DrungoHazewood

Mateo is 14th of 30 shortstops (min 40 games) in rWAR. Someone might quibble about the defensive runs saved (I think DRS has him more highly rated than OAA, or at least with more runs saved). But, arguably, Mateo has been an above-average MLB shortstop so far this year. On the bb-ref list he's been more valuable than Wander Franco, Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Bo Bichette Bobby Witt, Elvis Andrus, Jose Iglesias and Brandon Crawford. Among others. Statcast has Mateo's glove as +13 compared to Bobby Witt's.

Trout is signed through 2030, Harper 2031. There's a lot of time for their teams to regret what they've done. Mickey Mantle retired before he got to the ages they'll be at the end of their current deals. But the real issue with acquiring Soto or Ohtani is that neither would be likely to sign with the Orioles long-term so the team would be giving up multiple high-end prospects and taking on salary for a few years of the player. And they'd almost certainly be looking to trade them prior to free agency even though they'd probably be in contention. Trade them, or let them walk for nothing.

My 50-year-old brain has trouble recalibrating to 2022 expectations, but it still boggles the mind that Hall has a higher strikeout rate as a starter in AAA than Armando Benitez did as a closer in AA. Benitez was fast-tracked to the majors because his strikeout rate was so ridiculous. Benitez' career AAA K rate was 11.8, Hall's 14.8. Benitez faced 4.9 batters/appearance. Hall 18.4.

I think the Baseball Reference page is from 2012. Not sure about Fangraphs, but if anything I would have expected them to incorporate that earlier.

As I mentioned to Frobby both main flavors of WAR include leverage in their WAR calculations for relievers. You could just use WPA instead of a leverage-adjusted runs saved number in WAR. But I don't know if that's objectively better or worse than the way they do it now. Jorge Lopez has a 0.9 fWAR, 1.6 rWAR, and 0.5 WPA.

They're not leverage neutral. From Baseball Reference. From Fangraphs.

I love John Goodman, but he was a ridiculous Ruth. Teenage Babe probably weighed 180 or something. Goodman was bigger and much less athletic than Walter Young or Calvin Pickering.

Or is that just a function of their limited number of innings? Jorge Lopez has faced 171 batters, and he's only two games behind leading the majors in appearances. Even multiplying by his leverage index of 1.93 that's the equivalent of 330 plate appearances. Austin Hayes has 342 PAs, plus another 165 chances in the field, and he's created a few runs on the bases. Relievers don't have as much space to create value.

I can't get to Fangraphs right now, but I'll take a guess: - Fangraphs uses FIP to measure pitchers. Lopez has a very low batting average on balls in play, which drives his FIP up to over 3.00, which is good but not great. - Statcast sees McKenna as a very good fielder and runner, while his .662 OPS is not that far below league average. bb-ref uses RA instead of FIP and sees Lopez ahead of McKenna 1.6 to 0.7.

The first class that included players on the Brady Anderson, Nick Markakis level was in 1946. And that's never really let up. The Hall was a thing for over 30 years before the first Baseball Encyclopedia came out in '69, so many players were inducted based on embellished stories about players who'd retired half a century before. That continues to some extent even today. Tommy McCarthy went in in 1946. He was basically an average hitter, a pretty good fielder, and once led the league in steals. Only played 13 years, his playing career was like, I don't know... the 1890s version of Jermaine Dye or Jay Bruce. But someone told a story about him helping invent the hit-and-run, so he's in. The Frankie Frisch-led Veteran's Committee of the 60s and 70s inducted dozens of players from the 20s and 30s who played with or against Frisch. Players like Sunny Jim Bottomley, who wasn't in the same zip code as Fred McGriff or John OIerud. There are years from the late 20s where something like 20-25% of NL plate appearances were players who'd eventually go into the Hall. If you're upset about the Hall inducting pretty good players you need to blame poor information and badly designed voting systems from almost a century ago, not advanced metrics.

I know at least two people who work Caddyshack quotes into their daily lives. All the time. That's kind of an epic sports movie for someone to not have seen, even if you're not a golfer.

Maybe the thing that sets The Sandlot apart from most other baseball movies is that kids playing baseball is a lot more believable than adult actors playing baseball. In almost every baseball movie about major leaguers, at least to some extent, you have to suspend disbelief that these guys are actually really good ballplayers. Because they're clearly not. Maybe it's easier with period pieces like The Natural or Eight Men Out because your mind already kind of recalibrates what 1920 or 1935 is supposed to look like. Just about every movie with Babe Ruth is super cringy because they feel the need to make a goofy fat guy play arguably the best player who ever lived. I love Major League, but you really have to suspend disbelief to think 90% of those guys could play rookie ball, much less be in the Majors. Bad News Bears, Sandlot, they're believable because they're really just kids playing baseball like kids play baseball. But even The Sandlot doesn't completely escape (hopefully not too much of a spoiler) because the cheesiest part of the movie is Benny on the Dodgers at the end.

I didn't watch it when it came out, I was in college or just graduated. It was probably 10-15 years ago when I first saw it.

There's a guy I worked with before he retired a few years ago. Big baseball fan, Orioles fan. Had never seen the Sandlot and we ribbed him about it all the time. We'd be in meetings and reference Sandlot quotes or something about Wendy Pfferkorn or Smalls, and be like "oh, you don't know what that is..."

If you define "good" as "about 10%".

Mateo has been worth 1.6 rWAR and 1.1 fWAR in 81 games. I trust the fWAR more, as they use OAA for defense which I think is on more solid foundation than DRS. Either way, he's pretty close to being an average MLB player despite not being able to hit a lick. There's certainly a lot worse players in the league, even on good teams.

Just curious, who's telling you what to think?

The Natural is another one that I will watch and enjoy the heck out of, but still have these lingering issues about how they could have done it differently. Someone needs to remake the Natural (Tim Burton? Herzog? Coens? Someone who can really pull off depressing and weird) and stay true to the book, so at the end Roy strikes out, then is met outside the stadium by a kid with a newspaper that says "Hobbs suspected in gambling scheme", and he just weeps as the credits roll. Bill James once wrote that the lesson of Malamud's book was that no matter what you do nothing ever works out in the end.

I didn't see Field of Dreams or Bull Durham in the theater, but I actually took a date to see Major League. So that'll always be high on the list for me. All of them came out when I was a junior/senior in high school. Even though I appeared to be 12* at the time, I don't remember any problems getting into R-rated movies. * Guy at Memorial Stadium laughed at me on beer stein night when I was maybe 20 years old ("no way kid!"), but I got my revenge later that winter when I got the 14-and-under hockey stick at the Caps game.

Championship caliber teams routinely use players who are below average but above replacement. The Braves last year didn't really have a regular LFer, they had nine different players who were below average in 100+ PAs. Perfect example was Dansby Swanson, who played almost every game, was a 1.9 rWAR/-0.4 WAA player. On the World Champions. Tom Tango has a system that converts WAR into what he calls the Indies, which is a win-loss record instead of a single number. The single number is very useful in a lot of cases, but for comparing player value 15-3 vs 15-13 means a lot more than just saying six wins vs. five. That gives you playing time context. Santander might be a 5-4 player, while Rutschman is a 4-1 player (numbers made up for this example). People don't understand a lot of things. I think WAR helps eliminate some of the BS arguments you'd get when people would haphazardly combine numbers. They'd take a guy who hit .320 with 28 homers but a brick glove and terrible baserunning and pick and choose how to value the total player, usually on the basis of how much the like the guy. WAR provides a consistent framework and data sources so you can't do that. You see that in old MVP votes, where the guy with 2.6 WAR wins the trophy and the guy with 9.0 finishes 11th because there was nothing systematic about combining all the different aspects of player value.

Why would you hard pass on a trade of Santander, who's 27 and has never had a 2-win season, for a pretty good starting pitcher with a big K rate? Snell is only making $10M a year, which doesn't buy you much in free agency. Stowers could likely come to the majors today and be about as good as Santander.

If I didn't alienate enough people with putting The Sandlot and the Bad News Bears on the same plateau, I also always thought the Beatles were a little overrated. Zeppelin, too.

I admit that when I watch it it's pretty emotional and gripping. It's a good movie. I've been to Dyersville and walked into the corn field. But I also am not at all a fan of Shoeless Joe Jackson hagiography, this whole oh he and the Black Sox are victims narrative. He took $5000 to throw the World Series. He's lucky he didn't end up in jail.

Wow, that's a crazy take. Although looking on Rotten Tomatoes not an unpopular one.

I forgot Bull Durham, probably because I haven't seen it in a loooong time. I need to rewatch it.