, might as well make it funny.

Am I the only person in "fun-bad" mode this season? I haven't been upset about a single play. It's all hilarious. ?

Like I said, we've had great injury luck over the years. We're do. Eloy doesn't concern me at all. He could probably hold his own already. I think Robert's gonna be a really fast riser once he gets healthy, so that doesn't concern me much either. Hansen concerns me, but it's the nature of pitching. There's been some major plusses this year too. Collins, Rutherford, Adolfo and Cease have all taken big steps. I'm not a believer in Burger, so I don't really care about that. This is just how rebuilding goes. Some guys fail and some guys surprise you.

Has anybody considered that Yoan's hammy is still bothering him? I honestly don't know.

We got some major karma to pay back to the injury gods for all these years of health. Might as well do it while we suck.

That's really dramatic.

Didn't Robert and Jimenez only get put on the 7 day DL?

He's fluent.

The worst part is that he definitely would have signed a cheap extension just from the love of his heart!

I disagree. If the kid fails, you should have it rubbed in your face like you try to do to other posters. Unfortunately, probably half the board wants the kid to fail now because of threads like this.

Or maybe you can just give him some time to figure out the strike zone first. My God. We've become such a culture of instant gratification.

Yeah, that guy just doesn't like Yoan and won't just come out an say it. If you just don't like somebody, just admit it and move on. To this day, I can't stand AJ and never will. Whatever.

What you're asking for is really advanced, there aren't a whole lot of hitters that can do it with power and a lot are RH. That's why a lot of LH power hitters (which I think Yoan is) are dead pull hitters that walk a lot. To me, he looks like he's having problems with pitch recognition, the strike zone and being in between. I think he should focus on nothing but his approach. I wouldn't touch his swing. I do think he can be a lot more than a pull hitter, but 1 thing at a time. Once he gets a better understanding of the strike zone, I think he can start driving outside pitches into LF.

It's not uncommon at all for a switch hitter to have pretty big power splits and approaches.

What I don't want out of a LH Moncada is a slap hitter that's spraying the ball. I want him to identify pitches he can hit, and crush them. I want him pulling the ball. I want him laying off pitches he can't crush and taking walks. Now, I like a Moncada that sprays the ball from the right side of the plate though and uses his speed more.

You realize I just described 2014 Mike Trout?

But seriously, I don't think you're ever going to see a guy that's fighting a lot of pitches off and poking pitches the opposite way when he's fooled. I think you're going to see a more 3 outcome type of hitter who gets some extra hits because of his speed. I'm thinking at his peak, you're probably looking at a .265/.400 35 HR type of hitter with a lot of k's. The bad thing about LH's with pretty swings is that once they get started, it's hard to stop.

You ever try to make a "mid swing adjustment" on a fastball? I think you're saying you want him to fight more pitches off. That's a pitch recognition thing. A mid swing adjustment sounds like a great way to break your own wrist. I'm also just giving you a hard time. Yeah, I want him to fight more pitches off though.

Calling Moncada's swing "robotic" is mind-boggling to me. It's like we're watching 2 different people swing a baseball bat. If you mean "repeatable," then yeah, I agree and he should keep repeating it because there's absolutely nothing wrong with his swing. In fact, it's one of the prettier left handed swings you'll see. If you want to criticize his understanding of an MLB strike zone, then we can talk. He has a lot to learn in that regard. I definitely don't want my 23 year old star prospect making "mid swing adjustments." That's an incredibly bad idea for a myriad of reasons, most notably, heatlh.

I don't think 28-51 teams have high leverage situations.