roger_that

I like Denzel--he's often the most powerful actor, carrying films that don't really add up, and playing strong parts in films that do. Training Day works better as a scary parable than as a story in itself. It's a nightmare scenario from Ethan Hawke's character's point of view, a descending spiral of bad events that get worse and worse, any one of which he could have prevented by standing up to Denzel's character at any early point and saying, "Hold on, man, you're trying to bait me by your macho ******** into breaking the law. Drop me off at the precinct, I'll report you, and I'll find me another partner, podner," but he decides to continue and finds himself in a world of ****. The entire film depends on Denzel's playing the overbearing bully-cop convincingly, and it works on that level.

Well, you need to use your brains as well as the advantages that sim scores give us. Using only one of them will result in certain misconceptions. In Shohei's case, I'd judge that the one time he appeared as Pete's best comparable, they were 26 years old, neither had a long body of work to begin with (which is when the sim scores will be most unreliable) and Shohei had done very few of the very distinctive things that would mark his MLB career. I wouldn't put that much stock in sim scores of players with three years of MLB experience. Tell me, why (if sim scores are based strictly on adding certain stats together, as they are) do you suppose most sim score lists of veterans turn out to be players who play the same position, and often of players of a very similar body type? Adding stats wouldn't produce such results --it's because they're very similar players, and have often gone through most of the same things that formed who they were as players. This makes sim scores useful in predicting future results--with the judicious use of our brains, of course. I hesitate to name the very best result I've gotten speculating with sim scores because that ended up getting me thrown off this website. Let me just say that it was a spectacularly successful speculation on my part, one that was deeply upsetting to the majority of CPFers at the time, and one that would probably upset some CPFers today. If you want to hear a famous case that would have proved helpful to the Mets, I'd suggest Jason Bay. His comparables in his early thirties are all of players who had put up good to great numbers in their late 20s, like Bay, but who fell off a cliff once they'd hit 30. I think a careful perusal of Bay's most comparables might have given the Mets considerable pause in acquiring his services. Not all, and not all overwhelmingly, but enough of them faded very quickly to let the Mets wonder if they were doing the smart thing by banking on Bay to continue slugging as he aged.

I think this is a foolish ignoring of a very useful tool. When I've used sim scores in the past to speculate on future performances, they've done me very well. What people are saying about Pete Alonso now, without using sim scores, pretty well agree on what the sim scores show: he should be good for another year or two, but after that watch out. Remind me where you're seeing Shohei Otahni in Pete's sim scores, please?

Except that simply deciding to swing more often won't necessarily produce the same results in greater quantity and could very well result in a declining output. I had never heard the 'treat it as a 3-1 pitch' analogy before but it sounds like a good benchmark to me. There the attitude is, "I'm going to swing if it's MY pitch where I want it". But once that flips to, "I'm going up there a'hackin' cuz the numbers show I'm 'good at this' " then there's a good chance that you're no longer going to be good at this, or at least as good at this. And, of course, there are always various game/score/inning/runners/outs/pitcher circumstances dictating that 1st pitch swinging isn't (or is) the right move at that time. I agree, with you and with CF, in principle. I think it's sort of obvious that expanding the opportunities will decrease the numbers. But the numbers are so good that a small reduction may be worth the expansion. Would you rather someone hit 1.200 OPS in 90 ABs per season, or hit .950 OPS in 180 ABs?

While no Pete, my boy Baty seems to have done well for himself on the first pitch: First pitch swinging for Baty in his career: 1.033 OPS in 87 ABs, a healthy .379 BA. McSquirrel almost mirrors Bret in far more career ABs: First pitch swinging for McNeil, career: 1.007 OPS in 615 ABs and another good BA, .376 Soto, as you might expect, is off even these exalted charts: First pitch swinging for Soto, career: 1.237 in 467 ABs, .426 BA, 43 HR Maybe someone should encourage these guys to swing at the first pitch a little more often? Or tell me what exactly is going on here?

First pitch swinging for Pete in 2025: 1.279 OPS in 92 ABs First pitch swinging for Pete in 2024: 1.166 OPS in 73 ABs First pitch swinging for Pete in 2023: 0.909 OPS in 56 ABs First pitch swinging for Pete in 2022: 1.031 OPS in 93 ABs First pitch swinging for Pete in 2021: 1.203 OPS in 91 ABs First pitch swinging for Pete in 2020: 1.425 OPS in 32 ABs First pitch swinging for Pete in 2019: 1.246 OPS in 61 ABs I wonder what the results would be if he swung at first pitches more often. career OPS is 1.165 in 528 ABs. 56 HR, 157 RBI. .365 BA.

Bored (I lose interest in baseball once the Mets are eliminated), I'm cruising around bbref, and I light upon the category in "splits" called "Count/Ball-strikes" and I happen to notice that many Mets in 2025 were unusually effective when swinging on the first pitch. Baty, Alonso, McNeil--off the charts effective, OPS+es in the 1.200 range. Not all--Lindor was relatively ineffective swinging on the first pitch in 2025. Why is this, do you suppose? First off, I guess I should ask if this is actually a thing, or just a statistical oddity I happened to notice. I went back a few seasons with Nimmo, who wasn't particularly effective on first pitches in 2025, and found that he'd put up off the charts numbers in 2023 and 2024. But if this actually is a thing, can it be used even more effectively? If pitchers are known to throw fastballs in the zone on the first pitch, as I believe most are, does it make sense to swing at first pitches even more often than hitters now do? The OPS+es will come down, of course, the more batters swing at the first pitch, but they could come down quite a bit and still be league-leading figures. Is first pitch swinging under-utilized as a strategy?

I guess we differ on that. I place a lot of my sense about sim scores on their reliability, and don't worry about the methodology so much. I find it remarkable that, for a system that puts no emphasis at all on physical dimensions and positional history, it's come up with a list of huge slugging first-basemen as Pete's comparables. Coincidence? I think not. There's something in these sluggers' histories that link them together, and when a pattern forms, like career length, I feel the need to show that a certain respect, in the absence of any easy verbal explanations. Why did Jim Gentile suddenly stop hitting at age 31 or 32 or whatever age he was, following his monster 1961 season? You can ask ten baseball experts and they'll each give you a nice logical explanation--put on weight, started seeing more curveballs, lost his job to BooG Powell, whatever. But the point is he--and all the sluggers on Pete's comparables--just flat out stopped slugging, and beyond a point it doesn't really matter why, when you're trying to figure if signing Pete to a long-term contract makes sense. Your only other option is to argue that this is all a big coincidence.

One of my favorite films to re-watch. Simply delightful, and I'm no Madonna fan, but in this film she plays herself, a smug jerk who thinks highly of herself and her selfish values so that's fine. Good plot, some funny scenes, a lot of good acting in small parts (Giancarlo Esposito, Richard Edson, Steven Wright). Aiden Quinn and Rosanna Arquette at their best. A gem.

Very strange movie, the first scripted by Woody Allen, who plays a role in it (that he obviously wrote for himself), inspired and intended as a vehicle for the womanizing Warren Beatty, who recited the title to young starlets (whose names he couldn't keep straight, so he just called them "pussycat"). Peter O'Toole stepped in after Beatty dropped out, and he plays a compulsive womanizer who is trying to reform himself by consulting a (loopy) psychiatrist to help him curb his sexual appetites and allow him to become a faithful husband to the woman he intends to marry. Sexual hijinx, naturally, recur. The plot makes very little sense, but I did notice that it follows very loosely the plot (single man consults a psychiatrist to deal with his oppressive lusts) of Portnoy's Complaint. Probably a coincidence, in that the early chapters of Roth's novel hadn't yet started to reach print (I think the first chapters were published in 1966 or '67) but it is a sign of the times that shrinks and lust and sexual adventures were beginning to enter the cultural spotlight. A very poor movie, all in all.

Getting into WAR, Pete doesn't look good at all. Actually I was surprised by how little WAR he got in 2025 with his 38 HRs and league-leading 41 doubles: 3.4. That's pretty piddling, considering. Bret Baty came in at 3.1, in hundreds of fewer plate appearances. BTW, is the 3.4 you cite as the first prediction a prediction or a description of his 2025? Those other numbers look pretty sad. And I don't understand why you're clinging to McGwire as a good thing for Pete. Since he was juiced (and achieved some big numbers in his thirties), doesn't that suggest that Pete would require massive injections of steroids (which he will not be able to get) in order to match McGwire's performance in his thirties?

Why would you look at similar batters through age 29? Pete's turning 31 in a few weeks. As to McGwire, are you under the assumption that Pete's getting away with taking steroids? I'm convinced he's not.

The sim scores do raise an interesting theoretical question: assuming you don't buy into their predictive value at all, is there a degree so extreme that you would concede that there's something scary there, or would you insist on your theoretical lack of faith in sim scores? For example, if I showed you that literally every one of Pete's top 20 comparables, say, ALL had put up terrible numbers after age 31, but Pete had an excellent year at age 31, would you insist "Nah, doesn't scare me. Pete's the exception"? Or would you concede, "Maybe there's something to it"?

I'll go to my grave insisting on this.

Denzel/Marky Mark buddy flick. As dumb a script as I ever saw filmed. Just the principle of "one betrayal, reversal, twist after another," so fast they couldn't be followed, plus car chases, crashes, explosions, and one scene featuring Paula Patton topless. Recommended for boys under fifteen. Funny about Topless scenes in movies. They usually (as here) come early in the film, and never again, but you pay peak attention every time that woman appears in a scene, because--who knows?