mvp 78

Kumar Locker/Jack Leiter sweepstakes

Seems like it

Would you respect the decision if the Sox brought in Correa, Altuve, Bregman or Springer?

In the 5 games with the highest leverage index where he gave up a bomb, 4 out of those games had substantial pitch location issues where the FB was middle (and sometimes middle/middle) and the CB wasn't down enough in the zone. If I had to wager a guess about the performances on those games, he probably didn't look too good.

Even though there was no corresponding spike in ERA or WHIP?

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/epidemiologist-zachary-binney-on-whats-gone-wrong-with-mlbs-covid-response-and-whether-it-can-be-fixed/ On Monday, I reached out to Dr. Zachary Binney, an epidemiologist at Oxford College of Emory University, to get his thoughts on what’s gone wrong in MLB, and if it’s possible — or even wise — for baseball to continue in 2020. Zachary Binney: We’ve seen two massive outbreaks on two different teams, the Marlins and the Cardinals, that are not related. The question that MLB is facing right now is whether this is going to keep happening, or is there something you can do to change it? I got asked this morning, what would you be advising Rob Manfred right now? My answer is that I’d tell him to take a deep breath, look in the mirror, and ask and answer honestly, are things going to change? Is there something we can do to avoid the Marlins and the Cardinals happening over and over and over again? You can’t just say this is only the Marlins, everybody else is being good. What I think you see MLB trying to say is, the players were not adhering to our protocols. And that’s a very convenient story. This is exactly what you’d expect MLB to say to save its season. If it’s risky player behavior, that’s something you can fix. If it’s the protocols themselves, that’s harder. I have some very serious questions about MLB’s contact tracing procedures that they conducted contact tracing on the four Marlins who tested positive, and that somehow did not lead them to suspend the entire organization. You’re telling me you didn’t identify a whole heck of a lot more people who would have to sit out after having four positives? I don’t even know if they’re accurately doing the six-foot/15-minute measurement. The NFL is using proximity monitors to help automate that, which I think is actually very interesting, and I applaud them for their innovation on that front. I don’t know what MLB is using. I was always afraid that you would see MLB’s protocols fail for teams in areas with more virus. I thought there was a higher risk of this happening to the Marlins or the Astros or the Rangers or the Diamondbacks than the Yankees or the Mets or the Red Sox or the Phillies. I think it’s a numbers game. But there’s also an element of luck and randomness here. Somebody has to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, or the test maybe is done on the wrong day. In terms of ways that MLB could maybe improve things, I would say if you can do more frequent testing or get the results back faster, that would help because it would cut down the amount of time that people bring the infection in from the community, and then to try to reinforce the importance of limiting indoor time in the clubhouse and of distancing when you’re in the dugout and of wearing masks all the time when you’re not on the field. One thing I will say is that there’s a lot of focus on high fives, and I get it, but that’s not something I’m that worried about, because that’s very quick passing contact. If I had to guess, I think we have a lot more reason to be worried about guys sitting in the dugout talking with each other, and more to the point, what happens inside in the clubhouse and at team hotels, where guys are spending extended periods of time together. I think that’s where most of the spread is happening. According to ESPN’s Jeff Passan, the Marlins tried to use contact tracing as an excuse for playing against the Phillies last Sunday. That really disgusted me, because you should’ve taken a step back and said, “We have four cases, we need to think that there’s an outbreak, we should not be playing this game until we have a stronger sense of whether there is one or isn’t.” Contact tracing works best if you have one case and you want to identify people you needed to immediately quarantine. That doesn’t seem to be what the use was with the Marlins. It was [perverse] to be like, if we didn’t identify anyone in contact tracing, they must be fine. And that is really not how you should be thinking about it. It’s a piece of a broader puzzle. That made me pretty angry. The other thing I’m worried about is that we’re getting reports on the investigation into what happened in Miami and St. Louis, and the team doing the investigating is the same MLB department that’s handling things like sign stealing. That’s not an outbreak investigation. I hope they have some actual epidemiological expertise in the groups that are doing the investigating and that those people are being listened to and that they have a very strong hand in writing up the report and the recommendations for MLB. If this were the plan that I’d built, I would’ve recognized that it was built on the assumption that the country would look like it did in May or June, and that if things change dramatically, maybe we wouldn’t be able to do it. If that weren’t an option, I would’ve worked with the players to try to negotiate some kind of bubble. Not in a single spot, and just generally speaking, bubbles are not ideal. It’s easy for me to sit here and be like “Create a bubble.” Well, I’m not the player going away from a family for months at a time. That’s not psychologically or emotionally pleasant. But it may be the only way you can do it safely. So maybe figure out something like smaller bubbles, home bubbles, where you rent out a couple of hotels in each market and that’s where the players and the staff stay, and they go between there, the training facility and the ballpark and don’t have contact with anyone in the community outside of that little network, and then when you travel to another city, you’re going bubble to bubble. And you have really strict regulations with actual punishments in place, negotiated with the union, for anyone who’s caught breaking protocol or leaving the bubble. What could you do now to salvage it? Maybe pick up the frequency of testing and the turnaround time, but do we as a nation have the capacity for that right now? The answer is an emphatic no. What are you supposed to do now? Hope that this was players and staff engaging in risky behavior and that you can modify that, and that people can take a lesson and this will be a wakeup call.

I agree about the back to back thing, but not closing. 37% of his runs came in games where he pitched the day before. Yuck. In save situations vs non save situations, his ERA/WHIP/K9 were all in the same strata. His k/bb rate was actually higher in save situations at 3.33 vs 2.5. The biggest difference was HR's, where he gave up 7 in save situations and 1 in non save situations. That seems like an aberration since all of the other numbers line up.

https://www.overthemonster.com/2020/8/4/21353446/matt-barnes-boston-red-sox-bullpen-new-york-yankees-aaron-judge For Barnes, it’s not overly complicated as he is essentially a two-pitch guy with his curveball and his fastball. Last year he started throwing his curveball more than his fastball for the first time, and he’s taken it even further so far this year with his curveball being thrown 60 percent of the time, per Baseball Savant. That could be part of the issue, but the fastball is down in velocity by about a mile and a half per hour. Also, both pitches are being crushed by whatever metric you would like to look at. Whether it’s wOBA or expected wOBA or whiff rate or average exit velocity or hard hit rate. Both pitches are way worse than they were a year ago. With that, it’s possible that the increase in curveball usage contributed here, but it sure seems like there’s more than that going on. So, the next thing I looked at was where he was throwing his pitches. My assumption based on how hard he was being hit was that everything would be over the heart of the plate. But that’s not exactly the case. With the curveball, he simply isn’t throwing the pitch for strikes as often, and he’s also favoring his glove side a bit more. We saw what happens when one of those are left up against Aaron Judge. With the fastball things are even more jarring, as he’s almost totally to the glove side. So, with both of his pitches, he is overwhelmingly favoring one side of the dish. My initial thought was that his release point was messed up, but nothing I saw in that data indicated a major issue. Instead, it just seems he’s missing location. In the home run for Céspedes, for example, the target was on the outer half but it ended up as a fastball middle-in. We hear a lot when people talk about pitching that the idea is to change the hitter’s eyes. That’s up and down, but it’s also side to side. When you’re in a rut like Barnes where you’re throwing so much on one half of the plate, the opponent can focus in there and do big-time damage.

@redsoxstats Seems like Dalbec is with the Sox in Tampa, though not on the active roster (per @ISteeleABC6) and Groome is expected to pitch in the simulated game at McCoy for the first time today (per @BWMcGair03).

I would bet donuts to dollars that even the dumbest GM in baseball is far more smarter at running a team than any of us are.

Not to get too far into the weeds with the HOU stuff, but it's very odd to me that the only guys who faced the music were Beltran and Cora, two guys no longer with the team. The whole sign stealing program was set up even before Cora got there. I don't believe he was a ring leader any more than the HC, GM or owner. He was just the fallguy.

That has occurred to us, but is so outside the realm of reality that clearly he's much more likely to want to come back to BOS even if he had to prostrate himself in front of the media and fans. The real question is if Hang 'Em Chaim Blooming Idiot is smart enough to roll out the red carpet for him. He spent so much time down in TBR that the bats in the belfry have been deafened by the echoing cowbell noises bouncing off the cobwebs. Who know what that absolute madman will want to do. Maybe he's on the hunt for a good HS coach to come in and save Henry some money. HS coaches may be the new market inefficiency!

Do people think he's intentionally trying to lose?

You can get milk and coffee at a hotel though?

It's better than trading John Henry for Peter Angelos.

@JonHeyman Jeter defends Marlins players, says they just let their guard down in Atlanta and weren’t running around. A few left the hotel but just for a milk, a coffee and in one case a dinner at a house. They didn’t do a good job of social distancing but they weren’t out carousing, he says

The theory is to get rid of the expensive contracts before their value goes under water. Plus, if you can move someone at the height of their trade value, you may be able to derive more future value from another team (controllable assets). The first part is money. The second part is managing your prospect pipeline.

Dodgers don't need Eovaldi. Padres are in a constant rebuild and I don't think Eovaldi puts them over the top. White Sox are a year or two away. I don't think they want Eovaldi right now.

Not a philosophy that Bloom subscribes to.

RE: Cardinals @markasaxon Also, I can now confirm at least eight positives. Of those, six are players. One source said the number is 13.

@Rotoworld_BB Cards/Tigers 'highly unlikely' to play on Tuesday

Yes, we got to see players, not umpires. Did fans flock to the exits once replay became available?

Right now, he's only hitting 7% line drive rate. That's just not going to get it done. he's making a ton of soft and medium contact, but not much hard contact.

Posts like this deserve a week ban.

I actually think it's an empowering phrase, but that's just me.