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

right ... i don't really get the baseball scoring logic of that not counting as a hit - he hit the ball and ended up on first without an error. i guess the idea is he probably would have been out if he had been the only runner.

right

lol sorry for that last post where i make an argument and then immediately counter my own argument.

the answer was within you all along

The top 5 for household rating are:

St Louis Cardinals – 7.52
Milwaukee Brewers – 5.21
Kansas City Royals – 4.80
San Diego Padres – 4.59
Detroit Tigers – 4.23

it's confirmed: we've got jack shit to do in the midwest

https://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2022/05/16/mlbs-biggest-untold-story-is-its-mass-appeal-for-advertisers-on-regional-sports-networks/

that pujols pitching performance will go down with the great beltre/colon videos

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2022/05/chris-paddack-undergoes-tommy-john-surgery.html

The Padres dodged a bullet there, so much so, that that trade seems fishie.

https://i.imgur.com/cDxLCo1.png

*2 New Challengers Enter the Tournament*

oops, sorry - the number on the right is sprint speed (ft/s). they are the bottom 4 in MLB. the number in the column to the left is the number of "sprints" that are being measured

i attributed maldonado's presence a few weeks ago to small sample size, but he has REALLY lost a step. last year he was running 23.5 ft/s, which is still very slow for a baseball player, but muuuuuch faster than he's running now. is he injured?

aaron judge hitting two homers and then bitching about camden yards’ new wall because he didn’t get a third is lame af

Johnny Cueto owns an ambulance that transforms into a portable sound wall with 54 speakers. It's just another reason he is The Most Interesting Man In Baseball. Story at ESPN, free and unlocked, on the legend of leisure -- and, it turns out, work ethic: https://t.co/goh3wgnmGp pic.twitter.com/r3TAMiWFPl

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) May 21, 2022

Yes let’s glorify the rich and their extravagant lifestyles its totally healthy

It could be this crap.

https://www.yahoo.com/sports/yankees-white-sox-benches-clear-after-josh-donaldson-calls-tim-anderson-jackie-robinson-223254927.html

Fuck baseball.

https://www.si.com/mlb/2019/04/30/chicago-white-sox-tim-anderson-jackie-robinson

What sucks even more is Donaldson saying he did it to him starting last year, and didn’t understand why it was a big deal now. After Anderson had even let it slide the first time he did it in the game yesterday. Everyone know someone like a Josh Donaldson. Fuck him is right. How many Jackie Robinson tributes has he seen in his life?

I realize Donaldson can be an asshole - but if Anderson was comparing himself to Robinson, it kind of opens himself up to some ribbing.

there's a lot to say on that, but in short, i completely disagree. and regardless, there is no way that the pattern of behavior going back to last year, with Anderson alone (who knows how many other players he is doing this to) is "some ribbing"

it's not something that requires banning or disciplinary action, that sounds like it would be a complete mess. but Donaldson should stfu for the rest of his life

Yeah, gentle ribbing does not lead to on field brawls. Donaldson should know better. It’s not like I need another reason to dislike the Yankees.

yadier molina has joined prince albert in the career 36.00 ERA club

yankees fans both booing tim anderson and chanting ‘jackie’ at him tonight

The Padres spanked The Giants this weekend, they outplayed them in every aspect. This Giants team is not even close to what they were last year.

Posey effect.

On to the Mets...

sorry to parachute into the thread like this, but i was curious *why* Anderson brought up Jackie in that old interview and now having read it, *that* - that he said that - is the dumbest part of all of this!

i thought at least maybe he was the only out player or something. he's the Jackie Robinson of *bringing fun back to the game*?!

Without bringing Robinson's name into it, if Anderson really sees himself as a pioneer of "fun" as that 2019 article suggests, then he's opening himself to ridicule. But it wouldn't surprise me if the name calling had gotten out of hand since then, not at all. To be on the safe side, it would be best for all the players involved in this to STFU from now on.

i'm sure ben shapiro fan josh donaldson simply found TA's comparison gauche, no other reason he'd bring it up 3 years later out of the blue i'm sure

He said he’d brought it up before, which is why he was caught off guard by the reaction.

I just watched the craziest game I have ever seen. Mets went up by three after trailing by six runs. Joc Paterson hit three home run. Giants then were down again by one in the ninth and win 13-12.

Lol Joc said he was chatting with Barry Bonds before the game and said it probably rubbed off on him.

What a game, I love baseball.

I don’t know if anyone deserved to win that game though, pretty bad pitching and lots of fielding gaffes. Ball was flying everywhere like it was Coors field.

Lol Joc said he was chatting with Barry Bonds before the game and said it probably rubbed off on him.

― Bee OK, Wednesday, May 25, 2022 12:46 AM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

insert flaxseed oil joke

What a great playlist I just made. pic.twitter.com/35mT7nwP99

— Nationals on Reddit (@NatsOnReddit) May 25, 2022

Holy fuck. If my neighbours were asleep, they’re not anymore

the yankees have signed utterly washed-up cardinals legend matt carpenter and are using him tonight as a designated hitter, which seems like a slap in the face to everyone else in the organization

i have just heard about this, along with the news that he shaved and looks weird, and i am desperately searching for info

apparently he was putting up above average production in AAA for the rangers, which would be the first sustained period of non-awfulness for him since maybe 2018?

Our first look at Matt Carpenter in his Yankees threads! pic.twitter.com/H65bm89DQI

— Talkin' Yanks (@TalkinYanks) May 26, 2022

he can still draw walks i guess

David Strathairn, DH

J.D. Martinez is hitting .380 right now, albeit with less power than usual. He's been such an amazing hitter through his career...Weird thing is, his top comps for Similarity Score are Nolan Arenado on the one side (career numbers only) and Jim Edmonds on the other (age specific), two fabled defensive players...Martinez has next to no defensive value, no?

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/martijd02.shtml#all_appearances

I guess Similarity Scores are based on offense only--I always thought there was at least a built-in position component.

makes you really appreciate arenado and edmonds - both of them similar to JD Martinez (at least at the moment, compared to their career (arenado) or late-career (edmonds), but with astounding defense as well

However, Jim Edmonds is the one of the worst 10 broadcasters of all time, which makes his early HoF bow-out seem better in retrospect. dude needs to not be in the hall of fame and to just shut up for a minute

nevermind. i retract any trace of optimism i had from carpenter's minor league line

There’s also a complicating factor: he’s not hitting the baseball very hard. His average exit velocity in the minors this year stands at only 86.0 mph. That would rank him 230th out of 260 qualified players, via Statcast, and that’s against pitchers who are largely significantly inferior to the ones he’ll face with the Yankees. He does a little better in hard-hit percentage but still would rank in the bottom third of baseball; his 35.5% rate is 187th out of 260, again with the additional caveat that he’s facing weaker pitching. That’s enough to take some of the optimism out of the signing for me.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/matt-carpenter-resurfaces-with-the-yankees/

matt carpenter used to beat the shift with above average power, great contact skills, and lots of walks and deep counts.

i'm not not sure what order those elements disappeared during his decline (which happened steeply a few years ago and only got worse), but to me it looked like the power went first. he had lots of back injuries, too, probably a heavy factor. if his back feels anything like mine does, i have no idea how or why he is still attempting to be a pro baseball man. once his power went, he was no longer driving the ball over the outfielders (or into the seats) but instead right into a wall of shifted fielders. he continued to draw some walks, but pitchers started challenging him more, and he did not meet the challenge and never has, ever since 2018

i think the apple+ broadcast is pretty awful, based on the two that i've seen, once in early season, one last week. among many, many other things, they repeatedly got the names of the players wrong. Not just once or twice, but five, six, seven times. i tuned out near the end.

one thing i DO like about it is the general presentation, and although i'm sure it's annoying to many, i actually like the little pitch-by-pitch probabilities in the corner of the screen.

turns out even those are awful. they're based on a proprietary machine learning kinda deal from nVenue which uses 120 inputs to come up with the probabilities. this fangraphs writer compared it to his own extremely rudimentary model, using nothing but widely available hit-type probabilities based on count. turns out this dude's one-variable model ended up predicting the outcome better than the proprietary secret sauce on apple is using.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/how-good-are-those-probabilities-on-the-apple-tv-broadcasts/

MLB announcement: Free-agent pitcher Carlos Martínez has received an 80-game suspension without pay after testing positive for Ibutamoren, a performance-enhancing substance. Martínez formerly is of the Cardinals and recently was released by the Red Sox.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) May 27, 2022

So Carpenter hit one out today.

And this Apple broadcast is god awful