FAZ Believes Strikeouts Are The Same As Any Other Out

Agree with what you say but Eovaldi pitches right handled. Even Ray Charles can’t see that.

Striker–just want to let you know, “Good luck–we’re all counting on you.”

Fuck it. Roll with Puig and Kemp. Joc and toles can come off the bench. Say goodbye to Grandal. Forget machado. Keekay back to utility man.

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Cf–verdugo

3b–turner

Ss–seager

Lf–kemp

1b–bellinger

Rf–puig

2b–taylor

C–barnes

Realmuto–in a recent fangraphs chat someone posted the average triple slash line for a major league catcher. It began with a .230 and got no prettier from there. Will smith and keibert Ruiz are insanely valuable and I see no reason not to bank one on of them (or both!) Leading us into our next era of success. If we trade a posey/molina type I’ll never forgive us.

Anybody see anything similar to the 2017 WS in these first two games? Biggest one seems to be the Dodger offense has failed to show up again. A lot of other similarities but that so far is pretty glaring. Two years running, why?

Be interested to see any statistics on how well the ‘all righty’ line up has actually performed historically. I don’t like it, but how has it actually fared in games played, and do others use it to the extent we see the Dodgers use it?

I heard somethimng interesting on MLB this morning on the way to work. Jim Leyland said that when you are facing a pitcher like Price or Sale, it’s unlikely you will string together a bunch of hits, so stack your lineup with HR hitters and swing for the fences. Makes sense to me.

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1. Pederson LF

2. Turner 3B

3. Freese 1B

4. Machado SS

5. Bellinger CF

6. Taylor 2B

7. Grandal C

8. Puig RF

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Let her rip!

Mark: There you go again, as an old actor used to say:-).

The Kike’ thing: yes, he could go 4 for 4 today. And the sky over LA

could be filled with rainbows at 5pm local, causing the squadrons of

flyin’ pigs to squeal with delight.

He was unusually good in the time you mentioned. He has,

under pressure, done what he has most often done in his career under

pressure. The odds favored him performing just a wee better than

he has (which has been awful even against the backdrop of all

the other Billion Dollar Boys collective offensive awfulness), but

only that. In short, Kike’ has been himself, true and thru.

And can we blame the FO for all the awfulness? We sure can, and

there’s a few screws lyin’ on the floor if we don’t, especially at or

around the billion mark.

They inherited a flawed playoff team. Four years and obscene numbers

of dollars and moves, they have managed to produce (wait for it!!!) – a

FLAWED PLAYOFF TEAM:-):-).

There was some testimony here a few days ago that the desperate game

7 adventure against a badly starting-pitcher damaged Brewer team was

proof positive that the FO knew what it was doing in the Great Homer

Derby that is today’s game. If so great, why did the Ds need an extra game

dispatch the Rockies? Why did it take seven to take care of the new kids

on the block (who took care of the Rocks in the minimum).

The Ds got very lucky in facing the Braves, and then the Brews – and still

were this close to going home.

Add: you don’t spend a gazillion for an immature crotch-grabber like

Machado. Bases loaded, no one out, and a weak fly to medium center,

scoring a single run, is not the stuff of legend. And that’s mostly been

his contribution since he came – ok, even once in a while good, but

leaving the real game-changer hits at his locker. Save the gazillions

for utterly unpromising Cuban prospects!

One last: I was all for taking Ryu out. He had so many chances to close

that inning and would not/could not. But I shuddered when Madson

came marching in. The computer on top of my head said uh-oh,

with the lately-added data from the night before. Dave’s move should

have been Anyone-but-Ryan.

What sets the greats apart from the mere goods and not-so-goods is

the art of an inning, not the science. As a casual, thoroughly unprofessional

but long, longtime observer, my take was 3 -in-5 he walks Pearce again,

1-in-5 that he strikes out the ever-adjusting Martinez again.

Dave has made these moves time and again now in the most crucial

moments of the most important games. He reminds of Tommy. No

accident, it says in my house, that the Ds last ring came in a year

when every guy in the pen had a career or near-career year right

thru the season, and into the champ series. Whoever Tommy called

was unlikely to fail. Ryan did not fit that description in that moment.

And I claim that as 20-20 foresight:-). You can ask around….

Aw, shucks (blush, blush, blush). And greatly appreciated you take it

in the mostly-fun sense intended. Good on yer!

See youse all at 8 local.

baseball is so unpredictable. in a binary world it seems the two most likely outcomes are: 1) buehler begins his dodger legend status & 2) we end up facing a near-insurmountable 3-0 deficit.

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in reality, this will probably another “ugly” [to me] game in which starters get taken out early and bullpen/pinch-hit match-dominant the action.

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the media will probably spend a lot of time on the whole AL-with-no-DH aspect. that’s fine. it’s a valid angle. maybe this will only highlight the fact it’s time to have one universal rule governing baseball and two separate ones.

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otherwise, yeah, try to enjoy it folks. it ain’t over until it’s over. just think: tonight could be the beginning of one of the greatest chapters in dodgers history. ya better believe!!!

If you don’t think that the Braintrust doesn’t mind all of the strikeouts, then they would be different than every other analytically-run baseball team out there. In the event that you aren’t paying attention, the league batting average is lower than it has been since 1972. For the 1st time ever, there were more strikeouts than hits this year league wide.

There are a number of reasons for this phenomenon.

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1- Baseball nerds think that strikeouts are great for pitchers but don’t matter for hitters. Here’s an article from 2013 called How Can Strikeouts be Great for Pitchers but Not That Bad for Hitters? : “This is the easy part to understand, obviously. The more a pitcher strikes out the batters he faces, the less dependent he is upon both his defense and pure dumb luck on balls hit to his fielders. The strikeout is a sure out, the ball in play could be anything.” –

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“Advancing the runners while retiring to the bench and making “productive outs” is preferable to simply retiring to the bench, sure. A ground out is typically worth .06 of a run more than a strikeout. But for some reason, this talking point has become noticeably overstated in baseball circles.

This .06 of a run is therefore a small price to pay when we think of how it boosts the batters production at the plate. If we look at the weighted averages of all hitters from 2002-2012 with at least 500 PA, we find that hitters with the highest strikeout rates have wOBAs just as high as hitters with lower strikeout rates. Moreover, they have a significantly higher wOBA than hitters with lower strikeout rates.”

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2. The next bit is from a St. Louis Cardinals blog addressing the issue of strikeouts. Their analysis? Hi K hitters are better than low K hitters because their slugging % is higher:

“he high K% group averaged a whopping 23.8 K%. The low strikeout group whiffed at a 14.6% rate on average. That is a BIG difference. So which group actually hit better? The high whiff group posted an average 105.4 wRC+ while the low strikeout group put up an average 101.6 wRC+. The whiffers hit better!

The low whiff group posted a higher batting average, but we as educated fans here on Redleg Nation know that batting average is an extremely poor and misleading way to evaluate hitters in modern baseball. The one surprise for me is that the low whiff group had a slightly better OBP as well. Generally speaking, players who strike out a lot also walk a lot. The high whiff group did walk more often than the low whiff group last year (8.3% to 7.3%) but in most seasons the difference is greater. Last year was a bit of an anomaly in that regard. Striking out and walking go hand-in-hand to a large degree. Hitters who go deep into counts tend to both walk more and strike out more. Both require seeing multiple pitches. If you hit the ball early in the count you won’t strike out but you won’t walk either. If you want to be a star hitter you have to walk a lot (or else you won’t have a high OBP) and you have to hit the ball hard (or else you won’t have a high SLG). Making contact isn’t the goal. Doing damage and producing runs is the goal.

Where the high whiff crowd pulls away is in slugging. The whiffers hit the ball much harder than the non-whiffers. It makes sense, the harder you swing the less likely you are to hit the ball, but when you do hit it you tend to do some real damage. Hitters who try to maximize contact tend to be the smaller, skinnier guys who can’t hit the ball very hard, so they try to compensate by at least hitting it more often.

All things considered the high whiff batters out-produced the low whiff hitters. It wasn’t a huge difference, but it was certainly a statistically significant, real difference. Striking out doesn’t make a hitter better, but it doesn’t prevent them from being better either. Don’t worry about the strikeouts, worry about the wRC+.”

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Anyone here doesn’t think that this is exactly what the Braintrust is after? How much do you hear from Roberts talking about “slug”? Or do you remember Zaidi complaining that the Dodgers were losing because they weren’t hitting enough HRs?

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3. Pitchers aren’t really dumb. They know that everyone is trying to hit HRs and have changed their pitching patterns accordingly. Here is a quote from a Washington Post article on the subject:

“In addition, more and more batters are tailoring their swings to hit home runs by launching the ball hard in the air. As a result, pitchers are less likely to stay in the strike zone: As a group they threw 52 percent of their pitches in the zone in 2006 and were targeting the zone just 43.4 percent of the time entering Friday night’s games. Meanwhile, hitters have become less afraid of chasing those pitches. Twelve years ago, hitters swung at 23.1 percent of pitches out of the zone; that has jumped to 29.6 percent in 2018.”

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So pitchers throw fewer strikes but hitter don’t care because they’re trying to hit HRs and strikeouts don’t matter. So the K rate goes up, the contact rate goes down, baseball is an uglier game to watch all of the time.

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4 . The Dodgers had 3.9 AB/K in 2018. League average is 4.0 so they are a little worse than average. Boston is 4.5 (3rd best). Top teams are Cleveland and Houston. Maybe something to learn there?

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5. In short, “Batting average, which is the ratio of a batter’s safe hits per official times at bat, was once one of the chief statistical currencies of baseball. An average of .250 was considered average, under .250 was below average, and .300 and above was the mark of an elite hitter.

But batting average doesn’t take into account extra-base hits, and so production numbers such as OPS, a number that combines slugging percentage (which is similar to batting average but rewards doubles, triples and homers) with on base average (how often a batter reaches base through a walk or hit) make more sense today to talent evaluators. So do sexier data points such as launch angle and exit velocity, which shows the speed of the ball off the bat.

The trouble is that you can have a high OPS, while striking out regularly and hitting for a dismal batting average. Joey Gallo is the poster boy for this phenomenon: the Texas Rangers slugger is considered valuable because he ranked third in the league in home runs with 40 and has a solid .815 OPS. But Gallo had a .206 batting average this season, and struck out an abysmal 207 times while walking on 74 occasions. That means he failed to put the ball in play in nearly half of his at bats this season.

Yes, many MLB front offices have discovered that strikeouts, once a sin across the sport, are no longer a shameful result, as long as the whiffs come in exchange for power and patience.” (from The Guardian)

Normally I would say big emotional lift coming home and a comfortable win tonight for the home team except what Boston did in Houston which was sweep all three games there. They will be out for blood not a let down and the Dodgers have to match their intensity. Buehler seems to never go more than 85 pitches or so and he needs to make them count. Win game 3 tonight or it gets ugly and the second guessing goes ballistic. Even with a win it’s a tall mountain to climb but our Dick Mountain can do it in game 4. From here on out manage every game like game 7, players play like it’s game 7 and fans root like it’s game 7. 5 game 7’s! The Dodgers can do this and we all know it. They play best when their backs are against the wall and this qualifies. If that means bring your best guy in from the bullpen in the 5th inning then that’s what you do. Worry about tomorrow when it comes but win today!

Gold Glove finalists announced – Dodger have ZERO!

I am not going to get into 2019 discussions until the 2018 season is in the books. Right now I only care about what this team can do to become more productive.

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I concur with what Dodgerrick had written, but my observations were probably more anecdotal than an overall comprehensive analysis as Rick provided. It is not the strikeout that is bad, but the timing. The Dodgers struck out 1436 times for the 8th highest number of K’s, while the Red Sox struck out 1253 for 26th. Red Sox make better contact overall. But where it really comes into focus is the strike out rate with RISP and with RISP w/2 outs. The Dodgers seemed to go the opposite direction in this stat. With RISP they struck out 355 times for 5th most in ML, while Boston struck out 300 times for 27th. With RISP and 2 outs, the Dodgers struck out 186 times again good for 5th most, while Boston struck out 131 times for the best in MLB.

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Mark you have previously commented (and rightly so) that the #1 difference between the 2017 Astros and the 2016 Astros was their push to cut back on strike outs. They went from striking out more 4th most of all MLB teams in 2016 to striking out less than every other MLB team in 2017. The Dodgers were more in the middle of the pack in 2017, recognizing and realizing that strikeouts were a contributing factor in their WS loss. And they regressed in 2018.

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I keep reading that the Dodgers have the best talent, and then I read that FAZ and Doc do care if the hitters are striking out. It cannot be both. Either the hitters are not talented enough to shorten their swing or go with the pitch with 2 strikes, or field and front office management does not care about one out vs another. If they did there would be consequences for CT3/Kike’/Grandal/Muncy swinging the same way every pitch regardless of the game situation. This thought process permeates down to the minor leagues. The much-ballyhooed DJ Peters struck out 192 times in 559 PA in the MINOR LEAGUES. And he had the most by far PA than any other member of the Tulsa team. Why? Because he hit 29 HR’s to lead the league.

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As Rick’s commentary alluded to, OPS is the big stat that front offices glom onto. A strikeout does not detract from this stat any more than a ground out or fly out. An out is an out. But the other component is OBP and SLG. The more HRs the higher the OPS. The more walks the higher OPS. Max Muncy was every bit of a Dodger MVP this season. He burst onto the scene and nobody really knew him. With the playoffs, he has certainly been studied much more than he was during the season. For the playoffs he is slashing .194/.370/.361/.731. He has 20 strikeouts in 46 PA. His OBP is up because he has walked 10 times. He still has the great eye for the strike zone, but pitchers are pitching around his sweet spot. As obnoxious as Smoltz is, he has pointed that out on numerous occasions. Pitchers (pitching coaches) have learned how to get Muncy out. He may get his walks, but he is not going to hit as much for power.

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The next time that CT3 or Kike’ or Grandal go up swinging for the fences on three pitches and strikeout, even with RISP, nothing will happen. No Dodger hit 40 HRs or had 130 RBIs as JDM did this year. And yet with two outs and the bases loaded in a tie game, he singles into RF for 2 runs. He took what was given him and did not try to hit it over the Green Monster. Mookie Betts had 614 PA and struck out 91 times. He also walked 81 times (OBP = .438). So for the 442 times Mookie hit the ball, he had a .425 BA. Name ONE Dodger who can approach that bat to ball skill.

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One final anecdotal observation. Many have questioned why Alex Verdugo was not on the post season roster. Outside of JT, Alex may have the best bat to ball skills on the team, but nowhere near the power that FAZ covets. It is the lack of power that kept him off the post season roster. The one comment I will make for next year is I will be very curious as to what happens with Alex. The team cannot keep Joc/Alex/Toles. But do not be surprised if the Dodgers choose to keep Joc because of his power potential.

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One last comment, my observations are not meant to be anti-FAZ. Quite the contrary. I am a FAZ supporter. They have built a great deep and versatile team. But their obsession with power over bat to ball skills may keep them from a WS title for the 2nd consecutive year. That being said, I still pick the Dodgers in 7. The Dodger pitching staff will beat the Boston pitching staff in Game 7.

Of course the Red Sox’s numbers will probably regress a little with two outs, but their numbers will probably still be higher then the Dodgers numbers, and most teams, if we don’t do better, or expect better.

i feel pretty good about winning tonight’s game.

Nothing wrong with getting into the opponent’s heads:

What is the more difficult course of action?: winning all three in LA then taking one of two in Boston OR taking two of three in LA then winning both in Beantown.

Tonight’s Lineup:

Pederson LF

Turner 3B

Muncy 1B

Machado SS

Bellinger CF

Puig RF

Grandal C

Taylor 2B

Buehler P

L-R-L-R-L-R-L-R-R……….finally

How about if the Dodgers could just catch a flyball. I don’t have stats to back me up but Puig should have caught Martinez ball and the number 9 guy who started the rally. He was positioned poorly and that has led to multiple runs. The Dodgers have been totally outplayed offensively, defensively, pitching, and managing and yet we were in both games. If we could just bring our A game and not beat ourselves we could win the series. It is certainly a statistical longshot but doable. We look like we have never played the game. Maybe Boston is just that good but right now I am not convinced.

I am just casually reading through all the well thought through comments. Too tired to comment in any detail. However, in looking at all of the statistical comparisons of both teams, I wonder how much the presence of the DH in the AL makes a difference in some of the overall offensive stats of both teams.

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Finally a professional looking lineup tonight. Mark, you aren’t getting Realmuto without giving up Verdugo. Just my opinion.

AC,I think you are right about Joc. He will be on the team next year and that is a huge mistake. JT and Manny have the best bat to ball skills on the team. Right behind in my opinion is Verdugo and Toles. Yet the front office and Doc do not appreciate those two. It would not surprise if one or both are traded.

It would be nice to not make Joe Buck’s or John Stoltz’s day, tonight.

I’m just sayin’….