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markos

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Everything posted by markos

  1. markos
    My point was more about ceiling. If you look at Sano's career so far and compare him to every other hitter of this decade, he has already basically maxed out every on-contact statistic. He is 2nd in BABIP, 9th in avoiding GB, 3rd in HR/FB, 1st in Hard%, 9th in Hard%+Med%. And even with all that, his career wRC+ is 136, which is good but, for a defensively-challenged future DH, not amazing. And that assumes that his .367 BABIP is his true talent. If it isn't, and it happens to be .350 or so, then maybe he is more of a 125-130 wRC+. That is a 2-4 WAR player - essentially Mike Napoli. Nice player, but not franchise altering. But if Sano is going to take a leap and actually reach the Rizzo-Bryant-Cabrera-Ortiz-Bautista level of production, he is either going to need to push his on-contact stats to historic (or beyond) levels, or he is just going to need to make more contact. A lot of players have been able to make more contact and still maintain equal or better production. And adding more contact does provide a fair amount of wiggle-room with one's on-contact production. For example, if he dropped his K% to 30%, his on-contact production could drop by 9% and he would be equally productive. Similarly, if his K% dropped by 10% to 25%, his on-contact production could drop by 17% and he would be equally productive overall. I am obviously more optimistic than you are that more contact will be a net positive for Sano. Just out of curiosity, what do you think Sano's BABIP will be over the next 4 seasons? Would you take the over on .370?
  2. markos
    Yeah, that high of K% puts so much pressure on his BABIP and HR/FB. He is already top-5 in both of those stats, so there isn't a ton of room for him to improve, and it is certainly possible that his .370 BABIP isn't sustainable. If he could get his K% down to 25%, wow, he would be so good.
  3. markos
    Unfortunately, I'm not sure it was too difficult. The Syracuse starter walked 5 in 2 2/3 innings.
  4. markos
    My bad. I forgot you mentioned the 4/60 price earlier. Yeah, I would probably be okay with Ramos at that price. But if I had to guess, Ramos will get closer to 5/82. Too many big money teams need catching help (Red Sox, Tigers, White Sox, and Nationals all come to mind).
  5. markos
    As someone who has watched Ramos very closely for the past few seasons, my big question is durability. He has averaged only 88 games per season over the past 6 years. By comparison, Martin averaged over 120 games per season prior to signing his big deal. If Ramos is demanding comparable money, I would pass. And this is coming from a guy who advocated for signing Martin back in 2015. I think they are comparable players when healthy, but I also think that you are getting 30% more games with Martin. That is a big difference for me.
  6. markos
    I am excited to see Garver move up. He hasn't necessarily gotten the best defensive reviews, but I noticed this interesting tidbid the other day: Baseball Prospectus has done a ton of work trying to calculate pitch framing using PitchFX data in the big leagues. Beyond the pitch location data, their model adjusts for count, pitcher, batter, umpire, score, etc. One of their interesting findings is that their framing numbers using with PitchFX correlate very well (~.7) even when you remove the actual pitch location component and just look at balls and strikes called. This means is that they can estimate a player's framing ability just looking at the frequency of balls and strikes (adjusting for context). Where is PitchFX currently unavailable? The minor leagues. So they've use this alternate methodology to approximate the framing ability of catchers in the minors. Garver has been one of the top-10 catchers - well above-average - in AA so far this year. So even if he isn't a great catch-and-throw or blocking guy, he could still be valuable defensively.
  7. markos
    Exactly how much worse? I mean, Butera has a .879 OPS right now. So you're saying Turner is just an .800 OPS guy? I'd take that. Yeah, Turner has been a huge disappointment this year. I really thought by repeating AA he could show some decent progress. But if anything he is hitting worse than last year.
  8. markos
    I honestly don't know what to think about all the shifting, and if it really says anything about the manager. I have to think that the decision to shift or not - at least at some level - has to come from above and relies on data from the analytics team. And the Twins were #6 in the AL last season under Molitor. They aren't shifting as much this year, but that isn't unique to the Twins. The Cubs and Royals both have gone from middle-of-the-pack in total shifts to rarely shifting. The Cubs are last by a significant margin - the Astros are going to put on a shift ~1000 more times than Cubs this year. IIRC, there have been a few articles (I think from BP) investigating why the shift isn't causing a big change overall (ex. BABIP is up overall). Anyway, there are probably a dozen things I could complain about with Molitor before I would get to his usage of the shift.
  9. markos
    http://www.milb.com/multimedia/vpp.jsp?content_id=741651383&sid=milb http://www.milb.com/multimedia/vpp.jsp?content_id=739979183&sid=milb http://www.milb.com/multimedia/vpp.jsp?content_id=734521583&sid=milb This is probably a biased sample.
  10. markos
    It is possible that with more reps at AAA he would have been more comfortable and committed to his new mechanics, and therefore less likely to drift back to his old form when he struggled. Maybe?
  11. markos
    Sorry, I didn't realize it was behind the paywall: 1 90 Cameron Maybin 2009 2 87 Anthony Gose 2013 3 84 Lastings Milledge 2007
  12. markos
    Seriously, don't go look at PECOTA's top-3 'Comparable Players' for Buxton on Baseball Prospectus. It will make you sick.
  13. markos
    I'm probably reading too much into this, but you seem to be implying that any decision with variable future outcomes is - by definition - a crapshoot. For me, a "crapshoot" is a situation where the probability of success/failure is essentially identical between all your available choices, and therefore there is no penalty for selecting randomly. So games like roulette and the powerball both fall under the category of "crapshoot". The draft is very different - there is no way a team with the first pick would be better off (or even just as good) by just randomly pulling a name out of a hat. There is some gray area in between here, even with the draft. As pointed out by others, there is probably some point in the draft (pick 30? pick 50? pick 100?) where it does become significantly more uniform in expected results, and much closer to what I would consider a crapshoot. But the top of the draft, at least for me, is not.
  14. markos
    I think there is a slightly better chance than you might thing, particularly for top-10 drafted college catchers. Posey got a cup-of-coffee his first full season after being drafted and was up for good after a couple months at AAA to start the next year (presumably for service time reasons). (And remember, Posey was drafted back when the signing deadline was mid-August, so he could have moved faster with today's deadline.) Yasmani Grandal had a similar promotion schedule as Posey (he also had a late-August signing). Mike Zunino made it to AA the year he was drafted, and he was called up halfway through the next season - his first full season. The only top-10 catcher that didn't move fast was Tony Sanchez. So I don't think it is unreasonable to think that a top college catcher drafted in 2017 could be in the majors as the full-time starter for 2019. And depending on how the spring goes, both Harrison and Schwarz could fit the bill.
  15. markos
    August Fagerstrom at Fangraphs wrote about the evolution of Buxton's swing today: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-changes-byron-buxton-has-and-hasnt-made/ Several shout-outs to Parker's previous work.
  16. markos
    And this implies that there was a contender willing to acquire Suzuki how exactly? You seem to have missed my point. Sorry about that; I will try again: I could see an argument for blaming Antony if, for example, the Phillies were able to trade Carlos Ruiz or the Braves were able to trade Pierzynski. But they didn't. No one was able to trade any catcher other than Lucroy. Norris was available. McCann was mentioned. Butera and Hundley are also pending free agents on sub-.500 teams. There were catchers available, but no one moved. So I have a hard time believing that there was a market for Suzuki but Antony blew it by asking too much. No other team could find anyone willing to pay for crappy catching despite equally strong incentives to do so.
  17. markos
    My opinion is that since Lucroy was the only catcher moved, there is a good chance that they simply didn't like the other available catchers. There were other names out there (Norris most notably) besides Suzuki.
  18. markos
    I was just thinking this morning that I hope the new GM would work hard to configure the team to be able to go all in during the 2018 season. Next year is the year to solidify a hopefully decent roster, and then hope that around the trade deadline in 2018 they are in position to be a buyer, kind of like how the Royals were major buyers last year. And the rest of the division might play along. The KC's last hurrah is 2017 (Davis, Cain, Escobar, Moustakas, Hosmer, Duffy are all FA after 2017). DET will probably be rebuilding, and CWS might as well. CLE could still be good, but they just gave up a lot of talent to win right now, so they might be on more of a downswing. It isn't hard to visualize a scenario where the Twins are 5 games up in the division at the end of July, 2018, and there could potentially be multiple ace starters and relievers available at the deadline.
  19. markos
    Yeah, one would think the difference should be the same between the Twins and Angels. I can think of a few things that might make a difference on the margins (# of away interleague games, for example) but nothing that would explain a 30 run gap. Weird.
  20. markos
    I think you misunderstood my point. Yes, what Cashman did was very smart. But some of it was a product of circumstances outside his control. Chapman and Miller stayed healthy. Beltran is having his best season since 2011. If the Yankees had won 3 more games this year and are in the thick of the wildcard race, they probably don't trade as many players. If relievers weren't so highly valued this year then maybe they only get 2/3 of the prospects that the were able to get this year. It was a perfect storm that he definitely has taken advantage of.
  21. markos
    There is a lot of luck involved in this. The one year that the Yanks are actually in a position to sell just happens to be the year when everyone is willing to pay a crazy amount on relief pitching (thanks Royals) AND when the Yankees just happened to have two of the best relief pitchers. Now some of this is by design, and Cashman deserves credit for executing. But if this was an offseason when everyone was paying top-dollar for starting pitching, the Yanks wouldn't have much to offer.
  22. markos
    He seems Gonsalves-esque to me. I have certainly liked what I've seen from the Brewers under Stearns.
  23. markos
    Crazy. The gap between decent and great relief pitching is simply amazing in terms of prospect cost.
  24. markos
    Clearly Antony is trying to get everything out of the way so he can go to lunch.
  25. markos
    Yeah, but potentially the demand could be bigger as well. There are a bunch of teams that are more-or-less out of it this season (Pit, Sea, NYY, KC, LAA) that may consider themselves contenders (and subsequently buyers) in December. Hard to know how the dynamics will shake out.
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