2019 Rolling "Hey Chatter Chatter" chatterthread

I'm in favor of bat flipping AND beaning

justin bour is having a tough week (see the second video clip from an earlier game with the cubs, as well):

https://deadspin.com/angels-justin-bour-gave-up-an-embarrassing-double-play-1834187688

through 20 games, tatis jr is batting .296/.370/.606, 154 wRC+

he's going to be amazing... reminds me of manny machado or younger hanley ramirez just physically

that bour clip is brutal

😬 pic.twitter.com/SzaTYe8mqB

— Seattle Mariners (@Mariners) April 20, 2019

dee actually orchestrated all of that, which is pretty cool

Why didn't they call infield fly? I'm confused

infield fly is only with first-and-second or bases loaded

no respect for ausmus not immediately benching bour

otoh he already had bourjos (.086/.108/.114) and cozart (.096/.143/.115) in the starting lineup so i guess there weren't too many options

I also thought the infield fly rule only had to do with first base being occupied.

right, makes sense, because if the player runs as they are supposed to, you still only get one out

yelich nearly hit the perfect homer today

it went 421 feet off a 69 mph pitch

Fernando Rodney tied Cy Young's games total tonight--I know; that's like saying Ed Sheeran matched Chuck Berry's bowling score--prompting me to look at his career box for maybe the first time ever. He's really had some high-save/mediocre-or-worse-everything-else years, hasn't he? He might be the only 300-save guy with a true outlier season on his resume (2012, half his career WAR).

I enjoy watching Yelich at bat, don't get me wrong, but Belli is on a whole other level

https://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2019/4/22/18510708/cody-bellinger-christian-yelich-los-angeles-dodgers-milwaukee-brewers-mvp

Folks, allow me to free your minds. Yelich, while exceptional, is NOT the best player this season. That honor belongs to Cody Bellinger. Here are some of his otherworldly numbers in bullet-point format, just as Provenzano dubiously presented those of Yelich:

• .424 batting average
• .500 on-base percentage
• .882 slugging percentage
• .552 wOBA
• 255 wRC+
• 2.3 fWAR

All of these stats are not only better than Yelich’s, they’re better than everyone else’s in the National League. While the disgraced Provenzano wasn’t wrong when he described Yelich’s 222 wRC+ as Ruthian, Bellinger’s 255 wRC+ goes far beyond The Babe. The single season record for wRC+ is 244 set by Barry Bonds in 2002. This makes Bellinger’s start to the season, uh, super-Ruthian? Mega-Bondsish? Trout-in-rookie-ball-like? Whatever, it’s crazy good.

Bellinger's 2.7 bWAR in 23 games projects to 19 over 162

i might want to take a mulligan on the Judge vs Bellinger debate from a couple years ago.

I've been waiting for the right moment to revisit the raised eyebrows I got when I suggested Bellinger was clearly the better bet. (In other words, I'm skeptical the leap he's taken is for real. The weird thing is, I said all that before I'd actually seen him play; I don't think I would have after watching him the last couple of World Series. In the abstract, though, the idea that a 21-year-old has significantly more growth potential than a 25-year-old is an absolutely fundamental tenet of the early Abstracts.)

"I'm skeptical the leap he's taken is for real"--just to clarify, that doesn't mean I'm skeptical that he'll hit .400 with 75 HR. I mean I'm skeptical that, by the end of the season, he's one of the, I don't know, five or six best hitters in the game? He just looked so unimpressive to me those two WS...I don't even mean his batting line, which was abysmal, but his swing and everything else.

i think going forward Bellinger is probably now the better bet. Judge's injuries are a little concerning for the long term and his stats the past couple of years are really outstanding but not McGwirean like his rookie year was. They were more....pre-MVP Stantonian.

Wouldn't be remotely shocked if his 2017 bests any season Bellinger has in the future, though this year could make me look foolish.

Bellinger is completely overperforming his projections (STEAMR/ZIPS/PECOTA/etc.) so I can imagine he is due for a hard regression at some point. It is nice to ride his hot bat in one of my fantasy leagues though... speaking of, most drafts he went middle of the 5th Round or around 60th overall. Will most definitely trade him at some point, will look for the beginnings of a slump, then dump.

Coming into yesterday's game, Braves pitchers were
- 1st in BB/9 by 0.54 (similar distance as 2nd to 11th)
- 29th in K/BB
- 1st in BB% by 1.3% (same distance as 2nd to 14th)
- 27th in K-BB%
And then they walked 9 more last night.

pretty impressive pitch framing here

This is so so so good. Francisco Cervelli frames a pitch that he doesn't catch, gets the strike call as the ball rolls to the backstop, and immediately asks the ump for a new one. pic.twitter.com/iZ3Z3CWEkK

— Ben Porter (@Ben13Porter) April 18, 2019

ha the ad on the backstop is perfect

lol, that's fantastic all around (including the ad)

gio back to the brewers

wait, he was unsigned

he had a minor league deal with the yanks, made a couple triple-a starts, and opted out a couple days ago when they would not add him to the 25-man

chris paddack for RoY

a bit irritated that ESPN went with the "Gio signs with pitching-thin Brewers". We are not low on pitchers, they just are all bad

Cory Kluber walking in a run with bases loaded:
2010-2018: 0 times
1st month of 2019: 4 times

Bellinger has a decent shot to reach 100 TB by the end of the month (12 more in 4 games).

check out these stats

.343/.378/.686
wRC+ of 180

pretty good, right?

guess what

that's Chris Davis since 4/13

damn

yeah, i'm already regretting making him my reverse fantasy 1B pick

but almost everyone else did too

I don’t see it lasting.

so happy for CC.

lol watching him have to hug every one of these dozen teammates he's spent all of three weeks playing with

CC Sabathia career strikeouts

#1 Mike Kinkade
#1,000 Ichiro Suzuki
#2,000 Torii Hunter
#3,000 John Ryan Murphy

— Christopher Kamka (@ckamka) May 1, 2019

Bellinger's April:

Most home runs ever (tied): 14
Most RBI: 37
Most hits: 44
Most TB: 96

Cody Bellinger is batting .434 with 14 HRs and 37 RBIs over 30 games this year. No other @MLB player ever reached all three of those triple-crown levels through his first 30 games of a season.

— Elias Sports Bureau (@EliasSports) April 30, 2019

Headed for a major slump, I'm sure, but he's probably done enough already to ensure a big season.

I know that it's a Wednesday afternoon during the school year in a city that doesn't draw well against a team that doesn't attract a road crowd. But I've never seen so few people at a major league game as the one just starting now between Kansas City and Tampa Bay. pic.twitter.com/z3QUdfdWiT

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) May 1, 2019

https://expo.masslive.com/sports/g66l-2019/01/49a5d04a748757/boston-red-sox-white-house-trip-which-red-sox-will-attend-visit-with-president-donald-trump.html

spoiler alert, every white player is going and every black or hispanic player is not going or is undecided, with the exception of jd martinez

xp jumbotron still gonna say the attendance was 20,000 or some shit

re: that Passan twit's tweet, it was a makeup game that got moved an hour earlier with <24 hours notice.

that's a heckler's dream right there

Stephen Strasburg just struck out the 1,500th batter of his career. He is the fastest pitcher in MLB history to do so by innings (1,272 1/3).

— Jamal Collier (@JamalCollier) May 2, 2019

Chris Sale, LHP
WILL ATTEND
"Yes. I would be there. I think it would be cool going to the White House. Most popular house in the country." (Jan. 19)

After the latest UZR update, Cody Bellinger's March/April WAR is, for now, the highest on record in a calendar "month" at FanGraphs, back to 2002:

Bellinger, Apr '19: 3.24
Berkman, May '08: 3.12
Winn, Sept '05: 3.02
Bonds, Aug '02: 3.00
Bonds, Apr '04: 2.83
Trout, July '12: 2.83

— Ben Lindbergh (@BenLindbergh) May 2, 2019

Hell of a cherry pick, kudos:

Dodgers March/April 2019 # of games: 32
Astros May 2008 # of games: 28
Giants August 2002 # of games: 26
Giants April 2004 # of games: 24
Giants September/October* 2005 # of games: 30
Angels July 2012 # of games: 26

*2 games in Oct: wow cool, another arbitrary "month" not disclosed in cherry-picked stat category

Doing some maths 4U:

WAR/# available games to play per "month"

Bellinger '19: 3.24/32 = .10125
Berkman '08: 3.12/28 = .11143
Winn '05: 3.02/30 = .10067
Bonds '02: 3.00/26 = .11538
Bonds '04: 2.83/24 = .11792
Trout '12: 2.83/26 = .10885

Bellinger probably falls out of the top 10/20?

prob taking that tweet a leetle too seriously

....randy winn?

yes, for the Giants