Jeff Sullivan FanGraphs Chat — 2/2/18
9:02 |
: Hello friends |
9:02 |
: Welcome to Friday baseball chat |
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: Hello, friend! |
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: Hello friend |
9:02 |
: How is everybody’s morning/afternoon? |
9:02 |
: Fine |
9:02 |
: Hello friends |
9:02 |
: Welcome to Friday baseball chat |
9:02 |
: Hello, friend! |
9:02 |
: Hello friend |
9:02 |
: How is everybody’s morning/afternoon? |
9:02 |
: Fine |
Earlier this week, we learned about how Lars came to join the Sydney Blue Sox. Today, in the sixth of what is now planned as an eight-part series, the itinerant slugger-cum-wordsmith introduces us to Feathers, Tank, Chuckles, and Numbers. He also explains how his sightseeing plans went awry.
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Lars Anderson: “My ‘permanent’ living situation was still being sorted out when I arrived in Sydney. For the first two nights, I crashed at Tony’s high-rise apartment that he shares with his exceedingly cool wife, Katie. The apartment overlooks Parramatta, a groovy, multicultural neighborhood 30 minutes from the heart of Sydney. Tony is originally from Adelaide. Tony is also an assistant coach for the Australian national team, occupying that role for almost two decades. From what I’ve gathered, he’s a ‘who’s who’ in the baseball community here and seems to be garner nearly unanimous respect.
“When Tony isn’t managing in the ABL, he is a scout for the Pittsburgh Pirates and is in charge of all players in the Pacific Rim. He spends his summers scouting in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Australia.
“In my limited time around him, I see why he has earned said respect: he’s been accommodating beyond reason with me off the field. On the field, he is even-keeled, honest, positive (yet stern and serious in the right moments), and he supports and defends his players. After a tough loss in Brisbane, we walked into the locker room to find that there was no postgame meal. Tony, frustrated with the loss and the way Brisbane had played host, walked outside and yelled, ‘Give us some fucking food! You kicked our ass on the field, you could at least throw us a bone off of it!’ The team erupted in laughter, and the bitter taste of defeat was lessened by his calculated antics. It was an uncanny bit of leadership.
You might remember Rob Mains from the work he contributed to this site’s Community blog. More recently, he’s been doing great things over at Baseball Prospectus. Just this past month, he was nominated for a SABR award.
Mains wrote a piece over at BP in the middle of January that I found to be of interest. It came shortly after the Pirates shedded Gerrit Cole and Andrew McCutchen, with Pirates owner Bob Nutting claiming he couldn’t afford to keep star players around at market rates.
Asked Bob Nutting what it will take for #Pirates to break cycle of "develop, then sell when gets too costly."
Answer: "I think you'd have a fundamental redesign of the economics of baseball, that's not what we're going to have."#Pirates— Will Graves (@WillGravesAP) January 16, 2018
Mains’ piece is, in part, a meditation on what we ought to expect of a pro sports team’s ownership — and, in particular, if there should be a moral obligation, or civic responsibility, inherent to holding such an asset.
Here’s your chance to vote for the 2018 SABR Analytics Conference Research Award winners.
The SABR Analytics Conference Research Awards will recognize baseball researchers who have completed the best work of original analysis or commentary during the preceding calendar year. Nominations were solicited by representatives from SABR, Baseball Prospectus, FanGraphs, The Hardball Times, and Beyond the Box Score.
To read any of the finalists, click on the link below. Scroll down to cast your vote.
Contemporary Baseball Analysis
Contemporary Baseball Commentary
Historical Analysis/Commentary
Voting will be open through 11:59 p.m. MST on Monday, February 12, 2018. Details and criteria for each category can be found here. Only one work per author was considered as a finalist.
Mobile or Safari users, click here to access the survey
Results will be announced and presented at the seventh annual SABR Analytics Conference, March 9-11, 2018, at the Hyatt Regency Phoenix in Phoenix, Arizona. Learn more or register for the conference at SABR.org/analytics.
Job description:
Would you like to play a key role in supporting TrackMan’s baseball operations and engineering teams? Are you ambitious, self-driven and willing to go the extra mile? Then you should join the TrackMan Baseball Operations team!
TrackMan A/S is a fast-growing sports technology company that develops, manufactures and sells 3D ball flight measurement systems for a variety of sports. Originally developed for golf, TrackMan now enjoys a market leader position in several sports disciplines such as baseball in measuring and delivering real-time sports data.
Your key responsibilities include:
Requirements:
Your ability to build and maintain positive relationships is crucial for the role. You will work with stadium operations staff to ensure cooperation when TrackMan is on-site and provide remote support in the initial phases of trouble shooting. Moreover, you will work in close collaboration with contractors as well as internal stakeholders in US and Denmark.
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TrackMan helps athletes get better at their game through data. They currently operate within golf, baseball, tennis, soccer, and the Olympic Games. The world’s absolute top performers, as well as the serious amateur striving for improvement, rely on TrackMan’s data to gain that critical, competitive edge. TrackMan has a global footprint with its headquarter located in Denmark and offices in New York, Phoenix and Tokyo, and a dedicated, global sales force. Visit their website to learn more.
Apply today and join a company with great technologies, great colleagues, and great opportunities to grow.
To apply, or if you have any questions, please contact Matt Pullman at mpu@trackman.com. Start date is as soon as possible, and interviews take place on an ongoing basis.
Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about bullpen-cart feasibility, a listener crowdsourcing project to fill out the Effectively Wild Wiki, and the effect of starting an inning with a runner on second, then follow up on player volatility and knuckleball hits and answer listener emails about the historical significance of the Marlins’ latest firesale, the respective offensive ceilings of Didi Gregorius and Andrelton Simmons, the effect of this winter’s slow market on future extensions and high-profile free agents, the “Steroid Era” and aging patterns, and optimizing a legendary lineup. Plus a Stat Blast on low payrolls and a teaser for the sixth annual EW season preview series.
Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download
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Surely you’ve noticed that a number of prominent free agents have yet to find work. Less surely, but still probably, you’ve noticed that today is February 1, and the start of spring training is only a few weeks away. The good free agents are going to get jobs, and so are many of the worse ones, but we haven’t really seen a delay like this, not on such a large scale, and the reasons for it have been driving the wider baseball conversation over the past month or so. I doubt you’re a baseball fan because you just really like digging into the terms of collective bargaining agreements, but this is where we’ve gotten to. This is what’s up for debate at the moment, because baseball has provided little else.
At the heart of it all is league spending. I suppose it’s more about league spending versus league revenue, but with revenues, we’re mostly stuck with estimates. Spending, we know a lot more about. So let me show you a plot. I’ve spent a lot of time today navigating around Cot’s Contracts. That site includes opening-day payroll information going back to 2000, and there are also projected opening-day payrolls for 2018, including league minimums for roster filler.
We all love Christian Yelich the baseball player. Or, at least, we all should love Christian Yelich the ballplayer. He’s coming off back-to-back 4.5-win seasons and is just entering his age-26 campaign. ZiPS calls for him to produce just slightly more than 20 wins in the next five seasons. He is, in short, one of the game’s great young stars.
The Brewers certainly made their love for Yelich evident recently, shipping off a rich prospect package to Miami in order to acquire him. No doubt part of their interest in him is due to the fact that he’s also signed to one of the most club-friendly deals in the sport. If he produces wins at the sort of rate that ZiPS suggests, the Brewers will be quite happy no matter what becomes of Lewis Brinson and company.
Location: Seattle
Description:
The Seattle Mariners are working to build a winning team with exceptionally talented people. If you are passionate about baseball and eager to make an impact using your skills, learn more about this exciting opportunity to join our Baseball Operations team. This individual will provide support to our scouting operations while working closely with various members of our Baseball Operations team.
Primary Objective:
Support the baseball operations department in day-to-day scouting operation tasks, administration, and research.
Essential Functions:
Education and Experience:
Competencies, Knowledge, Skills and Abilities (KSA’s):
Dates:
Start date is flexible. End date is end of the 2018 season. Preference will be given to candidates who can start by March 1, 2018.
To Apply:
Interested and qualified applicants may apply by February 7, 2018 through the following link: Baseball Operations Intern
Health issues have thrown Patrick Murphy a curve. Toronto’s pick in the third round of the 2013 draft has had Tommy John surgery, thoracic outlet syndrome surgery, and a nerve moved in his elbow. As a result, he went into last season having amassed just 94.2 professional innings.
He more than doubled that total in 2017. Four years into what had been a frustrating career, the 22-year-old right-hander was finally able to cast aside his injury demons and demonstrate an ability to flummox opposing batters. Featuring a hook-heavy three-pitch mix, Murphy fashioned a 2.94 ERA with the Low-A Lansing Lugnuts, then finished up the year by making two starts for high-A Dunedin.
Late in the season, I asked the 6-foot-4 curveball specialist about the arduous path he’s taken to what now qualifies as promising prospect status.