gehringer_2

At the time there was also a story going around that Fenech had dissed Kate Upton in a way a husband might well not be willing to forgive. Considering the way other players and orgs supported JV even in contravention to league rules I think there's a fair chance something like that was at the root. It was striking how little support he got from anyone, even his editors didn't try to do much for him in the end.

but he was also a total jerk and he was always pushing a step beyond the limit. I remember him getting in trouble at ST because he would not abide by the filming rules and kept trying to shoot surreptitious video on his cell phone. That kind of stuff wears out your welcome and means you're going to get no slack when other stuff hits the fan. I assume he found some other career because he seemed to disappear with nary a trace.

IIRC Willie Mays could close his hand on a baseball. And he threw as hard or harder than most pitchers.

The trick is trying to understand/figure out if the person you are dealing with is your enemy or if the org he is dealing with is the enemy. If it's the latter then you want to recruit mutual empathy so he becomes your advocate in his org. That's the situation where being angry is counterproductive because it makes it easier for him not to care about your problem. Conversely, if you believe the person you are dealing with is the immediate problem, then a threat (if it's a legitimate one you can back up) becomes more useful/needful.

as a Tiger fan, the extra irritation about Lolich and Freehan is the inconsistency. They say Freehan didn't play long enough even though he was the undisputed best at his position for mulitple years, then they turn around and say that even though Lolich finished his career as the all time leader in K's for a LH pitcher, it was only because he threw so many innings and played so long, he was never dominant enough. You can't have it both ways, at least one of them should be in the hall under any theory of HOFness.

That's a new one on me. ( /google/...) Still counts on the 180 but not on his team's roster. OK, whatever. Can't be a whole lot of optimism left for Workman - just misses too many pitches.

sure - all the guys from the pitcher's era suffered by comparison with what came after, but probably especially catchers and shortstops.

But that's because you are in a self-selected group of people with enough facility of written language that you post regularly on a message board in full sentences over 160 characters.

When Freehan was eligible it was all about counting stats and he didn't play long enough to have huge counting stats. But he was as dominant in his league at his position over a 10 yr stretch as any HOF member, which to me is as good a definition of a HOF player as any.

It's a false premise anyway. It's experiencing and overcoming *shared* meaningful adversity that creates corps bonding. You don't get it from abuse manufactured and applied from within by other members inside the group.

not bad. I went through this with my daughter recently as she was upset with the maintenance being provided by her landlord and wanted very much to write an angry letter and I tried to bring her down to writing a something more along the lines of the above. Maybe the biggest advantage for most people in these situations with the bot is exactly its lack of emotional involvment.

The funny thing is that to listen to Harris you could classify what he says as quite 'old school'. The thing is there are various ways to cut up the definition of 'analytics'. There is the data statistical end, advanced instrument measurement end and the player measurement/bio-mechanics stuff. An org may use different proportions of the various tools for different reasons. Based on what I've heard him say, if anything it sounds like Harris is driving a more detailed/fine grained observational scouting system, But at core it has an old school component because it is still based on eye-ball scouting, but they appear to be drilling down for more specific details. So if they have a more sophisticated and systematic way of doing eye-ball scouting, is that old school or analytics? And the other piece is just plain very old school - get out there and look at more player in more places - e.g finding guys like Cerekownyk.

arn supposedly fringy for the left side.

He must have gotten rusty.

He's getting close to the cusp of reasonable call up material - OPS, walk rate, power have all improved, but that 27-28% K rate is just kind of stuck there. Under 30% so maybe not a total killer but it's certainly high enough to keep his future cloudy.

31BB 18K

But 32 yrs old. Jake seemed like a good guy and definitely a good glove, but you can't justify keeping an older journeyman on the roster as long as you still have younger guys that might still have upside you need to look at.

I don't think you can consider position too much at the top of a baseball draft, you have to go BPA. I think people are just surprised they had Clark higher on their board than Langford, but to listen to Harris and you hear him telling you that they aren't scouting performance as much as the factors they have identified as projectable. I certainly can't pass judgment one way or the other on whether they are right, but just from what I've read about the two prospects, I can believe the Tigers probably think Lanford is already closer to his ceiling than Clark and that's why Clark was higher on their board.

Unlike some guys that are all fast twitchy, he looks very smooth in his movement. I'll take that as a sign he has the fine motor to become a better shooter, but I guess time will tell.

Non-sequitor. They use cobalt in the alloys to make gasoline powered cars also and in lots other stuff as well. Kids are not being abused because the cars are electric.

Y.o.u..c.a.n..n.o.t..m.a.k.e..i.t..u.p..

+/- is probably more useful for comparisons within a team, and even then it breaks down for Dmen like Seider who have to be on the ice against the opposition's best while lesser defensemen are 'protected' by not getting those minutes. If you are going to compare across teams you can take the team's even strength goal differential, multiply it by the player's total TOI/4920 and substract that from his +/-. That result should be more comparable for players across differenct teams.

The only guy they will miss from last yr’s crew is Hronek, and that’s only if he doesn’t play like me did two yrs ago.

I think the willingness to focus on HS bats to such a degree indicates that whether they are correct or not, this FO believes they can look at a prep hitter and project with more confidence than the old regime I think that is what you have to do. Get outside the top 10 picks and pretty much any bat that achieves an OPS+ positive in the majors is an extreme outlier and even big stats from college end up not being all that predictive. So we'll see if Harris and Co. are as good at this as they seem to believe they are. I just hope we don't lose the ability to find arms that the old regime - despite all their other flaws- had done a pretty good job with.

Dont have to play the same lines against every opponent. If you are playing a team where going small won't hurt you, that's always an option - at least at home with last change.