2015-02-06 13:00:00 (link to chat) | The catcher framing work that I've seen at Baseball Prospectus over the past couple of years just blows my mind. I'm not sure I understand the full implications correctly, though. When we say that Brad Ausmus had 242 catcher strikes above average runs added, are we saying he added about 24 wins above replacement over the course of his career, just by framing? In other words, does the model suggest that his framing created 24 WARP? That's more than Hall of Famer Rollie Fingers earned over his entire career!
It's quite possible that I'm totally, embarrassingly wrong. If I am, how can CSAA runs added be translated into WAR terms? (Rob from DC) | the answer is "yes" and I'm also freaked out by the implications, to some degree. I spend a lot of time looking for ways to 'reduce' the impact (replacement level? no; positional adjustment; no) when it comes to a wins translation....but I'm finding that the elite players of our present time are Posey, Trout, Lucroy and Yadi. I'm going to dive further into this, but, heck it sure screams "wow" to me, too. This also takes Piazza's HOF case further into the "no kidding, elect the man" territory. (Harry Pavlidis) |
2012-01-26 13:00:00 (link to chat) | Dallas Braden just got a tattoo of Rollie Fingers riding a dolphin under a rainbow. Your thoughts, please. (Immanuel #Want from Prussia) | That's pretty cool. My friend has a tattoo of a stingray with a plate of fajitas on its back. (Jason Parks) |
2012-01-09 13:00:00 (link to chat) | If you had an "all facial hair" HOF, who would be in your initial class: Bruce Sutter, Jim Kern, Al Hrabosky, others? (dianagram from NYC) | All of those guys would be in eventually but the reliever standard still starts with Rollie Fingers, and I'd want to balance the distribution out so it wasn't all 1970s guys. As the 1994-2005 period was to homers, the Seventies were to facial hair. (Jay Jaffe's Hall of Fame Special) |
2012-01-09 13:00:00 (link to chat) | RE: All Facial Hair HOF: I'd be suspicious of the gels and waxes used in the 70s to achieve perfect hold. I mean, have you seen Rollie Fingers' mustache? There's no way that was achieved naturally. (mattymatty2000 from Portland, OR) | It was the Wild West, a loosy Goosey Gossage era, and there were a lot of means of mustache enhancement that fell into the gray area. I know of at least two players who injected the dessicated bone marrow of King Kelley - though I can't say exactly who in public - and even more who partook in various other outre methods. (Jay Jaffe's Hall of Fame Special) |
2011-04-12 13:00:00 (link to chat) | Hi Ben
What are the chances that Zach Braddock will be closing this year or next? Thanks (Ed from Cranford, NJ) | I guess that depends on the chances that John Axford won't be closing this year or next. Here's what we said on that subject in this year's annual:
"Relievers with walk rates that high tend to lose their grip on the closer reins as managers grow frustrated with their self-inflicted jams. While it's possible that Axford has developed a newfound ability to find the strike zone and will spend the next half-decade closing games at Miller Park, it's just as likely that Brewers fans will wake up one morning to discover that yesterday's Rollie Fingers has morphed into today's Derrick Turnbow."
I don't think Axford is about to enter Turnbow territory, but there are certainly unlikelier closer candidates than Braddock. His talents would be wasted in the bullpen, though: with a name like that, he really should've been a cowboy or a spaceship captain. (Ben Lindbergh) |
2010-08-02 13:30:00 (link to chat) | Must admit that I was rooting hard for the Jays to trade Downs at the deadline, so that I no longer was confronted with the abomination of somebody else wearing Dave Stieb's uniform number (37). It's well past time for the Jays to retire the uniform number of their all-time leading pitcher. (Roy Halladay, you say? Never heard of him.) (rowenbell from IL) | Ah, Rowen, you know how to hit a person smack in their nostalgia lobe, don't you. I do miss Dave Stieb, but there again, you're talking to somebody whose favorite pitcher of all time was Dave Stewart, and the A's can't retire his number, because they subsequently retired it for Rollie Fingers. (Christina Kahrl) |
2009-07-30 14:00:00 (link to chat) | John, does the $1m cap before approval of the commissioner's office go back to the Charlie Finley sell-off of 1976? As as Sox fan, I remember being thrilled, if I recall correctly, of getting Joe Rudi and Rollie Fingers. (Tim from DC) | You know your history. It does go back to Rudi and Fingers being sold to the Red Sox and Vida Blue getting sold to the Yankees. All the deal were voided before those players actually played in a game, though they did put on the uniforms of their "new" teams. (John Perrotto) |
2008-10-24 14:00:00 (link to chat) | It seems like there are no players on either team who are already good Hall of Fame candidates (though guys like Utley, Upton, etc. have time to qualify.) Can you ever remember a Series without such an established veteran star? (oira61 from San Francisco) | Wow, that's a good question, one that pretty much ties into what I was saying a couple of days ago about how rare it is to get two fresh teams facing off in the series for the first time in awhile. Add to that the fact that both teams are dominated by younger guys whose best days may still be ahead of them and you wind up with a situation like this. I'm jogging my memory and looking back over the WS matchups and thinking that we've hit a real stumper. At the time, people wondered aloud if the 1998 Yankees would yield a Hall of Famer, but now it's apparent that Mariano Rivera and Derek Jeter will make it if nobody else does, to say nothing of Tony Gwynn from the opposite dugout.
The 1982 matchup maybe - at the time it certainly wasn't apparent that Ozzie Smith, Robin Yount, Paul Molitor or Don Sutton would make it (Sutton would win 60-something more games in the majors), adn Rollie Fingers was sidelined too. Definitely a question to sock away for future pondering. (Jay Jaffe) |
BP Annual Player Comments
No BP Book Comments have been found for this player.