John_Havok

holy hell, i knew Manny was garbo on defense... but -277 runs is f***ing unreal. He's Andruw Jones defensive opposite.

Its hard to say, he was still hitting 30 HRs a year prior to the breakout, but what he wasn't doing... was pretty much anything else with the bat. He was a 112 wrc+ from 1993-1997 while averaging 34 HR per year. He didn't take walks or even pile up hits, he was a pretty empty 35 HR hitter. Interestingly enough though he was a pretty plus defender in those years and worth more runs on Defense than offense. Then the roid years took over, his offense skyrocketed while his D plummeted to average or well-below average.

Feels like if there wasn't a stupid 10 name limit, Sosa would also be on there.

We'd probably be having the HOF conversation about him right now, right alongside Jones, Rolen and Edmonds. Chavez was in that same mold.

Pujols is an interesting case. Clearly a HOF hitter, but when you look at the halves of his career theyre so different it's incredible. Age 21-31, OPS+ of 170 , just murdered baseballs. 445 HR, avg OPS was 1.037 Then 32-41, OPS+ of 108, 234 HR, avg OPS of .758 The cliff is real. The Angels got 1 good year out of his 10 year deal. Damn

Same problem with others of that era. Overshadowed by the Bonds, Ramirez, Sosa, McGwires.... etc. The entire steroid era is so interesting in what it does to the Hall of Fame. Guys like Edmonds who objectively had better careers than many hall of famers just wont get in.

It's a figure of speech. When voting on who gets into the the Hall of Fame, I'm pretty confident they actually look at stats and stuff. They totally screw up the interpretation of those stats a lot, but they still look at them.

You're not wrong. if I was looking at HOF resumes I would probably think the voters would put in Edmonds ahead of Jones, yet Edmonds was gone in his first year with just 2.5% of the ballot.

Ozzie.... i don't even know if any catchers in there are there for defense, though I'm sure Molina will be eventually. Maybe Greg Maddux as a pitcher, He won like 18 gold gloves. Pure defensive induction there right?

Jones was a far superior defender to Edmonds... it's a fairly massive gap in defensive value.

I don't know the exact stuff either, but I do know they have different rates for times of day, days of the week and even the types of commercial breaks. Like, in a 9 inning they game, they know 100% there will be X amount of breaks during the pregame, and between each half inning. Those will all have varying rates depending on the time of the night they happen. Like a commerical in the 1st inning might cost more or less, because its's at 7:15 eastern, vs a commerical in the 7th that might be at 9:15 eastern. The rolling TV viewership numbers is what dictates the rates. Since those commerical blocks are guarantted to happen and they have a very solid idea of the time they will occur, those rates will be pretty much set in stone. The varying rates will the extra breaks for possible injuries, in game delays, pitching changes, extra innings... those will have variable rates because they won't know exactly when they happen, nor exactly how many of them there will be. They'll have a pretty good idea with averages from previous years... so they will generally have a bunch of companies that sign up for the variable spots, and then they pay X amount for X # of commercials. When they run over their alotted number, they either stop running that companies ads, or get them to re-up.

I would happily sign Vlad for 10 years as soon as the lockout is over. 10 years, 250-280 million would be my max. It's pretty much 10 million for 2022, then 15, 20 and 25 for the rest of his arb years, and 30-35 million for years 5-10. you lock in his best years and avoid the downside. Add in some Awards based incentives for MVP, Silver Sluggers that could take it over 300 million and I would be fine with that too. The only real risk is injury and/or ice cream consumption.

I nearly spit my tea all over my monitor with that one. That is gold sir.

Could be. But that's why the eye test is horribly flawed. When Jones was in his prime 11 year run, his WORST defensive year was better than Pillar's best and most years he was significantly better than Pillar's best... like twice as many runs saved kind of thing. I really think Jones gets severely and unfairly underrated by baseball as a whole.

I have a feeling we are very close to the same age. Way younger than Hurl though, thankfully.

Congrats. You are now old. Welcome to the club

Griffey Jr did have some great defensive years in CF, he was legitimately good on Defense. Not Jones level elite consistently, but he was still quite good.

I have no doubts the union will be pushing for it like crazy, but the reality is that they have a lot of other things that can help out players salaries that they can get done easier than a floor. We know a hard salary cap is a nonstarter for the PA. The hard floor is the same for the owners. If a cap/floor system ever comes to MLB, the labour stoppage that preceded it will have been extremely long.

I don’t understand the way of thinking of “depends who else is on the ballot” unless you run out of space because of the stupid 10 names limit. He might be the worst of the worthy candidates every year but that’s no reason to sit until a “weaker” class shows up. Either he’s worthy or he isn’t. The guy who passes all his classes in med school, but has the worst grades still gets called Doctor.

Probably due to a variety of factors, the most obvious being that he was in the era where guys were hitting 50-60 HRs a season regularly, he only hit 30-35. PLus, the publicly available advanced metrics on offense and defense were still in their infancy. I mean, people could see someone was a good defender, but they had no idea how much more valuable Andruw Jones was versus a normal no-bat, all defense CF. At the time, he probably just looked like your average run of the mill CF who happened to hit for some power, while other guys who didn't play CF hit 60 bombs a year.

If you had a vote, would you vote for Jones and/or Rolen?

Why not? I'm not saying you're wrong btw, just wondering why two elite defensive players, with virtually the same WAR would be treated differently by the Hall voters. Jones was way better with the bat, and just slightly less good defensively. The clearly better offense doesn't make up for the marginally inferior defense? What about Rolen? Even better offensively than Jones, but a clear tick below on D. Still managed 70 WAR over 17 seasons. Still no?

Ozzie Smith is in the Hall of Fame for his defense. 67 WAR in 18 seasons. Combo of negative offense and elite defense. Andruw Jones put up 67 WAR in 17 seasons, though largely in the first 11. Combo of both good offense and elite defense. Does that change your opinion in any way?

Andruw Jones for the Hall of Fame: Hard to deny those 11 seasons from 1997-2007 as being as close to godly as you can get for a CF - 10 time no doubt gold glove defense with 30+ HR per year. Also the poster child for falling of a cliff due to injury in 2008. Easily a HOF peak IMO, but not the typical longevity. yay or nay?

1. Guaranteed 2. Nope 3. Probably 4. Guaranteed 5. Can't see a salary floor, but I can see an increase in the luxury tax threshold to 230ish million or so. The salary floor will be thing that I think the players will give up on in order to get minimum salary increases and some sort of better deal for younger players, arbitration, years of control etc.