.
Look like any GM's you know? :- )
If you want to see 85 seconds that capture the essence of Dr. D's complaint with the "win 85-90 games with efficient dollars" approach -- as Dr. D sees it, anyway -- this Lombardi video will give you a feel for it.
.
Q. How much difference does SSI expect from the new dimensions?
A. :- O
Had the Mariners simply removed the scoreboard in LF, we'd have expected a large impact. What they actually did... ::golfclap:: can we get a stadium name change with that? I'll go for Funway Park.
For those who just joined us, Dr. D does not quote Bill James because he's divinely inspired. We quote from him because he has a unique voice. Well, that and the fact that Dr. D is used to listening to Grandmasters with massive pattern recognition. Here is what James had when asked about the Padres' home park:
...........................
Any comments on the talk about the Padres moving their fences up? Sounds like it will happen, do not know what dimensions yet.
Asked by: dyourg
Answered: 4/28/2012
I'd be in favor of it, if I was in San Diego. In the steroid era, maybe there was an advantage to keeping the totals real. But who wants to have a team that scores 550 runs in a season? What hitter wants to play in a park like that? Here's my suggestion: Have a little triangle that juts out from the end of the bullpen in right field, maybe 15 feet, where there are bright red ground-level seats. If the ball is hit into the red seats on the fly, it's a ground rule TRIPLE.
............................
Two things about this reply:
.
Q. If you check the scatter charts, each Mariner hitter would have gained only 1-4 homers in 2012, based on an overlay.
A. The operative word there being "EACH."
.
Q. ...
A. Larry LaRue pointed out that on Tuesday, when the score was 3-0 Mariners, that with the new fences it would have been 9-5. I'm blinkin' lovin' it. If we turn out to have Coors West it is All Right By Me.
No, the impact may not be quite so colossal, but I been sitting up there on the 3B side, 3rd deck, since the park's been open. There are LOTSA LOTSA balls off that scoreboard, up against that wall...
I've been going back through old minor league seasons as I put together the roll-out of all the minor-league statistical analysis over at Stalk (which I begin today, by the way), and there was really only one name that kept coming up as a guy who shouldn't have been a bust, but was. And that was Wladimir Balentien.
Q. The arguments against giving Josh Hamilton a $200M Prince Fielder type contract are ...
A. ... Too obvious to waste time typing out. If you're going to play two people at once, like Steve Martin's good cop bad cop in Pink Panther, you might at least ask questions that some people haven't thought of the answer to....
Suffice it to say that in rotisserie baseball, good owners split the difference on guys like Hamilton. In his MVP year he was worth $39 in 5x5. So you pay $25 for him. That's the right thing to do.
Life mirrors art. You pay 2/3 of what you'd pay for a healthy Josh Hamilton and that's plenty gamble enough. Dr. D remembers his roto mentor, back in the middle '90's, going "Mark McGwire is the biggest gamble in our game. If he's healthy, whoever owns him is going to win the league. But he probably won't be healthy."
.
Q. What's the least you'd pay Hamilton?
A. Glenn DuPaul makes the extremist case against, capping him at 5/$80M. DuPaul's an economist and his pencil is nice and sharp. But pencils as sharp as that sign no free agents, and they figure that's just as well.
The question is going to be: if Josh Hamilton could be had at the 7/$120M given to Jayson Werth, Matt Holliday and Carl Crawford - or, analogously, 6/$140M - would you do that?
.
G, Spec*, are you guys now wavering as to whether you'd have grabbed Zunino with the 1-1? I certainly am. If Houston had had this information on draft day -- 13 homers in 38 games with massive walks, 10/23 CS, etc., they wouldn't have taken Zunino?
Of course, SSI will cheerfully admit that it doesn't know much about the HS hotshots. . But! Usually a high school hitter would have to be pretty close to Hamilton-, Griffey-level talent for modern ML teams to pass on a college hitter who is head-and-shoulders over the crowd. Never heard anything about Correa or Buxton being THAT good.
Zunino parchutes into the high minors, the high minors being AA baseball where pitchers can throw breaking pitches for strikes when behind in the count, and in his first nine games crushes it like a pop can: three HR's, four more doubles, a .406 AVG with an EYE in excess of 1.0 and a .800 SLG. This follows his clear overmatch of the Northwest League, and let us hastily remind you that most pundits were quite dubious about Zunino's promotion.
No, LrKrBoi29, we're not declaring the case closed and declaring that Gary Carter are belong to us. We're asking whether this additional data on Zunino -- that his first six weeks in the minors would produce dominating control of pro pitchers -- would have affected his draft standing. For example, on draft day, you didn't know for sure whether the change in bats would affect Zunino, right?
On draft day, I was moderately bummed at a "forced" choice. Re-rack the draft and it says here that Zunino is a no-brainer at 1-1.
.
In a recent "Dynasties" article at BJOL, James points out that the 1900-1912 Pirates became a dynasty by absorbing a second team:
7. The Pittsburgh Pirates, 1900-1912
19 Points, Tied on our List as the 14th-15th greatest team of all time
Key Figures: Honus Wagner, Fred Clarke, Deacon Phillippe and Sam Leever.
The "Pirates", as I suspect most of you know, became the Pirates by stealing the best players from the Louisville team. In 1898 Pittsburgh went 72-76, Louisville 70-81; in 1899 Pittsburgh went 76-73; Louisville 75-77. Neither team was great, but they had about a half a team each. Pittsburgh had Ginger Beaumont, Jimmy Williams, Jesse Tannehill, Sam Leever and Jack Chesbro; Louisville had Honus Wagner, Fred Clarke, Chief Zimmer, Deacon Phillippe and Rube Waddell. The two teams had several investors in common, people who owned parts of both teams. After the 1899 season the Louisville team was folded, and the two teams merged into one. Pittsburgh "pirated" the Louisville roster, taking three Hall of Famers.
The combined team went 79-60 in 1900, second place, but earned a dynasty point because the National League was still using a post-season series to decide its championship, and the Pirates were one of the two teams. The Pittsburgh/Louisville combo team won the National League in 1901 (90-49), 1902 (103-36) and 1903 (91-49), and continued to play brilliant baseball for nine years after that, winning the World Championship in 1909.
As saberdweebs, we focus on the idea that Beckett, Crawford and AGone are collectively being paid too much. We haven't focused on the possibility that maybe these AL celebrities will step down to a AAA league ;- ) and demolish it. ... we're tongue in cheek about the Dodger dynasty, LrKrBoi29, but this on-loading of three stars at once is a subtext to be aware of.
MLB Trade Rumors has a bullet list of talking points that is high-quality even by their standards. SSI's crunch of these talking points:
.
=== Don't Leave Anything On the Field (in Boston) ... or On the Conference Table, Dept. ===
This morning, the Red Sox and Dodgers completed a nine-player blockbuster sending Josh Beckett, Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford, and Nick Punto to Los Angeles for James Loney, Allen Webster, Ivan De Jesus, Jerry Sands, and Rubby De La Rosa. For more on the quartet of prospects the Red Sox received, check out Mike Axisa's rundown from earlier today. Here's a look at some of the reaction to today's mega-deal..
- Buster Olney of ESPN.com (Insider sub. req'd) looks at the winners and losers of the deal. The Dodgers of 2012 are unsurprisingly among the winners while the Dodgers of 2017, Olney writes, appear to be losers in the trade. Olney also notes that this is the first time in MLB history in which two players with $100MM remaining on their contracts were involved in a trade.
First time in which two players with $100M remaining were both in a deal ... and both going one way! With another pricey player. Wow. No precedents on this one.
The takeaway for M's fans: the value of a playoff run, and the value of a TV deal, can dwarf $/WAR considerations. The M's are coming up on their own TV deal. Let's hope that the conservative M's ownership committee can find the guts that everybody else does, to push into the pot in order to reap the investment benefits.
.
Watcher sez,
How 'bout a POTD for Trout? If he's as you suggest, the best player in the game, etc., how was he not drafted higher like A-Roid or Jr? Imagine if the Yankees had not signed Teixiera. They would have been able to draft Trout, and which would you rather have right now? Yeah, me too. And Trout vs Ackley? Even easier answer.
I don't know much about Trout's pre-draft situation as such, but Terry McDermott hooks us up with the pitch-perfect sorry Freudian slip there interview on it: Link Man, Billy Beane lights Reiter UP on that baby. HEH! By the way, Terry ... how did you like the headline Reiter went with, after Beane schooled him?
Mike Trout was drafted #25 overall, which is a high compliment, not a criticism. But why wasn't he 1-1? The short version is,
(1) Trout plays better than his body, which is nothing unusual.
(2) Everybody did have Trout as a 1st-round quality player.
(3) You can't visualize 18-year-olds as 23-year-olds with such a level of accuracy that you can discern between a normal MLB player - who is a miracle of reflexes - and a star MLB player.
(4) Trout wasn't playing against top competition, which scouts don't necessarily grade down for that too much, but how can you compare players then? But read the Beane interview. It is epic, every word totally accurate and every word right to the point.
Jose Montero guns down Sam Fuld at second base. The umpire called him safe. Nice timing on Cindy's photo though, eh? Single shot.
If you saw the slo-mo's on TV, you saw Seager get the glove down onto the leg, just as Fuld's hands were about 4-6 inches from the bag. Not sure whether you'd call that "bang-bang"; a hand's length is a pretty good separation as baseball "beat the throw" plays go. Had Fuld been called out, as he would have been if an Angels catcher had been throwing and a Mariner running, Montero's CS% would be at exactly the league average.
You notice that Wedge, and Wakamatsu before him, usually accept the treatment that the umpires inflict on the Mariners. You can't fight City Hall, though Piniella and Weaver made life pretty miserable for the mayor.
Ah well. Not a bad photo from the third deck, if y'ask me. :- )
...........................
Q. How's about those Kemp and Hamilton comps that Malcontent threw down?
A. Dr. D would compare Josh Hamilton to a lot of things... to Ken Griffey Jr., to Mickey Mantle, to a T-1000 hypermimetic alloy terminator, to a falling meteor with mass in excess of 200,000 metric tons ... beyond that he ain't touching Hamilton comps with a 10-foot pole. :- )
But Malcontent's audacious (and thirsty) comparison to Matt Kemp might have more legs than you'd think... hm, let's toss the corkboard coasters around the table. ...obviously the age-arc factor is not going to match....
.
Q. What do you do with somebody on such a weird age-arc trendline?
A. Dr. D was there baby. For the keystone-kops version of Randy Johnson. Before he got good, the scouts were saying "you've got to endure the pain, because of his ceiling." Bill James was saying "watch close, because you're never going to see another like him."
Like Michael Saunders is, Randy Johnson was a long, ungainly man who moved like a basketball player. Or, in golf terms, Michael Saunders is swinging a 1-wood where Justin Smoak is swinging a 3-iron. (Randy Johnson was swinging a trick 5-foot driver.)
You weren't going to understand Randy Johnson by using age-arc methods to plot a trendline, now were you? He was bad for a long time, and then one day he was an ace, and then one year after that he was one of the ten greatest starters who ever lived.
The Mariners did not hang onto Randy Johnson hoping that someday he could be a 3-4 WAR pitcher. They put up with him for so long because they thought he could be a 7 WAR pitcher. The Mariners put a ridiculous amount of faith and effort into Michael Saunders, and it wasn't because they were hoping for a 3 WAR player.
It's perfectly reasonable to speak in terms of Michael Saunders' 5-7 WAR scenario. That's a very realistic possibility. He's swinging a 1-wood.
.
..........................................
=== What's Lame About 'Im? ===
Watching Buxton swing makes me sick. I'd call that kind of lame, I guess.
...........
Well, that's kind of a James-ism, an overstatement to make sure the point sticks... still, point stands. When I watch Buxton swing I have to say to myself Eric Davis, Eric Davis, over and over.
The second half of this video should suffice. He's disorganized. Where's the weight transfer? Where's the leverage? ... he's got only 2 home runs this high school season, and they make excuses, talk about he never gets anything to hit. You shoulda seen the 450-footer he hit this one time... what I see is a bunch of flat, static topped line drives. With zero leverage applied.
I'm not saying life is over for him. We are talking about the #1 overall here, right? (No, we're talking about the #3....) Actually we are talking about the #1. You've got 5-6 players who are all THIIISSSSSS close on the draft board, and if you're #3 you better get a guy you'd have been fine with at 1-1. You feel me?
.............
You know what, in fairness, Eric Davis' swing was totally disorganized. He just kinda stood there, hands not even ready, and here comes the pitch and he just sort of exploded on the ball. (For you kiddies who haven't heard of him, for short flashes Eric Davis was the best player you ever saw - .400 OBP, .600 SLG, 80 stolen bases, a guy who simply overmatched the entire sport of baseball.)
