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Hank Chinaski

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Posts posted by Hank Chinaski

  1. 30 minutes ago, TriStone said:

    You've got it.  Herman knew everything and helped cover it up, and then Mrs. Herman paid $10,000 in hush money to the victim to keep their names out of it.  That is, no bullshit, the narrative that's worming it's way thru the intertrons.

    Edit:  I forgot to add the best part.  Herman "snitched" because tOSU was just destroying us in recruiting.

    Hahaha...so he was complicit in the cover-up - so complicit that he, in fact, paid the victim hush money. But then he decided to make the story national - intentionally shining a light on a scandal in which he was intimately involved - because one 17 year-old kid in Texas has decided to play football at Ohio State? 

    That...doesn't make sense. The conspiracy theorists need to huddle and come up with something a bit more plausible. 

    • Like 2
  2. Who knows how true any of this is. But if Herman did tip McMurphy to dig into this, I say good. Herman seems like a vengeful fuck, which isn't necessarily a negative attribute for a football coach. And if it is true that he has been helping the victim throughout the process, even better. 

    • Like 1
  3. Fangraphs reader: Thoughts on Tyler White? Can he hit enough to be a 1B/DH?

     
    9:42

    Jeff Sullivan: Yes

     
    9:43

    Jeff Sullivan: He actually projects for about the same wOBA as Gurriel

     
    9:43

    Jeff Sullivan: Ditto Gattis

     
    9:44

    Jeff Sullivan: This year in Triple-A, White had twice as many walks as swinging strikeouts

     
    9:44

    Jeff Sullivan: Would a team rather have Tyler White or Eric Hosmer? It’s closer than you’d think!

  4. 9 hours ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

    I don’t like the sound of the Altuve comment.  Too much typical front office dodge and weave for it to be anything other than worse than we expected.

    Yeah, it's weird. There's either structural damage to the knee or there isn't. I suppose it could be very minor damage to the meniscus or something. He's missed 2 weeks with general "knee soreness." 

  5. Astros Emerging Superstar

    Spoiler

    By just about any measure that counts, Alex Bregman has been one of the best players in baseball. In fairness, Alex Bregman was expected to be one of the best players in baseball, but not quite to this degree. I can explain, using our old standards — projections and WAR! Coming into the year, among both hitters and pitchers, Bregman was tied for the 45th-highest projected WAR. He was sixth in projected WAR among Astros, behind Carlos Correa, Jose Altuve, Justin Verlander, Dallas Keuchel, and George Springer.

    Right now, Bregman and Verlander are tied atop the Astros’ WAR leaderboard. And Bregman is tied for 10th in all of baseball, around names like Matt Carpenter and Nolan Arenado. It’s not that no one ever saw Bregman coming — he was already a good everyday player, and the Astros did, after all, select him second overall in the 2015 draft. But Bregman has steadily continued to improve, to the point where he’s nearly maxing out his skills. Because of how loaded the Astros’ roster has been, it’s been more difficult for Bregman to stand out. It’s funny to refer to someone as having played in Altuve’s shadow, but Bregman’s completing his star turn, and he should be recognized as such.

     

     

    Bregman’s only 24, and he debuted in 2016. I’ll recite for you his year-to-year wOBAs:

    • 2016: .336 wOBA
    • 2017: .351
    • 2018: .386

    You can see his improvement right there, with a start-to-present wOBA jump of 50 points. But now, with the help of Statcast and Baseball Savant, check out Bregman’s year-to-year expected wOBAs, based on his walks, strikeouts, and batted balls:

    • 2016: .308 expected wOBA
    • 2017: .347
    • 2018: .402

    The improvement is even more evident, if you think of expected wOBA as being a better measure of true talent. Compared to his rookie season, Bregman now is up 94 points. For the sake of providing some context, in 2016, Bregman’s xwOBA ranked in the 39th percentile. The next year, he was up to the 74th percentile. Right now, he ranks in the 95th percentile. Bregman isn’t exactly pulling a Mookie Betts, but he still looks like one of the most improved hitters in either league. Some of it is just about his batted balls, but the bigger story has to do with Bregman’s approach.

     

    As a rookie, Bregman walked about 7% of the time, and he struck out about 24% of the time. Over two years, that walk rate has almost doubled, and that strikeout rate has been cut almost in half. Between 2016 and 2017, Bregman’s big step forward was with regard to his making contact. Between 2017 and 2018, it’s been a matter of increased selectivity. In the following plot, you’ll see every hitter with at least 250 plate appearances in each of the past two seasons. The x-axis shows the changes in chase rate. The y-axis shows the changes in in-zone swing rate. Bregman, as you could guess, is the point in yellow.

    discipline-changes.png

    Bregman’s isn’t the most extreme point in there, but it’s among them. Out of 206 players, he has the fourth-biggest drop in chase rate, and he has the 16th-biggest drop in in-zone swing rate. The outliers, if you’re curious, are Nick Williamsand Pablo Sandoval. Williams deserves a post of his own. This is about Bregman, though, and what you’re seeing, basically, is intent to sit on certain pitches. Bregman trusts his eye, and he’s become increasingly patient. Or, if you prefer, increasingly selective. While Bregman’s top exit velocities aren’t in any way comparable to Giancarlo Stanton’s, you don’t need to hit the ball 120 miles per hour. Bregman is putting his best swing on more pitches, and he’s laying off more of the stuff he doesn’t like. That’s how he’s become one of precious few players in baseball with more walks than strikeouts.

    The other day, I wrote about Juan Soto. That post has a plot that shows power (ISO) and discipline (K-BB%), and Soto and Bregman are right next to one another. I like thinking in terms of player comparisons, so I wanted to run some more math. Here’s what I did, in short: For every regular or semi-regular in 2018, I found their swing rates, their contact rates, their exit velocities, their launch angles, and their sprint speeds. From there, I calculated standard deviations and z-scores, looking for the smallest distances from Bregman’s own stat line. When I ran this analysis for player comps, one player stood out as easily the best comp in the pool. This season, the player most comparable to Alex Bregman is Jose Ramirez.

    By the numbers, Ramirez came out literally twice as close to Bregman as the next-closest player. Here’s a table of the relevant information, along with some bonus stuff to drive the point home:

     
    2018 Player Comparison
    Player Swing% Contact% EV LA Sprint BB% K% xwOBA
    Alex Bregman 37.4% 88.0% 89.2 16.3 27.8 12.8% 12.5% 0.402
    Jose Ramirez 39.8% 87.4% 89.3 18.2 27.6 13.3% 11.4% 0.407
    SOURCE: Baseball Savant
    EV = average exit velocity; LA = average launch angle; Sprint = average sprint speed.

    Bregman and Ramirez are similarly disciplined, and they make similar amounts of contact. The contact they make is also almost identical — right down to how they excel to the pull side — and as it turns out, Bregman and Ramirez even have comparable top sprint speeds. Because of the discipline and contact, both players walk plenty, without striking out. And their current expected wOBAs are only five points apart. This is about as close a match as you can find. Bregman is a 24-year-old third baseman. Ramirez is a 25-year-old third baseman.

    They’re built a little differently, sure, but it’s nothing dramatic. Bregman bats righty, while Ramirez bats from both sides. This year, Bregman has eight steals, while Ramirez has 26. Ramirez rates as the superior defender. But both players stole 17 bases a year ago, and while Ramirez is strong in the field, infield defensive numbers are our least reliable, and many believe Bregman ought to be playing shortstop. I don’t want to go over the top and come off like I think they’re literally one and the same. But if you were wondering what Alex Bregman went and improved into, he improved into becoming awfully similar to Jose Ramirez. Ramirez just ranked first on our trade-value list. Bregman ranked seventh.

    When Bregman first came up to the majors, he succeeded, but there was reason to be skeptical. He didn’t seem to possess upper-tier power, and his approach left room for improvement. That approach, sure enough, has improved, and now Bregman is one of the most selective hitters in the game. He’s also one of the most difficult hitters to strike out in the game, and the contact he can make is plenty strong enough to drive the ball to or over the fence. Just about the last thing the Astros needed was another superstar on the roster. It looks like they’ve got one. Bregman is doing almost everything he possibly can.

     

    • Like 1
  6. 5 hours ago, RadiologyHorn said:

    Hummer is back on drugs...

     

    Jimbo Fisher is owning state of Texas recruiting in Year 1

    Standing on the sideline at The Opening Finals in Frisco, Texas, Dylan Wright is holding court.

    247Sports’ No. 69 overall player in the country isn’t participating at The Opening due to an injury, but plenty of players come over to chat up the four-star receiver. Wright, at 6-foot-4, is an imposing physical presence and comes with a personality to match. On this day, he’s talking to a reporter about the state of Texas recruiting while making bold statements. Most of them revolved around what the state of Texas could be in college football if the top athletes stayed home. But one of his quotes, in regards to first-year Texas A&M head coach Jimbo Fisher, stands out because it came mostly unprompted.

    “He’s building something that will change the whole thing,” Wright told 247Sports.

    Wright said this a few weeks before shocking many in the recruiting industry by committing to the Aggies. Only a single Crystal Ball prediction projected it, and Wright had previously been considered a Longhorn lean.

    I wrote an in-depth piece about the recruiting war that’s ongoing in the Lone Star State between Texas and Texas A&M last week. Don’t expect that to end soon. But it's also important in the present to acknowledge the significant swell Fisher’s created in Texas. The Aggies own the nation’s No. 3 overall recruiting class in the 2019 cycle with Wright's commitment. They’ve owned the state, too. Texas A&M holds 11 verbal pledges from the state’s top 30 overall prospects, including four of the top 11.

    This head-to-head battle between the Longhorns and Aggies is hardly even a fight at the moment.

    Of the 16 in-state players who have committed to the two programs this cycle, 11 of them will call College Station home. The Longhorns hold commitments from just four of the top 50 players in the state. This is not to say Texas is struggling on the trail with the nation's 10th ranked class, but it does show the impact Fisher’s had early in his tenure on the state's recruiting landscape. Remember, it was only a year ago when Texas inked 11 of the state’s top 15 prospects and landed the No. 3 class itself. 

    That's a drastic shift that can only be credited to Fisher.

    “A lot of things changed at A&M,” said five-star offensive tackle Kenyon Green. “A little more swagger, a little more oomph to them. They’re trying to get there now. … It seemed like they wanted to win but they weren’t pushing as hard as Fisher is now.”

    The 2019 cycle is far from over, and Texas A&M, which hasn't won a conference championship since 1998, must prove it can win. 

    But recruiting at this level is the norm for Fisher.

    His full-cycle recruiting classes at Florida State (excluding his half-year effort in 2010) averaged at fifth overall nationally. The state of Florida provides plenty of talent, but Texas’ borders produce no less than the Sunshine State annually. Yes, Fisher’s aided by being a first-year coach who can sell promise. Yes, it helps that the Aggies haven’t played a game yet. And yes, recruiting tends to be cyclical from class to class. But now the onus is on the other coaches in the state to keep up.

    This is not a recruiting fluke for Fisher, and kids in the state have taken notice.

    “He’s getting nothing but dogs,” Wright said

    Blah blah blah I'm pretty sure I read this same article a few years ago. Building something, swagger, yada yada. 

    • Like 2
  7. 3 hours ago, Johnny Sack said:

    Tyler White’s OPS is now 903.  Was 853 last year.  

    Yup - over the last 2 seasons, White is around .270/.350/.530 with 7 HR in 45 games (140 PAs) - good for a wRC+ of around 140. 

    Pretty, pretty...pretty good. 

  8. 1 hour ago, closetojumping said:

    Some lessons were learned, but not all of them. During film session with WR recruits and their dads this spring, allegedly, Mehringer made a point of talking shit about the existing talent, including Johnson, to the tune of turning the families off completely, or damn near so. 

    What a fucking idiot. What exactly did he think this would accomplish?

  9. 42 minutes ago, closetojumping said:

    I puked in the parking lot after the 2001 Big 12 Title Game. I was stone cold sober. That's never happened before or since. Just absolute despair as a fan boiling into nausea.

    Then some gigantic Colorado broad getting into her minivan with her tiny, skinny husband and two fat kids made the mistake of screaming "hahahaha Texas sucks!" at us as we were walking by their vehicle. She made for the perfect outlet at the perfect time. I assume her husband is still trying to comfort her over the vitriol that sailed out of my mouth into her fat ears. I like to think I've grown a great deal since then.

    I watched that game at the home of a friend of my girlfriend, who was having a party that evening. It was an artsy wine-and-cheese crowd, I was one of two people glued to the TV. I kept it together the entire game, through all the ineptitude. When we finally stopped those fucks, finally getting the ball back to go win...and then roughed the punter...I snapped. I unleashed a string of the most vile expletives you can imagine, screaming like a madman at the top of my lungs. When I finally stopped, I looked around the room, lightheaded and dazed, shuddering from the aftershocks of my outburst, to see that everybody was staring at me in complete silence and my girlfriend was sobbing a little. I was still muttering to myself under my breath. I looked at everyone and then just left, walked right out the front door. I walked home from North Lamar area to my place on 18th and Rio Grande. I too like to think that I've grown.  

    • Like 5
  10. 58 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

    Plus athelte does not mean a plus baseball player 

    Nobody said it does. But plus-athlete combined with minor league production does mean that he will get a longer leash and more opportunities than lesser athletes. 

    The questions was whether Fisher still had any value either to the Astros or on the trade market (more likely). I am just suggesting that his minor league performance + physical tools means that he still has trade value. He has 250 big-league plate appearances; he's not a lost cause yet.

    None of this means that he has a high probability of becoming a good major league player. It just means that he has a higher probability than many others, and thus maintains trade value (though probably not as much as he had at this point last year). 

  11. His very limited major league numbers say otherwise. His large sample of minor league numbers support the scouting. 

    I'm not saying he's going to be a good player. Just saying that he should still have trade value, though less than he had at this time last year. 

  12. 1 hour ago, Scraps said:

    He's more like a shittier Robbie Grossman, which is pretty fucking shitty

    He's nothing like Grossman. Fisher is a plus athlete with a 60 power and 70 speed. If he improves his contact he has all-star potential. It is looking less and less likely to happen, but he has tools that GMs would value. 

  13. 9 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

    Fisher was meh in AA and a huge shock he's meh on the MLB level 

    lunhow loves him though. im guessing this is his last chance. he has tucker / jake / kemp in front of him 

    FIsher had a 132 wRC+ with 16 HR and 23 SB in 102 AA games in 2016. He did strike out too much though. Then he obliterated AAA last year (and has performed well this year too). But he's obviously been bad at the MLB level. 

    He's about to be 25 and still only had 248 big-league PAs. With his tools, I imagine he still has trade value - the guy has power and speed. But unless he can cut down on the strikeout/contact issues, he likely won't be a regular. 

     

  14. 1 hour ago, UTexasFight said:


    Not worried about the A’s.

    They’ll hit a wall soon.
    30-10 and best record since June 15, or whatever it is, isn’t sustainable even if they’ve gotten better with all of their moves in July.

    I’m still going with the theory that the AL West 2018 is a lot like the AL West 2017. That is, Angels, Mariners and A’s take turns having white hot streaks (substitute Rangers for A’s in 2017) but Astros are still the cream of the crop.
    Everyone was freaked out in April that the Angels were going to be there all season long.
    Then the Mariners late May to mid-July
    Now A’s.

    Astros clinch the West on the final home game sept 23 (game 155).

    I generally agree, but it would be nice if all of our best players stopped injuring themselves...

  15. 3 hours ago, Machinator said:

    Dj20v6WU4AAcZj5.jpgDj20xIoUYAE5u8g.jpgDj20ydFU4AEyPD7.jpg

    lol...so Mack is going into his final college season, but this guy is comparing how overrated he is to two guys who have yet to become eligible to take a snap - and stating their overrated-ness as fact. Got it. 

    • Like 1
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