coolhandluke121
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Everything posted by coolhandluke121
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Friendly reminder that I merely disagreed with someone who said he's the 2nd-best player on the team, and then I explained why. You're saying the same thing, so I don't see what the issue is. It's not a case of me digging on him for fun or anything. It's been taken totally out of context for some reason. That's just excessively high praise, and polished scorers are often subject to being a little overrated. I don't really consider those advanced stats. I mean, it's sort of like calling OPS an advanced stat, because it's a pretty small part of the picture if you get down to it. On/off stats, controlled for lineups, are much better. Granted, they're not perfect either, but they're the NBA equivalent of WAR and they're the best we've got. WAR captures how much value a player adds to the team, controlling for position, and adjusted on/off stats measures whether the team plays better or worse with a player on the court, controlling for the on/off profiles of teammates in the same lineups. Several of those other stats just measure scoring proficiency with no context. Defensive and offensive rating are worth something, but they also need to be adjusted for lineups. In any case, the offensive rating does lend tentative support to what I'm saying about how much Brogdon benefits tremendously from playing with the other guys and the attention they get, but lineups can really affect that (for example, Giannis used to often play with bench units, so his raw on/off stats didn't do justice to his impact).
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Waiting made sense for a long time there. Then they cracked down on PEDs (meaning players can't stay in their prime until their late 30's) and teams got more discerning about value at the same time. I agree though. There should be more early extensions, and I think there will be soon. But even that could be something teams don't do when there are so many cheap players in their prime always coming up, due to team control rules and antiquated arbitration settlements that don't reflect true value.
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If by "big part of me" you mean "every fiber of my being", then I concur. Suck it Manny. I think the players have a legit gripe though. They should be getting more of the revenue. To me the solution is obvious - pay them more when they're young and are actually worth it. It's hard to argue that owners should go back to handing out huge free agent deals again, as that would often put their teams at a competitive disadvantage. But you can't just let them pocket the extra money; it should go to the players who are earning it. The young guys are getting way underpaid.
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While I agree, I think this is overstated in terms of putting people who would support the move on the defensive. It comes down to what you care about in the fan experience. I wouldn't trade last year's experience for one of the Yankees' titles. I'd rather love the team than the piece of hardware. Their resourcefulness and resilience and personality last year was much better than buying a title. So I definitely wouldn't support it because loving and respecting the team is too steep of a price to pay for me. I actually think loving the team should be the reason you want them to win in the first place, and not the other way around. But that's a matter of personal taste.
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Put it this way: there are about 27 potential mystery teams, and the probability that one of them is the Brewers is probably a lot lower than 1 in 27. If there's a stunner coming, I think it's more likely that they manage to get Kluber on a steal or sign Kimbrel.
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The plan is to give a roster spot and precious salary to some retread who's better than those guys just so you can mash LHP's when half your positions players are already RHB's and Grandal is a legit switch-hitter? Even though only about 20% of pitchers are LHP's? Braun, Aguilar, Pina, Cain, Arcia, Perez Thames, Shaw, Yelich, Gamel, Spangenberg Grandal You could make a pretty strong case that they should add a guy like Moustakas. So many pitchers are RHP's. It's robbing Peter and Paul to pay Mary if you want more than half your position players to be RHB's just so you can start 7 RHB's against LHP's.
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But as Bill Hall Star said, they will often be able to shuttle guys for times like that. If you have 10 straight games and 7 are against the Cubs and Dodgers, then you call up Saladino or Dubon instead of one of the young pitchers for some of those games. Otherwise you're talking about a permanent spot on the 25 for a guy who just won't see much playing time. I don't think that's a good allocation of money or roster spots.
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Me, in response to someone who literally said Brogdon's the 2nd-best player on the team: "I don't think Brogdon's the 2nd-best player on the team. Here's why." You: 5 rambling posts complaining about what I said. Also you: "Who ever said Brogdon was the 2nd-best player on the team?" Also you: "You contradict yourself when you say Brogdon's not the 2nd-best player on the team, but you think Wilson has a very high ceiling." Wut. Also you: "Who made this a referendum on Brogdon vs. Wilson?" (You did.) Also you: "You keep taking things I haven't said to argue with."
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Seriously. Don't know why some people get such cognitive dissonance from ordinary people noticing a guy in a prestigious position is actually a moron. It happens all the time.
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I do know what it means. I graduated with high honors in pscyhology from Wisconsin. I'll grant that you usually can't clinically diagnose a public figure as a sociopath, but where there's smoke there's fire. I noticed you left out the wife-beating by the way. Pretty convenient. How about the confirmed incident where Kidd claimed the players voted to suspend Jabari, but the incident never happened? Or the way he said Giannis texted him to say he shouldn't have been fired, which Giannis objected to because it was supposed to be a private conversation? A sociopath is a supreme manipulator who doesn't care about other people. Kidd checks an awful lot of boxes.
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How anyone can watch what's happening and not conclude Kidd was terrible is beyond me. He's an arrogant, stubborn sociopath whose personality has poisoned every city he's been in at some point. When he was playing, his talent made up for it. Coaching? Not so much. Not missing that isoball offense at all. Yeah....and this is where I'm just...out. There's ridiculous(claiming you predicted the Cain, Yellich and then Grandal acquisitions as well as how the Brewers would eventually use their pitching staff well ahead of time)...that I can just ignore and move past. Then there's this....just absolutely ridiculous level of hyperbole. Never claimed I predicted those acquisitions. I said those were the guys I wanted. As for predicting some of their changes to how they use their staff, you could easily look that up in last year's free agency debates about adding a starting pitcher. Are you aware of Kidd's history? Drunk-driving, wife-beating, kicking teammates in the head at Cal, the Lawrence Frank incident, sleeping with his own teammate's gf behind his back in Dallas? I think you're in over your head here. Saying "Kidd is not terrible" should have tipped me off right away.
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Yeah, I'd be fine with Moustakas. I don't think you should prioritize how you perform against LHP's to the point where you want a good RHB option at every position. There's just not enough opposing LHP's to waste precious roster spots like that. I also think there was somewhat of a statistical aberration in their performance against LHP's last year. Didn't Braun, Santana, Pina, and Arcia all slump against them at the same time last year? I wouldn't worry too much about it. Braun, Aguilar, Arcia, Perez, Cain, Yelich, and Pina should be an above average lineup against LHP's, even with Shaw or Moustakas. Would be fine with a strict Corenan Sperezburg platoon as well. Not real interested in Walker.
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How anyone can watch what's happening and not conclude Kidd was terrible is beyond me. He's an arrogant, stubborn sociopath whose personality has poisoned every city he's been in at some point. When he was playing, his talent made up for it. Coaching? Not so much. Not missing that isoball offense at all.
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He's not guarding the other team's best players very often. Bledsoe guards the best guards and Khris guards guys like Kawhi and Durant. He would be easier to replace than those two. He's shooting and scoring? LOL, that's like ignoring WAR and looking at runs or RBI's. He's good, but he's not the 2nd-best guy on the team. He's way behind Bledsoe, Lopez, Khris, and of course Giannis in RPM. He's even a tick below Hill, albeit in a small sample (that basically means the Bucks struggle more when any of the other starters come out of the game, but don't suffer when Brogdon comes out, although there are conflating variables of course). His contributions aren't that hard to replace. As for Wilson, I think he's literally quicker than Brogdon on defense (not just quicker for a big man but literally quicker) with legit center size and strength and possibly comparable shooting at a position where it's much harder to find good shooting. He also has a small fraction of the experience Brogdon does. He started playing at a late age, had a stress fracture in high school, underwent extensive rehabilitation for biomechanics in college, and missed time in college with ankle injuries. He has a much higher ceiling than Brogdon.
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I mean, can you imagine if they had heeded all the red flags with regard to Jabari and gotten anything of value for that #2 pick, whether before the draft or at any point before he tore his ACL the second time and still had trade value? Oh c'mon. "All the Red Flags" before the draft? Nobody saw the situation devolving like it did. I'm not saying drafting Embid at the time would have been wise....only with the benefit of hindsight can I say it was a good move. You can't say the inverse is true with Jabari. Duke was often better with him on the bench. His defense was that bad, even in college. One of the ultimate empty stats guys in the history of the NBA. Was also fat several times before he even turned 21. Yes, the red flags were there. And yes, some people did see the situation devolving like it did. He was a consensus top-3 pick in the same way Chris Carter would have been a consensus all-star after leading the NL in home runs if he had played 30 years ago - because there are still a bunch of people making those decisions who have no idea about the nuances involved in evaluating players.
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Kidd was terrible. Some people gave him credit for Giannis and Khris improving their skills under him, but improving skills is the most rote part of coaching. They were learning some bad habits about how to play. You can see how Bud coaches spacing and ball movement, and it's amazing. I was thrilled the first time I saw DJ play this year because they were clearly coaching him to set screens constantly and get open behind the arc, and he was buying in. He was lost last year. He's been absolutely terrific. I honestly can't put an upper limit on how good he could be eventually. ETA: Hate to say it, but I think Suki's vitamins get some of the credit too. I know I'm cynical, but we're talking about a trainer who arrived with somewhat of a reputation for pushing those boundaries, and we're seeing results that (indirectly) support a lot of cynicism.
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I guess if some other team really thinks he's the 2nd-best player on arguably the best regular-season team in the league and pays him accordingly, we'll find out. My money is on him struggling to maintain this if he ever gets the kind of defensive attention guys like Giannis and Khris get.
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I mean, can you imagine if they had heeded all the red flags with regard to Jabari and gotten anything of value for that #2 pick, whether before the draft or at any point before he tore his ACL the second time and still had trade value?
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It's not "for some reason". It's for very obvious reasons. He looked awful in the second half last year and has actually been awful for most of his professional career. There's no reason to assume his first half is indicative of the real Aguilar. And a guy with his training habits and conditioning could be a strong early decline candidate. 29 is already past prime age for the average player.
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It's possible to have numbers and not be that good though. There's no stat for the stagnant possessions he creates by over-dribbling, and he's really slow by today's perimeter defense standards. He doesn't close out shooters or stay in front of quick drivers. That's why advanced stats are rather unfriendly to him. Basketball is still kind of stuck in the equivalent of baseball's "RBI's bro" phase, but sometimes the guy driving in the run is more replaceable than the guys setting up his opportunities (getting on base in baseball or being the guy who draws the other team's best defenders and frequent double-teams in basketball). That may sounds excessively negative out of context, but remember that I originally responded to someone saying he's been the second-best player on the team. I'm not trying to bash him, but 2nd-best player on a top-3 team is excessively high praise for the role he's playing. He's a role player, but his role is opportunistic scoring and that tends to get you incorrectly labeled as a star in basketball. He's good, but his impact is nothing special. He's like O.J. Mayo before he discovered obesity and cocaine.
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That I don't know. Teams are constantly kicking the can down the road when it comes to paying salaries though. It's standard practice in baseball for whatever reason. There's a lot more involved than just whether or not you're paying the luxury tax. Escrow and insurance and all that stuff. I think they can even claim depreciation on players, and it's the only sport where you can do that. Maybe that has something to do with it.
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I don't see how you can assume he won't get better offers next year. The qualifying offer is a big deal to teams these days. Without that, and with big numbers in Miller Park, he could easily end up getting $60m in the next 3 years. He's a good player at a premium position. I would have definitely taken 4/$60m, but what he did is not a bad gamble. There's pretty good chance he's healthy and productive, which gives him an outside chance at a huge payday.
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In practice I think it's just a way to defer a little guaranteed salary into the next season, as someone mentioned earlier. It's a very thin margin where it's in both the player's and the team's best interest to pick up the option. Either the player performed and would get a raise in free agency, or did not perform and is therefore not asked back. Rarely does it hit the narrow interval where both parties pick up the option. It makes total sense for Grandal. Put up big numbers in Miller Park and get back on the market as soon as possible, without a qualifying offer hanging over his head.
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Yeah, I guess that's why I'm wondering if the market isn't as strong for him as he and his camp had hoped it would be this winter? Then again, the Phillies and their "stupid money" might just be holding off until they throw even more "stupid money" at Harper first before they offer the same to someone like Keuchel? Maybe that's the reason why we haven't heard much on him this winter? Both sides might realize that the Phillies are the only team willing to give him the type of money that he wants, and they are just prioritizing Harper first?
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Yankees Sign DJ LeMahieu, 2 Years - $24m
coolhandluke121 replied to JDBrewCrew's topic in Milwaukee Brewers Talk
Glad the Brewers didn't blow their load on Lowrie or LeMahieu.