shohei ohtani alert

I think that's probably true. It's like OPS; mathematically, you can't give equal weight to two percentages with unlike denominators.

This sounds bizarre, but if baseball is 50% scoring runs and 50% preventing them, it's almost like Ohtani's hitting should be on one side and his pitching and defense on the other.

I don’t understand what you mean by that

i think it mean otani's all man

What I meant (playing off the previous post)...Right now, Ohtani's overall WAR just adds together his position player WAR (comprised of hitting plus defense, or in his case a DH adjustment) and his pitcher WAR. Baseball has two components: scoring runs and preventing runs--you need to do the first better than the second to win. So, as James has written many times (usually debunking things like "baseball is 70% pitching), pitching is exactly 50% baseball, but when you say pitching, that then needs to be broken down into the pitcher and the defense. So for Ohtani, move the defensive part of his overall WAR from the position player to the pitcher.

Do I think that's actually a good idea? Haven't a clue (or if it would even affect his overall WAR--maybe not, since it's all addition anyway). But I agree that "I don't feel like WAR is equipped to gauge Ohtani."

I kinda get it, I mean "Wins Over Replacement" is based on the idea of a "Replacement player", and the people who come up with these calculations admit that this is kind of a guess, so its conceivable that both sides are slightly off in different directions

ohtani hits every day and pitches once a week. when he hits, he gets the defensive penalty of a DH. when he pitches (and hits), he gets the same defensive penalty for being a batter, but gets a defensive boost for playing the field on the mound

Would love to have that translated into Stengelese.

do catchers get a defensive penalty for rarely fielding the ball?

I thought they got a bonus because so few people can play that position. idk how they rate catcher defense though

Re catchers they get a bonus. Re 50/50 pitching and hitting i think EW or fangraphs has the ratio significantly one way or the other

http://research.sabr.org/journals/is-pitching-75-of-baseball

Possibly old

I…think tracer was kidding?

(xpost) That looks like the kind of "insider" survey James got his start debunking: "During the winter of 1978, we sent a short, one page questionnaire to the 26 field managers and the 26 general managers and/or chief executives of all major league baseball clubs, and 26 selected sportswriters and sports broadcasters."

Whatever kind of analytic system you develop, it seems like sound logic to me that you have to start with one basic premise: winning baseball games comes down to 50% scoring runs and 50% preventing them.

right I mean…that’s just not how things work

i just think, if you're a catcher, maybe it's like try playing a real position and then we can give you a meaningful WAR

man and I thought *I* had the most extreme catcher-value related challops on ilx!

as somebody once said, 90% of this game is mental, and the other half is physical. the rest is catching

500-ft. HR, 30 before the break.

https://www.mlb.com/news/30-or-more-home-runs-before-mlb-all-star-game-c266214234

sometimes i see clips of his homers and think huh, i didn’t expect that to get out

this was not one of them

dude fuckin cranks

yeah, that ball was DISMISSED

wow

279 wRC+ in june

Posnanski's column today:

Ohtani is coming off a June in which he hit .394 and slugged .952. That .952 slugging percentage is the third-highest EVER RECORDED for the month of June. Check out this list:

Babe Ruth, June 1921, .979 SLG
Babe Ruth, June 1920, .960 SLG
Shohei Ohtani, June 2023, .952 SLG
Lou Gehrig, June 1936, .934 SLG
Lou Gehrig, June 1930, .919 SLG

(Most of the column is devoted to the Braves, who--I can be miraculously oblivious to these things--were 21-4 in June.)

31. (The other guy homered too.)

Pulled early again with a blister, almost certainly not pitching at ASG

Shohei Ohtani (via interpreter Ippei Mizuhara) on whether the finger blister is relate to the cracked nail from his last pitching start: "It's basically the same thing as last time. It wasn't fully healed. It's gotten kind of worse as the game went on."

— Sarah Valenzuela (@Sarah_IsabelVee) July 5, 2023

he needs to do the derby fuck the game itself

wonder if the Angels are pondering trading him in the wake of the Trout injury. I know that move would be massively unpopular but Fangraphs has their playoff odds at 20% currently (only 4.5% to actually win the division) and they could get an insane haul for him, possibly the best midseason haul ever. I really hope they don't and think doing so would be bad for the game but they have to be considering it, right??

Not sure if you saw this: https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-rumors-trades-and-signings?t=trades-and-transactions

i think they want to re-sign him and if they trade him that seems very unlikely so i think they will just pray for a miracle that they can make some noise in the playoffs this year & that he decides to re-sign w/ them for whatever reason. i highly doubt he re-signs there tho

^^^

when he first came over, he wanted to be on the west coast. i presume that that is no longer a major factor

Honestly can’t see him going to an east coast team. I could be wrong but physical proximity to Japan & all the money a team rakes in from being able to run Japanese advertising to viewers there in a more favourable timezone…but who knows. Personally think he’s a Dodger.

i'm sure he will entertain the yankees, i don't think playing in new york hurt the japanese stars before him. but otherwise it feels like it's gonna be the dodgers, giants, mariners... i'm sure the padres will throw their hat in the ring but idk how they could make that payroll work. sluggers don't like to seem the giants -- both stanton & judge turned them down. i feel like it's the dodgers too but i wouldn't rule out seattle for obvious reasons

I would love it to be Seattle - great pitcher’s park, Ichiro there every day - but he was absolutely miserable playing in cold weather apparently & more chance of that there (& in SF) than LA. SF also preferable for me and I think it being a historically good pitchers park would be in their favour. Think Judge just wanted to stay a Yankee and was never going to move once they gave him an acceptable offer.

all the money a team rakes in from being able to run Japanese advertising to viewers there in a more favourable timezone…but who knows

AIUI, foreign media/markets and merch are all pooled so any team that signs him doesn't make all that much money from the Japanese market - tourists coming to Ohtani home games, some in-stadium advertising but it wouldn't cover much of a $40mn+/yr contract (particularly if you're the Dodgers and already basically selling out every home game).

35 in 94 games, 18 in 31--on pace for 60.

"doing a Ruth" while casually dealing to the tune of 3.50 ERA

Old-guy stuff, I know, but I like it anyway.

https://i.postimg.cc/wMxnQJvJ/winfield.jpg

that bat flip was a thing of beauty

home run #35 for shohei and then an elite bat flip 🔥 pic.twitter.com/59WTacp8rp

— Codify (@CodifyBaseball) July 18, 2023

This is really amazing if accurate (the HR check out, although I have Ohtani playing slightly fewer games...I guess he's had a few where he pitched but didn't hit; haven't checked the pitching side of it).

- Babe Ruth: 159 home runs in his first 674 career games / W-L 35-18 in his first 455.0 career innings pitched.

- Shohei Ohtani: 160 home runs in his first 674 career games / W-L 35-19 in his first 455.0 IP career innings pitched. pic.twitter.com/6L8kkHUvEp

— Héctor Gómez (@hgomez27) July 17, 2023

(I assume they had to remove a photo of Ruth eating 12 hot dogs.)

One more, pertinent to the Winfield tweet:

Bill: What do you believe is more impressive/difficult to accomplish: Being a Two-Way player like Shohei Ohtani or playing 2 sports at the same time like Bo Jackson/Deion Sanders did with Baseball/Football?
Asked by: Taylor

Answered: 7/17/2023
The most difficult feat in the area is writing about baseball and also writing true crime books. Joking. I doubt that being a two-way player in one sport is more difficult than playing two different sports. I think there are and have been other players who could have done it, if given the opportunity--not at the level Ohtani is doing it, but they could have done it. Greinke could have done it. Ken Brett could have done it. Micah Owings could have done it. Many Negro League players DID do it...Double Duty Radcliffe, obviously, but also many others.

(I don't take that as criticism at all: "not at the level Ohtani is doing it.")

to be fair to ruth the first few years of his career were in the deadball era

Which made the pitching easier and the hitting harder...As I've said a few times on here, I've become very skeptical of baseball records pre-integration/pre-War, although players that bridge both eras--Williams, Musial, Spahn--I'd at least give them a pass, since they were still premier players during the heyday of Mays, Mantle, and Aaron. It's a continuum. In the end, I guess I really don't know what Ruth would do playing today.

my kids would call him "big bunda"

https://thetomspowerpop.bandcamp.com/track/angel-on-the-mound-shohei-ohtani

Not quite "Mrs. Robinson," but not bad!

(I have that Toms compilation...I knew it looked familiar.)

for no reason i can adequately explain i am a huge tommy marolda fan. haven't really followed baseball since the twins won the '87 world series, tho.