Friday morning things

there is not much difference in the Rangers 1-5 guys, all are pretty mediocre, it really doesn’t matter.

I’m going to run out on the field and close line Warsh.

maybe so…but to base that on one of JJT’s columns? That’s like saying after watching Ron Artest “battle at the Palace” and saying all NBA ballers are thugs

for some people gambling makes sports more fun and interesting.
for myself i get that from fantasy sports.

Unless somehow the Rangers hang in there all season long right to the very last week.

effort and attention into keeping up with these awesome prospects to have them get to the majors and not have the best possible instruction from their manager.

If Wash isn’t the best possible person (looking that way) then get him out and bring on the best.

How are the Rangers overrated?

I’m not sure I’ve seen one report that sets this team up to actually compete this year.

how much does he make this year?

but holy fuck.

The A’s across the board? Really? If the Rangers were going out with that same pitching staff, people would be saying how the same old Rangers fielded a team full of young, unproven pitchers. I don’t see how simply putting on an A’s uniform is going to make that group of pitchers better. I guess if we had found a way to jam Holland and Feliz onto our staff they would love us too? Usually when a team loses its ace and closer before the season starts, that discounts their prospects. But not in this case.

It only makes them stronger.

Ridic.

i don’t exactly think the rangers will win the division, but being the last place pick by the majority??
surely they are better than the mariners this season

makes a little sense now…

There might be some rooting involved on my part ; )

Some of those are ridiculous. I don’t know how you can say that Hamilton is overvalued, or….THE RANGERS ARE OVERRATED?!?

this much of an overreaction over preseason rankings is a real sign that we’re ready for the regular season to start.

who picks the A’s to win a division (even a very weak one like the AL West) hasn’t looked hard enough at that teams starting rotation. Picking the A’s to win the WS is just borderline stupid. The A’s will be lucky to win 75 games.

The Halos will win the West by default.

he has 2 Beltre clips and 2 Main clips, too. And a Hosmer clip for those interested.

and magraine touched on it for a second from the other side because Andruw Jones couldn’t make contact last year.

Honestly, Andruw Jones better not play in 150 games. Last year, he only played in 70 because he sucked so bad, but the manager only stuck with him that much because of his contract. This year he better be traded/released halfway through the year because we’ll need the spot for players like MaxRam and Borbon.

I am clueless about the accessibility of swimming pools to players as they train.

Do the Rangers have a pool at their ST facility? Will they install one at RBiA? How about in the DR academy? I realize it’s a bit more expensive to maintain a pool than to tell folks to do more long toss, but in the long run, if swimming as revealed by scientific work and through the experience of Ryan, wouldn’t it be a small expense compared to injuries and ineffectiveness from weak shoulders?

of long tossing.

in the swimming pools. nolan was basically doing light weight resistance training and cardio.

Yes

If Salty is given 3 out of every 5 games that would leave about 65 games left for Teagarden. It’s hard to argue that Salty would be considered the starter if he were catching less than 3 out of 5.

but probably around 40 starts if Salty’s healthy, producing at the plate and not hurting the staff

He goes on for a little bit and I’m following the logic, but then he throws Mauer and Martin out there – proven offensive and defensive catchers that Boston would trade for in a heartbeat for Bowden and Buchholz. Isn’t this the point? One somewhat unproven, potential star for another somewhat unproven, potential star? NOT, a guy who threw a no-hitter for an already All-Star caliber player.

I kept hitting the “z” and “c” keys…nothing happened.

you do salty and main for bucholz

I loved Half Nelson. So I have pretty high expectations here.

I’m out.

at the deadline if we’re out of it though…

people think the Rangers will finish behind the Mariners. Honestly.

since the rash of pitcher injuries? I’m not naysaying them, just wondering.

why didn’t anyone tell me we replaced our entire pitching staff with batting tees and the fathers of the opposing teams’ players?

mariners with 82 wins?

It seems to me that since most projections are low-pass filters over recent history (capturing long-term trends) and integrating in historical trends, these projections tend to be insensitive to sudden shifts in ability. Which is sort of the point – you don’t want outliers to impair your projections.

But baseball players do have majors shifts in skills – there are non-linearities in the process, but they are unfortunately unpredictable and on an individual basis indistinguishable from outliers.

Why does this matter? There is a difference between King Felix’s 2008 being an outlier or being a bad omen for his long-term development. Between Ichiro’s 747 OPS being an off year or him just being Michael Young with a better glove. Is Chris Davis, whose 2008 was greater than his past would have predicted, real or not? These are specific examples of the problem with quantitative prognostication, but the AL West is loaded with them. Old guys trying to squeeze in one more effective year (Vlad, Abreu, Giambi, Ichiro), teams relying on rookies to take on big jobs, etc. Add in the inability of any projection system to assess probability of health, then a division where important players on every team have injury concerns becomes very difficult to project.

Prediction systems are good at making predictions under very controlled conditions. But they can’t really capture the variance associated with new random events (yes, diamond mind’s monte carlo approach can incorporate old variability, but even that variability is averaged out). Ultimately, the baseball season is played once. And variability is far, far more important in a division where all the teams have noisy conditions like this one. Ultimately, variability helps the teams that are objectively worse, because in a low variance environment, they’d usually lose. Add the noise, maybe they do better.

Therefore, it isn’t surprising that Seattle and Texas are benefiting the most from the chaos in this division, even though they have their own chaos as well.

Incidentally, in complex systems there is a theory that prior to any major system state change there is a lot of noise. I think we’re seeing that right now in the AL West, where the old state (Angels dominating) is about to change to a new one (A’s+ Rangers, maybe with M’s). It is an interesting thing to watch.

Arizona- 86.5
Atlanta- 83.5
Baltimore- 73.5
Boston- 94.5
Chicago C- 91.5
Chicago W- 79.5
Cincinnati- 80.5
Cleveland- 85.5
Colorado- 77.5
Detroit- 82.5
Florida- 76.5
Houston- 74.5
Kansas City- 75.5
LA Angels- 89.5
LA Dodgers- 82.5
Milwaukee- 80.5
Minnesota- 83.5
NY Mets- 88.5
NY Yankees- 97.5
Oakland- 81.5
Philadelphia- 87.5
Pittsburgh- 69.5
San Diego- 71.5
San Francisco- 80.5
Seattle- 72.5
St. Louis- 82.5
Tampa Bay- 87.5
Texas- 73.5
Toronto- 80.5
Washington- 71.5

http://vegaswatch.net/2009/03/mlb-totals-contest-2009_29.html

…because their info is easy to access…

They are predicting 72-90, with the Rangers allowing 58 runs fewer than last season, but scoring 112 runs fewer than last season — 795 RS, 902 RA.

They project a significant drop-off in production for Ian Kinsler, Josh Hamilton, and Hank Blalock versus what they did last year, project David Murphy to be about replacement-level offensively, and project 39 starts from Benson and Harrison with an ERA of about 6.50, no starter posting an ERA below 5.00, and only two relievers posting an ERA better than 4.50.

So some of the assumptions aren’t very realistic, I don’t think.

BP has the Rangers as the 2nd worst team in baseball, and by far the worst team in the A.L. I just don’t see it.