2022 MLB General Season Chatter: Ghost Runners On The Half-Billion Dollar Infield

2022 non-MLB update:

Roki Sasaki delivered arguably the greatest pitching performance in Japanese baseball history last night. The 20-year-old Lotte Marines phenom not only threw a perfect game — NPB’s first since 1994 — he tied an NPB record with 19 strikeouts. Sasaki also set a record. After retiring the first two hitters he faced on ground balls, the right-hander fanned 13 consecutive Orix Buffaloes batters. Pitch counts weren’t a problem. Sasaki reportedly completed his perfecto having thrown just 105 pitches.
― Karl Malone, Sunday, April 10, 2022 11:15 AM (one week ago)

last night was Sasaki's next appearance, and he threw another 8 perfect innings! was taken out in the 9th.

Roki Sasaki is being pulled after 8 perfect innings. Naoya Masuda is coming in, he posted a 2.24 ERA in 64 innings last season. Sasaki has retired 52 straight batters and counting, we'll see how far that streak continues next week. Here's Sasaki's last strikeout from the day. pic.twitter.com/hFmXnRa8h4

— Kyle Kishimoto (@kylemoto10) April 17, 2022

163 kmh = 101.3 mph :-o

sorry, kph. i was born in iowa

Nah you had it, km/h is how I usually see/write it

this is a really fun substory of the 2021 season: every time a team visits the blue jays, they have to identify who sucks ass

Multiple unvaccinated Red Sox to skip Toronto trip https://t.co/i6JLxRb6jg

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) April 18, 2022

The A’s had three idiots. Including one of the relievers they got for Chapman lol. I think Puk was the biggest name that had to stay home because they’re so very very smart.

I cannot lie, I LOVE those yellow Red Sox unis

A’s just had to place 6 players on the covid IL. This includes all three unvaxxed dudes who couldn’t come up to Toronto lol

oh my god the idea of turning on a red sox game and seeing them in yellow and bright blue jerseys is deeply offensive to me. like, whoever thought that was a good idea should be subjected to a congressional inquiry

it would be a massive understatement to say that I hate the fucking shit out of allowing active players to partner with sports betting companies. Fuck this entirely. https://t.co/CcY1DtLk4I

— Jay Jaffe (@jay_jaffe) April 20, 2022

"but i always bet on myself to win!!"

imo MLB absolutely *loathes* the idea that money involving its product can be made without it getting a cut. (see also when it argued that it could copyright baseball stats)

this attitude, like its attitude toward its players, is taking it places it should be avoiding. but so it goes

this guy

Tommy Pham on Luke Voit's slide into Tyler Stephenson: " If Luke wants to settle it, I get down really well. Anything. Muay Thai, whatever. Like I said, I've got an owner here who will let me use his facility. So fuck 'em. I'm out."

— C. Trent Rosecrans (@ctrent) April 20, 2022

dallas keuchel's pitching strategy of throwing every pitch in the strike zone at less than 90 mph somehow isn't working out

85 mph pitch in the exact center of the strike zone to jose ramirez with the bases loaded, sure

lol they have a doubleheader and i guess TLR is just going to let him wear it?

they finally took him out after he gave up 10 runs with no outs in the second inning

helped along by four (!) errors

Scary moment there with Story taking a fastball from Berrios to the head. Looks like he’s ok now

this might belong on a stats thread, but i figure more people will read it here. for those of us who frequently refer to fangraphs WAR (fWAR), they've updated their defensive statistics for 2016-2021 to replace UZR's "range" with Statcast's "fielding runs prevented" (or Outs Above Average; OAA). good move! the change only affects statcast era (2016-current).

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/a-fangraphs-war-fielding-update/

as you might guess, the change benefits those players whose defense is rated more highly by OAA then UZR (and vice versa)

the biggest beneficiary is nick ahmed, who gains 6 fWAR overall. in particular, his 2018 season (.234/.290/.411, wRC+ 84) went from 1.4 fWAR to 3.0 fWAR, thanks to his apparently crazy-good defense.

there are charts at the link that show you gains or loses, overall. as a cardinals fan, it's interesting to see paul dejong lose quite a bit of his value, particularly as his defense is the foundation of his game. but it looks like statcast/OAA rates his lower on defense than UZR

also, nicky lopez's defense now gets him 6.0 fWAR last year, very impressive

why the switch? i don't know much about how UZR is calculated vs statcast

a’s drew 2,703 last night vs baltimore — their lowest attendance since 1980

this is generalizing way too much, but Outs Above Average (which is a statcast thing: here are last year's leaders) is calculated using cameras that know where the fielder started (something UZR doesn't know) as well as the velocity of the hit, the trajectory, where it landed, etc.

UZR was and is used calculations based upon play-by-play data. it can be back-calculated to ye olden times of baseball based on box scores and work done by Baseball Solutions to provide more batted ball data. but obviously, they don't know where lou gehrig was standing when the ball was hit, how far he had to run to get it, that kind of stuff. there's still a place for UZR because we'll never know that kind of stuff. but for modern baseball, OAA is way more useful/accurate as a fielding metric, i think.

note: the Fangraphs WAR calculation uses multiple measures for defense: it wasn't just UZR, and it's not just Statcast/OAA now. the recent switch is just a replacement of UZR's "range" component.

i also think that UZR maybe always had a tough time handling shifts, whereas statcast can easily handle that

joe . . . say it ain’t so

Here's my problem with what happened at the Yankees game -- nobody, and I mean nobody, is looking out for the fans. You have Dave Roberts pulling Kershaw with a perfect game. You have Aaron Boone IBBing Miggy with 3,000 hits on the line for a tiny strategic edge. 2/3

— Joe Posnanski (@JPosnanski) April 21, 2022

the rare bad joe p take. i didn't click through but i assume he's getting roasted.

it's a small thing, but i don't want umpires giving explanations.

otm, this is terrible. umpires are supposed to be the judgment of doom, striking silently and surely. now they speak up and they've got these dumb little voices. if i wanted that i'd watch the lol NFL

the posnanski tweet is terrible! the tigers are playing at home this weekend, so many chances for miggy to get his hit in front of home fans.

with all the hoopla i assumed they were going on the road tomorrow

"nobody thinks of the fans who can afford to skip work and take in a day game!"

“They’re really, really behind you around here… my fuckin’ ass. What the fuck am I supposed to do, go out there and let my fuckin’ players get destroyed every day and be quiet about it? For the fuckin’ nickel-dime people who turn up? The motherfuckers don’t even work. That’s why they’re out at the fuckin’ game. They oughta go out and get a fuckin’ job and find out what it’s like to go out and earn a fuckin’ living. Eighty-five percent of the fuckin’ world is working. The other fifteen percent come out here. A fuckin’ playground for the cocksuckers. Rip them motherfuckers. Rip them fuckin’ cocksuckers like the fuckin’ players. we got guys bustin’ their fuckin’ ass, and them fuckin’ people boo.“

Posnanski just posted a long column on the Cabrera walk (beginning by saying he never should have tweeted, because "Twitter is the enemy of argument"). Great, as always.

Listen, we either die young or live long enough to become counterrevolutionaries.

Also he wrote a book about joe paterno after sandusky so *shrug emoji*

idk why people can’t discern between the kershaw and miggy situations—they’re completely different in pure baseball terms. roberts removed a pitcher who hadn’t given up a base runner yet with an eye towards the future, boone was making a tactical decision to help his team win the game

I didn’t read the Posnanski piece - but I’m not sure why anyone would think it’s a managers job to pander to the fans. Their job is to win games. There’s probably more room for debate with Kershaw - but with Miggy, the fans boo’d because *they* wanted to see hit 3000 in person. He’ll get plenty of chances.

It was an unnecessary sign of respect and poor strategy. Cabrera hadn't been IBB'd since 2020, going back at least 800 PAs -- all with hitters weaker than Meadows behind him!

First base was open. He was walked to load the bases, to open up the possibility of a force play on all four bases, instead of none.

it wasn’t a sign of respect, i think it’s what almost any manager would do in that situation

Also, Kershaw asked to be taken out of the game. He wasn’t begging to stay in and overruled by his advanced stay-addled poindexter manager. He asked to come out because his arm isn’t built up enough. That point keeps getting missed, but if a player asks to come out for injury concerns and you force them to stay in and make history, uh

Baseball is fun and fans want memorable things to happen, but we aren’t entitled to these things any more than some Star Wars fan is entitled to the thousandth rebooted spin off mini series taking place on the fourth moon of Naboo.

boone couldn't take out lhp luke luetge because of the three batter minimum, so walking right-handed miggy to face austin meadows (terrible against lefties in his career) was a sound strategic decision.

Baseball is fun and fans want memorable things to happen, but we aren’t entitled to these things any more than some Star Wars fan is entitled to the thousandth rebooted spin off mini series taking place on the fourth moon of Naboo.

― Karl Malone, Friday, April 22, 2022 10:23 AM (four hours ago)

this is technically true but i disagree w/ it in spirit. there is a symbiotic relationship between baseball (or any sport) as a game of competition and as a product of entertainment. there will be no fans if there isn't something at stake (championships), but also if the game isn't fun to watch the fans will leave and there will be nothing to sustain the competition (taking this to its logical extreme). so it's in baseball's best interest to care about whether it is harmful to the sport for i.e. pitchers to be pulled in the 7th inning when they have no hitters. i agree w/ voodoo chili that the boone/cabrera argument doesn't hold as much water bcuz aaron boone doesn't manage the tigers, but one of the main things that differentiates baseball from football and basketball is the importance of records and the overall historical context of the sport. it's true that fans can't "expect" managers to care about this stuff bcuz after all they get paid to win not paid to caretake the sport, but thousands of individual decisions have been made by people who get paid to win that have led to baseball being sent into an efficiency death spiral. the league has some control over this and have taken some small measures like requiring RPs to pitch to a certain amount of batters, experimenting w/ pitch clocks etc. things like the kershaw and cabrera cases are more existential than tweaking rules, but i actually don't think it's crazy for fans to expect ppl broadly in charge of the sport including owners and managers to think of things like, how do we make our fans (of the team and the sport) happy? how do we make this sport fun? what is enjoyable about coming to the park or turning on the TV? is it a bunch of RPs throwing 100 mph or is it clayton kershaw going for a no hitter? the owners have always been dickheads of course but i do think managers in i.e. the 70s cared about baseball as a sport beyond what you get out of your typical current day manager. if everyone who makes decisions in baseball passes the buck and says "well look my job is to win a championship" then i think eventually baseball is going to keep moving towards a point where it's no longer a thing lots of ppl in america care about, bcuz as a game it is less compelling than football or basketball to most ppl and it's only being pushed further in that direction. i don't think it's unreasonable to "expect" managers to think about these things because in a very literal sense they are stewards of the game

tragedy of the commons strikes again

this has been playing out in miami recently because they have been batting jazz chisholm ninth and platooning him against lefties despite him having a good season and being quite literally the only reason you might want to pay attention to a marlins game at any point when the team is at bat. of course, mattingly has his answers about how it doesn't matter if you bat first or sixth or ninth and how he has players who make sense as part of a platoon, but for the fans it falls on deaf ears because they're essentially doing everything they can to reduce the amount of times the most (only) exciting player on the team is involved in the game. the marlins *of all teams* should be thinking very hard about what interests the ppl who for some reason are their fans, but of course nobody is actually paid to think that way they're only paid to think about how to win 77 games. (they finally batted jazz first last night and he crushed a homer)

I've seen very good arguments for taking Kershaw out--I singled out one of Sheehan's--but with both Kershaw and Cabrera, I find the "their job is to win" the weakest of all. The Dodgers win probability going into the 8th inning of the perfect game was 99%; their win probability after the reliever let the first guy reach base was still 99%. With Cabrera (from Posnanski),

Using general data — which assumes that Cabrera and Matthews have roughly the same chance of getting a hit — the Yankees’ win percentage actually went DOWN after the walk, from 12.6% to 11.9%.

If you happen to know Tom Tango and ask him to dig as deeply as possible into the data, you could make the case that the Yankees’ chance to win ticked up the tiniest bit from 8.7% to 8.9%.

If you take the latter statistical breakdown precisely — and, let’s be honest, you really can’t — that would mean that if the Yankees and Tigers had that exact same situation ONE THOUSAND TIMES, then walking Miguel Cabrera would win New York...two more games.

In other words, from a pure strategy perspective, it was too close to call.

Kershaw getting injured, that I understand; strategically, I think both moves were basically meaningless.

(Also don't find Posnanski's analysis exactly "counter-revolutionary," by which I assume you mean a guy who's oblivious to analytics--Posnanski is most definitely not that.)

i find myself routinely deciding not to watch a ballgame mainly because i don’t often have 4 hours to kill but also it must be said a large proportion of that time is spent on the tedium of watching endless foul balls, swings and misses, ground balls into the shift, pitchers taking off their hats, wiping their foreheads, taking off their gloves, rubbing the ball, stepping off for the rosin bag, cleaning their cleats, doing self-acupuncture, it’s maddening. my kids certainly can’t hold their concentration on it for more than 10 minutes. unless they remember how fun it is to clown bobby dalbec, then they strap in

i take all those points, especially "thousands of individual decisions have been made by people who get paid to win that have led to baseball being sent into an efficiency death spiral"

i understand the wish, hoping that kershaw would stay in or that miggy could get an opportunity at hitting his 3000th with 2 runners in scoring position and a tie game.

miggy situation i could be bent, i guess. when i was watching, i thought that was his last chance in front of a home crowd for a while. realizing that his next game was a home game took away that factor.

i was also having a weird fake conversation between the pitcher and miggy, during the game. in this fake conversation the pitcher sees miggy before the game and he's like, "listen man, i respect you, but i don't want to go down in the history books as the guy who threw 3000 to you. i'm a rookie. i need to make a name for myself. so i respect you but i'm not gonna groove you anything". then miggy spits on the ground, and swipes the dust across the ground with his cleats, and he goes, "i earned every single one of those 2,999 hits. and you better believe i'm going to earn 3000 off of your ass today, rookie", and the rookie is startled but has even more respect for him. miggy get the 3000th hit, and as the crowd goes wild the rookie thinks about what he learned out there today.

this is dumb as fuck, what i'm saying, but maybe in a small way miggy would want his 3000th hit to not come in a situation where they're doing him a favor. or who knows, maybe baseball is all about favors or intuition or forecast, knowing where to look, guess hitters, dumb luck, and you take every fucking chance you can get.

anyway, i'll be watching the next tigers game

don't feel bad for those thursday fans in attendance because he hit 3 hits the game before that and no way anyone holding tickets for friday thought that was coming the night before

tbh i think analytics *has* destroyed baseball -- its findings are interesting af, but in practice things were better when every nanosecond of the game wasn't strictly micromanaged

cat's out of the bag now, tho -- you can't make teams/managers act stupidly. so it's a matter of changing the incentives, and unfortunately we're nowhere near there being any incentives for reds/pirates/a's/o's to spend money

much respect to certain little things tho -- like the royals breaking camp with bobby witt rather than gaming him, or the nats signing nelson cruz

(none of this has anything to do with the kershaw/miggy situations -- both are entirely defensible, especially the latter. it's not like boone walked miggy four times yesterday, or that miggy now won't reach 3000! it'll just be in front of a slightly different group of fans)

i kind of feel lonely in really enjoying baseball right now! i seriously watch every game, i love it

anyway, don't get me wrong - i was watching both the kershaw moment and the miggy moment, and i wanted both of them to happen, badly. i'm not trying to downplay that. i'm just not outraged or anything. i mean, there was a triple play the other day. come on. every time a big moment almost happens and it doesn't, there's another moment that probably should not have happened but did anyway

for example, that jazz chisholm HR was hilarious because seconds before he hit it, he was taking forever to get back in the batters box, and i think the umpire said something, and yadi said something (i need to watch the jomboy on this -- don't jump to the conclusion that yadi was being a dick - i think in this case he actually did chisholm a favor?) but anyways then chisholm crushes a HR and is very happy about it and does a little dance before touching home plate. and then the two cardinals announcers (especially jim edmonds, who is by far the most vacant man i have ever listened to for more than 10 hours) were like "whoa. whoa now.", and edmonds was like "in the 90s...let me tell you. in my opinion, in the 90s, when i was playing...whoa. that would not have happened. there would be consequences", shit like that.

in other words, all of that was amazing, fuck jim edmonds, and that could not have happened before