sk7326

Last year certainly. Played 135 games or more the 4 years prior to that each season. 2014 was a down offensive year, but still remained one of the most productive 2B in the league. I mean last year in 93 game he was still a Top 10 second baseman. The durability concerns me - but I am not sure it is a thing.

This argument can also be used against cell phones. Or cars. Or airplanes. Disagreement is not an issue here - because this is an objective call. The game survived because the umps did the best they could given the tools. The tools are much better. Denying umpires those tools - to preserve some arcane notion of baseball that predated integration - is batty.

I thought the heart of the game were the players who throw the ball, hit the ball, and catch the ball.

1984, with my dad. Got blown out by the A's IIRC. A's were still rocking versions of their yellow softball duds. I only truly caught the bug in 1986 though.

Given their job, this is probably the best you're going to get with humans. I mean they have to pay attention to the hitter too ... and technically, where ball is caught should not be where the "strike" is decided.

They can because the industry is swimming in cash. The Red Sox are still in a position to be able to make a Sandoval sized mistake and have it only marginally affect their ability to be buyers this year.

As always, the salary and tax is about ownership tolerance, not baseball law. Verlander is not my top choice (Miller is probably). At the same time, I do think of Verlander as the sort of sneaky name Dombrowski might look at if this team gives them a reasonable hope of winning it all.

Pedroia at his current price is a steal ... and given the other variables, more valuable to Boston than anybody else.

For me the miracle is that it is so far the best season HE has had ... 195 RC+ which dwarfs his own career best and leads the majors by quite a bit. More hard contact then ever. I just remember how much he was flailing against the Rays in 2008 and how in 2009 it looked like the ride was over to some degree. He has been remarkable.

I could see that - although on a Fielding Independent Level, there is not much difference.

His FIP has been better than average the entire time. This year the strikeout rate is back and the walk rate has not really changed. BABIP is .269, but he has historically been good in that area.

A lot of people don't fully appreciate how acutely the Royals built to their ballpark ... even with the "meh" starters, they found guys who could keep it in the yard, and if you can keep it inside the boundaries, they have a good chance to pick it. What I find interesting is that the Red Sox lineup is now uniquely built to the ballpark of 2016 - not the 1977 Fenway where you loaded up on the monster, but the one we've had for a couple of decades, which is a haven for doubles and gap hits.

Who is firing any umps? I am advocating for helping them do the job which is the hardest (indeed, near impossible) to do. Umps doing a bad job calling pitches, and then getting surly when players (often correctly, but rudely) point this out, and then getting aggressive going after them ... (see West, Joe) ... that is part of baseball? Not the guys on the diamond who expect the rules to be administered properly?

Because flags fly forever, and betting the under on Wright and Porcello is still be best way to look at things.

Jhoulys Chachin with the Angels also has had a solid season - I would not pay a ton for him, but the Angels have the worst rated system by a mile and will be trying to convert assets (no, not Mike Trout) to help things.

Teheran and Miller are your controllable upside guys. Both have pitched very well and are young ... always risk coming into the division, and as always, price matters. James Shields is possible too. Now, while I did not like him as a premium FA signing - he does have AL East experience, and is a good bet to at least provide some solid bulk. I would not give up much, but there is a solid case for him. Some guys I think Dombrowski will be watching as the season unfolds: Anibal Sanchez - who has been awful so far, but has been good before and might be a buy low opportunity. Personally, the interesting guy to me if you want to take a plunge, use some prospect inventory and really go for it ... is Justin Verlander. Yes, he is on the other side of the mountain - but his fundamentals have not changed all that much - and if the Tigers slip further off the pace, it doesn't hurt to ask.

The interesting thing is the shape of the production ... 2003/4 team was so physically strong, and took a ton of pitches. It was like having the greatest beer league softball team of all time. This team is just so athletic - RB/WR types at every position. And the team has gotten (to date), Big Papi's finest season, which is some kind of miracle.

A realistic extension framework for Betts or Bogaerts is on the order of 7 years, 200 million. Maybe a bit more. It buys a couple of UFA years for the Red Sox and locks the guys in at a price which is fair by today's market and quite reasonable for future ones. For the players, it's a lot of money. And it gets them free before age 30 so they can try it again.

Wait ... you don't want umps to have access to same stuff you and I do when following a game online?

Yes ... but the strike zone is one of the less complicated places where this sort of thing can work

There is data that places the floor at 1 out of 7 ... and given the huge impact that can have on ABs (an expected batting avg from a 1-1 count is .282, from 0-2, it's .094), that is a lot of fundamentally altered at-bats. Now I'd like zero errors - duh - but you'd like to at least get a couple of sigmas out of a decent process. The entire discipline of pitch framing is built on inducing positive mistakes and eliminating negative ones - but it is built on umpires inability to do this job. Now I acknowledge your appeal to authority here (how come nobody is complaining?), but that is because the umpires behaviors and corner cutting in this area is normalized. People are sympathetic (like I am) - and know it is an impossible job, so the complaints are limited. However, that it is an impossible - and truly important - job that the umpires should not have to do it. There are plenty of difficult calls that they get right all the time. This not a call to eliminate umpires - which your post seems to imply - this is a call to make their job easier and to improve the job function. It would also help to reduce the arguments - and thus reduce the number of incidents of umpires going after players. (which is unconscionable, and another practice that is tolerated too easily)

Short answer for UFAs ... almost always no. HOWEVER ... you have to see what the decline is, and whether you can live with it, and what phase your team is in. To use a beat to death example. I am very certain the 6 year deal the Cubs signed Lester to will be a loser at the end, in that Jon Lester will not be a 25 million dollar pitcher by the time he is 37 or whatever. However, he will justify his salary for a little while ... and then you take the plunge (using your scouts and medical people) that a guy with his mechanics and history of durability will provide enough value and a mid-rotation guy that you don't look at his salary and start to tear up. That might end up being a net loss $$/win-wise, but there is enough out-front output for you and your team to be able to live with the back end.

I disagree. For me the calculation is much simpler. 1. Is the technology there in a relatively mature form? Yes. 2. Is the miss rate of a home plate umpire on called pitches unacceptable? Yes. 3. Do teams create strategies to exploit #2? Yes 4. Is there a known definition for the strike zone? Yes Other sports create logistical nightmares. You can't automatically track holding - the technology is not there and the data would be extremely messy. It's why the NFL largely only calls particularly problematic examples. The NBA can't automate every legal/illegal pick call. (which they tend to ignore anyway) Hockey with its various flavours of contact is self evident. The ball-strike call is very simple to automate comparatively. Other sports have judgment calls, and some crews are more whistle happy than other - but the reffing jobs in other sports HAVE to be done manually because the technology is not there.

Now - I am enormously sympathetic to the umps ... and I think others posting here might be too. A home plate ump has to basically react to a hitter swinging while also trying to interpret if a pitch entered the strike zone in any way. (a 3 dimensional question - not simply where it is caught) That they even get it right as often as they do is remarkable. But there is an extremely high error rate - and home plate umps have to use shortcuts which create more noise (like using catcher positioning.

I would worry about Betts at the top of the lineup more for a lack of RBI chances than anything else. But the Red Sox have gotten so much mileage out of Bradley at the bottom of the order that Betts has had more chances to do something good. I suggest alternative choices would not make much difference - stuff is clicking.