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Wishhiker sez,
Please forgive the bad math..."Eric Filia, RF, Peoria (Mariners). His lone plus tool is his hitting ability, and it showed when he led the AFL in batting (.408), on-base percentage (.483) and OPS (1.088) during the regular season." Yeah, simple subtraction there gets you to .605 SLG which actually shows that hitting is not so lone in his abilities. I guess we should ignore the readily available defensive videos of him in the AFL as well. Like the ones embedded in the article? Eh, it can't be easy to fill all that space, I'll cut Callis a break...It is not a world where I'm always right either. Chipper Jones at 29? There's that .605 SLG; .330/.427/.605... kind of what Filia just did to the AFL. Who hits 4 triples in the AFL anyway? 12 BB and 7 K. 1 HR in case that SLG misled you. 0 steals in 3 tries, i assume means he got caught napping 3 times.
So, did a bunch of you resolve to stop talking baseball this year?
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Very true that there's very little to talk about right now. Also, when Dr. D tried his gymnastics trick down two flights of stairs, beneveloence spurred the Denizens to jump in. Now there seems to be the expectation that SSI is back to its old "check in, read, smile, move on" mod. It ain't.
Keep in mind Dr. D has as little to talk about as any Denizen, so 7-10 pots' worth of oyster stew vs. 2 oz. worth of comments .... ;- )
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Eric Filia. We're at the point, due to Haniger, Zunino, Segura, and perhaps Healy/Gamel that even one or more two Seager-lucky deck draws will do the contention trick.
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Wishhiker also sez,
But looking at Ramirez and Leake, I came away surprised that nobody seems as happy with who they seem to be right now. Am I just delusional? Should I just wait at least 6 months and ask again?
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From a long, long, LONG list of wait-and-hope candidates, Erasmo Ramirez has been excerpted from having to compete for a job. Dipoto puts him in a totally different category from Povse, Moore, Gonzales and even Miranda. So does Dr. D! The cut fastball is a certifiable game-changer, and let us recall that Erasmo's ERA+ was 109 last year. Mike Leake's contract is 5 years, $80,000,000, my friend, and Dipoto lifted him for about 3/$38M. Which price paid was praised even by Dave Cameron.
"Delusional"? No, of course Leake is a bona fide #3 starter and Erasmo is a quite reasonable #4 going into camp. Now, whether or not injuries strike again, that's another question. But if you're looking for reality checks, consider the checkmark served with a flourish.
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Fungineer links to,
You got me interested in Art Warren so I found this:
http://baseballcensus.com/2017/09/14/seattle-mariners-art-warren-power-p...
Sounds like a high upside RP with decent baseball intelligence (pitching backwards etc). Decent-ish results to back it up since 2016. On my list of ones to watch!
Thanks Wishhker.
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Bill James once groused, about the 1980's when his Royals featured Brett, Saberhagen and co., "they always seemed stacked with pitchers who had 95 MPH fastballs and absolutely refused to throw them to you. Dr. D loves, loves, loves this pitching template: the pitcher rocks back, threatening 97 MPH, and then comes in with something else that he actually commands. ML hitters are very, very disproportionately afraid of having a fastball thrown by them, so they start their bats real quick on any pitcher like that. The secondary stuff plays wayyyyy up.
Warren's minor league record is not super remarkable (67:25 CTL in 64 IP, high class A at age 23. But if he does throw high-90s and does like to pull the string, he's got my interest.
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James hadn't written any Hey Bills for about 10 days. Here's one from today:
Hey Bill!
Listening to a radio show this morning and they were discussing the history of the "high-five," which led them to the photo of Dusty Baker and Glenn Burke, which led to a side note into the story of Glenn Burke. The guy telling the story said, "While Burke did not do much after his outstanding rookie season, he was a very good player who the Dodgers talked about as potentially being the next Willie Mays." Oddly enough, when I run similarity scores for Glenn Burke's rookie season (age 23), I do NOT find Willie Mays' first MVP (age 23) among the comps. Must be bugs in the system.
Asked by: mikeclaw
Answered: 1/5/2018
No doubt. A few years ago we traded the Pirates a 4-A first baseman, little short guy with some power. . .what was his name? Jerry Sands. During spring training some guy with the Pirates compared him to Steve Garvey. We got a good laugh out of that. Which is not to say that we weren't irritated.
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Was stunned, stunned, stunned to see Bill James call any player an AAAA player. His writing have always been about the 25% overlap between the best minor leaguers and the worst major leaguers.
It has always been Dr. D's conviction that there is such a thing as a AAAA player, a guy with a weakness that requires ML precision to exploit. Jeff Clement. At this point we would normally go through a list suggesting possible applications to current Rainiers, but ... do the Rainiers have anybody who look like they could impact the majors?
Enjoy,
Dr D
