I'm just getting in to baseball - like I get the game (played for six years) and I know some teams history, but I was wondering if anyone had any good blogs / reading etc? I like to lose myself in reading material and shit through the day on whats going on in the sport, and I've got a lot of names to learn and shit So any like, mainstay style blog (think Puckdaddy of the baseball world if you know hockey) plus a good jays-specific blog would be great if you could point me in the right direction. Thanks.
Kornheiser and Wilbon just called Jair Jurrjens the best pitcher in baseball, in light of his win last night. Wow. I'm a Braves fan and I know how good Jurrjens is, but even I was surprised to hear that. They said Halladay and Verlander were "close," but "there's nobody better." I'm really hoping he gets the NL Cy Young. He's been pitching out of his mind all season.
One blog I like is Joe Blogs by Joe Posnanski who writes for SI. He mostly writes about baseball but other sports do get written about. Jurrjens is having a great season, but no way in hell is he the best pitcher in baseball, I would take Halladay in a second.
It's in many ways typical of them. They (and the rest of ESPN) are always fast to tout the newest phenom in every sport. Jurrjens is having the best season, probably. Even that isn't certain. But half a season does not make him the best pitcher.
I'll second Posnanski's work, there's not a sportswriter out there who's work I enjoy more. For more of an aggregator/discussion type site, check out Baseball Think Factory, usually 10-12 different threads a day, often solid comment threads, especially if a Murray Chass article pops up. Bluebird Banter is the only Toronto MLB blog I have in my rss although Jays Prospects is decent for minor league stuff. You have to consider the source, those guys aren't exactly top baseball minds. Jurrjens isn't the best pitcher in baseball, the best pitcher in the NL, the best pitcher on the Braves or even the best pitcher in the rotation. The new grip on his two-seamer that Venters taught him has certainly helped and he might have the 'best results' in baseball right now, but even off the top of my head I'd think I could come up with 20 starters I'd prefer to JJ (subject of course to whatever age/contract/whatever we were 'ranking' by). If anything, JJ is the SP I'd most want the Braves to trade for a bat (aside from Minor). As far as "best" in the majors? Give me Verlander, wouldn't hesitate, guy has another gear that no one comes close to.
Nomar Garciaparra and I agree. He was asked who the best pitcher is on SportsCenter's Cold Hard Facts tonight. Every time he goes out everyone around here is on the edge of their seat expecting a no hitter. He has been unreal this year. Particularly during June. As the great Rod Allen proclaims, he is Must See TV.
May I ask why this is? Do you feel that he couldn't keep up this kind of production long-term? I know the Braves are hurting for a bat (thanks for nothing, Dan Uggla), but that seems like a harsh overreaction. Then again, I'm not as privy to the details of baseball as you are. I didn't even know Venters taught him a new grip. I was going to go with Halladay or Verlander as well. The PTI guys simply honed in on Jurrjens' ERA. Even though it's the lowest in the MLB, it isn't very indicative of anything, especially in July. This is probably a stupid question, but what statistics do you guys look at when considering how productive a pitcher is? I know W-L is largely a trivial stat, but what about WHIP and ERA? K/BB and K/9? I don't want to get all "sabermetric-y," but I like taking a closer look at certain numbers to see where the real difference-makers are.
ERA is a pretty decent indicator. So is K/BB ratio. Strangely enough, I'm not sure Halladay is the best pitcher on the Phillies right now. Overall, I think I'd call Hamels or Verlander the best pitcher in baseball (based ONLY on this year, Halladay would be my pick if we take careers as a whole into account.)
Wow it has to suck to be Josh Hamilton. Even more to be that man's son or other family members. I can't even imagine having to deal with that. Tragic.
Would that be something to hold against Jurrjens, then? Because among all ERA leaders, his is among the lowest. On the other hand, I listened to a friend of mine, a little over a month ago (end of May/early June) try to tell me that "Halladay's having a good season so far, but he's getting way too many strikeouts. That's not the kind of player he is." And he went on to say Halladay was therefore "playing out of his comfort zone." The hell? How can a lot of strikeouts be a BAD thing for a pitcher? I then went online and found out that he's had 200+ K's in every year going back to '08, so it's a moot point. Maybe my friend is just dumb.
It depends how they are getting their strikeouts. Up until early this year I would hear people (Jack Morris) knocking Verlander saying he was getting too many strikeouts too. He was running up his pitch count and he would exit the game after 6 innings. Lately though he's been getting his strikeouts efficiently so he can last 8 or 9 innings. I guess he's just yielding less foul balls lately? I'm sure that's something I could look up.
I'm not holding anything against Jurjens, he's having a career year. And this whole 'too many pitches' argument is getting old. The 100 pitch count is bullshit. Nolan Ryan pitched into his 40's and his pitch counts were regularly 130+. Halladay has always been a strikeout pitcher (after he was demoted to the minors and was coached back up). Halladay's having an excellent year, but not his personal best. Of course, that could change in the second half. The guy won the Cy Young last year for Christ's Sakes.
JJ will bring the most back. Still young (25), 2 more years of control, relatively cheap (3.25M this season, likely 7 after arb & 10.5 after that). Lowe couldn't be moved for anything other than salary relief and even then we'd have to pick up several million for each year. I prefer both Hanson and Beachy to Jurrjens, so out of the starting rotation he makes the most sense to me to move especially considering the surplus of RH starters we have coming up in the system. ERA & WHIP are surface stats, if you want a (very) rough measure of how a pitcher's performing look at underlying stats like K/9, BB/9, K/BB and groundball %. Typically going to want a k/9 north of 7.5, bb/9 between 2-2.5 (if not below), GB's at 50+. These numbers are largely why people are saying Jurrjens' success isn't sustainable. If you want an even better idea of performance, look into some defensive independent metrics like FIP and xFIP. As far as the Halladay/strikeout comment, don't overlook the fact that b/c of his durability & number of complete games the guy is routinely near the top of the league in innings pitched, so even if he's not a "strikeout pitcher" he'll be able to rack up 200+ Ks in close to 250 innings.
Halladay is a clear number 1. There are maybe 6-7 in a tier below him. As far as metrics go, ERA is an ok stat, except that it doesn't take into account park and league. If you're pitching in Petco, your era is going to be lower than if you're pitching in GaB. ERA+ is a little bit better (it takes those things into account), but it's still a stat that looks backwards and has a lot of luck involved. If you want to look at how a pitcher is going to do going forward, FIP (which weights walks, strikeouts and home runs) and xFIP (basically the same, but uses groundball rate instead) are a better bet, for one simple reason: pitchers can't really control what happens with batted balls. The vast majority of pitchers, good and bad, wind up having hitters hit around .300 on balls in play over the long run, so the best way to be really good is to limit the number of balls in play and not walk anybody. Obviously, if a pitcher gets out of a lot of jams, they deserve credit for doing their job. But it's not really sustainable going forward. Neither is a pitcher who strikes out a lot of players and doesn't walk anybody doing poorly, a la Zack Greinke. At the risk of sounding obvious, I'd much rather have Greinke for the rest of the season than JJ. If you really want to see who's going to give you good value, you can break down FIP even further, into things like swinging strike percentage. And if you want to break that down, you can look at stuff like Pitch f/x data, which measures vertical and horizontal break and stuff. Pic tangentially related.
Felix Hernandez is the best pitcher in baseball. As far as this season, Weaver, Beckett and Verlander are all doing better than Jurrjens, and they all have past success as well (Verlander the most consistently).
Speaking of great pitchers, where will Clayton Kershaw end up next season? Can the Dodgers afford to sign him to the huge contract he'll invariably have coming, with all of their bankruptcy issues?
The Dodgers' bankruptcy will have zero effect on their ability to retain Kershaw. He'll likely break Weaver's 1st year arb record for a SP but even then it'll be around $4.5M or $5M. Their current payroll obligation for 2012 is around $48M plus arb eligible players. Aside from the cash they dump from free agents, they'll decline the options on Furcal and Blake and no chance that Garland's vests. Loney and Broxton will be non-tendered, so their arbs will be Kershaw, Kemp, Ethier, Kuo and maybe some role-players. Maybe $33-35M for the arb cases and they're still way below this year's payroll.
Pretty incredible day for Jeter to get to 3000 hits. 5 for 5 with a game winning hit and got his 3000th as a homer. The fan who caught the ball didn't want anything for it but the Yankees gave him 4 Champions Suite tickets for the rest of the season and the playoffs. If it was me, I think I would want to auction the ball off.