DrungoHazewood

I don't really know. I'd have to do some research to see if walk rates track with the league rates. Maybe he gets called up and sees his free passes go down by 44%? All I really know is there are a lot of walks in the minors today.

1) The win rule is a holdover from a long time ago, and they didn't really put too much thought into the starter goes five/reliever can get a single out thing because relievers in 1913 were mostly some random guy who came in when the starter was either hurt or gave up nine runs in 2/3rds of an inning. The details of the rule have mostly been out-of-step with reality since long before any of us were born. 2) Here's a list of several hundred players who hit at least .300, qualified for the batting title, yet had an OPS+ under 100. Patsy Tebeau hit .302 in 1894 and had a 75 OPS+, or lower than Ryan McKenna's career mark. The Mariner's Felix Fermin once hit .317 in a season where he had 11 walks and one homer, and had an 85 OPS+. Hall of Famer Lloyd Waner (perhaps only because the committee got his files mixed up with his brother Paul's) hit .316 yet had just a 99 OPS+, and was a below-average hitter for his whole career.

The IL is walking 4.7 per nine, which is kind of astronomical. Across the minors walks are over 4.0 per nine everywhere except the AA Southern League. That was the case last year, too. Was a little lower in '22. But if you go back to '19 everyone (except a couple rookie leagues) were under 4.0. Is this because of the auto ball/strike system? I think I haven't been paying close enough attention to know. For comparison, the Majors have been over 4.0 walks per nine just twice and just barely, in 1949-50. And in the last 60-70 years have only been over 3.5 a very small handful of times. So the International League sees more walks this year than any year in MLB history, and it's not close. They're walking 44% more batters than the Majors are in '24. It would be nice if some aspiring analyst went and looked to see if AAA pitchers walk rates fall upon promotion to the majors, and vice versa.

It's Ben's Chili Bowl, which is half-smoke sausages that you can get chili on. I don't know if the stadium versions are the same, but the original Ben's is a DC institution.

That's miserable. The food situation at any sports stadium is often ridiculous. The prices outrageous, and anytime during the game it takes 10, 15, 20+ minutes to go through the line, and the whole time you're thinking I'm supposed to be here watching the friggin' game not in line! My boys and I went to a hockey game in Chicago in March and two of us missed a good 10 minutes of the game getting some wildly overpriced chicken tenders. The area around Nats' Park and Audi field is not great for vehicle access. I didn't have your experience, but was at DC United on Saturday and even 1.5 hours before kickoff it's a bit of a mess. Luckily I have a CAC card and can park on Ft. McNair for free. But getting out is a 30+ minute ordeal. I would have lost my mind if I lost my cell phone at the game.

Remember when expansion supposedly diluted pitching? When I'd ask why expansion didn't dilute hitting just as much the answer was usually something along the lines of "well, it's obvious that there are all kinds of effects that the scarcity of pitching shows that there's just more hitters in the pipeline and kids these days can't see that the training and stuff isn't like the ways that the people did it back in the 50s and all that... yea." Until someone shows me relevant data confirming Rosenthal's hypothesis I'm going to assume he has no idea if it's true or not. But his article will now be cited as evidence by any number of people who claim it is.

I haven't read the article, just the snippets in the original post. But I'm guessing there's no study to accompany this, where they show a bunch of statistically significant samples of rookie performance in their first X games in, say, the 1970s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, and then compare the data to the 2020s with a clear trend line that it really is more difficult to break in today? Because without that, this is more-or-less a fluff piece speculating on the causes of an effect that nobody has shown to actually be true.

Of course it is. While it's possible he lost the ability to hit overnight, it's much more likely that he's still a 100 OPS+ guy, +/- a few points. It would be somewhat unusual for a player to just lose it before his 30th birthday unless there's an underlying injury.

If I had one reason to trade him it would be the injury risk for Miller is about 30 times higher than for a non-pitcher.

300 wins has always been a automatic threshold, but only about 1/3rd of HOF starting pitchers have 300+ wins. If you want a long-career rule of thumb 50-60 WAR is a good place to start. Setting aside active players and PED cases there are less than 10 pitchers over 60 rWAR who aren't in the Hall. And five of them are from the 1800s when pitcher's jobs and expectations were very different.

I'm a bigger fan of game-tying runs scored.

On 17 different occasions Greg Maddux got a win in a game where he allowed five or more runs. Another 38 times he took the loss in a game where he allowed two or fewer runs.

You can be nostalgic about anything you want. I still want to see somebody hit .400 in my lifetime. But that doesn't mean that's best way to assess runs and wins. I only get a little upset when people turn their nostalgia into "We knew better in the old days than they do now, stop all this xwOBA, WAR gobbeldygook and go back to stuff that matters like pitcher wins and RBI!"

I'd be surprised if they didn't. But I would be surprised if they traded one of the big prospects (and perhaps it would take more) for a closer.

I have a question. Why would the A's trade Miller? Why would the A's trade Miller for another player who has five years of control left, when they could just keep the high-performing young guy they have locked up through 2028? If you're a team that is looking to build for the future don't you build around players like Miller? And if you're waiting for some point in the future where you're the Las Vegas A's, I'm still not sure you're making any moves because there are no very young players who're likely to be both more valuable than Miller and need 3-4 years in the minors.