Turning2

Let’s go hitters!

Nothing to complain about Durbo’s defense so far

We need some “outfield” singles… there ya go Chourio. Will take the dingers too!!

Yes, they need to add a couple of consistent bats. Isn’t going to happen though. Score 6+ runs today, take the series., and we’ll forget about Saturday.

I'm not in the mood to point / counterpoint with individuals today, so I'll post some general thoughts regarding my view of the Moneyball era metrics. First thing, that movie came about based on the A's 2002 season and the supposed, innovative approach to player evaluation. With few (if any?) exceptions, none of the teams that need to resort to this data spinning alchemy has ever won a World Series by utilizing it. Perhaps small market KC beating the Mets in 2015 might qualify, yet they were 7th in overall payroll that year too. That's not exactly a David vrs Goliath victory like these metrics are supposed to deliver. Moral of that story... money STILL talks, BS walks. Revisiting a search for how WAR is supposedly calculated brought me to Baseball-Reference.com WAR Explained | Baseball-Reference.com. It only reinforces my beliefs. The wording of the definition makes my argument for me. Full of theoretical fluff rather than the calculable, traditional, time tested means to evaluate talent. The bold parts pasted from Baseball Reference tell me - and should tell everyone, what they need to know about the new mousetrap which a bunch of spreadsheet folks invented. How to Use WAR The idea behind the WAR framework is that we want to know how much better a player is than a player that would typically be available to replace that player. We start by comparing the player to average in a variety of venues, then compare our theoretical replacement player to the average player and add the two results together. There is no one way to determine WAR. There are hundreds of steps to make this calculation, and dozens of places where reasonable people can disagree on the best way to implement a particular part of the framework. We have taken the utmost care and study at each step in the process, and believe all of our choices are well reasoned and defensible. But WAR is necessarily an approximation and will never be as precise or accurate as one would like. Nobody ever argues about the validity of the traditional stats for a reason. That's because its black and white, real data crunching based on the actual rather than actuarial suppositions and projections. I think for myself and that rocks the boat of conformity sometimes. So be it. When folks get blathering on about some silly stat or another, I just laugh and skim over it. Others stand in line for the next new thing, ready to trumpet whatever they're told it is as being far superior than the old thing. I've seen it time and time again in the corporate environment. Lemmings doing lemming things. And then.. years later, it comes full circle, and the next wave of "go getter, full of themselves" smarty pants revert back to the systems and processes that worked previously, lauding them as the "new" continuous improvement implementation. I despise this mentality, and resent how it has infected the game I love. I hate seeing the players having to check their little cheat sheets on the playing field, drowning themselves in a minutiae of information that tells them what players of the past knew from observation, experience and baseball instinct. I understand the world changes, progression does occur. Sometimes for the better and sometimes not. It's a matter of distinguishing between the two of what actually present value, and what is a bunch of noise.

Sure, that ******** the development of some players, but it's also a bit of rationalization if we're going to be honest with ourselves.

I stepped away from following pro ball around 1986 when salaries and such were beginning to get stupid, and teams couldn't retain their players. So, no, I don't know anything about the Braun / Fielder era teams. The game has been taken over by the moneyball front office mindset thanks to Bill Gates providing the software to overanalyze what baseball didn't need to obsess about for over a century. In my mind, stats are calculable, whereas metrics are highly subjective and can be twisted to serve talking points and a cottage industry developed by computer nerds. When I speak of power, I don't mean it is the end all be all. Of course, you have to have more to your game than just power. That's what HRs, batting average, RBI's traditionally provided. On base and slugging percentages are useful too. But I put no stock in any of the Wins about replacement because from what I've read it's how much value you bring which equates to W's versus your replacement. You simply can't measure that because there are 8 other guys / positions whose performances have to be accounted for in a W or L. These supposition metrics just provide often useless data that some use to create new employment opportunities. The data paints a picture that doesn't necessarily reflect reality. I have to question how baseball managers ever managed to win without all these new measurements. Purely dumb luck? No, they indentified guys who could hit, play defense, pitch, run and had baseball instinct and smarts. They also recognized guys who had the competitive fire and heart for the game. There are no metrics that can spit out data on that. It's a new era for a younger generation weaned on video games and XL spreadsheets and I'm old... it is what it is LOl. 😁

Arnold is doing exactly what is expected of him by the ownership group. With a limited budget, keep the team just competitive enough not to lose the fan base from coming to the games and spending gobs of money on merch and overpriced concessions. His job is to provide that summer of entertainment that Attanasio so famously referenced. That sounds like a slight, but I mean it as a complement. It's the reality of small market baseball in a MLB's ridiculously imbalanced economic environment. With any luck, ownership hopes they catch lightning in a bottle and actually win something meaningful like another league championship after 50 odd years. That's what the whole "just get in the playoffs" mantra is all about... banking on the hope of getting hot at just the right time while not going bankrupt getting there. The Packers are in a similar situation, Keeping Lambeau filled due to being competitive is jobe #1, that entire city economy largely depends on the Packers not being perennial cellar dwellars. Winning a SB is just icing on the cake. How the hell can WI have the smallest market in both MLB and the NFL... crazy.

My posts probably come off too hard on short stature guys. It's the light hitting more than the height. Nothing wrong with 5'8" Jose Ramirez who has a ton of power. Collins is 27, just breaking into the top level at age 27. When Ramirez was 27, he hit 17 HRs and .292 average. When he was 25, same age as Frelick and Durb, he hit 39 with a .270 average. Maybe some of these guys will develop bigger power numbers (not expecing HOF numbers like Ramirez) as they grow older, but they're already mid 20's and older.

? Never heard of that. Is that another of the new fangled metrics that have been invented. My 4 wins for a corner OF are (regardless of size) .265+ average Minimum of 15 HRs At least average defense At least average speed Frelick checks off all those but the power which, nbt surprisingly, brings it back to where my opinions started.

I like the guys, and they are developing, but "playing well" is a bit of a stretch for me. Frelick has the gold glove defense and an excellent batting average. He's a keeper. But let's say he winds up with 10-12 HRs for the year. Is that want from a corner OF? Not ideally. Collins is an older guy just now breaking into the bigs. He's probably peaking before our eyes. The average is good at the moment, and he's on pace for about 10 HRs. Is it enough? Maybe. Durbin.. pretty much the same thing except he's a rookie. I like scrappy underdogs, and they are playing well enough to give us a...... summer of entertainment LOL. Hopefully they are really polished by the time the farm thumpers get called up in a couple of years. That could be an exciting balance of power and speed give us a few autumns of entertainment.

It helps to have a slew of MVPs woven into the roster and an unlimited payroll budget. Yes, smaller guys can hit for power, ours just don't. That power tends to come from bigger guys regardless. Don't get me wrong - I like our smaller, scrappy guys, they've grown on me. The scouts, GM, coaches and owner just need to find a way to get more thump in the lineup that can stay healthy. Find 5 guys that can provide 20+HRs. Thought they might have that this year, but it hasn't panned out. Yelli, Hosk, Contreras, Chourio, Mitchell.... Could have been a "wallbanger" redux.

Begging to differ... Slugging / power still matter. We like these guys because they are our guys. But unless they can hit dingers like Altuve or Pedroia, you're only going to go so far with small, fast, defense first, light hitting players making up roughly a third of the starting lineup. How many WS champs over the past 15 years have had 3-4 players under 5'9" in their everyday lineups? I'm not going to look it up, but I wouldn't be surprised if the answer is zero.

But the point is, they aren't "winning" on run prevention. Winning lots of regular season games and division championships, yes.. but that is not the "winning" we're talking about. This franchise needs deep post season success and a WS championship. They need more thumpers to do that. Yes, the farm is currently loaded with some big guys (all but Dinges and Adamczewski) who may or may not pan out. Odds are some of them won't cut it at the big league level. So, I'm advocating to keep that pipeline of "big guys" pumping. Need power hitters on the corners both infield and outfield. They currently have a plethora of infielders of that size, so now they need to continue stocking the OF. Braylon Payne at 6'2" was a good start. And of course, you need high contact guys as well, so its a matter of balance as usual.

Maybe initially, especially if the intent is a short term call up.

Why now?... as already mentioned, he provides a lot of roster flexibility. A Leatherman multi tool infielder who can also provide catching backup really covers a lot of ground, a lot of bang for the buck. And he's hitting in the high .270's with 7 HRs. Perhaps it's an "encouragement nudge" to Durbin that we need more from the bat or playing time may be split. Or maybe it's just to give Sieg a cup of MLB coffee until Perk returns. I don't think Contreras is going on the DL anytime soon.

Given that the recent issue was related to the screws they patched him up with the first time, yeah, that sounds like a potentially ongoing problem.

No surprise. How long do they justify hanging onto him? I don't blame a guy for injuries, but goodwill doesn't win ball games either. Really too bad. He was there only, what I consider, big, prototypical power hitting OF who might give you 25-30 HRs. No prospects fitting that mode either that I can think of, except perhaps Payne as he gets a little older and muscled up.

We're all supposing that WC's hand injury is severe enough to impede his ability at the plate, but not serious enough to sit him. I have to wonder if Murphy and med staff know otherwise, and perhaps that's not the case. Maybe he is just having a down year with the bat. We've heard that WC is vocal about not being left out of the lineup, but still.. if he was injured to a detrimental extent of the team, it's hard to believe they wouldn't DL him (I reject the IL terminology).

It's not rocket science. Draft big framed guys who have shown they have power and contact skills relative to their level, and who can put on muscle. Enough with the small, fast, defense first guys with little to no power. That recipe has not worked and will not work. You have to find a balance between the two. You have to have 5 guys capable of reaching 20+ HRs (because all of them probably won't at the same time due to injury, down year or whatever).

I'm not quite as grumpy about the celebrating while on base with the dugout, That has always existed to some degree and rightfully so. I just think it's a bit more flamboyant than in my youth, and also the TV production looks for it now, so it's more evident. I just prefer a simple fist pump or something. The dugout costume / prop stuff is hopefully a quickly passing fad designed as entertainment for young and casual adult fans who view going to a game as an amusement park, Savana Banana type event rather than serious, top level baseball. Same thing with the city connect jersey nonsense. No better way to add revenues than to sucker a bunch of fly by night fans into buying gaudy merch. That's what it takes for slow paced MLB to remain relevant in an UFC / NFL culture I suppose.

Correct, that's why I included the addendum about making the prospects unneeded / tradeabale

Yes, defensively he's been better than I expected... by quite a bit. The range is good for what he can do lengthwise - in other words, there are balls he can't get to when laying out because of his stature. But that is negligible. I suspect his average will come up to at least the .250- .270 range eventually (next year?). If he can get his power up to the 15ish HR's / year range, he will be a great band aid until some of the prospects arrive - (that assumes at least one of the prospects will pan out with power at this level however). To that end, if he hits those targets, he might make some of the prospects tradeable. I still hope / believe that Wilken will eventually be our monster thumper at 3B delivering 25+ HRs yearly.

Sell Ortiz because of Pratt? There sure is a lot of presumption when it comes to Coop. He certainly looks promising, but it's not like he's hitting .280 with a dozen HRs at AA Biloxi.

He does have an odd throwing motion, It looks like a dart pushing movement sometimes. I noticed that right off, but it hasn't been a problem.