It would be a nice little feat for the A’s to fly back across the country in sole possession of first place. It’s up to Jon Lester to deliver all two wins on this rather unpleasant road trip. He’s opposed by LHP Mike Minor, who’s been hit pretty hard this year.
Crisp CF, Gomes LF, Donaldson 3B, Norris C, Moss RF, Freiman 1B, Callaspo 2B, Parrino SS, Lester P.
Inb4 all of the “Minor Threat” jokes from the punkheads.
My DC contemporaries. Never saw them but saw a shit ton of their musical descendents in the mid-80s.
let’s go oakland.
Kruk may be vacuous and annoying at times, but Dave O’Brien certainly knows a lot more about Jon Lester than we do.
I’m excited that ESPN is showing tonight’s game, so people who have never seen Jon Lester pitch before will get the chance to.
Ha ha!
Oh god. I don’t know if I can take 3+ hours of Kruk.
Leadoff double. As Coco goes, so go the A’s.
Pretty small crowd.
Shut the fuck up Kruk you stupid piece of shit.
Him getting this gig is inexplicable.
Well, it was supposed to be him and Curt Schilling (!) in a three-man booth, but Schilling’s cancer issues knocked him out for the season.
Schilling is an ass, but he’s a reasonably smart and well-spoken ass. Kruk is dumb and inarticulate.
Odd that ESPN is using the more traditional CF camera spot compared to the last couple nights, which was a great angle.
Kruk has now called Josh Donaldson “Josh Johnson” and “John Donaldson.”
Do you think he knows ANYTHING about anyone in the A’s lineup other than Crisp, Gomes and Lester? Lots of generic comments coming.
I’m sure he knows about Dale Barton.
Coco sets the table, then nobody advances him.
I’m not sure what Gomes is doing batting second.
Bothering John Kruk by not hitting the other way, I hear.
Which is hilarious because he did hit the ball the other way that time.
I think his point was that he popped up because he was trying to hit the ball the other way. On which I call bullshit.
Moss shouldn’t be hitting fifth either, but the lack of DH has domino effects.
I disagree. Moss should be hitting. I think the problem is he’s not. (Yes, I know what you mean).
Wow, what a play by Gomes in the corner.
Those three boys mechanically waving their limp foam tomahawks around feebly is unsettling.
Can man live off “want” alone, Fredi?
Thank you Mr. Minor.
Boy that was a blast. Of course the pitch was Hammelesque.
Well, you leave that pitch there and Freiman will make you pay. That was a blast.
Hammel didnt even do the HR tunnel right.
Big shout-out to Rosie. Thank you man! We still love you.
I do anyway.
I’m a fan too. He seems like the nicest guy.
OK, Jon. You got your run.
Lester has the most career ABs without a hit of any active big leaguer, the knowledgeable ESPN crew informs us.
You can say it Kruk. You like Upton’s ass.
Just the way things have been going.
That awesome defensive play deserved to be a 2-base error.
That ball could not have trickled out of play more slowly. Am I wrong to think that Norris should have gotten there?
Samardzija’s pullover getting some national TV exposure.
Naturally Lester picks that inning for 7 pitches and out.
I like how he set up a fan to give him wind-blown hair action for the interview.
FUCK YOU
Damnit.
We suck.
Not a bad pitch at all.
Dang, no kidding, not even a strike probably.
The fact the A’s have only one run against Minor in four innings is not a good one.
Did it feel this bad back in ’11 and before? Because this sucks donkey.
Yeah.
Ew, Cubs rubbed off on all of our players. TAKE A SHOWER!
This last week has been so hard to watch.
The A’s better get their Little Feat moving.
Once again, Lester’s results will likely be pedestrian. He’s 3-0, but he has needed to count on the A’s offense except for the Twins game.
With scoring calls like that, no wonder that guy is a perennial gold-glover.
How many times are we going to hype Jason Heyward tonight?
Hey now. Ive found out great things tonight. Did you know that Heyward runs to the area the ball is hit to? Most OFs dont do stuff like that.
(joke is only funny if you try and forget about Byrnes)
Also he really, really wants to catch the ball. Like, all the time. He never wants to not catch it.
2nd time in 3 weeks I went and got lunch forgetting I was going to make the exact same thing for dinner. What to eat…
So when ESPN does those cool shots of the home city next week when heading to commercial, how many of them are going to be of San Francisco?
One thing I really like about the NFL is that they always show aerial shots of Oakland during Raiders games.
Raiders management actually complained to CBS some years ago to get them to use Oakland-specific aerial shots.
OH COME ON SWING THE FKING BATS ALREADY.
This is not a reply-fail. Well, ok, it is, but I swear I was posting at the bottom of the thread.
We may have the best record in baseball, but it’s a hollow best record in baseball.
We don’t have the best record in baseball, but our record is in no way hollow.
Nice read, Freeman.
pAthetic.
Naturally the A’s make Mike Minor look like his 2013 self instead of his 2014 self.
Kruk’s approach seems to be to praise the Braves’ pitcher, even when the pitch isn’t a strike, instead of pointing out that the A’s cannot hit at all right now. It’s polite.
Politeness and stupidity: Where does one end and the other begin?
In our line-up, Smoke bats third and Mirrors bats cleanup.
If this team had the decency to be in last place like they deserve to be, we all wouldn’t be so miserable.
Heh heh
Man, watching the 34-0 Broncos killing of the 9ers in a preseason game would have been more entertaining than this. Even if you knew the final score. And I hate preseason football.
Lester wouldn’t have given up that HR if we hadn’t traded away Cespedes.
This is difficult to argue with.
No wonder ESPN Sunday Night Baseball hasn’t featured the A’s since 2006. Can you blame them?
well then
Braves 3, Freiman 2.
Is Big Nate playing in fear of being sent down? If so, threaten everybody.
Thank you Mr. Minor…
Thank you Mr. Minor…
(they sing that line three times in the song…hint hint A’s)
Freiman likes playing on national television.
Just need Freiman to come up one more time. And then again in extras.
Can you fucking get guys on base in front of you before you do that shit?
At least Nate Freiman realizes Minor is fallible.
Also, it’s not easy for a ballpark to make the Coliseum look small, but this Atlanta park does.
I feel like we’ve had a lot of warning track shots to go with a little lack of BABIP luck and a whole lot of crap the past week.
We have. Everything in the air is a little short and a little too much at someone. Rational me still sees this ending and it becomes a funny footnote to look at these threads in a year or 2.
But rational me can suck a bag of nuts. MOAR RUNZ PLZ!
Jesus, O’Brien, it’s Callaspo. You didn’t have to Kuiper that one.
It has come to this…trying to see if we can get to Nate Freiman again to have a chance.
Also actually saw something interesting on the crawl: Lester gave up 3 runs total his last 3 Sux starts. He gives up 3 a game for us.
I had forgotten how bad these ESPN guys are. PxP guy just mis-ID’d the guy warming up in the bullpen.
I remembers when we were winning and the only thing we had to complain about was how shitty our middle infielders were. Now we can bitch about anything we please!
Bob Melvin really needs to improve his sunscreen application technique.
So THAT’S why he was glaring at the streaker last night.
At least our middle infielders are still shitty.
I LIKE BITCHING.
Remember when you felt confident that the A’s would come back in the late innings, especially from a small deficit? That was fun.
Remember when “the BIG ACE” didnt give up runs every time we close the gap?
Totally changed comment midstream…thx Lester.
uhg
They start yakking about Lester going back to Boston. Home run. Single. Yank him.
Can we at least write this road trip off on our taxes?
Did that exchange between Norris & Lester seem a little odd?
I went back and looked again…not really, but I don’t think Lester needs Norris trying to pump him up right there.
what happened?
It looked like Norris tried to say something rah-rah to Lester as he was walking off the mound, and Lester just ignored him.
I don’t think Lester was in a mood for cheering up of any kind.
Looks to me like Norris was talking while Melvin was getting Lester. Lester just walked off. Not heated or anythung, but I dont imagine Lester wants to hear anything at the moment.
Well…96 pitches keeps him fairly fresh, and his next two starts figure to be against the Angels.
Rentals acquired for run producers can’t be mediocre.
Sure they can! They can suck donkeys! Just watch! Beane will never live it down.
I didnt think I would be here for another year. But here we go: none of us ever expected this run. Mid May 2012 we were happily playing out the string until we got a new park. We have been playing with house money since then. Whatever happens they cant take all that we have had away.
We haven’t had shit. We haven’t had shit since 1989. What’s to take away?
If you believed at that point that we were going to be the 2 time division champs and had all the wins and fun we have had, then you are a better psychic than any Ive ever met. And if the only take away for you is rings then why would you even be a fan of the A’s to begin with?
Because I was born in the East Bay and raised a baseball fan. Fandom is not contingent upon success.
But you say we “havent had shit”. I may be out of my mind, but I have had 2 great years following the team. If I compare that to years of hoping that Greggles and Moose Costco were going to set the world on fire that is something. Hell, I once hoped Ray Burris was going to become studs and guys like Bill Almon were going to have career years so we could win the division. To some, the journey is part of it too.
The journey is part of it. But the last two years, the journey has ended in extreme heartbreak. I stopped watching or paying attention to ANY sports after the MLB playoffs last year, didn’t come back out of hibernation until late in the NFL season. I couldn’t take it, and I think I may die of malaise if we implode without even making it to the postseason this time.
But, in fact, you did take it and you won’t die.
Well, now that Lester is gone, time for O’Brien and Kruk to start talking about Jeter.
We needed mo’ Lester.
Sam Fuld will surely lead our big comeback.
yup
Check those glasses, B.J.
They really want to give this game to us and we keep refusing it.
what does “some measure of success” mean to you vince?
Was B.J. Upton good at some point? I feel like people thought he was, but I missed it.
If Coco tries to bunt again I quit.
Pretty clear the problem is, Coco is playing hurt and at times he thinks that’s his best chance for success.
If I get fired it’s because I yelled at someone. They wouldn’t leave me alone about changing the desktop image on their computer and I snapped.
What the hell is happening?
Is this like satchel paige calling the defense off the field?
Somehow North Carolina football is ranked in the preseason Top 25 (thank you ESPN crawl). With absolutely no insight whatsoever, I’d be willing to bet a mortgage payment they don’t finish there.
Freiman vs. Kimbrel in the 9th?
Probably Jaso, no?
Completely forgot about him.
Maybe it depends on if Moss gets on? If not, Reddick hits for Freiman, if so, save Reddick for Parrino?
Gotta figure both Jaso & Reddick come off the bench for the first two righties/infielder.
Very discouraging. The Braves have been very sloppy, but the A’s are doing just enough to lose.
At least Freeman will be happy Kimbrel gets the full entrance tonight.
I hope Freddie Freeman is satisfied with the Kimbrel Grand Entrance tonight.
When does Jaso pinch-hit?
parrino
I guess Kimbrel is making up for the strikeouts tonight.
And that completes a 1-6 roadtrip.
i miss the may A’s
Thank goodness we get 48 hours before having to endure any more of this.
Man. The way we’re playing, we could find ourselves 10 games out by the end of the month.
I am unfazed. I feel certain that the A’s will not lose tomorrow.
I hate baseball and everything baseball stands for.
Back to the Wild Card. Still not enough runs. Lester remains inadequately good. Just as happy there’s no A’s game tomorrow.
The Steve DeBerg of trade deadline Aces.
Seattle is now only five back in the loss column.
While it seems paranoid, I am not assuming the A’s make the play-in game. It seems pretty likely, but teams have fallen apart in worse fashion.
What’s odd is that the Angels aren’t playing that well themselves, and eliminated the deficit very quickly anyway. They just played crappy teams this week, and scraped by.
The good news – tomorrow, all the talk will be about the 49ers’ stinker today.
Not really. Ultimately that game means all of nothing.
So, You’ve already forgotten about talk radio?
Talk radio means nothing to me, nor should it mean anything to anybody else. It’s pointless.
But what will Huff’s take be?
One of my few joys of living down here. The sports talk is never about the A’s and I simply ignore it. I know I would turn on 95.7 if I was up there just out of morbid curiosity. Here when I turn on 95.7 I get The Guess Who taking us into 45 minutes of the best of Fresno’s Classic Rock.
the talk about the A’s is forced. They get their 12 minutes an hour in and then ito on to the giants or football or making fun of women
Oh I assume it’s forced. But I would know they were going to say something which would make me wait for it-glutton for punishment.
Here we have one older guy who might make a passing comment. He actually is a good sports talk guy-doesn’t do most of the BS we complain about and makes me laugh. but he is a diehard Giants guy and their main sports station covers the G’s so it is all them and then all FSU football.
It was Abey Baby’s first birthday today so I had to turn the game off during the 7th. I have to sing love songs to my kids before my ex shows up. Only he didn’t like it (I can’t sing a lick but the others don’t care) until I did “You Make Me Feel Brand New” by the Stylistics. Then I got the squinty eyes. That’s Abraham’s song.
Anyhoo, glad I didn’t miss much. :(
there hasn’t been much to miss lately
We’re in a FIVE GAME losing streak. We no longer have the best record in baseball by .001 percentage points, and don’t even have sole possession of first place in our own division. Lester DIDN’T WIN and is only 3-1 because of the A’s offense in the three wins, which, by the way IS ANEMIC since the Cespedes trade.
Every one of us is shortly going to expire.
I blame Hammell.
we all do
He got Cub all over the guys.
the A’s have played shitty since the third former Cub was activated on the roster.
Never go full Cub.
Oh shit. This isn’t the Curse of the Big Dick is it? The Curse of the Long Dong? The Curse of the Blocked Cock? The Curse of the Bulky Boner?
Yes
I hope San Fuld doesn’t take it personally that I want his second cousin hanged by his own entrails.
Speaking of Cubs…
Something is off. It has been festering for awhile now. I have not generally brought it up here because I don’t like to be part of sky-is-falling hysteria. But well before the Cespedes trade, something had started to feel wrong. Pretty much since the All-Star Break, although I didn’t really start to notice the feeling for a week or so. And even then, the Angels were still the Angels. If you’re relying on Grampa Pujols, the Ghost of Josh Hamilton, a shredded pitching staff, and one certifiable Best Player in Baseball, you shouldn’t be a threat, not even to a scuffling A’s team. But then we just kept getting worse. Our pitchers are making mistake pitches all the time now. Our hitters’ patience has completely disappeared. (UPDATE: Before posting, I double-checked that. That is not true. Our second-half P/PA is actually .01 higher than our first-half P/PA, and our August P/PA is .12 higher than our season P/PA, so I don’t know what the fuck.)
Bad luck + bad/injured Coco + a few very bad pitches here and there
I actually feel pretty good now that what I expected to be a terrible road trip is behind us. A day today to refocus, and by tomorrow Reddick will stroke someone’s beard and we start on a good stretch.
We have to be able to beat teams like Atlanta and Kansas City. They’re not world-beaters. They’re pretty good, maybe postseason-bound, but they are not teams that should have us scritching and scratching for a couple of runs on our way to a 1-6 road trip, a five-game losing streak, and a 14-15 record since the break against teams with a median winning percentage of .492 and a mean winning percentage of .484.
If Coco is playing hurt, Billy needs to put a stop to that shit so he can go get it fixed, at least to a degree that will allow him to hit the ball competently. The starting pitchers have got to cut the shit with these 0-2 fastballs down broadway–seems obvious, but someone isn’t telling them. And yeah, there’s been some bad luck. But there was bad luck before. We’ve always been 3-6 wins below our Pythag, so we had bad luck already. But we were playing well despite that. Now there’s bad luck AND we’re playing like dogshit.
I see also that we are currently at a cool 7-10 for the month of August. Can we go 8-4 against the Mets, Angels, Astros, and Angels again to salvage a winning month? You make the call!
KC is the hottest team in the AL right now. Losing 5 of 7 to them stinks, but they’ve been playing very well. Best record over the past month and more recently besides.
KC will probably cool off at some point, but as much as some other teams were run over by the A’s when they were hot, the same thing just happened to our guys.
Are they the hottest team because they’re hot. Or are they the hottest team because we sucked ass for 5 of 7 games against them and they got to play the shitty Giants?
They were 47-43 at the end of the day on July 9, then dropped 3 of 4 at home to DET entering the break, were swept in 3 in BOS, then lost their first in CHW, putting them at 48-50 after July 21. Since then:
2-0 @ CHW
3-1 vs. CLE
2-1 vs. MIN
2-1 @ OAK
3-0 @ ARI
3-0 vs. SFG
3-1 vs. OAK
2-1 @ MIN with one more tonight
That’s 20-5, and BAL has the second best record over the same period with 16-8. Nobody else is better than 14-10 in the AL.
Okay, the A’s have been reeling and the Giants have dropped off considerably, while everyone else on that list is mediocre to bad. All the same, they’re taking care of business against weaker opponents. Of who’s left on their schedule, They get COL for 2 games, they have a pair of series each against TEX, CLE, DET, & CHW, plus single series with NYY (plus a makeup game), BOS, & MIN.
I think that leaves KC in fairly good shape to claim a wild card spot or even hang on to the division. DET does have three series left with MIN, and they get the Giants as well as TBR. Other than that, they’ve got one series with NYY and nothing else with BOS.
So basically they’re the hottest team in baseball because everyone they’ve played recently has sucked some serious ass.
Wouldn’t be the first time. That’s often half the story, isn’t it?
No, it actually started before the break. It’s not a patience thing. I don’t feel like we’re having horribly bad at bats either. But there’s something definitively off on the offense side and I feel like it’s negatively affecting the rest of their game (base running, defense, pitching) because they’re pressing and feeling like they have to make up for it. Some of it’s bad luck. A lot of their outs feel like they were hitting the shit out of the ball only for it to go right to someone. And while I’d love to attribute it to just a lot of bad luck, I don’t think that’s it. There have been a few injuries, but only Coco seems to be a major contributor so I’m not convinced that’s entirely it either. I think it may be a purely mental thing. A couple of our key players do seem to be kind of headcases.
See, before the break, and even for a little while after the break, I think it was bad luck. The ball was being hit hard and it was being hit right at people. That’s the way it goes, life goes on, this team was good enough to still be the best in baseball, no matter how much shit luck you throw at them. A home run can’t be BABIP’d, a walk can’t be BABIP’d, and you hit enough of those balls on the screws, even BABIP can’t BABIP you every time.
Something happened, and I think people are right to say it was that series in Houston. Here’s an awful team–one with some promising youngsters, but an awful team–taking two out of three games while outscoring the A’s 19-11. And they should have swept us! They dominated us almost the entire series except for a six-run ninth inning in the middle game that gave us the 7-4 win. Without that inning, we got swept and outscored 19-5. And sure, that inning counts as much as any other inning, but we only got it because one of the worst teams in baseball did their worst-team-in-baseball act, which they were presumably doing for the entirety of the series, and we still came a hair away from being swept.
From there we got beat 1-0 by Raul Ibanez and we were truly off to the shit-races. Even when we’ve won, we’ve looked bad. And the worst part of it is that we’re getting contributions from the guys we were waiting to get contributions from (some of them.) Reddick is posting clownishly good numbers since coming back. Eric Sogard is OPSing .807 in the second half! The A’s as a team are OPSing .722. Nate Freiman is showing his power. And then everybody else’s plate appearances are just bats swung by an idiot, full of sound and fury and scorifying nothing.
I’m kind of thinking the bad luck caused them to start pressing and when these guys press, they collapse like a cheap chair.
I think I’m seeing a .589 winning percentage team. Even a team that wins 100 is going to lose 62, and some of those losses are going to occur in batches of, say, five. I say this is what a .589 team looks like because, you know, they’re at .589.
Needs more amateur psychoanalysis.
I think that’s a gross oversimplification. This isn’t a team that’s going to win 100 games. They’ve played like a sub .500 team for the last month. So yes, it balances out to a .589 team as of now. But that depends on where their regression (for lack of a better term) leads us. If we were playing over our heads in the first half (which we were) and we’re playing (at least somewhat) under our potential for the past month, then there’s real concern about just how far over our heads we were actually playing and where that actually balances out to.
So what you’re saying is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . Sounds right to me.
Duplicate post is duplicate for some reason.
SHIT! but i’m good at those. and i was juuuust about to spot the difference too. i know i was.
i’m good at jumbles too. and circle the word? absolute ace.
I’m a grandmaster at Slylock Fox.
I’m better at them than Slylock. He usually comes up with some basic idea that can be foiled by an 8th grader, which is fine since he thinks only 3rd graders are reading…
i thought i was great at family circus until i figured out it’s not a game (besides, the answer’s always not me).
We need a dotted line map of you making your way around the North Lot in flip flops.
just kidding. i spotted the difference first try. and the secret answer was forewarned is forearmed.
sometimes we have to oversimplify to tell ourselves the stories of our lives in a way the psyche, and more importantly, the heart won’t suffer a complete breakdown from. i, for one, have to make sure there’s a bottle of valium nearby, and a nice storybook about a dog named spot next to it, before i even think about .588709677419.
I do think these guys get in their heads a bit much when they start pressing.
My hope is that Gomes is going to take the off day and show some veteran leadership and take them all to the best titty bar in town. Or gives them all golden thongs, whatever it takes.
We should have had someone turn on the hoses for a night and get a “rainout”.
Clearly the problem is that he has not been doing his 2012 thing where he would pick a random youngster to sneak up behind and growl, “Don’t be afraid to be a hero today.”
Veritably.
well, you say veritably. more like verily, really.
The problem iss these guys wouldnt know majesty if it came up and bbit them in the face. We need a hero. With beefy arms and consummate V’s…
A Johnny 5 dance is the true heir to the Bernie.
The Ed Lover dance is pretty awesome.
Thanks, and go As.
Yes it is. But Yo! MTV raps was not a cheesy 80’s movie.
And I always thought it was a missed opportunity to not add in something about Yo(enis)! for a promotion or something.
And now we are back to the trade again…
What was up with having Reddick in the on deck circle and then pulling him back for Jaso? Was it that he would rather have Reddick with a man on and Jaso with the bases empty? Trying to mess with Kimbrel?
I was guessing that with a man on base he was going to use Reddick and hope for a dinger to take the lead but with bases empty he picked Jaso for OBP skills. Not sure that there is much logic there, but it made a little sense to me last night.
I don’t understand why Callaspo batted though. Unless Melvin felt like playing for the moral victory of not K’ing against Kimbrel.
I’ll give you 25 guesses as to who has the top position player fWAR in the major leagues right now.
Is it a fish?
one fish two fish red fish royal fish?
I peeked… and wow. Does anyone think he will get any MVP love?
Related: Donaldson is the AL leader for bWAR
He’ll probably get a handful of 5th place votes or thereabouts.
That’s another good lesson in why you shouldn’t just take the WAR number at face value. (not a duplicate comment if I write this…)
He absolutely will not get any MVP love.
Also tough to guess: only team with two players in the top ten.
(Answer: Mariners – Cano and Seager)
Edit: We will also accept Brewers – Lucroy and Gomez have 4.6 WAR, tied with Seager for 9th-11th places.
If you include pitchers then the Mariners also have Felix to go along with Cano and Seager. That’s a top-heavy team.
If top-heavy is an advantage in the playoffs, SEA, DET, and LAA are all scary.
The Angels have one guy. I think we can handle one guy.
Not in a one game playoff.
We won’t be facing them in a one-game playoff. If we were, I’d have faith in our ability to win a one-game playoff.
A scenario where the Mariners pass us both by does exist. And if that scenario were to play out, I’d have zero faith in our ability to win that game.
That’s a good lesson in why you shouldn’t just take the WAR number at face value.
Why? It’s still a recording of what happened, while not necessarily a measure of true talent, no?
Thanks, and go As.
It’s not very straightforwardly a recording of what happened, more of a guess about what happened, and what would have happened if other fielders had been standing there. Different defensive rating systems are all recordings of what happened in some sense, but they disagree with each other, and only one thing happened, so you can’t say any of them individually are reliably a recording of what happened.
This.
The biggest difference is that publicly available defensive metrics are both purely relative and arbitrarily bucketed.
Imagine you are a MLB hitter. But instead of recording your actual hits, there would be a stringer inputting the location and hit type of every ball you put in play. Then, a system would proceed to calculate your average, OPS or wOBA based on single, double, triple and out percentages within each arbitrarily defined bucket of location/hit type combo. But not only that, the system would furthermore filter out those location/hit type combos that only a selected group of players hit and give you values based on how successful they were on what the system thinks are similar enough hits. So, you could theoretically end up in a bucket with 25 Kurt Suzukis or with 25 Miguel Cabreras. Which would give totally different values to the same inaccurately classified hits you had in the first place.
And that’s only a part of it. There is a big bias involved as well. I did some preparations for a study* I never published and it showed that the worst fielders were overvalued and the best ones undervalued due to natural tendencies of stringers to place the location of the hits further away from the fielders and locations of outs closer to them.
The analogy above is not perfect, but it helps show that thinking that defensive metrics record what happened is not really correct. Even with better systems in place, e.g. cameras replacing stringers, there are challenges, especially in regard to positioning, shifts, sharing the credit/blame on infield throws etc.
* The only motivation for finding that data again and going through with it would be that it would shave some 15 WAR from Jeter’s totals.
That’s not motivation enough?
Seriously. Anything to put down God’s puppy.
Shaving 15 WAR from Derek Jeter’s totals would be enough to motivate me to do quite a few things. I mean a LOT of things. I might have sex with a guy if I was convinced it would take 15 WAR away from Derek Jeter.
There is one variable here that make this sentence have very different meanings.
Thanks, and go As.
compels the question, would you have sex with derek jeter?
He’s an attractive man. If I were going to have sex with a guy, and I were given my choice of guys, he certainly would have to be in the running.
OK, forgive me for being crass because I’m finding this confused.
I can’t tell if you are a hetero guy contemplating this, or a gay girl, or [OTHER]
Either way I’m chuckling, so there’s that.
Thanks, and go As.
I’m a straight dude. Straight in that the only reason I wouldn’t have sex with a man is that I don’t want to have sex with men because butts are gross.* But some men are undeniably attractive, and Derek Jeter is one of them.
*Yes, I know that blow jobs would remain an option, but I’m not enthusiastic enough about blow jobs from anyone of any gender to receive one that would force me to redefine my sexual identity.
Is he? I’m going to need a second opinion on this one ‘cuz I think he’s funny looking.
Yeah as a straight dude, I don’t find him to be a good looking guy by any means.
Thanks, and go As.
I mean he’s not Dustin Pedroia or anything, but he’s not exactly Eric Chavez either.
Few men are Eric Chavez. He could smile the homophobia off a cop with a moustache.
To be clear, Jeter doesn’t crack my Gay Five, or probably even my Gay Twenty. But if someone told me that if I fucked Derek Jeter, they’d peel 15 WAR off his career totals, I think you can’t just automatically say no to that. It may not exactly be a win-win, but it certainly isn’t a win-lose.
What if they told you he would have to fuck you?
You’re getting the gift basket either way, right?
I’d sure hope so.
This whole exchange should be taglined.
Good, I triggered a profound sabermetric discussion.
What would you do for some Jeter WAR?
Eh, it might be a minor factor in the decision but not a deal-breaker. I mean this is 15 WAR we’re talking about.
I’m sorry, but butts are gross? I mean, yeah if they’re not taken care of they’re gross. But on the whole, I find them rather pretty. Not to mention remarkably tight. I don’t go for men because on the whole, I don’t find them particularly attractive.
I assume he’s talking about the act of sexing butts, rather than the aesthetics of them
But that shit’s fun!
BFN is just worried about getting too close to God’s Poopy.
Butts can be nice to look at, but the fact that poop comes out of them represents a significant obstacle for me in any decision to have sex with them.
what’s a stringer?
If this is a joke, it’s over my head, so I’ll answer it seriously. It is a person who records hit data. There are ones hired by MLB, who have a device with a rendered 256px by 256px schematic area of each field and then press on a spot where the ball has landed and then also chose what kind of a hit it was, pop fly, fly, fly/line drive, pure line drive, etc.
real question. thanks.
And more generally, stringers as discussed by Mr. Wikipedia, at his eponymous website.
That’s really interesting about the worst fielders actually being worse than recorded (and the best fielders being better). Unless I’m mistaken, common consensus was that defensive variance was less significant, at least in comparison to offensive variance, but this seems to imply the opposite conclusion. Certainly makes defense seem even more meaningful.
I think the value bet is that the A’s are a better team than most people think they are today and a worse team then most people thought when they won 6 straight in the beginning of July.
i loved that team.
I want it back
One of the reasons I’m not writing that “Jeter Study”, or some other interesting ones I have made preliminary research into, is that I just enjoy being somewhat healthy again and playing baseball and other sports. I have both little time and somehow, I just want to concentrate on the simplicity of playing as opposed to the complexity of analyzing.
Just the other day, I had one of those adrenaline/endorphin moments that really make one love this game. Bear with me, there is a quiz question at the end.
Late innings, we are playing an important game away, clinging to a 5-4 lead. They load the bases with one out. I am playing right field. Their clean-up is at bat, a power righty, so I am shading towards centerfield. He hits a pop fly right down the right field line. I run a mile, dive, catch the ball and then pick the guy off of first base throwing from my knees by about one tenth of a second. It was really, really elating moment, especially because nobody scored after that. But here is the question.
What would have happened, had the runner from third not gone back to tag, but continued for home counting I would not catch the ball and had he crossed the plate BEFORE my throw reached first baseman’s glove?
No run, but you have to appeal at third.
Here’s a situation where a team failed to appeal, and the run counted.
That’s crazy! I was just guessing.
I’ve always thought the appeal rule was wonderfully ridiculous even when there are less than three outs. I mean, presumably the umpire knows the runner left early, and yet he is supposed to keep his mouth shut unless the defending team throws the ball over there.
That is my favorite Baseball play. Everyone just stands around and then you throw to a base and hope for a call. And no matter what the ump does you know SOMEONE will come out to argue.
The appeal rule is 7.10. On these “fourth out” situations somebody has to be alert enough to make sure the appeal is made before the defensive team returns to its dugout.
If he tags up and crossed the plate before the final out he is safe, right?
If he doesn’t tag and crosses the plate before the throw reaches, he has the opportunity to return to third, retagging home?
What’s the point of going back to third? There are three outs.
not until the third out is made.
“There are three outs.”
“Not until the third out is made.”
This is now one of my favorite exchanges on this site.
Nothing. The run wouldn’t count, because you caught the ball the runner is required to tag up.
Thanks, and go As.
He scores the run unless the team in the field appeals to 3B. Similar thing happened in the fourth inning of this game from the 1980 NLCS. The runner from third left too early, and could’ve been called out had the Phillies appealed the play.
Nice play buddy! Flash the leather, show off the cannon.
I chose not to dive for a (soft)ball I should have had last week and spent days kicking myself for it.
Thanks!
Go for it next time!
I am somewhat incapable of not diving if it is in the vicinity. Some two weeks ago, after I already dove for one and bummed my bum shoulder somewhat, and while we were comfortably ahead, I told myself “no more diving”, but then found myself in the air the next time a ball was hit my way.
I dove for one in front of me the other day. Runners on and 2 out. missed it by about a foot.
I say that was close enough
I’d say so, too. Especially on the one hit in front, as you will probably stop it with your body even if you don’t catch it and end no worse for it.
So, you weren’t catching?
nope. we were already down by 7 or so, first and third. The short stop was close enough to back up.
It was likely the last half inning as they needed to get the prisoners back to the block.
Wouldn’t matter what the guy at 3B did if he never tagged up in the first place. Even if the runner got back to 1B, a throw still could have been made to 3B to double off that guy instead. Yeah, it’d likely require appealing though.
i’m totally with you. broke a whole week off of swimming with 2K for lunch, and much like you concluded, i’m not writing a jeter paper either.
Doesn’t count
pics or
OK, here is the solution some more less described in their comment.
For starters, run counts. Second out was a flyout, but the third out (doubling off the runner from first) was out for out for failing to retag the base, which is NOT a force out. That makes it a timing play, so the run from third will count if it crossed the plate before the first baseman catches the outfield assit.
That is for starters. Now, the infamous “fourth out” rule comes into effect.
After the third out was made and the run counted, the defense can appeal at third for the fourth out, but only if they never leave the field before they do. Once the team crosses the foul lines, there is no possibility for an appeal. If the appeal is granted — it would clearly be in the case above — the defense can shoose to have the fourth out counted as the third out, although it happened at the later time.