2022 MLB General Season Chatter: Ghost Runners On The Half-Billion Dollar Infield

willie mcgee will have no comment on the kershaw situation

cup safety reminder

😳 (Escobar is okay) pic.twitter.com/10ofpoRfsf

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 14, 2022

god knows i love willie mcgee -- i actually have a baseball purportedly signed by him. (my only signed baseball.) but tbh it's pretty cool that any brewers fans remember shit from 40 years ago

see also (and i hate both teams) new york rangers fans still shouting 'potvin sucks'

Potvin, stance aside, does suck though

True (can't remember why, though).

Byron Buxton is hurt.

I was at the home opener in Milwaukee. Fucking hilarious watching everyone trying to tailgate in the 30 MPH winds. Shit was flying everywhere. Our table flipped twice. Game itself was fun too. I got to meet Tim Dillard. Also got to watch Pujols attempt one of the worst stolen bases of all time

The cardinals announcers were quick to point out that he had stolen his last 14 bases in a row without getting caught, he was the ultimate smart runner, etc.

I glanced at his stats and those last 14 SBs in a row date back to 2015! This is the smartest, most choosiest, slowest human being of all time

I (unsurprisingly) love Potvin.

New Tom Seaver statue at Citi Field looks good. First statue for a NYC sports team apparently.

So the angels opted to walk Corry Seager with the bases loaded instead of pitch to him?!

man i understand why the ghost runner is happening and i know it's never going to not happen again, but as soon as it happens i just check out. might as well end it on a coin toss.

Love that the Orioles crowd was so loud that Chapman couldn't hear the Pitchcom. Ended up walking in the winning run anyway.

Most pitchers seem to be having a hard time as soon as the noise rises above golf level

Looking fresh in his 2001 Mariners uniform, Ichiro fires one down the pipe! 🐐 pic.twitter.com/Qe9ZPifIH7

— Seattle Mariners (@Mariners) April 16, 2022

2022 non-MLB update:

Roki Sasaki delivered arguably the greatest pitching performance in Japanese baseball history last night. The 20-year-old Lotte Marines phenom not only threw a perfect game — NPB’s first since 1994 — he tied an NPB record with 19 strikeouts. Sasaki also set a record. After retiring the first two hitters he faced on ground balls, the right-hander fanned 13 consecutive Orix Buffaloes batters. Pitch counts weren’t a problem. Sasaki reportedly completed his perfecto having thrown just 105 pitches.
― Karl Malone, Sunday, April 10, 2022 11:15 AM (one week ago)

last night was Sasaki's next appearance, and he threw another 8 perfect innings! was taken out in the 9th.

Roki Sasaki is being pulled after 8 perfect innings. Naoya Masuda is coming in, he posted a 2.24 ERA in 64 innings last season. Sasaki has retired 52 straight batters and counting, we'll see how far that streak continues next week. Here's Sasaki's last strikeout from the day. pic.twitter.com/hFmXnRa8h4

— Kyle Kishimoto (@kylemoto10) April 17, 2022

163 kmh = 101.3 mph :-o

sorry, kph. i was born in iowa

Nah you had it, km/h is how I usually see/write it

this is a really fun substory of the 2021 season: every time a team visits the blue jays, they have to identify who sucks ass

Multiple unvaccinated Red Sox to skip Toronto trip https://t.co/i6JLxRb6jg

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) April 18, 2022

The A’s had three idiots. Including one of the relievers they got for Chapman lol. I think Puk was the biggest name that had to stay home because they’re so very very smart.

I cannot lie, I LOVE those yellow Red Sox unis

A’s just had to place 6 players on the covid IL. This includes all three unvaxxed dudes who couldn’t come up to Toronto lol

oh my god the idea of turning on a red sox game and seeing them in yellow and bright blue jerseys is deeply offensive to me. like, whoever thought that was a good idea should be subjected to a congressional inquiry

it would be a massive understatement to say that I hate the fucking shit out of allowing active players to partner with sports betting companies. Fuck this entirely. https://t.co/CcY1DtLk4I

— Jay Jaffe (@jay_jaffe) April 20, 2022

"but i always bet on myself to win!!"

imo MLB absolutely *loathes* the idea that money involving its product can be made without it getting a cut. (see also when it argued that it could copyright baseball stats)

this attitude, like its attitude toward its players, is taking it places it should be avoiding. but so it goes

this guy

Tommy Pham on Luke Voit's slide into Tyler Stephenson: " If Luke wants to settle it, I get down really well. Anything. Muay Thai, whatever. Like I said, I've got an owner here who will let me use his facility. So fuck 'em. I'm out."

— C. Trent Rosecrans (@ctrent) April 20, 2022

dallas keuchel's pitching strategy of throwing every pitch in the strike zone at less than 90 mph somehow isn't working out

85 mph pitch in the exact center of the strike zone to jose ramirez with the bases loaded, sure

lol they have a doubleheader and i guess TLR is just going to let him wear it?

they finally took him out after he gave up 10 runs with no outs in the second inning

helped along by four (!) errors

Scary moment there with Story taking a fastball from Berrios to the head. Looks like he’s ok now

this might belong on a stats thread, but i figure more people will read it here. for those of us who frequently refer to fangraphs WAR (fWAR), they've updated their defensive statistics for 2016-2021 to replace UZR's "range" with Statcast's "fielding runs prevented" (or Outs Above Average; OAA). good move! the change only affects statcast era (2016-current).

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/a-fangraphs-war-fielding-update/

as you might guess, the change benefits those players whose defense is rated more highly by OAA then UZR (and vice versa)

the biggest beneficiary is nick ahmed, who gains 6 fWAR overall. in particular, his 2018 season (.234/.290/.411, wRC+ 84) went from 1.4 fWAR to 3.0 fWAR, thanks to his apparently crazy-good defense.

there are charts at the link that show you gains or loses, overall. as a cardinals fan, it's interesting to see paul dejong lose quite a bit of his value, particularly as his defense is the foundation of his game. but it looks like statcast/OAA rates his lower on defense than UZR

also, nicky lopez's defense now gets him 6.0 fWAR last year, very impressive

why the switch? i don't know much about how UZR is calculated vs statcast

a’s drew 2,703 last night vs baltimore — their lowest attendance since 1980

this is generalizing way too much, but Outs Above Average (which is a statcast thing: here are last year's leaders) is calculated using cameras that know where the fielder started (something UZR doesn't know) as well as the velocity of the hit, the trajectory, where it landed, etc.

UZR was and is used calculations based upon play-by-play data. it can be back-calculated to ye olden times of baseball based on box scores and work done by Baseball Solutions to provide more batted ball data. but obviously, they don't know where lou gehrig was standing when the ball was hit, how far he had to run to get it, that kind of stuff. there's still a place for UZR because we'll never know that kind of stuff. but for modern baseball, OAA is way more useful/accurate as a fielding metric, i think.

note: the Fangraphs WAR calculation uses multiple measures for defense: it wasn't just UZR, and it's not just Statcast/OAA now. the recent switch is just a replacement of UZR's "range" component.

i also think that UZR maybe always had a tough time handling shifts, whereas statcast can easily handle that

joe . . . say it ain’t so

Here's my problem with what happened at the Yankees game -- nobody, and I mean nobody, is looking out for the fans. You have Dave Roberts pulling Kershaw with a perfect game. You have Aaron Boone IBBing Miggy with 3,000 hits on the line for a tiny strategic edge. 2/3

— Joe Posnanski (@JPosnanski) April 21, 2022

the rare bad joe p take. i didn't click through but i assume he's getting roasted.

it's a small thing, but i don't want umpires giving explanations.

otm, this is terrible. umpires are supposed to be the judgment of doom, striking silently and surely. now they speak up and they've got these dumb little voices. if i wanted that i'd watch the lol NFL

the posnanski tweet is terrible! the tigers are playing at home this weekend, so many chances for miggy to get his hit in front of home fans.

with all the hoopla i assumed they were going on the road tomorrow

"nobody thinks of the fans who can afford to skip work and take in a day game!"

“They’re really, really behind you around here… my fuckin’ ass. What the fuck am I supposed to do, go out there and let my fuckin’ players get destroyed every day and be quiet about it? For the fuckin’ nickel-dime people who turn up? The motherfuckers don’t even work. That’s why they’re out at the fuckin’ game. They oughta go out and get a fuckin’ job and find out what it’s like to go out and earn a fuckin’ living. Eighty-five percent of the fuckin’ world is working. The other fifteen percent come out here. A fuckin’ playground for the cocksuckers. Rip them motherfuckers. Rip them fuckin’ cocksuckers like the fuckin’ players. we got guys bustin’ their fuckin’ ass, and them fuckin’ people boo.“

Posnanski just posted a long column on the Cabrera walk (beginning by saying he never should have tweeted, because "Twitter is the enemy of argument"). Great, as always.

Listen, we either die young or live long enough to become counterrevolutionaries.

Also he wrote a book about joe paterno after sandusky so *shrug emoji*

idk why people can’t discern between the kershaw and miggy situations—they’re completely different in pure baseball terms. roberts removed a pitcher who hadn’t given up a base runner yet with an eye towards the future, boone was making a tactical decision to help his team win the game

I didn’t read the Posnanski piece - but I’m not sure why anyone would think it’s a managers job to pander to the fans. Their job is to win games. There’s probably more room for debate with Kershaw - but with Miggy, the fans boo’d because *they* wanted to see hit 3000 in person. He’ll get plenty of chances.

It was an unnecessary sign of respect and poor strategy. Cabrera hadn't been IBB'd since 2020, going back at least 800 PAs -- all with hitters weaker than Meadows behind him!

First base was open. He was walked to load the bases, to open up the possibility of a force play on all four bases, instead of none.

it wasn’t a sign of respect, i think it’s what almost any manager would do in that situation

Also, Kershaw asked to be taken out of the game. He wasn’t begging to stay in and overruled by his advanced stay-addled poindexter manager. He asked to come out because his arm isn’t built up enough. That point keeps getting missed, but if a player asks to come out for injury concerns and you force them to stay in and make history, uh

Baseball is fun and fans want memorable things to happen, but we aren’t entitled to these things any more than some Star Wars fan is entitled to the thousandth rebooted spin off mini series taking place on the fourth moon of Naboo.