Frayed Knot

You probably can't blame Dodger fans considering the way this series has gone, but they sound like school kids attending their first game as soon as any LAD hit ball gets into the air. The noise increases as if they assume each one is destined to be a HR, only to sound so disappointed when it turns out to be a pop out to deep SS.

Edgy MD wrote: Could they have analyzed the plate-blocking rule any more? The guy was out by a mile. Nobody was fouled. The catcher fields the ball where he fields it. He doesn't always have time to see if his feet are standing in the baseline. Least controversial thing ever. No legislation required. Except that they have called plays like as catcher's obstruction, even ones where the runner was another 10-15 feet further from home than Duda was when the ball arrived.

Centerfield wrote: But this article seems to be saying just the opposite. That it IS worth it. There are no guarantees obviously, but the higher the pick, the better your odds of finding a star. This difference can be measured. But only in a very broad sense. Take this graph, for instance, where the author separates out where only those 'Impact' players came from in his sample. High impact results in green, highest level in Red: [fimg=400]https://i0.wp.com/outfieldflyrule.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/1986-2005-Impact-Draft-Pick1.png?resize=1352%2C902[/fimg] The only picks really outdistancing the others are the first two or three; from pick #4 through about #24 a trend line drawn on that graph would be more or less flat. There are plenty of peaks and valleys in between but even those don't always show up where you expect them: 12th picks in this sample had a better track record than 6th picks, 22's turned out considerably better than 18's, etc. Go down the graph a bit further and you find that the top 25 or so picks, as a whole, have a considerably higher hit rate as compared to the next 25. But, like I said earlier, anyone taking the 'crapshoot' label so literally as to not expect that to be the case had a skewed view of this going in. And of course many of the second set of 25 picks are the second picks for teams who already chose once, so it's not like you can simply mail it in during September in order to tank yourself from say a mid-30s pick where 2 or 3 out of 20 becomes an impact player up to the top 5 where closer to half do. In fact what it's showing is that, even within those areas where a team could conceivably tank itself into a better spot, the results from the 17th slot have been pretty much like those from the 10th which itself is about the same as the 5th. Would I rather have the 5th pick than the 17th? Of course I would but, even if one could/would move from the one to the other, the evidence doesn't suggest that it would be an effective strategy.

... An undrafted TJ Rivera will have a better baseball career than a lot of first-rounders, I'd bet. Considering that around 1/4 of all 1st round picks* never spend a day in the majors, he already has. * oe: I actually did a quick ten-year search and the number I found was closer to 1/3 -- 95 of the 300 top-30 picks from 1995-2004 never played a single ML game The only slots not to have a failed prospect from that sample were the 1st, 2nd and ... 22nd picks.

Those who use the term "crapshoot" to imply that the draft is a totally random activity with later round picks succeeding at the same rate as top picks are more wrong than those who treat each slot as if it's a Beamonesque leap above the previous one. Of course higher picks are better than lower and most top players who come via the draft come from earlier rounds. But there's still so much variation within rounds that it becomes pointless to obsess over getting this slot rather than that one. Is the #2 pick better, over the long-haul, than #22? ... Sure. But dumping games so as to move from #10 to #7? ... eh, not so much. As an example: Kernan in the Post today is chiding the Mets for not just Justin Turner's career as a Dodger vs his one as a Met but also for losing out to the Dodgers by selecting the wrong SS in the 1st round of the 2012 draft: Gavin Cecchini with the 12th pick vs Corey Seager with the 18th; and then for the wrong 4th round legacy pick in 2013 when the Mets chose LJ Mazzilli with the 116th pick leaving Cole (son of Clay) Bellinger to be scooped up by LA with choice #124 Unless things change dramatically in the near future, the Mets clearly made the worse choice in each case despite having the better pick and there there's no way of knowing whether or not the Dodgers would have done the exact same thing had the roles been reversed. THAT is what people should mean when they employ the word 'crapshoot' about the draft.

That guy goes through a whole lot of rigamarole to tell us that really high draft picks have a better shot at turning into stars compared to less high ones. Gee, thanks. And even then it's only in general and over time that those picks work better -- in other words you pretty much have to consistently have top-5 type picks for that "strategy" to have a decent shot at paying off and/or you need to consistently pick the right guys. Tough to pull all that off on purpose. It 'worked' for the Nats when they, for the first time ever, had back to back #1s overall* but that was as much timing as anything. It's great if the years you have #1s that you get gifted no-brainers like Strasburg and Harper. If you offered GMs their choice of draft picks for the entire 21st century, both at the time and with the wisdom of hindsight, those two would be in the top ten. It's also easy for the Braves fan to connect his team's predicament with the idea that it'll lead to the next Chipper Jones while ignoring that most top picks don't render anything close to him. Lately there's been a lot of talk about how Houston pulled an NBA-style tank job in order to get where they are now. But that breakdown/remake had more to do with the previous owner wanting to strip down in order to sell than it was a long-term or pre-thought-out plan. It also involved suffering through three straight seasons worse than anyone since the early '60s Mets had endured -- consecutive seasons of 106, 107, and 111 losses -- to produce three straight #1 picks, one of which, Carlos Correa, is contributing to this current surge. One of the others, Mark Appel, was dealt as part of a package to the Phils for set-up man Ken Giles and is currently pitching to a 6.00 ERA in AAA. The other, Brady Aiken, didn't sign w/the Astros and was re-drafted the next year #17thoverall by Cleveland where he currently sports a 5.50 ERA in A-ball. * the #1 overall pick used to bounce back and forth between the worst AL team and the worst NL team so it wasn't possible to pick 1st twice in a row until they did away with the distinction.

How did all those guys sign on the same day with Sandy only being able to concentrate on one thing at a time? Indeed ya did :$1.5M (almost 50 percent above slot value). So that's where the money went that they saved from all those college senior picks afterward.

Five innings in the books and we're only at the two hour mark!!

2nd run is earned (1st one wasn't) but both LAD runs were built upon errors.

Already 0-8 w/RiSP -- 6 of them Ks That's tough to pull off in just 4 innings.

Nice [u:302ddtp0]non[/u:302ddtp0] (and correct) call on the IF Fly Rule ... and it was by Angel Hernandez!!!!

PILL TOPS HILL

Good thing there were runners on 1st & 2nd there so TJ didn't have to throw across the diamond. The inning would probably still be going if he did.

I see that ground balls remain a 50/50 proposition for this team.

Edgy MD wrote: Hey, Ann Coulter is back behind home plate. She disappeared after the third inning last night. Is it actual Ann Coulter or just one of the thousands of skeletal blonds in SoCal?

Out of town update: Max Scherzer carried a no-hitter into the 8th but then the Marlins scored twice -- IF single, Error, HBP, Wild Pitch (scores 1), and then an RBI single by Stanton Four Miami pitchers held the Nats to 5 hits including a Ryan Raburn HR for their lone run (are their subs on a HR/day quota or does it just seem that way?) Scherzer walked 1 and K'd 11

Centerfield wrote: Is it legal to trade someone on the DL? Cause Walker has value. Middle infielder with an .822 OPS over the last two seasons is not bad. It's legal, but it's also more difficult. On the legal side you need the player to give his OK. Without it it's like very player on the DL has complete, even if temporary, no-trade immunity. But it's more the practical side of things that's the big wrench in the works. The potential trading partner doesn't know if they're getting four months of a player in prime form or two months of a compromised version of him and, because of that uncertainty, the team dealing him has to be willing to take less back since they're dealing damaged goods.

The one thing keeping the current Mets from being completely out of it at this point is that, once again, the NL as a whole is getting its collective ass kicked by the AL. The record at the moment is 80-57 which translates into the AL playing inter-league games at the pace of a 95 win team while the NL wins like a team on pace to win 67 over a full season.

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: Organized Base Ball, as The Sporting News call it, O.B.B. Ahh yes. Was simply 'OB' back in 'BALL FOUR' i.e.. that guy's the worst pitcher in OB ... Cleveland has the worst post-game spread in OB ... etc.

The number of errors we've committed recently is staggering. The number of errors we've committed recently that were [u:2yrz17v9]Not[/u:2yrz17v9] scored as errors is even worse.

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: ... am suddenly very worried for the future of obb obb? yeah you know me

Edgy MD wrote: The machine is broken. What, just because they have 5 HRs to our 4 hits?

Edgy MD wrote: Come on! An inside-out homer by the shortstop? I'm calling BS. Shortstops didn't used to be 6' 4" / 220 oe: speaking of which, I had occasion to look used Johnny Evers a while ago (I forget why). Evers, of course, was the Troy, NY born 2B man of Tinker-Evers-Chance fame. He's listed in BB-Ref as 5' 9" / 125 !! I mean, shit, I was skinny as a teenager (as opposed to the big, husky lad I am now) and weighed around 130 back when I was 5' 9" at 16 or so years old. But this was a full grown man at that height and only 125 lbs. And he won an MVP at one point! Perhaps not surprisingly, he hit all of 12 HRs over a 15 year career

Tommy Lasorda was 0-4 with a 6.48 ERA in 26 appearances (5 starts) in his major league career. It's possible that the 56 walks in 58 innings might have had something to do with all that.

We don't turn many DPs, but we're sure good at hitting into them.