2019 Rolling "Hey Chatter Chatter" chatterthread

You do your thing, Bee! I miss seeing the giants bumped regularly

you and i will forever be linked because of The B-52's. you did such a good job.

i will probably come back full time when Zaidi gets this thing turned around. i probably won't be able to help myself when the Giants are good again.

That's how I understand the rule, Thermo. I think Boston is claiming that the Rays never properly declared who the pitcher was replacing (and where he'd be in the batting order), therefore they assume he subbed for the DH. Since the DH can't play the field, then they lost the DH. I find it hard to believe that Rays management doesn't know the rule here. I guess that Boston was caught by surprise and decided they had to complain.

I just saw the news about Jonah Keri becoming a psycho -- wtf?

yesterday Counsell put Hader (by far his best reliever) in for the 7th, up 5-4, to face the meat of the Reds' batting order. I've also seen him bring him in with narrow leads w/ men on a few times. is this a common thing now? you had to figure managers would eventually start using their closers in smarter ways but I don't know if this is a league-wide trend.

definitely becoming more common. baseball is changing, to the chagrin of dozens of really out of touch, cranky broadcasters who are unsure of which side to choose in the "analytics" "debate"

back in the old days, when the manager was expected to keep in the obviously out of gas SP for another 3 outs so that he could secure the opportunity to obtain another pitcher Win, things were better

don't tell dave martinez about this

but yeah. counsell is one of the smarter managers and i think hader is somewhat used to being used that way after last year's playoffs

is this a common thing now?

We've been talking about "high leverage" use of pitchers for 15 years on this board, based on my search of the term.

curtis granderson is now 99th all-time in homers with 341

one more would tie him with ron santo for 98th

Nelson Cruz just hit his 3 HR on the day so far (still has one more AB possible), giving him 7 in his last 6 games.

Great day for my namesake pitch as O's center fielder Stevie Wilkerson gets the save, the first in MLB history for a position player, without topping 60mph!

Welp, I'm a Sling customer so there go the barves games on FSN.

Nelson Cruz just hit his 3 HR on the day so far (still has one more AB possible), giving him 7 in his last 6 games.

― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Thursday, July 25, 2019 7:25 PM (yesterday)

8 in his last 7 now...

i don’t hate it or anything, but fenway is an absurd place to play baseball

also wmc how do you watch sling

Cruz has now hit 309 HR in his 30s, with 26 days short of a year before he turns 40--wonder how high that puts him on the all-time list? (Not sure how to use play index for checking such things.)

he would appear to be 12th -- tied with reggie jackson, one behind willie stargell

Thanks. The way he's going right now, looks like he'll finish up 8th or 9th.

also wmc how do you watch sling

― mookieproof, Saturday, July 27, 2019 4:35 PM

Sling TV app through a 4th-gen Apple TV...not sure I understand the question.

didn't know if you watched on a laptop or through a roku or whatever. i was gonna suggest a vpn so you could use mlb.tv and cheat the location blackout -- it's easy enough to do on a computer but i don't know anything about apple tv

Oh it's not a regional blackout sitch -- Sling/Dish and Fox are having a pissing contest.

https://www.androidheadlines.com/2019/07/sling-tv-fox-regional-sports-blackout.html

oic!

do the phillies and braves and nationals ever play anyone but each other

They sometimes play the Marlins

But they told the Mets to take a fuckin' hike, they don't play them anymore.

either way it's better than 51 reds-pirates games each season

Never would I have thought I'd read an interview in which Randy Newman talks about Byron Buxton, WAR and range factor, but here we are. https://t.co/xHJDys8UPH

— Jason Foster (@ByJasonFoster) July 31, 2019

it's pretty wild how Mike Minor has a bWAR of 5.9, which ranks him as the #1 pitcher (and #3 player overall) on Baseball Reference, with a decent lead over Scherzer and Ryu and Verlander and Greinke, but meanwhile on Fangraphs his fWAR is 2.7 which ranks him something like 28th among pitchers. seems like a huge discrepancy (i trust FG much more in this case...)

i think fangraphs relies more on peripherals and "true talent," while bref leans more towards results.

yeah i suppose. weird though since Minor's results aren't exactly eye-popping.

Usually Baseball Reference works fine for me--the differences generally fall within range, and if you need to take things further, splitting the difference is useful. But Minor's high ranking baffles me too, even in terms of traditional results. His K/BB ratio is nothing special today--under 3.00. He's given up 20 HR in 140 innings; I know HR are historically very high right now, but wouldn't that be within range of league-average at best? H/9, good not great. Only one of his total runs is unearned, and that's very good, but there must be some huge park and quality-of-defense adjustment there, otherwise I'm stumped.

i think it's because ERA 3.21, FIP 4.27, xFIP 4.49

2.7 fWAR is still pretty good, tho! same as bauer

hey Trout has finally passed Bellinger and climbed to the top of bWAR's MLB rankings (he's well ahead of Cody in fWAR).

yeah, i meant that bref relies on ERA, fg relies more on FIP

Braves bullpen did not look very good this weekend.

awwwwwwwww

Isan Diaz's dad was being interviewed when his son took Jacob deGrom deep for his first career MLB hit

His reaction was amazing 😂

(via @Marlins)pic.twitter.com/nCPuERXFwK

— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) August 5, 2019

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWKA9Zi5-_Y

giants dfa'd joe panik

😒

Isan Diaz has to have one of the all-time jacked baseball dads

sideshow bob is on the hill for the dodgers in your youtube game of the week

Nelson Cruz has been wild in the second half:

23 games (started 21), 16 HR, 30 RBI, 22 runs (.357/.449/.964)

Barves have got to figure out some other ways of winning besides scoring 11 runs -- they can't count on that and the bullpen's still shitting the bed even with their new hires.

Will Leitch had been doing decade lists for each position:

https://www.mlb.com/news/top-10-starting-pitchers-of-the-2010s

That's the starting-pitcher list; you can get links for everything else on that page. Putting Bumgarner 5th is quite generous, but most of those are inarguable.

have we discussed cole hamels' hof-ness? i don't think he's going to get there, but he's pitched pretty well for chicago. probably needs three or four more seasons as good as this one to get close, which is asking a lot

Here's a random comp with a guy who hasn't made it in:

Hamels: 162-117 WL, 3.39 ERA, 124 ERA+, 2660.2 IP, 2520 K, 4 ASG appearances, 1 ring, 1 World Series MVP
Schilling: 216-146 WL, 3.46 ERA, 127 ERA+, 3261.0 IP, 3116 K, 6 ASG appearances, 3 rings, 1 World Series MVP

schilling also finished second for the cy three times

plus the fuckin sock

i mean he's a ridiculous asshole but he belongs

Check it ⁦@StratOMatic⁩ This is The 2019 Tour Series of Baseball HallOfFamers at 50,000 feet I’m up 2 games to 1 but my home team is in the Polo Grounds ⁦@tmorello⁩ home team is Wrigley Field . SatchelPaige shut us down yesterday but RegJax Bench HR today for my win pic.twitter.com/77N507b9RW

— Chuck D (@MrChuckD) August 10, 2019

he wants no piece of me and the 82 cardinals

My god this 2019 Orioles HR allowed record is gonna be absolutely untouchable