| 12:01 |
: Welcome to the OH GOD THERES NO MORE BASEBALL edition of SzymborskiChat.
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| 12:01 |
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| 12:02 |
Is Dan Duquette a good GM? |
| 12:02 |
: I’d probably say average-plus? It’s harder these days to differential GM performance from the overall front office/ownership
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| 12:02 |
Heard this is where I get my French drain tips. |
| 12:03 |
: Check your inlet cleanout risers!
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Let me give you three stat lines, and you’ll understand immediately where this is going. It’s time for Player A, B, and C. Let’s add in D, E, and F too.
| Player | AVG | OBP | SLG | wRC+ | DEF |
| A | 0.212 | 0.271 | 0.361 | 76 | 4.6 |
| B | 0.232 | 0.324 | 0.378 | 87 | -1.6 |
| C | 0.232 | 0.304 | 0.359 | 80 | -25.4 |
| D | 0.251 | 0.310 | 0.348 | 80 | 20.3 |
| E | 0.218 | 0.274 | 0.338 | 72 | -11.5 |
| F | 0.257 | 0.293 | 0.320 | 67 | 13.9 |
These guys look bad.
Player A had that season in 2014. He was 26 and supposedly headed towards peaking. He could make contact and hit for power, but there was something missing. A pull-happy fly-ball approach easily defended by the shift, no walks — suddenly his glove was keeping him afloat. That wasn’t supposed to happen.
What’s funny is that Mike Moustakas actually learned the lesson he needed to learn in 2013. It just took until 2015 to really cement in his day to day work. As Ben Lindbergh pointed out on Grantland this year, he meant to change his approach to the shift coming into the 2014 season by trying to maybe hit balls over the shortstop sometimes.
I watched the last Super Bowl in Seattle. It was a hell of a football game. It followed what had been, for the Seahawks, a miraculous conference championship game, and in the Super Bowl itself, another miraculous event put the Seahawks on the verge of a title. And then, in the dying seconds, a controversial play was called, and they threw an interception from the one-yard line. That quickly, everything that happened before was erased. A feeling crept into the fans around me, and collectively they refused to feel it. Instead, they felt confusion. Why pass? Why not run? What if they had run? The real heartache did sink in in time, but still the confusion lingers. Why not run? Would they have won if they had run? As far as the sport is concerned, it’s the greatest unanswerable question imaginable. There is no closure to be found. The closure doesn’t exist.
I also watched the previous Super Bowl in Seattle. They say people were nervous about it, but the game was shockingly comfortable. On the very first play, the Seahawks recorded a safety. The eventual celebration knew nothing of the horror that was to come. It knew nothing of the fact that a year later, that celebratory feeling would be impossible to remember unblemished.
I’ve asked myself a hundred times what it would’ve felt like if the two Super Bowls were reversed. Seemed to me, it would’ve felt perfect.
Source: FanGraphs
Of course it involved a crazy comeback. Congratulations to the Royals and all their fans on another remarkable run.
| 7:41 |
: hello, all!
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| 7:42 |
: We’ll get this thing started shortly before first pitch. Here’s to another good night of baseball
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| 7:56 |
: commence chat!
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| 7:56 |
Screw the World Series, lets talk discuss who was better, John Olerud or Jeff Kent. |
| 7:56 |
: Getting to the important stuff early. I like it. I’ll take Olerud’s career
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| 7:59 |
Who makes more in free agency, Alex Gordon or Yoenis Cespedes? |
I know this isn’t going to help, Mets fans. And I know this might seem like I’m picking on Daniel Murphy which isn’t fair because Daniel Murphy, by himself, has never lost the Mets a game and Daniel Murphy, by himself, has never lost the Mets a World Series. Players don’t lose games, teams do, and the World Series isn’t over yet.
But Daniel Murphy is a human being, and human beings are prone to mistakes. Some mistakes carry greater consequence than others, and on Saturday night, Daniel Murphy made a very costly mistake. Murphy’s mistake is the one that will be remembered, but it was just one of several made by the Mets in the late innings of Game Four that led to them blow a 3-2 lead in the eighth inning.
A lot has been written about the Royals’ hitting approach. Not enough has been written about their hitting coach. A moribund offense became a much more dangerous one after Dale Sveum stepped into the role last May.
As you know, Kansas City hitters don’t strike out very often. Their 15.9 K-date was the lowest in both leagues. Aggressive to a fault, they put more balls in play with no strikes on the batter (1,475 times) than any other team.
Not surprisingly, Sveum likes contact, especially when his team is rallying.
“You get three outs in an inning, and if you strike out for two of those outs, your odds of coming back aren’t going to be very good,” said Sveum. “But if you put three balls in play, something might fall and you keep the line moving.” Read the rest of this entry »
| 7:49 |
: This is the World Series Game Four Live Weblog. Please don’t hesitate to begin saying whatever you’ve come here to say.
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| 7:50 |
: Perhaps consider this: what the over/under on infield fly balls induced by Chris Young? That seems like a moderately interesting question to contemplate.
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| 7:52 |
5. Or, one per inning pitched |
| 7:55 |
12 |
| 7:55 |
I’ll say 3. And aren’t we lucky to chat with sexy Carson Cistulli! |
| 7:57 |
: The price is also being required to chat with Owen and me.
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Ben and Sam do a quick bonus Saturday episode on Mets starter Noah Syndergaard’s first pitch of World Series Game 3.
Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download
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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, orange for TechGraphs and blue for Community Research.
Read the rest of this entry »
