OT: Raise the Jolly Roger: Tanking underway

[DJ Spinoza]

Hayes is incredible. Just murdering the baseball.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

Hayes is also just a beauty to watch from a fundamentals perspective. In a season of almost unlimited misery, we are truly lucky with how things seem to be breaking with him.

 

[ImporterExporter]

Hayes is also just a beauty to watch from a fundamentals perspective. In a season of almost unlimited misery, we are truly lucky with how things seem to be breaking with him.

Baseball IQ is the difference between Hayes and somebody like Polanco sir.

Polanco, btw, is 1 for his last 22 (including today) with 11 K's.

On the year, over 126 AB's, Polanco has 17 hits.

.135/.190/.294.

57 K's

He's not an MLB player.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

I don't really believe in such a thing as baseball IQ. I think it's too caught up in tropes I'd rather not perpetuate.

I prefer to focus on the positives, which nearly start and end with Hayes at this point. Getting crushed by the Royals and Reds certainly adds some immediate misery to this unending season of misery, but it will be worth it if it means we lock down pick 1.1.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

I only now noticed that the Red Sox have been manipulating service time on Nick Pivetta. One of the richest teams in the sport cynically manuevering in order to gain a year of control over a reclamation project? Yeah, this sport isn't fundamentally broken.

 

[Jaded-Fan]

It remains to be seen what approach Major League Baseball will take on this, but one way would be by simply adding 2019 and 2020 together and coming up with a Draft order on overall winning percentage. Another model could give equal weight to both seasons in a 50-50 split. Below is what the Draft order would be as of Wednesday according to the first model, with where each team would pick according to the second model in parentheses.

1. Tigers (2)
2. Orioles (3)
3. Royals (4)
4. Marlins (7)
5. Pirates (1)

Inbox: Draft order, Braves southpaws, more

 

[ImporterExporter]

I don't really believe in such a thing as baseball IQ. I think it's too caught up in tropes I'd rather not perpetuate.

I prefer to focus on the positives, which nearly start and end with Hayes at this point. Getting crushed by the Royals and Reds certainly adds some immediate misery to this unending season of misery, but it will be worth it if it means we lock down pick 1.1.

You don't believe people process information differently, including the speed at which people can go from brain to action? Retaining important information, especially in a game like baseball where there are almost always variables? I've never met anyone that watched Polanco play and look like he was a student of the game. Pitch recognition is one I noticed early with him. He's never shown an ability to consistently adjust to what pitchers where doing. He'd flash it, but it was far and few between. Couple that with a long swing, though quite smooth, and it's the primary reason for the struggles at the dish.

Then there is the play out in the field. So many blunders, odd falls, hurting himself doing routine baseball actions like sliding. You watch a kid like Hayes and you can tell he's thinking the game in terms of chess, not checkers. Obviously we're all impressed with his debut thus far, but as you yourself said, Hayes looks like he knows what he's doing at all times out there.

I'm not looking to pile on you DJ in regards to Polanco. I promise it's not personal. You simply made an interesting rebuttal and I wanted to chat on it a little.

P.S. Human psychology is incredibly underrated in our society. It's one of the great failures of our species IMO.

 

[ImporterExporter]

Inbox: Draft order, Braves southpaws, more

If they combine this "year" with last year in entirety and we fall to 5th, I will be in jail.

Print that.

 

[Empoleon8771]

Inbox: Draft order, Braves southpaws, more

I have a tough time imagining how the MLB can rationalize doing that when the Marlins are currently over .500 and currently have an 80% chance of making the playoffs.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

P.S. Human psychology is incredibly underrated in our society. It's one of the great failures of our species IMO.

Fair enough regarding wanting to chat and not piling on – I have just said my piece on Polanco and don't want to get into it any more. I would not suggest that people don't process information differently, or anything along those lines, just that, _at best_, the idea of baseball IQ is an extremely fuzzy and imprecise one which tends to get thrown around with ridiculous ease.

More to the point, I don't think Polanco's problems gravitate around such a hazy notion. His current problem is pretty much exactly what you said in the initial post, which is the almost absurd amount of swing and miss in his game. If we want to talk about realistic and measurable analysis, then I would point to the fact that when he actually does connect, he continues to hit the ball hard, which is an important sign. The swing and miss has gotten to the point where he is not rosterable if he's doing this for 6+ weeks in a regular season, but I am effectively throwing out all of the results this year and moreover only think that the discussion of Polanco remaining on the team or not benefits Nutting's wallet. If he's this bad in late May/early June next year, then it becomes a different conversation.

I don't think psychology is underrated as you do. I would suggest instead that you can pretty much find continuous invocations of psychological failures everywhere, as explanations for social and political problems. It is probably ideology numero uno in US society in terms of what people reach for in order to explain various phenomena. I don't think psychology is unimportant or irrelevant, but also would say that there is a lot of knee-jerk psychologizing that goes on which is unnecessary.

In Polanco's case, I can't imagine his confidence is very high at the moment, but the biggest problem with his game is that he cannot make contact at any reasonable rate. This has always been an issue for him even when he was performing adequately as an everyday RF, despite the expectations people heaped on him. I don't know that he will find the swing again, but if he does and the other peripherals stay the same, I guarantee he'll be on track for 25-30 HRs next year and there will be people who either want to keep him or else think he can be traded for a very big return. We have a long way to go before we get anywhere near that, though.

 

[cookthebooks]

Seems like being involved in a collision that seriously injured your a teammate weighs on a player

 

[ColePens]

Baseball fans...the boys are 14-34. We are going to unstick this thread but leave it open for discussion and bump the pittsburgher steeler thread back to stickies. @BHD @Scandale du Jour

 

[DJ Spinoza]

Seems like being involved in a collision that seriously injured your a teammate weighs on a player

It's not Polanco related but just because I don't know if everyone remembers, another and much more grave point on this front is Crick. He's obviously looking like he's in trouble, with the velocity dip and generally with fading into mediocrity or worse, going back somewhat to last year. But Crick's twin brother died in the offseason and then his dad died earlier this year – can't imagine it's easy to prep for a normal season under those conditions, let alone whatever we want to call this sideshow (I'm happy to call it a season if it means we get pick 1.1).

I'm maybe a little cavalier in throwing out the results of this season, but in addition to the injuries, especially with the pitching, I think the tldr; on it is not that complex. Poor team has absolutely abysmal start to the year, sinking them lower than they otherwise would be, and can't really dig out of it. There are probably disagreements to be had – for example, with a healthier/non-suspended (in Santana's case)/non-offensive abyss group, I don't think this is close to a 100-loss team, but there aren't 100 games this year so it's not worth discussing.

Heading into next year, there are as usual much more questions than answers. It would be nice to see some signs of life out of Reynolds as we close the season, and ideally at least one Keller start to hang our hat on (the velo going back up is hugely encouraging). There are going to be and should be some big decisions made over the winter and somewhat of a shuffle. 2021 should be another "building" year, to use BC's preferred nomenclature, but like with just about any Huntington team, if things break right, it could become more interesting. The division will continue to get weaker and weaker, IMO, especially the Brewers, Cubs, and Reds. With Hayes' breakout, we should accelerate some urgency to try and hit a window beginning in 2022. The ideal scenario would be adding another impact player or two over the next 1.25 years (Keller and Cruz), sorting out supplemental and depth pieces, and then having Rocker or Leiter to inject into what could be a very fun 2022 team.

There are lots of reasons to be very down on the team, but my attitude in general is that we lucked out this year, so long as we don't get royally screwed by Manfred and IE and I have to team up despite our different attitudes towards Polanco in order to solve him. At the end of the day, Hayes being better than anyone could have dreamed so far and potentially getting Kumar Rocker with only ~60 games of misery is much better than a drawn out season in which we barely scraped by to avoid losing 90 games or something.

 

[Scandale du Jour]

Baseball fans...the boys are 14-34. We are going to unstick this thread but leave it open for discussion and bump the pittsburgher steeler thread back to stickies. @BHD @Scandale du Jour

Boooooooooooooo! We are in a race for the 1st pick baby!

 

[Winger for Hire]

I can't think of a more Pirate thing to happen than to have the worst record in baseball going into a draft year with a pool that has a organization defining Top 3 to then pick 7 because Huntington decided to move ahead in 2019 with the most mediocre team ever assembled with the "hopes" of a playoff spot.

 

[Goalie_Bob]

I just don't understand how the commissioner can change the rules for the draft after the season has completed. Any way you look at it, it could be seen as favoritism for whoever gets the first pick etc. To not have this figured out before the season started is just ridiculous and negligent on MLB.

IMO, the 2019 season happened and their was a draft for that season. The 2020 season is shorter than normal, ok but it did happen. You have to go with the results. I could maybe see a lottery for the top 10 picks where any team can win the top pick and everyone moves down one pick depending on who gets the first pick etc.

 

[pistolpete11]

Haven't been paying attention much this season for obvious reasons, but it's good to see Hayes. He's tied for the team lead in WAR....after only playing 13 games. Hopefully he's not just some flash in the pan and they're wasting it on this pathetic season. Edit: sorry, "season".

 

[ImporterExporter]

The thing with Hayes is he's already ELITE in the field. He'll always have a lot of value simply based on his glove. I estimate he can be worth as much as 2 WAR defensively (that's peak). Not even factoring in offense.

The semi question mark was his bat. Was it going to play at the MLB level. Was the power going to develop?

I think we've seen that he can indeed do both things very well. He made adjustments to his swing. The league will counter. The question now is can he remain a plus hitter and become a legit middle of the order bat or does he' come back to earth, long term, and end up a more modest offensive performer.

Overall though, you couldn't have asked for a better start to his career.

 

[SomeDude]

I have a tough time imagining how the MLB can rationalize doing that when the Marlins are currently over .500 and currently have an 80% chance of making the playoffs.

The next time the MLB is able to rationalize any of it's decisions will be the first time.

Also, if they can keep any potential star players away from the worst franchise in professional sports...I'm sure they'd be ok with that.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

I can't think of a more Pirate thing to happen than to have the worst record in baseball going into a draft year with a pool that has a organization defining Top 3 to then pick 7 because Huntington decided to move ahead in 2019 with the most mediocre team ever assembled with the "hopes" of a playoff spot.

*Nutting

 

[DJ Spinoza]

Kuhl's line in the second game won't look as good as it could or should have in large part due to a totally incompetent umpire who blew a clear strike three call, after which an inning really spiraled (and it was immediately followed by extreme bad luck). Setting that aside, he looked as sharp as he has all year tonight, a good sign heading into the winter. He should get one more start, so hopefully he can cap off his post-TJ season on a strong note.

Otherwise, lots more of the same. It's good to see Reynolds hitting the ball hard, as well as Polanco finally getting some hits to fall in recent games. I remain fully convinced that there will at least be a lottery but whatever is going to happen, we seem to have last place all but sewed up officially.

 

[ImporterExporter]

Hayes up to 6 walks already as well. He has solid plate discipline, right now. The one thing to watch is his stance/swing. There is more movement than you see in the most traditional methods and while the open stance has absolutely increased bat speed/velocity, there is always the risk of finding a hitch in process, as the process is longer/more "volatile" than others. Love the swing, it looks very good. Just something to keep an eye on moving forward.

I can't imagine us winning more than a handful of games the rest of the way, so I think we've 99% locked up the worst record.

The only thing now, is how badly are we going to get bent over by MLB and the big market teams, like Washington and Boston who would like nothing more than to steal a franchise altering pitching prospect.

 

[OswaldBates]

Meadows began this season on the COVID-19 injured list and has batted .205/.296/.371 with four home runs and 50 strikeouts in 152 plate appearances since he debuted Aug. 4. Now I know why people here haven't been bitching about that trade

 

[Rakell67]

Meadows began this season on the COVID-19 injured list and has batted .205/.296/.371 with four home runs and 50 strikeouts in 152 plate appearances since he debuted Aug. 4. Now I know why people here haven't been bitching about that trade

Wow. That’s a huge dropoff.

 

[ImporterExporter]

Keller was incredible tonight.

Hayes is a stud.