Laika

ah cool I bet he hits a grand slam

This means they don't really like IKF as a shortstop (makes sense) Clement is a stud 3B so this might actually be the best infield defensive alignment they can put out there.

I wonder if the idea is to basically hide him from the league until the playoffs

Dunno about low leverage, but leverage middle relief / bridge stuff. Like, imagine Scherzer is struggling through 3 playoff innings. Do you want to bring in Bassitt or Berrios or Lauer? Or do you want to bring in Trey f***ing Yesavage for three innings? Even if the game is very close. I know my answer...

If they were to bring up Yesavage they probably use him as a 2-3 inning guy.

And why the Yankees have stuck with Volpe all year (defensive projections don't care about a few balls thrown away in 2025), etc. All these teams, well the good ones, run on projected performance. Of course there are opportunities to realize your projection model is wrong and win extra games by making quicker decisions. And yeah the timing of Yimi being hurt and Little/Varland sucking has been part of Hoffman just remaining the closer. Maybe.

Trevor Rogers has one bad start this year and it was his second game. Every other outing he has gone 5.1 + IP with more strikeouts than walks. 12 of his 15 starts have been 6+ innings. Possibly the *best pitcher in baseball* if you shrink the IP cutoff to let him be on the list. Third in FIP behind Skenes and Skubal. First in ERA. Would be nice to be the first team to get to him. 93 Stuff+ with plus Locations, it should be doable.

Hoffman 260 Batters Faced in 2025 Santander 209 PA HR rate for pitchers takes like 1320 BF to be 50% stable Just funny to compare stat reliability between a full season RP getting slammed (and now everyone thinks he sucks) and a position player who got hurt after 200 PA. The only pitching stats stable in 260 BF or less would be things like K rate, BB rate, GB and FB rates. And of course more granular stuff like velo and stuff metrics which stabilize quickly. You (we) should be regressing Hoffman's HR/FB rate like 80% to the mean (whatever that is). All slash line stats are not nearly stable. LD rate and HR/FB not close to stable. However, for hitters 209 PA is enough for 50%+ stability on all of: K rate, BB rate, HR rate, ISO, GB and FB This means nothing because Santander was hurt so you can just throw out most of his 2025 sample, but if that caveat didn't exist you could say that Santander's 2025 numbers actually mean more than Hoffman's. As far as determining how good the player is. That is to say, if you think Jeff Hoffman sucks than to be consistent you should not even want Santander to come back.

Insane stat line in 2025. Complete game, 2 hits, 1 walk, 0 runs, 9 strikeouts, 100 pitches I think that's a 91 game score which would be 4th best in 2025 Skubal, Wheeler, and Sonny Gray all have complete games 1 or 2 hits and and 11+ Ks

I was wondering if Ernie was the king of the "soft fly ball" So here is everybody in 2025 with 200+ PA and a FB% over 40% with a Hard Hit% under 25%. This is BIS hard hit rate, not statcast. Player FB% Hard Hit% Jose Herrera 43.80% 18.80% Tyler Fitzgerald 43.80% 20.80% Evan Carter 40.80% 20.90% Mauricio Dubón 40.30% 21.00% Michael Massey 51.30% 21.20% Angel Martínez 42.70% 22.20% Nolan Arenado 44.80% 23.50% Cole Young 43.90% 23.60% Wilmer Flores 44.90% 23.70% Ernie Clement 41.80% 23.80% Jake Fraley 41.50% 24.60%

prove this please lol vs. Power/Finesse Pitchers I Split G GS PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS TB GDP HBP SH SF IBB ROE BAbip tOPS+ vs. Power 464 808 723 180 25 2 10 66 60 161 .249 .320 .331 .651 239 24 18 3 4 2 10 .306 98 vs. avg.P/F 550 1203 1112 307 43 8 17 110 65 190 .276 .321 .375 .696 417 29 12 7 7 1 10 .318 111 vs. Finesse 534 1343 1258 325 62 6 8 109 55 176 .258 .297 .336 .633 423 33 16 9 5 2 12 .294 92

okay but somebody give IKF the memo because I believe he has struck out looking in important spots twice now lol

Hoffman the scapegoat but the offense was the bigger issue. They should have been expected to put up 6+ runs last night. Springer not putting the ball in play with the go ahead run on 3rd and 1 out was gross. Vlad doing nothing against the pitchers he faced, shameful. John Schneider benching his own son Davis and using three other RHB replacements before him was a sackable offense

So in the playoffs the thing other teams should do against Toronto is just surprise them and throw their SP5 for game 1. They'll have no idea what to do with 90 poo. Jason Alexander is 33% changeups and 40% 90mph sinkers I understand that the changeup is good and maybe his command was on but realllllly all they had to do was sit on one pitch or the other the entire AB and swing for the fences Javier should at least be a more standard PA with his average velo fastball so hopefully Vlad doesn't let 12 horrendous swings loose like last night

She's 49. I dunno what the aging curve is for umpires but it's not like her eyes and reaction times are going to get better at 50+ All downhill from here. Hopefully she develops a huge edge and just becomes a sideshow, for entertainment reasons. When the challenge system comes into play the umps will matter less anyway. The system will erase all of the big mistakes.

It's completely asinine and I am not happy about it. I would rather see Davis Schneider up there in these spots, going for a big result. He should be above France and IKF and be the #1 RHB pinch hitter. First up in a big spot. Last night was insane. It was Steven Okert. They pinch hit IKF for Barger, then France for Loperfido, then let Gimenez hit... all in the 8th inning... while their best RHB pinch hitter sat and watched...

Feel bad for Varland He looked great and threw strike 3 to Walker but ump blew it

Weird tries against Alexander Not sure what they are getting fooled by

Don't wanna jinx him but Berrios' fastball has some action to it tonight. Stuff looks good.

As win!

Kremer, Sugano, Morton, Gibson, Povich, Young, broken Eflin Hilarious!!!! This collection of AAA or NPB or should-be-retired quality SP makes Jose Berrios look like Curt Schilling!!!!

A lot to prove for 2026. Chip on shoulder team.

Yeah the home-road reality tilts things even more. The Jays have more home games, where they are great and the Yankees have a bad road trip left. That matters. Boston has a lot of home games left though, so that kind of sucks.

Good point. 37-38 on the road, they are a different team away from Sacramento. Sox also lost Roman Anthony of course.

In light of the above I feel like we should want Boston to take 2 of 3 from New York this weekend. Take the series, hang two Ls on the Yankees, but don't sweep and come out of it with extreme confidence. Yes, Boston and Toronto still play and if BOS inches closer and sweeps Toronto it could be problematic, but aside from that, Boston has less games remaining to pile up wins if they get hot and they have the harder schedule remaining so they are generally more likely to lose against these stray remaining opponents, compared to New York.