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I believe general consensus is that the ability to limit damage on batted balls is a real skill, but it is much rarer than people think and we don't have a good way to isolate and measure it. The only way we know if a pitcher is a legit "FIP-beater" is if he continually beats it for a bunch of years in a row. And then, by the team we feel confident about it, there's a good chance the pitcher's skills have declined or changed, and so it's still precarious to predict it going forward. I think Matt Cain was the big posterboy for this effect. He beat his FIP significantly like seven years in a row or something -- and then one year he just started getting shelled and never bounced back. The knee-jerk reaction was "oh see well he was just lucky for really long but it caught up with him," but the truth is more likely just that he declined with age and lost whatever skill made him successful. Like any stat that serves as a proxy -- which is nearly all of them -- there's a tremendous amount of information you can get from it, but it doesn't explain everything, and so it's important that we pay attention to nuances and try to resist using the stat in a context it wasn't meant to be used. That's all I'm trying to say, really.

Look up Voros McCracken and DIPS theory, then get back to me. The reason FIP is based on strikeouts, walks, and homeruns is because those are pitching-exclusive events that Voros McCracken determined are statistically stable year over year. Hence "Defensive Independent Pitching." He scaled his totals to ERA, then tested and proved that FIP on year is more predictive of ERA the next year than ERA is. I'm not making this up, Voros McCracken did this work, and published the research. FIP is a FanGraphs stat that stands for "Fielding Independent Pitching." This statistic exclusively measures "things that happened." You can anecdotally look around at things if you want, but these are facts.

I just need to point out that this is not true. FIP is measure of what actually happened without the influence of defense. Depending upon how you're using the number, this can be construed as what the pitcher "deserved," to happen in terms of run prevention, and in that it has been proven to be a better predictor for future ERA than past ERA is, it can sometimes be considered a suggestion of "what should happen," but there is a common misconception that FIP is some kind of projection that lives in the realm of theory and that isn't true -- it is a measure of actual descriptive events that occurred on the field.

Slam-dunk, no doubt future ace Michael Kopech, of course, with his two good pitches and 20 months away from the mound.

All of the contenders

Going into the season with Lopez as the fifth starter instead of signing ANY one of the LITANY of mid-to-back end veterans flying off the board for $8-10mm right now is just motherfucking batshit insane. For this front office not to have budgeted to manage even THAT is absolutely inexcusable. You can't even cry poor JR on this one -- they spent more money on stuff they didn't even need. The team has so much young talent and upside, it certainly could go far. But it will be DESPITE what this front office has done, not because of it. This front office is actively handicapping itself at this point. I used to be a full-on Rick Hahn apologist, and he has driven me completely to the opposite side over the past few years. They just CONTINUOUSLY mis-prioritize their resources and additions every single offseason, insisting on taking two steps forward and one step back for no discernable reason. I'm sorry, I know I'm being dramatic, but it's bonkers. There's just no explanation.

To the person who tweeted: what's "overtly dumb" is using a 300 inning sample of DRS to try to prove ANYTHING. That's not even REMOTELY close to a predictive sample for DRS. It may as well be no info at all. However, you're right about Eaton. Remember, everyone, how much of Eaton's elite RF defense with us had to do with his arm score. We talked at the time about how arm-driven performance were often not sustainable -- not because the arm is worse or the performance wasn't "real," but because good chances for putouts on OF throws are vey random, somewhat rare, and once guys get a reputation for having a good arm, coaches tend to stop sending runners. So in terms of his measurable defensive value, it was always a bit of a mirage to project it going forward anyway, and it was one of the things that turned into a good "selling high" point for Hahn back when he originally traded him. So yeah, given that his actual range was never his strong suit anyway, and given that he's continued accumulate injuries, and given he is now past his physical prime, it would be quite a stretch to expect him to provide any significant defensive value.

Very possible.

There's wisdom in this post, which is that we don't know what the dynamics of negotiations were. Signing for x dollars in early December does not equal signing for x dollars in late January. The White Sox have been heavily rumored to be involved in both trading and signing Joc at different points; it's unlikely that they didn't make an attempt.

The "let's have a mediocre guy who can play against lefties AND righties instead of a platoon of guys that can crush one each" argument was lost before most of us were even born.

The expectations this board is putting on yoelqui cespedes and/or Oscar colas to be near-ready, low risk MLB contributors are confusing and seemingly unfounded.

Yep. To be fair though, all of these do lol

FWIW it just came out yesterday that Moore broke off negotiations with SoftBank to consider MLB offers

No, looks like I typo'd the year. I meant if he wants to go again in 2022.

It sounds like he wanted to stay with NYY above all else, but when that went out the door, it was going to take a significant amount of money to keep him in the MLB. Which is to say, there were higher offers here, but not higher ENOUGH offers. Also, Jim Allen suggests that although it's a two-year deal, the Eagles have agreed that if Tanaka wants to go to MLB again in 2021, they'll release him.

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2021/01/masahiro-tanaka-return-japan-signs-rakuten-eagles.html White Sox running out of pitchers to sign. TBH, if he wasn't going to sign with Chicago, this was the best case scenario.

It's crazy how high they have had to go to get people to take their money this year. But good on them. Hopefully this takes them out of the running on the few remaining established starters that remain.

If you're on a message board complaining that people are posting too much, I think you're doing it wrong, man. I'm just saying, when employers are combing your social media before they hire you, they aren't going to criticize your Soxtalk Reputation Score.

Guys, you should really spend none of your life worrying about Soxtalk emoji reactions.

Chicken or egg?

Ok, last 15 years? They ran top-5 payrolls for a few years after the 2005 WS win.

I just don't know why people think this. Nothing that's occurred in the last 20 years supports the idea that this team will spend beyond the 50th percentile at best, no matter what the roster needs.

Right but his point is that Zack Wheeler was a free agent, not three years from being a free agent.. If you want to project what a contract extension looks like for a given player, the most accurate comp BY FAR is "comparable players that extended at the same level of service time." Essentially, the teams/players are pricing risk against free agency.

No idea really, but Tanaka has already kind of gone there, he has his own clothing brand (MXTX or something) that Rakuten helps him market. Also he's made a dick-ton of money already (from the Yankees), a LOT more than most Japanese players ever make, so it's possible that maximizing earnings isn't the biggest thing. My guess is he knows he's gonna go back and get a few seasons in NPB at some point anyway, he's just trying to figure out if it's now or later. Because at his age, once he goes he isn't coming back.

I think it's definitely a possibility. Hard to know what his priorities are, but with Sugano getting $10mm/yr out of the Giants -- that's a huge ceiling to break through for NPB players. Sugano was already the highest paid player at just under $6mm before, so 4/40 is a precedent-setter. Add that to the fact that there's nothing even remotely close to a salary cap or luxury tax in the NPB, and what each team spends is really up to what the corporation that owns them feels like doing from year to year, and then consider the Rakuten is huge, rich company that's grown a ton in the past five years and is also where Tanaka pitched before, and that Tanaka is an absolute legend in Sendai, having led the Eagles to their only championship the year before he left for MLB, and that the Eagles are currently a contender whose main weakness is a couple big holes in the starting rotation -- and that's a run-on sentence that suggests I think the possibility is ripe for Rakuten to step up and give Tanaka some real money to come home and lead another charge. I think it comes down to how badly he wants to get a WS ring. Because if he's looking at 1/15 over here, he may not be able to get quite that much per year in NPB, but he might get pretty close and with a lot more in overall guaranteed money.