Olerud363.354

How good is this park for a right handed hitter now? I think the dimensions are somewhere between the original and the freak show dimensions https://www.mlb.com/news/effect-of-camden-yards-new-dimensions-for-2025. If Mike Elias is a moron I guess the freak show camden thing might be evidence (for the record I thought he was the greatest GM of all time and about to launch the greatest franchise of the 21st century, 2025 wasn't great evidence for that theory but who knows what the future years will bring). Anyway freak show Camden. Seemed like it was designed to stop Vlad and Judge and Bo and Stanton. I always thought there would have to be a 5-3 game where Vlad (or Bo or Judge) hit a 415 foot, 115 mph missile to left centre that was caught and the Orioles celebrate, don't remember that game happening to the Jays but maybe it did happen to the Yankees once, I recall watching the now defunct Michael Kay show, and Kay complaining about something that happened to a Judge 117 mph 420 foot flyball in Camden. So anyway obviously the Orioles couldn't quite make an all left handed line up (Jackson Holiday, greatest prospect ever, so far is questionable as to that status, just like his GM is to his 'greatest' status, Cedric Mullins, all star center fielder now journey man, some of their other left handed hitters not panning out, so had to bring in the wall and sign big old slugging first basemen for 150 million.

Funny how Kirk and Moreno are same guy, except Kirk more durable and as of now has better post season numbers. Atkins did a great job realizing the one with the "better" body artificially had more trade value but Kirk so far has been more durable.

If they lose out on Tucker go for Imai and one of the position players. I guess they would have to get rid of Berrios in that situation.

Rumor is now Dodgers are looking to trade for Skubal and offer Tucker a 3-4 year deal with big AAV. If Jays lose out on Tucker I wouldn't mind seeing them still in on Imia. Make a super-redundant 6 man starting staff to battle the Dodgers super-team, then can move some guys to the bullpen if all healthy in October.

Crazy how far the Jays got given... 1. Bieber was dealing with forearm tightness and unable to handle a full playoff workload 2. Scherzer looked done at the end of September and they went 1-2 in his starts. 3. They lost all 4 of Gausman's ALCS and World Series starts. 4. Bichette was injured all of October 5. Springer was beat up and injured some of October. Despite the fore-arm thing they went 3-0 in Bieber's ALCS and World Series starts, 3-1 in Yesevage's. Almost no question the Jays could have a healthier and better playoff team next October. Also sadly since so much luck is involved in this, this better team may not get as far.

Not qualified to comment on your other stuff, but Jays should go LA lite. 140 innings for starters. Lots of labwork and rest. Figure out what ails them all and fix. They all get to be a setup man once and a while so don't do that for first time in playoffs. Like - next weeks you are setup man 3 times. Chill. Rest. Get strong and learn to be setup man just in case we need you in the most critical inning of last 30 years.

They should resign Bassitt and Tatsui Imai Then just have guys on stand by half the time, experiment with 4 inning outings, starters being the setup man sometimes. piggy backing, 6 man rotation sometimes... everybody end up with 140 innings, maybe Bieber less. Option Yesivage for a couple weeks for a rest. Put Bieber on the dl a few times. All kinds of crazy stuff then just aim to be fresh for the playoffs. And as a second purpose to this make sure different types of relief work aren't new to these guys. Like your first opportunity as a set up man is ideally not game 7s. Gotta still make the playoffs so that is why they need Tatsui Imai to do this. Realistically probably never work... because guys have their routines... or maybe it would.

Seems like in the Atkins press conference he said something like 'Bieber is probably going to be ready for Spring Training, taking it week by week. The whole thing is weird between making him the 3rd then 4th SP in playoff rotation, to him taking the qualifying offer. Wonder what is going on. Hopefully just a slow TJ recovery and nothing else. Also sounds like Berrios wasn't too happy watching playoff baseball.

Jim said that even after regression their splits were something like wRC+ was like 90/110 in favor of Scheider. It is probably more like 85/105 but same trend. That mostly reflects the difference in total wRC+ rather than platoon skill. Jim has 40 years experience being the most highly paid engineer in a firm of 2000 and more statistical analysis experience then the rest of you combined. I still will say that he intuitively understood that the platoon trends of Clement and Schneider were real (albeit small) and he did correctly deduce the net wRC+ difference of 20 (vs righties) between the two. Personally I have 22 years experience going from job to job, getting canned fairly quickly, though have not been canned in many years, I guess because my linkedin has had that green 'open for work' thingy since before Covid. That being said I've been canned by many Jim-types, and many phony-types just trying to eliminate me before I took their job, so I know the difference between the real-deal and the make-believes.

Enough about Olerud already Olerud. One more thing. He also had potential as a pitcher. I don't think it was Ohtani like potential but crafty lefty type potential. Given his elite hand eye coordination (which shows up on offense and defense) got to think he'd he'd have had more control than Brandon Little. Probably could have pitched 50 innings a year, at the very least been a position player mop up guy with some actual pitching game. Love to see another player like him come up in my life time.

John Olerud had an 8 fWAR MVP type season at 24 to start his prime years hitting .363 and setting the Blue Jays batting average record. John Olerud had an 8 fWAR MVP type season at 29 to end his prime years hitting .354 and setting the Mets batting average record. Have to think if he had a manager and organization that believed in his style his age 25-28 seasons would have been better. Even with that way more fWAR than Delgado and Mattingly... should have been a hall of famer. Should have been a life long Blue Jay.

Olerud has 57 fWAR compared to Delgado 44 and Mattingly 40. Delgado has a 135 wRC+, Olerud 130 wRC+, and Mattingly a 124 wRC+. The only reason Olerud isn't being considered with Delgado is I guess is that people don't think the 1b defense metrics are real. What is the reason that he isn't being considered along side Mattingly? Olerud is better on offense and defense. Olerud's best two seasons are both better than Mattingly's two best. His best 5 combined are better. If Olerud wasn't platooned by CIto his career would look completely different. 20 homers and 80 rbis on back of the baseball card looks so much better than 15 and 60. Then there is the second order effect that platooning probably had on a young player. Not seeing lefties much for so many years probably hurt his development.

Is it though? Clements career wRC+ against righties - 82 Schneiders career wRC+ against righties - 112 Jim regresses it (I presume) without math, just uses his intuition from a life of stats, logic and decades of experiences both intellectual and visceral and and comes up with 90/110. What are the actual numbers if you regress? Formula on fangraphs looks simple enough, but like Jim I am a very experienced man of statistics so know the answer but would like to see the peanut gallery do the math. (fyi I do agree about Terminators point that since Schneider only plays against Josh Towers level righties we can't totally trust his splits).

Schneider has 500 PAs against righties. How do you regress them? Using the league average against righties? I understand like if he had 30 at bats against righties and went 12 for 30 with 4 homers... You wouldn't believe it, and you'd just take his career stats. But if we are already taking his career stats what else is there to average in? 500 PAs against righties, 300 PAs against lefties. Pretty even. Slightly above average guy against both. I guess maybe not enough at bats and you adjust based on long term general trend and assume his even platoon splits actually would be unbalanced (better against lefties worse against righties) if he had a 12 trillion at bats in a simulation?

My above post is pretty long. Shorter version is that there is nothing super special about Mookie on stats cast, and actually rates below clement in range, arm and speed. If there is something 'special' about Mookie it is hard to measure, but whos to say, given what we know about Clement he doesn't also possess the same 'special' qualities? (Totally agree no need to force a move to Center, still an interesting discussion).

Just out of curiosity I looked at Bett's savant page. Last year he was 92 percentile range, 29 percentile arm. Take that with a grain of salt but he's close to Clemente and Giminez. A little less than them in range. That's just one measure obviously and could be flawed. So the counterpoint maybe to Mookie Betts being a freak is that range is more important than traditionally thought and players with good range can play different positions. Also interesting Mookie's sprint speed is below average only 36%. Is that really true? If so why does he have such good range? Instincts? First step? Agility. Clement's range is elite and spring speed very good. No need to move him to center with Varsho still here. What could be interesting is just start giving him time in the outfield once and a while, just as much in preparation for playoffs as for any long term move. Like start thinking about playoffs with potential longer games and more moves needed, and try to give these guys a little experience at difference things before throwing them into it in the World Series. Same goes with Starter's relieving. Give every starter 5 relief appearances, prep for playoffs, and also could be useful once and a while. Counterpoint to that philosophy (play around with roles in regular season so it is not new in Playoffs) is that no one really does it... so must be some downsides in terms of player comfort.

According to Savant Ernie Celent is 98% range, and 25% arm. Jiminez is 97 and 47. Bo is 1 and 46. Barger is 20 and 99. Who I would want at short if all I knew was statcast range and arm 1. Jiminez 2. Clement 3. Barger 4. Vladimir Guerrero jr. 5. Bo Bichette

His defensive metrics have always been great and he's played a lot of short stop. According to baseball reference he was the best defensive player in baseball at 2.9 dWAR. Scored well on fangraphs the last couple of years. He's scored high defensively with a mix of of all three middle infield positions so I'd be skeptical of claims he can't play short above average. I think Giminez was just shifted there instead because Giminez is an even better defensive player, but Clement would be fine at short. The only flaw in that theory, that these awesome defensive infielders should to be able to play short well is arm strength. Maybe Clement doesn't have quite the arm you want at short. I don't know that and I suppose could look it up on savante.

Jake Cook is 22 years old and scouting report is that he has some of the best speed and defensive potential of the draft class. Normally I'd say if he can hit, it should show up right away and no reason he can't be ready for 2027. Like the typical path for a 22 year old College player (if they can hit) is to rip through a couple levels of the minors and show up at age 24. I guess he was a pitcher though so could take a little more time to develop. On a related note kind of weird that very few of the Jays draft picks got any minor league experience last year. Cook, Parker, and a couple others I can't find any stats for. One of the only guys who appears to have played is Sean Casey's son who hit quite well for a month in Dunnedin. https://www.milb.com/player/jake-casey-814457. Would have been interesting to see what Cook (about the same age) would have done there, but I assume they are holding him back and working on stuff.

I am curious why you think they wouldn't make these changes? I am a complete outsider but I assume they are tracking performance on every pitch and adjusting from start to start. So if the data says make some changes I would hope they would. Seems like in some of your other posts you are hinting that the Jays have some limitations on the coaching side. The game is so data intensive these days, and teams are using AI now to make best use of data, so if there is something that would help, and it is public enough that people are discussing it on message boards... well the team would have to know about it, and it would only be human stubbornness that would prevent good strategies from being used.

Both those years they were trying to win and there was tonne's of excitement. Won 80 in 2005 and the expectation was to win 95 and contend in 2006. And they should have. The 2006 Blue Jays were missing 70-90 runs. What is the greatest OPS of all Blue Jays teams? 2006 .811 They scored a pedestrian (for 2006) 800 runs and should have had 900. They had better statistics then the 2015 team but 90 less runs. 90 runs. Gone. Into the ether. The fates are cruel. This is why I think I'm not as torn up over game 7 2025 World Series as others. The f***ing fates have lots of ways to screw you. Some late, some random, some mysterious. 90 f***ing missing runs. Gone because the fates f***ed us for 162 games in weird mysterious ways. The 2013 team also was expected to win, and it became apparent they wouldn't 15 games in. That sucked too. You had tickets for a mid June game and were excited to see Dickey, Johnson, the track team (Jose Reyes and friends), Bautista and EE going for 80+ homeruns.... and it was gone April 15th and had to suffer through John Farrell getting the golden season instead.

I think they'll give him every chance to work things out. He was their best reliever by fWAR. Probably make the team and get a month to work things out and if he doesn't he'll work on it in Buffalo.

2005 was amazing -- Burnette, B.J. Ryan, Glauss, Overbay maybe forgetting a couple. The 2006 team played great just messed up short stop and for some reason their offense was inefficient. They scored 800 runs with stats that should have led to 900 2012 - track team and ancient knuckle baller. Not the greatest really. 2014/2015 - Donaldson, Estrada, Russell Martin, Devon Travis, Justin Smoak, Michael Saunders -- pretty incredible group

I think there could be benefit (or a disadvantage) depending which way interest rates sway. They buy the bond every year so if interest rates go up, the price of the bond goes down and they have some extra present day money. If interest rates go down the opposite. If there was ever dramatic interest rate changes (which there will be) team could get a bit screwed on this. 10 year interest rates historically have been as high as 15% and as low as less than 1%. When Ohtani signed his contract they were about 4.5% and haven't changed much since then. I am curious what happens if the 10 year swings dramatically say there is a financial crisis and it goes to 0.5%. That would mean a 10 year bond that matures at 70 million could cost millions more, so practically speaking LA would have to pay more. Not sure if it would change luxury tax calculations too.