MLB 2011 Part Two

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[quote]BONEZ217 wrote:

[quote]therajraj wrote:

[quote]eeu743 wrote:

[quote]therajraj wrote:
For any of you fantasy guys Brett Lawrie will probably be a good pickup until the end of the season.

In his first 97 plate appearances over 25 games his stats are:

.340/.392/.713 7 HR 20 RBI 4 SB 4 triples and 6 doubles

Even though it’s been roughly only 100 at bats, I have a feeling this guy will never have trouble hitting at the Major League level.

[/quote]

Got him on most of my teams. Kid’s good. You guys need some good pitching (besides Romero) now.[/quote]

Brandon Morrow will eventually become the best pitcher on the team, I know it’s hard to believe looking at his stats.

But the Jays need…

a) 1 more big bat (Prince Fielder perhaps?)

b) A good bullpen+closer. This isn’t actually that hard you can rebuild a bullpen pretty easily every year. The current bullpen leads the league in blown save opportunities.

c) Potentially another legit pitcher. the GM is currently over in Japan scouting Yu Darvish and there are quite a few good arms in the minor leagues.[/quote]

The blue jays need an ACE or two, first and foremost.

You cant do anything without a lockdown stud at the front end. The other things are obviously important but Fielder wont matter unless guys like Lind and Hill start producing. They play in the AL east. You need more than 2 legit hitters and group of 2 and 3 starters. [/quote]

I see them having 2 aces next year.

I consider Ricky Romero close enough to being an ace at this point. If he takes one more step next year he will basically be there, just look at his numbers this year.

My projection of Brandon Morrow is he will be even better than Ricky Romero - he is that good. He’s pitching tomorrow at Yankee Stadium so you can get a good look at him.

Aaron Hill was traded a couple weeks ago, currently Kelly Johnson is playing 2B and he might be the guy coming back.

You’re right about Adam Lind, he has basically been a corpse since the All Star Break. Offensively, I don’t really think they need anymore than one more big bat, I would rank them a top 5 offensive in the AL right now, they’re 4th in the AL in runs scored.

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[quote]therajraj wrote:

[quote]BONEZ217 wrote:

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

[quote]BONEZ217 wrote:

[quote]WestCoast7 wrote:
Beane is one of, if not the most overrated GM’s in the game.[/quote]

Beane is overrated but I think his system has merit. Epstein put together a WS team with it. With a much bigger bankroll though. I dont think the 04 sox had a huge payroll but they werent pinching pennies like Oakland does every year.

But yes, he is overrated. But I think he gets credit more for changing the game rather than being a great GM.

I mean his best As teams in what, 2000-2005?, were all pretty bad offensively. They were successful because Zito, Hudson, and Mulder were mowing people down. [/quote]

Actually, those teams were really good offensively. They had Giambi, Tejada, Jermaine Dye and Eric CHavez in the middle of the lineup, plus a younger Matt Stairs, Randy Velarde, Ray Durham, Eric Byrnes, David Justice, Johnny Damon and Ramon Hernandez behind the plate.[/quote]

Not really good. A few MVPs but not crazy lineups. Not anemic by any means but Giambi was only there until 01. Tejada was the only force in the lineup for a while. And him Chavez were the only 100 rbi guys.

This is from a Yankee fan’s perspective, not a Giants fan. :wink:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/OAK/[/quote]

Oakland’s best year was 2006. I agree their offense was never amazing, but at the same time it wasn’t shitty. You don’t need a Yankee’s type starting lineup in the Central.[/quote]

My point was that Beane gets recognized for revolutionizng the way offensive players are evaluated. Yet the offense wasnt the standout aspect of his team and his teams were successful because of the starting pitching. Theres nothing revolutionary about that formula. You need a potent offense to win in the playoffs UNLESS you have an utterly dominant pitching staff that all pitch their best baseball at the same time in october.

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After looking up the runs scored, holy shit at the disparity between the AL and NL offenses. the top 4 teams in the Major leagues are all the AL. There is almost a 100 runs scored gap between the top team (NYY) and the best NL team (STL)

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Just one more thing to point out: Ricky Romero won AL player of the month.

He went 5-0 with a 2.05 ERA on the month. Batters hit .160 against him in his 6 starts.

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All remaining charges against Bonds were dropped today. He’s never been convicted of anything related to baseball and he never tested positive after MLB implemented its PED rules and regulations.

Obviously everyone knows I am a huge Bonds fan, but after taking the above into account, what are your personal opinions on his HOF chances? I fully acknowledge that Bonds used, but technically speaking he never broke any MLB rules…

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I don’t claim to be fully in touch with how the voters think, but I believe that, right now, he has no shot. People’s opinions change, and if there was some big movement among baseball writers to get him in, who knows? I don’t see that happening though…he’s disliked by almost everybody. I don’t necessarily agree with it, but that’s how I see it.

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[quote]therajraj wrote:
After looking up the runs scored, holy shit at the disparity between the AL and NL offenses. the top 4 teams in the Major leagues are all the AL. There is almost a 100 runs scored gap between the top team (NYY) and the best NL team (STL)[/quote]
That shouldn’t be that big of a surprise considering the AL has the DH. Then again, the Yankees lineup is stacked and fit perfectly for their ballpark.

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[quote]WestCoast7 wrote:
All remaining charges against Bonds were dropped today. He’s never been convicted of anything related to baseball and he never tested positive after MLB implemented its PED rules and regulations.

Obviously everyone knows I am a huge Bonds fan, but after taking the above into account, what are your personal opinions on his HOF chances? I fully acknowledge that Bonds used, but technically speaking he never broke any MLB rules…[/quote]

0% in the first half of his eligible years. 1% chance in the remaining years.

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awwwww

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Strasburg’s first start back is in WAS on my bday… fuck yea!

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So I was listening to Keith Law’s audio blog and they were talking about the exact thing we were discussing about AL MVP candidacy and the value of runs scored as a measurement of individual performance.

They made the same points I made earlier, but they did mention there is an advanced metric that actually quantifies how many more runs a players baserunning has lead to or taken away. It doesn’t just take into account how many times a player has scored, but also how often they went from 1st to 3rd, tagged up and went to 2nd to 3rd etc.

According to this stat:

Granderson’s baserunning has lead to more 5.1 runs, Bautista 3.5 runs and A-Gon’s base running has taken away 6.3 runs.

I know you guys are pretty hard set on your beliefs about runs scored but it’s the base running stat at the bottom of the page under value.

Just thought I’d throw that out there.

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I’ve been out of the thread for a while, but:

Why does Bautista get so much questions about juice but Granderson doesn’t? It isn’t like Bautista is huge and jacked, so I don’t think we can play the size card.

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[quote]scj119 wrote:
I’ve been out of the thread for a while, but:

Why does Bautista get so much questions about juice but Granderson doesn’t? It isn’t like Bautista is huge and jacked, so I don’t think we can play the size card.[/quote]

You’re right, but no one has brought this up since cuban32 did at the beginning of the season. What we spent the last 2-3 pages arguing over is who has the best offensive production and which stats are the most telling of individual performance.

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[quote]scj119 wrote:
I’ve been out of the thread for a while, but:

Why does Bautista get so much questions about juice but Granderson doesn’t? It isn’t like Bautista is huge and jacked, so I don’t think we can play the size card.[/quote]

Good question. You dont hear it much anymore though.

I think the reason was that he went from hitting 10-15 homers a year to 50. Granderson had a 30 home run season in detroit (a big ball park) and now hes going to have 40+ in yankee stadium after learning to hit left handed pitching. Granderson is impressive and surprising but didnt really come out of the blue with his production this year.

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[quote]BONEZ217 wrote:

[quote]scj119 wrote:
I’ve been out of the thread for a while, but:

Why does Bautista get so much questions about juice but Granderson doesn’t? It isn’t like Bautista is huge and jacked, so I don’t think we can play the size card.[/quote]

Good question. You dont hear it much anymore though.

I think the reason was that he went from hitting 10-15 homers a year to 50. Granderson had a 30 home run season in detroit (a big ball park) and now hes going to have 40+ in yankee stadium after learning to hit left handed pitching. Granderson is impressive and surprising but didnt really come out of the blue with his production this year. [/quote]

Good point, I forgot about that random 30hr season, thought of him as more of a 20-25hr guy in DET.

My opinion was that Bautista made such a large jump, and made it before Granderson, that Granderson flew under the radar while everyone was concerned with Jose.

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[quote]therajraj wrote:

[quote]scj119 wrote:
I’ve been out of the thread for a while, but:

Why does Bautista get so much questions about juice but Granderson doesn’t? It isn’t like Bautista is huge and jacked, so I don’t think we can play the size card.[/quote]

You’re right, but no one has brought this up since cuban32 did at the beginning of the season. What we spent the last 2-3 pages arguing over is who has the best offensive production and which stats are the most telling of individual performance.

[/quote]

You linked fangraphs so I assume you’re familiar with WAR. My big problem with WAR is it’s formulated differently on two sites (baseball-reference and fangraphs), hard to use a metric if people can’t decide how to define it. The difference between the two is how much defense factors in I believe.

IMO, for batters, walks are good, strikeouts are bad, homers are good… outs are the worst, OBP is the most important for hitting (with power being 2nd).

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[quote]scj119 wrote:

You linked fangraphs so I assume you’re familiar with WAR. My big problem with WAR is it’s formulated differently on two sites (baseball-reference and fangraphs), hard to use a metric if people can’t decide how to define it. The difference between the two is how much defense factors in I believe.
[/quote]

It doesn’t matter, Bautista leads in WAR anyway it’s calculated.

[quote]scj119 wrote:

IMO, for batters, walks are good, strikeouts are bad, homers are good… outs are the worst, OBP is the most important for hitting (with power being 2nd).[/quote]

Dude, where the hell were you? I said the exact same thing! Both BONEZ and DBCooper told me I was wrong.

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[quote]therajraj wrote:

Dude, where the hell were you? I said the exact same thing! Both BONEZ and DBCooper told me I was wrong.[/quote]

lulz, once I get one page behind I feel like I have to catch up on too much so I stop trying.

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[quote]therajraj wrote:

It doesn’t matter, Bautista leads in WAR anyway it’s calculated.
[/quote]

FTR, I think WAR is a starting point for MVP discussion, to identify the top 5 or so candidates, but not a be-all-end-all. Like anyone within 1 or 2 wins of him should get consideration.

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Oh come on, not another one with a home run fixation

How bout this

You have two guys

Guy 1 hits 0 home runs. Drives in 100 runs.

Guy 2 hits 99 home runs. Drives in 99 runs.

Who is more valuable to putting W’s on the scoreboard?

And about the OBP comment, since I dont think you read all the comments, what good is a player reaching base if he doesnt drive in a run in the process or proceed to score a run? “Total baserunners” isnt even a stat that’s considered when measuring the productivity of a team’s offense.