User Comments, Suggestions, or Complaints | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Advertising
|
Demarini, Easton and TPX Baseball Bats
|
AllianceTickets.com has cheap MLB Tickets. Get all your Colorado Rockies Tickets, Seattle Mariners Tickets, San Francisco Giants Tickets and all your favorite baseball tickets here. We also carry cheap Denver Broncos Tickets, Seattle Seahawks Tickets and Denver Nuggets Tickets. |
For wholesale prices on baseball gifts and equipment, check these stores out! |
Page rendered in 0.3378 seconds
63 querie(s) executed
Reader Comments and Retorts
Go to end of page
Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.
1. DarrenI suspect we all have our own version of this sentence that we never say outloud.
Edited to add ZIPS
It's good to keep this sort of thing in mind to keep the irrational hatred in check. But don't read the comments or you'll undo all of that.
But don't get me started on Jimy...
When I watch Lackey pitch, I have the same exact sense of certitude I had chasing that dog, knowing it was heading toward definite fatal conclusion.
I went over to Fangraphs to check the Lackey article and started reading some other articles. The comments section were miserable places, just constant snark without anything of substance. Is it always like that?
Our Great Stagnation is our baseball team.
Like most unhappy events, this can be blamed primarily on David Cameron.
Our Great Stagnation is our baseball team.
I always assumed it was spellt Durden.
GGC, you should have gone Thursday--my daughter's choir did the National Anthem.
Jesus. How do you tell your friend that you killed their dog?
And this is the part where I realize I have no idea how old anybody is on this board.
As to our Sox, I'm still concerned about the run-differential. They were -33 through 12 games, and are +25 since...having done that exercise, I am now less concerned about the run differential. 120 runs to 95 over that span is consistent with a .615 WP% or so. Selective end points and all I know. Given the crappiness that has been John Lackey, I'd expect the Red Sox to over perform their pythag because of the concentrated runs in those losses, but maybe every team has this issue.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
Sticking packs of pencils up your butt does not make you a speller
What pleases me is that for the first time the Sox aren't playing at a "worst pace" from recent seasons. The 20-20 record through 40 games is not particularly good, but they have been worse than that every year since 2002 except 2003 (20-20 worst 40 game stretch) and 2005 (21-19).
Thanks for making me check my spelling 5 times there! Don't pull that again, or this button-down, Oxford-cloth psycho might just snap, and then stalk from office to office with an Armalite AR-10 carbine gas-powered semi-automatic weapon, pumping round after round into colleagues and co-workers. This might be someone you've known for years. Someone very, very close to you.
This is why he wasn't worth $23M for 7 years.
If he crashes and burns at age 29 after developing into a very good hitter whose baserunning and defense made him project as elite or near-elite, that will suck. It'll show the Red Sox made the wrong call. It won't have anything to do with his career OPS.
Or, if Crawford was never as good as his numbers, lucky to hit for quite that much power, mis-measured by problematic defensive statistics, that will suck. It'll show the Red sox made the wrong call. It still won't have anything to do with his career OPS.
The issue was always whether Crawford's defense and baserunning were being properly accounted for. Was he a +5 or a +15 fielder? Would a +15 fielder really be that valuable in Fenway's left field? Would Crawford's baserunning and defense decline earlier as he aged? And so on. Those were quite reasonable debates, I think.
The argument against signing Crawford was always that he wasn't good enough at things other than hitting for his (already agreed-upon) expected quality of hitting to be worthy of the contract.
This is really what I mean. He's a very good left fielder. He steals lots of bases at a high success rate. He hits for something like a park-neutral .800 OPS.
To which I say: So? Why is that player worth a bazillion dollars? Especially at Fenway? Especially since he can't hit lefties?
Curtis Granderson's agent is going to demand $30M/yr, after this overpay.
That added up to 5.7 WAR in 2009 and 6.8 in 2010. That's worth about a bazillion dollars.
2009
+18 batting runs above average
+5.5 SB runs above average
+17.5 fielding runs above average
+22 runs above replacement level
-7 runs positional adjustment
2010
+27 batting runs above average
+5 SB runs above average
+18 fielding runs above average
+22 runs above replacement level
-7 runs positional adjustment
That's an average well over 6 WAR per season. It's a legitimately elite player.
Obviously one can argue that these numbers aren't right - TZ defense, for instance, has Crawford nearly 10 runs per year worse - but they are perfectly reasonable measurements that suggest that precisely the player you describe is worth a bazillion dollars.
How old did you think I was before and how old am I now?
Even though the catchers and Crawford are obviously still black holes in the lineup, I think the real issue the team needs to address in the short-term is the rotation. The front 3 are obviously fine, but with Lackey going on the DL and Daisuke also looking like he's probably got at least a minor injury the FO has to do something to fix this rotation. Doubront should get one of the spots, but Wakefield really shouldn't be taking Lackey's turns. I think the FO might need to just bite the bullet and mortgage the farm for another starter. I haven't really looked at rosters to consider who they could target, but the Sox really can't keep going with 2 rotation slots in flux. If it was just one spot, I think they could patch things together and be fine, but trying to fill 2 rotation slots with flotsam and jetsum just isn't going to end well.
While the back of the rotation looks bad, I'm really happy about the back of the bullpen right now. Matt Albers is looking like a legit leverage reliever, and Alfredo Aceves is the practically perfect long man. With both Aceves and Atchison on the roster, we shouldn't see any more out-of-arms games like the one in Anaheim.
I literally had no concept. 25-45. Now that range is narrowed, in my head to 37-47, skewing to the younger side. I'd guess about 40 given standard kid having age, and age of kid. Though I suppose you could have other kids, of other ages, that I do not know about.
I'll be quite surprised if the results come back clean. I'm curious to see what the Sox decide to do if they have to put him on the DL with Lackey.
RHP Michael Bowden en route to Boston. Move pending.
Sounds like Daisuke to the DL to me. Or maybe Atchison is going back to AAA.
Edit: According to Cafardo, Matsuzaka is indeed headed to the DL. So 2 of the starting 5 are now on the DL like I expected. I just don't see how this team can get by patching together those 2 spots with the guys available.
I realized lately that I usually default to assuming everybody on the internet is my age (31 at the moment, though that's a moving target of course), unless they say otherwise. It's a fair bet around these parts, but not everywhere, and there are plenty of people older than I usually guess.
Then there's YouTube.
Well, your inability to appreciate good snark made me think 62, but with the new information, I'd be willing to move that down to 48...
if they win 2 of 3 when their 1-3 go and score enough to win 50% of the other two games ... well, that's .600 ball.
See, now that's good snark.
I assumed that everyone here thought I was old. I'm very excited he thought there was a chance I was under 60.
Very happy to see Bowden up. In the pen, they'll let him stick with the 2 pitches that helped him rocket through the system before they decided he needed a slider more than anything.
See, now that's good snark.
A rather transparent and vain attempt at trying to appreciate snark, in the hope that people will conclude that you aren't a foggy old geezer. It's not fooling anyone...
Supposedly he's been pitching as a fastball-slider guy as a reliever, occasionally throwing cutters to lefties. So he is in fact NOT using the power curve that was his signature pitch in his early minor league career.
With that increased confidence has come an improvement in stuff. Last year, Bowden’s performance as a starter was up-and-down, in part because his fastball velocity was inconsistent. This year, he has been living at 92-93 mph and down in the strike zone, while complementing that offering with a modified swing-and-miss secondary offering.
Once a fastball-curveball-changeup pitcher, Bowden is now working primarily with his fastball and a slider, with an occasional cutter worked in against left-handers. His results suggest that the revised formula is working.
Source
Somewhat bringing the two topics together. Darren will be happy to know that while I was not posting here as frequently in the Spring of 2009 Junichi Tazawa was definitely my Ramon Ramirez that year. Given my Spring Training trips the last few years and the pitchers I got excited about the progression of Tazawa-Ramirez-Lackey is not doing much for Jose the Scout. I was seriously excited about the guy.
I'll say this--Joel's got a good bead on it.
You must be Registered and Logged In to post comments.
<< Back to main