MLB 2018 regular season thread

The fog and cold have rolled in, so I have borrowed Alice's laptop. I have a story. When I was at the Phoenix and George Kimball was the sportswriter, one of the copy editors was a very smart and quite lovely young woman named Mimsi (she's still named that of course, she married one of the other editors and they're still together decades later). She also had a wicked sense of humor. So one day, after George had sent in his (still typewritten then) copy, and it was on the way through the printing process beyond recall, she came up to George and said, "oh, George, I looked it up and it's runs batted in. So I changed all your RBIs to RsBI." Kimball just about stroked out, but then realized he'd been pranked.

 

The correct term is "ribbies."

Carry on.

 

I'd describe it as stubborn, and somewhat monotonous, while occasionally interesting/humorous.

 

Jake's into the 7th and just got a double play.

 

Small sample size.

 

"Six Inning Jake, I'd like you to meet Small Sample Size Shohei."

 

Five-Inning Jake! Five!

 

Dammit.

 

Mike Trout comes up in the bottom of the 9th of a tie ballgame with catcher Rene Rivera on 1st and one out. Trout smacks a double that moves Rivera to 3rd, then Justin Upton hits a medium-depth fly ball for the game-winning RBI. After the game, Upton basks in the knowledge that he was difference-maker this time.

 

Fuck driving in runs, I want to score runs. Did you know only eight players in all of baseball scored 110 or more runs?

Get Dee Gordon on the phone. He scored 114 runs last year. SCORED them. You said it best, the point of the game is to score runs.

 

I can’t believe in 2018 this is still an argument.

7 best in driving in runs is not accurate. Was Jeff Kent better than Barry Bomds?

 

That's right. Upton happened to be in the spot that produced the run batted in.

Over the course of a season, I want a guy who has 110 of those runs batted in.

110 is still a lot of RBIs regardless of anything else the guy may do poorly.

Because I've already got Trout on my team.

The question was who'd I choose, guy with Stats A or Stats B.

Hostility! LOL.

I have Dee Gordon on my team BECAUSE of the fact he can SCORE runs in a variety of ways.

So I've chosen him for that reason and his ability to steal bases, not his RBI factor.

Therefore he would not be Player Stats A or Player Stats B from which to choose.

The statistic is called Runs Battled In. Last year there were 7 players with 110 or more.

If you were one of those 7 then you were one of the 7 best at batting runs in.

In 4 of the 6 years they were teammates, Jeff Kent was better than Barry Bonds in RBIs.

For all 6 seasons, Jeff Kent had more RBIs when he batted with runners on base:

106-78
113-104
89-65
108-74
93-91
87-81

In 4 of those 6 years, Bonds had a better average when runners were on base.

But this isn't about batting average with runners on base -- or, any other statistic.

I was asked which of the final 2 players I'd pick, 70-RBI .350 wOBA or 110-RBI .300 wOBA.

I've already got the rest of my team. These are the last 2 players. I'm picking the guy who drives in 40 more runs.