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Hank Chinaski

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Everything posted by Hank Chinaski

  1. In the spring, I suggested that if Straw can get on base 1/3 of the time, and add value on the bases and in CF, then he'd be a valuable (enough) player. At the halfway point, he's got a .344 OBP and positive baserunning and defensive metrics per Fangraphs and B-R, and has 1.6 and 1.2 WAR respectively (FG seems to value his defense a bit more). Not sure if he can keep this up offensively, but if this is really who he is, he's all right. His defense and baserunning are somewhat disappointing considering his overall profile, even though they are positive (you'd hope they'd be better), but taken together he could be about a 2-win player, meaning a league average-ish starter. Given the rest of the lineup, I think this is what Click et al were expecting/hoping for from Straw.
  2. Toro hitting second (where your best hitter should bat) and Tucker 6th...christ.
  3. Bauer has always seemed like a douchebag because he's always come off as a pretentious, childish, attention-craving narcissist, with a massive victim complex, who thinks he's always the smartest guy in the room. People that fit that description generally suck as human beings and are generally unlikable. It's laughable to suggest that "Astros fans" is the lone cohort of people who dislike him when there are myriad stories of his own teammates going all the way back to college hating his ass. He is largely loathed. That he very well may be a violent rapist is unfortunate, but probably not extraordinarily surprising given the way he typically conducts himself.
  4. Agreed. His general football instincts were just awful. He passed on kicking FGs when he shouldn't have; he went for 2 when he should have kicked, he kicked PATs when he should have gone for 2 (the end of the '20 OU game was inexcusable); he had the offense hurry up when it didn't make sense to do so; he inexplicably would stop running what was working within games; his personnel decisions were often odd. He had plenty of other issues, like the staff he hired and the fact that his teams committed lots of dumb penalties and the special teams play was consistently shitty. But to me, it always just seemed like his in-game instincts were just off.
  5. I remember hearing Berkman tell a story on the radio about how, on one of his first days in the big leagues, he saw Biggio going apeshit and throwing chairs and such in the clubhouse an hour or so before the game. He couldn't figure out what was going on. Turns out it was because Dierker told Biggio he was going to rest him that day. I think he ended up back in the starting lineup by game time. I don't think things like this happen anymore.
  6. Haha, he's going ahead and giving the ags the nod for a "decade" which currently includes one quasi-season. That's...not at all surprising.
  7. So Glasnow's complaint is basically, "since I can't use substances to get the performance enhancements I have become accustomed to, I have had to alter my natural grip and that has led to health problems." In other words, "if I can't bend/break the rules, then i can't be as effective." That may not earn him a ton of sympathy. And although Bauer is an insufferable douchebag, he's not wrong about this.
  8. How is the fit on these Criquet shirts? Look like they could be too snug in the shoulder/chest area...are they about true to size?
  9. OK, but in baseball the result of every PA is attributed to the batter and the pitcher. I guess it doesn't have to be that way, but it works pretty well. About 0.5% of all PAs result in an IBB. It's mostly noise in that IBB probably don't skew a pitcher's metrics in any meaningful way.
  10. I mean, it has to be scored as a walk because it is a walk. The hitter must be credited with a walk from the plate appearance, whether he "earned it" like Bonds used to or he gets it simply because he hits in front of the pitcher. So the pitcher must also be charged a walk. To your point, I am somewhat surprised to see that most of the prominent advanced pitching stats don't appear to differentiate between intentional and unintentional walks. But even philosophically, I'm not sure it is that cut-and-dry as to say that a pitcher doesn't ever "deserve" at least some responsibility for the IBB, as they are often issued because 1B is open (meaning there are baserunners in scoring position), though often it is simply playing the percentages. Over the last 5 full seasons (2015-2019), IBB represented about 6% of all BB. Which means even for starting pitchers, we're talking about fewer than 10 IBB per season. For example, Justin Verlander has thrown almost 3,000 innings in his career and has issued 27 IBB. His highest season total was 8, and he has had 4 seasons with 0 IBB and 4 more seasons with 1 IBB. So - its probably not statistically relevant enough to differentiate between IBB and BB.
  11. I remember the Dome's scoreboard and $1 general admission outfield seats (and actually feeling cold because they cranked the shit out of that AC); when Dickie Thon was an emerging star before a beanball broke his face and derailed his career; Mike Scott and Glenn Davis (whom Milo dubbed "the Big Bopper") and - yes - Jose Cruz (and Nolan and Knepper and Doran and Bass and Hatcher and Puhl and Walling and Garner and Reynolds and Ashby and Kerfeld) and the '86 division winner in the club's 25th year; Scott's no-hitter to clinch (afternoon game and I caught the last few innings after the conclusion of my 4th-grade school day); Hatcher's foul pole HR and Bass striking out to end that NLCS; Here come the Astros/Burning with desire/Here come the Astros/Breathing orange fire; watching Scott take a no-no through 8 2/3 against the Braves at the Dome before Ken Oberkfell broke it up with a little soft flare; the promise (which never quite materialized) of Eric Anthony; Biggio and Caminiti giving some hope for the future; the acquisition of Bagwell and his ROY award the next year; trading Kenny Lofton for Ed fucking Taubensee and knowing (at age 15) that that didn't seem like a good idea; Drayton taking over and signing Drabek and Swindell and it felt like the tide was turning; the first of 2 unfortunate rebrand/uniform changes; Bagwell's MVP year and the second one he should have won 5 years later; drafting Berkman in the first round out of Rice; acquiring Randy Johnson at the last minute and his 2 months of absolute brilliance; losing that year to the Padres in the NLDS and knowing it was the best team in franchise history to that point; moving to a new stadium; the Beltran acquisition and Edmonds breaking our hearts again with that catch on the Ausmus fly ball in the NLCS; the bittersweet WS appearance the next season in which Bagwell couldn't really play anymore (and getting swept); Drayton letting the franchise talent level completely deteriorate by letting the farm rot and stupidly overpaying aging veterans to keep the club almost mediocre; the move to the AL and the ownership change; being 100% on board with the Lunhow plan to strip it down to the studs because that was always the most direct and expedient path to contending; going to games whenever you felt like it and getting the best seats in the house because the club was awful, the stadium was 80% empty and people were giving tickets away; the emergence of Altuve and the callup of Springer; drafting Correa and Bregman and tracking all of their minor league stats; building up to a champion and perennial contender. Did they cheat and get caught and deserve to be punished? Sure. Was it sensationalized and overblown? Of course, scandals and outrage stir the pot and gets clicks (formerly sold newspapers), especially when MLB's 3 largest fan bases get to conclude "we didn't really lose!". Did the sign stealing seem to impact their performance at all? Not really, because they hit as well (actually better) on the road, in subsequent seasons, in 2021, etc. Can all of these things be true? Yes. Did I type a lot of words responding to Helobious? Sigh, yes.
  12. Hell, those days were great...could almost always get tickets for free and sit wherever you'd like.
  13. I mean, I guess it depends on your definition of "elite." Texas had the best winning% of any P5 team from 00-09. Better than OU, USC, Ohio St, Florida, LSU. That doesn't necessarily mean he was better than Stoops or Carroll (I'd argue he wasn't, though the difference isn't great) or Tressell (I'd take Mack). He was never what Saban or Urban were, but almost nobody in the history of the sport has been. If those two are the threshold for "elite," then yeah, Mack wasn't in that class. I don't know why Mack fell apart after 2009. And I certainly don't need to see a statue of him. But for that decade of 2000-2009, almost nobody in the sport was better.
  14. For the love of god, Dusty. Again and again - just because Bregman hits 3rd doesn't mean his replacement should hit 3rd.
  15. Ray Thornton does not seem terribly interested in posing for this photo op.
  16. Would love to see some of the old USFL teams/uniforms revived. I was age 6-8 when the USFL played in the '80s and it seemed awesome.
  17. Hopefully it'll keep fading until it is no longer there.
  18. See, that's part of why Tebow is so extraordinarily overrated. He was the backup QB in 2006. Chris Leak was the MVP of the title game. Again, Tebow was a really good college QB. I'd say he was behind only VY and Leinart (who was actually the starting QB on 2 title teams and won a Heisman) in the 00's. But he wasn't nearly as good as he was hyped up to be (because he was hyped up to be the greatest college player ever). Yes, he won the Heisman. So did these guys:
  19. Dawson is currently striking out less than 16% of his PAs. In 2019 he was around 30%, mostly in AA. He's not even at 100 PAs yet, so it is obviously early, but may be interesting to watch. I *think* K% tends to stabilize fairly quickly in the course of a season. His swinging strike % is way down so far. If this is a real improvement, he has a shot.
  20. Well, he was unlucky in 2008 when his player dropped an INT that would have put him in the national title game. And it was pretty unlucky the next year when his All-American QB was lost for the game after they did make it to the title game. Those two plays may well have prevented him from winning 3 national titles in a 5-year span. I think Mack's teams were generally smart (didn't commit stupid penalties) and played well on special teams. And he recruited superior talent compared to almost everyone that he played. All that probably helped them win close games.
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