Baseball

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

Since this article was posted, Chris Davis has broken the record for more consecutive at bats without a hit

Chris Davis Continues His Free Fall

If there’s one player whose 2019 season is off to a more conspicuously inauspicious start than Nationals reliever Trevor Rosenthal, who has yet to retire a batter through four appearances (including one on Sunday), it’s Orioles first baseman Chris Davis, who has yet to record a hit. Like Rosenthal, Davis’ run of futility has actually carried over from his previous season. He’s now approaching the major league record for consecutive hitless at-bats by a non-pitcher, held by Eugenio Velez (0-for-46 in 2010-11), and is putting the rebuilding Orioles in an awkward position given his huge contract, which could become the largest sunk cost in major league history.

Already known for his all-or-nothing extremes, which included him hitting 53 homers in a season (2013) and striking out 219 times (2016), the now-33-year-old Davis appeared to find the bottom last year, when he hit .168/.243/.296 for a 46 wRC+ while striking out in 36.8% of his plate appearances, numbers that all ranked dead last among the majors’ 140 qualifying hitters. Whether it was mechanical flaws, eyesight troubles, medication issues (he has a therapeutic use exemption for an ADHD drug, an issue that led to a 25-game suspension in 2014, when it wasn’t properly addressed), or mental struggles, Davis and the coaching staff weren’t able to find the answer to his problems. Including slightly subpar defense (-1.7 UZR), his -3.1 WAR tied for the majors’ sixth-lowest mark since 1901. He closed the season while stuck in a 1-for-39 skid, with a September 14 double off the White Sox’s James Shields his only hit after his second plate appearance on September 5. He went hitless in his final 21 at-bats, with 14 strikeouts (he walked twice and was hit by a pitch within that span). In an act of mercy, the Orioles — who were on their way to 115 losses, the third-highest total of the post-1960 expansion era — didn’t play him in their final eight games, preventing Davis from digging an even deeper hole.

Both executive vice president of baseball operations Dan Duquette and manager Buck Showalter got the axe after that disasterpiece of a season. Incoming executive vice president/general manager Mike Elias and manager Brandon Hyde have given no indication of being ready to part ways with Davis, who entered the season with four years and $92 million remaining on the seven-year, $161 million contract he signed in January 2016. He was in the Opening Day lineup against the Yankees and has started seven of the team’s nine games (and come off the bench once), going 0-for-23 with 13 strikeouts and four walks (one, inexplicably, was intentional).

[noddy]

eye hand reflex guys usually fall into a pit somewhere in their mid 30's - you get away with poor technique until your twitchy reflexes abandon you.

in the cricket world their is a couple of freaks who pushed that into the late 30's but they are also physical monsters who hit harder than normal so they get away with more miscued shots than your regular fellow.

the only guys who really make a career post early 30's are the technical ones with a brain for the game who have done the hard yards working on the risk percentages on every type of delivery and the shots one should play when confronted with them.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

It got so bad for Davis that the crowds were cheering for him out of pity.

He did eventually break out with a mini-hot streak (for older him) going something like 7 for 20; and four of the hits were doubles/home runs.

He's now merely hitting an awful .130 batting average/.217 on base percentage with a .241 slugging percentage. And he's been worth -0.5 Wins Above Replacement with only a tenth of the season played. We could be looking at the first player to cost his team 5 wins (analytically) compared to a random bottom of the barrel replacement player.

Most impressively, he was worth -200 weighted runs created+ during his streak of futility, and now sits at a pathetic [but comparatively respectable] 42 runs per 162 games played. So he is merely only half as good as the average major league player. It's a little worse than that if we were to only account for his primary positions, first base and designated hitter. Both are high offense positions and the average first basemen creates around 112 runs a year and the average Designated Hitter 109 runs.

[wRC+ takes the statistic Runs Created and adjusts that number to account for important external factors -- like ballpark or era. It's adjusted, so a wRC+ of 100 is league average and 150 would be 50 percent above league average.]

There was some debate whether he was having the worst season ever recorded last year, so he's still doing his darnedest to make sure there can be no debate about that for this season.

The funny thing is, since the Baltimore Orioles are a really historically bad team this year (as well as last), he's been pressed into pitching duties when they've run out of arms. And while he's definitely no pitcher, he's been a neutral contributor in the few innings he's gone out to the mound.

So maybe the O's should run him out there for his arms to get some sort of value from the contract.

Otherwise, they have several more years of this.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

A real team stocked with only replacement-level players would probably be filled with a roster of guys from the double and single A levels of the minor league or older guys whose talent now hovers around those levels.

They'd be expected to win 40 games in the 162 season.

In other words, they'd be real close to the 1962 New York Mets who went 42-120 in their inaugural season, with a roster filled with way past-their-prime names and young players clearly not ready or, well, talented.* There have been a number of teams to approach the terribleness of the '62 Mets but none have yet to match their futility in the last 100 years. The 2003 Detroit Tigers were pretty close at 43-119, pulling out an astonishing 3 wins at the very end of season to avoid the infamous record by a game, at least as I remember it.

Only the Cleveland Spiders were worse, as they went a 20-134 in 1899. They count as a proper National League franchise but folded after that season, and long story short, it's not really professionally comparable to what would become the National League in the years to follow.

*The Mets ended up with such a team that first season because the year before, during the first expansion, the Los Angeles Angels and (then) Washington Senators actually poached young, talented players from the other rosters-- enough for the Angels to be a competitive team straight away. The owners of the other clubs, furious, set rather strict prohibitions on who the Mets and Astros (then Colt 45s) could draft for their opening seasons. The new clubs were of such poor quality that the Commissioner's Office stepped in and established the guidelines for every new club from then on.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

As for this season, the Yankees currently sit at 12-10. They've climbed out of a very early season hole. But it hasn't been easy and the competition hasn't been good. April was supposed to be the easy part of the schedule.

What has happened, since opening day, is an unbelievable amount of injuries to mostly young players. All told they've now lost their:

-best starting pitcher
-their most experienced starting pitcher and unofficial captain
-best relief pitcher
-starting catcher
-back up first baseman
-starting shortstop and the starting shortstop he replaced, who was injured at the end of last season and is currently working his way back
-starting third baseman
-starting left fielder/designated hitter
-starting center fielder
-starting right fielder
-their back-up outfielder
-and two other valuable pitchers who are still rehabbing injuries from last seaosn

If one fielded the all-injured team and padded out the rest of the roster with replacement players, they'd be estimated to win 94 games and make the playoffs.

What began as a season where the only serious question was if they'd choke in the playoffs has turned into how long can they tread water before the injured heal up; and will it be enough time for them to make up ground.

[noddy]

It got so bad for Davis that the crowds were cheering for him out of pity.

He did eventually break out with a mini-hot streak (for older him) going something like 7 for 20; and four of the hits were doubles/home runs.

He's now merely hitting an awful .130 batting average/.217 on base percentage with a .241 slugging percentage. And he's been worth -0.5 Wins Above Replacement with only a tenth of the season played. We could be looking at the first player to cost his team 5 wins (analytically) compared to a random bottom of the barrel replacement player.

Most impressively, he was worth -200 weighted runs created+ during his streak of futility, and now sits at a pathetic [but comparatively respectable] 42 runs per 162 games played. So he is merely only half as good as the average major league player. It's a little worse than that if we were to only account for his primary positions, first base and designated hitter. Both are high offense positions and the average first basemen creates around 112 runs a year and the average Designated Hitter 109 runs.

[wRC+ takes the statistic Runs Created and adjusts that number to account for important external factors -- like ballpark or era. It's adjusted, so a wRC+ of 100 is league average and 150 would be 50 percent above league average.]

There was some debate whether he was having the worst season ever recorded last year, so he's still doing his darnedest to make sure there can be no debate about that for this season.

The funny thing is, since the Baltimore Orioles are a really historically bad team this year (as well as last), he's been pressed into pitching duties when they've run out of arms. And while he's definitely no pitcher, he's been a neutral contributor in the few innings he's gone out to the mound.

So maybe the O's should run him out there for his arms to get some sort of value from the contract.

Otherwise, they have several more years of this.

amusingly, an australian guy I follow in the indian league just got 5 ducks (out without scoring) in a row which is a new record, 4 of these are golden ducks (first ball)

thats about the limit for such things in cricket - normally 3 would get you benched but the team is doing ok and this guy can really hit a ball when he isnt having a bad run.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

Well, they've tried benching him; if only to clear his head and work on his swing.

They'd love to send him to the minor leagues but between the labor agreement and his sizable contract, that's just not happening. And even then, Baltimore is a really bad team right now, it's not like it'll make a world of difference.

You're right about the aging slugger and the disappearance of the necessary quickness to make up for poor form and deficiencies.

Davis turned into a pumpkin sooner than anyone imagined. It's a combination of his very narrow skill set combined with his eyes/reaction time and lack of natural baseball skill and smarts.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

Davis is interesting because he's appeared at just the right time. If he had been born 5 years earlier or 5 years later, he'd never had made it to the majors to begin with. Earlier, and he'd have wouldn't have passed the old scouting system conventions; later, and the more developed analytic departments and new science/tech used to evaluate players would've held him back.

Instead, he's probably the last of the players I'd say represents that transition period where analytical departments and measuring every aspect of a player's skills was just beginning and the old scouting methods were ending and teams league wide were calling up these players with clear deficiencies on the presumption that computers could magically fix their problems overnight...or at least, do so right around the corner. It also helped that his best years coincided with pitching dominance and power was at a premium. So a guy who could potentially hit 50 home runs (which he got close to once or twice) was given a lot of opportunities. He finally put it together with a Baltimore team which was lagging in the analytic department but had a lot of experienced, old school coaching which did end up getting the most of out of him before the whole computational side of things became effectively systematized and conventional league wide.

What wasn't known in 2013 compared to now is that Davis has a very small plane of attack which he has been incapable of adjusting. He doesn't change it up at all; you can actually just pitch around his swing without trouble. Now, the smarter old school scouting/coaching would've probably caught that and passed that along but those guys were losing jobs left and right when not largely ignored. And the analytic departments weren't picking up on it because they either weren't noticing or they didn't have enough data to make a judgement.

So the whole thing has this paradigm shift thread to it too.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

It got so bad for Davis that the crowds were cheering for him out of pity.

He did eventually break out with a mini-hot streak (for older him) going something like 7 for 20; and four of the hits were doubles/home runs.

He's now merely hitting an awful .130 batting average/.217 on base percentage with a .241 slugging percentage. And he's been worth -0.5 Wins Above Replacement with only a tenth of the season played. We could be looking at the first player to cost his team 5 wins (analytically) compared to a random bottom of the barrel replacement player.

Most impressively, he was worth -200 weighted runs created+ during his streak of futility, and now sits at a pathetic [but comparatively respectable] 42 runs per 162 games played. So he is merely only half as good as the average major league player. It's a little worse than that if we were to only account for his primary positions, first base and designated hitter. Both are high offense positions and the average first basemen creates around 112 runs a year and the average Designated Hitter 109 runs.

[wRC+ takes the statistic Runs Created and adjusts that number to account for important external factors -- like ballpark or era. It's adjusted, so a wRC+ of 100 is league average and 150 would be 50 percent above league average.]

There was some debate whether he was having the worst season ever recorded last year, so he's still doing his darnedest to make sure there can be no debate about that for this season.

The funny thing is, since the Baltimore Orioles are a really historically bad team this year (as well as last), he's been pressed into pitching duties when they've run out of arms. And while he's definitely no pitcher, he's been a neutral contributor in the few innings he's gone out to the mound.

So maybe the O's should run him out there for his arms to get some sort of value from the contract.

Otherwise, they have several more years of this.

amusingly, an australian guy I follow in the indian league just got 5 ducks (out without scoring) in a row which is a new record, 4 of these are golden ducks (first ball)

thats about the limit for such things in cricket - normally 3 would get you benched but the team is doing ok and this guy can really hit a ball when he isnt having a bad run.

Here's a trivial question:

And what's the etymological relation between Cricket using the term "golden duck" and baseball using "golden sombero" for a certain sort of batter/batsmen futility.

Or the relation between "duck egg" in cricket, "goose egg' in baseball and "love" in tennis?

[noddy]

What wasn't known in 2013 compared to now is that Davis has a very small plane of attack which he has been incapable of adjusting. He doesn't change it up at all; you can actually just pitch around his swing without trouble. Now, the smarter old school scouting/coaching would've probably caught that and passed that along but those guys were losing jobs left and right when not largely ignored. And the analytic departments weren't picking up on it because they either weren't noticing or they didn't have enough data to make a judgement.

So the whole thing has this paradigm shift thread to it too.

In cricket that guy still gets picked alot of the time, despite the fact his flaws are obvious because of a phenomena called "flat track bully" (FTB)

this is situations when the opposition teams bowlers arent special, or the atmosphere/ball/pitch conditions are dead and a slogger can really cash in on his one trick wonder of smashing it to "cow corner"

cow corner for a right handed batsmen is to the front and left, the natural sloggers arc for those with that small plane of attack you describe.

a proper skilled batsman scores at a lower rate than the FTB in these conditions due to their inherit skillset making them take less risky options on many deliveries - thusly most teams will carry one or two of these guys to maximise scoring potential, provided they have some quality elsewhere to carry the rest of the game and the less "flat" conditions.

--

my team doesnt believe in this approach much, they expect the batsmen to switch techniques on demand as the situation demands.

[noddy]

And what's the etymological relation between Cricket using the term "golden duck" and baseball using "golden sombero" for a certain sort of batter/batsmen futility.

Or the relation between "duck egg" in cricket, "goose egg' in baseball and "love" in tennis?

love i believe is anglo corrupted duck egg in french.

as to why you lot switched from ducks to geese, I cant begin to say

[Nonc Hilaire]

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

MLB playoffs have started:

Al Wildcard game: Tampa Bay Rays vs Oakland A's-- Rays won
NL Wildcard game: Milwaukee Brewers vs Washington Nationals- Nationals won

Division series [best of five] so far:

NL:

St.Louis Cardinals vs Atlanta Braves- series tied at 1 game a piece

Washington Nationals vs Los Angeles Dodgers- series tied at 1 game a piece

AL:

Tampa Bay Rays vs Houston Astros- The Astros lead 1-0

Minnesota Twins vs New York Yankees- The Yankees lead 1-0.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

The Braves should be up in their series 2 games to nothing. They are a better team than the Cardinals but one of their star players, Ronald Acuna Jr., has made a few terrible base running mistakes. One of them was a clear example of 'hot dogging' it- stopping to admire what he thought was a home run but turned out to be a very long single, because he wasn't running.

The Dodgers are one of the best teams in baseball, and maybe the best in the National League. The Nationals aren't push overs but they've got a terrible bullpen and, what I think, is a bad manager who doesn't get enough out of the talent he has.

What the Nationals do have is one of the three best starting pitchers in the game. Their playoff rotation, featuring those three, is formidable and probably better than what the Dodgers have [even if the Dodgers are also top tier in this department too.] And the first two games of the series have shown this to be true. The longer the Nationals starters remain in the game, they have a chance to win. That bullpen is so bad though, the Dodgers line up so good, that once they are removed for relievers it's a dice roll if they are going to limit the Dodgers to less runs than the Nationals can score. This worked in the 2nd game in the series but barely. The series is heading back to Washington from LA; if the Nationals can steal Game 3 with the same formula as tonight, they may have a small chance, as they'll only need to win of the two remaining games. But even if the series goes to five, the Dodgers are still the heavy favorites because they have no weaknesses like the Nationals.

The Astros- Rays series is not even worth mentioning. The Astros are up their with the Yankees and Dodgers and Twins as 100 game, all around very good teams. The strong case is that they are the best team in baseball. Their lineup is awesome, their starting pitching is awesome and their bullpen is above very good. The Rays, as Game 1 shows, have no chance barring miracles.

The Twins-Yankees is a slugfest. I don't want to put the Twins down, but while the Twins are a 100 win team, it is probably the weakest of the bunch. They can certainly hit but they don't have enough pitching. Plus there is a bit of self-defeating psychology about the Twins organization. They've lost 14 playoff games in a row now- 11 of those 14 to the Yankees. And while it's taken place over the span of decades and with players long gone and not connected with the current crop, it is the primary question from the media and something which has to be planted in the back of their minds, especially after losing Game One. On top of that, they come into the series more banged-up than the Yankees.

Even though it has nothing to do with them, you could see during tonight's game players looking dejected, or as deer caught in headlights facing the big, bad Yankees in Yankee Stadium, which is not the easiest place to play. If the Yankees win tomorrow night, I think they'll sweep the series. The Twins need to come out tomorrow and find a way to shake the confidence of the Yankee team before it's too late for them and another season ends.

...for myself, if it were anyone but the Yankees, I'd be rooting for the Twins. I'd not be all that upset if they win this series. But the fan in me wants what it wants.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

Last night, the Yankees swept the Twins, who looked over-matched and dejected the whole series. For a team which won 101 games on the season [which for you non-baseball followers is a great number] it should be a disappointment, despite all the pity and talk of pride in winning that many games.

The fact of the matter is the Yankees were better in the series, on paper, on the season record...any metric you wanna use. But they weren't sweep in 3 games and totally dominant them better. The Twins were mentally out of it after they gave up their one run lead in the 3rd inning of game one. So that is on the manager and the front office. They were psyched out by the Yankee brand/history/media as much as anything.

The Rays won game 3 in St.Petersburg to force a game 4, the problem is that the Astros elite pitching rotation now turns back to the ace of the staff, followed by arguably the best pitcher in the American League this year for game 5 if they can carry it that far. As much as I'd like to see it, I think the Rays lose tonight and the Astros win the series.

Things are more interesting in the National League, where both series are now heading to game 5, winner-take-all. The Braves and Cardinals look to be pretty evenly matched and it's anyone's guess on how that will play out.

The Dodgers lineup has under-performed, and the Nationals have gotten a lot out of their best pitchers (the blow-up in game 3 notwithstanding.) Maybe
they don't have a meltdown in game 3 and would've won this series already. Problem is, the Nationals are using their aces in a non-traditional way against an excellent team. So, it's hard to say that they blew it.

Anyway, it probably comes down to the best pitchers on each team in game 5. Whoever gives their team length is probably going to win this thing.

[Miss_Faucie_Fishtits]

I am disappoint.......

I live in Twins and Vikings territory and they seem to be a manifestation of the worst tendency of the Minnesota character. They can make a good showing for most of their run, but when it gets down to the nuts, they just phone it in.....DX..........

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

Rays force a game five back in Houston

They played great last night.

And this beautiful play occurred (starting around the 30 sec. mark)

i0iN59vldDo

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

from earlier in the year, one of the better manager ejection rants (mostly) caught on hot mics:

IbSfJLF_0-8

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

The Rays are out, got totally shut down by the brilliant pitching of Gerrit Cole- so the AL Championship Series will be a clash of titans: Houston vs New York.

The Braves were absolutely humiliated, allowing 10 runs in the top of the 1st inning and losing a very anti-climatic game 5 to the Cardinals.

And the Nationals stunned everyone by winning in LA and eliminating the Dodgers in extra innings. The Dodgers blew the game.

So the NL Championship Series starts tonight and will be between two surprise teams in Washington and St.Louis.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

The Nationals lead their series 2 to 0, and the Yankees and Astros are tied at a game apiece.

The Nationals pitching has absolutely dominated the Cardinals, almost no hitting them in the first game and doing so for 2/3 of the game in the second.
This series resumes tonight in Washington D.C. and I don't see a way the Cardinals get back into it- they are just over-matched.

The Yankees and Astros is a lot closer. The Yankees beat up on the Astros in Game One 7-2, and it didn't even feel that close.

Game Two starred one of their two super-aces and he delivered, holding the Yankees to 2 runs in 6 2/3 innings of work. The teams were tied going into extra-innings when the Yankees, who have been aggressive in using their bullpen, ran out of their top flight bullpen arms in extra-innings and had to rely on the lesser arms from the bullpen. That game them about two innings to try to get the lead but it was not to be, and the Yankees lost in the 11th inning, 3-2.

The series heads back to the Bronx, where the other Astros ace takes the mound for Game 3. The Yankees will not be finished if they go down 2-1 in the series but it will definitely put the Astros in the catseat and almost guarantee a Game 6 back in Houston, with those two super-aces taking the ball in any possible games 6 and 7. (I can't see the Yankees losing all three games in the Bronx. There is a distinct home field advantage for both clubs.)

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

The Nationals swept the Cardinals in four games to advance to the World Series.

Meanwhile, after two exciting closely-matched games, the Yankees have collapsed and are embarrassing themselves.

It's painful to watch, and the Astros are on the verge of winning the series. Right now it's 3-1 Astros, with the Yankees needing to win the remaining games, two of them in Houston (where they are near unbeatable) and two of them will be against the Astros super aces.

The Yankees stopped hitting well, pitching well, and tonight they even fielded poorly; they committed four errors- the first time a Yankees team has done that in the playoffs in forever.

It's as if the whole momentum of the series turned on the extra inning loss in Game 2, and the Yankees have played like they were psychologically defeated then. That aspect of it is on the manager. Then to come back to Yankee Stadium, where the Yankees are near unbeatable, and lose two games and possibly the whole series tomorrow night, is atrocious.

So, it's pretty much lights out for me and the baseball season. The Astros are definitely a great team but I'm not feeling up to watching them advance to play the Nationals.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

The Washington Nationals just pulled off quite an upset in Game 7. They are the World Series champs.

First World Series, and first time ever in any of the major American sports that all games were won by the road team. Nationals won 4 in Houston and the Astros won three in Washington.

[Miss_Faucie_Fishtits]

Beating a team in front of the home crowd means you owned them in a biblical sense....'>.......

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

ooh boy, only a few weeks away from spring training and the talk of the off-season has been the massive cheating scandal of the Houston Astros and Boston Red Sox, winners of 2 or the last three World Series, and the Astos appeared in the third.

It's a mess. Several executives have been fired (more or less banned from baseball), and three different managers have been fired as well (so far, the Astros manager is the only one with a year long suspension from baseball- the Red Sox manager will be suspended once the report on the Red Sox is out, as he is connected to both the Astros and Red Sox cheating.)

MLB has not released its report on the Red Sox yet; but the fact of the matter is that by not penalizing any players (so as not to fight the players' union) they may have made the situation worse instead of minimizing damage and, I guess, hoping it goes away.

We've had several MLB pitchers who've stupidly gone on record saying that they will be head-hunting players involved.

I hope Jose Altuve is prepared to get hit a lot this year; 'cause it's gonna happen no matter how many directives are written to prevent that sort of retaliation. It won't happen in the first half of the season; as they'll be no reasonable doubt about motives...but come July, it's gonna be open season.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

For those not following the story;

the 2017 Astros are found to have been using technology to steal signals in real-time. The main method (and most publicized and officially acknowledged) being having a video feed from the centerfield camera right behind the dugout.

Players and/or algorithms would decipher the signals and then players would bang on a trash can to relay what pitch was coming to the batter. It was no bang for fastball, one bang for change-up, two bangs for breaking ball. There has been even more speculation that MLB's official report is withholding the actual extent of the cheating, from wiretapping visiting clubhouses to bluetooth devices attached to players' bodies to relay signs.

Sign-stealing has been a part of baseball forever; but the technology available is making it extremely easy and there is a sense among teams that what the Astros were doing went beyond the usual shennigans and actually crossed the cheating line.

More worrying for baseball is that this was not just a player/coach directed thing, in order to have a feed from the centerfield cameras, the whole organization plus tv network has to be involved.

------------

What the Red Sox may have done hasn't come out yet. But they immediately hired the bench coach of those 2017 to manage the club and the sense is that he implemened some of these things on a smaller scale for the Red Sox in 2018.

The Mets got caught up in this because they hired one of the players from that team, now retired, as manager for this season. After the MLB assured all teams that no players were to be punished as long as they cooperated; MLB's official report actually named him as part of the conspiracy. He was the only player named, and it doesn't take much to read between the lines and figure out that 1) he was the main instigator from the players' side for the camera feed and 2)that while MLB couldn't officially punish him, naming him was a way around that.

So it left the Mets with no choice but to fire him (or 'mutually part' as it was publicized) before he managed a single game.