Olerud363

Vict, Drew, Napoli, Gomes, Carp, Ross = 10 WAR. Reyes, Izturus, Boni, Melky, Thole, Blanco, Derosa = -0.6 WAR Boston has gained 11 wins over Toronto through the offseason offensive acquisitions. These are important. Reverse this and Toronto is ahead of Boston and still in it for the second wild card. Lets take 11 wins away from Boston, and give Toronto 10 wins Boston 65-65 Toronto 68-59 What are you arguing?? 1. 11 wins aren't important. 2. WAR is crap. 3. I still love AA. Farrell sucks. Cherington is a fag.

This reminds me of an old Dilbert cartoon where they give the Boss an etcha-sketch instead of a lap top....

The difference between the Jays and Sox is largely explained by the acquisitions, not the holdovers. Ped 4.9, Ells 4.9, Ortiz 3.8, Nava 1.7 total = 15.x Baut 4.0, Ras 3.8, EE 3.6, Lawrie 2.1 total = 14.x Drew, Victorina, Napoli, Gomes, Carp, Ross - ~11WAR Reyes, Melky, Izturus, Boni, Thole = -0.5 WAR or so On offense the difference between the core holdovers is minimal. There are 10-12 wins difference between the new acquisitions.

Even worse - Josh Johnson -1.6 WAR -- Henderson Alvarez +1.2 If Alvarez got hot he could end up 4 wins better then Johnson. Escobar is 1 WAR ahead of Reyes. Kelly Johnson is a couple WAR ahead of Cabrerra... both left fielders except Johnson can cover 2nd and 3rd as needed.

It's so ironic. When you look at all the guys that have been available in the AA era Cespedes, Chapman, Darvish, Chen, Solar? (cubs guy), Puig, Ryu, Chen... It is an era where you have all these guys coming from different environments and one would think that the largest scouting team in baseball would have an advantage in this...

This should be posted on every door in the Jays baseball operations offices. Plastered everywhere on Beeston's office. Maybe someone could hack into Beeston's computer and make this the screen saver.

My thought is that "the top" doesn't refer to AA or Cherington. The top is above that. For Boston the top is John Henry. He's got a background as an asset trader, and is a brilliant guy. In Toronto the top is really Beeston... and you know what I think of him. I suspect Farrell is referring to Beeston as the top.. though I don't know for sure.

Not really hindsight. The point is that if it didn't work out Boston still has their young players. There is luck involved. But Boston had a strategy that didn't absolutely have to work, but it did. The Jays had a strategy that absolutely had to work (given the cost in young players) and it didn't. Now things are worse. Boston is even more entrenched as "the place to be" and Toronto is a mess.

Definately a good point. there's no guarentee they come... but then again it was only a few years ago that Burnett, B.J. Ryan, Frank Thomas came. One could argue those were overpays. I don't know... All Boston's pickups were buy low... There is luck involved. What I like to see is two paths. Bidding for 2nd tier free agents and international players (Darvish, Puig, Chapman etc.) that are available for only money. Then develop the farm concurrently. Don't burn the farm... This season is so tragic. After this disaster it is hard to see Toronto as being "the place to be" anytime soon...

Napoli, Drew, Gomes, Victorino, Carp, Dempster, Uehara. 13 WAR without giving up one young player, or draft pick. Brilliant. 13 WAR and they still have all their top prospects. Reyes, Johnson, Melky, Dickey, Buerhle, Boni, Thole - ~ 3 WAR giving up all the top prospects.

These guys come around a lot. Not many of them stick. But some do. Woody Williams had 5 good years or more. He has a small chance to be a 4th/5th starter. If I had to guess I would say 15%. As a couple of others said stash him in Buffalo. Call him up as s*** happens. Hope he can have some success. Obviously not a guy you ink in for a rotation spot... because if he's 5th, the 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th guys (who will be needed as we see time and again) are by definition worse then Redmond.

This is all because of the idiotic "super-scout" mentality. AA and his super-scouts mistakenly think they can value every player properly... so give up 5 low level c prospects... no problem none of them will be anything. The problem is the superscouts will indeed predict the AVERAGE value of the prospects very well but there will be an outlier that will burn us. 5 c prospects are worth more then J.A. happ because chances are 1 will become atleast happ, and perhaps really surprise ... even though all 5 are "predicted" to be cups of coffee at the most.... there will be outliers.

The purpose of statistics like WAR is that humans are notoriously difficult at evaluating subjective things. We are notoriously difficult at evaluating complicated scenarios. In 2005 I had a physicist recomend that I buy real estate. He was an incredibly smart guy. He just wasn't capable of evaluating the real estate market in the context of complicated sub prime mortgage derivatives. No one was. I know some people will say "I saw it coming from a million miles a way"... but c'mon. You either thought real estate was a great investment, or it wasn't". You only had 2 choices, some people were bound to get it right. Anyway defense is kind of like that. Really complicated and no one can evaluate it well subjectively. The formulas aren't perfect either. But you shouldn't discard them out of hand. There are different types of WAR. Some showing Reyes/Kawasaki almost even, some showing Reyes ahead (but not by as much as you'd think). Keeping in mind that Reyes earns 17 mil or whatever and Kawasaki 400,000... well it's not crazy to ask is Kawasaki + 16 mil somewhere else better then Reyes??

That's why I harp on Beeston so much... I've been around this environment where you end up having a slick, not so technical guy (Beeston) giving a report about a fairly technical subject to a powerful suit. The suit has literally dozens of Beestons giving reports about various issues and it takes years to realize the Beeston guy is full of it. And by that time a slickster like Beeston retires or moves on. ......

This has been brought up before. I was folllowing Yan Gomes but the "hole in the swing" crew told me not to. They said he had a "hole in his swing" and was destined for doom. Interesting player to follow,... really a controversial one in that it puts the scouts on trial... both the professional scouts and the arm chair scouts on this board have it on record that Yan Gomes cannot possibly suceed because of the "hole in his swing". They may be right, they may be wrong. Not a lot of at bats yet. Interesting to see how this develops.

Wow... I get up and check this thread to figure out what happened last night. I knew Jays got behind earlier. But 25 pages that's a lot for a west coast laugher... so I thought maybe it wasn't a laugher after all. But instead it's Howard Roark?? who??

Don't live right in Boston, though am there fairly often... near enough that I have to deal with it all... and near enough to NYC that I have to deal with that too. I like it here.... NE U.S. Vermont, North Easter NY, Western Mass, great places to live. Don't really want to move... even if I did would be tough though because of work and wife's work... Worst thing about it here is that Tim Horton's tried to move in and was totally demolished by Dunkin' Donuts. Full Assault, In Rhode Island and Conneticut there was new Tim horton's... full scale executive style DD was built right beside them, right away... Bad things.... 1. No Tim Horton's.. likely never will be... they are moving into Buffalo and Rochester but much farther East and DD attacks aggressively. 2. John Farrell Mensa fans... MIT Mensa members that love John Farrell. Impossible to argue with them.

Keep in mind I live in Red Sox land and I have to deal with Red Sox fans all the time. And according to them Farrell is a princely genius... According to some in Cleveland he is a jewel of a human being... There are dumb red sox fans and smart red sox fans, but they all love Farrell. They thank me every day for him, and rub it in... Toronto Blue Jays just a development system for the sox... not a real organization. Just humor me... I don't mean to annoy you with the Farrell stuff... if you're annoyed just think how it is for me to hear about his princely deeds every day on NESN and from the red sox fans. It's not easy. Red sox, Farrell, Big papi, sweet caroline, you suck, blue jays suck, get a real team, Farrell, it's all I'm exposed to really.

July 29th 2013 Farrell 63-43 .345 on base Jays 46-54 .320 on base 1. As ussual I am not saying that Farrell himself is solely responsible for the sox on base percentage... it is more like a kid who makes it to MIT. MIT is good, and the kid is good, and they dream of each other and find each other... 2. We have made a little bit of progress in on base percentage since I started the thread. We have made a correspondingly small amount of progress in winning percentage. However we are now have no chance at the pennant. 3. The Jays are about average in on base percentage, and offense in general. They are bad because the pitching is a awful. I don't know what to say about this. I will update a few more times before seasons end... but it's not really appropriate to go balistic about this issue. It is not necessarrily solved, being average isn't the same as being "championship" quality... but with 5 playoff spots if you can get the offense average and the pitching average and you have some luck... Any way major problem is obviously pitching... not as easy to go on about... I mean is there the pitching equivalent of Dwayne Murphy?? Some guy who says "I don't care how many the pitchers walk... pitchers walks are overrated... they can walk as many as they like... clog the bases up... it only helps... not all those walks are comin around to score... as long as they prevent rbi hits everything will be fine." You see it's harder to complain about the pitching without "that guy". Anybody got any stupid Pete Walker quotes??

What is so absurd about becoming the cubs?? I don't understand since when did young players and modern analytics become such a dirty concept?? When did observing successful rivals become such a bad thing? I admire Tampa Bay, I admire Boston, I admire NY Yankees. Obviously I admire any team that implements a system that results in a high team on base percentage. I admire Baltimore for bringing Markakis, Jones, Wieters, Davis, Hardy and Machodo along (realizing they weren't all from the farm system...). But apparently I am a mindless idiot complainer. I read Bill James, but I shouldn't read that dirty, godless crap. I think this is what is creating so much disruption on this board. Many of the people who are huge complainers, weren't this way 5 years ago. Weren't this way 2 years ago. I understand that people (including myself) express things in such a way that is... overly dramatic I guess. But there is nothing wrong with stating your views. Before we went "all in"... we had 1 million posters complaining about rogers, complaining about young players, complaining how "prospectzzzzz" never made it.. and the team was just fap but no performance. So now we nuke the farm system, and get the veterans that so many wanted... and the team is as bad as ever but no more farm system... but apparently we're not allowed to be disgruntled about that. Just the vibe is sort of... nothing to see here... Rogers knows best, stand in line, drink Bud light. I miss the days of a good farm system, of young players getting better every year, and Labatt's instead of Bud at the ball park. I miss the days where you could throw Cecil Fielder overboard because you literally were developing too many young players.

I agree 100% that it does not reduce performance because of "timing" or some hogwash. I agree 100% that in theory it is similar to batting practice. I think the workload for someone who goes far in the contest is higher then batting practice. Some injuries (especially pitching) are thought to be workload dependent. I am still not convinced that it is safe. I think you mentioned Nicholas Taleb on another post?? Before reactors get hit by a Tsunami we think they are safe through anything. The test is not what you think but what you'd do. The test is would you of put Bautista back in it in 2013?? Would you of put EE in it?? If both you think it's safe, if EE but not Bautista you think it could be dangerous for susceptible hitters. If neither you think it's dangerous. Unless you become a GM or other high position in baseball operations, I will never know what you'd really do because you're not in charge of these players. It seems to me AA doesn't quite think it's perfectly safe. But many of us think AA is an idiot... so does his opinion sway us??

People actually believe that pitchers can get injured if their overworked... or become less effective. I don't believe that it disrupts their timing or any of that... It seems feasible that it could cause an injury, the workload is higher then batting average.

The plausability is in the fact the guys are taking as many as 50 hard swings. You don't hit 30 bombs in batting practice. To test the theory I mentioned that you should look at two groups. One group made of guys who made it deep into the contest so took 40 or 50 swings... the other group made of guys who were eliminated early and took only a few swings.

There is plausability to the theory... homerun contest might physically mess up your wrist... Tricky to test this one. One could use month before homerun contest and month after... but month before home run contest is probably abnormally hot (players who are randomly hot more likely to be in contest). Career stats and career injury rate vs. month after stats and injury rate?? Wouldn't work either. Players in homerun contest are more likely in their prime... How about number of swings in homerun contest vs. performance after. 2 matched groups. Similiar performance before but high number of swings and low number of swings. If damage is like high pitch count guys who went deep into contest should be more likely to be damaged.

And yes I know the American Government has gotten into huge debt... the common Americans realize this and are hoarding every trinket they can find... And (if there is some sort of collapse) America might yet survive... places like Texas could come to rule the world under the conditions of world wide collapse. That's why Obamacare is such a big deal here. Texans want to have zero-obligations to anyone including each other, then when it all collapses they get out the gold and guns, and things march on much as before. (Edit) I apolagize for going a bit off topic.... in the past when I have brought up sociological differences between Red Sox and Toronto fans the response is always "America is in debt, U.S. sucks bro... red sox suck too... Farrell sucks...." (well not Farrell sucks because last time on the old board he wasn't a red sox.)