adambr2

Small pet peeve but in most cases I really hate the "overrated" chant. You dominated a really great team. Why downplay that by telling them they weren't actually good at all?

Why? Aside from 75 or so innings with the Brewers over the last two years, Lyles has never been all that good. Because those 75 innings were pretty dang good, and $8 million a year over two years isn't a crazy sum for even a league average starter. Yeah, you'd be taking a risk, but is it better to pay Lyles a guaranteed $16 million, or MadBum $116 million? I would do neither. Yeah, Lyles was great for us, but we're paying for his future, not a past 11 starts for us. His 4.64 FIP and 4.61 xFIP were indicative of those 11 start results not being sustainable. Stearns has been pretty good about staying ahead of these things and getting the good short-term results and then not making a mistake of a long-term commitment. Yeah, 2 years and 16M is certainly not backbreaking money, but it's not an insignificant sum, either. We aren't a franchise that can operate by consistently paying the Jordan Lyles of the world 8M a year. We'll find another Jordan Lyles next season. We always do. It'll just be someone other than Jordan Lyles.

I presume you mean Urias? Whoops! Yes, correct, thank you.

Narvaez was a high quality defender at 2B and will likely be at least acceptable at SS. This isn't another Keston Hiura in the middle by any means.

I dont know what it would actually take for Wisconsin to get in, but if a 2 loss non champion georgia were to get in over a 2 loss champion Wisconsin then the whole system is broken. Likewise I dont know what Oklahoma's name recognition would do to benefit Baylor, but we also would have beat a high name in ohio st. Plus have some other good wins despite the extra loss. Georgia isn't the problem. They aren't getting in over us if they lose. The problem is between LSU, OSU, Clemson, Oklahoma/Baylor, and Utah, there are too many 1 or less loss names above us if we lose. Had we not lost to Illinois, we're in with a win. As it is, the Rose Bowl is our ceiling. And to be fair, a team that is a 17 point dog (which we all pretty much agree is reasonable) to another team in the country probably isn't one of your 4 best.

I'll go ahead and answer my own thread question again. It's the Bucks. It's going to be the Bucks.

Not a peep today about this move from certain someone's who were ready to surround the Stearn's household with lit torches after Moustakas and Wheeler signed elsewhere.

I don't get the appeal with Nottingham. He is not that young anymore for someone who hasn't shown any ability to play at this level. His last 3 non Colorado Springs aided minor league seasons he couldn't even crack a .700 OPS in the minor leagues and couldn't hit last year in the PCL where nearly everyone hits. Not a good sign at all for a player who is considered a bat first catcher. I'm ok with letting him ride it out on the 40 for one more year in San Antonio and see what happens, but he simply hasn't progressed enough to be a default part of our future plans.

Well, they've got Hosmer pegged at a cool -$107M in surplus value at the moment, so I think they are in agreement with you that it was a terrible deal. As far as Urias goes, it's not about Urias becoming a worse player when he was traded. It is about a player at his position, with his track record and control, and his career trajectory being worth a different value to MLB teams than what they previously thought at this point in time and having to adjust for that. And again if Urias breaks out and becomes a star his value will be adjusted to reflect that. As it will if he ends up being a bust, in the other direction.

That Zillow analogy makes no sense. Then every single trade is even by definition. Exactly! It's a cop out in my opinion. I really believe you guys are misunderstanding the concept here. Every single trade is not even by definition. In the Zillow example, Zillow doesn't just cut your estimate from 500K to 300K based on that single sale. It's one piece of evidence that is applied across the board to that and similar homes on the market. So there's a slight adjustment. Maybe the market for that home is really changing, or as Peavy pointed out maybe that particular owner made a bad sale. But it's still a change in the market that needs to be accounted for. Likewise, the trade values from baseballtradevalues.com weren't adjusted to make things even on both sides. If you even look at it now, it still shows us getting about double the value that the Padres got even after the adjustment. But an adjustment was necessary because the market dictated an adjustment. It showed them that under their previous valuations, Grisham was likely undervalued and Urias was overvalued so they had to adjust to the market. If Urias turns into an All-Star and Grisham turns into a 4th outfielder, those valuations will once again be adjusted to reflect that new information. Any market-based valuations operate under those same concepts. Look at Kelley Blue Book for another example. If they publish that a 2017 model of a certain car with 50,000 miles on it is worth $15,000, and then that next year ten thousand similar transactions take place with an average price of $12,000, are they going to stomp their foot and stand by their $15,000 valuation? No, they are going to adjust their valuation to account for what the market tells them they were worth.

Yes, they did. But I think it's important to differentiate when it doesn't happen which it didn't in this case. I thought his explanation was a good one, though, when he pointed out that if Zillow puts a $500,000 estimate on a house that sells for $300,000, they can't insist the house is worth $500,000. They have to adjust their estimates based on the market. I'm pretty sure he admitted they were off on that one, but like any other market, it was never designed to be perfect. It fluctuates based on many factors, one of course, being real life trade results. They have to constantly re-evaluate and adjust. That goes for any value based estimate around. The adjustment wasn't made to save face and try to make it look more even. It was made because they had to adjust values based on what the real life market told them those players were worth.

Yeah, those numbers definitely got altered to make this seem more even than it actually was. Just like last week's deal. Joey, I think you're one of the best posters around but I personally think this is unfair to John and their models over at baseballtradevalues.com to assume that without knowing (if that's in fact what you are doing, I could be wrong and maybe you were saying that off an earlier posted projection in which case I apologize).. But as he pointed out, Narvaez was consistently at $5.1M. I checked it this morning and it was indeed at $5.1 well before the return was announced. That was the main reason I didn't expect a significant return so I would disagree with you entirely in this case and say that based on the trade return, John's projections were in fact validated, not altered. To answer SRB (at least in part), you can't just project his WAR out and put a price on it, you also have to subtract his projected arbitration salaries as well. I don't even know if the traditional 9M per WAR value is even applicable anymore or if it is in fact outdated, nor do I know if they use that to calculate value.

Don’t call him out though. I pointed out how he was wrong on Twitter once and he blocked me. I had to disable my account and create a new one so I could follow him as he does retweet a lot of things that I like to see. Don't worry, he blocked me too. His skin is as thick as tissue paper. I just google "Tom Haudricourt Twitter" and his last few tweets come up.

Agreed. Added three starting caliber players with significant upside and the only thing of real consequence lost is Trent Grisham and Zach Davies, who many didn't want back anyway. Narvaez is a perfect complement to Pina. SS is solved. Tons of possibilities still out there for 3B.

Narvaez has some really odd career platoon splits. His batting average and slugging is significantly higher against RHP, but he actually gets on base better against LHP to the tune of a whopping .371 career OBP vs LHP. Almost like he can see the ball just as well or better against LHP, just not hit it as well.

Lol. That's a terrible look for Haudricourt.

Yeah I really wasn't too concerned about giving up big names in this return. There just wasn't a high enough surplus value for Narvaez. I agree it's maybe even a little lighter than I thought but not shocking. I am interested to see how his defense really is, from my perspective on defensive catching it seems that perception doesn't always match the eye test. I know there actually have been pitchers for Narvaez who have raved about his work behind the plate. My guess would be a fairly hard platoon of Pina starting against all LHP, Narvaez starting against all RHP and Pina sometimes substituting late in games.

That's just not how supply and demand works. And there's always going to be a market inefficiency somewhere. It changes, and it's important that our analytical guys try to stay ahead of it, but there's always values.

Rosenthal saying the Mariners would receive "at least one minor leaguer" in return implies to me that there aren't MLB pieces going back and that Peralta and Burnes aren't involved. Maybe I'm reading too much into that but I stand by my belief that Burnes and/or Peralta aren't going back to Seattle in this deal.

Seattle is in huge need of pitching. I'm going to guess Corbin Burnes or Freddy Peralta. Perhaps Small, Ashby or Rasmussen. The return is gonna sting a little. I can't see Burnes or Peralta being on the table at all for Narvaez. Ray seems fair but only because his value has plummeted. I think we are overestimating the value of Narvaez a bit. He's entering arbitration so about to get a little more expensive and obviously does have some defensive concerns that make him more available than he otherwise would be. I think Nottingham + Supak is probably a fair deal. But I could be wrong.

I'm going to take a wild guess and say Jacob Nottingham.

That's all well and good but if you can't measure it, it holds no water. So let's agree that it matters. But you can't quantify who is good at it and who is bad at it because they can't factor the variables needed to measure it. So you can't show it's statistical impact. That kills it's validity. As I said above with missed tackles. One guy misses 3. Can't move. One guy misses 20 and gets to 15 the other guy couldn't touch. Who is worse at tackling? That's the biggest issue with the new analytics craze. In many ways its golden. In many ways it's given far too much credibility when they can't factor it anywhere near accurately. The link I gave you does quantify it. It says this catcher was worth "X" amount of runs and this catcher cost his team "X" amount of runs in pitch framing. Now yes, it's not pefectably quantifiable but there are many accepted modern analytics that fall into the same category of not perfectly quantifiable (WAR, UZR and other defensive statistics for example).

I've never seen anyone making that claim back that up with anything. I'm hoping you'll be the first. Back up that it has an impact. I've watched umps blow calls that were framed perfectly. I've watched them make calls properly when the pitcher was 3/4s of a plate off his spot and the catcher swiped at it. I do not buy that these umps are that easily swayed, or at the very least swayed to a point that has a statistical impact. It's an old school fairy tale. It has as much to do with the umps bias towards a pitcher/batter as the catchers "skill". https://tht.fangraphs.com/pitch-framing-was-doomed-from-the-start/ Pitch framing has an impact. It is not as easy to quantify as many other factors but it is most definitely a thing. Yes, umps are swayed by pitch framing. Some less so than others, but I am surprised that anyone who regularly watches the game would not see the impact that it can have. I remember watching Andrew Susac a few years ago and thinking he had to be the worst framer I'd ever seen. It's definitely not a fairy tale. I'm not relating this to the Narvaez acquisition (I like the acquisition! And he did improve to average framing levels in 2019, so I don't expect him to have a negative impact there), but it does matter. Sure, bring on the robots and it won't matter. As long as you have human umpires, there will be human error and yes, that error is increased by a catcher's framing ability. Just because umpires have indeed blown calls that were framed well and made calls correctly on poorly framed pitches does not make the measure invalid. That's like saying you don't believe defense is that important because you've seen great defenders blow easy plays before and seen bad defenders make great plays.

Wondering the same thing. I'm not currently in "the sky is falling" mode or anything, but I'd be lying if I said there wasn't concern in the back of my mind that this franchise (with its history of futility and slashing payroll) was going to slash payroll and say "we tried". To question someone's fandom because they want the billionaire owner to spend, and keep telling them their opinion isn't a good look seems a bit over the top. It's the same rhetoric from the same poster year after year, every offseason, every trade deadline. It isn't about the front office here being above criticism or anything. But when the same guy has been panicking year after year about the lack of moves all the while DS has been averaging 90 wins a season the last 3 years it gets a bit eye rolling. If this was the first time he was doing this I think the responses would be more in line with that.

Next season is 2020. 2015 performance is not relevant i am fairly certain that was his point, but i can't speak for him. You certainly can in this instance. I have no idea what Briggs is talking about. I just pointed out his dominance in 2015 and questioned what happened since then. In no way was I trying to imply that Grimm is going to turn back the clock and go full domination this year because he did in 2015.