Let’s Talk Baseball

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21

As someone who spent 2/3rds of his life in Europe and the last 1/3rd in Canada I got to appreciate the sports here in North America.
Besides hockey - which I already followed quite a bit in Europe as well - Baseball and American Football never really got my attention back then.

However Baseball is really fun to play yourself and while my kids did not do many seasons of playing it my son actually became a Baseball referee to ref some games during summer of U-10 to U-18 teams and earn a bit money that way.
I still find it hard to watch through a full MLB game though but I also find it equally boring to watch a full soccer match now unless it involves a team that I really follow - which to be honest is mainly the Austrian national team right now.
My problem with MLB games is really that the duel between pitcher and batter cannot really pull me in as much as some great fielding plays which happen not enough.

But the one preseason game that I watched with my son a couple years back between the Jays and the Cardinals where it was 0-0 until the 9th and then Guerrero hit a home run with the ball sailing right over our heads was definitely fun.

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22

If you think Hosmer is “dead weight” would you agree with the trade of Didi Gregorious and Alec Bohm for him?

23

In an instant. The Phillies wouldn’t do it in a million years, though.

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24

The lockout has dragged on longer than I expected. Supposedly they have a little over a week to go before the start of the season will be delayed.

25

I hope the players hold out as long as it takes. I’d rather have no season than for them to give in to the billionaires.

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26

I just looked up hosmer’s stats. Not bad. A little inconsistent, up and down, but otherwise good.

27
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28

What stats are you looking at? Since he arrived in San Diego he has a .738 OPS and has been worth 0.5 WAR in his four seasons in San Diego. His 2021 season was worth 0.0 WAR so exactly replacement level. In those four seasons he has been worth -5 defensive runs saved. According to Fangraphs he was the second worst first baseman in MLB in 2021 (only Carlos Santana was worse). In those four years, as a replacement level player, he has made $84 million dollars.

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29

Absolute pain.

30

I find myself in the uncomfortable position of caring about the lockout simply because Houston’s Alex Bregman is not only a hometown boy, he’s the good friend of my boss’s son. Baseball is a cutthroat, unforgiving business, so I’m in favor of the players getting everything they can.

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31

Cardinals fan and a more interested college baseball fan here. It helps my school (NC State) got to the college World Series only to be eliminatined by Covid.
We haven’t been to a Cards game since the pandemic started. Not due to any worries about the virus, but the rising crime in downtown St. Louis. Car break-ins are common in the parking lots.

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32

A different kind of pain (admittedly a lot less given the WS win) is, as an Atlanta fan, watching the best first baseman in the league and a team legend, leave because the team just forgot to offer him a good contract.

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33

Honestly I’m hoping if he doesn’t resign that the padres don’t sign him. He’s almost 33 and seems like he’ll get a 5-7 year contract and I wouldn’t feel great about the last 2-4 years of that.

34

Is it in the MLB brass contract, that they have to piss off players and fans every couple decades?

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35

I don’t pay attention wars and ops. I look at batting average and rbis.

36

Those are really bad stats to use to judge a player. OBP and OPS are much more useful for evaluating a player offensively. RBIs are possibly the most useless stat because it’s more about who hits before them. WAR is a good look at how valuable a player is vs a random player from AAA.

Trust me, he’s a very bad baseball player at a position that need to produce with no desire to improve and a horrible contract that makes him untradable.

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37

I would not say rbi’s are a useless stat, but maybe I should pay more attention to OPS.

 I assume the Padres have given up on Vinnnie Velazquez.    I really hoped Vinny woukd  get his act together.   He did pitch a few gems, but was largely inconsistent.
38

What a rollercoaster week. Euphoria that the lockdown is over and the first preseason Padres game is this Friday! Followed by the devastating news that Tatis jr is out for 3 months with a wrist fracture.

Chis who do you think will go in at SS? Will they bring Abrams up or put in Kim?

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39

I’d guess mostly Kim for now, putting Abrams in AA and aggressively promoting him if he earns it. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was up by mid season. I’d rather they not bring him up right away, not playbhim much, and hurt his development like they did with Campusano or Urias. Or Kim for that matter.

I’ve got to say though, I’m very down on the Padres right now. Without finding a taker for Hosmer and Myers, and with a lot more wasted money on Pomeranz (who hopefully is healthy) and Profar (who stinks) they’re not going to spend any more money, and they’re not going to be good enough. Bad contracts have them in a bind. They have holes in LF, RF, 1B, and big question mark at C and now Tatis is out, possibly for most of the season. As it stands, they’re going to be battling Arizona for 3rd place.

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40

I used to love baseball in the 90s… Nolan Ryan, Jack McDowell and Tim Wakefield were my favorite players. I stopped following baseball when Wakefield retired, although I did check boxscores when Jamie Moyer was pitching near the end of his career.

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