Talkin' Baseball

Click here to see the 2024 MLB draft results.  I know the dad of number 74 overall and have met Ryan Johnson before. Basically the only guy I knew from this year before the draft was Cam Caminiti (and Johnson, of course). I'm really excited about Caminiti, but seeing as how the Braves have a lot of young pitchers, it may be a while before he comes up. I'm too lazy to do anything else right now. So just read it. And also every draft pick (only 615) Have a great day. Thank you for reading.

      On March 20, the Padres and Dodgers kicked off a two game series in Seoul, South Korea. This was technically Opening Day for them, I guess, but the other teams still had a fair share of spring training before their seasons started.     Game 1 of the Seoul Series was a tight game. The Dodgers ended up taking the game with a four-run eighth.     In that inning, the game was tied 2-2 with runners on first and second base, one out, when this happened:     This was called an error on the first baseman Jake Cronenworth. I dunno about this call. If a ball is hit, and breaks through a fielder's glove, I don't see how it could be called an error, since the fielder did no wrong in fielding the ball.      I get that the ball wasn't struck particularly hard, and I don't know what it is that caused it to go through, but I don't think that this play should be scored an E-3 since Cronenworth didn't do anything wrong. He went to field the ball, and it broke his glove.    

      I don't know what on earth I was thinking when creating this post; wait a second, I do now. I played all of my backups in one of my fantasy baseball leagues one day when I was getting slaughtered (Not Holy Cross league). So arose the question, does a good manager play all of his players? There are a number of answers to the question depending what level you are. Here they are.     Certainly when you're in Little League, a manager should play all of the players, no matter how good or bad. Of course, in most Little Leagues, you have to at least bat the whole team and often they have to get into the field at some point during the game. Since Little League is not all about winning, but development, this is most definitely the way it should be.      Some higher Little League divisions (like 14U and up) maybe could have a different ruling for playing time, but seeing as how it's still Little League, the rules should probably stay as they are.     Moving on to high school ba

       Errors suck. For one, they cost the fielding team an out and usually add a baserunner, and they suck for he who made the error. But on the offensive side, they lower your batting stats. It's a good trade-off to drop your batting average one at-bat to get on base, assuming you're a team player.  Herman Long has committed the most errors in MLB history (1,096)     Errors lower your OBP. But should this be so? I mean, you are technically getting on base, and OBP does stand for  On-Base Percentage.       This definition comes straight from  MLB's Website : OBP refers to how frequently a batter reaches base per plate appearance. Times on base include hits, walks and hit-by-pitches, but do not include errors, times reached on a fielder's choice or a dropped third strike. (Separately, sacrifice bunts are removed from the equation entirely, because it is rarely a hitter's decision to sacrifice himself, but rather a manager's choice as part of an in-game strategy.

      Ay! Ever heard of Chris Davis? Yeah, that guy who hit 53 home runs and then 47 two years later? Yeah, that guy. Did you know he had a .233 career batting average? Well, that's unfortunate, but managers will often overlook bad batting averages if the guy has loads of power. Chris Davis was no exception to this practice.     But take a look at his 2018 campaign:     If you can't see it, Chris Davis hit a rather sad .168 in 2018, good for an OPS+ of only 49. YIKES!     Yes, while this season was very bad, there's a reason for this: he did badly. But, something even more impressive than batting .168 in 128 games is what he did from September 14th of 2018 through April 12th of 2019.     After starting the game 1-for-1 on a beautiful day in September, he went 0-for-3 the rest of the contest. No worries, right? 1-4 games raise his batting average, so we're all good.     The next game he went 0-3, and 0-3 the game afterward. Oh well, 0-fors happen. Then he went three more

      I'm trying not to relapse back into writer's block. So, I'll post on something semi-stupid; my fantasy decision today. This is stupid for two reasons; why am I posting on my managerial decisions? and, this particular decision was pretty stupid.     I was losing to my opponent 10-5, and there was no reasonable chance that I win. So, I benched my starting second baseman, Zack Gelof, who has been hitting awfully thus far in favor of Jackson Holliday, who has somehow been hitting even worse. Yikes. I also benched my starting catcher, Gabriel Moreno, in favor of Tyler Stephenson, because the past two days Stephenson was sitting his rear-end on my bench and hit homers in each game. Also yikes.     So I ended up going through with the decision. After all, a good manager lets all the players get playing time, right? Well, that's a subject for another day. Anyway,  the two guys I started went a combined 0-for-6 with two walks. Big surprise there. Meanwhile, Moreno and Gelo