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vs. BLUE JAYS, 8/06


OFFNY

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    • I’ll take a great defender that’s lost a step over a player that has low baseball IQ. Also, you can’t tell me that Ryan McKenna has better current defensive athleticism than Pillar or Hicks.  It’s time to let the “Ferrari” go. Hicks was a bench OF for an O’s team that won 100 games last year. Pillar was a bench OF for a Braves team that won 100 games last year. McKenna blew a catch last year that cost us a game, and had blown a catch this year that has cost us a game.  What advantage does McKenna have other than being “homegrown”?
    • Statcast has Pillar with ~ 3 fielding run value over ~400 innings in 2023 and McKenna with a fielding run value of ~0 last year over ~ 350 innings.  Pillar’s xwOBA was .295 and McKenna had an xwWOBA of .276.     I think it likely does not make sense to pick up Pillar for a few days before Hays’ return, but statcast does show some minor advantages over McKenna.
    • Yes, I would let him walk unless he for some reason gave the club a significant discount which I think there is zero chance of. I'm not a huge fan of armchair GM-ing.  Especially with the ownership change, not knowing how that will affect payroll, extensions, etc.  It's Elias' job to figure out how to fill the spots and so far he's done pretty well at it.
    • Before the great purge in the 1990s* the umps more-or-less did whatever they wanted. They'd interview an ump and he'd say things like "the strike zone is what I say the strike zone is." There would be talk of reforming things and the umps and their union basically just said no. We're the umpires, goldang it, and we control what goes on. Wrong call? Missed something? Bullcrap, we're the best umps in the world, how dare you question us? And until HDTV and cameras everywhere, and tracking systems in the last ~20 years it was often hard to tell just how good or bad they were.  There was that famous Eric Gregg game in the 1997 NLCS where he just decided the strike zone was going to be three feet wide and Livan Hernandez (career K rate of 5.9, never struck out more than 11 in any other game in his long career) struck out 15. It just happened, no consequences, nothing. But now, with Statcast everywhere, even in the minors, and HD broadcasts of every game, it's a whole new world. Umpires have been graded on balls/strikes for many years. They just accept that the whole world knows more-or-less objectively if they were right or wrong in near real time. They can't hide. Truly terrible, belligerent, rogue umps don't exist like they did when I was a kid. That's why Angel and one or two others stand out. But they'd have been mid-pack or better in the 1990s. There can still be improvements, but umpiring is better than it's ever been. * Remember there was some kind of work stoppage and the umps resigned en masse, and the owners called their bluff and accepted the resignations. When the umps came crawling back the owners only brought back the ones they liked.)
    • To record outs efficiently in September and October.
    • His command of all of his pitches is not great, but they seemed improved from last year. Some of the stuff is real good, but he still looks more like a potential bullpen guy than a starter to me.
    • Why would we trade a starting pitcher prospect for a reliever?
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