Balta1701

I had Beckham and Rauch as the biggest busts I could come up with. Fields was a first round pick but wasn’t that highly thought of.

If you ever want to see what proper coaching can do about errors look at the 2012 White Sox. 2012, Robin Ventura gave a s%*#, White Sox had the fewest errors in baseball. 2013, Robin Ventura stopped caring, same players except added Keppinger, 29th fewest errors in baseball, 2nd worst.

So you're saying LA was the better coached team and this clearly showed up throughout that series. I agree.

What's ironic about bringing up the Yankees and Dodgers series is that you had a great example of a spot where one team lost because they were sloppy and one team won because they were crisp. The team that was sloppy was sloppy the whole year, they were one of the worst base running teams the whole year and they made a ton of mental errors the whole year. That team got by on talent, but they never put in the effort to play the game cleanly. I'm not sure which team was more talented of the two, but I can safely say that better coached team won.

Starting in August and September he is throwing his cutter a fair amount less than earlier in the year and its spin rate does spike at the start of August also. In a lot of his August appearances he doesn't use anything that gets caught as a cutter. He does throw his slider a "TINY" bit more in August than before but I'm not sure it's a significant difference, it's maybe 1 more slider every 2 outings on average. What pitch is a spider?

There's a handful of minor things with him that do change in the 2nd half, but it's hard to know how significant they are or if they started a particular day. -His spin rates are slightly higher in the last 2 months than the first 3.5. -He throws fewer strikes in the 2nd half -His release point and arm angle are slightly different from the first half. -His arm angle is 43-44 degrees in April-July and it's 46 degrees in August on his 4 seamer. There's subtle enough changes that suggest there were some mechanical differences in Dodgers Kopech, it's not just "He threw more off speed pitches because he listened to Katz" because he didn't throw more offspeed pitches. The problem is I can't say for sure that these didn’t start 2 weeks earlier because the data isn’t precise enough to say there was a sharp change in any specific outing. I do find it interesting that the arm angle change doesn’t happen until August. He never had as steep of an average arm angle this season as he had on August 3 before that game.

Except weirdly his breaking ball usage wasn't particularly different with the Dodgers and White Sox this year and it was substantially down from 2023 as a starter.

If Tim Anderson got $5 million last year, this makes general sense.

Just winning, baby.

It does look like Kopech was specifically throwing more pitches slightly outside the zone with the Dodgers, leading to more swings and misses outside the zone.

For roughly 6 years.

Worth noting that media relations is also a skill that a coach will learn if they’re good. Grifol never learned. You want to meet a fanbase halfway, acknowledge challenges but without being too down, and do it off the cuff. Not easy. Too negative and your Jim Mora being asked about the playoffs. Too positive and you’re cloying like the Getz fanboys here. For now feel free to complain, the hope is, unlike Grifol, this is something he gets better at.

Prediction: Moncada signs a FA deal in Houston to replace Bregman. Is an all star next year.

Luis Robert.

They wasted no time here huh.

Welp, game is tied and inning would have been over with no runs had Cole covered first on a grounder.

Chris Getz is gone?!

Well, the Dodgers are going to have work to do to win it tonight.

For the statistics to work out, they’d have to win roughly a million of those for this to not be weird.

Anyone have what the final odds are for Freeman homering tonight?

If Terry Francona took a job it became a good opening when he accepted it.

An obvious one is that Bruce Bochy has decided to coach until he’s 72 or 73 unless his health gives out, and that would leave him waiting several years for a job that wasn’t guaranteed to him.

If they had similar odds of losing and won those games 4 times, either ESPN's odds are terrible, or you'd have a reputation as making incredible comebacks. I don't think they do.

Honestly, yes.

Just to stress, the White Sox were 26th in fWAR from their pitching staff and 24th in fWAR from their starters last year. Their bullpen was historically bad even though people said "I think the bullpen might be ok" coming into the season. Multiple guys were dumped and got better when they went elsewhere. Pitching "Wasn't as bad as hitting" but no, it didn't "work". These guys shouldn't be graded on a curve.