| 2:00 |
: Happy first day back at work after the long weekend!
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| 2:00 |
: I hope this chat eases everyone back in to their ho-hum day time responsibilities.
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| 2:00 |
: Good afternoon!
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| 2:01 |
: It’s still technically morning here.
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| 2:01 |
: Hey Meg, do you think Ohtani will still be pitching 2 years down the road?
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| 2:01 |
: I’m trying to decide how to deal with “still” in this question.
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The National League Wild Card race is nuts. Here’s the currently field of clubs competing for it, through Thursday’s games, with our playoff odds.
| Team | W | L | GB | Proj W | Proj L | ROS W% | Win Division | Win Wild Card | Make Playoffs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cardinals | 75 | 59 | 0.5 | 88.8 | 73.2 | .494 | 4.1% | 63.0% | 67.3% |
| Brewers | 75 | 60 | 0 | 88.7 | 73.3 | .508 | 4.5% | 61.8% | 66.4% |
| Rockies | 72 | 61 | 2 | 86.2 | 75.8 | .491 | 14.6% | 14.7% | 29.4% |
| Dodgers | 72 | 62 | 2.5 | 89.2 | 72.8 | .616 | 56.4% | 17.4% | 73.8% |
| Phillies | 71 | 62 | 3 | 86.2 | 75.8 | .525 | 35.3% | 6.2% | 41.6% |
That’s just nuts! In the American League, the next closest Wild Card team, the Seattle Mariners, is 4.5 games out of a playoff spot. The next closest team behind them is the eight-games-out Rays. The next closest NL team, as you might notice, is significantly closer than that. The NL has eight teams whose odds of making the playoffs are over 25%; the AL, meanwhile, has just five such teams.
And so, with the NL’s relative nuttiness in mind, the Brewers traded this afternoon for left-handed pitcher Gio Gonzalez to bolster a rotation that is still in search of reinforcements after losing Jimmy Nelson to a shoulder injury before the season started and Brent Suter to Tommy John surgery in July. In return, the Nationals will reportedly receive two minor leaguers, though at the time of publication, those players’ identities are still unknown. As such, we’ll evaluate this trade in terms of Gonazalez’s merits for the Brewers and what the trade signals for the Nationals’ late-season tear-down. We should also note that the trade, famously a disruptive event, was remarkably convenient for Gonzalez, who — as a result of the two teams playing one another today — simply had to walk across the field to the Brewers’ dugout.
| 2:00 |
: Hello! Welcome to the chat. Let’s chat!
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| 2:00 |
: What piece are you stuck on?
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| 2:01 |
: Writing a thing on pitchers in blowout losses and am in that stage where I know what I want to say and have done all the research and gathered all my GIFs and now I just have to write the damn thing. I’ll finish today.
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| 2:01 |
: Or tonight, when the 2AM sillies hit.
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| 2:01 |
: with the two clear AL cy young favorites sidelined for the immediate future, who do you think takes charge of the race? gerrit cole seems to me the most likely “next best up” but i could see blake snell getting a lot of attention even with the innings deficit
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| 2:02 |
: I wonder how we’d react if Kevin Cash won Manager of the Year on the back of managing the opener strategy (I don’t think he’ll win, but do think he’ll get some down ballot consideration) and Snell won the Cy as their only guy who ever really starts.
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| 2:00 |
: Hello, and welcome to the chat.
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| 2:00 |
: There is a lot of smoke in Seattle. It is a bummer. But, a chat!
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| 2:00 |
: Robinson Cano had a dramatic HR for the Mariners last night. Is this the Mariners keeping their heads above water for a little longer before they finally drown? Or is there a rescue boat nearby?
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| 2:01 |
: I think it might be best described as there is a lifeboat nearby, but the crew of the boat has dropped one of the oars in the water and also, the A’s are a giant shark whose fin we can see.
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| 2:02 |
: The AL West being a race is very exciting and winning is better than losing. And surely the A’s can’t win like this… forever? I think the division still probably goes to the Astros, but it is hardly a far gone conclusion, and the A’s still probably hold on to the second wild card, but the M’s aren’t dead yet.
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| 2:02 |
: Why is Luis Urias still not on the Padres?
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No one likes to lose, baseball players perhaps least of all. We’ve all heard ballplayers talk about the necessity of putting losses behind them, but I bet some disappointments stick in the backs of their minds. I sometimes wake up at 3am feeling badly about things I did in middle school; I imagine giving up seven runs in two innings could have a similar effect to when I was nasty to Charissa in French 2 because Laura was mean to me, and I wasn’t sure how feelings worked quite yet. Ghosts haunt their haunts at the oddest times.
But losing is also part of baseball, like spit and dust and strikeouts. Twelve teams have losing records this year. Baseball’s losingest team by win percentage, the Orioles, have as many wins (36) as the Red Sox (the winningest team) have losses. That’s a lot of losing! That’s losing days in a row. That’s losing weeks at a time. That’s the sort of losing you have to get used to if you’re going to carry on living. Which got me thinking about the best ways to lose. Losing stinks, sure, and baseball players hate doing it, but how can you lose and grin and bear it and avoid revisiting it at 3am on a Tuesday night? There are a great many ways to lose, but I believe I have arrived at the best five.
Beaten by God
Giancarlo Stanton hits a 453-foot walk-off homer.
The Mariners’ mistake was asking Ryan Cook to face God. There are whole books in the Bible dedicated to the various ways in which the Ryan Cooks of the world don’t prevail when forced to square off against the divine. And sure, Ryan Cook was angry when Giancarlo Stanton thwacked a dinger to end the game.
Here Cook is, being angry. Aw buddy! You messed up good.
| 2:00 |
: Hello! Welcome to the chat!
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| 2:00 |
: I’m sorry I had fun at work today….won’t happen again…..
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| 2:00 |
: I assume this is in reference to David Bote.
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| 2:01 |
: One thing is, bat flips are fine. Bat flips can be great! Bat flips when one has one on a walk-off grand slam are terrific.
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| 2:01 |
: Another thing is, we could collectively be more selective about who we give the time of day to.
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| 2:01 |
: Are DRA and DRA- ever coming to Fangraphs?
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To be an umpire is to be something of a bad time. Umpires embody the same spirit that leads our mothers to force a helmet on us at the roller rink. They’re your friend Wanda, who just wants to remind you, because you did complain last time, that strong beers give you heartburn, so even though it’s your birthday and you just want to have some fun, you might want to lay off. Wanda isn’t wrong — your body doesn’t do well with all sorts of things anymore — but she could also be described as “harshing the vibe.”
Umpires stomp on our good time and get in the way of our boys and their wins, so we yell and squawk their way, but we’d be lost without them. They’re a very necessary bummer and they normally perform their bummering quite ably. You can tell, because we have baseball at all. They aren’t perfect, and they have their foul-ups and biases, but if umpires were much worse at their very hard jobs, even just some medium amount worse, we couldn’t have the sport. It would offend us; it would get us down. The action on the field would grind to a halt. We’d say baseball was stupid.
The calls, especially at home plate, have to be mostly very good mostly all the time, or the whole thing comes tumbling down. And so umpires do their very hard jobs mostly very well with very little thanks and a not small amount of jeering. And what’s more, they’re calm while they do it. That mellow is important. The job well done keeps us moving; the calm lets us believe it’s fair. The calm lets us trust it. And so they’re calm. Not perfectly so; not when the yelling and the squawking really pick up. But usually? Quite calm.
Case in point: on Wednesday evening, a bug flew into second base umpire Bruce Dreckman’s ear during the ninth inning of the Yankees-White Sox game. Here is Dreckman, running in from the infield as Jonathan Holder prepared to pitch to Nicky Delmonico. He calls for a trainer, looking vaguely stricken, but only vaguely. Greg Bird appears confused. What’s going on here? Well jeez, Greg, he has a moth in his ear.
Dreckman grasps the shoulders of Steve Donohue, head athletic trainer for the Yankees. It’s moving around in there, Steve. Oh god, it tickles.
Bruce and Steve descend into the dugout, with Bruce giving his ear the little dig-and-flick of a man who has just gotten out of the pool and is unable to shake that last. little. bit. of. water. Except it is not water. It is a bug.
| 2:00 |
: Hello, and welcome to the chat!
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| 2:01 |
: After a couple weeks of swapping stuff around this should (*should*) be the normal chat time now, which will avoid us having two chats at the same time.
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| 2:01 |
: Is there any chance of getting minor league splits into the Fangraphs stat pages? Only reason I still use BR, and I’d rather stick with FG.
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| 2:01 |
: I will ask. Also, B-R is great and very deserving of your clicks!
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| 2:01 |
: rougned odor has a 225 wRC+ in the second half. maybe 24 year olds can still figure things out, after all.
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| 2:02 |
: Sure they can! They’re bright young things full of promise! We’ve also seen Odor be good for a stretch and then just be dreadful before.
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| 12:00 |
: Good afternoon from Boston, and welcome!
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| 12:01 |
: This should be the last week for a while where the schedule is wonky, so thanks everyone for being patient.
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| 12:01 |
: Is Bryce Harper officially back?
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| 12:02 |
: Was Bryce Harper ever really gone? I know this season has not gone the way that he or the Nationals wanted it to. I know that the increase in strike outs has worried some. I also don’t want to chalk it all up to BABIP.
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| 12:03 |
: But barring some injury we don’t really know about, I think this is a fluky, weird year, that we’ll look back on and think, “Huh, that was strange.”
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| 12:03 |
: Does Meg purchase overpriced stadium food or sneak in her own treats?
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Saberseminar, the excellent annual baseball research conference, begins tomorrow and that can only mean one thing: it’s almost time for FanGraphs’ Saberseminar meetup at Meadhall in Kendall Square in Cambridge! As we have in years past, we’ve reserved space on the bar’s mezzanine level and ordered some tasty snacks to share. We’ll kick things off at 7 p.m., just in time to have a beer and watch the Red Sox and the Yankees continue their battle for the AL East.
Event Info
Today, Friday, August 3rd from 7 to 10 p.m.
Meadhall, Upper Mezzanine
90 Broadway, Cambridge, MA
In addition to many of Saberseminar’s presenters, there will be a number of FanGraphs folks in attendance, including David Appelman, David Laurila, Jeff Zimmerman, Sean Dolinar, FanGraphs alum Paul Swydan, and yours truly. Seminar organizers Chuck Korb and Dan Brooks generally make an appearance, as well. It should be a fun evening of good beer and good conversation, and we hope to see you there. Until then, please enjoy this GIF of the Red Sox outfield goofing around!
