What Braves should do now...

TNDawg71

@WCDawg said:

@TNDawg71 said:

@WCDawg said:

@Kirbstomper said:

@WCDawg said:

@donm said:

@WCDawg said:

@TNDawg71 said:
I want Kluber

He'd be my pick of any starter to sign for 3 years. I don't see the team investing big in a starter though. We have maybe 5 young candidates to emerge as the ace of the staff in the next few years.

Alas, all aces are not created equal.

I'm referring to true aces, not 1st in a rotation. Not many teams have a true ace.> @Kirbstomper said:

@WCDawg said:

@Kirbstomper said:

Markakis has better stats and he's just a year older.

Markakis is 4 years and 1 month older than pollack. AJ is freshly 31 and nick turned 35 in November. Moreover pollack has battled injuries for seemingly every season, but when he has been healthy he’s a better hitter and fielder than nick.

Nick had an absurd 2018, destroying his projections and playing in all 162 games with a 114 wrc+ and 2.6 WAR. Pollock played in just 113, was close to nicks batting line with a 110 wrc+ and amassed 2.5 WAR. Assuming any decent outfield depth To take over for pollock in 50 games, i would take pollock over nick because of roughly equal to better hitting and better defense and baserunning. While nick probably plays more games, if you get 100+ out of pollock he will probably be a more valuable asset than 150 games of Nick.

The biggest difference is one projection system (Steamer) projects pollock for 3.1 WAR in 146 games while it projects markakis for 1.1 WAR in 146 games. Teams have their own projection systems that aren’t public, but are probably similar to publicly available ones.

Now it is an interesting thought over which you’d prefer on the Braves, since pollock may be 3-4 years at 15-20 Million a year where you could get nick for a 1 year 10 Million deal for sure. Since pollock has injury issues in his past, a 3-4 year deal for him is a decent sized risk, especially with him being 31 and likely to be declining.

I edited the post about Markakis's age 5 minutes before you posted, you must have been typing your post. Nick has far better OBP and more doubles than Pollack, and not just last season. I would sign Markakis over Pollack any day of the week. Markakis has averaged 39 doubles and a .358 OBP the past 4 seasons while playing almost every game. Pollock missed most of the 2016 season and he averaged just 28 doubles in his last 4 full seasons ( minus the 2016 season). His OBP has averaged just .324 since 2015.

If we want to go back to 2015, pollock was genuinely an MVP candidate and one of the best players in the game with almost 7 WAR for what it’s worth. He was insanely good that year, then barely played in 2016 after injury. His doubles numbers on that 3 year average will be low due to him playing 2.25 seasons worth of games as opposed to nicks almost full 3.

It’s his rate stats that are the big difference. Excluding 2016 again, his slugging percentage over that 4 year span is about 100 points higher, or basically 25% better than nicks. Nick averages less than 10 hr a year while pollock averages 18 a year, with less games played.

I’ll take an extra 8 homers a year over an extra 10 doubles a year.

I want OBP over any other offensive stat. If you put together a team that gets on base at a high rate and hits for extra bases, it will score a lot of runs. Also, showing up for work matters, Markakis has been extremely durable, you can't help the team from the bench.

The thing about this is, how do you weight all the things? Sure OBP is valuable, but so is hitting for power right? . But how valuable is a walk? What about a double? How about a homer? These things are hard for you and me to quantify. But that’s why we have statisticians all over the game.

They came up with a forumala to mix all these things together, weighing for singles/doubles etc. the weighting factors were found empirically, so as to say they looked at runs created by a single/double etc. in situations throughout the past. Like all the mlb baseball games played in the last however many years. There were no opinions involved, opinions are bad for objectivity.

Empirically, they created this formula and called it wrc. They then scaled it to where 100 would be average, and every point above 100 would be 1% more runs created over a season than 100. They called this scaled stat WRC+.

I don’t site this stat because it fits my narrative, I site it because it’s literally the best thing we have to quantify how valuable a guy is offensively on a rate basis.

Baseball is a game of 4 bases and 27 outs in 9 increments of 3. That is breaking offensive baseball down into a board game. I want players on base and the next guy up to advance them around the bases, it's a simple game till you get to actually having the skills to accomplish these simple things.
With Markakis you get a guy who is going to be in the lineup almost every game. He is going to get on base, which advances anybody already on base either into scoring position or brings them home. He is going to hit doubles at a good clip, which brings home base runners and puts himself in position to score on a single.

Pollock misses a lot of work and he doesn't get on base or advance those already on base at as high a rate.

I'd love Nick, but at the right price and especially term. You have to assume at his age he will decline and it could be quickly.

He has been very durable and has shown no signs of decline. I'd trust him more over a 2 or 3 year contract than Pollock who has been injured and spotty. Generically no doubt 35 is risky. He has an extremely sturdy build and very sound mechanics though.

2 years sounds good to me. He is a solid clubhouse presence as well. I'm less concerned with the durability, but it doesn't take much slowing of the quick twitch muscles to really have an effect on performance. Other than the steroid era it has been proven many times over. I wouldn't give any hitter in their mid-30s over a two year deal unless a 20% decline in performance would still put them at All-Star level (see Aaron, Henry).

donm

@Kirbstomper said:

@donm said:

@RandomFan said:

@donm said:

@JackLattty said:
We’ve got to do something about RF. I don’t think Camargo can play there and I don’t trust Culberson for a full time spot. I want AJ Pollock.

why couldn't Camargo play there? He's very athletic. It's a lot easier position than the infield and he has a very strong throwing arm.

He doesn't have enough foot speed for outfield.

I couldn't disagree more. He'd leave Markakis in the dust in a foot race. He has above average speed - not an Acuna or an Albies, but few are. I think his speed is more than adequate for the OF.

No, Camargo is slow. Check this out. He is roughly the same speed as nick, who is slow to begin with.

https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sprint_speed_leaderboard?year=2018&position=&team=ATL&min=10

I stand humbly corrected. My eyes definitely failed me. Interesting stats. Thanks for the research.

WCDawg

@TNDawg71 said:

@WCDawg said:

@TNDawg71 said:

@WCDawg said:

@Kirbstomper said:

@WCDawg said:

@donm said:

@WCDawg said:

@TNDawg71 said:
I want Kluber

He'd be my pick of any starter to sign for 3 years. I don't see the team investing big in a starter though. We have maybe 5 young candidates to emerge as the ace of the staff in the next few years.

Alas, all aces are not created equal.

I'm referring to true aces, not 1st in a rotation. Not many teams have a true ace.> @Kirbstomper said:

@WCDawg said:

@Kirbstomper said:

Markakis has better stats and he's just a year older.

Markakis is 4 years and 1 month older than pollack. AJ is freshly 31 and nick turned 35 in November. Moreover pollack has battled injuries for seemingly every season, but when he has been healthy he’s a better hitter and fielder than nick.

Nick had an absurd 2018, destroying his projections and playing in all 162 games with a 114 wrc+ and 2.6 WAR. Pollock played in just 113, was close to nicks batting line with a 110 wrc+ and amassed 2.5 WAR. Assuming any decent outfield depth To take over for pollock in 50 games, i would take pollock over nick because of roughly equal to better hitting and better defense and baserunning. While nick probably plays more games, if you get 100+ out of pollock he will probably be a more valuable asset than 150 games of Nick.

The biggest difference is one projection system (Steamer) projects pollock for 3.1 WAR in 146 games while it projects markakis for 1.1 WAR in 146 games. Teams have their own projection systems that aren’t public, but are probably similar to publicly available ones.

Now it is an interesting thought over which you’d prefer on the Braves, since pollock may be 3-4 years at 15-20 Million a year where you could get nick for a 1 year 10 Million deal for sure. Since pollock has injury issues in his past, a 3-4 year deal for him is a decent sized risk, especially with him being 31 and likely to be declining.

I edited the post about Markakis's age 5 minutes before you posted, you must have been typing your post. Nick has far better OBP and more doubles than Pollack, and not just last season. I would sign Markakis over Pollack any day of the week. Markakis has averaged 39 doubles and a .358 OBP the past 4 seasons while playing almost every game. Pollock missed most of the 2016 season and he averaged just 28 doubles in his last 4 full seasons ( minus the 2016 season). His OBP has averaged just .324 since 2015.

If we want to go back to 2015, pollock was genuinely an MVP candidate and one of the best players in the game with almost 7 WAR for what it’s worth. He was insanely good that year, then barely played in 2016 after injury. His doubles numbers on that 3 year average will be low due to him playing 2.25 seasons worth of games as opposed to nicks almost full 3.

It’s his rate stats that are the big difference. Excluding 2016 again, his slugging percentage over that 4 year span is about 100 points higher, or basically 25% better than nicks. Nick averages less than 10 hr a year while pollock averages 18 a year, with less games played.

I’ll take an extra 8 homers a year over an extra 10 doubles a year.

I want OBP over any other offensive stat. If you put together a team that gets on base at a high rate and hits for extra bases, it will score a lot of runs. Also, showing up for work matters, Markakis has been extremely durable, you can't help the team from the bench.

The thing about this is, how do you weight all the things? Sure OBP is valuable, but so is hitting for power right? . But how valuable is a walk? What about a double? How about a homer? These things are hard for you and me to quantify. But that’s why we have statisticians all over the game.

They came up with a forumala to mix all these things together, weighing for singles/doubles etc. the weighting factors were found empirically, so as to say they looked at runs created by a single/double etc. in situations throughout the past. Like all the mlb baseball games played in the last however many years. There were no opinions involved, opinions are bad for objectivity.

Empirically, they created this formula and called it wrc. They then scaled it to where 100 would be average, and every point above 100 would be 1% more runs created over a season than 100. They called this scaled stat WRC+.

I don’t site this stat because it fits my narrative, I site it because it’s literally the best thing we have to quantify how valuable a guy is offensively on a rate basis.

Baseball is a game of 4 bases and 27 outs in 9 increments of 3. That is breaking offensive baseball down into a board game. I want players on base and the next guy up to advance them around the bases, it's a simple game till you get to actually having the skills to accomplish these simple things.
With Markakis you get a guy who is going to be in the lineup almost every game. He is going to get on base, which advances anybody already on base either into scoring position or brings them home. He is going to hit doubles at a good clip, which brings home base runners and puts himself in position to score on a single.

Pollock misses a lot of work and he doesn't get on base or advance those already on base at as high a rate.

I'd love Nick, but at the right price and especially term. You have to assume at his age he will decline and it could be quickly.

He has been very durable and has shown no signs of decline. I'd trust him more over a 2 or 3 year contract than Pollock who has been injured and spotty. Generically no doubt 35 is risky. He has an extremely sturdy build and very sound mechanics though.

2 years sounds good to me. He is a solid clubhouse presence as well. I'm less concerned with the durability, but it doesn't take much slowing of the quick twitch muscles to really have an effect on performance. Other than the steroid era it has been proven many times over. I wouldn't give any hitter in their mid-30s over a two year deal unless a 20% decline in performance would still put them at All-Star level (see Aaron, Henry).

I mentioned his mechanics because having a very solid repeatable swing often helps aging players maintain good production. Chipper is a prime example of being able to compensate for the decline in bat speed late in his career by knowing how to hit.

Teddy

@WCDawg said:

@TNDawg71 said:

@WCDawg said:

@TNDawg71 said:

@WCDawg said:

@Kirbstomper said:

@WCDawg said:

@donm said:

@WCDawg said:

@TNDawg71 said:
I want Kluber

He'd be my pick of any starter to sign for 3 years. I don't see the team investing big in a starter though. We have maybe 5 young candidates to emerge as the ace of the staff in the next few years.

Alas, all aces are not created equal.

I'm referring to true aces, not 1st in a rotation. Not many teams have a true ace.> @Kirbstomper said:

@WCDawg said:

@Kirbstomper said:

Markakis has better stats and he's just a year older.

Markakis is 4 years and 1 month older than pollack. AJ is freshly 31 and nick turned 35 in November. Moreover pollack has battled injuries for seemingly every season, but when he has been healthy he’s a better hitter and fielder than nick.

Nick had an absurd 2018, destroying his projections and playing in all 162 games with a 114 wrc+ and 2.6 WAR. Pollock played in just 113, was close to nicks batting line with a 110 wrc+ and amassed 2.5 WAR. Assuming any decent outfield depth To take over for pollock in 50 games, i would take pollock over nick because of roughly equal to better hitting and better defense and baserunning. While nick probably plays more games, if you get 100+ out of pollock he will probably be a more valuable asset than 150 games of Nick.

The biggest difference is one projection system (Steamer) projects pollock for 3.1 WAR in 146 games while it projects markakis for 1.1 WAR in 146 games. Teams have their own projection systems that aren’t public, but are probably similar to publicly available ones.

Now it is an interesting thought over which you’d prefer on the Braves, since pollock may be 3-4 years at 15-20 Million a year where you could get nick for a 1 year 10 Million deal for sure. Since pollock has injury issues in his past, a 3-4 year deal for him is a decent sized risk, especially with him being 31 and likely to be declining.

I edited the post about Markakis's age 5 minutes before you posted, you must have been typing your post. Nick has far better OBP and more doubles than Pollack, and not just last season. I would sign Markakis over Pollack any day of the week. Markakis has averaged 39 doubles and a .358 OBP the past 4 seasons while playing almost every game. Pollock missed most of the 2016 season and he averaged just 28 doubles in his last 4 full seasons ( minus the 2016 season). His OBP has averaged just .324 since 2015.

If we want to go back to 2015, pollock was genuinely an MVP candidate and one of the best players in the game with almost 7 WAR for what it’s worth. He was insanely good that year, then barely played in 2016 after injury. His doubles numbers on that 3 year average will be low due to him playing 2.25 seasons worth of games as opposed to nicks almost full 3.

It’s his rate stats that are the big difference. Excluding 2016 again, his slugging percentage over that 4 year span is about 100 points higher, or basically 25% better than nicks. Nick averages less than 10 hr a year while pollock averages 18 a year, with less games played.

I’ll take an extra 8 homers a year over an extra 10 doubles a year.

I want OBP over any other offensive stat. If you put together a team that gets on base at a high rate and hits for extra bases, it will score a lot of runs. Also, showing up for work matters, Markakis has been extremely durable, you can't help the team from the bench.

The thing about this is, how do you weight all the things? Sure OBP is valuable, but so is hitting for power right? . But how valuable is a walk? What about a double? How about a homer? These things are hard for you and me to quantify. But that’s why we have statisticians all over the game.

They came up with a forumala to mix all these things together, weighing for singles/doubles etc. the weighting factors were found empirically, so as to say they looked at runs created by a single/double etc. in situations throughout the past. Like all the mlb baseball games played in the last however many years. There were no opinions involved, opinions are bad for objectivity.

Empirically, they created this formula and called it wrc. They then scaled it to where 100 would be average, and every point above 100 would be 1% more runs created over a season than 100. They called this scaled stat WRC+.

I don’t site this stat because it fits my narrative, I site it because it’s literally the best thing we have to quantify how valuable a guy is offensively on a rate basis.

Baseball is a game of 4 bases and 27 outs in 9 increments of 3. That is breaking offensive baseball down into a board game. I want players on base and the next guy up to advance them around the bases, it's a simple game till you get to actually having the skills to accomplish these simple things.
With Markakis you get a guy who is going to be in the lineup almost every game. He is going to get on base, which advances anybody already on base either into scoring position or brings them home. He is going to hit doubles at a good clip, which brings home base runners and puts himself in position to score on a single.

Pollock misses a lot of work and he doesn't get on base or advance those already on base at as high a rate.

I'd love Nick, but at the right price and especially term. You have to assume at his age he will decline and it could be quickly.

He has been very durable and has shown no signs of decline. I'd trust him more over a 2 or 3 year contract than Pollock who has been injured and spotty. Generically no doubt 35 is risky. He has an extremely sturdy build and very sound mechanics though.

2 years sounds good to me. He is a solid clubhouse presence as well. I'm less concerned with the durability, but it doesn't take much slowing of the quick twitch muscles to really have an effect on performance. Other than the steroid era it has been proven many times over. I wouldn't give any hitter in their mid-30s over a two year deal unless a 20% decline in performance would still put them at All-Star level (see Aaron, Henry).

I mentioned his mechanics because having a very solid repeatable swing often helps aging players maintain good production. Chipper is a prime example of being able to compensate for the decline in bat speed late in his career by knowing how to hit.

And Uggla is the opposite of Chipper, he couldn't overcome any loss in bat speed.

WCDawg

@Teddy said:

@WCDawg said:

@TNDawg71 said:

@WCDawg said:

@TNDawg71 said:

@WCDawg said:

@Kirbstomper said:

@WCDawg said:

@donm said:

@WCDawg said:

@TNDawg71 said:
I want Kluber

He'd be my pick of any starter to sign for 3 years. I don't see the team investing big in a starter though. We have maybe 5 young candidates to emerge as the ace of the staff in the next few years.

Alas, all aces are not created equal.

I'm referring to true aces, not 1st in a rotation. Not many teams have a true ace.> @Kirbstomper said:

@WCDawg said:

@Kirbstomper said:

Markakis has better stats and he's just a year older.

Markakis is 4 years and 1 month older than pollack. AJ is freshly 31 and nick turned 35 in November. Moreover pollack has battled injuries for seemingly every season, but when he has been healthy he’s a better hitter and fielder than nick.

Nick had an absurd 2018, destroying his projections and playing in all 162 games with a 114 wrc+ and 2.6 WAR. Pollock played in just 113, was close to nicks batting line with a 110 wrc+ and amassed 2.5 WAR. Assuming any decent outfield depth To take over for pollock in 50 games, i would take pollock over nick because of roughly equal to better hitting and better defense and baserunning. While nick probably plays more games, if you get 100+ out of pollock he will probably be a more valuable asset than 150 games of Nick.

The biggest difference is one projection system (Steamer) projects pollock for 3.1 WAR in 146 games while it projects markakis for 1.1 WAR in 146 games. Teams have their own projection systems that aren’t public, but are probably similar to publicly available ones.

Now it is an interesting thought over which you’d prefer on the Braves, since pollock may be 3-4 years at 15-20 Million a year where you could get nick for a 1 year 10 Million deal for sure. Since pollock has injury issues in his past, a 3-4 year deal for him is a decent sized risk, especially with him being 31 and likely to be declining.

I edited the post about Markakis's age 5 minutes before you posted, you must have been typing your post. Nick has far better OBP and more doubles than Pollack, and not just last season. I would sign Markakis over Pollack any day of the week. Markakis has averaged 39 doubles and a .358 OBP the past 4 seasons while playing almost every game. Pollock missed most of the 2016 season and he averaged just 28 doubles in his last 4 full seasons ( minus the 2016 season). His OBP has averaged just .324 since 2015.

If we want to go back to 2015, pollock was genuinely an MVP candidate and one of the best players in the game with almost 7 WAR for what it’s worth. He was insanely good that year, then barely played in 2016 after injury. His doubles numbers on that 3 year average will be low due to him playing 2.25 seasons worth of games as opposed to nicks almost full 3.

It’s his rate stats that are the big difference. Excluding 2016 again, his slugging percentage over that 4 year span is about 100 points higher, or basically 25% better than nicks. Nick averages less than 10 hr a year while pollock averages 18 a year, with less games played.

I’ll take an extra 8 homers a year over an extra 10 doubles a year.

I want OBP over any other offensive stat. If you put together a team that gets on base at a high rate and hits for extra bases, it will score a lot of runs. Also, showing up for work matters, Markakis has been extremely durable, you can't help the team from the bench.

The thing about this is, how do you weight all the things? Sure OBP is valuable, but so is hitting for power right? . But how valuable is a walk? What about a double? How about a homer? These things are hard for you and me to quantify. But that’s why we have statisticians all over the game.

They came up with a forumala to mix all these things together, weighing for singles/doubles etc. the weighting factors were found empirically, so as to say they looked at runs created by a single/double etc. in situations throughout the past. Like all the mlb baseball games played in the last however many years. There were no opinions involved, opinions are bad for objectivity.

Empirically, they created this formula and called it wrc. They then scaled it to where 100 would be average, and every point above 100 would be 1% more runs created over a season than 100. They called this scaled stat WRC+.

I don’t site this stat because it fits my narrative, I site it because it’s literally the best thing we have to quantify how valuable a guy is offensively on a rate basis.

Baseball is a game of 4 bases and 27 outs in 9 increments of 3. That is breaking offensive baseball down into a board game. I want players on base and the next guy up to advance them around the bases, it's a simple game till you get to actually having the skills to accomplish these simple things.
With Markakis you get a guy who is going to be in the lineup almost every game. He is going to get on base, which advances anybody already on base either into scoring position or brings them home. He is going to hit doubles at a good clip, which brings home base runners and puts himself in position to score on a single.

Pollock misses a lot of work and he doesn't get on base or advance those already on base at as high a rate.

I'd love Nick, but at the right price and especially term. You have to assume at his age he will decline and it could be quickly.

He has been very durable and has shown no signs of decline. I'd trust him more over a 2 or 3 year contract than Pollock who has been injured and spotty. Generically no doubt 35 is risky. He has an extremely sturdy build and very sound mechanics though.

2 years sounds good to me. He is a solid clubhouse presence as well. I'm less concerned with the durability, but it doesn't take much slowing of the quick twitch muscles to really have an effect on performance. Other than the steroid era it has been proven many times over. I wouldn't give any hitter in their mid-30s over a two year deal unless a 20% decline in performance would still put them at All-Star level (see Aaron, Henry).

I mentioned his mechanics because having a very solid repeatable swing often helps aging players maintain good production. Chipper is a prime example of being able to compensate for the decline in bat speed late in his career by knowing how to hit.

And Uggla is the opposite of Chipper, he couldn't overcome any loss in bat speed.

True, Dan was not our best FA acquisition.

TNDawg71

@Teddy said:

@WCDawg said:

@TNDawg71 said:

@WCDawg said:

@TNDawg71 said:

@WCDawg said:

@Kirbstomper said:

@WCDawg said:

@donm said:

@WCDawg said:

@TNDawg71 said:
I want Kluber

He'd be my pick of any starter to sign for 3 years. I don't see the team investing big in a starter though. We have maybe 5 young candidates to emerge as the ace of the staff in the next few years.

Alas, all aces are not created equal.

I'm referring to true aces, not 1st in a rotation. Not many teams have a true ace.> @Kirbstomper said:

@WCDawg said:

@Kirbstomper said:

Markakis has better stats and he's just a year older.

Markakis is 4 years and 1 month older than pollack. AJ is freshly 31 and nick turned 35 in November. Moreover pollack has battled injuries for seemingly every season, but when he has been healthy he’s a better hitter and fielder than nick.

Nick had an absurd 2018, destroying his projections and playing in all 162 games with a 114 wrc+ and 2.6 WAR. Pollock played in just 113, was close to nicks batting line with a 110 wrc+ and amassed 2.5 WAR. Assuming any decent outfield depth To take over for pollock in 50 games, i would take pollock over nick because of roughly equal to better hitting and better defense and baserunning. While nick probably plays more games, if you get 100+ out of pollock he will probably be a more valuable asset than 150 games of Nick.

The biggest difference is one projection system (Steamer) projects pollock for 3.1 WAR in 146 games while it projects markakis for 1.1 WAR in 146 games. Teams have their own projection systems that aren’t public, but are probably similar to publicly available ones.

Now it is an interesting thought over which you’d prefer on the Braves, since pollock may be 3-4 years at 15-20 Million a year where you could get nick for a 1 year 10 Million deal for sure. Since pollock has injury issues in his past, a 3-4 year deal for him is a decent sized risk, especially with him being 31 and likely to be declining.

I edited the post about Markakis's age 5 minutes before you posted, you must have been typing your post. Nick has far better OBP and more doubles than Pollack, and not just last season. I would sign Markakis over Pollack any day of the week. Markakis has averaged 39 doubles and a .358 OBP the past 4 seasons while playing almost every game. Pollock missed most of the 2016 season and he averaged just 28 doubles in his last 4 full seasons ( minus the 2016 season). His OBP has averaged just .324 since 2015.

If we want to go back to 2015, pollock was genuinely an MVP candidate and one of the best players in the game with almost 7 WAR for what it’s worth. He was insanely good that year, then barely played in 2016 after injury. His doubles numbers on that 3 year average will be low due to him playing 2.25 seasons worth of games as opposed to nicks almost full 3.

It’s his rate stats that are the big difference. Excluding 2016 again, his slugging percentage over that 4 year span is about 100 points higher, or basically 25% better than nicks. Nick averages less than 10 hr a year while pollock averages 18 a year, with less games played.

I’ll take an extra 8 homers a year over an extra 10 doubles a year.

I want OBP over any other offensive stat. If you put together a team that gets on base at a high rate and hits for extra bases, it will score a lot of runs. Also, showing up for work matters, Markakis has been extremely durable, you can't help the team from the bench.

The thing about this is, how do you weight all the things? Sure OBP is valuable, but so is hitting for power right? . But how valuable is a walk? What about a double? How about a homer? These things are hard for you and me to quantify. But that’s why we have statisticians all over the game.

They came up with a forumala to mix all these things together, weighing for singles/doubles etc. the weighting factors were found empirically, so as to say they looked at runs created by a single/double etc. in situations throughout the past. Like all the mlb baseball games played in the last however many years. There were no opinions involved, opinions are bad for objectivity.

Empirically, they created this formula and called it wrc. They then scaled it to where 100 would be average, and every point above 100 would be 1% more runs created over a season than 100. They called this scaled stat WRC+.

I don’t site this stat because it fits my narrative, I site it because it’s literally the best thing we have to quantify how valuable a guy is offensively on a rate basis.

Baseball is a game of 4 bases and 27 outs in 9 increments of 3. That is breaking offensive baseball down into a board game. I want players on base and the next guy up to advance them around the bases, it's a simple game till you get to actually having the skills to accomplish these simple things.
With Markakis you get a guy who is going to be in the lineup almost every game. He is going to get on base, which advances anybody already on base either into scoring position or brings them home. He is going to hit doubles at a good clip, which brings home base runners and puts himself in position to score on a single.

Pollock misses a lot of work and he doesn't get on base or advance those already on base at as high a rate.

I'd love Nick, but at the right price and especially term. You have to assume at his age he will decline and it could be quickly.

He has been very durable and has shown no signs of decline. I'd trust him more over a 2 or 3 year contract than Pollock who has been injured and spotty. Generically no doubt 35 is risky. He has an extremely sturdy build and very sound mechanics though.

2 years sounds good to me. He is a solid clubhouse presence as well. I'm less concerned with the durability, but it doesn't take much slowing of the quick twitch muscles to really have an effect on performance. Other than the steroid era it has been proven many times over. I wouldn't give any hitter in their mid-30s over a two year deal unless a 20% decline in performance would still put them at All-Star level (see Aaron, Henry).

I mentioned his mechanics because having a very solid repeatable swing often helps aging players maintain good production. Chipper is a prime example of being able to compensate for the decline in bat speed late in his career by knowing how to hit.

And Uggla is the opposite of Chipper, he couldn't overcome any loss in bat speed.

Uggla was the worst signing because it came at a time where the league was moving away from that type of player and we doubled down on him. When the inflated numbers came down he wasn't even passable, plus he was a terrible fielder in his prime, much less when he got older.

AndersonDawg

Don’t forget BJ Upton. $20M for a mediocre fielder and 200 BA. only thing he was good at was looking confused on a called strike 3 on a pitch down the middle.

Teddy

@AndersonDawg said:
Don’t forget BJ Upton. $20M for a mediocre fielder and 200 BA. only thing he was good at was looking confused on a called strike 3 on a pitch down the middle.

Or all the pieces traded away for Teixiera, that were key pieces to getting the Rangers to back to back World Series, for a temporary rental in Teixiera basically.

Kirbstomper

@Teddy said:

@AndersonDawg said:
Don’t forget BJ Upton. $20M for a mediocre fielder and 200 BA. only thing he was good at was looking confused on a called strike 3 on a pitch down the middle.

Or all the pieces traded away for Teixiera, that were key pieces to getting the Rangers to back to back World Series, for a temporary rental in Teixiera basically.

Or trading andrelton Simmons for only Sean newcomb! That one still bugs me.

Teddy

@Kirbstomper said:

@Teddy said:

@AndersonDawg said:
Don’t forget BJ Upton. $20M for a mediocre fielder and 200 BA. only thing he was good at was looking confused on a called strike 3 on a pitch down the middle.

Or all the pieces traded away for Teixiera, that were key pieces to getting the Rangers to back to back World Series, for a temporary rental in Teixiera basically.

Or trading andrelton Simmons for only Sean newcomb! That one still bugs me.

They got Dansby the same offseason, guess they were counting on him panning out. But yeah, Braves went through a rough patch of trades for a little while.

TNDawg71

@Teddy said:

@Kirbstomper said:

@Teddy said:

@AndersonDawg said:
Don’t forget BJ Upton. $20M for a mediocre fielder and 200 BA. only thing he was good at was looking confused on a called strike 3 on a pitch down the middle.

Or all the pieces traded away for Teixiera, that were key pieces to getting the Rangers to back to back World Series, for a temporary rental in Teixiera basically.

Or trading andrelton Simmons for only Sean newcomb! That one still bugs me.

They got Dansby the same offseason, guess they were counting on him panning out. But yeah, Braves went through a rough patch of trades for a little while.

The Swanson deal was phenomenal though, Inciarte alone was robbery. The Simmons and Kimbrel deals hurt because they were talented and fun to watch.

WCDawg

@Kirbstomper said:

@Teddy said:

@AndersonDawg said:
Don’t forget BJ Upton. $20M for a mediocre fielder and 200 BA. only thing he was good at was looking confused on a called strike 3 on a pitch down the middle.

Or all the pieces traded away for Teixiera, that were key pieces to getting the Rangers to back to back World Series, for a temporary rental in Teixiera basically.

Or trading andrelton Simmons for only Sean newcomb! That one still bugs me.

The jury is still out on that trade. Newcomb is still only 25 years old and if he can ever keep his head on straight he might be one of the best starting pitchers around.

WCDawg

@Teddy said:

@Kirbstomper said:

@Teddy said:

@AndersonDawg said:
Don’t forget BJ Upton. $20M for a mediocre fielder and 200 BA. only thing he was good at was looking confused on a called strike 3 on a pitch down the middle.

Or all the pieces traded away for Teixiera, that were key pieces to getting the Rangers to back to back World Series, for a temporary rental in Teixiera basically.

Or trading andrelton Simmons for only Sean newcomb! That one still bugs me.

They got Dansby the same offseason, guess they were counting on him panning out. But yeah, Braves went through a rough patch of trades for a little while.

This is it for Swanson in Atlanta. If he doesn't figure it out in 2019 the team will give up on him. There are too many young guys moving up to waste a roster spot.

TNDawg71

@WCDawg said:

@Teddy said:

@Kirbstomper said:

@Teddy said:

@AndersonDawg said:
Don’t forget BJ Upton. $20M for a mediocre fielder and 200 BA. only thing he was good at was looking confused on a called strike 3 on a pitch down the middle.

Or all the pieces traded away for Teixiera, that were key pieces to getting the Rangers to back to back World Series, for a temporary rental in Teixiera basically.

Or trading andrelton Simmons for only Sean newcomb! That one still bugs me.

They got Dansby the same offseason, guess they were counting on him panning out. But yeah, Braves went through a rough patch of trades for a little while.

This is it for Swanson in Atlanta. If he doesn't figure it out in 2019 the team will give up on him. There are too many young guys moving up to waste a roster spot.

I agree and I'm not sure he's guaranteed much going into spring training.

WCDawg

@TNDawg71 said:

@WCDawg said:

@Teddy said:

@Kirbstomper said:

@Teddy said:

@AndersonDawg said:
Don’t forget BJ Upton. $20M for a mediocre fielder and 200 BA. only thing he was good at was looking confused on a called strike 3 on a pitch down the middle.

Or all the pieces traded away for Teixiera, that were key pieces to getting the Rangers to back to back World Series, for a temporary rental in Teixiera basically.

Or trading andrelton Simmons for only Sean newcomb! That one still bugs me.

They got Dansby the same offseason, guess they were counting on him panning out. But yeah, Braves went through a rough patch of trades for a little while.

This is it for Swanson in Atlanta. If he doesn't figure it out in 2019 the team will give up on him. There are too many young guys moving up to waste a roster spot.

I agree and I'm not sure he's guaranteed much going into spring training.

I'd be very surprised if he has a spot on the opening day roster reserved going into camp.