Out of the Past

Opinion: a view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge Whether you guys agree with the methods around determining WAR and other statistics similar to it, the bottom line is that it IS based on facts and knowledge. My opinion is that Dodger Stadium is a great place to watch a baseball game. A fact is that Dodger Stadium is in the Elysian Park area of Los Angeles. My opinion is that the orange Marlins jerseys are horrible. A fact is that Adeiny Hechavarria is horrible. See what I did there, guys? See how I brought Adeiny into it? It's NOT a fact that WAR measures "wins above replacement" accurately.

I think you are patting them on the back too much. They did make some good decisions, but there are some really dumb ones that most other teams probably wouldn't make. The way that they handled the Ryan Webb arbitration is downright infuriating. He would be a great asset for the pen right now and they basically spent half of his would-be salary on Marmol "because they thought they could fix him." They tried to do things on the cheap and it was predictably a bad decision. The $3.5 million they are spending on Furcal shouldn't be downplayed, either. That was a waste of money even if he wasn't having injury problems. It just shows how dumb they are for not wanting to spend a little bit of money on a solid reliever but have no problem wasting it on Furcal and Marmol. Not every decision will work but the team looks like a .500 team with the lowest payroll in MLB so they must be doing something right.

The offense is a lot betrer than last year. Not MLB worst anymore. Probably around bottom 10 which is a big improvement.

There's 30 teams.. 25 players per team.. 162 games per season.. so there's 121,500 chances for players to be late per season and you hear of maybe 10 tardiness cases per year and people freak out when it happens. In my company we have 90 people in Miami and easily 20 are "late" everyday and people don't freak out. And there's nothing wrong with bat flipping.

I would have a four team playoff. To help select the playoff teams, at the end of the season (after Conference Championships) I would have a Sagarin type system ranking all FBS teams from 1 to 116. Then each team would be given points for each of their wins with the number of points depending on the quality of the opponent. For example, if you beat the No. 1 team you get 116 points but if you beat the No. 116 team you get 1 point. If you beat a non-FBS team you don’t get any points. The four teams that accumulated the most points would make it to the playoff.

Saban's post game press conference blaming the players was pretty classy. http-~~-//www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QaAeMW5bOE I don't see what it is he said that was so wrong.

Ortiz is just cheating or something. He's at .733 batting average for the series I think. Just unbelievable. He may set a few records. Normalize his BABIP and his numbers will nosedive... luck luck luck.

The unfortunate thing is that I really doubt this ever gets repealed. Fortunately, voters might be waking up, though. From the article I posted: Pam Kehaly, president of Anthem Blue Cross in California, said she received a recent letter from a young woman complaining about a 50% rate hike related to the healthcare law. "She said, 'I was all for Obamacare until I found out I was paying for it,'" Kehaly said. Remember that Obamacare was pretty damn unpopular in the first place. The backlash was dampened because Obama managed to convince a lot of idiots that the law would make costs go down and that if they "liked their plan, they could keep their plan." It could be seen from a mile away that both of those Obama "promises" were falsehoods. I hate pieces of s*** like that and I'm so happy she got screwed.

Those people who are getting the heavily subsidized care benefit in the short term, but everyone loses in the end when health care costs continue to go through the roof and the quality of care goes down. I think wealthy people with low taxable income will come out quite well getting subsidized health care even if quality eventually goes down. Free stuff is really good especially when you don't need it to be free.

Half a season was enough evidence really, that team was going nowhere. It was pretty clear before opening day that they didn't build a playoff contender. Hindsight is 20/20... there were plenty of "experts" picking the Marlins to make the post-season... I think the consensus around here was that it was a mid 80's win team.

Boston is tops in WAR. St Louis is 19th.

Ten years of no playoffs. Cardinals/sox 7th World Series together in ten years. Getting tired of this. Loria spend money. We tried that. Marlins tried it for half a season and gave-up. That's not really trying.

What's been bad about his strike zone? He called "strikes" several Boston pitches that were balls. He called "balls" several Detroit pitches that were strikes. I don't like home plate umpires having such a huge impact on who wins and losses because of their incompetence (or something else). I know some people don't care about that but I do.

After tonight's performance home plate umpires should no longer call balls and strikes.

WHIP is not even a difficult stat to understand. You'd think an old guy would love that statistic. WHIP is a retarded way of measuring base runners allowed. OBP allowed is better way.

The Canes got outgained by more than 2:1 ratio. The so-called greatest offense and so-called greatest offensive line and so-called greatest RB in the history of history all got man-handled. If you project where the Canes are headed based off of this game then more mediocrity lays ahead. It's hard to believe how bad Jeff Driskel is !!

Jose is tied for 5th in WAR and Puig is tied for 19th. WAR is a counting stat and what's amazing about Puig is that he has accumulated so much WAR in the only 90 or so games he has being on the roster.

I still say that another 6 or 12 or 18 innings simply doesn't matter, he's earned the right to pitch beyond the arbitrary limit of his upcoming last start against ATL. Instead of faltering or struggling or acting tired, he blew out WSH. He throws 98 or 99 like it's nothing. He bends curveballs for strikes routinely. He embarrasses hitters and then smiles at them. After the 1st inning, I wondered what Redmond would do if he was still pitching a perfect game after 6, and he damned near did it. Later, it was revealed that Redmond had told him not to be concerned with innings, he would get another start. But, even at that, the entire proposition is slightly ridiculous. 170? Obviously not set in stone. 180? What's the big deal versus 170? 190? OK, that's probably enough. About 45 more than he threw last year. But 190 would give him his last 3 starts. This team, crappy as it is, is an entirely different team when he pitches, to wit: Through 112 non-Fernandez starts, they're hitting .229 and scoring 3.15 runs/game. In 27 Fernandez starts, .244 and 3.67 runs/game. In 9 starts since the All-Star break, .258 and 4.33 runs/game. MLB average is .254. Now, the improvement in Fernandez starts is certainly not all due to Fernandez, but there is no doubt that this team gets motivated and excited and plays significantly better when he pitches JUST BECAUSE FERNANDEZ IS PITCHING. Why deprive a guy who should be ROY of 20 innings and the chance to nail it down beyond all doubt, never mind the teammates who want to play behind him? A team that's 36-76 when he doesn't pitch is 17-10 when he pitches. That's championship-level baseball. Let him pitch. If Puig maintains what he's doing he'll probably lead the league in OPS+. As of now it's very close.

That pitchers in the old days pitched more innings is not debatable. That's a fact. The reasons for the changes in durability are debatable.

risk vs reward the risk may be low but it's not zero. reward? there is none, Jose is already awesome and established and the Marlins are playing for nothing. If that's the case then the Marlins should've shut him down after the midsummer classic when he was ERAing a 2.71 on an already bottom dwelling team. That's a dumb thing to say. The Marlins needed to increase Fernandez's IP workload from what it was last season. Teams have historically tried to increase IP by 30 or so each season for young pitchers. The idea is that increasing the workload in marginal increments would alleviate stress on the connective tissues and also build up arm strength safely. Shutting him down in July wouldn't have done Fernandez any good, either. This type of inning management strategy seems to be logical however pitchers who started their careers in the old days and were not "babied' pitched a lot more innings and were much more durable than the "babied" pitchers.

He's our new John Baker. Remember when John Baker used to hit and you used to hate him? Never hated anybody. In Baker's case, I always said he had a nice bat but was terrible at defense. Nothing more. Not many agreed openly with that.....Until he was gone. What's the difference between what you used to say about Baker (or Gaby Sanchez) and what I'm saying about Hechavarria? Hechavarria is a lot like one of your other favorites, Emilio Bonifacio, who has moved on to have quite the mediocre career (just traded for nothing not so long ago). Perhaps Hechavarria is better than his defensive #'s. No one has ever said that defensive #'s are perfect. They're flawed, but at the same time, I see no reason to fully ignore them. And while we're at it, while defensive #'s are far from perfect, offensive #'s are pretty accurate. Hechavarria's offensive #'s pretty much put him in a category of: "he has to be Ozzie Smith defensively to have any type of relevant value because he can't hit for s***." You seem to defend defensive, toolsy players who can't hit a lot more than solid offensive players with no position. I don't know why that is, but you have a history of doing that. Maybe because sh*tty offensive players are written about more on here, and you like to be the contrarian at all times. It seems like you only post on here now to critique other members of the board. I would like to see MLB Network or ESPN do a special in which they show many defensive plays and then show on the screen how the various “advanced� defensive stats rated each play. I have very little faith on the “advanced� defensive stats but such a show maybe would sway my mind a bit if I agreed with the ratings. ========================= Another thing… to your credit you admit that offensive stats are far more accurate than defensive stats.. I don't ever recall reading a saber guy acknowledging this very obvious fact.

I hope Ryan Braun has a career ending injury. He's such a despicable human being. He basically admits now that he lied about that entire synthetic testosterone debacle where he came off as a smug asshole and ruined the sample collector's life when he knew all along that he was guilty. What a scumbag. He might be worse than A-Rod. Nice... He ended the sample collector's career. It's only fair. Two wrongs don't make a right. I don't see anything wrong in wishing bad things to happen to really bad people.

They've only spent money for about a 2 or 3 months period and then gave up and there's really not a lot of talent on the team right now other than Stanton and Fernandez and then maybe a couple of guys that may be good but are by no means sure things. I don't see them spending money in the next 2 or 3 years. I also don't see many free agents wanting to come here after the last firesale unless the get ridiculous offers.

Puig is a douche. It was a horrible call... the ump is the douche.

Let's say Stanton finishes the season between .800-.830 OPS... How much does that effect his arbitration price for 2014? 2 or 3 million.