Olerud363

That was similar to the Vlad HR last day of Spring Training 2018. He's still right on track with Vald. lol. (17 year old seasons were very similar). Who knows where this guy is in reality. Will be interesting to see. To bad the minor league season is delayed a month. I'm ready for Orelvis box score watching.

I don't think anyone can aim the ball on demand. Long term guys can change their approach, so on average they hit more opp-o perhaps at the cost of power, but once they do, the other team will just stop shifting. Not that I know much about hitting mechanics, lol. I am curious why their hasn't been more guys with Wade Bogg's / John Olerud /Joe Mauer approach... I guess for guys who don't have an elite hit skill, the 'light' version of that is Tony Fernandez which just doesn't produce enough unless you play a key defensive position? I mean, once Mauer lost just a bit he couldn't really hit enough for first. Seems Craig Biggio made a conscious decision, perhaps with the help of coaching to completely change his approach. His numbers in Vancouver were a contact hitter with no power... then started striking out in Dunedin, and a year later power went way up. So it's better to be a .250 .350 .450 hitter than a .280 .350 .400 ?? Sounds about right.

The term grade 1 and grade 2 oblique strain just don't tell us much. Grade 1 strains supposedly take a couple of weeks to heal. While grade 2 generally take a couple of months. However in reality there is a continuous spectrum of severity. Like batting average. What if we only used grade 1 batting average, grade 2, and grade 3. What would that tell us? From what I read, technically a grade 1 strain is less then 5% of muscle fibers damaged, grade 2 is 'a greater number of fibers' torn, and grade 3 is a complete rupture. There is a lot of gray between '5% of fibers damaged' and 'complete rupture', so his recovery time could realistically be between 2 weeks on the low end (if his injury is technically grade 2 but barely so) to 2 or 3 months on the high end. We just don't know, but from everything they are telling us it is closer to the low end. I agree with the posters who are saying it is silly to push for him to come back opening day, if it is mild give him the full 2 weeks at least, and have him back April 5th or something.

How much of the Price contract does it make sense to take on in return for the privilege of acquiring him for a b prospect?

Despite ranting above, I do agree it would be silly to bring him back for opening day, just to have him on opening day. If it is a 'mild' grade 2 strain, still no reason to rush it. Aim for April 10th or something. April 10th would be a pretty quick recovery from that type of injury and we'd all be happy to see him then, I am sure.

Playing 2 games then being out for 2 months will also be a disaster. Do you think the front office will let that happen? Teoscar Hernandez had a similar injury and was out for 10 days last September. Aaron Judge had a similar injury and was out for 2 months. Brett Lawrie had his career ruined by vaguely described oblique and upper body injuries. Another case were people on this board, who have no information other than 'grade 2 oblique strain' are bullshitting. Maybe Teoscar's oblique strain was grade 1.48, Springers is grade 1.52 (rounded up to 2), Judges was 2.41, and Lawries was a weird 3.4 that didn't show up on the imaging. Point is the system used to describe the severity of these injuries is completely uninformative. The team has way more info, and hopefully they will use it to make the right decision.

And everyone is a year older, and a year stronger, with a year of high performance simulated training instead of minor league games. No one has any idea how that will play. There will probably be a lot of surprises, guys up way before we thought, and a lot of disappointments, guys who couldn't handle the year off, or weren't destined to be able to handle the high minors, and we start finding out this year.

he has a very amazing streak going where he has more homers than walks for several years running (OK tied one year). In fact more homers than walks in career. I wonder who else has done that.. I checked Tony Bautista. No he has not done that. I bet Joe Carter didn't even come close.

Kirby Yates out for several weeks according to Wilner and others. What is the status of the rest of them? Who is the closer now? T.J. Zeuch maybe with 80% ground ball rate? (kidding) Romano, Castro, Phelps, Dolis, Chatwood.... Kay, Liriano, Bourocki? Will they do fine or are we doomed?

Ramirez has a pretty crazy career arc. Hit like 3 homers a year in the minors with great contact rates. Hit .350 in rookie and low a but .270 with a .350 slugging in aa. Then some how got major stints at 20, 21, and 22 and was completely useless. Looked like a failure at 22. Then somehow he becomes a .300 hitter with 35 homers a year. lol. Maybe the contact rate does predict something.

Not disagreeing with you about the economy, but the bad economy looks pretty good to people like Dayton Moore. Stonks - High White collar salary - High 401K - High (because Stonks are high) Jobs - good if you can zoom Why would the economy look bad to some guy like Dayton Moore ? Especially since they will probably allow enough fans into Kauffman to allow KC to have a pretty much normal revenue. Economy is great for Dayton Moore.

Groshans only had 1 month above rookie ball. He might suck and we just don't know it yet, maybe the 23 games at Lansing were just a hot streak. It's going to be incredibly hard to evaluate these guys for a few months.

Can you tell if the new ball is significantly different? It is supposed to be a bit less lively. Is playing that way? Balls you think should be homers are not? Or are they even using the new ball yet? I thought I might of heard they use up left overs from last year first.

Yeah... Hope you are wrong too.. but I always like to see guys with pristine injury history, or if they get an injury to come back exactly on time with no setbacks. The 'setback' guys always seem to have constant injuries. Good guys - Slight groin pull, out 10 days, day 8 ahead of schedule starts throwing, day 12 back to full workouts, day 15 back Bad guys - Slight groin pull, out 10 days, day 8 ahead of schedule, no not quite ready, day 12 still a few days away, day 15 another small setback, day 20 at this point starting Spring training again it will be 30 days, day 30 10 days away from workouts, Day 40 workouts start but need a full spring, day 70 not quite ready yet, day 80 minor league rehab, day 90 still working back, day 100 OK back now. Day 125 elbow soreness. Those 100 day setbacks really add up over a career... a couple of them a year and only might get 20 days in.

I am happy to hear Grant out on this one though. Is there any reason to believe Zeuch is unique and pitchers of his profile have had success? Is there any reason to believe milb ground ball rate and height is predictive of anything that the raw stats don't predict?

lol I kind of agree with Grant. I think he will be the next Jesse Litsch/Josh Towers and if he stays healthy will surprise for years. I have zero logical reason to think that... other then fond memories of being surprised by Litsch and Towers... and Zeuch is taller and supposedly more durable. Please don't yell at me for this post. I 100% admit I have no data to back it up... I assume extreme groundball pitchers like this only come around every few years, so Zeuch is actually a unique guy... but probably there are 100 guys like this and I never heard of them because they all suck (including Jesse Litsh) but Litsch is the one who lucked out for a season and a half creating this illusion in my mind.

He looked good yesterday. This years inefficiency is handling the "missing" development year. The 'moneyball' teams will a) have given their Manoahs and Groshans the best possible replacement activity's for the missing 2020 minor league season identify who took a big step and who didn't properly Not saying either took a big step, or is ready... just saying out of the hundreds of minor league players some of them did take a bit step in 2020, the information is just hidden. The smart teams know that information regarding their own players.

I totally agree. The question is what is the 'voter's criteria'. Halladay, Schilling, Grienke are all similar. 200ish win guys with several Cy Young caliber seasons. I think advanced metrics would have all three in the same ballpark. But... Schilling doesn't get in because of politics or because his career looks weird ? Great seasons surrounded by injuries. Does Greinke get in if he retires today? No 20 win seasons but otherwise similar to Halladay. Will the criteria become... 1. 200+ wins 2. Silly accomplishments like '20' wins 3. Good behavior hmmm.. 20 wins might become rare too if current trends continue... I still want to see the first Cy Young Vulture... numbers look something like this g 54 gs 11 inning 167 * era 1.09 w/l - 23-2 (167 innings because they nice enough to get him qualified for ERA title)

Looks like out of Halladay's top 10 comparables on bbref, only one made the Hall of Fame https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/v/vanceda01.shtml Pretty similar actually, 3 real big years, 5 or 7 pretty good years, less wins than most hall of famers. His big season was 300 innings and 30 complete games... lol, it was 1924, that's pretty equivalent to 250 innings and 10 complete games or whatever in the 2000s EDIT: Looks like there was a big war in the first part of his career, which he must have been involved in during his prime years... I guess that explains the hall of fame induction, with what at first appears to be a modest (especially for the time) win total.

Bret Saberhagen and David Cone are somewhat similar to Halladay I think ... a touch below Looks like neither even sniffed the hall of fame... which is weird. Halladay was better and had more big seasons than those guys... but not 100 times better

Halladay -- 203-100, 2 Cys, 5 top 3 Cy finished, 7 top 5 3 or so 8 WAR seasons. 200-30 k/bb a couple times. And his best season (2005) probably ended before the All Star Break Is there anybody from another era with that kind of record that didn't get in because of "only" 200 wins?

Well, he's not going to up to be Jansen's backup. If he's up it will be to split catching duties and DH against lefties I'd think. I think if Kirk is up they'll just start by splitting catching 50/50 and then plug Kirk in at DH occasionally so he's on track for 110 games. Which would be the most he's ever played anyway.

Is anybody raking advantage of players relative strengths and weaknesses for the shifts? If for example Biggio is indeed far inferior to Bo and Semien in terms of arm strength, wouldn't it makes sense for Biggio to play either near the bag at third (with Bo deep short, and Semien deep up the middle), or the 'shallow' second basemen (with Semien in medium right?)

Cavan Biggio. l.o.l. Several people on the board are seemingly impressed with his play at third. Arm is accurate from what I have heard and if true he could maybe play a David Eckstein level. If he plays at third Biggio will end up playing at traditional short stop position 1/3 of the time or so on shifts anyway... which kind of makes me wonder why Semien isn't playing third instead... I remember when they first started shifting Lawrie went from third to between first and second and I think the ss and 2b stayed roughly up the middle. I remember this because it made Lawrie the best player in baseball throughout the first half of 2012. He was ahead of Trout in WAR until all star break 2012. Part of it was the weird shift, and the formulas thought he was getting balls 100 feet away... part of it was that Lawrie was awesome in 2011 and really good in first half 2012. There was a discussion whether it should be "Trout and Harper" or "Trout, Lawrie, and Harper", and it wasn't dumb because Lawrie was competitive with them in WAR as of late June 2012.

If keeping "starters" at 150 it makes sense to use the opener a lot for another reason, It would let starters "vulture" wins even if they don't go 5. Use an opener a lot, then you can have good "starters" still going 15-7 with 140 innings or something. I guess it would suck to have an opener give up 4 runs on your day, but probably it would even out, sometimes your team would score 4 and you come in, in the second leading 4-0.