gusguyman

Or it forces the pitcher to throw in the zone more, which allows more contact and runs. Plus the human error isn't limited to the umps - the batter still needs to expand the zone a little in case they are wrong about a borderline pitch.

What? Yes, the batter should expand his zone to protect the plate and not strike out. Are you saying the umps should expand the zone too? First of all, no way. Second, you could do that with robo umps too, but with perfect consistency.

Fixed that for you

MLB players have sat out game 162 instead of risking their exactly .300 BA going to .299. Professional players are human too, and almost all humans love milestones.

Regression is a b****, eh?

Yeah. Why, did I run over another industry on my (eco-friendly carpool) commute to work this morning?

That isn't how these types of injuries work. Even if they pull him from that game, the damage was done. The only thing that game ruined was his 2018 ERA

So radical that there is even a a well known acronym for cases like these

Especially because the tweet he is responding to talks about a history of hawk's actions, implying this was an ongoing thing. But Stone jumped straight to the most recent event (which obviously sparked the tweet, but still).

I think he should be suspended. I think there is a clear difference between selling a call to an ump and bringing a fake ball onto the field of play. I also think its amazing and hilarious he got away with it.

Dr. House always talked about occam's razor and he's one of the best doctors ever so I agree

MLB has adjusted to Kopech. Time to see how well he adjusts back EDIT Although I guess its easier to adjust when his velo is down 3 mph or so

What a shame that Thor is already taken. Although he did cut his hair

Settled in nicely

Sorry, I phrased it weirdly, but we are actually in complete agreement here. The first half was a fairly accurate representation of our team, and while we improved (I've said previously from mid 60's to low 70's in wins), we have not improved as much as the record looks like. I think adding Eloy and a full year of Kopech and Rodon gets us to upper 70's wins, and the growth we need to see from Moncada and the young arms could feasibly bring us to .500, if things go right. Glad we could all align.

Don't move the goalposts. At the ASB, the team was on pace to finish 56-106. If you want to say that is unlucky because our sort of shitty outfielders got injured and we had to replace them with actually shitty outfielders, fine, but that record is pretty close to what I saw as the true talent level of the team while watching games (Which I have already said was low 60's wins). The stats all back me up on that. If you saw a team significantly better, I'll have what you're having. I am by no means a saber expert, but I am a (Bayesian) stats expert, so I love to read articles from the people who really know what they're doing. Stats can't replace a scout, but they are far more resistant to bias and narratives, so I prefer to lean on them. Thanks for the welcome, and as a NorCal guy it is nice to see another Sox fan who will be posting in my time zone. I agree with this. Luck regresses, talent does not. The potential talent may have been decent, but the actual talent of the roster was trash for most of the 1st half. Hopefully a good chunk of the post ASB production is because young players took a step forward. The stats say a lot of it was luck though, and I have to agree. There is no way the roster went from a 100 loss to a 90 win team.

So your counterargument is the eye test and narratives? "That's weak." As someone who puts a lot of faith in sabermetrics, I think we'll just have to agree to disagree.

Always willing to learn about baseball, so what else should I look at then? Fangraphs says Hr/FB% can measure luck too. Well the WS were middle of the pack in that for the 1st half, which could be a little unlucky considering the stadium. Looking at the players though, only Narvaez and Abreu put up low rates, and Davidson and Palka both had a HR/FB% above 20, which is pretty lucky production from some key power hitters. Our pitchers ERA was right inline with their FIP/xFIP, and they actually posted a very low HR/FB% (9.3). Our runs scored is right in line with our team wOBA and OPS rankings. All of these indicate that the team largely played at their true talent level in the first half. We have young players, hopefully that talent level has increased over the span of the season. But all of these stats indicate we are playing and winning games at a rate far above our true talent level right now.

BABIP is widely accepted as one of the best and most accessible ways of measuring how much luck is influencing stats, and therefore how much regression should be expected. As I am commenting on a forum, not writing for fangraphs, I don't understand how you can dismiss my argument without countering it with your own stats solely on the basis of it not being complete enough. I'd rather you be right here, it bodes better for next year, but the ball is in your court if you want to prove it.

We may be talking about two different types of luck here. Was it "unlucky" that almost all of their players played near their floors first half? Yes, but very few of them were actually playing well but getting unlucky. It's not unlucky that Gio put a 7.00 FIP, he was just terrible, and his stats were in line with his peripherals. The only unlucky BABIP players of the first half were Jose and Nicky D. Moncada actually had a .345 BABIP, which might be sustainable since he hits the ball really hard but its high. ReyLo also outperformed his peripherals by a ton Overall we won about as many games as our run differential would predict. Across the team as a whole, I don't see anything that points to the first half being notably unlucky.

I've provided many stats that all point towards the second half results being tremendously lucky. If you would like to argue that the first half was even more influenced by (bad) luck, I 'd love to hear it and will adjust my expectations of the team accordingly.

I agree there has been huge improvements, I just think its from a mid-60's win team to low 70's. It seems others see a much better team than that.

This team is unquestionably playing better after the break. But the pitchers and some key batters are also benefiting from huge BABIP luck, and the result post ASB is still a negative run differential. This team isn't good yet, but lucky and below-average looks fantastic to us after the hell that was the first half of the season.

Nope the board I was looking at doesn't know how to handle arbitration apparently.

I think Machado and Harper make sense this year, especially because you could front load significant money if they don't sign anyone else. That would be great because the back-end of these mega-deals are usually poisonous. Boog Powell, Marcell Ozuna, and Aaron hicks are all OF FAs in the next class if our prospects don't get to the bigs in time. Going all in for 2019 is way too premature.