Brownie19

I believe I said this last time someone said "the stupid FO should have signed Walker - f***ing idiots" - He pitched 67 innings over the previous 3 seasons. - In the very few innings he pitched, he was solid, not specular by any means. - His 'stuff' isn't very good (this isn't Danny Salazar, who's stuff is incredible when healthy). - He ended up getting a 3 year deal! He seemingly 'settled' for a 3 year deal with the Mets. For all we know, he was asking the Jays for 4 years, or 3 years at $30M+ I mean there's a chance the Mets somehow outbid themselves or something - but I have to imagine the Jays were rightfully looking for a 1 year deal with a 2nd year option or something like that and thus were nowhere near what Walker valued himself at. He's walking 4 per inning right now - we should revisit this in about 6 weeks and then again in about 18 months to see if we still regret it.

If anyone f***s with the A's green colours they should be shot and pissed on.

Does anyone know much about the leagues in Japan or Korea? Is the shift used heavily over there now? I don't think their velocity is nearly as high as in North America (but may be trending up?). Have any made any adjustments? I believe the ball they use slightly smaller...which you think would actually increase velocity and favor the pitcher more. I wonder if they have any of the similar challenges that MLB faces. TTO rise, K% increase, less action, too many pitching changes, games taking too long.

Several of the Korean/Japanese players arrived at the wrong time. Many struggle with the higher velocity in north america. These guys would have dominated back in the '90's when velocity wasn't nearly as high.

and Hosmer.

Sounds like he'd be a great influence on the younger generation . It's hard to fathom that he doesn't realize how f***ing horrendous he is at baseball now. I guess I can appreciate he'd like to be in there against probably the only pitcher in baseball that he still has success against, but trying to tag and take an extra base on a routine fly to LF? As you said - self awareness is negative 7.

are you convinced the vast majority of the league is stupid?

I thought he was pissed he wasn't starting v. Yarbourgh, who he's crushed historically.

Ohtani was dominant tonight - finding his command (1 BB and 62 strikes in 88 pitches). It looks like they moved him to RF when they pulled him from the game. Thought that was interesting....sure beats losing his bat when he comes out.

That's a good win. Well done boys.

MLB has given Oakland permission to start exploring a relocation if they can't get a new stadium. Las Vegas is expected to be the favourite. Do we want Oakland to relocate?

What do you mean by that? Grichuk's average exit velocity has dropped significantly from when he first arrive in the majors. 97th percentile in 2015. He's been in the mid 50's since 2019.

Ah yes - I'm dumb. But as recently as 2016 and 2017 - when shifts were being used, we had BABIP's of .300, which is some of the highest we've had the past 20 years. 2019 was .298. I'd also take 2021 #'s with a grain of salt as we haven't hit the warm weather yet and pitchers typically start the year ahead of the batters. Even 2020 was a funky shortened season. It's not like you can look at the list and say - well....that's when they started using the shift a lot more. The historical numbers are all over the place. The BABIP was lower in 1993 than it was in 2019. Was the defense just so good in 1993 that it made up for the lack of shifts? Or was everyone trying to avoid striking out so much that we ended up with a s*** ton more weak contact that lead to outs? Is there a list of exit velocity by year? I have to think Bonds, Mac, Sosa and the steroid boys were hitting the ball the ball pretty hard in the early 2000's

You provided a link behind a paywall so I can't see it, but what you're suggesting doesn't jive with the stats P2F provided - which show essentially no pattern at all for BABIP. I'm confused.

Just read they scratched Leiter just 2 hours prior to his scheduled start last Saturday. They claimed they were monitoring his innings, but the timing seems odd.

I tried unsuccessfully to find the league wide BABIP stats by year. Does anyone know where to find that? Has BABIP dropped dramatically over the past 10 years?

My 10 year old throws better than that.

Interesting. I swear we've reviewed umpire stats in the past and they were a lot worse than that. This article says they were wrong over 12% of the time between 2008 and 2018. https://theconversation.com/an-analysis-of-nearly-4-million-pitches-shows-just-how-many-mistakes-umpires-make-114874#:~:text=Using%20this%20available%20technology%2C%20we,and%20strike%20calls%20for%20accuracy.&text=In%20the%202018%20season%2C%20MLB,ended%20with%20an%20incorrect%20call. I wonder if they've been getting better over the last few years? https://www.bloomberg.com/businessweek/graphics/baseballs-worst-call-of-the-day/#/umpires/ranking/2019 If you click year by year, it does appears they're getting more accurate? This is such a hot topic that I'm not surprised. Gone are the days of just accepting the home plate umpire is a 'pitchers umpire' with this made up, ******** strike zone that he has a reputation of calling. I wonder as we continue to push those old dogs out of the game and replace them with umps who call the actual strike zone - and with more focus on a consistent strike zone game after game, if human umpires can continue to improve their accuracy to the point robo umpires aren't needed. If there are on average about 300 pitches per game. If the accuracy gets up to 95%, that's only 15 'misses' per game. At that rate, I kind of doubt the changes we're suggesting robo-umps would create (can't throw as hard - need to throw more strikes) would actually happen...

In my mind - this is a cyclical thing. If my memory serves correct, back in the 90's, pitchers were always told to pitch down in the zone because pitching up in the zone resulted in lots of home runs. You were told that a pitcher was tiring when he started to 'leave it up'. That philosophy was drilled in every pitcher and they became good at it. In turn, hitters changed their approach to start handling the low pitches better....but - that's made them more susceptible to the high fastball again. Hitters are now in the process of adjusting their swing path and approaches to handle the high heater again...it's just a matter of when they catch up. I fully expect that by say 2030 - we'll hear pitchers being told to keep it down. Paint the knees again. My only hesitation on this is the added velocity we see across the league. It may mean that it remains very difficult to hit the high fastball - no matter what adjustments the hitters make to their swing path... Love this type of discussion - thanks TL

I thought great umpires were wrong 10% of the time and s***** umpires were wrong 15% of the time on ball and strike calls?

The great starters will always be the great starters (and we want that). Gerrit Cole and deGrom are still going to be utterly dominant. However, the middling pitchers who throw upper 90's probably don't have the command to succeed if you implemented a robo-ump. They probably need to tone down their delivers to improve command and consistency, which will make them more hittable. Also - didn't MLB recently change where they measured the pitchers velocity from - which artificially increased the radar gun numbers? Or am I dreaming that up?

Not bad for a 39th round pick (1185th overall)

Saints are a decent example - but Spanky is right, almost every team would be s*** if you removed their HOF QB and replaced him with some middling QB. It's been so depressing watching the Packers draft over the past couple of years. f*** me. It's really too bad that Love doesn't seem to be the future as they could get a massive haul for Rodgers and transition to the future. Denver had a super bowl roster, minus the QB and a ton of cap space to add Rodgers....it's a really good fit. Packers could probably get 3 first rounders + Jeudy or something like that. GB could use Fant too (Deguera sucks Spank).

I think the issue is that the environment you're in often creates the results - and not being an ******* is a pretty low bar. An aging veterin is with a team for a few years, producing on the bench for a very good young team that has success. Maybe he has a lot in common with some of the younger players, he's comfortable in the environment, earns their respect and becomes a great mentor for them. He develops a reputation as being a great veterin. That veterin becomes a FA and is signed to play a similar role on a new team. However this team isn't nearly as successful, they have a rash of injuries and this veterin is pushed into an extended role where he isn't nearly as successful. It's this first year on the team, he doesn't know anyone that well, doesn't have a lot in common with the younger players on that team and isn't performing on the field. Now he's probably worried about keeping his job in general and probably isn't providing any of the mentorship they thought they'd get from him. I mean good luck replicating that type of relationship with some old veterin you're bringing in for a year or two. Foolish stuff IMO.

It's pretty crazy to see the top 14 seasons by K% are 2021, back to 2008 in exact order.