2024 MLB Season Thread
Nobody wants these games to start more than Mannfred.
Shohei just spoke to the media for the first time. In a prepared statement, he said:
-He never bet on baseball, or any other sport,
-He didn't know that Ippei lied to him, and that Ippei took the money from Shohei's account to pay his gambling debts
-He'll continue to cooperate with the investigation, and play as the investigation plays out.
If all that's true, then this is probably the best possible outcome for his reputation going forward. He's a naive star athlete who trusted the wrong person. It happens.
In any event, these games are about start! Last year, just like we all predicted, "Someone Else" came on strong in the playoffs, as the Texas Rangers defeated the Arizona Diamondbacks for the World Series. Can that happen again?
T-Mobile is giving away a free MLB.tv subscription ($149 value) to T-Mobile subscribers starting TOMORROW (Tuesday 3/26 - April 1). Don't miss out.
So speaking of gambling, here are the current best odds for the World Series you can find, from Vegas insider!
the crads just lost a series at home to a team that was 1-14 on the road coming into that series
the crads organization is even worse than the A's at this point. complete clown show.
When you factor the postseason too, Rivera is quite literally better than Hoffman and Wagner's careers combined.
23 years later I still remember being in total disbelief when he blew the lead (and lost the game) in game 7 of the 2001 World Series. That guy was a robot.
Career playoff stats: 8-1, 0.70 ERA, 141 IP, 11 ER, 110 K.
WAR actually severely underrates someone him bc in the playoffs he's pitching more high leverage innings and pitching in a higher percentage of his teams games.
WAR also underrates him during the regular season. Mariano Rivera is 7th all-time among pitchers in WPA (Win Probability Added - how much he improved his team's chances of winning games, taking into account the situation; this likely excludes true old timers for whom we don't have data) at 56.59, just behind Greg Maddux (59.46) and Warren Spahn (57.98) and ahead of Tom Seaver (56.43), Pedro Martinez (53.75), Randy Johnson (53.20) and Clayton Kershaw (50.62)
In the postseason, it's not even close between Mariano Rivera and other pitchers:
Top 5 Pitchers by Postseason WPA
Mariano Rivera 11.7
Curt Schilling 4.1
John Smoltz 3.6
Andy Pettitte 3.5
Jon Lester 3.4
Top 5 Pitchers by Postseason Championship WPA (basically like WPA, but in terms of increasing championship probability rather than winning individual games - this is super high variance by design FWIW)
Mariano Rivera 183.0
Madison Bumgarner 132.6
Rollie Fingers 122.3
Art Nehf 101.4
Jack Morris 92.6
I don't think he's quite there (WPA doesn't take into account the value of average innings and a huge part of his postseason WPA is due to opportunities and some of it is probably also luck) but Mariano Rivera has an outside claim as the most valuable modern pitcher ever, from the standpoint of overall team success.
When you factor the postseason too, Rivera is quite literally better than Hoffman and Wagner's careers combined.
I know that sounds like hyperbole, but it's instead a massive understatement - Rivera is not merely #1 in postseason WPA among pitchers, but he has more WPA than #2, #3 and #4 combined. Meanwhile, both Hoffman and Wagner have negative postseason WPA.
Guy came in and spent big money on pitching, got burned. now he doesn't wana play no more. wants to develop players only. I like the team but they are a few players short. Stuck. Stienbrenner he is not. One bad experinece and the checkbook is Closed.
Guy came in and spent big money on pitching, got burned. now he doesn't wana play no more. wants to develop players only. I like the team but they are a few players short. Stuck. Stienbrenner he is not. One bad experinece and the checkbook is Closed.
This is a weird thing to say about a team that has literally the highest payroll in baseball. Focusing on development and thinking long-term is the right way to build a consistently good team, even if you're willing to spend. The Mets are also not a free agent or two away from being great - this is a team with an aging core with holes all over, there's just no quick fix, especially with the Braves and the Phillies being clearly superior squads.
Baseball can be very random, so you never know, but the Mets' best hope might be to tread water for the next two seasons using their financial muscle not for immediate help but for prospects and see if they can contend 2026+.
Don’t count out Philly, too…. They’re very live with their pitching.
Wheeler had another dominant start yesterday.
Maybe Goatani can add a 40/40 season to his resume.
Yawn
40/40 is nice, but it’s no 41/73 season.
Nats have been playing good, and today's pitcher. They were +200 at home versus Burnes iirc
40/40 is nice, but what's remarkable about Ohtani's season is that he's been a little unlucky with regards to batted balls. Typically when players are putting up career-high numbers in a month or so of baseball, they are usually running fairly hot wrt batted balls. Ohtani, on the other hand, is underperforming his expected stats by a decent amount:
Ohtani
BA: .365 (#1 in MLB), xBA: .373
SLG: .696 (#1 in MLB), xSLG: .756
wOBA: .480 (#1 in MLB), xwOBA: .505
While expected stats only go back to 2015, I think all three of these might be all-time high for a full season. The highest xwOBA ever recorded was .463 (you might have guessed, Aaron Judge in 2022). Ohtani is hitting the ball very much like Aaron Judge did in 2022 when he makes contact (xwOBACON of .604 vs .611 for Aaron Judge in 2022) while striking out at a substantially lower rate (18.1% vs 25.1% for 2022 Judge).
People talked about Ohtani potentially winning the batting title last season, but the reality was that he was never that close if you looked at expected stats, so he would've needed a lot of luck. This year, he's legitimately looking like a hitter that can hit .400 with some luck. He's striking out at a well below-average rate, while having all-time level batted ball profile.
Even while underperforming his expected stats, Ohtani's wRC+ and OPS+ are both higher than Judge's 2022 season. It's early, but he's off to an absurd start. We have an injured pitcher recovering from an elbow surgery, who was embroiled in a fake scandal for much of the season, currently on pace to have an all-time great hitting season. This is not normal.
Giancarlo Stanton 120 mph off the bat, hardest hit of the season.
https://streamable.com/ajodcd?src=player...
Juan Soto and Aaron Judge have also homered in this game.
O's are so deep, why wait until the trade deadline to make sure they never have to put Kimbrel in another game? imo?
the bottom feeders in each division are some of the worst I can ever remember
Yelich and Betts were 30/30 with a batting title very recently.
40/40 is nice, but what's remarkable about Ohtani's season is that he's been a little unlucky with regards to batted balls. Typically when players are putting up career-high numbers in a month or so of baseball, they are usually running fairly hot wrt batted balls. Ohtani, on the other hand, is underperforming his expected stats by a decent amount:
Ohtani
BA: .365 (#1 in MLB), xBA: .373
SLG: .696 (#1 in MLB), xSLG: .756
wOBA: .480 (#1 in MLB), xwOBA: .505
While expected stats only go back to 2015,
I'd be curious to know how Statcast is calculating xBA. Baseball HQ has Ohtani's xBA at .336. It's a little hard for me to see how anyone with a BABIP of .391 could possibly have an xBA higher than his actual BA.
BABIP doesn't count homers, as they are "out of play."
But homers are still hits obv.
I understand. But that's still an insanely high BABIP.
FWIW, I'm not remotely critical of Ohtani. If you were genetically engineering baseball players, the template would look a lot like Ohtani. You really couldn't ask for a more optimized set of physical tools.
