The 2023 Running Baseball Thread

As Michael_Gee pointed out, maybe having him on base as a threat to run helped create better hitting opportunities for Albies, Riley, and Olson. I imagine that was among the other questions you mentioned. It isn't just distracting pitchers and infielders. You might have pitchers throw more fastballs to help control the running game, which might help some hitters. Then again, it might hurt Riley, who does a lot of damage off breaking stuff.

 

As the great A's players, "would you have rather had Rickey stealing or not?" I'm leaning "yes."

Acuna scored approx. 40 runs leading off the 1st (based on a Jayson Stark article I read recently), that's amazing. How about a lead 25% of the time to start the game? I'm sure a lot of that involved a steal.

 

Sorry if this is behind a pay wall but the Angels are such penny-pinchers it boggles my mind:

How ownership's frugality led Angels to squander 6 years of Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani

The Freakin' A's pay their security guards more than the Angels in Orange County!! Even the Rays spend more on player development than the Angels. Yeah if I'm Ohtani I can't leave fast enough.

 

I like this. It goes to the heart of one thing I definitely don't like about over-adherence to analytics.

Put simply, the most important thing in baseball is what your job is in that moment when you're at the plate or on the mound.

Analytics dorks can parse, say, RBIs, and de-value them because they're just a function of who got on-base before the batter got a chance to knock them in. They're not wrong ... up until the next guy steps in the box.

Where analytics devotees take it too far is in their application of the above truth ... by de-valuing what the next guy does at the plate, because in that moment, his primary job is to knock those runners in.

It doesn't matter how they got there, they're there, and anyone with any kind of critical thinking knows damn well there are players who are much better at driving in runs than some of their peers are. So don't tell me 100 RBIs isn't something to value because it absolutely is.

So the conditions that created the RBI? Yeah, a function of lineup, and to some degree, luck. The actual batter who created the RBI? Not a function of mathematical luck, he is carrying out his job.

Michael Gee points out the same dynamic in base stealing. For various historical stages of baseball, stolen bases were deemed not worth the reward for the risk, but someone who can put pressure on the basepaths has an influence well beyond just the stolen base itself.

Always take into account the job on the plate and at the mound and assess statistics accordingly. The only old-school stat that has truly been de-valued by analytics are wins for pitchers, but that's only because pitchers rarely go the distance anymore. Back when it was CG-or-bust for starters, wins were a more meaningful stat because one man had out-size influence on who got the W.

 

I know I'm risking karmic retribution, and I also know this post would come as no surprise, but I really hope the Brewers knock the Cubs out of the box this weekend.

Not just because of Milwaukee-Chicago schadenfreude, though it would be delicious, but clueless Cubs fans thinking the world revolves around them is so tiresome.

Was talking to a Cubs fan last weekend. Great guy, but emblematic of the dynamic I'm talking about. I told him I didn't want the Brewers to play the Cubs in the Wild Card round because of all the sturm und drang that comes with Cubs-Brewers. Not that I wouldn't love to beat the Cubs, because I absolutely would (see 2018 NL Central one-game playoff), but it's just easier to just play the Marlins.

So he says, quite innocently and without a hint of shit-talking, "Oh, but don't you want to sell out Miller Park?"

Cubs fans seem to be under the impression that the only time a crowd shows up at Miller Park (Editor's note: I will never call it AmFam Field. Not because of any animosity towards American Family Insurance, but just via force of habit) is when the Cubs play there.

This despite the fact that the Brewers, the smallest market in baseball, hemmed in geographically by the Chicago colossus to the south and Minnesota up north, have not drawn less than 2.3 million in a non-pandemic-influenced season since 2005.

I told him, "the park will almost certainly sell out, it's a matter of who it sells out to."

I will never understand how Cubs fans, who come from a metro area of 9.4 million located 90 miles south of Milwaukee, refuse to grasp that they have a demographic advantage over a city and state that has a total population of 5.8 million. Cubs fans showing up at Miller Park has little to do with their "devotion" as compared to Brewers fans, who took over Wrigley in that 2018 one-game playoff when it was a fair, short-term proposition to get tickets, it has everything to do with a sheer numbers advantage and proximity.

Frankly, it's easier to go to a game in Milwaukee for a lot of Cubs fans than it is to go to Wrigley Field, especially those in the northern suburbs. Parking, etc., are all much easier.

Anyhow, fuck 'em.

 

Aren't the Brewers locked in to play the Phillies?

 

That's weird. Why wouldn't the lowest division winner get the best wild card team. EDIT: I just checked, and that's indeed how baseball did it last year. So the "reward" for the top wild card seed is the team with the best record, while the lowest seed division winner gets the team with the 7th seed. How ridiculous, but how fortunate for both Central divisions.

 

My confusion is all due to poor memory. I had absolutely forgotten the Mets-Padres series.

 

I wish I could forget that series. Oh, Mets.