On hot bats, playoff odds, power rankings, poor punditry, analytics rants, minor moves, Ricky Tiedemann, Davis Schneider, big oil, the trashbag Texas Rangers, and more!
Thanks for calling out the Shell logo on the mound. Although for me, what’s worse are the bullshit Net Zero ads on the signboard behind home plate by that Big Oil propaganda group. Thankfully haven’t seen them recently so the Shell logo is… an improvement? Yeah. Not great.
Buck was never going to succumb to cancer because he's destined to die on this hill.
Like, there's some truth there. I don't think anyone, even in these circles, believes in an unwavering Borg-like compliance to the numbers. But he's just so lost in the sauce on this one. His train of thought is almost conspiratorial.
The players who agree with him are speaking from their heart. The players who don't are *under the influence* of (((non-baseball people))). The managers too don't agree, but they are have no choice. They are just puppets for Big Analytic.
I had a dream that we lost the first Texas game 4-3 in extras. Sorry.
As for Buck, he doesn't hide the fact that he pines for the old days. So do a lot of us in different ways. I miss complete games and the fact that rbi's and pitcher wins are out of fashion. But I get it. Maybe Buck was just trying to say that analytics don't always tell the entire story and sometimes, it's okay to go with what your eyes are telling you. That relates to the human element of the game which I love. Where would we be without praising or moaning about managers decisions and player performances? It's part of the fabric of the game. Which is why I hope we never see robo-umps.
That said, I'm perfectly comfortable with Kikuchi never going through the order a third time!
It would be interesting to do the stats for some of those complete game monster pitchers of the 70s and 80s. How did they fare third and fourth time through the order?
There were people bitching about Kikuchi being pulled after 5 and Schneider's a moron. My reply was exactly the same logic as you just wrote. Agree on your Buck take totally. It makes me laugh when people bitch about managerial decisions and call the FO and the Manager idiots, as if they're smarter than the people who have literally spent their whole lives playing and being involved in professional baseball
Those guys can make wrong calls for sure, but when they do it's usually not nearly as obvious as people think! The whole John Gibbons experience was very instructive for me. I always thought people were way too hard on him, and that he got a raw deal when he was fired the first time, and that he really didn't deserve the hate he got for most of the second tenure, and then the team got good and Alex left and Gibby wasn't Shapiro's guy, so suddenly everybody else came around and he's some kind of a folk hero. The anger and the praise are not usually as much about making the right or wrong pitching change as people tell themselves.
So because contrary to standard for the Jays fanbase I am assuming things are going to work out, I've been thinking about the playoff rotation. Gausman is obvious, but after that it gets a little complicated. Like you'd have to think it's some combination of Berríos, Bassitt, and Kikuchi, but in what order? That also leaves out Ryu, which makes a certain level of sense except that I don't think you use Ryu out of the bullpen, and Kikuchi was alright at that last year, but you're also not going to start Ryu in favour of the guy who you could argue should be the #2 or #3 starter in an ideal rotation the way he's going right now. I suppose it's a good problem to have.
Definitely is. Nick and I talked about this on a recent ep, I think. Good case for any of the non-Ryu others in a vacuum. Matchups and how hard they'll have to go in the last week of the season to get in seem pretty likely to be the deciding factor!
Thanks for calling out the Shell logo on the mound. Although for me, what’s worse are the bullshit Net Zero ads on the signboard behind home plate by that Big Oil propaganda group. Thankfully haven’t seen them recently so the Shell logo is… an improvement? Yeah. Not great.
Buck was never going to succumb to cancer because he's destined to die on this hill.
Like, there's some truth there. I don't think anyone, even in these circles, believes in an unwavering Borg-like compliance to the numbers. But he's just so lost in the sauce on this one. His train of thought is almost conspiratorial.
The players who agree with him are speaking from their heart. The players who don't are *under the influence* of (((non-baseball people))). The managers too don't agree, but they are have no choice. They are just puppets for Big Analytic.
I had a dream that we lost the first Texas game 4-3 in extras. Sorry.
As for Buck, he doesn't hide the fact that he pines for the old days. So do a lot of us in different ways. I miss complete games and the fact that rbi's and pitcher wins are out of fashion. But I get it. Maybe Buck was just trying to say that analytics don't always tell the entire story and sometimes, it's okay to go with what your eyes are telling you. That relates to the human element of the game which I love. Where would we be without praising or moaning about managers decisions and player performances? It's part of the fabric of the game. Which is why I hope we never see robo-umps.
That said, I'm perfectly comfortable with Kikuchi never going through the order a third time!
It would be interesting to do the stats for some of those complete game monster pitchers of the 70s and 80s. How did they fare third and fourth time through the order?
There were people bitching about Kikuchi being pulled after 5 and Schneider's a moron. My reply was exactly the same logic as you just wrote. Agree on your Buck take totally. It makes me laugh when people bitch about managerial decisions and call the FO and the Manager idiots, as if they're smarter than the people who have literally spent their whole lives playing and being involved in professional baseball
Those guys can make wrong calls for sure, but when they do it's usually not nearly as obvious as people think! The whole John Gibbons experience was very instructive for me. I always thought people were way too hard on him, and that he got a raw deal when he was fired the first time, and that he really didn't deserve the hate he got for most of the second tenure, and then the team got good and Alex left and Gibby wasn't Shapiro's guy, so suddenly everybody else came around and he's some kind of a folk hero. The anger and the praise are not usually as much about making the right or wrong pitching change as people tell themselves.
So because contrary to standard for the Jays fanbase I am assuming things are going to work out, I've been thinking about the playoff rotation. Gausman is obvious, but after that it gets a little complicated. Like you'd have to think it's some combination of Berríos, Bassitt, and Kikuchi, but in what order? That also leaves out Ryu, which makes a certain level of sense except that I don't think you use Ryu out of the bullpen, and Kikuchi was alright at that last year, but you're also not going to start Ryu in favour of the guy who you could argue should be the #2 or #3 starter in an ideal rotation the way he's going right now. I suppose it's a good problem to have.
Definitely is. Nick and I talked about this on a recent ep, I think. Good case for any of the non-Ryu others in a vacuum. Matchups and how hard they'll have to go in the last week of the season to get in seem pretty likely to be the deciding factor!
love those PowerGraphs FanRankings
Smart folks down there.