Brock Beauchamp

Good to see I'm not the only person who hits 9 every time they reach for the 0 on a mobile phone.

This is the point when previous teams started collapsing. A huge gap between the 38-39 wins for the 2014 squad.

Win 39. Game #: 2015: 72 2014: 88 2013: 92 2012: 93 2011: 86

On that topic, one of my pet peeves is the "Obama is the worst President of all time" theme going around various social media outlets. If you honestly believe that to be the case, you are so completely ignorant of American history that it pains me to even think about it. Every President who sat from 1830-1859 were horrible Presidents. Southern appeasement directly led to the Civil War. Andrew Johnson capped it off by following Lincoln and instituting Jim Crow (meaning that over a 40 year period of American history, there were "horrible Presidents" and "Abraham Lincoln"). Pretty much any of the clowns who let their cronies run Washington and allowed the Roaring 20s to happen (which directly led to the Great Depression) make the list. Those are bad Presidents. Hell, Obama isn't even as bad as the guy who preceded him, much less some of the *******s on the list I just posted.

I think there are elements of truth to everyone who has chimed in here (you, always, pseudo). The lines are so blurred and the country so polarized that it's hard to pick out the racist elements compared to the blind hatred of the other party (both parties are guilty of it but the Republicans have taken it to a new level with Obama). What I find most perplexing is that in the matter of foreign relations, Obama is basically a Republican. Drone strikes abound, Guantanamo is still open, the Patriot Act (**** that name) is still here. Yet the GOP still hates him with a fiery passion. Is that a partisan opinion or is it sprinkled with racism? Probably a bit of both. But then there are things like the Birther Movement (**** that name), which is blatantly racist. Anyone who denies that movement is steeped in racial distrust (don't know if I'd go as far to call it "hatred") has blinded themselves to reality. Then there are the Obama chimpanzee photos... It's a muddied situation. Do most conservatives hate Obama in part because he's black? I don't know the answer to that question. For the majority, it could be a continued escalation of the Polarized Nation we've created over the past several decades. It might be subversive racism. Don't know. What I do know is that with Obama, we've had an entirely unremarkable President. Outside of the ACA, he has accomplished very little. He hasn't started any wars. The economy is in good shape. Some of that is Republican interference but to be perfectly frank, Obama hasn't exactly pushed himself outside the envelope with interesting ideas, either. He's a subdued President who doesn't accomplish much and isn't very inspiring. Which makes the intense hatred for him all the more confusing, which leads me to believe that at least some element of it is steeped in racism. Simply put, the guy hasn't done anything to evoke this kind of passion from his enemies. Hell, he hasn't done much of anything at all. At least with the previous guy, liberals had a reason to openly dislike him as much as they did. He started nonsensical wars. The economy tanked on his watch. The Patriot Act flew through Congress. The administration was so sketchy that it was nearly impossible to deny that at least some truly nefarious things were happening under our noses. With Obama, not so much. The guy is largely ineffectual. Not necessarily a bad thing in my opinion but the reality is that he's not actually polarizing, yet he's treated as the most polarizing President in my lifetime. Obama is not FDR, folks.

33/1 K/BB rate. Not good enough.

Pretty much all of this. I think Molitor had a strong suspicion that Byron would be able to hit a bad lefty like Danks, not so much a decent righty like Samardzija. But, as you said, there's little to lose by moving him up the order. Most of the lineup isn't hitting and the ones who are aren't hitting that well. A shake-up is in order. Whether that involves moving Buxton to leadoff or the five spot, I don't know nor do I really care. He should start sliding up the lineup in some capacity.

Nailed it.

Uh, sure. That's why I qualified the statement in the next sentence.

Is take more issue with the quote if Kyle didn't also say this, indicating he understands the nature of putting the ball in play and the risks of doing so: "When hitters puts balls in play, they’re going to get a hit sooner or later. But if I get five ground balls in a row, I’m more than likely going to get out of the inning. Offensive numbers will tell you that. If they only get a hit three out of every ten times they put the ball in play, that’s less than two out of five, so I like my chances.”

Not much of a split, no. L/R splits: 2015: .885/.831 2013: .917/.876

Dave has a point. I absolutely hate to admit it when Dave has a point so there's that. We've all had our say. Let's get the thread back on the topic of Mark De Rosa. I mean Byron Buxton.

Gesundheit.

True, but that's more likely to happen to a player who plays in the same stadium for the same team (with the same defensive strengths/weaknesses) for a prolonged period of time. The more a player jumps around, the less likely that is to happen.

In Samardija's career as a starter, here are his numbers: ERA: 3.96 FIP: 3.65 xFIP: 3.44 It's not an enormous gap but it should be noted that a gap exists.

In my opinion, what I find most telling about Samardzija is that he has routinely underperformed his FIP by .45 or greater. Last season he overperformed it a touch, which has balanced his career number a bit. He also overperformed it during his career as a reliever, which is skewing the overall number. Two times in the past four seasons, his xFIP has been nearly a run lower than his ERA. In another season, it was nearly half a run lower. Only last season - the season when the hype around him started to swell - did he actually overperform his FIP/xFIP.

Because the latter assumes that a pitcher is the same guy with the same odds against every batter in every situation. Look at Mike Pelfrey's former inability to pitch from the stretch. That's a real thing that happened and neither FIP nor xFIP can account for it. Did it affect his performance? Of course it did. That's a big problem for a pitcher. Now that won't apply to most players, which is why I'm not discounting FIP/xFIP entirely... But if you see a trend in 5+ years of a player's career where something is always off in his advanced metrics, alarm bells should start going off. I hate to use such a dumb phrase but it rings true here... "These guys aren't robots". There could be something as simple as tipping pitches that consistently throws FIP/xFIP out of whack for any single pitcher in MLB.

Year to year, it gets a bit stickier because of the volatility of ERA and its relative small sample size per year... But my point about underperforming compared to advanced metrics stands. If a player routinely underperforms his year-to-year FIP, I'm going to be skeptical of its ability to accurately project that player's performance the following year.

I'm hesitant to say that about ERA but when we're talking about an MLB player with 4+ seasons under his belt, I often put more stock in ERA+ than I do FIP/xFIP.

I'm sorry but that doesn't make sense. I intentionally used Nolasco because he has played in multiple leagues and for multiple teams. He has consistently underperformed what he should be doing on the field according to advanced metrics (as has Samardzija in three of his four seasons as a starter). At that point, one of the following needs to be acknowledged: 1. Ricky Nolasco struggles in real-world situations, lowering his overall numbers 2. The metric is somewhat broken when applied to certain styles of players Either way, it casts doubt on the ability of the metric to accurately predict the performance of that player and therefore, I fall back to that player's actual real-world numbers to predict future performance.

Yep. At some point, projections need to fall aside and be replaced with real-world performance. You can't do that with a guy going into his third season of baseball so FIP/xFIP is a useful tool... But once a guy is several years into his career, the real-world numbers become, well, reality.

Eh, this is where I kinda get off the FIP/xFIP train. When we're talking about guys who have pitched 600+ innings (three seasons seems like a good baseline to me), I prefer ERA+ because trends can be seen with certain pitchers and FIP/xFIP. Some guys just don't pitch as well as they should in real-world situations. Ricky Nolasco career: ERA: 4.50 ERA+: 91 FIP: 3.80 xFIP: 3.78 What number looks closest to what you predict for a healthy Ricky Nolasco? I think it's pretty clearly the 91 ERA+. The ERA doesn't look unreasonable, either. FIP/xFIP, not so much. Samardzija, like Nolasco, has underperformed compared to his FIP/xFIP. Not to the extent of Nolasco but the same trend is there. With both pitchers, they've played for multiple teams in both leagues. It's unlikely that they've been unfairly tagged by bad defenses and bad park situations during that entire stretch of time. The reality of the situation is that they're probably just not as good as FIP/xFIP tell us they are. I like FIP/xFIP for most players because it's a good way to tell what should have happened and use that as a predictor for the future... but at a certain point in a guy's career, ERA/ERA+ can tell us just as much, if not more about a player.

Since becoming a full-time starter four seasons ago, his ERA+ is 101.

His 107 ERA+ came in his first year as a starter, which was followed by an 89 ERA+ in his second season. Then he one (not two as I said earlier) very good season. I misread the stat line. And he's pretty terrible this season. One good season, one kinda bad, one very good, one pretty bad. That sounds inconsistent to me. ERA+ by season as a starter: 107 89 125 82

Yep, I actually hope that Samardzija turns it around a bit for the Sox in the second half so they're tempted into throwing piles of money at him.