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BRAVES POLE-AXED BY MLB

G-Money points out a bizarre development that gives Jerry Dipoto a chance to Band-Aid his minor league system a bit:

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NEWS: Major League Baseball will hammer the Atlanta Braves for significant international and domestic rules violations and declare 12 minor league players free agents, including highly touted 17-year-old Kevin Maitan. Story at Yahoo Sports:

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1.  We'd just now shed two important 2018 bullpen arms.  Gave a lot, but: we upped our ante on Shoehei Ohtani and filled in 1B for peanuts, advertising marquee moves to come.  So the idea with Nick Rumbelow is to replenish our '18 depth.  Speaking loosely, Dr. D sees our current position as more dynamic than a couple weeks ago.  Not to say that our position is better, but - Dr. D is a big fan of dynamism.

Kate Preusser sees Rumbelow as an impact add for 2018.  Dr. D is not co-signing this necessarily -- insufficient data, Mr. Spock -- but that seems to be the goal here.  The 3rd comment down in Preusser's article, "Andrew McQ" sees Rumbelow as "much better than Vieira," LOL, which is hard to say until you wade up into the Edwin Diaz strat-o-sphere.

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Moe Dog sez,

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Sorry guys, I can not buy the theory that our only way to the promised land is through Ohtani.

Say we sign Darvish, but don’t get Ohtani.  Then we get a Bradley Jr. or Grichuk.

Darvish, Paxton, Leake, Ramirez, Gonzo, Miranda, Moore isn’t enough rotation to grab a wild card?  Haven’t even included Felix.

Get a Bradley Jr. and you’ve addressed weaknesses at 1B and CF.  

Goodness knows I lust for Ohtani, but we can skin the WC cat in other ways.

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Right.  And to reinforce the point.  There's no *guarantee,* exactly, that Ohtani is a Cy contender in 2018.  Real good possibility that Darvish outpitches him next year, certainly that Darvish and a good DH outperform him in a two-way context.

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James has an article up today - in front of the paywall, I'm pretty sure - in which he uses Judge vs Altuve to "ask the questions of a child" about sabermetrics.  You know the truth is?  That I understand micro sabermetrics a lot better than I understand the macro questions.  I might be able to tell you whether a -1 inch horizontal movement is better than a -3 inch movement, but I probably can't tell you how many more/less games you'd win because Ryon Healy played 3B instead of 1B.  In other words, I don't consider any sabe observation too basic to discuss.

In this morning's piece, James reduces all of sabermetrics to 2 'moral' issues:

(1) No stat means anything outside of its connection to W's and L's, and

(2) You have to "normalize" everything in its context, like HR's in Fenway vs Safeco.

Do those two things and you've forwarded your understanding of baseball.