DrungoHazewood

Corn said this many pages ago, but there is a strong correlation between velocity and effectiveness. You can Google some studies, but more-or-less an average pitcher who throws 97 would be a 90th-percentile pitcher who throws 92. In the beginning baseball was a sport where pitchers pitched, almost like in horseshoes. Underhand, stiff elbow and no snapping wrist, there were no called balls or strikes because it was expected that the pitcher would pitch the ball up so the hitter could put it in play. The game was supposed to be a battle between hitters and fielders. Pitchers could do that all day long with barely any risk of injury. The pitchers didn't cooperate. They threw as hard as they could without flagrantly breaking the rules. Over time they convinced the powers-that-were to loosen up the rules. So from about 1860-1884 they went from horseshoe pitching to essentially modern overhand deliveries, and the injury risk went from nothing to "dude, every single pitch you throw could be your last".

I'm not saying anything I haven't said before, but I'm good with it the way it is. I think the league needs more very long dimensions to adjust to today's players, and historically this is completely unremarkable. If you pick a date in baseball history, be it 1950 or 1920 or 1880, 392' to LC wouldn't even be within 60 feet the most extreme distance to that part of the park. In 1920 half the parks in the league had 450+ signs somewhere, and that was with an average MLB player probably 5' 9" and 165 lbs. I want to see OPACY's park factor go closer to 100 by moving everyone else's dimensions out (and move the mound back to 63' while they're at it). If the small-market Orioles can afford it so can everyone else. Baseball is just a better game with more people putting the ball in play and running around doing athletic stuff.

At today's gold valuation and assuming Chirinos is understating his weight by 20 pounds he'd be worth $7.3M.

Any real team would hot mic all the organizational trainers and docs and livestream them to the world. Plus a public Sharepoint site to host all the players' diagnostic imaging.

That's what makes his inevitable downward spiral through injury, depression, overeating, substance abuse, legal troubles, starring in his own reality show, and, finally, hanging out at a fat farm/rehab clinic with Sidney Ponson that much harder to swallow.

Yea, not like the good ol' days when men were men and in 1922 there were five catchers in a 16-team league who caught as many as 125 games. They should follow the Jody Davis model. Debuted at 24, played 130+ games for four straight years, then completely spent at 30. Carlton Fisk played forever. You know how many times he caught 130 games in a season? Four. Bench had just four years starting 130+ games behind the plate. Rick Dempsey played 24 years in the majors, started over 113 games as a catcher just once.

Remember Paul Bako? Whenever I'd suggest the team could do better than a 35-year-old with a .534 OPS I would be drowned out by a chorus of "clearly you don't understand the intangible impact of a veteran catcher on a pitching staff. He could go 0-for-the-season and he'd still be an asset." 15 years and the story is the same.

Yes, a 38-year-old hitting .137 and who is last in the league in framing runs is probably the key to the franchise's success.

I think fair is having both teams facing the same dimensions during the game. If we follow this fairness thread to its conclusion we're going to end up back in 1975 when most teams played in symmetrical parks that were about 330-375-400. Fair to everyone, and completely devoid of character.

1. Imagine how many free agent RHH we'd attract if the LC wall was 275' away and 2 inches tall. They'd be lined up around the block. 2. Haven't you argued that there was never a free agent pitcher who looked at the old 364' sign and considered that as a reason to not sign here? Then why would the new dimensions impact hitters' decisions more? You can't have it both ways. Or maybe you prefer RHH free agents over free agent pitchers?

It's unbelievably incompetent that they haven't already scheduled the Tommy John surgery. Of course he'll never be the same, he'll be lucky to end up with Brian Matusz' career. The rebuild has officially been derailed, Elias is weeks from being fired, and it's a near certainty that the Orioles will move to Nashville and OPACY will look like a post-apocalyptic wasteland full of rabid raccoons and the bodies of drug dealers by mid-2024. That's the best-case scenario here.

Yea, I know. Just stating my opinion about the piece you posted.

Nope! Exactly what the doctor ordered. Would anyone think we're better off if Ryan Mountcastle had a few extra homers, but Jordan Lyles and Bruce Zimmerman were borderline unpitchable?

I don't want to sound flippant, but I don't care how Keith Hernandez played first base. I care about how many outs he made above and beyond an average first baseman. If he was that magical he should have way more context-adjusted PO/A than anyone else at first. His impact shows up in the numbers, but it's not like he was Babe Ruth out-homering every other team in the league. Hernandez made 0.22 plays/game more than an average 1B. If he was regularly making plays nobody had ever seen before I'd think that would show up somewhere.

Some. I think it's pretty well documented that LF in Fenway depresses putouts. Richie Ashburn the most impressive PO totals of any CFer ever, and while he was very good a lot of that was park illusion because Shibe Park was 468' to center. Also Robin Roberts was a big flyball pitcher. I think Statcast is better at accounting for park than TZ and similar.

I think Hernandez was a great defensive first baseman, and Eddie was very good. But if either of them had been great defensive baseball players they'd have been center fielders or shortstops. Hernandez was hurt by being left-handed. There's a bias against lefty fielders, in that Hernandez wasn't allowed to play 2B/SS/3B (probably for fairly good reason), so he couldn't have the defensive value of a similarly-talented righty. As good as he was at first, it's basically playing third without the requirement for an arm. 1B/3B have the fewest meaningful plays on the diamond, but at first that's masked in the PO numbers by hundreds of times you catch a routine ball letter high on a throw from someone else.

In 2016 Mark Trumbo had a RF of 1.99. Nick Markakis had a 2.12. Mookie Betts a 2.34. In a general, non-adjusted sense Trumbo made 85% of the plays Betts made. If you'd had Mark Trumbo race Mookie Betts in the 100m dash in 2016 Betts would have lapped him. Yes, I know 100m is a quarter of a lap but Betts would have run all the way around the track and still beat Trumbo in his first 100 m. That's 15%.

I guess it's possible to go to the park night after night and just concentrate on the positioning and jumps of a few players. But even then you're only watching a small number of players so you have a limited set of information to compare that to. And almost nobody actually does that.

I think both injuries and mental state and motivation can have substantial impacts. Aging and physical conditioning, too. Not so much today, but in the past it was common for a player to show up to spring training 20 pounds overweight and try to lose it in March. Look at someone like Dave Parker, who was a very good right fielder as a younger player. But put on a lot of weight and started using drugs and became a negative fielder with little range in fairly short order.

Yes, to some degree, but then Nick went to Atlanta and had basically the same defensive metrics he had in Baltimore. Also, by far, Nick's biggest outlier season defensively was 2008 when he was +22. So if someone suspects TZ ouliers are suspect you'll need to knock about ten runs off his performance that year. It would be nice to have Statcast for most of history, but we don't. So just do the best you can with the data that's available.

Doesn't it make sense that someone who was placed at the least important defensive position would only have about as much impact as an average player at somewhere like 2B or CF? Hernandez is seen by TZ as a +117 run defensive first baseman, one of the best totals ever. But that's tempered by the fact that he was being judged against players like Kent Hrbek and Darrell Evans, Glenn Davis and Bill Buckner, John Mayberry and Dan Driessen. Guys who clearly couldn't field other positions, especially on the back ends of their careers. Kent Hrbek was considered a very good defensive first baseman, but if you put him at short... I mean, he weighed 250 on a good day; that wouldn't cut it in a softball beer league. Another way to look at it: Hernandez has a higher career (defense + position) than Derek Jeter by over 10 wins.

Why do you think that fielding is much more consistent than hitting? Would you come to the same conclusion if we mainly judged offense by feel and observation, like many have always done with defense? I think that subjective observation has a smoothing, averaging effect that makes it seem like defense is more consistent But you can't really tell until you have metrics.

It's really just because the determination of a player's value and whether they're above or below replacement or average or whatever bar you set is based on all their contributions. Not just defense.

But you definitely know all the metrics suck, and you know they suck because you knew how good everyone was before looking at the metrics and sometimes the metrics are different than your opinion, so they suck. The best way to validate anything is to compare it to what you currently believe, and if it's different it's wrong.

Markakis was really good but the metrics say he was below average. How do you know he was really good? Because I said so. Why then do the metrics say he was below average? Because they suck, because I said so.