DrungoHazewood
-
Posts
31314 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
138
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Everything posted by DrungoHazewood
-
Yea, the only two possible choices are a room of clones simulating all the games in a Google datacenter, or playing the game exactly like it was in 19-and-aught-five. -
You'll lose a lot more fans by telling them that it's okay that the folks on the field are the only ones who can't know the right call. It's become untenable to have millions of fans see a clearly wrong call in real time and no one can do nothing about it. Not using electronic aids would be like handing out speeding tickets based solely on the cops' judgment, when there's a radar gun sitting on the seat next to him. Yes, there needs to be consideration about flow of the game, but this ain't soccer. Baseball naturally has a discrete, segmented rhythm with dozens of pauses and breaks.
-
Do you remember Ron Luciano? He was like Leslie Nielsen with the dial turned back three notches. In his autobiography he claimed he threw Earl out of several games just for fun, before he'd even done anything.
-
Wait... what? Have you heard something?
-
I'd like the next CBA to just state that you become a free agent after six years of service time, or after your age 28 season (or maybe 27, I haven't totally thought this through), whichever is first. So for most players who come up at 23 or 24 or 25 it would incentivize putting them in the majors as soon as they're ready to play any kind of role. No more games, just put your best players out there, with a few exceptions. No, this is not going to happen. But I believe the NHL does do something like this.
-
I know this will get little, if any, traction here, but I think the poll numbers reflect this a lot better than the post-trade hand-wringing: Parra had every expectation of being an average MLB outfielder filling a sub-replacement hole, while Davies was in a fairly tight grouping with Wright and Wilson as potential future backend starters. I thought it was justifiable, the Orioles were in a spot where a win or two was conceivably the difference between the playoffs and not. Much of the hate and discontent* comes from the fact that Parra had a near .900 OPS in Milwaukee, but a .625 for the Orioles. * Exempting Can_of_corn, who had an intense fear and loathing of the trade from day one for mostly ideological reasons.
-
Greenland. Or maybe Madagascar. Still islands, unlike Australia.
-
It's March first and the Braves are in first place.
-
Sounds like he's in the best shape of his life.
-
One last straight-on kicking aside... I completely forgot to mention the other Hokie conventional kicker from the 80s - Chris Kinzer. Before Shayne Graham's field goal to win the '99 WVU game when you said "the kick" everyone at Tech knew you were talking about Kinzer's 40-yard FG as time expired to win the 1986 Peach Bowl over NC State. Straight-on with his toe from the right hash mark to win the Hokies' first ever bowl game.
-
He does have a lengthy track record of being the steadying influence on a chaotic roster of Julio Lugos and Tike Redmans.
-
I almost want to post a poll that says "would you trade an Orioles organizational 5-10 prospect for Nick Markakis and $10M?" Frobby would probably respond with "hell yes, and I'd even throw some cash in instead of expecting it back."
-
If I were the Braves I'd be very wary of his .338 BABIP despite a LD% right at his career average, since that drove his value up to 1.6 fWAR. If he repeats the .290-something BABIP he had in 2013 and 2014 he'll have a poor year, probably a sub-one-win year. This year did nothing to change my mind that a 4/44 deal was a significant overpay. My Worlds Simplest Contract Estimator has him worth 3/21 until he slips below replacement level, and that's assuming you want anything to do with a three year deal for three wins.
-
I've always had a soft spot for straight-on kickers. They were almost extinct when I was a kid, but I spent many hours practicing straight-on kicking in my back yard. The Skins had Moseley, but also had Steve Cox who was their punter from 1985-88 and also long field goal specialist who kicked straight on. IIRC he once attempted a 67-yard field goal, but came up well short and wide. In a strange coincidence, I went to college at what had to have been the last holdout of the straight-on kicker, Virginia Tech. My freshman year (1989) their kicker was Mickey Thomas, who kicked straight-on. And a few years later they had Ryan Williams who had a kind of birth defect or injury that left him with only half a right foot, but he kicked straight-on with that half a foot. As far as I know Williams was the last major college kicker who didn't kick soccer-style.
-
Something crazy was in the water in the early 80s. Rollie Fingers won the 1981 AL MVP pitching 78 innings with 2.6 fWAR, in a season where Rickey was at 6.7. Then the next year Moseley won the NFL MVP in a season where he probably was on the field for about 8 minutes the whole year.
-
Does that reset his HOF clock? It's not impossible that some sanity will have been injected into the process in another five years.
-
He was funny last night. Jawing with the ump about the strike zone, lots of obvious facial expressions. Gave up a bases-loaded walk or two. Then York's manager got tossed.
-
Sitting at Blue Crabs game watching Rommie Lewis pitch for the York Revolution.
-
Exactly. I get the feeling Boswell's analytic baseball knowledge stopped growing about the time everyone decided Total Average just wasn't doing it for them, circa 1986.
-
I'm sure that's a much (actually infinitely) more likely story to have been written in the late 80s than "sometimes the difference between 5-10 and 9-0 is luck on batted balls, and run/defensive support".
-
And of course long after he left Baltimore he was involved in one of the great/infamous deadline deals of all time, when he was swapped for a pre-MLB debut John Smoltz. Alexander went 9-0 for the Tigers down the stretch*, helping them make the postseason where they were quickly dispatched by the Twins. And then he finished off his career with a couple more okay years in Detroit. But Smoltz spent almost his entire career on the dynastic Braves, putting together a HOF career worth ~80 fWAR. By fWAR the Tigers lost the trade 80-6. Or if you just count the six pre-free agency years of Smoltz' career it was more like 20-6. * Alexander was 5-10, 4.13 for the Braves, 9-0, 1.53 for the Tigers. But you could make the case that he really didn't pitch that much differently after the trade. His K and BB numbers actually got worse with the Tigers, but his BABIP went down 30 points and for whatever reason his homer rate fell off the side of the planet. At the time the story was written up as an almost heroic, gutty pitching performance leading the Tigers into the postseason.
-
That can't be the difference. He literally has had a 55 (!) run swing in his UZR/150 over the past three years. I wouldn't expect a 55-run swing if he'd shifted from LF to 3B. Lefthanded.
-
But it's also based on very poor defense combined with very good offense this year. Parra is an odd case. I really don't know what to think, except that I'm skeptical of someone who's offensive gains are all BABIP-related, and his defensive metrics have collapsed. But someone will probably look at the upside in both.
-
Does someone else believe that this isn't just a career year, but the new normal? The Orioles need to decide whether or not they can live with a 4/44 kind of deal for a guy who gives them a .740 OPS with so-so defense. They might because of the upside. Someone will almost certainly give him more than 2/16, that's paying for a little more than a win a year from a guy who's probably going to have been worth ~2 or more four of the last five years.
