sk7326

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.

The umpires rely on the catcher much too much for what is a strike and what is not. A catcher positioning himself 3 inches off the outside corner does not suddenly make that pitch a strike. Similarly, missing that spot right down the middle does not make the pitch a ball.

I am amazed how normalized the idea of an umps interpretation of the strike zone being a legit thing ...

in praise of the man - from (for me) the one weekly national baseball column I make a point to find: http://www.si.com/mlb/2016/05/31/the-30-power-rankings-week-eight-padres-marlins-white-sox-red-sox In his final season, he has (to date) been far and away the best offensive player in the entire league.

Indeed - but we are dealing with mature technology. I mean Pitch F/X can do a reasonable version of it right now.

For now the pen works - stuff might play up, and not having to turn the lineup over can help too. Also with Wright in the rotation, another long man is good to have. Honestly what the rotation needs is - frankly, what we were expecting from Wright. Decent bulk with perhaps a little more than that. One expects Ervin Santana to be a target as the season unfolds, especially if a Julio Teheran gets too rich. (although he is the clear #1 to me among the targets)

Takes about 600 PAs to actually start to hone on the guy's actual level ... which is inconvenient since it's time teams don't have. But 1/3 of the season is decidedly much too small.

When I made the assertion about athleticism, it did apply to the whole starting unit ... ironically, the team which actually hired Pablo Sandoval has the most un-Sandoval like lineup in team history. You have RB/WR types at every position (except for C where Vasquez seemed bred in Middle Earth specifically to do this job). Rice was a bad outfielder his entire career - but like Manny, he was a bad outfielder who knew how to play Fenway ... which as we've learned has little to do with more general outfield defense traits. Lynn clearly was an all-timer before his body broke down, and Evans' Hall of Fame case is quite good compared to a lot of guys who are actually in the Hall (including Rice himself).

Would take too long ... and the umps would never go for a system like tennis where you could challenge a human ball-strike call. Here is my argument - umps calling balls and strikes is an impossible ask. It is why pitch framing catchers can fool them so frequently, and why they often give up on off speed pitches which end up in the strike zone. They also frequently miss balls which miss the catcher's target but are still strikes. The strike zone is defined by rule. This doesn't mean a home plate ump is unnecessary. There are still swing related calls which really are judgment calls. And of course, there are plays at the plate.

.288 BABIP which has been slowly catching up to his career norms. Walking a bit less than normal but not crazy. And somehow on a 5 win pace regardless. Bradley's streak and Bogaerts' MVP-level start make it look worse than it is.

I don't know about that. Red Sox have had a long history and the Gold Dust Twins are a special crop. That said, in my 30 years following the team, this is the best set of athletes they have fielded. We bring the sort of just crazy "would letter in just about any sport" sort of across the board athleticism that I remember from say the 2008 Rays.

automated balls and strikes is so obvious common sense it will never happen. It's not that the umps are bad at the job - it is a job that is impossible to do well.

His 2008 season was one of the best shining examples as to where first-pass pitching stats are immensely unhelpful.

You build around the ballpark you have

You're right - although there are large gaps in D1 too. High-A compares favorably to the top college conferences for sure (SEC, Pac-12). It's why it would have been a bigger red flag for Benintendi to struggle at Salem, than it was a great sign that he mauled it. That said, Espinoza doing what he is doing in a full season league as an 18 year old is great, the way it was for Devers. Devers is struggling in Salem, yes - but he is still younger than the first high schooler taken in the most recent draft.