sveumrules

TB beat DAL, but lost to LAR, so I believe a DAL win plus an LAR loss plus a TB loss would put the Bucs in the #4 seed. According to Football Outsiders that is about a 1.6% chance They've got DAL staying in the #4 seed as a 90.2% chance.

Speaking of Hintzen, I never realized he counts a knuckleball among the pitches in his arsenal. Pretty cool wrinkle to toss up there every once in awhile... https://blogs.fangraphs.com/sunday-notes-brewers-prospect-j-t-hintzen-isnt-a-knuckleball-pitcher/

Sure, Ray is a bust. That is a common theme for 2016 first rounders... https://www.baseball-reference.com/draft/?year_ID=2016&draft_round=1&draft_type=junreg&query_type=year_round ...with only 9 of 41 cracking even 1.0 WAR five years on, that would be something like a 78% bust rate to this point. Brewers OF is already five deep with Yelich, Cain, Renfroe, Taylor & Jace. By virtue of being on the 40 man that makes Ray something like the 6th OF at the moment. No hope, just bleak reality.

Here's the last 20 years of MVPs with their playoff seeding. If recent-ish history is any kind of indicator (Vegas seems to think it is), being the QB for a #1 seed gives you the best shot at MVP with 9 of the last 12 winners fitting the criteria... 2020: Rodgers #1 2019: Jackson #1 2018: Mahomes #1 2017: Brady #1 2016: Ryan #2 2015: Newton #1 2014: Rodgers #2 2013: Manning #1 2012: Peterson #6 2011: Rodgers #1 2010: Brady #1 2009: Manning #1 2008: Manning #5 2007: Brady #1 2006: Tomlinson #1 2005: Alexander #1 2004: Manning #3 2003: Manning #2 / McNair #5 2002: Gannon #1 2001: Warner #1

Here's another way of looking at Rodgers vs Brady this year. Both have completed 352 of 513 passes (68.6%) for 3,977 yards (7.8 Y/A & 11.3 Y/C) with 35 TD / 4 INT (6.8 TD% & 0.8 INT%). In addition to that, Brady has also completed 104 of 169 passes (61.5%) for 1,013 yards (6.0 Y/A & 9.7 Y/C) with 5 TD / 8 INT (3.0 TD% & 4.7 INT%). Brady's additional quantity is of a markedly inferior quality. Rodgers was so efficient this year he gave away a game week one, missed a second game with COVID & still wrapped up the #1 seed to put himself in a position to play minimally or not at all in week seventeen.

Brady is certainly in the running, but he needed 169 more attempts & threw 8 more interceptions in the process of getting those extra 1000 yards & 5 TDs. That's why his passer rating of 100.5 is quite a bit behind Rodgers passer rating of 111.1. All the extra points scored are great, but the Buccaneers are still 12-4 (.750 W%) when Brady starts while the Packers are 13-2 (.867 W%) when Rodgers starts. I'd say the points that Rodgers lead his team to were more valuable, at least in terms of winning football games.

non-GB teams NFC North: 15-32-1 non-IND teams AFC South: 17-31

If Taylor is more valuable than Rodgers it hasn't showed up in the win column. Colts have scored 27.5 points per game vs Packers scoring 26.3 points per game. Colts have given up 20.9 points per game vs Packers giving up 21.2 points per game. That the Colts are 9-7 with a 101 point differential while the Packers are 13-3 with an 86 point differential indicates (to me anyway) that Rodgers impact has been more valuable than Taylor's. Derrick Henry ran for 2,027 yards (about 300 more than JT) last year on an 11-5 team & didn't get a single MVP vote. Peterson had 2,097 rushing / 2,314 total when he won MVP back in 2012. Taylor is currently at 1,736 rushing / 2,076 total, an impressive season no doubt but not really in that upper stratosphere, as FTC laid out above. If Taylor propelled the Colts to the #1 seed in the AFC maybe, but hard to be the most valuable player in the league leading your team to the #6 seed.

Rodgers passer rating is 111.1 this season. When he won MVP in 2014 it was 112.2. If you take out the week one warm up (I know you can't do this) he is 13-1 with a 115.3 passer rating (10th all time). His play has been plenty deserving. Sure, Brady has 1000 more yards & 5 more TDs, he also has 169 more attempts & 8 more INTs. Rodgers has him beat in yards per attempt, yards per completion, TD% & INT%. Brady = Wheeler, Rodgers = Burnes.

I can almost guarantee that is because pepperoni just looks nicer than sausage on TV. You get the red to pop on the white cheese. Looks better than brown/gray sausage. Yup. The pepperoni also serves as a subtle subconscious reminder that pizza, much like time itself, is a flat circle. Unless you are in Detroit or Rocky Rococo's, then it's a rectangle.

Red Sox ZiPS dropped today at FanGraphs with a couple players of note... https://blogs.fangraphs.com/2022-zips-projections-boston-red-sox/ Schwarber is projected for a 133 OPS+. He'll probably be too expensive for the Brewers, but would fit nicely if the DH makes its way to the NL. Recently traded SS prospect David Hamilton also clocks in with an interesting projection. 0.9 WAR with a 67 OPS+, 33/5 SB/CS, and +7 defense.

If we're scripting out the ideal scenario, give me SF first then TB in the NFCCG. Vanquish both demons from the last two years en route to Rodgers second Lombardi Trophy.

Excellent thread concept, especially now in the doldrums of CBA limbo. Thanks, MH.

Yeah, if the Badgers had even an average QB this year to go along with Allen & the defense it could have been them out there getting steamrolled by Georgia instead of Michigan.

They fired their hitting coaches in early May. 12-12 with a 103 wRC+ & 3.41 R/G before the firing and 65-73 with a 101 wRC+ & 4.01 R/G after the firing. Weird how firing their hitting coaches didn't turn around their whole season. Maybe their attempt to buy the NL East crown go better this year.

I think the modern view is that RBI are a combination of opportunity, batter skill & good old fashioned luck. Ty France had a 128 OPS+ & drove in 73 of 386 runners. Castellanos had a 136 OPS+ & drove in 100 of 387 runners. A. Meadows had a 117 OPS+ & drove in 106 of 387 runners. The idea there is no such thing as clutch is because those type of numbers show a very low year to year correlation. Seager's yearly OPS with RISP from 2021 backward.... 1015, 842, 868, 657, 893, 1031, 606, 835, 716, 892, 441 Compared to his overall seasonal OPS from 2021 backward... 723, 788, 789, 673, 773, 859, 779, 788, 764, 738, 691 Seager's average year to year OPS variance with RISP was 218 points compared to an average year to year variance of 55 points on the overall seasonal OPS.

Kind of a microcosm of the Mariners season, 211/287/361 with bases empty vs 259/338/450 with RISP. 205/288/336 in low leverage, 228/299/395 in medium leverage, 271/345/482 in high leverage. That's how you go 90-72 with a negative 51 run differential.

Along those line, Portis shot an insane 47% from 3 last season. This year he has doubled his attempts, and his % has only dipped to 43%. Yeah, Bobby definitely feels like he is a notch above what Brook provided on offense, but maybe that same notch below when it comes to rim protection. Just looking at some various lineup combos from BRef over the last couple few years... Giannis & Bobby 21/22 (391 minutes) +8.6 pts/100 Giannis & Bobby 20/21 (541 minutes) +10.2 pts/100 Giannis & Brook 20/21 (1270 minutes) +7.6 pts/100 Giannis & Brook 19/20 (1154 minutes) +17.0 pts/100 Giannis & Brook 18/19 (1494 minutes) +11.2 pts/100 Big Three & Bobby 21/22 (168 minutes) +8.6 pts/100 Big Three & Bobby 20/21 (146 minutes) +15.9 pts/100 Big Three & Brook 20/21 (683 minutes) +9.1 pts/100 Big Three 21/22 (271 minutes) +13.4 pts/100 Big Three 20/21 (922 minutes) +10.9 pts/100

Yeah, I think the consensus Top 6 at this point are Ashby, Turang, Small, Mitchell, Wiemer & Frelick. Specific organizations will value them differently based on their preferences, but there is enough there to make a competitive offer on say, Matt Olson for instance. Of the six, I'd most like to hold onto Ashby (best stuff, MLB success already) Wiemer (best power prospect in system) and Small (success at AAA with high floor, thin organizational pitching depth). Mitchell/Frelick bring similar skill sets & OF is pretty deep in the system, so dealing one of them wouldn't hurt too much. I like Turang too, but with Adames under control the next few years & Zamora/Garcia behind him, SS depth is pretty solid too.

Ashby & Wiemer head up the FanGraphs Top 36 Prospects published today, with Valerio also getting his highest ranking thus far at #9... https://blogs.fangraphs.com/milwaukee-brewers-top-37-prospects-2022/ Here's the System Overview... Some of this is due to the process by which we tend to arrive at our rankings, but the Brewers have clearly made a concerted effort to build via hit-tool oriented up-the-middle players; eight of their top 11 prospects are either middle infielders or center fielders. When the Brewers deviate from an up-the-middle approach, they’ve tended to target hitters with one premium tool, typically measurable raw power. Their acquisition of pitchers has been less traditional, and they’re perhaps the best club in the game at plucking interesting pitchers from independent ball, including Jake Cousins, who should have been on last year’s list. Many of their pitching prospects have extreme release points or pitch characteristics that are unique in some way, which has been true for most of the David Stearns era. The group is a little thin at present and the Brewers probably need more pitching depth than they currently have to sufficiently navigate the injuries that typically befall a big league staff. Milwaukee was one of a number of teams that seemed less inclined to protect their fringe 40-man prospects ahead of the deadline. I mentioned missing data in Joey Wiemer’s blurb. I sourced some specific TrackMan data across the entire minors at the end of the season, and most of the Brewers’ A-ball hitters are missing from it. When I checked with a source from a different org on some of those names, they were experiencing a similar issue. It’s a glimpse into how haphazard the data-sharing aspects of ops seem to be, if nothing else.

25 seasons is a marvel no doubt, but when almost half those seasons ended up with marginal to negative value it's considerably less impressive than it sounds. 1959: -0.5 WAR 1960: -0.7 WAR 1963: -0.6 WAR 1965: 0.4 WAR 1977: -1.4 WAR 1978: -0.2 WAR 1979: 0.3 WAR 1980: 0.3 WAR 1981: -0.7 WAR 1982: -1.1 WAR 1983: -0.2 WAR Same thing with the Gold Gloves. Greatest Fielding Pitcher of All Time sounds impressive, but when having an extra infielder for all those years still only comes out to a 108 ERA+ it apparently wasn't quite as impactful as it sounds. Buehrle worked fast, won a bunch of Gold Gloves, pitched almost 300 IP more than the next most durable pitcher during his career, was 9% better than Kaat by ERA+ and racked up 10 more WAR than Kaat over his career, yet he only cracked 11% his first time around & is currently sitting at 3.7% on Ballot Tracker for this year.

Both $ide$ have too much at $take to let thi$ drag out too long. The can will likely get kicked down the road until the next CBA on a number of issues that should have been addressed a couple two tree CBAs ago, but hey, at least there will still be baseball. Three hour forty five minute long 3-1 game with 37 combined strikeouts, 9 walks, 3 HBP & 4 hits (2 of which are HR) on a Tuesday night baseball.

Kaat threw 75 IP with a 90 ERA+ which shakes out to -1.1 WAR for the 1982 Cardinals. That's a key contributor? Wins? Really? I thought we'd moved far beyond using Wins to measure how good a pitcher is. Even if you do want to look at Wins for some reason, why not look at Losses too? Kaat lost 237 games, 120 more than Key and 146 more than Guidry. By winning percentage Key (.614%) and Guidry (.651%) easily outpace Kaat (.544%) because even though W/L is a team stat, Key & Guidry consistently gave their teams a better chance to win because they were notably better at preventing runs than Kaat. Sure, Kaat has more strikeouts, he threw 2,000 more innings. Guidry (142 K%+) by a mile and Key by a smidgen (96 K%+) both struck out batters at a higher rate than Kaat (90 K%+) did once accounting for the different eras that they played in. Vizquel's percentages are trending down pretty hard from last year at Ballot Tracker. 49.1% received in 2021 vs only 10.3% so far this year.

i think Kaat's 2000 more innings probably would tilt him into the HOF for me just on that longetivity. Under the Hall of Fame Monitor, he hits 130 when a likely HOF player is at 100. I think the longetivity makes his case as opposed to hurting it. I post this despite his presence on the 1982 Cardinals (SPIT). Those 2,000 innings are mostly just a result of the eras they played in though. From 1984-98 when Key was active he threw the 6th most innings in MLB with the 3rd highest rWAR. From 1959-83 when Kaat was active he threw the 4th most innings in MLB with the 16th highest rWAR. Guidry didn't stack up in terms of health/longevity, throwing only the 21st most innings while he was active from 1975-88, but still managed a tie with Steve Carlton for 3rd in rWAR over that time frame due to his dominance when he was on the mound. That Key/Guidry were able to put up similar value over 2,000 fewer innings is a testament to how much better pitchers they were, as borne out by their 11-14% edge in ERA+ & higher ranking among their contemporaries by rWAR. If I'm splitting hairs between players with similar career value, give me the guys with the higher peaks over the guys that stuck around being average for a longer period of time. Average Kaat season | 202 IP | 108 ERA+ | 2.0 WAR Average Key season | 205 IP | 122 ERA+ | 3.9 WAR Average Guidry season | 235 IP | 119 ERA+ | 4.7 WAR

On the replay it looked like the ball might have just grazed one of the D lineman, in which case I believe PI is off the table after the ball has been contacted by a defender. If the ball wan't touched at the line it is probably PI by the book, but also one of those borderline calls that if they flagged every time the game would never end.