SomeGuy

Yeah Cleveland didn't really make themselves much worse over the offseason. When they had a poor start to the year many people thought it was because of selling but it was really just bad injury luck. How could any team expect to compete without Clevinger, Kluber, and Carrasco for an extended time? They also had Lindor out for a stretch and Jose Ramirez is finally starting to play at his usual level. Its really impressive the Indians are where they are. If less players or just less important players were to get injured, the Indians are probably the division champ like everyone thought. Its not that the Indians misjudged the Twins state, they just had a serious run of injuries to their most important players. Terry Francona is their MVP. Michael Brantley was the only real loss in the offseason but how does a small market team justify spending that much on a guy they know first hand was always injured? Their trades were good moves. It is scary that the Indians get Kluber, Salazar, and possibly Carrasco back without making any deadline moves. They could do a soft buy and grab a cheap outfielder (someone like Corey Dickerson) and maybe a reliever, and I think they would be a very good team.

Diaz should be a fine addition but the cost of the prospects and having to pay and roster Cano for 5 years makes it likely that the trade never looks good for them.

The Mets off-season has not lived up to the hype. At the halfway point, Wilson Ramos and JD Davis are the only adequate additions from the off season. Jeurys Familia 7.50 ERA, 5.74 FIP (3 years/30M) Edwin Diaz 5.50 ERA, 3.64 FIP (gave up 5 players, 2 top 10 prospects) Robinson Cano .240/.287/.360 Keon Broxton .143/.208/.163 (traded 3 prospects and since lost Broxton on waivers) Justin Wilson 4.22 ERA, 5.64 FIP (2 years/10M) Jed Lowrie Has not played (2 years/20M) Wilson Ramos .272/.349/.408 (2 years/19M) Adeiny Hechavarria is the highlight of their minor league signings .229/.260/.427 JD Davis .279/.341/.468 (depth trade, gave 3 prospects and got 2)

Another 2 runs in 2/3 of an inning on Wednesday and credited for the loss, 16.88 ERA after his 3rd game.

It should be noted how much he has cooled off. Last 30 days 6.29 ERA, 5.51 FIP, 5.19xFIP Teams faced: Royals x2 (23rd in runs scored), Tigers (30th), Rays (19th), Athletics (10th)

I don't think 38th is too conservative for a 16 year old but Fangraphs does have him at 19th in their international rankings instead of the 8th he was in mlb.com.

4 homeruns in 7 days for Sano. K% of 21.7 in that span.

Exactly, will they all figure out like ours did? Does Reynaldo Lopez rebound and Giolito continue this progress? etc. We will see. Maybe the key prospects like Eloy Jimenez and Kopech/Cease go into a will they-won't they scenario for 3-4 years like Buxton did.

They have been seeing that inconsistency with prospects that we went through. Giolito,Tim Anderson, and Moncado take giant steps forward this year while Reynaldo Lopez takes a huge step back. Eloy Jimenez and Ryan Cordell are still trying to figure it out. Carlos Rodon takes a big step back before needing TJ surgery, Michael Kopech and 4 other top 30 prospects are also out for season and might have hurt their development. They should be a really good team but its kind of like the recent Twins seasons where you are wondering what they actually have in these players. I'm not as high on their rebuild as I was the last couple seasons but they could still have a great team soon. A lot of top prospects are turning into question marks.

It will be interesting how the agent turned GM will approach the trade deadline. Especially after how aggressive he was going all in during the offseason. He was pretty strict about winning now and probably has the same mentality about 2020. I'm guessing its rentals only from them, Frazier, Vargas, Wheeler, etc.

Polanco and Garver have joined Cron in that OPS funk. Last 30 days Cron 9th on Team in that span with .769 (.833 Season) Garver 10th with .724 (.972 season) Polanco 11th with .719 (.899 season)

I prefer Zach Wheeler to Bumgarner.

From Fangraphs, Makes it sound like they have mastered the art of making a baseball. Less seam drag, smoother leather, and a more perfect round to the baseballs. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/weve-reached-the-point-of-too-many-homers/ While one can point to the general trend of batters making greater efforts to elevate the ball — whether to hit it over shifted infielders or not — it’s more accurate to call that an adaptation to the new reality. The scientific evidence again points to the ball itself as being the driving factor. Earlier this week at The Athletic, Dr. Meredith Wills published a follow-up to last year’s breakthrough article, which itself was a follow-up to MLB’s Home Run Committee report. That committee, led by Dr. Alan Nathan, professor emeritus of physics at the University of Illinois, had found that the recent home run spike was caused by a decrease in the ball’s aerodynamic drag, but found no physical difference in the balls that would explain the change. Conducting her own measurements using digital calipers and disassembled baseballs, Wills concluded that post-2015 balls’ laces, which were an average of nine percent thicker than balls from the 2010-14 period, were producing less bulging at the seams, yielding a more spherically symmetric ball with less aerodynamic drag — thus allowing them to fly further. For her latest study, Wills examined 39 balls from this season, which she found differed from the 2015-18 balls and even earlier ones. Most notably, she found “demonstrably lower” seams, only 54.6 percent ± 15.0 percent as high as those on balls from previous seasons. By measuring the coefficient of static friction, she also found that the leather on this year’s balls is relatively smoother, concluding, “the static friction for the 2019 balls is 27.6 percent lower, a statistically significant result demonstrating the leather covers are genuinely smoother.” She measured the bulging of the seams and found, “Not only were the 2019 balls virtually round, what bulging they did show was slightly negative, suggesting the seams might be slightly ‘nestled’ into the leather.” The significantly rounder balls, which have thinner laces than last year’s (more in line with 2000-14 samples) produce even less drag than before, and thus even more carry. Wills noted that both the seam and smoothness issues jibe with anecdotal reports from pitchers about difficulties in gripping this year’s balls, as voiced by players such as Sean Doolittle, Jon Lester, and Noah Syndergaard. As for commissioner Rob Manfred’s recent suggestion that a better-centered pill (the core of the ball) is a factor in creating less drag, Wills was largely dismissive, writing, “[T]his is the most difficult result to produce without significant manufacturing changes, since existing techniques make it hard to keep the pill from being centered to begin with… Therefore, it seems unlikely that pill-centering would explain a sudden change in drag; at the very least, we would be remiss not to also examine other possible sources.”

Giancarlo Stanton fit 9 games in between IL stints this season. He will not reach 124 games for the 6th time in his 10 year career. Should be averaging about 120 games per season or less if he returns sometime in August. I wonder if he will reverse this injury trend or if his games per season will decline further when he starts his 30's in a few months.

The Front Office is very happy with the current team. The idea of this offseason was to compete this season without committing to the next 3 seasons. We could compete now for cheap and allow some development time to prospects. Should things have gone the other way, we could have easily reversed coarse but I don't think that was assumed to be selling these one year deals. As you can see with the dirt cheap Polanco/Kepler contracts, this FO has an eye for value. Not only have the deals worked out but the development side has worked out well too. Buxton confirmed that he was worth waiting for. Arraez seems able to take over 2nd now, etc. A big question mark for us was what we already had not just what we were getting from these filler signings. And honestly we wouldn't get a bounty for any of them either. What would a team give up for half a season of Schoop? Even selling Cruz would be trying to convince 1 or 2 AL teams to fit a 38 year old, DH only into their roster. He's clearly still a good hitter but there wouldn't be enough competition for him to really get a great return. I find it really unlikely that we signed them hoping they would put up decent numbers and trade them for middling prospects instead of winning with them.

In theory he could enter the game with a 10 run deficit as a reliever every time and not impact the outcome at all. Or we could just keep him where he has excelled and hope he hands our bullpen a late lead like he normally does. Also noticing a trend where the super relievers from each post season get hurt or are ineffective the following season(s). Chapman, Andrew Miller, Corey Knebel, etc.

To his credit Jay Bruce is doing a fantastic job filling in for McCutchen from a hitting stand point. Since joining Phillies .348/.388/.783 (1.170 OPS) wRC+197

Hard to win with the way they are pitching.

The Bumgarner is so great in the playoffs statement seems out dated. He hasn't had a great playoff run since 2014. He's had 1 great game and one bad game in the playoffs since then (both in 2016). We have no idea how good Bumgarner would be in a 2019 playoff run. Felix Hernandez was great 5 years ago too. (drastic comparison but Bumgarner has fallen off a bit since then too, 5 years is a long time ago)

Berrios is our best current pitcher by a mile and should absolutely start game 1 of any playoff series. You're worrying too much about stats in ballparks or stats versus teams. These don't compare well in a player to player comparison. For instance how does Berrios sample size in Tropicano Field compare to Odorizzi who called it home for so many years? How does Pineda's sample size against the Yankees stack up to everyone who didn't play most of their career for them? Gibson, Berrios, or Perez versus Pineda or Odorizzi in Fenway/Yankee Stadium/Tropicano doesn't really work because Pineda and Odorizzi were in the AL East for a long time. These comparisons are almost never on an equal footing. I don't see an argument that any of our current pitchers has better stuff or track record than Berrios and he should be used in as many games as possible in the playoffs. Game 1 starter all the way.

Are we seeing another Philly collapse? Record of 6-11 in last 17 5.74 ERA in June (25th in MLB) 17th in run scored in June 91 wRC+ (21st in MLB)

Montreal didn't really draw a crowd either when they had a team. I think the theory is that attendance would go up in both cities if fans only had 40 games to choose from. Having two markets for merchandise and possibly 2 tv deals makes this an interesting scenario for a small market team.

I would rather trade Jonathon Schoop. He is a pending free agent and Arraez seems ready to take over. Flip him for a prospect or 2 to lessen the amount we will lose in other trades.

I can see him being traded again if they do sell. I don't think they are selling anyone on board for next season though regardless of where they are at the deadline. They are kind of back in the race after taking 2 from Philly yesterday. Now only 4 back from Wild Card.

Dozier/Schoop comparison is getting interesting. Season Dozier .235/.318/.442 (.760 OPS) 97 wRC+ Schoop .258/.308/.475 (.783OPS) 105 wRC+ Last 14 days Dozier .286/.318/.690 (1.009 OPS) 152 wRC+ Schoop .244/.262/.341 (.603 OPS) 56 wRC+