BTS

Hooray! Unlikable Rays Lose! Ban TheHurl Soon.

You recently called Jeff Hoffman the most valuable asset in baseball. This should cause you to reconsider how firm your baseball-related opinions should be.

The "I judge with my eyes" crowd tends to be the "I judge by ERA" crowd. They just don't realize it. It's easy to attach a narrative to a guy experiencing good or bad luck with run prevention. I'm sure this Hutchison debate was being held re: Kluber and Carrasco earlier in the year on Cleveland forums.

League average LD rate is 21%, and that tends to fluctuate randomly. The GB is a skill, but it's accounted for in xFIP. Neither are interesting starting points in trying to explain why his ERA will continue to exceed his xFIP.

Obviously there are situations in which a pitcher's ERA doesn't match his DIPS and there' something to it. Buehrle's ERA was lower than his FIP, people looked into it, and found that he's an absolute elite defender and that makes up most of the difference. Matt Cain had something going on. Knuckleballers and guys with elite changeups tend to give up fewer runs than DIPS suggests they should. I think what frustrates a lot of people is the IP threshold at which you start to take a serious look at it. Half the forum is calling for Aaron Loup's demotion even though he's been outstanding because they're looking at ERA in a 30-inning sample. People couldn't stop praising Sanchez because his ERA was shiny over a 50 inning sample. There's a time to start taking a serious look at ERA-xFIP discrepancies. That time isn't after 50 innings, and the evidence suggests it isn't even after a few hundred innings.

Goddammit King, I can't wait until you become an adult and stop posting pics of 12 year old girls.

Brandon Morrow has a career ERA 0.24 higher than his xFIP. BABIP is league average. HR/FB is league average. So we're talking about a hair less than a quarter of a run per 9 innings over a relatively small sample (769 innings). That equates to approximately 20 runs over his career. Brandon Morrow, xFIP buster extraordinaire, has under-performed his xFIP by about 20 runs in his career. DRS has him as a very poor defensive pitcher at -7 runs. There are error bars on that, so we'll call it 5-10. That means that in 769 innings, the totality of Brandon Morrow's xFIP breaking-ness is somewhere in the vicinity of 10-15 runs. What's more likely: 1) the many things outside his control (luck, sos, team defense) have combined to cause a minuscule 10-15-run discrepancy between his xFIP and FIP (that's one run every 60 innings or so) 2) his ERA is his true talent, and that 10-15 run discrepancy over almost 800 innings speaks volumes about his abilities as a pitcher. Anyone with even the smallest shred of sensibility should default to the 'eh, there's probably nothing there' position. Because the discrepancy is small, and many, many factors are at play.

I get that he MIGHT be good, and I can certainly see wanting to get in now, but 'impact bat' sounds like what you'd give for the finished product after a lot more innings of certainty.

I'm looking forward to seeing the return, because I'm not really understanding the hype just yet. Mediocre minor league career with no real prospect hype. I think Kiley McDaniel called him a back end starter in the bigs in the preseason, and I'm not sure anyone was higher on him than that. Then 39 innings later he's returning an impact major league bat? I mean, the numbers are great, but 39 innings. Would be pretty unprecedented for people to buy in this early when it comes to making a legit trade for him.

Actually yeah, if he can finish up strong with 4-5 great years. I think the wrist issues in his early 30's might have ruined it for him though.

Poor GD can't do this yet

Is someone going to move an impact bat to gamble on Ross though? I can't see it.

The most surprising to me was that GD was tercet from the old forum.

I don't think that's really true. I would hope that the forum would welcome a Red Sox fan that contributed to discussion, but admitted once that 'you know, even if my team is out of it Id love to play spoiler to the jays down the stretch'. Not banworthy at all. Now, a sox fan that did nothing but s*** on jays players with every post is obviously a different story.

I think we'll see that when Ortiz and a couple of the generations best relievers get in. WAR is a nice quick and dirty guideline though, especially for pitchers.

I have to say this thread was a resounding success. Filled with intrigue, e-fisticuffs, ban threats, and butthurt TwistedLogic posts. I really just wanted to talk about about how the playoffs would be easy to make.

Ugh...

I think King was implying that my offer was high-strung and emotional, when in reality I'd pay almost anything for a DDL playoff berth.

Would it be uncouth of me to mention Evan Longoria? 29, should be at ~43 fWAR by the end of the year, and still chugging along at a 4-win pace. Decent bet to finish his contract well over 60 fWAR if he stays healthy into his 30s.

Ugh, two pages defending Hurl's honour with paragraph-length posts. Goddammit. Anyone else need a white knight?

I just don't understand why anybody would care. Spamming the forum is annoying. Posting just to get a rise out of people is annoying. He's not doing either of those things. He stated, once, when the conversation went in that direction, that he hopes his favourite team knocks a divisional rival out in the last series of the season. Just look at the absolute garbage posted on this forum. Navarro strikes out with a man on and there are 6 people in the GDT calling him a useless fat piece of s***, but Hurl positing once about how he'd like the Rays to beat the Jays in the season's last series offends people's sensibilities? Come the f*** on.

If I know TRM, and I do, he's a man of his word and his reputation is important to him. The offer will come. Have you checked your inbox?

TwistedLogic is dumn

Well that's embarrassing. These bush-league antics are what, until today, has made the BBDL the inferior of the forum 20-team leagues.

I worded that poorly. I know what it means, I'm just not sure why you posted it. Did the Rays lose on a bases loaded walk or something?