MLB 2022: The Long and Winding Thread

The Nats winning was worth it for 45 showing up to get booed out of the park.

 

That truly was a great moment.
Unfortunately, the Washington Nationals Baseball Team Inc., was -- and still is for the time being -- owned by a dedicated Trumpist who was able to get his taxpayer-funded ballpark to host a RNC klan meeting a few years ago.

 

Hermes-

Maybe you are soured by his asshole past. That's fine and I get that. I feel the same way about Trea Turner. Fugg him.

 

Let's not dissect @Hermes' post finding out exactly how many guys had sub-2.00 ERAs while throwing 98 mph in a setup role this year. The point is spot-on: It's a fungible job and good teams are able to minimize the year-to-year fluctuation by stacking their systems with fliers. Trevor Stephan may not do it again next year, but the Guardians will find someone who will. Hader is the outlier/unicorn and the Brewers weren't entirely wrong to trade him at or near his peak, but in every possible way, they chose an awful, tone-deaf time to do so.

 

I am 100% convinced Abreu whiffed Stanton.

 

to be fair, they traded for Hader when he was 21 and he spent two more years in the minors. His salary was as high as it was because of arbitration

 

Yes, I phrased “there are dozens of Josh Haders” awfully. There aren’t. He can do things a lot of others cannot. But the Milwaukee Brewers cannot spend $11 million on Josh Hader when they have so many other things to fix and have an MVP who forgot how to hit. I don’t know the Hader trade well enough to speak on if the Brewers got enough or traded at the correct time. I am on the side of them trading Hader, who on a small market team that is quite middling, was a very expensive hood ornament.

 

No, I just haaaaaaate watching small market team misallocate resources to bullpen arms.

Hader makes so much sense as a final piece to a team and no sense for a team like the Brewers.

 

Except they were in contention for the NL Central title at the time they made the trade. Sure, they had a strong replacement ready to take over as closer and got Rogers to step in to that set-up role, but they still seemed to weaken their team at a terrible time without getting a great haul in return. The best prospect they got was an outfielder with great speed who hasn't shown he can hit. I'm not a fan. Most of the time, Hader is a hell of a lot more useful than a hood ornament. Ask the guys who have tried to hit on him since he got his act back together in September.

What I'm sick of is small market teams selling rather than adding when they are in contention.

 

It used to be the back end of the bullpen was the last piece, but that all changed in baseball. Teams want that security.
What was really dumb was somebody like Mark Davis getting all the money he did for one flash season in a then-newish and contrived role.

 

I’m just going to say you can in no way EVER use WAR to calculate relief pitcher value. It doesn’t work.

 

Whenever I hear an aging baseball writer opine on modern approaches to the game, I like to remind myself that motherfuckers like that gave Davis a Cy Young Award. You weren’t any smarter, grandpa; in fact, evidence strongly suggests you were dumber.