Terminator

I am but the sound and my attention were on The Masters!

What happened? I was watching the Masters

2 up with 2 to play. He's got this.

Why did Montoya bench Tellez against the righty yesterday and start him against the lefty today? That doesn't make sense.

He's keeping Vlad's seat warm is all

Keith Law was right

This Austin Meadows guy can hit

Yeah they aren't distinct skills. Good command = good control but good control =/= good command. As for a pitcher with good command and bad control, you are right. The only way it could happen is if a pitcher had such s***** stuff he purposely nibbled at the very outer edges of the zone because it was the only way he could get outs and purposely threw a lot of pitches outside of the zone. Is that even bad control though? His stat sheet would say yes but a scout watching him could see him hitting the glove every time and could give a good command grade. But a player like that is so worthless it's basically impossible for all realistic purposes. That said, it's not "my" version it's the industry's version. But I always appreciate people trying to upend the system and you make good points so I will consider joining you if you try to turn this into a crusade good sir. Cheers.

I don't know if that's necessarily true. Some guys really can't do that. Or at least there are varying degrees to which guys can do that.

Go back to your Mother Jones articles then.

#1 could be right but they aren't going to be abandoned. Also, I think some (not necessarily you) are too hung up on the real world words which can be ignored because they are terms of art. If they called it "avoid walks" and "pinpoint" it would create less confusion. Your example in #2 isn't equivocal. A swinging strike is almost always objective but for the situations when there is a check swing. Good command works like good Catcher framing in that it is subjective in the way it goads the ump into giving out borderline calls. The ump subjectively rewards the pitcher for hitting his target. Simply being elite at keeping the ball within the zone, without the innate ability to pinpoint the baseball, doesn't get you the "extra" subjective strike calls. The best example of this is Bartolo Colon and Clayton Kershaw. Colon had probably the best command in the game and it got him 2 extra strike calls per game. Kershaw walked even less people than Colon on average but his command wasn't as good so he was pretty average when it came to umps rewarding the extra strike. But if you abandon the terms of art, stop differentiating the two and just use the word control like you are suggesting, how would you explain that?

Ok now I think I can get somewhere. Those examples aren't equivocal. It's just velocity and better velocity for the latter. Command and control are defined terms of art within the industry. A term of art is "a word or phrase that has a precise, specialized meaning within a particular field or profession." In real life, the definition of command includes the word control. "The ability to use or control something." But in baseball the terms have set definitions that like 90% of people agree with. Sometimes one term of art is sufficient to describe the events, sometimes the other term of art is more apt, even though both terms have some overlap. For example, BP theorizes that a pitcher who can hit his spots (like Bartolo Colon) can get two extra strikes per 100 pitches because he gets "rewarded" by the ump for hitting his target. That reward doesn't exist for a pitcher who can simply keep the ball within the strike zone. So if you ignore the industry terms of art, you are losing a small nuance and could be slightly incorrect when describing certain events.

If he confused Thornton with SRF then his comment actually makes some sense. He seemed to make several comments about it though like he meant what he was saying.

My example was probably s*** but the two things are different. It sounds like you've already made up your mind but I'll try again anyway. Here are the definitions as I understand them, which are just copied from BP. Control is the ability to simply keep the ball within the strike zone, though not necessarily within any particular location of the strike zone. Command is the ability to precisely locate pitches, in or out of the zone, with the goal of keeping each pitch out of the heart of the plate. Where you're wrong IMO is when you say "They literally say that the ability to put the baseball in the strike zone is different from the ability to put the baseball on the corners, as if it is possible to be bad at one of the two skills but great at the other." It's easily possible and quite common but probably only one way and that way is having control and not command. It's hard to provide examples because there aren't really stats for it. Baseball Info Solutions keeps track of command but I don't have access to it. TL;DR. Think of it as control being a good skill to have but command being a better, more specific and encompassing skill. Basic logic (to borrow your term) is that being able to throw the ball over the plate is good and takes some skill, but pinpointing the baseball is kind of hard and takes greater skill.

Yeah that is well said. There just isn't much to really cheer for right now. It's not even bad BABIP luck or anything. Just playing like complete s***.

This loss isn't all on Montoya but he had a bad game. Didnt use his bench at all. Left Sanchez in for a long time. Not sure I like Grichuk in CF either. I wonder of Brito is there if he makes that tough play in the 9th or if he makes the grab on that blunder. that cost us 3 runs. The backend of our roster f***ing sucks too. We have way too many guys who have no business being in the bigs.

Brutal game. That error was atrocious.

Yeah so small that it's worthless even looking at. He's probably not great but I have no idea. Idk I think the impact of that AB is greater than the defensive replacement value. He likely doesn't even get a ball hit to him. Gurriel has been playing OF too. But a hit there and the game is on ice. A sacrifice and it's a huge addition to our win probability, probably more than doubles it.

Yeah I suppose I get the Brito thing but Hanson can play some OF too.

No openers or anything.

What the hell is Montoya doing? Allowing Tellez to run and Brito to hit. This guy was supposed to be some sort of Rays sabremetric protege but he sucks so far. He's making Gibby look like Bill James.

Going to say it again but I sure am glad we dumped Pillar to watch Brito get all these ABs

Too many toilets filling out our roster

Screw moving them over just knock them in.

Would love to know why Montoya isn't pinch running for Tellez here. Tellez' sprint speed is in the bottom 13 percentile.