KingKat
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Everything posted by KingKat
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Has there been a single game this year... (Jose Reyes thread)
KingKat replied to Vincent's topic in Toronto Blue Jays Talk
The irony is that I don't think anyone here actually likes the Reyes contract. The whole debate pretty much hinges on whether this was the last "good" year on the deal or the last "merely bad" year of the deal. We can all agree that he's not getting any better or any cheaper. -
Has there been a single game this year... (Jose Reyes thread)
KingKat replied to Vincent's topic in Toronto Blue Jays Talk
I think if the position is undervalued by WAR around baseball that's not meaningless information. For instance when JFAS is suggesting that Eric Kratz might be worth 50 million dollars (or whatever the figure was), he's not actually suggesting that someone pay him that much because everyone knows that the market for Kratz isn't nearly that high. A win may be worth 7 or 9 million in abstract terms but if no one actually pays that much for wins from the shortstop position (or from a pitch framing catcher), you probably shouldn't either. There's two possibilities here. Either the market undervalues the positions overall OR (and I think this deserves serious consideration), players who play a premium position poorly are very overrated by fWAR. In either case, there's reason to believe the Jays are overpaying for what Reyes brings to the table. -
Has there been a single game this year... (Jose Reyes thread)
KingKat replied to Vincent's topic in Toronto Blue Jays Talk
Is a SS who played 0 games even a shortstop? If you're filtering by position, you need some kind of threshold for a player to even qualify as a SS. Otherwise, you're going to clutter your list with guys who maybe played there for an inning but wouldn't be anyone's idea of a SS. I'd like to see the threshold a little lower to allow for someone like Jeter but I don't think there's anything wrong per say with the way the data was presented. -
Given the nature of Gibbons contract does that mean he gets to be manager forever or should his job review come up as soon as funds allow?
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No he didn't. His point is they were lying.
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A lie that would only make them seem more incompetent if we actually believed it.
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FWIW, Bill James has flat out come out and said that the benefits of running an optimal lineup don't justify the hassle it would cause with players. You have to pick your battles and optimal lineups isn't one of them especially since optimal lineups rely on projection and conjecture anyways. You can only know retro-actively what the optimal lineup would have been. A good example of that was Marco Scutaro in 2009. All the projection models said he should bat 9th that year but Cito batted him leadoff and he ended up outperforming all his projections anyways. The benefit of optimal lineup construction is largely illusory because for it to really payoff (I think the maximum possible benefit is around 2 wins), you would have to be 100% accurate on your projected lineup's production. There's too much uncertainty in baseball to make optimal lineups even remotely worth fighting for.
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I would agree with this. Gibson isn't a sabermatrician. He's really an old school guy but from the Earl Weaver school more than the Whitey Herzog school and that's fine. It's about as good as you can hope for without running so afoul of baseball culture that you alienate people. There may be a few managers more progressive than Gibbons out there (Maddon, Acta) but there's probably a lot more Herzog types. When you evaluate Gibbons as a tactician, you have to grade on a curve. I really didn't love a lot of his decisions vis-à-vis pitching substitutions (neither in this term or the last one) and his seeming obsession with the 100 pitch count as an arbitrary turning point doesn't seem to serve him very well but overall, he's a "good" tactician if you accept the necessary, inevitalbe caveats that you have to conceed when discussing managerial strategy.
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No one can ever 100% know what someone's intent is in cases like these. Inevitabley assumptions will be made. Some may be wrong, some may be right. The idea is to send a message GENERALLY that player's safety trumps petty rivalries and they can do that effectively without necessarily being right in every case. Stroman threw at a guy's head. He probably didn't meant to do that but it certainly seemed like he intended to hit him and he certainly did make a very dangerous throw. That's enough to justify the suspension but certainly not enough to justify a major one which is why it's limited to something manageable. Who cares if they didn't do the same thing in some other cases. Inconsistency will happen, mistakes will happen. It's not a friggin' conspiracy against the Jays. It won't really impact the Jays much at all actually.
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Care to elaborate?
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What does this even mean?
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If the unwritten rule here is, "You can send a message but if you put a player's life in danger, we'll suspend you", I don't see why anyone should have a problem with it. You can raise doubts about intent and doubts about intended location. HBPs and near HBPs are never going to be black and white. There's always going to be a grey area but ultimately that grey area is reflected in the relative leniency of the suspension. The discipline is never going to be 100% coherent but that's an impossible standard anyways and that shouldn't prevent baseball from being proactive about sending a message about head hunting.
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I think it's an exageration to say his well being will be compromised. He latched on as a bench coach in KC last time he was fired. He has even more experience now so he should be at least as employable as he was if not more and I don't think his reputation in baseball has suffered. He's sound tactician with a pleasant disposition but he's not afraid to put the hammer down if he feels he's being disrespected (see Shea, Lilly, Pillar, Rasmus). He probably won't be a manager again but he'll land another gig. It won't be as lucrative but he had to have known that going in. Unless, he was dumb with his money, he and his family will be fine. I just don't want AA to waste more time on a manager search. No more excuses and no more distractions for AA, he needs to take the bull by the horns and build a better roster. Enough with this stars and scrubs crap. Assemble a decent bench, take advantage of option years to strengthen the 40 man and put your best foot forward for once.
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Whose undeperfomance, specifically, are you trying to explain? Other than Rasmus (who alos overperformed under Gibbons last year), I don't see too many players undeperforming. Reyes and Janssen are clearly regressing but otherwise, it seems like nearly all the starting pitchers are exceeding expectations and the bats are pretty much what you'd expect, the good ones are good, the bad ones are bad.
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Yeah 6 games is a pretty minimal punishment for a starter. Anything less and it probably has no impact at all. Stroman isn't exactly being tarred and feathered here.
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Have they dropped the appeal? I assumed he would make that start and then they would drop it.
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There are places where it's worse than others but it's never a good idea.
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Yeah it does. I wonder how that will go. AA's track record with managers is shall we say interesting. He kept Cito on for an extra year, ostensibly to due an extended manager search (but probably more out of loyalty to Beeston) and then the result of that search was the hiring of John Farrell, a strategically inept manager who didn't really want to be there. Then he decides to go the "evil you know" route and bring back Gibbons because of the comfort level he had. If he fires Gibbons, what route does he go know? He's tried exhaustive research, he's tried going the familiarity route. What would be his approach now and how does he justify having to hire his fourth manager? He basically would have to convince people that he's really bad a hiring managers but competent otherwise.
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You must be joking. He just happened to throw a ball behind the head of the player that Reyes was made at? Look I love Stroman but there's no reason to be such a flagrant homer about this.
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ARod did it on purpose. Caleb Joseph did not intentionally step on Reyes and Reyes had no business going head first to home.
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Sliding head first is never the answer.
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Best way to retaliate is for Reyes to man up and learn to slide instead of blaming the opposition for his mistakes.
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Holly s***! Is that actually in the movie?
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Talented dude, too bad he's such a derp.
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Highlight of Rauch's Jays tenure:
