AMS528

See this is the thing about complete idiots. They're usually idiots on several different levels. You can't contain that kind of stupidity, it's like breathing for this guy. Just second nature.

Jordan Groshans, still not hitting for a lot of power, but a lot more than he did while he was here anyways. 306/395/439. Has managed to get 9 xBH in less than half the ABs. Annoying that his numbers have been so much better there. He'd have still been a fairly touted prospect with those numbers and his low K, decent walk rates. Not that Anthony Bass has been bad, but Groshans could have pulled more value in a deal.

Literally always solid no matter what. In his four worst starts this season where he only gave up four runs each time he still went at least five innings in each of those starts. Even in his worst games he'll pitch decently deep into the game and keep it winnable.

I mean saying that again ignores xERA. And like I pointed out his statcast numbers do show that guys are getting good contact off of him.

It's not as if he doesn't acknowledge Gausman in there. "Gausman leads in FIP (2.17) and WAR (5.2), but his 3.12 ERA and 3.44 xERA, to these eyes, make him less likely to get serious traction against this competition." That's not unreasonable. We know Gausman has had great peripherals, but has gotten both a bit unlucky and hit hard when guys do make contact. His statcast numbers have him as elite at getting guys to chase and at not walking guys. But those same numbers also indicate when they do hit him they're barreling him up and hitting it fairly hard. Between his FIP and his xERA, it's not really unreasonable to split the difference there. There's more numbers than just WAR now. Gausman has been pretty elite, but by xERA he's been worse than the four pitchers the writer listed. If the writers placing more weight on that particular number than it seems fine. Every year that goes by we get a little more data allowing us to get even more granular when evaluating players performances. FIP was what it was about a few years, and now there's even more stuff. Which is why there's both a completely reasonable case to say Gausman has been the best pitcher and to say no he's been great but not one of the top four guys.

I did not realize former Jays minor league guy Harold Ramirez was having a great year for the Rays. Classic Rays, somehow getting an excellent season completely out of the blue from a random cast away that the Cubs gave up for absolutely nothing.

Greinke is consistently unintentionally hilarious. And knows his baseball. https://twitter.com/ByMcCullough/status/1562268852503085056?s=20&t=mJowCLv0F85MN81quhyekg What website has stats for how guys do each time through a lineup?

I think the outlook on Berrios basically is, this is for whatever reason a terrible off year for him, and there's a low chance he turns it around. But his track record before that is lot of innings of good pitching, so there shouldn't be panic that he can't return to that level at least next year if not this year. Luckily neither SWR or Martin are very good either so not much pain on that end of the deal. 800 innings of solid and steady performance and still on the right side of 30. Yeah he genuinely does suck this year and it's not bad luck, but he should return value on this contract overall given it's not a huge amount per year.

More walks than strikeouts as well. 62 PA is a pretty small but not completely insignificant sample size, when it comes to showing a bit power. Also move over Orelvis Martinez. Cade Doughty with 5 HR's in 41 AB's. That is some fun early power.

Why do you hate capital letters so much? What did they ever do to you?

Completely unrelated to anything about baseball, but I made the bad decision to click on the post in your signature and that was a god damn adventure of a thread.

I think he also said that he realized guys were taking it easy on him physically out of respect and literally letting him know they were about to hit him by yelling his name before it happened. At that point yeah, I can see why he decided it was done.

I think the only justification they could have for Berrios starting, outside of a strong turnaround over the next one and a half months, is that he has a good track record and its important to show confidence in a guy you just signed to a massive long term deal less than a year ago.

So it's not unreasonable to think that if we were to manage to make the playoffs, based on what we've seen to this point, Stripling would pitch over Berrios right? Besides the odd game here and there, Berrios has been consistently bad this year. He has a track record sure, but sometimes, once you've got a decent sample that's less relevant. He's not underperforming based on his peripherals and he's getting hit very hard. I just don't have much faith in him for the rest of this season. Stripling also isn't overperforming significantly either.

Haha what in the f***. Teo is having the same 4 WAR type season he has had for the last 2.5 seasons. He's as consistent as they get. Honestly out of all the things to complain about Teos performance this year is not one.

I do understand that those numbers are up, but I think in terms of relative safety as a major city it's basically still near the top even with those increases. And I think homicides are down from last year at least, while assaults and robberies are definitely up. https://safecities.economist.com/ The Economist still has it second amongst major cities. If those numbers keep heading in the wrong direction than sure but it's not really near that point even factoring in the increases. I think people underestimate what other major cities are like, in terms of homicides and crime. Also as an aside, I can't find any numbers for this but I feel like auto thefts are up globally, cause car thieves have figured out how to completely get around these push to start vehicles. Like my friend was in Montreal the last month and saw a new model car get robbed in about ten seconds flat right in front in front of him. They get in, hook up to the ECU and hit the push to start and were off to the races. Sometimes certain tech advances are more of a disadvantage than advantage.

Besides the absurd cost of housing, by most measures Toronto is a really good city to live in. It consistently ranks up there with the best cities in the world and safest major cities globally. I really can't understand how anyone can see it as a s*** hole.

There are tons of back end pitchers who have flashes were they don't look hittable as long as you're looking at their best games. Kikuchi isn't unique that way. If you look at say Trent Thornton's game logs in his rookie year, you have plenty of flashes of looking unhittable, but really doesn't mean much. He's even further away than a lot of those back end guys who show flashes, since he has no idea where his fastball is heading a good amount of the time. He has to just get to being a consistent and ok fifth starter, before we're talking about unlocking anything.

$12M on a one year deal for a back end starting pitcher would not be a big contract. They gave him a three year deal though, and you don't give a three year deal unless you really believe there's at least a chance he's going to be something more than a back end pitcher. Cause there are lots of guys to sign if you just want someone to suck for a single season with some upside and that doesn't hurt as much. Three years was a bit much for a guy who's never shown the performance to match.

I don't know if there's ever going to be a more egregious contract than the Albies one ever signed again in sports. It would be incredibly hard to top.

I think it's definitely possible that at least for this season he may not revert to his historical performance. I don't think he's going to pitch like this for his contract, he's better than this and he has five seasons of performances that would indicate that. But it's possible he can't turn it around this year for whatever reason has led him here, since his underlying numbers aren't really indicating a guy who should have have a better ERA. His xERA is horrific at 5.48, his FIP is only a bit better than that. Only his xFIP shows some hope, but that's not really taking into account the fact that he's getting hit really hard overall. The opposing hard hit percentage is way higher than any other season in his career, he's getting barreled at a higher rate. It makes sense that he's giving up this many home runs. Something is different this year for him, and unless there's a change, there's a decent chance that he'll continue being inconsistent and getting hit hard for the remainder of the year.

Pearson was young enough, and his injuries were occasionally non pitching related enough to hope on him. But Merryweather? He's pitched 60.2 innings total in the last 5 YEARS. I don't think you can ever reasonably hope for anything out of a pitcher with that kind of history. You can't really have any plans that rely on a pitcher like that.

Yeah if anything Teo has been an absolute model of consistency for three years. Similar walk and strikeout rates, consistent power, mediocre defensively but not so much to be crippling. Putting up roughly 4-4.5 WAR for every 162 games. He's been a very reliable guy to plug in year in and year out.

I think it's mostly for when an individual or company wants to do some subtle marketing, but doesn't want to draw attention. It's easier to do that with an older established account so when you click the account it doesn't look like it's literally just posting about video game x or product y. This was true before and I'm not sure it is now, but an older account with a lot of karma is also able to post more frequently. Which is why an account like his can probably post so many highlights in a single night.

Nah I took a look he's still there. I don't think you delete an account with millions of points of post karma. You can at least sell that for a few hundred dollars on some sites.