John_Havok

Sunday day game: Game 38 Happy Mothers Day!!!! Bonus: DOUBLE POINTS Bautista (2 Pts)- Condor13, Morales (3 pts)- Dylan Smoak (5 Pts)- Pearce (5 Pts)- Travis (6 Pts)- LTBF, johnhavok Pillar (7 Pts)- jays4life19 Barney (9 Pts)- Carerra (9 Pts)- Goins (9 Pts)- Coghlan (6 Pts)- Maile (9 Pts) Ohlman (9 Pts) Bench (10 pts)-

Reserved

I'm not either, he's never really been a great baserunner so expecting it would be silly. Defense is part ability, part opportunity and part luck. His ability is still there, the other 2 will even out.

Yeah I hear ya. I mentioned him the milb threads about 2 weeks ago for his obp. Its impressive for sure, but higher level pitchers with better command won't be as likely to miss their spots so his plan on attacking only pitches in the zone he wants ..., will become much harder. Its great that he feels comfortable hitting with 2 strikes, because he will probably be doing it alot.

Hearn has imploded. He started round 3 at 5 under, and is now shooting 9over par on the day ( 4 over total) after 15 holes. Ouch.

This is true for nearly all CF in the game. I really don't understand why they don't play a few steps deeper. It's like they think they need to get those broken bat flares taken away. If a dying quail falls in for a hit, who cares...it's a single. If a ball gets over your head, it's a double or triple. Its also easier to run in on a ball than to track one mashed over your head. To me it's a no brainer for CF to play probably 5 steps deeper than they currently do. Of course alot depends on the hitter at the plate and if there's a runner on second, an the stage in the game etc...but generally speaking I believe they should play deeper.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/aaron-altherr-is-part-of-the-phillies-core/ Relevant

Will remain to be seen what happens when the new book on him gets out to pitchers. He has shown an improvement in swinging on balls outside the zone, and a increase on contact in the zone. His opposite field results though are at a career low, with a corresponding increase on balls hit up the middle. Pull rate is abouut the same. Once defenses realize they don't need to play him straight up and shift a bit up the middle and to the pull side he will have to make an adjustment back to an all fields approach, or his numbers will dry up. Also i'm not really buying a 40 point ISO increase when his IFFB rate is also up and his flyball and grounder rates arent really out of line with his career averages. You can see he's made changes, but those changes do not account for all of his massive increase in numbers. He's also benefitting from some very good batted ball luck, especially on ground balls. To summarize, yes there's been improvements, but those changes don't take an 80 wrc+ hitter to 130. The other bad news is that his defensive performance has slipped dramically. Some of that is randomness in opportunities and some isn't and I'm not saying he's suddenly bad, because that would be foolish to suggest. Just saying that so far his defense overall hasn't been positive and it should be expected to rebound somewhat.

Saturday day game: Game 37 DOUBLE POINTS SATURDAY Bautista (2 Pts)- Morales (3 pts)-o2 Smoak (5 Pts)- johnhavok Pearce (5 Pts)- Travis (6 Pts)- Pillar (7 Pts)- Barney (9 Pts)- Carerra (9 Pts)- Goins (9 Pts)- Coghlan (6 Pts)- Maile (9 Pts) Ohlman (9 Pts) Bench (10 Pts)

I believe Travis as an average defensive 2b. The difference between the 2 beliefs? Mine is right. Yours isn't.

Insert obligatory Asians/electronics joke here.

Possibly, but you know 19 year olds that rake AA are going to be highly ranked, despite the lack of power and still the lack of success at AAA as a 20 year old.

Forgone conclusion. Everyone knew he would do this for he last 2 seasons pretty much. Raps still have the advantage in resigning him because of bird rights and can offer him 50 million more dollars than anyone else. This will be his only chance at a max level deal, so it was a no brainer. He would have opted out even if the Raps won the title.

Hughes s*** the bed in round 2 but another Canuck is now in the lead, David Hearn. Lots of players left to go today but he shot a great -3 today for a -5 total after 2 rounds.

McKenzie Hughes tied for the lead after round 1 at Sawgrass. My favorite tournament of the year!

I don't think there's enough scotch to sacrifice for that to happen.

Aha! Jobu likes Glenfiddich 18 year single malt. Noted for future sacrifices

Early lead for Edmonton

Well, I'm out of chickens, but I can sacrifice a shot of scotch for Jobu this time.

f*** you Jobu

Hang on, Im gonna go sacrifice a chicken to Jobu

Hard to believe this once vaunted offensive lineup has been reduced to Devon Travis laying down sacrifice bunts to let Darwin Barney and Luke Maile try to hit a guy in.

I think that's the main criticism of his swing though. That his hands start forward with his lead shoulder pointed at the pitcher, then as he goes into the leg kick, the hands come pretty far back, the lead shoulder closes off, then everything flies forward and open again. Lots of hand movement throughout the whole process but his timing/bat speed/hand eye get the bat where it needs to be anyways. The concern is that noisy process won't work against higher level pitching. And really, there's no way to know until he gets there. But you're right in that it hasn't failed so far, so he's got no reason to make changes.

Goins

So if the Capitals win. ... we have a Nations' Capitals ECF. Would love to see a Trump/Trudeau bet....loser of the series has his head shaved.