ashbury

If it saves us from just one ugly beard, like the one above that Aaron Thompson apparently thinks he is rocking, then we all will benefit.

Great Spring story. It's killing me that I didn't get to come down this year.

Murphy's having a poor Spring at the plate. SSS and all, but I would have felt better if it weren't so. But then again I don't believe Centeno's spring numbers, so I guess I should ignore all of the numbers. Just like I tell myself each off-season.

There are plenty of things we all like to discuss that in the big picture don't actually matter. http://www.ncaabracket.us/wp-content/themes/atahualpa/images/ncaa-bracket.jpg

I only said "discouraging".

Molitor's quote about Polanco "guiding" the ball to first is discouraging. This is what I saw in him, last spring - he can get the distance, or the accuracy, but not both. I was hoping he could find some way to get over the hump. But it sounds to me as if he is just shy of having a shortstop's arm. A pity. I imagine he can have a career at 2B (for some team, maybe the Twins), but SS would be nicer.

Some people already complain that modern stats are too complicated. But these stats often contain a simplifying assumption that only highly-talented players (i.e. those who can hold onto a MLB job) are being measured. If a truly universal stat were devised, to measure pitchers on a spectrum from you or me to Clayton Kershaw, how much more arcane might it become?

Back when it was Florimon versus Escobar, there was genuine disagreement over who was the better choice at SS, but it seemed clear to me that based on minor league progress the hitting stats said that EE had the upside. He was still so young. Now I think we may have gone a little too far overboard; he's a competent defender but not much more, and his hitting will not likely stay at such an elevated level. On the other hand, my eyeball test tells me he's a smart hitter, with legitimate pop in his bat when he chooses his spots wisely, and it's possible that I am underselling his bat by a little.

They do. It's called SABR. You can join.

Art Mahaffey got saddled with a reputation for pitch tipping. It probably irked him - "it was one game in Spring Training!" he surely would tell anyone who would listen, but I'm just guessing about that. Source below. Since it was early 1960s, maybe not totally relevant to this discussion. https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=888&dat=19630313&id=85BPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=KVIDAAAAIBAJ&pg=7272,1076885&hl=en

Fair point, but there do exist leagues where the game is not totally incidental to the beer. Full disclosure: I can not guess from personal experience what that would be like.

If it had been Beer League ball I'd have been especially impressed.

If Saul Pohlad of Tarsus*, accompanying the team on a road trip to Damascus, had a vision and suddenly realized, "my God, I've been pricing ordinary families out of going to ballgames," and cut ticket prices by 90%, guess what would happen? Scalpers would find ways to scoop up every ticket, and you'd pay essentially the same prices as before, only on StubHub Ticket King. The money is there, richer fans than you and me are the ones bidding up the prices, and the only question is whether you want that revenue going to the players, to the team owners, or to sketchy guys doing arbitrage on the street and slightly more reputable ones via automated websites. * Or Twins president Dave St Paul, if you prefer

If it's ever viewed as a real problem, it should be possible to modify the rules to fix it. The reliever's been throwing for 5 minutes in the bullpen, yet gets 5 (or whatever) pitches when he arrives at the mound. Cut that out, and a pitching change isn't that painful. Such a change also adds a slight bit of strategy - if those extra warmup pitches really are useful to the pitcher, then the manager has a dilemma whether to bring in that guy for just one lefty-lefty matchup.

Thought provoking analysis, SD. There are a lot of moving parts, so it's tough to forecast what the outcomes will be, but I would think this covers a lot of the possibilities.

What is a number like that based upon? Joe had 22 GIDP in 666 plate appearances this past season. Trevor led the league with 28, in 632. Obviously that's not close to 25%, so we must be talking about fewer PA. Focusing for simplicity on the greater DP threat, Trevor, I see on his b-r.com splits page that he had 48 PA all season where it was one out and only a man on first. 13 GIDP came from that, which is a 27% rate. Inning over, a very bad outcome, for those times. A strikeout (he also did those sometimes ) is bad too, but not as bad. There were also (if I added in my head correctly) 78 other PA with any combination of a man on first (and/or other bases) with fewer than 2 outs, from which came the other 15 DP. That's under 20%. A strikeout is bad too, but not as bad. And then there are the other 506 times Trevor came to bat, when a DP was a very remote possibility if at all. (Indeed none of his DP that season came when no one was on first.) That's 0%. A strikeout is worse in all those situations, by not even putting the ball in play for a chance involving your BABIP, nor adding a baserunner via a walk. If choosing a pinch hitter, sure, one would factor these chances in with the particular situation. For the starting lineup, hopefully what we're mostly talking about here, one is kind of stuck with the situational luck of the draw through the course of the game. The DP rips your heart out that inning. Strikeouts are death by a thousand (OK, one or two hundred) cuts, representing missed opportunity. Over the long season, I don't see the DP as markedly more deadly.

His SO have been climbing so fast as the competition quality increased. High-A was 28% of PA, AA was 35%, AzFL was 40%. And you're right. If we take 35% as his current baseline and if he could take back out 20% of that, and apply a 30% BABIP because he's now putting those balls in play (and/or walking), that's about .020 of OBP. That is enough to make an important difference in a career. Or of course you can just go by rules of thumb and say that he shouldn't strike out at historic rates like that.

One doesn't have to go with memory. He was a starter for the big club only two years, 2008 and 2009. The "splits" feature on baseball-reference.com tells the ERAs for these two years. Your memory is correct for 2008, with him showing good results until inning 6 when the clock seemingly struck midnight and he became instantly a pumpkin. But in 2009, after which point the braintrust apparently pulled the plug, he was the opposite way: 1st inning - 11.34 2nd inning - 7.80 3rd inning - 5.40 4th inning - 2.40 5th inning - 5.40 6th inning - 4.35 2010 he had only 1 start but still was no overnight success, with a season ERA as a reliever of 5.29 in short duty in the majors.

Yes, this is why teams pay no attention to the K/9 rates for their pitchers.

FTFY.

I am not intrigued by any of these lefty "names in the mix."

I found this online without having to search very hard, so I don't see a problem if I post it. Congrats to the happy couple!

If nothing else, he's providing great material for some future biographer working on their Hall of Fame plaques.

Gary Pettis, probably. Perennial Gold Glove CF, as you no doubt remember. When I looked up his records I see he only once had an OPS+ above 90, yet routinely racked up 500 PA and played in the majors 11 different seasons. An example of someone with elite defensive skills being able to carve out a career. Sure, he hit .236 lifetime, but it was an empty .236. / nah, he actually walked a lot, giving him a sufficient OBP.

You can't have too much good pitching.