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Hank Chinaski

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Everything posted by Hank Chinaski

  1. But yeah, I’m inclined to think that his overall offensive numbers are likely the closest to what he really is as a hitter (regardless of position) and those numbers are right there with the 3-4 best offensive catchers in MLB. A catcher that is good defensively and can hit like that is a huge advantage because most catcher can’t hit. We just inexplicably opt not to take that advantage.
  2. As a catcher (entering today): 155 PAs; .324/.355/.634; 11 HR As a DH: 134 PAs; .214/.239/.349; 5 HR He also has a handful of PAs at 1B and as a PH, but not enough to glean anything. So yeah, he has performed much better offensively when playing catcher rather than DHing. It’s still small samples for each, though, so I don’t think we can conclusively say that it’s a real thing or just statistical noise. This is where “significance” comes in - basically we need big enough samples to be able to reasonably conclude that there’s a real difference between samples of different conditions, usually such that the probability that the samples do not represent a real difference is very small (usually less than 5%).
  3. If he played as frequently as he should, he’s a rookie catcher with 30+ HR. That hasn’t happened since Mike Piazza 30 years ago. He’s in the Hall of Fame. But…Dusty.
  4. Dusty’s lineups reduce the Astros’ chances of winning games. The front office allows it. It appears that this is not going to change despite being in a fight to even qualify for the postseason. The only logical conclusion one can draw from this is that the club isn’t all that serious about winning in 2023, for whatever reason. Too much winning is bad for the kids?
  5. It’s almost like you should start your good players when you’re in a pennant/playoff race. They deserve to lose every time Dusty does this.
  6. This team deserves to miss the playoffs. We don’t play our best players. It’s fucking absurd. Makes it difficult to care when the club acts like it actively prefers not to win games.
  7. Reminder that Dusty has said that once a guy is fully ready, he likes to give him another day off. So…yeah.
  8. Sure, no need to play Chas. No urgency. Makes total sense.
  9. “Analytics” in this case is about describing probabilities. “it isn’t always right” doesn’t really mean anything at all. The most elite hitters in baseball make outs 60% of the time. But the odds of scoring more runs are enhanced by giving your best hitters - those with the best odds of not making an out/hitting the ball hard - more opportunities in situations that are more conducive to scoring. It’s really not that complicated. Increasing your odds of scoring increases your odds of winning. Even increasing the odds by what may seem like tiny amounts makes actual differences over a large enough sample. (Like the scheme in Office Space where they take fractions of pennies off of every transaction.) So yeah, you can agree with Jeff Bagwell when he makes fun of of exit velo - because anecdotally someone hits the ball hard and it’s an out - but to do so obviously misses the entire point, which is that the harder a guy consistently hits the ball, the better he is likely to produce. It doesn’t mean the hardest hit balls always have the best results. It doesn’t seem like it should be necessary to even have to explain that.
  10. Chas has 3.6 fWAR in 90 games. So basically he’s having a 5-6 win season. For reference, Kyle Tucker has never had a 5 fWAR season. But sure, let’s rest him when we’re in the thick of a playoff race. We’ve had no urgency all season long, why start now?
  11. Yeah. And reminder that Texas had zero players drafted in 2022. Whatever Herman’s classes were ranked, his roster resulted in a class without a single player drafted. (This was also Sark’s first roster.) I don’t think we are going to see that under Sark. We had 5 guys drafted last year, and we are looking at almost certainly more than that next spring. He and his staff seem to have a better grasp on roster acquisition and development than Herman and his crew did.
  12. I mean, there’s a pretty good chance that the only problem in October is that we’re done playing.
  13. I mean, I’m still trying to square the logic from years ago about how (1) Mack wasn’t a good coach (he just out-talented teams), (2) VY wasn’t that good (he was just surrounded by talent), and (3) Texas’s overall talent wasn’t that good (recruits get bumped up because they were going to Texas)…and they maintained these arguments despite Texas going 24-1 over a 2-year span. Once I figure this out, I’ll try to help with the 2023 version.
  14. Disagree. The 90-ish win forecast back then accounted for Altuve and Yordan coming back (without them it doesn’t resemble a 90-win team at all), and I always thought Chas was good. Diaz is better than we thought, sure, but the 90 win forecast also accounted for bad managing, which is why we haven’t taken advantage of Diaz being good. We’ve added JV, which sort of offsets the fact that Javier isn’t good anymore (which we didn’t know in April). We’ve added Graveman, which means we have an extra mediocre middle reliever, which is fine but doesn’t meaningfully change much.
  15. In late April this team looked like it was destined for 90-ish wins and a dogfight for the last WC spot. Nothing has really changed.
  16. Uhhhhhhhh…gonna have to disagree with your choice of words. If you said “higher profile” or “in a more marquee conference” or something, ok. But “more appealing”? Nah. Neither CS nor TAM per se is more appealing than almost any alternative.
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