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This is Divish's go-to response when asked to give predictions. He means it will happen or it won't (tongue-in-cheek). There's no way he thinks Wolf has a 50% chance of making this team.
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I/O: [Where do you think Paxton starts, AAA or starting rotation?] probably the rotation, especially with Iwakuma likely to miss a few starts
CRUNCH: Had everybody else been talking about this, and I just missed the memo?
Hisashi Iwakuma missing two starts, that like hands us K-Pax and Taijuan on a silver platter, right? Meaning that Iwakuma's injury is the greatest thing in the history of Mariner baseball.
Can't believe that something so obvious, sat there unnoticed. Hey, before Iwakuma's injury, the odds of us getting both kids for the rotation were probably 20%, 30%. Now it feels more like 80%, 90%.
Pending the import of a an MLB(TM) 15-game winner, which would also be quite pleasant.
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I/O: [Hart and Logan Morrison both have lost 25 (!!) pounds each]
CRUNCH: I wonder why there are never any studies on this.
Like in the first Bill James Player Handbook I ever read -- 1992 or something -- he carefully explained that some players will do much better, and there was no way to identify which ones, because [QUOTE] "some player has been drinking orange juice all winter."
In other words, you asked James what caused a player to have a good season, the reflexive reaction is that some ballplayers care about this season, have been doing their P90X, have been laying off the vodka, and if so, then figure them for an UP year.
Managers, of course, all believe this. That offseason conditioning leads to UP statlines. The typical blogger goes, "Pshaw - they all work out the same."
No, they don't.
.........
I'm not changing my roto draft that much, based on news that Joe Shlabotnik has lost 20 lbs., but it certainly is a hedge against DWN seasons. That LoMo guy is really the only one in camp who is a potential "injury-camouflaged" minor star.
Speaking as a big guy myself, 25 lbs. is exactly the difference between my legs getting injured, or not. At my right weight, I'm 225-230, and my legs feel great. But right now I'm 245-250. There are all sorts of things hurting in my legs, and believe me, if I don't take three days off at the right time, I'll snap my stuff up. I haven't heard whether ballplayers get to take three days off when they need to.
Think of it as --- > working out all day, with a sack full of rocks on your back. If you're past 30, your legs are going to be barking.
If Corey Hart is in fighting trim, that doesn't make him BETTER than the guy who hit .270 with a .510 SLG, but it certainly pushes up his chances to be that guy one more time.
B'lee DAT.
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I/O: [Randy Wolf has a 50-50 shot to make the club]
CRUNCH: ???
!
??
Does that mean they're considering him as a long man?!
That's going a bit far, in terms of handing out favors to old friends. Like he gets the job that Erasmo and Beavan were competing for?!
If this answer was one where Ryan just took a guess without identifying it as such, well, it was the only one I saw in an hour's worth of chatting. He does a slick job.
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I/O: [Farquhar is disappointed that he's not closing]
CRUNCH: This was relayed in a manner, like, "He's surprisingly disappointed." I like Farquhar's makeup.
When Voros McCracken was first hired by the Red Sox, many years ago, he talked about some AAA reliever that he hard-pressed the Sox to acquire. ... um ... Steve A ... something? The guy was striking out 13 per game in the minors, and McCracken thought the guy would be the next big thing.
If Danny Farquhar had fanned 12.77 men per game in triple-A, then he would be a national sensation as a sleeper. Since he did it to American League batters, though, it just doesn't process.
James talked about this, too. Major League GM's are like that. If a guy hits 29 homers and has 101 RBI in triple-A, then they're all over him. But if he hits 58 homers, they don't want him. It just blows their circuits and they figure something was weird.
If Danny Farquhar had fanned 9.5 men per game, we'd probably figure that had been real. Since he fanned 13, though, we figure the whole thing was just a mirage.
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Nice job by Divish. You go amig-O.
BABVA,
Dr D
Comments
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Baseball secret #832, Q: Why there are not any studies on fluctuations in player weight as a means of predicting up years, and down years?
A: Drumroll. .............................. It feels good to put one over on the professors once in a while. There are undoubtedly studies on player weight, but these studies are not released to the general public. The listed player weight of many players is 1. unchanging, and 2. blatantly untrue. For example: Consider Prince Fielder. His listed weight is 275 lbs. This listed weight does not change from year to year. No player's listed weight is ever changed for any reason. Also, its not clear whether the listed weight ever even had to be true at any point in time. I have personally scouted Prince on Youtube, and can tell you with all confidence that he ain't 275 lbs.
Teams do know how much their players weigh. A player starts a contract, and every season, with a physical exam. Presumably, the team obtains all of the player's prior physical exams before they sign the player. A player's med history probably contains all sorts of proprietary and sensitive matters that would be extremely useful in determining whether a player is going to have an up year or a down year or in deducing trends. But, except in the DL circumstance*, players' medical lives are somewhat secret.
Also, player's personal lives are somewhat secret. If you learned which players were on the outs with their wives, and which had happy wives, it would probably go a long way toward explaining some slumps and lackluster performances. If a wife continually said "I hate Seattle. It always rains. The kids don't like school, there's no good shopping. I'm getting seasonal affective disorder", that player, either consciously or subconsciously, is not going to do his best work to stay in Seattle. He needs, in industry parlance, "a change in scenery". The teams, which practically live together for half the year, know this sort of thing, and it is probably very useful, but it isn't released for fan dissemination.
*Of course DL information released to the general public is not entirely trustworthy either.
All of this is part of the veil of secrecy around baseball. Teams use statistics that are not available to us, they know things about the players that we do not and they are not obligated to tell us the truth regarding a particular players' health and well being.
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Hart/LoMo lose 25# each and we wonder if it's good. Sure, it takes a load of their knees, and maybe before rehab they gained a few from the expected inactivity. They are still plenty big enough. Montero, however, is overweight and has been trying to eat himself out of baseball. WTH is he thinking?
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That makes sense. I've got no education whatsoever in Div-speak.
:: daps ::
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As John told Paul one time, "I probably like your songs better than mine."
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As Doc said above, there is this thinking among stat heads that a certain subset of a player's development, related to 1. His upbringing, 2. His personality, 3. His current legal, social, and emotional problems, 4. His Health, are "intangible", that is, these things cannot be measured, and are best left to scouts to give platitudes about "makeup" and the like.
I think, but could be wrong, that most of these things can be measured, but are restricted from fan view. For example, if we were allowed to have a player's complete medical history and his psychological test results, such as the MMPI and the Welch anxiety scales, we would be able to craft new statistics that would be just as statistically relevant and scientific as the stats of what a player does on the field. Imagine what Spectator could do with a database of personality inventories for minor leaguers. We would be able to see the Kyle Seagers of the world a long time before they got here.
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The current situation had me thinking about Greg Halman again. RH bat with a glove, ya' know? The biggest details of that home-life situation, things that were obviously affecting his game, were not something that came across in anything I read until long after he was killed. It was 10 months later that this ran:
http://m.espn.go.com/general/story?storyId=8286055&src=desktop
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What a terrible ugly Cain and Abel story. The insanity, the violence, the horrible father. The Halman kids had it so bad. Thanks for sharing this. Never knew the circumstances and motive for the Halman murder. It gives deep insight into the struggles that a minor league prospect has.
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The Halman story also has a lot of flak around it too.
I remember there being a bit of conflict from the Halman family around the ESPN article when it first came out.
In any case, it's a terrible tragedy.
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And another thing that plays into players "performance" is substance abuse. I am sure many players are addicted to substances, drugs, alcohol, and food,,,like sugar, soda, (Griffey would drink 10 sodas a day), fast food....etc. Years ago M's closer, Sasaki, apparently tripped over a suitcase and got injured and later we learned he had serious alcohol problem. With these substances often comes depression, anxiety, and poor focus , etc.
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I'm not endorsing cocaine or tobacco addiction, obviously, but take away Nick Franklin's chaw and he's going to go into a hitting slump...
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"People have asked me for pics of Jesus Montero to see how much weight he has gained. I'm going to be real honest here. He doesn't look any different to me. I know Montero said all he did was eat after winter ball was over with. But he really doesn't seem to look fat or heavy, he looks, well, the same. "
I will laugh if the "he's eating his way out of baseball" Internet meme proves greatly exaggerated.