TheLeviathan

Santana is a fine pitcher, I like him, I appreciate what he brings, but I'm also not going to let some delusion about 2017 guide my decision making process. If we can deal Dozier and Santana and land at least one (if not two) major league ready young starters - we should do it. Santana's clock here is ticking and, like Dozier, this offseason is the ideal time to trade him. Too often lately we've let sentiment and false hope guide our decision making and that's one of the reasons our roster is a mess. We'll be continuing that trend if we go into next season thinking we need to keep Dozier and Ervin. Don't deal them for peanuts, but for the love of all that's holy - shop them!

I still hope Santana is dealt this offseason.

Poor Gotham, so much potential absolutely destroyed by poor writing and planning. I think television has gotten so good that I'm starting to really notice the difference in writing quality. There was a long time where I went more by the genres that entertained me, but now I seek out anything and everything so long as I can sense good writing chops at work.

At least with the Jon Benet stuff they are suggesting they are going to name a suspect using new technology. I could see that being interesting. OJ? Been there, done that. It was all over TV. Most people I talked to said it peaked in the first episode and went steadily down hill.

Coming full circle.... He was damn good in Fargo too!

That show took almost every single category! Granted, Fargo doesn't belong in that category either, but it should've smoked that series.

If we roll out Rosario, Buxton, and Kepler for a full season in the outfield we may see dividends right there. The problem is from catcher and around the infield we have a ton of question marks.

I want to root for the O's just for how weirdly they have gone about contending. Have we seen a team like this in recent memory? Virtually no speed whatsoever and bad starting pitching and they are winning with some crazy slugging numbers and a lights out bullpen. It's so unique I have to tip my cap.

Three pages and no mention of Saul! That's another one I eagerly await returning.

Plus, we live in the golden age of television. There are some truly great stories being told, too many for me to even keep up with it seems.

Luke Cage and Westworld are atop my list. Eagerly awaiting Legion, Fargo, Game of Thrones, and American Gods coming out later. Gotham went so far off the rails I gave up last season. I wanted, so badly, to like that show. Walking Dead won't get my audience until some Sunday afternoon replay. That show needs to figure out it's bad trolling crap before I'll tune in again in their primetime slot.

Kudos to Dozier and Bruno for finding and fixing the issue.

This organizational hierarchy can't get blown up fast enough.

On what basis do you make that claim?

I don't disagree, I was just responding to the idea that the rotation is an "unanswered" question. I think the answer is there, it's just not one we like. As far as particular pitchers are concerned I'd agree there are some questions - Will we move May back? And do we move Santana? But regardless of those answers, the question of "Do we need pitching help" is an obvious "Yes. Lots of it" That one is answered.

I guess I don't consider the rotation a question, insofar as not knowing what to do. I think that question has long been answered - we need a LOT of help.

I hope they are terrified about some of it. Some of what they did was just unwise. I agree with your larger point, but there are lessons to be learned from Arizona. Most notably, to be careful about what you judge your team to be and to need before you go out and try to change it.

And Twinsdaily sided firmly with Oakland! Woofta.

I think drastic changes are called for. Drastic, reasonable, changes. Brock is right about this analogy: yeah, you can't make the car run worse, but you can do serious damage to how quickly it is before you get it up and running again.

Sure, if everyone got a .150 OPS boost that would be awesome. The point is, if you have a bunch of .700ish OPS players, would you rather have them consistently be that or spend half the season being unplayable and the other half on fire? Personally, I'd take the consistent bunch. I wasn't blaming Dozier for anything this year, just speaking more generally.

I tend to agree, but that's why I don't think a feast or famine player is as good as a consistent one. A lineup of consistent players gives your more than one person who are liable to produce for you over the course of every game of a season. As opposed to hoping a rotating bunch of hot hands can make up for the rest of their teammates.

Team wins don't really matter much to me when I'm evaluating trends in a hitter's results. If we want to extrapolate that to team success that's another matter. That five month gap can mean a lot or mean nothing and for many (most?) players it generally means nothing. I could just as easily argue that a logical cut-off of evaluation could be between adjustments by Dozier. We make similar cut offs when we judge young players (like we are with Buxton). The truth is, that five month gap is arbitrary as a cut-off for player production. We use it for convenience sake, not because it has any special meaning. (Unless there is a specific reason to believe it does, like injury rehab) We also make many cases for player evaluation based on cutting off statistical analysis at various points. We talk all the time about things like "Since June 1st Brian Dozier has slashed...." or "Since being moved to the top of the order" or "Pre-allstar". All of these are arbitrary. It doesn't invalidate them. Short of taking the whole players career into focus, we're always relying on arbitrary time frames. That isn't a valid argument against a statistical study, especially if it takes a large, time consistent sample size.

Any time period we choose to judge a player is arbitrary. If we choose April to September, it just seems more significant because that's one 162 game season stretch. But really, how different is that than me saying April 2015-September 2016? It's still random with the most notable trend being it's the same baseball player. While I don't deny I want to arbitrarily pick a stretch of consistently bad play that crossed seasons, it's no different than you. You just want to cut those dates apart arbitrarily. When Danny Santana sucks in 2016 like he did in 2015, we don't cut those dates apart because the season ended, we look at the whole of the data. Hell, if we didn't use cross-seasonal data to analyze players it'd be rather silly. Baseball reference could really simplify their site too!

My theory would be that when guys are feasting, their huge surge in production has a less meaningful impact on wins and losses because some of that surge is probably surplus that doesn't really decide games. But long stretches of awful play can have an impact.

Why does it matter how people remember his seasons in five years? We spent the first two months of this season with a sub .600 Dozier hitting in prime positions in the lineup. We spent the last three months (when we were fringe contenders) with a slightly better, but still pretty bad, Brian Dozier hitting in those same spots. I don't think anyone has shown evidence either way, so I'm going to go with what is the most intuitive: feast or famine guys are probably less valuable than guys less prone to erratic production. But I'd be really curious to get an answer on that.