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Hank Chinaski

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Everything posted by Hank Chinaski

  1. He's not in ABQ. Not sure of his timeline.
  2. It was the worst game I've ever attended, and the worst part was that, after watching it...you knew there was no fucking way Charlie Strong was going to be the answer, but you also knew he had at least 2 more years to fuck everything up beyond what seemed imaginable. It felt like rock bottom, and then we opened the next season in South Bend in what was pretty much the same game. Goddamnit.
  3. I have a connection to a current player, which doesn't mean I know a damned thing about anything, just that I hear tidbits. From what he said, every team has/had a system and everybody knows it, which stands to reason and is supported by circumstantial evidence. And he pretty much had the same thoughts about the pearl-clutching response that Evan Gattis recently shared. From the Evan Gattis article in the Chronicle the other day: Gattis, who said he and his teammates believed they were just keeping up with what most of the other contending teams already were doing, also said it was no secret around the league what the Astros were doing, especially after White Sox pitcher Danny Farquhar let the Astros dugout know he could hear the banging while he was on the mound during a game in 2017. Gattis said the only reason no team spoke out at the time about the Astros' system is because they didn't want Major League Baseball to look into what they were doing on their side of the field. He said that's why his former teammates took offense to players from other teams - like the Dodgers' Cody Bellinger - saying the Astros didn't earn their World Series title. "There’s people in our clubhouse who have had to call other people from the Dodgers clubhouse and say, 'Hey you need to clean up your shit, because, yo, we know, bro. Why you gotta be like that?,'" Gattis said. "Everybody has a system," Gattis said. "Everybody knows a buddy that has a buddy that’s on the Dodgers in the baseball world. It’s like, 'Yo, we know, so you guys got to kind of chill out with that shit.'" https://www.chron.com/sports/astros/article/Evan-Gattis-Astros-cheating-Dodgers-signs-podcast-16282495.php
  4. Olney has had a hardon for the Astros pretty much since Crane/Lunhow took over. He constantly bitched about how they "were trying to lose" in '12-'13, and how terrible that was for the game. Anytime service-time manipulation is mentioned, he uses the Springer example - never fails. (He never acknowledges that, given the circumstances, it would have been professional negligence to trade full-season 2020 Springer for a few weeks of rookie Springer in 2014 on a team with no chance of contending - never.) Everyone did this. Everyone. Look, I don't mind criticism about Osuna or the douchebag front-office guy that yelled at the reporter, or even the sign-stealing thing (although it is intellectually dishonest for writers to pretend that it was as big a deal as they've made out to be). But when he's been whining about the org every chance he gets for nearly a decade, and then he feels the need to complain about guys who say "fuck you" to the All-Star game - in part due to a situation in which he himself is somewhat complicit in creating - yeah, he just comes off as having an axe to grind. I'd have more respect for him if he just came out and admitted that he doesn't like the org and the people who run it, and by extension, the players in it. Instead he has been passive-aggressive about it for 9 years.
  5. Ha, fair enough. It should be noted that the 3 times UNI has beaten ISU in the last 15 years, each of those ISU teams went 3-9. But yeah, the OT game in 2019...
  6. Sure, I guess it's about the definition of "best in the game" and whether that implies a certain amount of time/track record; it certainly doesn't have to. If I could have any player in MLB on my team for the next 5 years (ignoring contract, etc), I'd probably still go with Trout. But I wouldn't fault anyone for going with Ohtani (or the other guys previously listed).
  7. Yeah. Ohtani, Tatis, Acuna, Soto, Guerrero are awesome, but they're still looking up at Trout. I agree with your overall point, but to nitpick, I'd disagree here. Soto has a 142 OPS+ in 75 games at age 22, and it feels disappointing. There is no reason to think he's not on the very short list of best hitters in the game. (Not saying that's what you were implying, just saying that even when he hasn't been at his best, he's still better than almost everyone.)
  8. Also pretty excited about Korey Lee, who is hitting .327 with 10 HR between A+ and AA so far this season. K% is at 16% and BB% at 9.5%. For a guy who's projected to be a decent defensive catcher, those offensive numbers are very encouraging.
  9. To me, Trout is still the best in the game - though I hope the second half of his career isn't like Griffey's, who couldn't stay healthy in his 30s and was never quite the same after leaving Seattle. But the thing with Ohtani - how do you compare him to any other player? Of course he's not in the same tier as deGrom or Scherzer or Cole on the mound - he's a good mid-rotation starter (which is still really good). Offensively, he's terrific. Is he a better offensive player than Vlad Jr or Tatis or Acuna or Soto (or Trout when healthy)? Probably not, but he's making a case that he's in that class. I'd guess that he'll lead MLB in WAR this season, which is probably still the best way to compare him to the field, but he'll have to do that more than once to be considered the best in the game because he has a teammate who has done that multiple times. It doesn't really matter - he's great and unique and a blast to watch. I hope he stays healthy and plays for a long time, because his career will be fascinating.
  10. 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.
  11. Toro hitting second (where your best hitter should bat) and Tucker 6th...christ.
  12. 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.
  13. 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.
  14. 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.
  15. 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.
  16. 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.
  17. 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?
  18. 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.
  19. 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.
  20. 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.
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