ashbury

"Use the Force, Royce. Wait, no, no, not on yourself! Welp, that's a stint on the 60-day IL - bilateral self-destruction." That's all I got; RandBalls Stu already used the Bad Feeling line.

Did Prielipp just punch his ticket to St Paul with today's outing?

Unless he brings down the strikeouts, his high BABIP this spring is going to come back down and he'll be the same old Wagaman as before.

Heh. They've ended games in ties for a while, but "let's stop, we're out of pitchers needing any work" is the line you draw? Go to the back fields sometime and watch the games. When a major leaguer stays behind on a day his teammates are on the road, and plays against the AA guys, and leads off every inning followed by a courtesy runner if he gets on - will that prompt you to storm out and demand* a refund? 😁 * You won't be given a refund since they do not charge to watch games on the back fields. Life is good in Ft. Myers.

Hilarious satire. We're all going to look back on this with laughter during the World Series Championship parade.

Prediction is hard, especially where it comes to the future.

Your fate is now tied to his. I won't be able to read a headline like "Banda Coughs Up Another Late-Inning Lead" without thinking of you. I wonder if that autographed ball you're receiving is the one where Royce sprained his index finger signing it.

A dinger every 7.9 AB when the game was already pretty much decided. One every 18.7 when the score was within 4. That's basically the difference between being a 30-HR guy if he ever got 600 AB, and a 40-HR guy. Not that 30 is bad, but combined with a low BA it ain't all that, either. And when the game's not close, that 7.9 rate will fool us into thinking he's a 75-HR guy if we just give him the chance. (And no, not every batter has splits of that magnitude. Byron Buxton had a good 2025, and when the game was within 4 runs he homered every 13.67 AB, while when the lead for either team was 5 or greater, his homer rate was every 16 AB - the opposite direction of Wallner. I'm not going to invest more time looking at other individuals, but across the majors those rates are 29.4 and 26.8 respectively - not especially different, one from the other.) His ordinary splits with men on base look reasonable, but it could be that they're inflated by the meaningless situations. I don't know where to find further splits, of results with men on base versus bases empty, divided into the size of the lead when it happened. The one useful split b-r.com provides to go to this extra level, is what they term "late & close". In those very limited situations (and I don't know how they're defined), Wallner hit 1 HR in 33 AB, for a rather high ratio of, well, 33. It's dangerous to slice and dice things into small samples, but if those small samples are congruent with what looks like an overall trend, I'm more inclined to consider them. My working hypothesis is that Wallner is far more susceptible than most batters, to falling prey to the pitcher's strategy for the game situation. Which reduces his value far below what the raw numbers would suggest. I can't recall a player with such extreme splits in this regard - Joey Gallo maybe, although his unfavorable splits were of a different nature. I want, want, want the coaches to help Wallner figure this out.

Oh sure, tout the gaudy seasonal batting average. But it was pumped up by a BA of .255 in the plate appearances when the score was already at least 5 ahead or behind. In all other situations when it mattered he batted .192.

I like that argument. What I especially like is that it isn't symmetrical to the advantage that goes to the hitter in terms of offering at less-than-marginal pitches for fear of being rung up unfairly. Baseball is best when there is balance between things that aren't precisely mirror images. The remarkable balance between a catcher throwing the ball to second base and a runner trying to get there on foot is another example.

This team has a chance of being far enough behind, by about the 5th inning, of enough games, that Wallner will see enough fat pitches, from garbage time pitchers, to lace 40 of them over the wall. (Although truly, I hope he and his coaches figure out ways that he can stop eating out of the pitcher's hand when the game is still close, so that we have fewer of those garbage time innings to begin with.)

If Profar (switch-hitter) was slated to be paired with Yaz, then they'd be looking for a new righty bat. Connor Joe and his minor-league contract could be had from the Mariners for almost nothing, I imagine; other possibilities surely abound. I don't see how Larnach fits into the picture.

I know of a strong argument in favor of offense going up: pitching is all about disrupting the batter's approach and anything that makes that part of the game more predictable will aid the batter. I don't know of a countervailing argument that would give the pitcher any edge. If the umpires were systematically calling balls when they should be strikes, more often than the reverse, then maybe, but I'm not aware of any studies showing that.

No. HTH.

Oh, I think we know what they'd like. But will events allow it?

What's the over-under on the inning in which he is replaced? It being spring, starters don't play long. I'd put the line at 1.5.

As long as we're correcting the record, anyone who has spent time in the Bay Area will know that the name of the high school is Junípero Serra, in honor of the Franciscan monk who established many of the Catholic missions up and down the coast.

Thanks for this summary. Data that doesn't mean very much is still better than no data, at least if you accept the ground rules.

The Cardinals have already claimed him twice this off-season. What are the odds Kent passes through waivers if the Twins try?

Guh, who writes the headlines at TD? They are always out of whack with the content. There are four pitchers with higher WAR than Buxton. The headline didn't limit the discussion to hitters. Anyway, it barely needs repeating that he is a "what might have been" player with a probable HoF trajectory if he had better health.

Did we win?

Cueva de Jacob, going forward.

Ow! is a word that comes out of nowhere!

How much additional thought did you give to "allegoreality"?