ashbury

Race is such a beacon to some eyes, that to them blackness was the defining characteristic of the Obama presidency. He'd get indignant if someone called him racist, and yet McConnell sees events through exactly such a prism, and he gives it away in off-hand comments like that.

Similar thought process then - either a warning point, or sentenced to moderator duty. The two you nominated aren't really prolific posters, which only affects my thinking in terms of how often they look at the site, but they've been steady, and both post in a way that doesn't make me dread it.

He made a comment in last night's game recap that indicated an interest in moderation policy, at least.

Rocco discussed that, at about the 1:55 mark in the post-game video in the article. He said Polanco has the latitude to make those decisions. It wasn't called from the bench. I'll read between the lines and guess that Rocco didn't like the choice very much at all. But he's smart enough not to micro-manage his best players, either.

In addition to the other responses... Win Probability Added is a context-defined stat - giving more credit for a plate appearance when the game hangs in the balance than when the outcome is all but decided. Nelson's doing just fine by that measure, trailing Polanco and Buxton who have missed less time. It's true that the majority of his homers have been solo. On the other hand, his batting average has been higher with men on base than when empty. Slicing and dicing the numbers this early in the season always risks Small Sample Size anomalies, of course. I don't trust any stat by itself, but when WPA lines up with the overall production numbers it suggests to me that there's nothing there to discuss in terms of situational hitting. https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/MIN/2019-batting.shtml#all_players_win_probability_batting

Maybe they'll let us put it on the cuff.

I don't think our views are too much out of alignment. "To A Certain Extent" is my middle name. I'm more of a Big Hall guy anyway, so I like good character as a tie breaker to let someone in.

I don't know, but I'm willing to bet it's a secret. More constructively, and I forget how analytic your leanings are, but I imagine each team starts with some concept of Wins Above Replacement (WAR) - we can debate the specifics of how that's computed, but wins come from somewhere and to make decisions you have to look at each piece of a roster in that light. If we're talking about run of the mill players, then WAR probably suffices - wins above some mythical level of performance that you could obtain on the waiver wire or other minimum-salary marketplace. But for high-end players, the other team probably is not interested in acquiring two dozen players whose projected WAR adds up to "enough", and instead will focus on something akin to Wins Above Average, which roughly speaking is like subtracting 2 from WAR for a full season. This identifies your difference-makers, and that's what a team like the Mets would be looking for if trading someone like Syndergaard. Most prospects will register with a WAA of zero or below., and will not come up in trade talks except as throw-ins. So my guess is that any "formula" starts with expected or ceiling WAA for several seasons, then applies a fraction multiplier to reflect that prospects flame out a certain percentage of the time, and a different fraction multiplier to reflect that veterans also get hurt or lose their abilities without warning sometimes. Probably there is a fudge factor to reflect character and clubhouse chemistry, injury-proneness from an individual track record, age (improving or declining forecast performance), and of course any existing salary commitments. At some level, I bet that internal computations bring it down to dollars and cents, even for prospects. It costs a certain amount to purchase WAA among free agents, and arbitration sets salaries for other players, so those provide some benchmarks. "Excess value" the veteran player is expected to provide, beyond what the contract calls for in compensation, tells a team whether they can ask a lot in return, or conversely need to pay part of the remaining salary just to move him off their books. Similar calculation is done regarding the team's years of control of a prospect. Altogether I doubt you or I can come up with an actual "formula" that would be meaningful to predict trades. But I think this summarizes how a front office would approach the topic.

No wonder the tickets I bought from that scalper on Lansdowne Street were so inexpensive!

This isn't quite "fun" enough for Fun With Numbers. But... Jake Cave's OPS in the majors this season is .615 - his reward is an all-expenses-paid vacation to beautiful Rochester NY. Willians Astudillo's is .630, and he likewise is strutting his stuff in the International League for the time being. Among all the other non-pitchers, Marwin Gonzalez's OPS is next lowest, at .762. The AL OPS so far in 2019 is .752. Literally every position player on the major league roster is at the moment an above-average hitter. I'm too lazy to compute the league's OPS if Minnesota wasn't propping everyone else up, but our worst hitter's disparity over the league would be even greater - that's just Math!

I'm not saying they wouldn't, or won't, but they may have learned their lesson about the fleeting nature of intellectual property. Thirty years ago they (and their stats services) were very proprietary about the official scoresheets that provide the basic stats that we nowadays take for granted at baseball-reference.com and other sites. Ever heard of Bill James? James is known for pioneering work slicing and dicing data back in the 1980s, of course, but what he also did in the mid 80s was start something called Project Scoresheet, aimed at getting the data he and others thirsted for. It was basically an army of people who went to (or watched) ballgames and wrote down the stats that were needed. I attended an organizing meeting he held in a lobby at a SABR meeting around that time, though I never wound up contributing. Anyway the project didn't last very long but it didn't need to. MLB in its wisdom saw where things were headed and gave in. Project Scoresheet actually improved on the traditional scoresheet. New blood does what new blood does. Back to the future... with the way technology has advanced, it might not be necessary to replicate all the fancy hardware that MLB has installed in its ballparks, to replicate the numbers we're seeing for pitch speeds and launch angles and exit velocities. A bunch of geeks can bring down such an enterprise, so it's perhaps best to use the technology more indirectly to bring in the money.

Sorry. It was meant as deeply understated praise. MLB's technology arm is doing extremely good work here.

It's really unclear to me why St Louis would be looking to move Gant. Even if they fall further out of the Wild Card race by the deadline, he's under team control for a while longer and I can't imagine the Cardinals doing a fire sale / rebuild. They seem more like buyers than sellers. Maybe I haven't been keeping up with them.

Didn't think I was doing that. Mainly making an observation about Schoop's one play. That was not a long throw from the outfield, and even if Merrifield was not a regular there the throw was more or less like from one infielder to another. I hated seeing the try as soon as Schoop made the turn, and he was out by way too large a margin. I like aggressive baserunning, but not suicidal. I don't remember seeing Adrianza make a mistake (in my view) like that, my comment was just a general memory many weeks ago of the third-base coach waving him home in a situation I thought was a good choice, and he wound up being tagged out because he arrived at the plate a step or two slower than I would have guessed for him. We aren't really a team that is built on speed, and I'm fine with that; our offense is working great at the moment and so we shouldn't like to throw away outs. He's a middle infielder. Transferring the ball is what he does for a living.

Hasn't the opinion involving Graterol been in the context of Bumgarner and Will Smith in a package? Him plus a lesser prospect, for those two, give or take.

If one guy not working out means you're in trouble, you're already in trouble.

MLB Advanced Media are not incompetent clowns.

As it should. Character, howsomever the voters choose to interpret the word, is specifically mentioned in the instructions the HoF gives. It's not just the Hall Of The Best Stats.

That's fair about the 9th inning catch. I was multi-tasking at the time and I didn't see it until now on a video site. I suspect most RFers make that play, as it didn't require many steps, but credit where credit is due. https://cuts.diamond.mlb.com/FORGE/2019/2019-06/15/f2c00e36-0a743b10-11995ccb-CSVM-DIAMONDTMP-asset_1280x720_59_4000K.mp4 Likewise with Adrianza taking a base the other day, I don't recall it. A good lead and smart baserunning wasn't really what I was getting at, though. It just takes him longer to get where he's going, once he's going, than I expect of a guy of his size and general athleticism. Shortstop is more about quick-twitch reaction than raw speed anyway, and I'm just saying that he'd easily lose a footrace to any of the four I named, and that might not be the case for the average utility infielder. I don't have any complaints about Ehire's work on the basepaths - he's just.... not.... you know, fast. If I'm third-base coach and faced with a close decision, I don't send Cron, I don't send Schoop, I don't send Adrianza. Nothing to do with yesterday's game, of course, just a side observation after Schoop was thrown out by a mile at second.

Too many double spaces in this. I couldn't figure out how to make it look right in this WYSIWYG editor, but here is a screen-shot of what I managed to see: And my reaction: 94 runs and 89 RBI from your #9 hitter? Over 100 RBI from your leadoff guy? 100+ runs and 100+ RBI from your catching duo?

Several takeaways for me, some already touched upon. Marwin is a butcher in RF and isn't getting better. Either give him intensive drills, or play him elsewhere. Nelson Cruz used to play RF, and I bet he still could give you better innings out there than Marwin has shown us. Our backup right fielder is in Rochester. When Buxton sits, either use Rosario in center and put Marwin in left (where he's said to be good, I can't remember), or else give Ehire a try out there. Remember JD Martinez playing RF in the last World Series? Yeah. We're potentially facing that embarrassment when the stage gets bigger and we're not playing the Royals.Cron, what the what? Shake it off and get 'em next game, I guess. I counted 3 plays that he would have made on a different day.Ehire has a major league glove at all the infield positions, but he ain't perfect, as we saw again yesterday.I trust four of our baserunners, Rosario and Kepler and Polanco and Buxton. If you're not in that list, don't go stretching a single into a double in a situation that would only work in a beer league. I'm looking at you, Jonathan Schoop; with two outs a double would be helpful, but it'll have to be the next guy, so be off at the crack of the bat and let him drive you around. It actually catches me by surprise that two capable middle-infielders on our roster, Schoop and Adrianza, are so plodding on the basepaths, but they are what they are. We're mostly a slow team.You can make this many mistakes against the Royals and still win. We used to be the Royals. Heck, we're not that far removed - they're running Lucas Duda out there, and we almost did.

I think that's a past-participle, but I'll have to check with an expert. http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_9hJs2J1RW1Y/TSE7yaDRzcI/AAAAAAAAAXk/XuQl-I2T4hU/s1600/angry_old_woman.jpg

This is a fun team to watch.

Trying to decide whether to make this the first post I simultaneously click Like and give a warning point to.

When I steal, I like to do it from the best.