a700hitter

You have got the disease.

An 8-1 start to the season. That's never been done in Red Sox history. A very exciting 6 run 2 out rally in the 8th inning to give us a random 1 run victory. Do you believe that luck!!!

Stanton heard it big time at Yankee Stadium for his second golden sombrero of the weekend series.

Pedey has to bat 2nd.

imo, Travis was the better option. The kid has learned how to hit the long ball. He was hitting tape measure shots in Ft. Myers. I predict 30 bombs for him this season in the minors.

LOL! I know how I feel. Does anyone see a valuable role for Moreland on this team?

Can anyone think of any good reason to have Morelan on this roster?

He did have a good game. When he keeps the ball inside the park, he usually wins.

Every part of this post is bogus starting with the definition of “repeatable skill.”

Ball changes? How many balls does a champion professional bowler use? They get sufficient reps with each of their balls so that it is not a problem. Also if they Bowl 5-6 games on a lane in a day, there is no variation in the lane or other external factors. The reason why the bowler doesn’t bowl a 300 in every game with his highly repeatable skill is that he is human and that his performance (although refined enough to reach the professional level) still varies. When a professional bowler leaves the 7 or the 10, he doesn’t bemoan his bad luck. He knows that his ball needs to be an inch or two in one direction or the other. Only the amateurs whine about luck. The professionals know that they didn’t throw the exact same ball that gave them a strike. Similarly, teams that win more close than they lose is attributable to individual and collective skill. Your assertion that it is the product of random luck is bogus. The outcomes appear to be random when viewed as data, but the game is not played by data or chance rolls of the dice. The game is played by humans at a high skill level and skill is the major determining factor. Sorry, but it is instances like this where you sabremetrician wannabes go off the rails into crazy town. It makes it hard to take any of you seriously.

I stepped away and missed JD’s shot. Where did it go?

Bogey crushed that! He is having a day and a great beginning of the season.

He seemed to always load the bases with no one out.

Porcello gives up too many hits and too many base runners. We should have traded him after he won the Cy Young.

I can’t believe that I was the only one here who wanted to bring up Devers last season.

If the muscle mass is not unnaturally large, he could sustain it without help.

He is a bit of a bubble head.

Bogaerts still swinging it! 3-2

I thought JD had the grand salami there.

Are we going to have to listen to the 1st inning problems schtick. I am tired of that . A pitcher that has “1 bad inning each game” is a bad pitcher.

No.

You keep using this term repeatable skill, and I have to say that I don’t know the significance of that term in a sport that is as dynamic as baseball where your opponent is countering your every move. Winning 1 & 2 run games is not a repeatable skill, but you are saying that winning blowout games is a repeatable skill? Is that what you are saying? As for the Baltimore example, while I agree that the skewed records in 1 run games had something to do with good and bad fortune, the fact that the 2012 team won more than it lost was in greater part due to the fact that it was a better team than the 2013 team. It could also have to do with the fact that the 1 run games in 2013 were played against better teams. Just because the personnel on both teams were very similar doesn’t attribute the deviation to luck. Players perform differently from play to play, game to game, and so on. A player can strike out on a pitch and on the next pitch hit the same pitch in the same location for a HR. He doesn’t come back to the dugout talking about the randomness of the outcome. He knows what he did right when he hit the HR and what he did wrong when he swung and missed. The variation was in his performance. It wasn’t randomness at work. The Oriole 2012 team performed better than the 2013 team. Can there be a more repeatable skill than rolling a bowling ball? The ball is the same on every throw. The lane stays exactly the same and the pins are always positioned in the same spots. The sport is played indoors so there is no wind or other weather related variation. Yet, even a champion bowler like Mookie Betts who has rolled a high number of 300 games doesn’t come close to rolling 300 games every time. Is it randomness? No. The variation is in his performance. He knows exactly where he needs to put the ball to get a strike. The problem is that if he is not precise he will leave the 7 pin or the 10 pin or some other pin. Those pins didn’t randomly avoid the collision of the other pins. He just missed his spot. Now, let’s take a sport like baseball that is not static like bowling. There is an opponent countering your every move, umpires with varying strike zones, weather elements and fields of different dimensions come into the dynamics of the game. Those dynamics are not elements of randomness, but they do affect performance. In the end, it is a game of applied skill between 2 the most highly skilled performers in the world and the outcome of those contests is rarely random.

Try to keep up with when I am being serious and when I am being sarcastic. I don’t have the time to keep correcting you.

The money and temptation are too great. If you are buried in the minors, you have nothing to lose.

He will probably continue to use the additional muscle mass (built with PEDs) to his advantage.