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So with a game Monday and the foot tweak Kawhi will probably sit out tomorrow against the Lakers right?

If Zeuch doesn't soon show any improved ability to throw a second pitch they should stick him in the bullpen and hope he becomes a Jim Johnson type. Let him throw mid 90s sinkers 80% of the time.

Kawhi sat out the only other road game so far this season. And with the week between the last preseason game and start of the season he hasn't had to get on a plane for almost 3 weeks.

Going into today Vlad had only 1 strikeout in his ~60 plate appearances in the AFL. He recorded his second one today.

I see you aren't familiar with Rosie DiManno

I knew Boxy was asian but I didn't know he was Jeopardy! champ Arthur Chu! Haven't seen the doc about your life but I'll have to check it out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XKFkmhuJ9w

The Pelicans play at a ridiculous pace. They beat the Kings 149-129 tonight.

While the Orioles have been refusing to spend international money they've been paying Buck Showalter $4M per year. https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/columnist/bob-nightengale/2018/08/27/baseball-managers-salaries-joe-maddon-dave-roberts-aj-hinch/1102815002/

The Raptors won 134-119 over the Pelicans tonight with Kawhi, Lowry, JV, Ibaka, VanVleet, Wright and Green not playing. And NOLA were pretty much playing their full squad with relatively high minutes. Davis played 31 minutes and the rest of the starters and Randle were 25+. Doesn't mean much of anything in the preseason but it's noteworthy.

In the AFL today: Cavan Biggio: 0-2, 4 BB, 1 K (played RF again) Zach Jackson: 1.1 IP, 4 K, 1 H Vlad didn't play. I think Nate Pearson makes his return tomorrow.

And he almost killed somebody last night. https://streamable.com/500rf (LOUD VIDEO)

Vlad is now 2 for 2 with 2 doubles and a walk.

Is there any place to watch some of the AFL games? I know there have been some on mlb.com in the past. Vlad Jr. hit another double in his first AB. On the 9th pitch he saw. Here's the gameday link. Best thing I could find: https://www.mlb.com/gameday/saguaros-vs-rafters/2018/10/10/564215#game_state=live,game_tab=,game=564215

https://www.mlb.com/bluejays/video/vlad-jrs-big-fall-league-debut/c-2515279583?tid=7617858

A shortstop hitting 25 HR in 129 games at age-appropriate levels in the minors is nuts. Kevin Smith had a fantastic season. Some guy named Jazz Chisholm with the Diamondbacks was the only minor league shortstop to match that total. After them Fernando Tatis Jr. and Carter Kieboom tied at 16. You have to go back to Javier Baez's 37 in 2013 to find a higher number than Kevin Smith's 25.

Sounds like the kind of guy AA will be nagging the Rockies about all offseason. "Pls respond" texts abound!

With the Dodgers up 11-0 on the Giants, the Blue Jays will pick 10th next year in the draft.

The 10 teams with the 10 best records in baseball made the playoffs.

It would really be nice to still have Poetl on that second unit. Can't complain with the trade, though.

Chris Sale throwing 89mph tonight.

Go Brewers

wpa?

Not that I can find. I believe the metric is called Davenport Fielding Runs but I can't find any specifics. I think it was originally from back around 2004 when he worked for Baseaball Prospectus but I'm not sure if the methodology has been updated since then. I think it might not have been released publicly.

Clay Davenport publishes all kinds of advanced stats for the majors and minor leagues so, for whatever it might be worth, I took a look at some of defensive runs above average he calculates. I have no idea what method he uses to get these numbers. Here's the link: http://claydavenport.com/stats/webpages/2018/2018pageTORrealALL.shtml The site is a nightmare to navigate. The defense numbers are on the far right of the table. I believe the format "13-3B -1 12-2B 2" translates into "13 games started at 3B, 1 run below average. 12 games started at 2B, 2 runs above average. There are tables for the different teams (MLB down to Bluefield). Notable numbers: Vlad Jr was +4 at both AA and AAA. For some reason I'm just a bit skeptical of him being a +8 defender at 3B but it's certainly encouraging to see positive numbers. Alford +1 Jansen -5 (Buffalo) Pompey -2 RF, -2 LF Tellez -1 Roemon Fields +7 CF, +5 RF (I included him only because of the high numbers and proximity to MLB) Biggio +6 2B, 0 3B Pentecost +5 C Harold Ramirez -5 RF, -1 LF Bo Bichette -1 SS, -1 2B Kevin Smith (Dunedin) +8 SS, +2 2B Kevin Smith (Lansing) +3 SS, 0 3B Warmoth +3 SS, +2 2B Ryan Noda +1 1B, +2 LF Chavez Young, +2 RF, +14 CF Samad Taylor +7 2B Otto Lopez -1 3B, +2 2B Griffin Conine +12 RF Cal Stevenson +10 LF, +3 CF Jordan Groshans 0 SS, 0 3B (only 11 starts at Bluefield, though) Note that I only included Kevin Smith and Vlad's numbers from different leagues. There were other guys who split time between leagues but I didn't bother adding them. There really wasn't much in the way of significant mid-season promotions outside of Smith and Vladdy Cal Stevenson and Chavez Young might be more intriguing than we think. Kevin Smith top 60 prospect? Again, I don't know what value these numbers have but they're fun to look at.

Not that it would count but there was a Mexican League player with 34 HR and 21 SB. Or was there? I only bring this up because I was looking through Fangraphs after reading your post and saw something weird. In this table that aggregates across all minor leagues, Arismendy Alcantara shows up with the above numbers: https://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=10711&position=2B/OF However, when I go to his Fangraphs player page he is only credited with 14 HR and 13 SB: https://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=10711&position=2B/OF To make things even more confusing Baseball Reference shows 18 HR and 15 SB: https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=alcant003ari Looking at milb.com makes things slightly clearer. It shows his 2018.1 season with 11 HR, 9 SB and his 2018.2 season with 7 HR, 6 SB. These add up to the Baseball Reference numbers: http://www.milb.com/player/index.jsp?sid=milb&player_id=570489#/career/R/hitting/2018.2/MINORS I didn't know what 2018.1 and 2018.2 meant. The Mexican League wikipedia page didn't provide any answers. It simply states "Teams play 114 games each season. Five teams in each division advance to a four-round postseason tournament that culminates in the Serie del Rey, a best-of-seven championship series between the two division champions." I went one one of the team websites and found the schedule page. It does look as though the season is split in 2: http://www.leones.mx/calendario I went back to Fangraphs and got even more confused, as when I looked at the leaderboards for just the Mexican League, he was showing up with 30 HR and 21 SB. I have no idea where Fangraphs got the only 4 HR they were showing earlier: https://www.fangraphs.com/minorleaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=31&qual=0&type=0&season=2018&team=0&players=0&sort=10,d I thought some of the postseason games were getting counted in some places but not others, yet the MiLB page shows no postseason 2018 numbers for him. I hit a bit of a breakthrough when looking at the league lists on BR. Notice that there are Spring and Autumn leagues beginning in 2018. Arismendy Alcantara doesn't show up in the Spring League on BR (https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/leader.cgi?type=bat&id=4c4fdbdd) but he shows with 7 HR in the Autumn League (https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/leader.cgi?type=bat&id=51bf55cf) TLDR: The Mexican League split into Spring and Autumn seasons starting in 2018 and all the statistics websites seem to have not updated their methods for scraping the data and everything is a mess. I assume the 34 HR and 21 SB totals from Fangraphs are from both regulars seasons and both post seasons all combined but I'm not going to go through individual boxscores to confirm that. I give up.