Thurston Fluff

We found out ten days before Christmas my brother has terminal cancer. 54 years old, doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, had regular checkups and generally lived a healthy lifestyle. Got operated on the Monday before Christmas and was released from the hospital on Christmas day. So I feel you on the joyless season. As you said though, we'll get through it. Nothing else to do but go on.

This is just speculation on my part but I feel the lockout will end when both sides agree on a new labor contract. I want to be clear, I have no inside information. I just have a feeling that's when it will end.

Thanks for the effort, ClosetBrewerFan. They do seem to do about what one could reasonably expect them to. Now all we need is a place that projects using simple stats and see if the more advanced metrics do a truly better job. Anyone know if something like that exist? I guess we could just use the stats from last season and see if they are more or less the same then compare that to the projection systems.

Thank you for the link. It's a bit like the one I posted in that both are from a fantasy perspective. What I really want to see is each projection system evaluated from a pure baseball perspective. That would include more than the usual scoring stats fantasy baseball looks at. But your link and mine both at least try to evaluate the various systems in some manner. I'd still love to see each system show its effectiveness in some objective way. They have all the numbers so they could easily do it if they wanted to. Pretty sure this year was a little wider swing than normal with the Giants essentially being thee most under-projected team of all time, but most seasons I believe the average margin of error ends up around 7-8 team wins on a macro level. On an individual player level probably the simplest way would be to focus on OPS+ for hitters / ERA+ for pitchers & then set a minimum PA/IP threshold to get a large enough sample. Just using roundish numbers, it looks like in 2021 there were 362 batters (about 12 per team) with at least 200 PAs & 338 pitchers (about 11 per team) with at least 50 IPs, that would essentially capture all the "regular" players. I don't have time to dig in now, but as the offseason drags on I might be able to poke around a little bit & try to put something together. That would be cool. Given the lockout maybe this is the year to do it. At least it'd be something to talk about. On the other hand, it's also probably the worst year to do it because covid may have skewed the data. It should be something each projection system does on its own every season to prove its credibility. Don't know why they don't. Even less sure why some places don't show competitors results if their own is proven to be superior.

Thank you for the link. It's a bit like the one I posted in that both are from a fantasy perspective. What I really want to see is each projection system evaluated from a pure baseball perspective. That would include more than the usual scoring stats fantasy baseball looks at. But your link and mine both at least try to evaluate the various systems in some manner. I'd still love to see each system show its effectiveness in some objective way. They have all the numbers so they could easily do it if they wanted to.

Why not just use basic stats to get the basis to judge from if accuracy isn't relevant? I get that defining accuracy is hard, not to mention subjective. One of the articles I posted outlines the difficulty. Which begs the question. Why should we simply believe it's true if we haven't, or can't, measure it? As far as I can tell there is a lot of articles explaining why some of these in-depth predictors are better, but nothing showing they actually are better. If one claim's it's more accurate than something else, then it stands to reason it was shown to actually be so. But I can't find anything showing it is. Again, maybe I missed it since I'm not as big on that sort of thing. If anyone can point me to something actually showing it's better that would be helpful. I'm not talking about explanations of why it should be. I've found plenty of that. I'm also appreciative of posters here explaining why they like them. But that is not the same as SHOWING its superiority. Given how long these projection systems have been around it seems like a major oversight not to show it really is better.

Shouldn't the claims of how useful they are be backed up with past results? I'm not against them as much as I've never actually seen a comparison of predictions to results. I did a little looking and saw some very good articles on why we use them. This one for instance does a very good job of that. https://library.fangraphs.com/principles/projections/ But it doesn't tell show how accurate those systems have been in the past. It just asserts it's more accurate than the raw stats, the eye test or whatever. But given the nature of analytics it seems reasonable to show us that it actually IS better. It seems like it'd be very easy to actually show what they predicted vs what actually happened, so I looked a bit. While looking I found this article that demonstrates how hard it is to agree on accuracy. https://www.baseballhq.com/great-myths-projective-accuracy While I could find a lot of stuff on projecting accuracy, I didn't find much on how accurate these systems have been. I did find stuff on fantasy including this one https://www.fantasypros.com/2021/03/most-accurate-fantasy-baseball-projections-2020/ but not on actual baseball outcomes. Does anyone know where I can find something that shows the results compared to the projections? Or do I just have to manually go through each system for each player and compare the results with the projections individually?

I'm with you on that. However given the lack of anything else going on in baseball it's more interesting than usual. What might make it more interesting is to go back and see how past projections turned out. At least then we'd know what to make of the projection systems themselves.

That was me. I know the metrics out there state such and such WAR is worth such and such dollars. But as noted above, even the advanced metrics disagree on what good defense is. I fail to see how one can accurately measure dollar value via WAR when people can't even settle on a single definition of WAR. Or even what good defense is for that matter. Which is why I never really liked using it. I probably shouldn't have used it there either but it made for an easy illustration. I still stand by my belief Renfroe would get far more in free agency than what a soft market for average corner outfielders would dictate. I also believe the free agent market is our best indicator of value.

I was using it as a way to demonstrate the market for one-dimensional corner outfielder bats isn't exactly soft. I get Avi is slightly better but I don't consider a projected .8 higher WAR for next season to be worth roughly $5 million more next year. While it was not a perfect comparison I seriously doubt we can get someone of the same caliber of player as Renfroe at the price we have Renfroe for. It would take roughly another $4-$5 million and several more years to get that.

Avi Garcia and Renfroe are about as close as one can get for comparison and Garcia just got a 4-year $53M deal. If that's a soft trade/free agent market then we have an answer as to why we traded for Renfroe.

I feel both sides are being short sighted to some degree. The players seem fine with large market super teams because they feel large markets with unlimited resources will provide more money to the players. Which is true in a vacuum but doesn't take into account how having such a competitive imbalance reduces overall revenue. If the sport doesn't grow, or only grows in a few large markets, there will be less overall money spent on players. The owners can't get the revenue sharing right which again limits overall growth. If both sides could put aside their personal best interests and worked on growing the whole sport all their personal interests would be better served. But when a person is looking at millions of dollars difference today it's hard to think of how many more millions they could all get tomorrow.

Kim is currently a free agent. Right now the only projected opposing NL Central starting LHPs are Miley (Cubs), Matz (Cardinals), Quintana (Pirates) and maybe Dillon Peters (Pirates). While there may not be many starting pitchers in the division yet the off season isn't over. Even assuming there aren't any more there are certainly lefty relievers who will need to pitch to him given the three batter rule. That also means opposing teams may have to change their usage of lefties if Renfroe is coming up in the inning. Not to mention pinch hitting. As has been mentioned we were short of power hitters to face left handed pitchers so having more balance makes it harder for opposing teams to navigate the lineup later in games. Diversification is one way to add to the offense if we can't find/afford major upgrades. Overall I like the deal in that we at least tried to add something we didn't have much of. I would have liked it better is we had a high OBP guy with the power but that isn't likely to happen given our payroll constraints.

When was the last time the team who won the off season actually won the World Series? FWIW I agree it would be nice to see something resembling a level playing field.

There is a guy who orders something for every holiday to the same person living in a group home for a couple years running now. I took the order for Thanksgiving and while casually talking to him I asked how he knew this person. He said he didn't actually know her. He had a disabled family member who lived in a group home and always felt sorry for some of the others there who never had any visitors or get any presents. When his family member passed away he decided to call the group home and ask about someone there who never got anything or any visitors. They gave him her name and he's been sending something to her ever since. This Thanksgiving I'm thankful there are people like him in the world.

The brutality is the run itself. For hundreds of years, every bull has been tortured and killed in this ridiculous tradition. There are humane ways of killing livestock, but people like to do it this way. So if some dope gets gored, I shed no tears. When I was in Italy there was a bull fight on tv. I watched a total of about five minutes and was horrified at how brutal it was. They don't just let a bull out and have a matador fight him with a cape and sword. That at least would be a fair fight even if the bull had no choice. But that''s not how it works. First the matador rides a horse and uses spears to stick the bull to the point where the blood loss takes enough of a toll on it to make it calm enough for the matador to get off the horse and use the cape and sword. It's like 90% dead before that happens. It's not like I'm squeamish or a major animals rights guy or anything. I helped butcher several types of animal including cows, pigs, deer, rabbits, ducks and chickens from start to finish. I personally think everyone who eats meat should do so at least once so they know what it takes to eat an animal. But never would have I thought people would enjoy seeing an animal tortured before it's killed like that.

You and me both. The "needle" is never static. It moves with each addition or subtraction so it doesn't even make sense. What they're really talking about is how far the needle moves not whether it moves at all.

IF they boost prearby/arby eligible players salaries there will have to be some sort of boost to revenue sharing. There is no way either players or small market teams will settle for one without the other. For small market teams the reason is obvious but if there are essentially ten teams that can afford players with four or more years of service time it isn't good for them either. Eventually the big market teams won't need any more players and the small market teams won't be able to afford players with more than a year or two of service time and nowhere to trade them to. Thus a LOT more teams declining arbitration sending a boatload of players to free agency thus saturating the market. A market that saturated isn't going to favor the players.

I'll admit, I would have offered an extension, and yeah, I threw a 6-year/$9 million. I think ti wouls have been a bargain at three years, $9 million. The fact is, Pina was a very good value, and he brought much to the table. Yes, he had a big power surge this year, but what he always brought was being that top-end backup. Will it kill the Brewers not to have Pina? Probably not. But I think it would have been much better to keep him than to have let him walk in an era with no draft-pick compensation. For me it's not about Pina's value as much as it is how that value translated to the overall team performance. For the sake of argument lets say there is room to add $10 million to the payroll. Would it be better to spend part of that money on Pina then have $7 million left for upgrading third base or use the whole $10 million for a better option at third? I wouldn't have had a problem with keeping him but that has more to do with liking Pina combined with thinking he's worth that much as a players than it does thinking it's the best way to spend limited resources for this team at this time. Key phrase being "for this team at this time." In any event I'm glad he gets his payday and a little security for the next couple seasons. While I'm sure he'd have loved to stay here I'm glad he at least got paid and seems to be in a good position for both playing time and getting to play on a competitive team.

I have3n't looked at any stats...I assume he won a lot of games? Many more than Corbin? He was 18-6 and had averaged over seven innings per game. Wins and innings pitched were much bigger things back then.

He was a very sound backup but one who you'd like to replace if he was the starter. While it would have been nice as a fan to see him back, paying that much for him would make it harder to improve the overall team.

I promise to wake you when Stearns signs Castellanos if you promise to stay sleep until then.

He Larry us.

If the market is that thin then he may want to see if there's a team willing to make him the main catcher. It may be less about money or years than playing time that ends his time here.

I don't any more either. I used to just do the comedy stuff now I'm a certified balloon artist as well (Yes that's areal thing.) Not really sure how that happened. [sarcasm]As a certified balloon artist, did you get a raise? Or are you full of hot air?[/sarcasm] It bugs me that we don't have a font for puns. I got to keep not having to work at a real job. I agree we need a pun font. Maybe chartreuse because it's both a liquor and color.