2019 MLB Regular Season running thread

The Tigers gave away JD Martinez, Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander for essentially nothing.

 

How much of that was driven by money? What I'm talking about is teams always selling off talent to protect the owner's profits.

 

Is it a rule that every effing marginal and back-up catcher eventually becomes a manager? Jesus man.

 

The conventional wisdom is to take the bench coach of a successful active manager. Not saying it’s the right thing to do but Nats, O’s and Twins currently have Maddon’s Bench coaches.

 

I remember that Baseball Prospectus had a glib Rule of Back-Up Catcher Defense - Namely, that the worse a catcher was at hitting, the more his reputation was exaggerated when it came to defense and "game handling," as if to justify his roster spot. I imagine that with managerial candidates, the catcher being the liaison between the pitching staff and manager, as well as often the clubhouse leader, probably gets them "extra points." (I bet someone has looked at C vs. non-C manager records, but I'm too lazy to Google for it right now.)

 

Career WAR is a cumulative stat just like HRs, hits, etc, which people have forever used to compare players' careers. Nobody claims that Don Sutton is better than Bob Gibson because the former has more wins.

That's not a fair criticism. It is a tool for comparison so the exact number doesn't matter as long as you use the same system to compare players.

BB-ref explains the differences this way:

Different parts of the stat can have different inputs, but all the choices are defensible. Look at the inputs and decide which ones you think make the better choices. In the end, though, the differences aren't that great.

 

Girardi has Cubs written all over him

 

I don’t have an opinion of Girardi as a manager, but as a man I respect the hell out of him for the way he handled Darryl Kile’s death, telling the Wrigley crowd that the game wasn’t going to be played because of a tragedy in the Cardinals family.

 

They key word in the Baseballreference explanation is that it is an approximation. Also, your claim regarding picking and choosing whichever inputs you think are better supports my point. It is akin to manipulating statistics to fit your chosen narrative. That is a significant flaw. War is a manipulation of numbers that can be used to fit a possible narrative.

 

Where are the As bats?

 

Nothing worse than seeing a team do nothing on offense. Nine LOB. Ugh.

 

A lot of it
After a decade of chasing a title, the window had closed
Upton was traded for peanuts because his agent inferred to Avila he would opt out
Martinez reportedly turned down 4/$80M
They had to pay the Astros $16M to take JV
Plus they were still paying the Rangers $6M for Prince Fielder
Zimmermann and Cabrera are the only big salaries left
Kinsler would only accept a trade to the Angels