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Netzer

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If only statcast had the technology to measure the launch angle and exit velocity of yankee balls that have been hit off of your chin.

Goo Punch
Goo Punch
Hank Chinaski
Hank Chinaski

Good fucking riddance. 

henrygandorf

henrygandorf 29189

Posted
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down goes bauer.

Bauer to the DL with small fracture in fibula

Indians placed RHP Trevor Bauer on the 10-day disabled list with a small stress fracture in his right fibula.

Indians manager Terry Francona said there's no timetable yet on when Bauer might be able to return because the team is still gathering information about the injury. Bauer suffered the small lower-leg fracture when he was struck by a line drive in his last start Saturday against the White Sox. It's a tough blow, as the 27-year-old right-hander has broken out to the tune of a 2.22 ERA, 1.09 WHIP, and 214/56 K/BB ratio in 166 innings (25 starts) this season. Adam Plutko will fill his rotation spot.

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Sbbruin

Sbbruin 21847

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17 hours ago, UTexasFight said:

Dodgers blow their third game in as many days in the 9th.

It has been a fucking trainwreck.  With Jansen out, every game handed to the bully is a crapshoot at best.  Kershaw went 8 full of 1 run ball, only to have it handed to the Giants.

 

Does suck about Bauer.  Great Bruin, even if he's a little nuts.

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Scraps

Scraps 13561

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down goes bauer.


Bauer to the DL with small fracture in fibula
Indians placed RHP Trevor Bauer on the 10-day disabled list with a small stress fracture in his right fibula.
Indians manager Terry Francona said there's no timetable yet on when Bauer might be able to return because the team is still gathering information about the injury. Bauer suffered the small lower-leg fracture when he was struck by a line drive in his last start Saturday against the White Sox. It's a tough blow, as the 27-year-old right-hander has broken out to the tune of a 2.22 ERA, 1.09 WHIP, and 214/56 K/BB ratio in 166 innings (25 starts) this season. Adam Plutko will fill his rotation spot.

So its a "Bauer Outage" ???
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UTexasFight

UTexasFight 9432

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Puig is an idiot for sure, but Hundley should shut the fuck up.

Hundley’s a bitch for sure, but why not if you’re him and you know Puig’s a headcase. 

 

(Hindsight 20/20 but Puig would have been the winning run at the plate in the 9th.Instead Roberts has to PH with an ice cold left handed hitting Max Muncy against the lefty Will Smith (nevermind that Puig is done for about a week in the middle of a pennant race)

 

 

 

 

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UTexasFight

UTexasFight 9432

Posted
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A’s article in the WSJ today.
I can see the power lasting. I disagree with the comments on the bullpen. I think the playoffs the last couple of years prove no matter how good your bullpen is in the regular season, it’ll still turn in to a pumpkin eventually. For the A’s I think the clock’s at about 11:59. 14 of the next 21 against the Astros, Mariners and Yankees



The magic happening here this summer, in this dilapidated old stadium nestled in the heart of the East Bay, appears hard to believe. Despite modest spring-training expectations from oddsmakers and analysts, the Oakland Athletics have emerged as baseball’s biggest surprise, surging into an American League wild-card spot with about six weeks remaining in the regular season.

Few predicted this sort of performance from the A’s, especially considering how they started. They woke up on the morning of June 16 with a record under .500 and trailing the Seattle Mariners by 11 games. Statistics websites calculated their chances of reaching the playoffs at around 3%. Then they exploded, finishing the month with a 12-2 stretch, and they haven’t looked back.

Maybe none of this should come as a surprise by now. The A’s have spent nearly two decades under “Moneyball” architect Billy Beane toppling the giants of the sport, even while spending more than $1.5 billion less in payroll than some of their big-market opponents. They have qualified for the postseason eight times since 2000, better than all but five teams over that span, a group including blue bloods like the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers.

“People look at this organization and say what they want,” said closer Blake Treinen, a first-time All-Star this year. “The stadium’s old. This team doesn’t spend money, blah blah blah. But we have great players here still. You’re seeing superstars develop in front of your eyes.”

Don’t feel too bad if you can’t name them. The A’s have assembled a roster still largely unknown outside of the Bay Area.

Oakland’s best squads of the early 2000s boasted a trio of aces in Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder and Barry Zito, not to mention a pair of MVP sluggers in Jason Giambi and Miguel Tejada. This group features…nobody like that, to the point that their most prodigious run producer, Khris Davis, might at first glance look like a typo for his near-namesake in Baltimore, Chris Davis.

These A’s differ from their counterparts of last decade in another key way: The A’s of the “Moneyball” days revolutionized the game, fundamentally changing the industry and ushering a new paradigm for how front offices operate. As for this current incarnation, even general manager David Forst admits, “I don’t think the formula is a mystery.” (Beane now serves as the team’s executive vice president of baseball operations.)

Instead of inventing new ideas to succeed, the A’s used their small budget to build something seemingly manufactured in a lab to succeed in this era. They took all of the trends sweeping across baseball, distilled them into their purest forms and combined them to create the most 2018 team in the major leagues.

Oakland’s lineup has power. Lots of it. The A’s entered Tuesday’s action ranked sixth in baseball in home runs, led by Davis (34), first baseman Matt Olson (22) and second baseman Jed Lowrie (18).

And that doesn’t tell the whole story of their ability to pulverize baseballs into the stratosphere. The A’s play half their games in the cavernous Oakland Coliseum, one of the most pitcher-friendly ballparks in MLB. On the road, however, they homer once every 21 at-bats, the best in baseball by a wide margin.

They do this by capitalizing on another of the sport’s latest crazes, one designed to combat the rise of defensive shifts. They hit the ball in the air, ranking 29th in ground ball percentage.

“The defense is so good,” Davis said. “Just hit it over the fence and they can’t touch you.”

The pitching side also feels of the moment. Their rotation doesn’t offer much, leaving them with a weakness in an area once viewed as an imperative to contend for a championship. Highlighted by Sean Manaea, Trevor Cahill and Brett Anderson, Oakland’s starters entered Tuesday with a 4.16 ERA, the worst among any team currently in playoff position.

It doesn’t matter. Starting pitching means less nowadays, and the A’s realize that, focusing instead on their powerhouse bullpen. Their starters average just 5.5 innings a game, but their bullpen ranks sixth in ERA, ensuring that if the A’s secure a lead, they win. They have the best record in baseball in one-run games and, through Monday, had gone 49-0 when leading after the seventh.

Home runs and a lockdown bullpen—the definition of modern baseball.

“The formula has been to score enough to stay in the game and let the bullpen shut it down,” Forst said. “And it worked.”

Forst insists the A’s didn’t necessarily want to build up their bullpen at the expense of their rotation. But given the limited amount of money Oakland’s ownership gives him to work with, he lacked the resources to pursue established starters, an expensive commodity. Quickly, he realized “we were going to have to work from the back forward.”

So they supplemented Treinen by signing Yusmeiro Petit this winter, as well as trading for Ryan Buchter and Emilio Pagan, all of whom have contributed. They promoted Lou Trivino from the minors, and he turned into a revelation, posting a 1.56 ERA in his first 49 appearances. Now, in the past few weeks, they added Jeurys Familia, Shawn Kelley and Fernando Rodney, giving them plenty of options that could prove especially valuable in October.

“That’s been the recipe of a lot of successful teams in the past few years,” Lowrie said. “Look at teams that have gone deep in the playoffs, they have those elite bullpens that can shorten the game.”

Inside the A’s clubhouse, the players insist they believed they would fare better than the prognosticators anticipated, buoyed by the fact that they went 17-12 from last Sept. 1 to the end of the year. They saw the talent, players that outfielder Stephen Piscotty described as “not household names—yet.”

Forst took a more measured approach. Though he believed in the team, he recognized the challenge of competing in their division with the Houston Astros, the defending World Series champs. And for 2½ months, his hesitancy seemed justified.

Then the hot streak happened, the hot streak that still hasn’t ended—the hot streak that once again proved one of baseball’s great truths: Underestimate the A’s at your peril.

“It doesn’t matter what you have, it’s what’s you do,” Treinen said. “People are starting to see how capable this team is.”

Write to Jared Diamond at jared.diamond@wsj.com

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-most-2018-team-in-baseball-the-as-1534258241?mod=hp_major_pos26

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spystud13

spystud13 2371

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Fun with #s. 

Quote

4. The hitters just aren't trying.

I've generally been skeptical of the fourth hypothesis. Players want to get their stats, and a home run hit off Phil Ervin would be worth as much in free agency or arbitration as a home run hit off Clayton Kershaw.

But it looks like my skepticism was wrong. The evidence suggests that what we're seeing might be entirely due to hitters not trying.

Remember, we have 202 examples of position players pitching. Most of those are in blowouts, but 15 of them came in meaningful, high-leverage situations, most commonly in extra innings when the rest of the pitching staff had been depleted. That is not just high leverage but the highest leverage. Fifteen appearances is, unfortunately, a tiny sample, but the difference between the 187 blowouts and the 15 close games is stunning:

  BLOWOUTS CLOSE
BA .295 .389
OBP .371 .520
SLG .587 .685
K/AB 7.7% 9.3%
BB/AB 9.4% 21.2%
BABIP .262 .354
ERA 6.75 12.22
Strike% 59% 53%

http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/24364647/are-position-players-actually-good-pitchers-yes-definitely-no

 

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