Balta1701

That’s the U.K. right? They decided to use their vaccine to give one dose to as many people as possible. Honestly I wouldn’t do this, but it may well save lives. It’s a country wide gamble. But it is based on the idea that the supply coming to them will be limited, which may be true. At least they can get the shots to..SOMEONE.

Said it before and I’ll say it again for the new year, they will Papelbon him. They may want him to start, but they won’t be able to afford to develop him as a starter.

Yes he could suck. He could also be a 4 WAR pitcher next year. You know what we know about him? He came up, could throw strikes, and had the stuff to get outs. He looked like a solid major league starter. He will never be Max Scherzer, I can promise that. Yes he could suck, he could also be an all star the next 6 seasons in a row. The odds of him sucking and being out of baseball in 2 years seem very low, as are the odds of him being an every year all star. But if he doesn’t get hurt again, and Texas controls his innings, there is a very good chance he’s a solid starter for 6 Rangers seasons.

Lynn would want to extend now because his last contract was that of a pitcher people thought was falling apart. 3/$30 from the Rangers is nothing. He has earned $56 million in his career. If he can get 2/$40 as an extension, suddenly he is nearly (counting this year) doubling his career earnings over 3 years. With the uncertainty of the lockout next offseason, if you could get that in writing right now, without having to worry about being stuck taking a 1 year cheap deal in March, you take that.

I mean you know why I wouldn’t? Because he didn’t destroy BHam and Charlotte last year. Not his fault!

Yeah, but there aren't that many black RV owners so we don't need to worry about that.

They may not have had the young position players, but they do have young pitching in the form of Thompson and Kelley.

You know what's really driving me nuts? I mean, first of all, "panic" has been the right response what, 80 or 90% of this year? But even beyond that, here's the one driving me nuts. I have been telling Jack Parkman that this vaccine will work and we can get there all year. That the trials were working, that they were being conducted well. Earlier this fall, I said that the plan of 10+ million injections this month was feasible. We have that many shots produced and it's not this hard to distribute the flu vaccine. If they can't find people to give it to, give me a shot for crying out loud I'll take one right now. Yet somehow, only 2 million people have gotten it in the entire month. The execution of this has been so poor it has made Jack Parkman's worries correct. (Jack, no offense. Maybe a little offense).

And there are Congresspeople who don't live in their district. They aren't voting twice, and at some point they were legally allowed to vote in the district where they registered.

I doubt Fraud, because deliberate fraud is extremely rare as people know the penalties are huge. Mistakes and signatures that didn't match - absolutely. There's no reason to re-count those to prove that the votes that were counted were legal because those votes weren't counted. Once you've done a pass for signatures that didn't match well, and you take the ones that were judged to match and ask again if they match, you can't be all that surprised if they match.

No. This is re-counting the votes that were already counted. Ones where someone clearly did something wrong were already rejected and not in the pool of counted votes. Signatures that didn't match were already rejected. The ballot where someone accidentally voted for 2 people were already rejected. They were re-counting the votes that counted and asking if they still counted.

JMO - Mark! Has a better case than Baines. He’s in the “not always but sometimes” range in career WAR. He wasn’t ever the best pitcher in the game, but he might well be one of the last high inning starters ever. He has a no hitter, perfect game, and is tied for the most reliable closer in World Series history. He is not a first ballot guy, but let’s wait a few years. There are 4 current starters who are likely in - Verlander, Kershaw, Greinke, and Scherzer. Mark! Has more career bWAR than Hamels, meaning if we start talking about anyone other than those 4 making it we have to have a discussion about the differences between bWAR and fWAR. In bWAR, Buehrle looks right there. I want to see how his numbers look 5 or 7 years from now as the game evolves. If Sale stops around 45 and we don’t see anyone else get into the 60 range as a starter any time soon, what does that say about Mark! If he’s the last of a generation?

Didn't Cleveland dump him to Cincinnati in the middle of a pennant race for making a show on the mound of throwing the ball over the fence? That's a little more than trolling media and fans.

And then he'll be so effective in a few outings that the White Sox will need him to cover the closer's role, and he'll be there permanently.

No but that’s a simple and straightforward way to demonstrate how weak and poorly planned the start of this has been. That is exactly how you communicate the number in a way to be useful to people - if I told you that it was 2 million in 15 days would you be able to figure out if that is fast or slow? This is far more easily readable and has the benefit of being true based on the current pace. Turning it into that clock is good communication of a more complex number.

You mean like citing a guy's numbers from 5 years ago in 62 innings as a rookie? Quite simply, if FIP is supposed to be predictive of future performance, then you should not find a consistent trend of FIP being lower than ERA for a pitcher every single year over 500 innings by a similar amount every year. Statistically, that is quite unlikely, unless there is something that is not being captured by simply random behavior - which is the conclusion one would draw here. Over his career, Javier Vazquez was similar - an FIP consistently better than his ERA in many seasons (not all but longer career). It is interesting to see that feature in the pitcher I'm comparing him to.

Because you're the one who defined excluding stats because they make your argument look better as cherry picking stats earlier in this thread. And second, because consistently, 4 years in a row, his FIP has not been a good indicator for his ERA, and you're trying to blame that on Pittsburgh's defense while cherry-picking it in Houston to avoid this being a consistent story.

Well at least we know you no longer have a problem with Cherry-picking someone's stats.

In...62 innings pitched as a rookie. And that's the only time. You're trying to tell me that his FIP is higher than his ERA in those 2 years because his HR rate is high and his BABIP is high. You say he struggled with his BABIP in 2017 - it was .315 that year, and his career mark is .316. In 2018, his BABIP is .294, his HR/FB is 10.2%, and yet his FIP is 0.47 below his ERA, a difference of 0.03 from 2020. The years where the FIP and ERA difference is larger - his BABIP is lower and his HR%ages were lower! This is one of those things that has hung with a guy, quite consistently, for 4 years, and "it's entirely by chance" seems inadequate.

2017, FIP 4.38, ERA 4.77, difference of 0.39. 2020 Pirates, FIP 3.42, ERA 3.86, difference of 0.44. I mean, that 2nd decimal place, that is...um....everything?

So which of those describes the Houston Astro’s?

This ballot makes me feel worse about Rolen and Buehrle. At least I just learned that Rolen and LaRussa didn’t like each other at all.

So here’s one issue..every year of his career, his ERA has been worse than his FIP, by half a run or so. This is actually pretty consistent, across both his time with the Astros and Pirates. This is the case consistently across 496.2 innings and with 2 teams. Is that predictive or not? If not, how is it happening? Again, I feel like I’m describing Javy Vazquez here.

And speaking of ugh...