OmarComing25

It's really going to suck if a team gets a wildcard spot with 83 wins, that'd be such a huge missed opportunity.

With Sale's FIP almost a run lower than his ERA, this year's Cy Young voting will tell us a lot about if voters are noticing the advanced metrics or not. Even if Sale doesn't win, if he beats out Gray or Price despite a big gap in ERA that will tell us a lot.

11-4 is a weird score for a Felix-Sale matchup.

Assuming 8 more starts, Sale needs to average 9.75 Ks per outing to get to 300.

Feels like Sale is officially out of the Cy Young race now with that homerun. Disappointing.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Aug 21, 2015 -> 10:33 AM) I think ERA should be valued more than FIP for the Cy Young. It's an award for the results on the field over the past year. If you had some bad luck on balls hit into play, sorry, but you should be judged on what happened, not what should have happened. I think they should be given roughly equal weight, with maybe a slight advantage to ERA. I've seen way too many "earned unearned runs" given up by Sox pitching this year that I just can't give ERA significantly more weight.

1st has to be Keuchel right now. Even if Sale goes the distance today he'll have a double-digit lead in IP, and isn't that far away in FIP (2.72 to 2.40) or fWAR (5.2 to 5.0) and has an almost 1 run lead on Sale in ERA. If Sale can get his ERA below 3 I'd put him 2nd over Gray, but he'll have to do a lot to beat out Keuchel.

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Aug 21, 2015 -> 07:26 AM) You could just give the pitcher half of the credit for what happens with balls in play and you probably get closer to the truth than B-R or FG. So just take the average of the two WAR numbers? I think that's probably the best way to give credit to what "should" have happened (FG) and what "actually" happened (BR).

QUOTE (shipps @ Aug 20, 2015 -> 04:41 PM) I dont listen to too much of ESPN radio but the past few days I have listened to it and my god Ben Finfer is one confident dude for the Cubs. LOL This guy talks about them like they are a dynasty already. I really dont want to get into the Cubs/Sox hate that goes on but I would laugh at anyone that would have so much confidence in a team that hasnt won a world series in over 100 years like he has. They are a good team but cmon now. Are we sure Finfer and J4L aren't the same person?

QUOTE (knightni @ Aug 20, 2015 -> 08:06 AM) For me, I find their players an interesting watch; especially the young guys. The problem is, I really despise the attitudes of their fans. Agreed, the only player I really dislike on their team is Fowler, but that's just because he's a huge baby. However, while they're certainly more interesting to watch than the White Sox, I don't like watching their offense that much because they're kind of a three-outcome team - walk, strikeout, homerun (the Astros this year are even more of an extreme in this regard). All they do is take pitch after pitch after pitch and rarely swing the bat. That's not that exciting to watch IMO. It's why Yankees-Red Sox games the past decade have been such a bore to watch, it's like a game of chicken of who can swing the bat less. The extreme patience might work a lot of the time (though it does lead to a lot of strikeouts too), but it's far from exciting.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Aug 19, 2015 -> 11:20 PM) I still think Lester is going to be an absolutely dreadful contract sooner rather than later. All the Cub fans, radio guys, and announcers keep saying his inability to hold runners hasn't really cost him because a great deal of the stolen bases he's given up haven't scored, but he's been pretty lucky in that regard and it's going to be hard to keep that up (as constantly turning singles into doubles and triples is never a good thing), and it also ignores all the extra stuff that happens because of it that doesn't show up in the box score, like potential double plays being taken away. For example, in the first Sox-Cubs series Melky was on first and Avi hit a probable double-play ball to Bryant. However, because of the huge lead that Melky had, there was no way Bryant was going to get him at 2nd, and that brief hesitation caused him to throw the ball away. Little stuff like that can easily turn a game, and it has cost him a lot already.

QUOTE (CaliSoxFanViaSWside @ Aug 19, 2015 -> 10:01 PM) Trout's due for a bomb against the Sox. With the exception of his grand slam against Sale last year, I don't really remember him hurting us too much. Just checked his career splits, and among teams he's played at least 20 games against (basically all of the AL teams), he has the lowest OPS against us (.818) in 27 games and 113 PA. Of course it's still a pretty small sample size.

QUOTE (lord chas @ Aug 19, 2015 -> 09:57 PM) Are the Tigers aware they aren't obligated to give up their big lead every other inning? It's incredible how bad their pitching has become.

63 MPH? Seriously?

Great jump by Eaton.

Hopefully teams only pay attention to his fWAR and he still gets signed.

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ Aug 19, 2015 -> 07:13 PM) They also have the 32nd ranked farm system in major league baseball Their farm system is so bad it's ranked behind two teams that don't even exist.

There might be 10 home runs hit by both teams tonight with this wind blowing out.

Norris worked a walk in his 2nd PA tonight. Tigers might DH him on his days off.

After watching Lester fail at holding runners, advanced metrics should really account for that as a stat somewhere. Pitchers who are good at it like Buehrle should get credit for it as well. Or do they already include this somewhere?

Holy s*** Tigers, dingers everywhere.

First Norris breaks the scoreboard in batting practice with a home run, then he just crushed a home run to center off Lester. Wow. That was his first plate appearance in his baseball career in years too, that's crazy.

I disagree that we have a bunch of "aging veterans". That applies to Alexei and LaRoche and that's it, and Alexei could be gone after this season (and LaRoche the next). Maybe Melky but that's stretching the definition of aging because he's hardly that old. We don't have any crippling contracts either. The Tigers define "baseball hell", we do not.

I was looking through Fangraphs today and I randomly noticed that the White Sox are tied for 2nd in WAR for starting pitchers with the Cardinals (0.3 behind the Dodgers). http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=...=&players=0 Cardinal's starters' ERA: 2.75 (3.31 FIP) White Sox starters' ERA: 4.22 (3.63 FIP) Heck, even over the last 30 days we're 4th in WAR despite an ugly 4.95 ERA. I know we have an advanced stat thread but I thought this warranted a separate discussion. I'm as big of a proponent of advanced stats as anyone, but it still just seems completely ridiculous to me to claim our rotation has performed as well as theirs (just like you can't convince me Samardzija has been the 38th best starting pitcher this season). Yet, when you really look into it, the gap isn't as big you might think at first glance. Our defense has been mostly s***, and the Cardinals have experienced a boatload of "cluster luck" (they're on pace to shatter the all-time record for preventing runs with RISP, see link below). On the other hand that ERA gap is just so large that it feels hard to argue the rotations are even kind of comparable. I'm interested to see others' thoughts on this. What would a Fangraphs writer say? Can we really just explain that ERA gap away so easily? http://grantland.com/the-triangle/2015-mlb...s-cluster-luck/

For those of us cheering against the Cubs, I'm torn on whether I want Norris to do well today or not. If he looks really good and dominates, then that could be a hint of what's to come for us in the future (and yes, I'm aware one start is hardly enough to show that much).