Mariners (Hancock?) vs Blue Jays (Cease): 8/28/26, 7:15pm

[hanton]

7 minutes ago, Omar said:

Does he have the slug to stick?  I guess we will find out next season (whenever that will be).

he looks like a 5 year veteran, I hope that don't try and change his approach/swing, I'll take the lower power numbers with a .750 OPS + good CF + good fundamentals

[hanton]

10 minutes ago, HomeRunHomer said:

Looks good so far but we really need a bigger sample to evaluate him. Just can never trust small samples with guys with zero power.

Yea I agree, the sample size is so small, yet to see 4/5 start catches - just needs some opportunities

[Laika]

Lovely game 

Nathan Lukes can golf an offspeed pitch as good as anybody 

[G-Snarls]

Nice win with some offense and a Guardians loss?

TYVM

 

 

[Brownie19]

1 hour ago, Omar said:

Springer Dinger!!!!!!!!!

Don't look now, but he's up to a 110 wRC+.  Not bad after he battled thru all the injuries early.  Still has some juice in his bat.  Love to see it.

His wRC+ is north of 120 since June 15th.

[ComeTogether]

Got to get back to 500

Sweep this series first. 

 

 

 

[SeranthonySantander]

Double post

[SeranthonySantander]

33 minutes ago, ComeTogether said:

Got to get back to 500

Sweep this series first. 

 

 

 

Getting paid to do jays playoff tracking 

[Spanky__99]

12 hours ago, Terminator said:

Gotta win with Cease on the hill tonight.

And if we win this series and the next one against the Guardians, we can at least open the playoff tracker thread back up.

The tracker is right here...

[Spanky__99]

7 hours ago, Omar said:

Glorious WIN!

 

 

 

[max silver]

15 hours ago, hanton said:

he looks like a 5 year veteran, I hope that don't try and change his approach/swing, I'll take the lower power numbers with a .750 OPS + good CF + good fundamentals

I hope the team works with Bateman to add a little more juice to his bat. He's pretty dramatically overproducing compared to his expected numbers and is a prime candidate for regression over the longer term. His .260 xwOBA is horrific and correlates to something resembling 65-75 wRC+ or thereabouts and that won't play to any degree other than a role like a 5th outfielder at best.

[max silver]

16 hours ago, neverbeenhere said:

ya, maybe Vladdy should get juiced 

125 MPH piss rocket ground balls incoming. 

[max silver]

15 hours ago, Brownie19 said:

Don't look now, but he's up to a 110 wRC+.  Not bad after he battled thru all the injuries early.  Still has some juice in his bat.  Love to see it.

His wRC+ is north of 120 since June 15th.

I think George was held back by the broken toe initially coming off of the injured list but he's been producing closer to something resembling a normal age based regression from last season for over 3 months now. The first few weeks back post broken toe were rough but he's largely found his footing since then. 

Apr. 29-May 17

53 PA

32 wRC+/-0.4 FWAR

86.5 MPH EV

May 18-present

317 PA

127 wRC+/1.4 FWAR

88.5 MPH EV

[hanton]

4 minutes ago, max silver said:

I hope the team works with Bateman to add a little more juice to his bat. He's pretty dramatically overproducing compared to his expected numbers and is a prime candidate for regression over the longer term. His .260 xwOBA is horrific and correlates to something resembling 65-75 wRC+ or thereabouts and that won't play to any degree other than a role like a 5th outfielder at best.

I think we ought to hold off on the advanced stats, xwOBA is sample size sensitive isn't it?  might need more time for it to stabilize - it's only 73 AB's (unless you think otherwise?)

 

 

 

 

[John_Havok]

53 minutes ago, hanton said:

I think we ought to hold off on the advanced stats, xwOBA is sample size sensitive isn't it?  might need more time for it to stabilize - it's only 73 AB's (unless you think otherwise?)

 

 

 

 

Even not using xwOBA... use babip. Sure, it takes like 800 batted balls for babip to stabilize but you're never going to see a guy run it at .421 for that long.  

He's a slap hitter than will likely run a babip that's higher than normal due to his footspeed, but we're talking about a guy with an ISO of .068 which is right in line with his projections. 

His fallback is supposed to be a good eye at the plate and takes a bunch of walks. Well, that works in the minors where there are semi-wild arms in every team's starting 5 or 6 and bullpen. His MLB 5.1% BB rate is so much lower than his minor league career average BB rate of around 17.5%. K rate is 21% up here so far and career 16% in the minors. The 5% jump in K rate makes total sense as it happens to virtually every hitter coming up. But a massive drop in walk rate means his batting eye skill probably isn't going to translate since MLB pitchers see a noodle bat and realize they don't have to waste pitches outside the zone and he can't hurt them.

His closest comparable right now is Chandler Simpson, except Simpson is another tier faster, strikes out less than half as much and squares up more baseballs.  Simpson's babip is .335 (this is probably slightly higher than Bateman's would be right now) and is better than Bateman as a base stealer and overall baserunner, but Bateman is definitely better defensively. 

So... to get all they can out of Bateman, they have 2 options. Lean into the slappy slap slap and try to get more solidly hit balls to find holes at roughly .330 babip and teach him how to steal bases better so they have Chandler Simpson with elite CF D... or try to get him some pop. 

 

[max silver]

42 minutes ago, hanton said:

I think we ought to hold off on the advanced stats, xwOBA is sample size sensitive isn't it?  might need more time for it to stabilize - it's only 73 AB's (unless you think otherwise?)

 

 

 

 

That's an interesting thought. I did a bit of reading up on expected statistics and found conflicting opinions online. It's generally stated that expected statistics weren't meant to be predictive in nature and that results tend to be more predictive by comparison. At the same time I've also seen it suggested that in a short sample such as with Bateman that the expected statistics may be more predictive in nature as they more directly outline true player skill vs the on field results. I do think this is an interesting topic of discussion and hopefully someone more versed on statistical analysis will eventually chime in.

[John_Havok]

6 minutes ago, max silver said:

That's an interesting thought. I did a bit of reading up on expected statistics and found conflicting opinions online. It's generally stated that expected statistics weren't meant to be predictive in nature and that results tend to be more predictive by comparison. At the same time I've also seen it suggested that in a short sample such as with Bateman that the expected statistics may be more predictive in nature as they more directly outline true player skill vs the on field results. I do think this is an interesting topic of discussion and hopefully someone more versed on statistical analysis will eventually chime in.

The way I simplify it in my head is this: xwOBA (and other x stats) says what would most likely have happened on average to a ball hit that hard at that launch angle. It's commonly criticized limitation is that it doesn't take spray angle into account, but when you look at babip alongside it... you can basically put the picture together.  Right now Bateman is getting very lucky with ground balls finding holes that aren't hit that particularly well. 

The next obvious question from people that don't like that it doesn't take spray angle into account is actually quite simple. Defensive players are allowed to move where they setup defensively (within limits) and therefore using spray angle introduces defense to the equation, which is not a constant. 

[max silver]

18 minutes ago, John_Havok said:

The way I simplify it in my head is this: xwOBA (and other x stats) says what would most likely have happened on average to a ball hit that hard at that launch angle. It's commonly criticized limitation is that it doesn't take spray angle into account, but when you look at babip alongside it... you can basically put the picture together.  Right now Bateman is getting very lucky with ground balls finding holes that aren't hit that particularly well. 

The next obvious question from people that don't like that it doesn't take spray angle into account is actually quite simple. Defensive players are allowed to move where they setup defensively (within limits) and therefore using spray angle introduces defense to the equation, which is not a constant. 

I would expect that a small sample size player with a massive gulf between his expected statistics and on field results could expect the results and expected statistics to slowly even out more over time. I did look at the expected statistics on ground balls for Bateman and they paint exactly the same picture as you are doing. 

Ground Balls

wOBA .347

xWOBA .251

Bateman's contract profile is largely ground ball based as he places the ball on the ground 64% of the time. I see little chance of him continuing to enjoy his current level of success particularly once opposition khacki's start to accumulate sufficient data to appropriately place their infield defenders to guard against Bateman's tendencies.

[John_Havok]

5 minutes ago, max silver said:

I would expect that a small sample size player with a massive gulf between his expected statistics and on field results could expect the results and expected statistics to slowly even out more over time. I did look at the expected statistics on ground balls for Bateman and they paint exactly the same picture as you are doing. 

Ground Balls

wOBA .347

xWOBA .251

Bateman's contract profile is largely ground ball based as he places the ball on the ground 64% of the time. I see little chance of him continuing to enjoy his current level of success particularly once opposition khacki's start to accumulate sufficient data to appropriately place their infield defenders to guard against Bateman's tendencies.

Yup. It won't be long before its "just pitch him here, and he'll ground it to here about 60% of the time, foul it off someitmes or might get a seeing eye weak hit to there maybe but who cares... Oh, and don't worry about middle-middle either, he can't hurt you."

Good solid base of tools and can still be a 4th OF on most teams that gets strategically deployed but as a major league starter he needs to make some improvements this offseason in the lab. He should certainly invest some training time into bunting too as that could prevent defenses from being able to deploy in their favour a decent amount of time. 

[SeranthonySantander]

They are saying Bateman won’t stick.  I see hall of fame calibre player.  Think ichiro.

[SeranthonySantander]

On 8/28/2026 at 12:39 PM, SeranthonySantander said:

Good chance we sweep and lika opens the playoff tracker thread by Sunday 

Accomplished by Saturday