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I guess Chavis is still a bit gimpy...

More height on the seams = more affect of air flow = more break

It is a screwball. Carl Hubbell threw so many in his career that his left hand took a set with his palm facing outward at rest....

I’m saying the height of the seams has a better affect on the air flow around the ball. The disruption of the air flow is what makes the ball break. If you drive down the highway at 70 mph and stick your hand out the window so that it’s flat, you can feel some force from the air as you pass through. Rotate your hand so the air is striking your palm and you feel more force from the air. This difference in force is significant with your hand, but on a much lighter baseball, it can have greater results. There is a reason you can make a baseball break when you throw it but you can’t do the same thing with a cue ball. And it doesn’t matter how much you spin it. Heck, knuckleballs break best with no spin. Now some (all?) pitchers might not be getting the same grip. But even if they were, the reduced seam height would still have an effect...

DD traded Porcello to the Red Sox, not for them, as he was GM of the Tigers at the time. The contract extension wasn’t him either...

I don’t think “less spin” is the issue. If the thread height is lower, the seams disrupt the air flow around the ball as it travels toward the plate to a lesser degree. The reduced disruption of the air flow means a reduced localized pressure drop that enables a breaking pitch or a. 2-seamer (RP’s best pitch) to break. I’m not saying his revolutions/second is not different, but I am saying that lesser thread height makes that matter less. Even if he was achieving his former spin rate, this ball would still break les than last year’s..,

That’s actually a sad level of competitiveness from a high school coach...

It was essentially what he was saying, but sabermetric often fail to inspire the necessary level of drama...

And he was making a point about magnifying very small differences. In that speech, he specifically talked about lucky hits - “one blooper, one quark, one ‘grounder with eyes’ - get one of those per week” and it’s the difference between AAA ignominy and Yankee Stadium. A bit melodramatic, but he was mathematically correct....

+ 1, Yankee Lover

This is just an example of magnifying very small differences. The difference between hitting .259 and .271 is roughly 1 hit in 100 at bats...

Can’t do it. If a race of superhuman extra-terrestrials invaded Earth and challenged the Yankees to a game of baseball in which if the aliens won, they would enslave the human race, but if the Yankees won, they would leave peacefully, I still wouldn’t be able to root for the Yankees...

Your consistent rants do make you sound like a cranky old-timer who hates anything new. “What’s with these new-fangled microwave ovens?!? In my day, we didn’t cook with magic!! We set our food on fire and burned it into a little lump of coal ! And we liked it! And sometimes that lump of coal ripped up our throats! But we didn’t use any of your fancy pants penny sillen! We went to the barber because we were MEN and he had a razor and he cut out that lump!! And if we were still sick, we didn’t take none of that fact new meddy sin!! We took an axe and cut a hole in our skulls to let the evil spirits escape! Because that’s what men do! Then we died by 25 like MEN!! And we LIKED IT!!”

Ted Williams is very a good name drop onthe subject of hitting. And the idea of knocking in lots of runs a absolutely helps your team. But no one really showed the flaw in RBIs than Joe Carter. His one year in San Diego, he batted .232/.290/.391 (.681 OPS) and drive in 115 runs. He did hit .268 with RISP, which was a step over his awful average. But the big reason he had so many RBIs was he batted fourth most of the time that year and the 2 hitters in front of him were Roberto Alomar (.380 OBP) and Tony Gwynn (.415 OBP). Not everyone gets to hit behind two Hall of Famers. In fact, most sluggers drive in themself more than any other individual teammate. With 24 home runs, Carter drive in himself as his third most frequent scorer on an RBI, behind Gwynn and Alomar. In fact he drove in Gwynn and Alomar a total of 62 times, which accounts for over 50% of his RBIs. Carter came up with 542 runners on base that year and drove in 16.7% of them, which is good, but not great. (Most middle order bats drive in 15-18% of the runners on base.). The average hitter that year came up with 429 men on base. Had Carter seen a league average amount of base runners, he would have had 96 RBI. Still a good season, but it drops him from 3rd to 9th in the NL that year...

Versatility is apparently a big deal in fWAR, and a huge reason why players like Ben Zobrist could sneak to the top of the league leaders in that category. I can see pluses and minuses. On one hand, I felt it artificially inflated the defensive contributions from a player. But on the other, having a player who can defend multiple positions well is absolutely an asset..

I wouldn’t call OPS a mirage. But it is unquantifiable. If one batter has a higher BA by .030, we get it means he got hits in 3% more at bats. If a player has a higher SLG by .030, we can tell he got 3 more total bases per 100 at bats. If a player has a higher OBP by .030, he got a hit or walk or HBP in 3% more of his plate appearances. But if a player has a higher OPS by .030, what does it mean? On its own, you can’t tell. If course, you can tell simply by looking at OBP and SLG. Now the plus side, it’s the one simple stat that incorporates walks/HBP and doesn’t treat all hurts equally. It’s a far better overall picture of a player’s offensive accomplishments than any other single stat. And it’s much easier to find or calculate than Total Average, which did the same thing but incorporated stolen bases and caught stealing and runs scored. And the complexity of Total Average (which predated the widespread use of computers) was a big reason why it never caught on...

But those little flaws in advanced metrics are ruining the game somehow

Not really. Don’t forget the Complete Game used to be very, very commonplace. When only one guy pitched and you won the game, the assignment of a win stat was a lot less arbitrary. Completely agree on saves, in all their variations...

But then the last line in that article sets a deadline to determine buying and selling...

Or an out. But just one out. Hit into two outs and you don’t get credit for driving in a run. Or on an error. Which is weird because you do get credit on an out. So if the defense gets you out cleanly, you get an RBI. But if the defense botches the play, you don’t. (Think about that for a second. What other sport has a parallel?) Of course, the official scorer can credit a batter with an RBI on an error, if, in his opinion, the run would have scored. So once the ol’ opinion gets involved, the stats stop being consistent....

He always seemed like kind of a freak who was going all in on every pitch rather than pacing himself, which would explain the arm injuries...

Beni wasn’t on his list...

I like that site a lot. If I ever become famous, I want to be their celebrity spokesman...

I am all for letting Cora handle his coaches as he pleases. And while Cora also has some blame in this lackluster season, I’m willing to chalk that up to inexperience and hope he learns accordingly. But Dombrowski? He’s a veteran GM who not only should know what he’s doing by now, but has also shown he is incapable of learning from his mistakes...

JD might have some value. The rest of them? Not really...