Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times and blue for Community Research.
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This week, we’re going to run a series of posts laying out the case for the most compelling candidates for the American League’s Most Valuable Player Award. These posts are designed to make an affirmative argument for their subject and are not intended to serve as comprehensive looks at every candidate on their own. The authors tasked with writing these posts may not even believe their subject actually deserves to win, but they were brave enough to make the case anyway. The goal of these posts is to lay out the potential reasons for voters to consider a variety of candidates and to allow the readers to decide which argument is most persuasive.
Other cases: Jose Altuve for AL MVP / Mike Trout for AL MVP.
Mookie Betts has been pretty amazing this season. As we move closer to that time when writers have to submit their MVP ballots, he is going to garner attention. While he may lose some votes to his teammate David Ortiz, and faces stiff competition from the likes of Jose Altuve, Josh Donaldson, Manny Machado, Mike Trout and others, Betts has a great case of his own.
| 9:02 |
: Hi everybody!
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| 9:02 |
: Jeff may be late, but we’ll get started.
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| 9:03 |
: Trying out my Gamechanger priority list. It has me on STL-PIT right now, I assume because the LI > 2.
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| 9:03 |
: Bottom of the ninth, down one, you can send up one batter to lead off: Trea Turner or Billy Hamilton?
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| 9:04 |
: Turner, easily. I want the guy who has the higher chance of getting to first base. I’ll worry about the rest after.
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| 9:04 |
: Does Dan Szymborski no longer do chats for Fangraphs?
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Last week, Ben Lindbergh wrote a piece titled “Baseball Has a ‘RedZone’ Channel” over at The Ringer. It was all about a script that Dan Hirsch wrote at The Baseball Gauge called MLB.TV Game Changer. Basically, if you’re watching MLB.TV in a web browser, this script will allow you to program your MLB.TV experience to skip to the action that you most want to see, and you can customize it in many different ways. Put succinctly, this blew my mind. So I spent the better part of a night playing with the script’s priority list.
Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times and blue for Community Research.
Read the rest of this entry »
| 9:02 |
: Hi everybody!
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| 9:02 |
: Is it safe to say 1st half Jake Lamb was a tad lucky while 2nd half Jake Lamb is a tad unlucky?
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| 9:03 |
: I think it’s more safe to say the latter part. I think Lamb is pretty good, and his first half BABIP wasn’t so high.
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| 9:04 |
: The ISO was high though. Yeah I guess it would be safe to say what you said.
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| 9:04 |
: Some, also his plate discipline has gotten worse.
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| 9:04 |
: Alot has been said about an assortment of Brewers the last couple weeks. I think we should talk about another. Tyler Thornburg has looked dominant. How do you guys feel about him?
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Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times and blue for Community Research.
Read the rest of this entry »
| 9:02 |
: Hi everybody!
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| 9:02 |
: Sorry, was just talking with Jeff.
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| 9:02 |
: Start Danny Duffy @ BOS this week? I know it seems crazy to sit him given the roll he’s on, but his peripherals and dropping velocity are a little concerning. I’d probably start him in any other situation (except for an @ COL start), but based on the team and park factors for 2016 @ BOS is on par with an @ COL start. What say you guys?
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| 9:03 |
: I think Podhorzer made a compelling case to drop him last week at RotoGraphs. In my opinion, the Sox have been scoring less, so I’d rock Duffy til the wheels fell off. But you are right to be wary.
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| 9:05 |
: Hold on guys, Jeff is having issues.
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| 9:05 |
: Did I get the poll questions right? You never publish answers to these things
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Last week, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred declared in Houston that the problems most plaguing Major League Baseball’s current product are an excess of defensive shifts, an excess of relievers and the lack of a pitch clock. I’m not here to debate the specific merits of any of Manfred’s arguments. If you read this site on a regular basis, you likely know the arguments for each forwards and backwards. But I am troubled by the constant insistence that the game needs to be tinkered with in order to make it more appealing to new generations of fans.
No matter what is done to speed up the game, or make it more appealing, the core product is going to remain relatively unchanged. Games are still going to hover in the area of three hours. We’re not going to see a 30-minute reduction in game time. We often hear about the greatness of Game 7 of the 1991 World Series as a spectacle — a 10-inning, 1-0 affair that only featured two pitching changes. It took three hours and 23 minutes. The average game time for the World Series that year as a whole was three hours, 14 minutes. The game has lasted about three hours for roughly 30 years. We are not getting back to the days of two hour, 30 minute game times unless the league institutes a seven-inning game. Even then it might be dicey.
Instead of fretting over the game’s minor details, the game should be out marketing what makes its sport best — its players. This is something baseball does precious little of. Instead, the league is more worried about what I call the NFL Rules Committee-ification of the game. The NFL continuously churns out new rules, designed to make its game more appealing. Sometimes, they do. But the unintended consequences can be significant. Perhaps you remember the Dez Bryant catch? If you don’t, go ahead and watch it again at that link, I’ll wait.
Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times and blue for Community Research.
Read the rest of this entry »