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Willihammer

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Everything posted by Willihammer

  1. Willihammer
    1 in 10 baseball players is has a meth prescription. Which means maybe 1 in 5 ballplayers is using since you can get your psychiatrist to up your doseage by simply saying "its not having much of an effect" and then share/sell the extra to your friends. Say "meth" or "crank" instead of Adderall, because that's the street name for the same drug. Then does it sound more likely that we might be talking about addiction here? What we do know is that meth is highly addictive, and we're dealing with a very selective sample of the population, one that probably is at some elavated risk of addiction. What we don't know, is that using the drug is in any way beneficial to players, aside from their own testimony. But maybe the reason MLB banned beanies was because coaches and umpires got sick of dealing with strung out players all the time?
  2. Willihammer
    That is the reason. The link between thrill seeking and addiction. Either you deny that link, or you deny that athletes in general tend to be thrill seekers. You need to do one or the other, otherwise all the years of testimony from this bloc of drug users about how they are benefiting from the drugs is invalid.
  3. Willihammer
    You deny there's a relationship between thrill seeking and addiction?
  4. Willihammer
    Its tough to calculate Gray's true talent if the only evidence we have that stimulants actually improve performance -anecdotes from athletes, is invalid. A possiblity that nobody seems to consider. "But it helps me" could just as easily be rationalizing, as addicts are sometimes wont to do.
  5. Willihammer
    All I'm saying is that in my view, the bigger conclusion to draw when an athlete tests positive for a psychoactive like Adderall, as opposed to testosterone or HGH, is not just that you might have a cheater on your hands, its that you might also be looking at an addict. Guys can work around a 50 game suspension. An addiction, maybe not.
  6. Willihammer
    Would that be so far-fetched? Brain scans have shown that thrill seeking and addiction originate from the same area of the brain. Athletes tend to be thrill seekers. And not to get too catchartic here but have you ever taken an ADHD test? They're a joke. As someone whose experimented with all manner of uppers, downers, laughers, and screamers, including Adderall, the main difference betwen Adderall and other drugs is that Adderall is much easier to get. It will get you just as high as other drugs.
  7. Willihammer
    Correct me if I'm wrong but there aren't any studies out there linking stimulants to improved play athletically, is there? Instead, what this says to me on its face is that the kid likes to get high.
  8. Willihammer
    Diamond's velocity is down over 1 mph over last Apr-May. His walks and K-rates have taken small hits. Batters have gotten ahead of him more this year. I think its safe to say Diamond is not operating at 100% right now, and I suspect its because of the elbow/surgery.
  9. Willihammer
    Only 4.5 games out. If there had been a guy available this past offseason who A. filled the Twins need for starting pitching and B. was coveted by the Tigers, they might have made a direct, albeit "marginal" dent in that gap. A shame no such free agent pitcher fit both of those criteria.
  10. Willihammer
    How many of those traps occured with runners on base? I think he tried it against Aramis Ramirez in the Brewers series. Got all turned around every which way and ended up watching the ball bounce over the fence for a ground rule double. The bases had been empty.
  11. Willihammer
    Dark, this is preposterous. Hicks is not feigning misjudgment to goad runners into biting off extra bases so he can throw them out from center field.
  12. Willihammer
    I was convinced at the time that I pulled some little muscle in there but you know, sometimes in a man's life you have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and play through the pain - cough cough Mauer cough.
  13. Willihammer
    Did Denard put on about 20 pounds over the winter? Maybe the blue stripes hid a few curves all those years. He looks fatter as a Nat.
  14. Willihammer
    Not when you are looking at it from the perspective of Win Expectancy, no. From the perspective of expected run value you can at least narrow the calculus down to being lineup-specific. The formula for that is simply: Break Even Rate = 0.590 + 3.33 x (HR/PA) But, that too doesn't distinguish between a late and close scenario or a situation like last night with 1st and 3rd, 1 out, up 2 in the bottom of 6, or any other base/out/inning situation you can think of. Also, the constant and coefficient here are derived from the entirety of 1950-2012 (and yet manages to hold a r-squared of .685). So that's why I think for us who like to play armchair manager, you have to combine the two approaches somehow, possibly by weighting the WE values against the HR propensities of hitters, since the breakeven SB-HR relationship is so strong and HR rates can vary so wildly hitter to hitter.
  15. Willihammer
    Not to be a 1-upper but... deer hunting, 2002 I think. Bundled up, cold outside. Sat in my stand for an hour or better. Starting to get numb. Then I hear something to my 6 o'clock. Slowly turn my head, then the noise stops, so I freeze. Strain my EYE trying to see what the hell was over there (squirrel).
  16. Willihammer
    If you want to split hairs, all of those break even values should be weighted for a team's home run hitting proficiency, where obviously the Twins are lacking. Which makes the steal a more viable option for them in all situations. By the same logic, to get even more precise, the break even calculation should be weighted against the home run hitting proficiency of the batter at the plate - Florimon in this case. Obviously that lowers Hicks' break even point even further.
  17. Willihammer
    We have all seen Morneau shake his head disgusted after getting thrown out by 20 feet at 2nd base after clobbering a ball of Target Field's 23 foot wall in right. In many parks, those will be home runs, or at the very least, doubles. Is there any chance that Justin finishes the year slightly worse than 2012, is extended a QO, and feels its in his career's best interest to turn it down so he can try to move to a more LH friendly park?
  18. Willihammer

    Wedge

    Willihammer replied to drjim's topic in Other Baseball

    Strawman. I too missed the "uproar." I don't think there really was any outside of twitter. Fangraphs didn't weigh in on it. Baseball prospectus didn't weigh in except to say that Wedge was right. In fact Wedge's comments re: Ackley (after looking them up) are supported by statistics. Ackley's one of the most passive hitters in baseball, but he sees a lot of strikes and has hit poorly in his time at the MLB level. There's no conflict here.
  19. Willihammer
    As we're all aware, step 4 of the 21 Point Plan to More Twins Wins! is upon us. Step 4 of course is the first of a subseries of steps which looks at how the Twins AAAA bubble guys figure to fit into the next wave of All Star talent currently playing in Cedar Rapids and Ft Myers. Dozier, Hicks, Parmelee, Plouffe, Florimon, Gibson, Deduno, DeVries, and Hendriks. In Step 4, we isolate the position players. Smarter minds than I have calculated that the 150 PA plateau marks the point where we can say with a high degree of reliability what a guy's final scores will be at the end of the season in several metrics. Namely: Swing% (50 PAs) Contact % (100 PAs) K rate, LD rate, and pitches/PA Here is how our bubble guys weigh in: http://i.imgur.com/eMxs0wv.png So, if these figures hold reasonably stable for the remainder of 2013, do we pencil these guys in for step 21? Who gets cut?
  20. Willihammer
    As we're all aware, step 4 of the 21 Point Plan to More Twins Wins! is upon us. Step 4 of course is the first of a subseries of steps which looks at how the Twins AAAA bubble guys figure to fit into the next wave of All Star talent currently playing in Cedar Rapids and Ft Myers. Dozier, Hicks, Parmelee, Plouffe, Florimon, Gibson, Deduno, DeVries, and Hendriks. In Step 4, we isolate the position players. Smarter minds than I have calculated that the 150 PA plateau marks the point where we can say with a high degree of reliability what a guy's final scores will be at the end of the season in several metrics. Namely: Swing% (50 PAs) Contact % (100 PAs) K rate, LD rate, and pitches/PA Here is how our bubble guys weigh in: http://i.imgur.com/eMxs0wv.png So, if these figures hold reasonably stable for the remainder of 2013, do we pencil these guys in for step 21? Who gets cut?
  21. Willihammer
    I just wish the Twins had at least waited till David Ortiz had gotten expensive before parting ways, instead of releasing him at 26 because he liked to wrap his pinky under the handle.
  22. Willihammer
    Twinkie Town, a Minnesota Twins community Any volunteers to plagiarize them everyday? edit: I nominate Chukkjay
  23. Willihammer
    I think the worst thing would be for Provus to spend any more time informing. Either slip in an advanced stat without wasting time on background, or bin it. The savvy will know what he is talking about, and the people who don't care won't have to be bored to tears as he explains what he's talking about.
  24. Willihammer
    Ian Kennedy of Arizona Diamondbacks will miss next start after cutting finger while doing dishes - ESPN
  25. Willihammer
    Reasonably red?
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