smg58

The .185 BABIP and 0 HR/FB rate are obviously unsustainable, but Lavender still looks like a very viable option moving forward. It's one less item on the offseason shopping list.

The Fielding Bible has Semien at exactly average, which is noteworthy since he was at -4 about a month ago when I last checked. That being said, their defensive numbers for him were already declining sharply since 2023 when the trade happened and have continued to do so. Stearns had reasonable concerns about paying for Nimmo's decline, but he addressed them by trading him for a player whose decline is already here. The more important question now is what to do with Semien. Do we simply eat the contract? Do we hope somebody is willing take on a portion of it? Or do we think he'll provide enough value as a bench player? Because second base strikes me as the easiest position for us to upgrade this offseason.

Teams (other than the Brewers) seem to have forgotten that OBP is more important than slugging. Any player can become more selective at swinging, and it will help them. That was always the basic rule. There is a tendency in baseball right now to take a one-size-fits-all approach with hitters, but that does more harm than good with a lot of them. As a Mets-related example, Jeff McNeil has actually hit over .300 since July started. His power isn't where it was in his best seasons, but it's almost like somebody finally told him, "Just do what got you here." With Kristian Campbell, I think the bigger issue is that he hurt himself. If it were as simple as him not swinging at sinkers that drop out of the strike zone, that wouldn't be Driveline's problem. Just like it's not a tech guru's problem if AJ Ewing can't stop chasing curve balls down and away. But I think the big problem -- and it's far worse with pitchers -- is that people have all these data now but don't know how to use them, Geeks are crunching out the numbers, but they're still being interpreted by dumb jocks.

A big part of the problem is that it is common knowledge what players get paid -- and oh boy, do they get paid -- but what the teams take in is not common knowledge. So if the last agreement expires, and the owners impose a work stoppage, at what point is the non-disclosure agreement for the teams' books no longer in effect? That would be a ticking time bomb that gives the players some leverage. That, and nobody likes billionaires right now. And while the Angels are a big-market team, the fact that a perennial non-contender just got purchased for $4 billion should tell people something about the value that teams have.

I'm not sure that the Dodgers have been any more dominant than the Chiefs in the 2020s. And the Jeter/Rivera-era Yankees were not nearly as dominant as the Brady-era Patriots.

I've been to a couple of Long Island Ducks games this year, and when a batter or new pitcher gets introduced I like to search for them on Fangraphs to see how far they got. Basically, the profile of a typical Independent League player is somebody in his late twenties who either got a brief visit to the show, or aged out at AA or AAA. People like Dylan Ross, basically. There was one guy who was 1 for 9 in the majors, and I can only imagine how much that one means to him. So if a reasonable opportunity presents itself to give somebody like that a game or two before I clear space for younger guys in the offseason, I'm doing it.

What I get out of this is that any of the offers on the table for Robert required the Mets to eat most of the salary and still not get a prospect the other team thought it might miss. So the Mets figured they might as well use the player they already paid for, and see if a couple of good weeks at least frees them of the remaining salary plus buyout. I was just about to say I doubt it will, but the Orioles (one game out of the last AL wildcard spot, which looks completely up for grabs) have apparently claimed him.

You can be an effective pitcher without a high K rate as long as you're not walking anybody (2.05 walks per 9 IP is very good) and you're keeping the ball in the yard (1.03 HR/9 IP is OK but not great). Thornton has had some luck -- his 82% strand rate is unsustainably high -- but a 3.88 FIP suggests that he is holding his own regardless. For a rookie who wasn't really on the radar coming into the season, he's doing super. Moving forward, I think you try to find the balance on getting more ground balls without adding to the free passes.

He wasn't, up until this season. I'm not really sure what happened, but obviously the talent is still there. Hopefully he's turned a corner.

I've never seen Misiorowski pitch, so I'm looking forward to this one.

Not that the bit about making HS players ineligible portrays the owners in any more of a sympathetic light. Is minor league baseball really a financial drain?

I read the original headline and think "MLB wants work stoppage to last until 2032."

You have to be in on Skubal. Otherwise, one of Arozarena/Suzuki and one of Arraez/Lowe would be nice. Ty France is a relatively under-the-radar play that would help out a lot as well. As for third base? The options are painfully limited, but I wouldn't assume out of hand that a Mauricio/Vientos platoon wouldn't work. I certainly wouldn't pay more for Bichette than any of the free agents I mentioned above.

What I get from 1969 and 2015 (twice!) being on this list is that getting no-hit is in no way the mark of a bad team.

For all the ink that's been spent discussing personnel decisions, it needs to be said that at no point this season have we had both Lindor and Soto fully healthy at the same time. Lindor very clearly benefited from the time off. Hopefully Soto will as well.