sabretooth

Yes.

So awesome for Matt and Kelly Stafford - two awesome people that both deserve this success.

And the whole thing about getting other people sick who are vulnerable is hooey. Omicron is highly contagious....if you are that scared of it you have the option to isolate yourself....but expecting significant shut-downs to protect people who are already vaccinated is just stupid, massive, unnecessary overkill, especially for a strain like Omicron that basically has killed fewer people than trees falling or lightning strikes. And when I say "shut down" I also mean requiring vaccination cards to participate in society (education, restaurants, events, etc). The vaccines overwhelmingly work, so there should be little to no risk posed by the unvaccinated, especially if they already have had COVID-19. And also regarding hospitals being overburdened -- they have had two years to figure out how to deal with a surge....I don't want to see hospitals get in trouble or patients being hurt, but at some point if we are concerned about hospital capacity we should invest some of these ginormous Covid $$ from the Federal Government to hire enough vaccinated people to care for COVID patients during a surge. To shut down society at any level due to foreseeable events and a lack of contingency planning when COVID $$ are slopping over everywhere is just ridiculous, and we should not stand for it. I am sick almost to death of the COVID hype, especially from athletes. These guys have almost nothing to be afraid of, and neither does anyone else, if they take the vaccine/boosters, and/or are generally healthy, and/or have antibodies from a prior COVID-19 infection.

Yes, I am extremely sick and tired of hearing people treat COVID as some kind of death sentence. Recent Gallup polling indicated that the public waaayyy overestimates the severity and risk associated with COVID, thanks to the media hyping it to death. IF you are unvaccinated, and/or are over 65, and/or have an underlying comorbid condition, you have a small chance of being hospitalized (less than 2%), but otherwise.... IF you are vaccinated, below 65 years of age, and have no underlying co-morbidity, you should be more worried about your next car ride than getting COVID. Delta is a little more virulent, but Omicron is basically a common fucking cold for the healthy and/or otherwise vaccinated. I suspect that Omicron is a minor issue for otherwise healthy people with a prior COVID-19 infection even without the vaccine (I haven't seen data on this one way or another yet).

JJ to Edwards...get used to that

Oy what a night. Georgia is much better than I imagined. Total domination in every phase.

Twice as many BB and 2/3rds the Ks is not merely better plate discipline, its literally the difference between HoF level hitting and being a little better than average. Put another way, if two pitchers had similar hits + EBH, but one (Baez) allowed twice as many walks and had an average WHIP, whereas the other guy (Correa) had an elite WHIP, and struck out 50% more batters, nobody would say that they are about the same.

Again, I am NOT arguing that we should have offered more money than the $275M we offered to Correa. I am NOT saying I am unhappy with the Baez deal. I am NOT saying that Baez is an average player -- put together the bat and the glove at SS and the baserunning and you have an very above average/borderline elite player. I AM saying that Correa has been a much better offensive player than Baez. There's simply no question about that. Maybe Baez will close the gap somewhat or even entirely (unlikely, but it could happen in any given year).

No, he's not. The 191 walk advantage for Correa is huge, unless you consider walks to be a non-factor in terms of offensive production.

Also, not trying to be a downer on Baez, but he is making the hard switch from NL to AL, which usually causes a significant drop in hitting performance, at least for a while. Even Cabrera had a drop-off in 2008.

Compare them over the last 2 full seasons including the partial 2020 season where Correa struggled and Correa had better stats at everything except ISO and HR/PA. Compare them over the last 4 or 5 full seasons or their careers and it's the same thing. Interestingly, they have had almost identical number of PAs over their careers, which makes for an easy career comparison: Correa - Baez Singles: 178 - 176 Doubles: 162 - 160 Triples: 8 - 19 HRs: 133 - 149 Walks: 347 - 156 K: 660 - 953 BA: 277 - 264 OBP: 356 - 307 SLG: 481 - 477 OPS: 837 - 784 wOBA: 356 - 328 wRC+: 128 - 103 Bottom line: Baez has a slight edge in HR, but Correa's enormous advantage in walks makes him an elite/HoF level producer (a wRC+ of 120 or better for a career is elite), whereas Baez's wRC+ of 103 makes him an average producer overall. Don't get me wrong, I am happy with Baez, but he is hardly the equal of Correa in terms of hitting talent, and Baez at 29 is at the tail end of what is considered to be a prime age range for baseball players (26 - 29 is usually the peak performance period), whereas Correa is closer to the beginning of that range at age 27. And FWIW, I haven't seen anyone "whining" around here, just recognizing that Baez isn't the overall offensive producer that Correa is.

UNITY 😃

slap!

Just ask the old boy Rick James

Another close game against a superior team, on the road, with a pretty decent performance from the trash heap backup QB, and an average running game from the no name running back crew. I'm definitely coming around big time on Dan Campbell as the answer at head coach. He clearly has the skills (and the personality, duh) to make it in this league. Get this man some actual talent and lets see what he can do.

agreed

For the record I'm not arguing against quarantining people who are infected at this point. When these new pills are released and tried out across the country, we will see how necessary quarantining is at that time. We are fast approaching a point, especially with the new pills, where cases shouldn't cause quarantines, unless some new and different strain comes into play that cannot be effectively ameliorated by vaccinations, the new pills, or antibodies.

Maybe it's Omicron? If so, it is highly contagious, but presents symptoms similar to a common cold. The vaccines have been very effective in keeping breakthrough infections of the other strains from putting people in the hospital/ICU or morgue. Given that something like 85% of the country is vaxxed at least to some degree), and the rest can easily obtain the vax, quarantine isnt the necessity that it was earlier in the pandemic. When these new pills hit the street that the FDA just approved, which are designed to tamp down symptoms after presentment and keep people out of the ICU and morgue, existing strains of COVID should be no more dangerous than colds and flus. But yeah, athletes are stupid sometimes.

WOW

Interesting take. Maybe Campbell's focus on the running game, controlling the ball, and protecting the QB and buckets-of-love with Goff will help "clear his head" decision-making wise and make him a better QB. If the running game keeps producing at least average rushing totals 11 out of every 14 games that will certainly help. Of course, Stafford's back pain may make him skittish about barreling into contact with the D.

Oh my. Prayers for his family and friends! What a terrible thing.

I'm talking about their career norms

The nice thing is that every time I evaluate this team I become increasingly convinced that they will nail 85 wins to the wall absent unforeseen injury issues. 90 seems in the realm with this group, as long as Greene + Tork are in the mix as producers, though I would really like to see them get Kikuchi or Smyly.

Adding Javy's 6 wins to 77 is probably the best overall way to look at it right now. I don't think the May 8th-onward analysis works, except in individual cases like Miggy, where he went from being horrible to being a 0 WAR player, which is closer to his skill level at this point. The results of the other individual players for the whole year, I believe, were closer to their expected/normal level than what they did from May 8th onward.

The upgrade at SS is going to be large, but the 2021 SS guys were a -0.2 WAR according to Fangraphs...all of the guys who played SS totaled only -1.6 WAR at all positions in 2021 according to B-R. I think Baez will be a 5 WAR player, and the SS position will be a 6 WAR upgrade.....10 is a BIG stretch. In terms of starting pitching, E-Rod should replace the 24 starts from Turnbull/Boyd as you suggest, with similar outcomes. Let's assume that Mize and Skubal both improve, each shaving about 5-10 runs allowed, split the difference for a net gain (reduction) of 15-20 runs allowed. Maybe a 50:50 shot. Let's assume (hopefully) that Manning steps up and gives us 25 decent-or-better starts (his OPS+ was 115, we should hope for something more like 95-105, which would save about 15-20 runs. I'd say less than 50:50. Let's assume that Alexander can repeat his 15 nice starts from 2021 and add another 5+ pretty decent starts to replace most of the starts in 2021 by Hutch, Fulmer, Teheran, Holland, and Funk. I'd say less than 50:50. We still have to replace another 30+ starts from the Peralta/Manning/Urena/etc axis -- if we are content with the poor outcomes that Manning/Urena gave us last year, then we can plug a YTBN pitcher into those starts and get the same below average results. This would be easy enough. I think Grossman will regress some and Baddoo will improve some and probably offset each other. Very likely. I think Cabrera could be expected to continue his post-May-8th numbers and be a zero WAR rather than the -0.7 he was for all of last year. But the 2.5 WAR from the Catcher position might be hard to repeat and might offset Miggy's small gain for a net zero. I'd say very likely. The wild cards are Greene and Tork -- if they play regularly and well, they could easily add 2-3 WAR apiece vs. the net zero they will replace (effectively H Castro and others at 2B, and Reyes and others in RF), totaling 4-6 WAR added. I'd say less than 50:50. Best case scenario from above: - our SS would gain us 6-7 WAR - Greene and Tork could add 4-6 WAR - SP would improve with the above changes by 35 or so fewer runs allowed, good enough for 4 WAR. That's 14-17 wins added inclusive of all of the player improvements that we can reasonably expect, for a 91-94 win season, if everything pans out great. Worst case scenario: If none of the good stuff pans out then we're still at 75-80 wins. Split the difference and we're looking at 85 wins or so. That is probably most likely. To get closer to 90 wins, I'd rather they add a pretty decent SP for less than $10M (like Kikuchi, Smyly, Davies, or even Duffy or Grienke if we wanted to take a bit of a health flier) and hope for 150+ decent innings out of him. I would also like another good reliever in the mix, but I think we can do well enough in 2022 with this RP group and add low-cost cast-offs that Fetters can work with as needed.