Grant77

Jokes aside, he seems like a player they would ask for as part of a Kwan trade, given their lack of depth.

It's at least partially fueled by BABIP, but Joey Loperfido has made across the board improvements in his underlying hitting stats and is now hitting almost .400 with a wRC+ of almost 200. It would hurt to see him go, but you have to think that some teams in need of outfielders (Guardians, Pirates, White Sox) are taking notice.

That conversation was about Chris Bassitt and sports psychology, not Jeff Hoffman.

I think that science actually does support a correlation between preparation and performance in sports, but I digress. Occam's razor is used in science, but I guess it's called a PhD for a reason. Good call on the irony, I missed that.

I can see why someone would disagree, but I think that Rogers is clearly better than Dominguez.

Taylor Rogers goes to the Pirates as salary relief in the Hayes trade. He's having a decent season, but is not worth 12 million. If wonder if there's something we can do there with Chad Green, who is making 10.5 million. It wouldn't hurt to have another veteran lefty in the 'pen.

Well said, I agree. I think his mind not being in the right place is just another way of quantifying the same thing. Baseball is a grind and we all have off days. We can just hope that the highly paid vets like Bassitt are prepared to deal with that grind going forward.

That's true, but it's clear if you watched Bassitt's start, that he wasn't locating his pitches where he wanted them. He wasn't exactly painting the corners and having them get lucky hits. You'll never convince me that preparation and focus play no role in a MLB player's success. I understand that there's no way to quantify it, but when I see a player who is unprepared or distracted not perform well, I'm always going to correlate those two things. I'm ok if you think that's stupid, we can agree to disagree. I'm not a philosopher, so I stick with the facts and apply Occam's razor.

Interesting conversation. Why can't we be focused all of the time? I wish I knew the answer to that one. They hire sports psychologists for a reason. That's a clear sign that teams thinks there is more to performance than physical skill and variance. It's one of those things that seems heavily based on life experience. I haven't played high level sports, but I'll relate it to my more high pressure musical performances. When I am prepared and focused, I perform better than when I am distracted and unprepared. Your experience seems to be that life is more a random series of events that are unaffected by preparation and focus, which I can accept. I prefer to apply Occam's razor in this instance, rather than get too philosophical. Bassitt didn't perform well and he said that he was unprepared. It may not be the reason, but that's the simplest and easiest explanation here. Chris Bassitt is perhaps my favourite player because he's candid and authentic. Call me naive, but I believe what he says in his interviews. I definitely understand what you mean about the bro culture, especially in hockey.

You say that there's no way to quantify a relationship between being focused and performing well, but then proceed to say that there is no correlation. There's a reason why players perform poorly on any given day. It isn't fabricated, as you suggest. Bassitt and Berrios didn't perform well. Bassitt himself said that he wasn't prepared well enough his postgame interview. I don't think we need to look any further than that. Nobody would know better than him.

I can't agree with this at all. Anyone who has played a sport knows that you have days where just feel really locked in and focused, maybe you have something extra in the tank. Athletes themselves say these kinds of things in their postgame interviews, including Bassitt himself. These guys aren't superhuman, they don't feel the exact same every day. They call these the dog days of summer for a reason. It's difficult to stay focused in this part of the season and inevitably, some players aren't. It's certainly not some made up voodoo to appease stupid fans.

I think Schneider could be a backup 1B with some work in the offseason. That play is made if he and Clement are swapped.

A poor effort doesn't mean a player isn't trying. I hate when people try to dissect every single word on a message board, they have multiple meanings. I'll rephrase. I expect better (results) from Berrios in an important situation like this. I expect you'll fight me on this too.

Baseball is funny. Yesterday, we couldn't get anything against some of the worst pitching we'll see all season and then we jump all over Yennier Cano, who really wasn't as bad as it seemed.

It sure would!!!! Lukes!!

I'm going to be really sad if Loperfido ends up being dealt. He's becoming one of my favourite players, I absolutely love his approach. I do understand why he would be dealt, but it would hurt as a fan. Amazing job, Bo. A little lucky but I'll take it.

The results indicate a lack of focus, effort, and execution in my opinion. I don't see anything beyond that and I certainly didn't say that they weren't trying.

I have the same criticism for Berrios that I had for Bassitt. I can live with a little inconsistency and worse results then his salary dictates, but this team REALLY needed him to step up, be focused, and eat some innings in this start. If nothing else, he gets the big dollars to do that, and he failed miserably. I haven't really criticized him all year, but this really stands out as a disappointing level of effort from him.

I'm just looking at the largest sample possible, his entire career. Earlier in this thread, I saw the same kind of argument of 'if you remove his bad outings', he's really good. Well of course he is. I take your point that xERA is not predictive (although FIP is) and that the barrels could be a fluke, but I have noted in the past (not to steal Laika's point) that he has put an awful lot of fastballs in prime hitting areas and his pitch mix has been far from ideal. That's just opinion of course, but I have seen analysts note the same thing. (notably Dan Szymborski on Blair & Barker, who was concerned about Hoffman) You make some great points and I do expect him to be better going forward, but I maintain my stance that we need an additional option at closer and that Bednar is probably a better pitcher. Welcome to the forum as well. It's great to have you on board.

I agree with most of that, but we do have to note that his xERA and FIP are about replacement level, even with the elite K/BB numbers. His barrel% is exceptionally high at 15% and his hard hit% is also well over 40%. Batters are squaring him up a lot, even if there is some luck involved. His career HR/FB in over 500 innings is over 14%, which is very high. I understand that it's mostly out of the control of pitchers, but we have to consider that he may be more HR prone than other relivers, given the results.

I get criticized all of the time for being too optimistic about our chances, too high on prospects, underrating our opposition, etc. That bias certainly causes me to get some things wrong, but that's the case with anyone. I remember several prospects where I absolutely loved them (Cecil, Sanchez, Groshans, Pardinho, etc.) and I was so wrong. I loved the Chad Green signing and was wrong (especially after I have defended him all season). That being said, I'd rather be a glass half full kind of guy and get some things wrong then be down on the team all of the time. This is one of the few/only instances I have given heavy criticism to some of the players this season. I don't like what I perceive as a lack of effort and focus against lesser opponents. Again, there hasn't been any 'right' or 'wrong' in the discussion in this thread. We're discussing the age old argument of DIPS vs results in regard to Hoffman and whether or not we should go for another closer. There's a chance that Hoffman goes on a great run and flourishes in the playoffs. I don't think it's in the cards, It's an opinion. Please take note of this and I'll gladly say that I was wrong at the end of the season. Everyone on the internet thinks that everyone is always wrong and never says it, when that isn't true. Your horrible attitude just ruins baseball discussions for everyone else. Your character flaw is never actually discussing baseball and just being pissy and grouchy all of the time, instead of engaging in discussion. Work on that and I'll work on agreeing with everyone instead of offering counterarguments.

Criticism is perfectly valid after showing a lackluster effort and lack of focus in losing 3 games to a last place team. This isn't a debate about who is right or wrong. That's in the box score and indisputable. I always get s*** on for being too optimistic and then the moment I post some valid criticism, you can't even bother to make a real response to it. Don't be so obtuse, try actually talking about baseball for once.

Nice hyperbole, but expecting your highly paid closer to have an ERA under 5 is realistic. Expecting a 20+ million starter to eat some innings in an extremely important situation is also realistic. You talk as if I want to DFA them or something, when it's perfectly valid and realistic criticism that the players and management themselves would agree with.

Tonight's game, for example, isn't counted as a blown save, even though he was responsible for the loss. It's not a very useful statistic. Every hitter on our team would be hitting .400 if we took out their bad stretches. It happened, we shouldn't just ignore it.

Jax has the best xFIP in the league. You can cherry pick stats to make anyone look good, but the fact is, Hoffman has blown way too many games to be a reliable closer in the playoffs. I'll certainly take him as a late inning option, just not the closer on a team that wants to make some noise. He was not focused at all today, it was an awful performance. We can't afford to wait for him to figure it out.