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notin

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Everything posted by notin

  1. notin
    Evaluating pitchers is really always tricky because we always ignore a very big factor - the team the pitcher is on. Depending on how the schedule plays out, Gerrit Cole could make up to 20% of his starts this year against the Orioles. He will face the Yankee lineup in 0% of his starts. And John Means could make up to 20% of his starts against the Yankee lineup this year and will face the Orioles 0% of the time. We all expect Cole to have much better numbers than Means this year, but would the gap be the same if these two pitchers were to trade places? How much better would Cole be under those circumstances? So far, I think my favorite (yet still not without flaws) method for evaluating pitchers is to look at Zone % and Contact %. It answers the two simplest questions: 1) Is this pitcher throwing strikes? And 2) is anyone hitting them?
  2. notin
    You're overthinking it. It's games to be played minus games ahead of nearest opponent plus one. The Sox have 158 games to be played. Typically it is applied to a team in the lead and not a last place team, but the Sox "lead" is "minus 2 games", on Balitmore and Toronto. So the real Magic Number is 161. 158 - (-2) +1. But for catching the Evil Empire, the Magic Number is actually 158 - (-1) + 1 or 160. In both cases, it's larger than the games to be played because the Sox need other teams to lose games (which obviously will happen for a bunch of reasons, the most prominent one being reality.) All those scenarios about other teams are all built in to the formula, or will be as they affect the lead portion of the formula. Also, most important, Magic Numbers calculated on April 6th for 1-3 teams are done for comedic purposes only...
  3. notin
    All Andriese has to do is pitch the final 3 innings in a blow out game and he gets credited with the all important save. Yeah, saves!
  4. notin
    They're still the defending champions and will be until someone else takes the title...
  5. notin
    Go Boston Bananas!
  6. notin
    Many pitching stats are heavily dependent on defense. ERA is the same way. Better defenders can prevent runs by making more outs on batted balls within the park. Look at Arozarena last night, for example. Not like Wacha made a good pitch to Renfroe, and certainly not like Renfroe did not put a solid charge into that ball. But Arozarena made a great (re: unbelievable) play and probably saved a run or two. If the Rays had Phillips or Meadows out in RF, that ball goes for extra bases, and suddenly Wacha looks like a worse pitcher, when in reality he is the same Wacha. That's the reason for FIP, which only considers outcomes a pitcher can control, or that are at least not impacted by defense - strikeouts, walks and home runs And one could argue home runs are also influenced by ballpark...
  7. notin
    I was going to ask you why...
  8. notin
    I didn't notice. I was too busy watching the Red Sox beat up on the defending American League champions...
  9. notin
    Wasn't that exactly what was needed?
  10. notin
    No...
  11. notin
    We've also seen bullpens start slowly. Remember when they blew that 10 run lead to the Yankees a few years back? But then after that game magically transformed into an actual shutdown bullpen?
  12. notin
    The Sox are sixth in MLB in hitting the ball to the opposite field with 35%. They're also 21st in striking out (ranked from worst to best). The issue so far is hard contact, where the Sox are also 21st in MLB. Routine grounders to 2B just are not going to cut it most times...
  13. notin
    Magic number of 157?
  14. notin
    Rob Dobnak of the Twins entered a 15-1 game, surrendered 5 ER in 3 IP, and somehow was credited with a save in a 15-6 game. I just can’t take that stat seriously...
  15. notin
    This is true. But when a team is already near it's budget and has no farm system producing those quality players, where are they supposed to come from? I know spending is a key to success, but at some point, the spending limit has been reached. Even after 2 years of putting next to nothing into free agency, the Sox still have the 7th highest payroll in the league (per sportrac) at $175 million. Last year's abysmal team had the 4th highest payroll in the league. After 2018, there was a piper to be paid...
  16. notin
    A superficial comp at best, especially since one is the byproduct of being fought for while the other is frequently fought against...
  17. notin
    I am not buying into a comparison between free agency and outsourcing...
  18. notin
    Hey don't forget Mookie was not exactly some top tier prospect. He was drafted in the fifth round with the 172nd overall pick, and was not even ranked by every scouting bureau, and the ones who did rank him did not exactly place him near the top. He was only ranked in the top 100 before the 2014 season (his 4th minor league season), and came in at 62 on MLB.com and at 75 on Baseball America, and was behind former Sox prospect and career minor leaguer Garin Cecchini on both lists. Not exactly rankings or a draft status indicative of his future...
  19. notin
    The Sox would have to go 4-5 in their next 9 games for this to happen. I think you can find a taker...
  20. notin
    He was absolutely an asset in LA. But they have a budget, too, and spent their allowance on Betts and will have to deal with a Bellinger contract situation shortly. And figure out what to do about Corey Seager. No way they were going to spend that kind of cash on Hernandez...
  21. notin
    People who were predicting the cliff cited that as one of the exact causes. The team had a hefty budget and no cheap farm system replacements to fill the gaps, which is not a formula for sustainable success. What you said was an inevitable cause of the cliff, not a coincidental happenstance...
  22. notin
    The problem with the "C" word is that in order to avoid falling off one, you have to build a "B" word...
  23. notin
    Soft-tossing lefty Jeff Ballard went 18-8 3.43 the following season. Harmony will eventually tell is Ballard was part of a rotation at Stanford than included Jack McDowell and Mike Mussina...
  24. notin
    He's also only thrown 32 pitches so far this year, all of them against the Pirates. I'll hold off on naming him to the All Star team just yet...
  25. notin
    But it also doesn't really matter if fans "care" where the budget is. It's a cold hard reality. At some point, the team just cannot spend anymore, much lie every business ever. Even Amazon has some sort of spending cap for their expenses. They may be nowhere near it right now, but that doesn't man it does not exist. The Sox have spent a lot. They are still spending a lot. Casual fan or not, the notion that this team was too cheap to bring back Betts or anyone else is not based in anything realisitic...
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