MLB 2018 regular season thread

Now do the "not ready as a pitcher" part, dick.

 

That was what nullified the opinion?

 

Tebow and Lin.

 

No, I have a million stats.

 

Yeah, he looks really good so far.

Adam Dunn looked really good on Opening Day 2011. Ready to start the season, in fact.

Chicago White Sox at Cleveland Indians Box Score, April 1, 2011 | Baseball-Reference.com

I wonder how that turned out.

 

Geez, let's refer to a "definitive" story from Passan and tweet from Bloom that were offered in EARLY MARCH.
I was skepitcal about Ohtani, too, preferring the wait-and-see approach. I was also skeptical about Fernando and all of the other newbies, just because this game is hard and what you've done on the way to the majors means little once you get there.
But unless Ohtani stops throwing 100 mph heaters and splitters, and 89 mph breaking balls and changeups, and starts walking people, he is going to be a really good pitcher. Hitting will take longer because they will get a book on him. I think he opens up too quickly and is susceptible to the outside corner (like everybody), but it hasn't hampered him yet.
A former major leaguer who I trust said (on FB) that the Angels suddenly have two of the most exciting young players in baseball, and a solid lineup (Upton, Cozart, Calhoun, Maldonado) and maybe the best defense in the game.
Pitching is questionable.
This former major leaguer said that with a couple of key midseason acquisitions, the Angels will rank among the top four teams.

 

The bolded is what I was thinking, too. The scouts could be 100 percent correct about his flaws. Now they just have to figure out how to exploit them.

 

To be fair, he did a lot of damage off a guy who never existed.

 

It seems like exit velocity and percentage of hard-hit balls -- in both of which he ranks near the top -- is a strong indicator that he's legit. Do those vary from week to week? Does a guy go from hitting the ball as hard as anyone in the majors to dinking flares?

 

I'm more worried about strikeouts.

 

Also, every time I look up his BR page, I get a different front.

 

I was on a jury for a medical malpractice case where the expert witness for the accuser wouldn't admit that a wound that was shrinking in size was healing. Over the course of a few weeks, a man with an open wound on his foot had gone to a podiatrist for treatment. Each time he went, the wound had become smaller, as it would do if it were healing. No matter how the attorney asked, the expert witness could not bring himself to say the wound was getting better. The case wasn't good to begin with, but was lost on that testimony, in my mind.

The argument here about Ohtani being ready for the season reminds me of that.