Laika

Boston is a laughing stock. You love to see it

It might be as simple as a fitness issue. I could see how being 80 pounds overweight might inhibit his ability to hit for power, while being say 40 pounds overweight may not be detrimental. At some point your swing mechanics are affected and out of balance. He was definitely fatter than ever in 2023.

You are talking about 41 games in the 2nd half. Cute narrative aside, there is not much information in that sample. Also, if you want to throw narratives around... lots of young catchers show flashes of greatness and then the physical demands of the position wear them down or limit their actual production. Moreno has barely had to deal with that. He caught 87 games across all levels in 2022 and then 111 this year. Basically - we still haven't seen the pitching in the league adjust to Moreno, and we still don't know how he will hold up. We kind of know what Alejandro Kirk's FLOOR is. We just saw it. We have seen pitchers adjust to him. He sort of looks durable (but too early to reallllly say).

Skill .... Kirk .... Moreno (all skill run values are approximations) DEFENSE Framing: .... +8 .... -2 Arm (SB): .... 0 .... +6 Blocking: .... +4 .... +2 Misc. "good fielding:.... +2 .... +4 BASERUNNING: BsR: .... -8 .... -4 Assuming Moreno is not as bad as his 2023 results which were basically as rough as Kirk's BATTING: BB% .... 10.6% .... 7.3% K% .... 11% .... 18.3% ISO .... .134 .... .112 MaxEV .... 110.1 .... 109.7 Barrel% .... 6.8% .... 4.5% I'm not sure if you can say good or bad on the career batted ball profiles. Moreno has a higher career LD rate and a higher BABIP. Kirk has a higher career FB rate. Moreno probably "earns" some of his higher BABIP, but probably not all of it. Kirk's batted ball profile is superior IF he can find his 2022 and 2021 pop again, I think. So.... DEFENSE + BSR all things considered is probably just a wash. The superior player will be defined by the sticks. I feel like Kirk has better inherent skills; his career B and KK rates are way better and the power potential seems very similar. Moreno however may have better "tools" i.e. he could have skills not showing up yet in the numbers.

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people with limited competence in a particular domain overestimate their abilities.

The point is not to get rid of it Everyone likes the playoffs, generally speaking. They are exciting. It's just to make the contest a weeeee bit more of a proper test of strength

c'mon, meatloaf football's playoff matchups = 1/16 of the season (6.25%) nhl's playoff matchups = 7/82 of the season (8.54%) basketball's playoff matchups = 7/82 of the season (8.54%) [ignoring their stupid play in tournament] world series and alcs/nlcs = 7/162 (4.32%) alds/nlds = 5/162 (3.09%) Relative to regular season length, baseball's postseason matchups are the worst measurement of relative team strength in north american pro sports

100% this is why I kind preferred the 1 game wild card thing; it opens up space for the division winners to just always do a 7 game series in all rounds... although they can't do it now because the worst division winner has been bumped to the WC round. So it's just not fair in that sense. Maybe the solution is the elimination of two divisions. So just NL west and east and AL west and east. Then you can give the division winners a bye, have 4 wild card teams do a single elimination round, then go immediately into 7 game series for the rest of the playoffs. We should also return to the short lived nine game World Series!!!! No f***ing off days.

bWAR also likes Arenado much more than fWAR does, which will influence some writers

No idea. Definitely many writers will blow their load over 10 straight GGs. But Wright - Longoria - Arenado will be a fascinating group to watch slowly be voting eligible as they are so similar (assuming Arenado is done being a star player). Like if David Wright doesn't get in how can you argue for either of the other two? None of them are Hall of Famers to me. Actually, I'll walk that back a bit. Arenado might get there.

Of course wRC+ last 4 years is 76 (sss), 112, 150, 107. that's after five straight prime years of 121 to 133. it's probable that he is done being an elite defender his under the hood offensive numbers don't show any drastic drops but you can see small things like uptick in chase rate the last couple of years, trouble getting the ball in the air this year. very much feels like Evan Longoria circa 2017/2018 probably at the stage of his career where a 3 WAR season is close to as good as you can hope for

absurd I am open-minded about Kim Ng possibly being a great executive because it's not like she had a lot of resources to work with in Miami, or a good organization or ownership group... but it has to be about the body of work. People keep talking about how she is "qualified twice over" to run a team but really very little she has done with the Marlins demonstrates that she is an upper half GM.

Jeremy Pena playoff legend game tonight Max Scherzer leaves with upper back tightness that turns into offseason TOS surgery

Varsho is a weird one. Some of his LF stats are not that great. Austin Hays is a huge "TV dive" defender. KK is up against Luis Robert and Julio Rodriguez and they all have basically the same OAA. It's kind of weird. I feel like literally any of these Blue Jays finalists could win.

GG finalists: Berrios P Kirk C Chapman 3B Varsho LF Kiermaier CF

Wow! But he was going to fly the nest and win a World Series with the Red Sox in the next two years! He's a genius, Jimmy Gluck is. Lucky us he is stickin' around. wow!

Victor Martinez. There's another possible answer for the question of who the f*** ruined Springer, Kirk, Vlad, Chapman this year

It happens all the time doesn't it Jordan Montgomery is going to get like Kevin Gausman money, haha

He is literally part of the Blue Jays front office. If he was so f***ing good you'd think you guys wouldn't, you know, hate the Blue Jays brain trust so much. Click is also the "VP of Baseball Strategy" so you'd think that angry Jays fans would be mad at him specifically, seeing that the two biggest complaints at the end of this year are both baseball strategy things, being the team's day to day offensive approach and the one game decision to pull Berrios.

show us your wife or girlfriend or fwb looking forward to it

No he wouldn't, lmfao. At best he'd get the Trey Mancini deal from last year (2/$14). Might not even get that though.

The front part of these contracts are working out mostly as Philadelphia hoped, yes. Still pretty early for most of them though. Harper 2019 to 2031 Wheeler 2020 to 2024 Realmuto 2021 to 2025 Castellanos 2022 to 2026 Schwarber 2022 to 2025 Walker 2023 to 2026 Turner 2023 to 2033 The Wheeler signing was a total jackpot. Everything else kind of just looks somewhere between bad and okay. But lots of years left, lol.

It's true for Biggio too though. The difference is that Biggio is not a +20 defensive player. He's a minus defensive player. So his oscillation between replacement level player and a 1.5 WAR player is not that interesting anymore. I would say that the "average Jays fan" including many on this board think that Varsho is hopeless with the stick.

The KK signing was such a grand slam that mental midgets like connorp think an MLB squad can do it every year. No. There are almost never quality CF available in free agency for reasonable costs. You either pay big for a Nimmo/Springer level FA or you are weighing Kevin Pillar against a 37 year old Brett Gardner i.e. looking at bench players and backups. 2024 is actually a bumper crop for possible 1 year CF options. Best I have seen in a while. You have Michael A. Taylor, KK, and Harrison Bader who may sign a pillow contract. All three of those guys you could probably just give 500+ PA to and they would provide 2 WAR or close to 2 WAR. There is a big difference between "sacrificing offense" and starting a 90 wRC+ player vs. sacrificing all semblance of offense and starting a 70 wRC+ player. Dude says "WAR schmar" and then makes a mistake that WAR prevents you from making. He's like a cartoon message board buffoon.

I mean yeah. The money made the decision for her I guess.