mtcal wrote:

WilliamC wrote:Millwood makes me cringe way more than Bell. Only time I liked him as a Phillie was when we traded him for Estrada which seemed great and when he threw the no hitter hitter. Bell had a few semi-decent seasons with the Phils.

This move is really exciting. I like the Santana move. Like others have said, just being competitive late will be great if that happens.

i was supposed to be at that no hitter but my ex-wife then fiance wanted to go get a guinea pig instead that day.

I had tix and traded them for another day.

I also had tix to the mulholland NH, but wasn't able to go. And I was at the game with the unassisted triple play, but was making my way up the ramp at the time because we were late (my fault) and we missed it. It's one of only two times I remember my grandfather being mad at me.

But I was there for some cool stuff, too, so I try to remember all the good moments that I did manage to catch, like WFC and Thome's 400, Bell hitting for the cycle, beating the dodgers to make the series in '83, etc.

mtcal wrote:

WilliamC wrote:Millwood makes me cringe way more than Bell. Only time I liked him as a Phillie was when we traded him for Estrada which seemed great and when he threw the no hitter hitter. Bell had a few semi-decent seasons with the Phils.

This move is really exciting. I like the Santana move. Like others have said, just being competitive late will be great if that happens.

i was supposed to be at that no hitter but my ex-wife then fiance wanted to go get a guinea pig instead that day.

Ditto

I was there for free. My brother in the Phantatic's Birthday Club and back then they gave you two free tickets to the Phanatic's Birthday game.

PSUPhilliesPhan wrote:

mtcal wrote:

WilliamC wrote:Millwood makes me cringe way more than Bell. Only time I liked him as a Phillie was when we traded him for Estrada which seemed great and when he threw the no hitter hitter. Bell had a few semi-decent seasons with the Phils.

This move is really exciting. I like the Santana move. Like others have said, just being competitive late will be great if that happens.

i was supposed to be at that no hitter but my ex-wife then fiance wanted to go get a guinea pig instead that day.

Ditto

dang, lotsa guinea pig fans on this here board

i was there, was my kid's first game. he was like 9 months old. Saved the newspapers as well as the 'first game' certificate signed by Phillies Manager Larry Bowa. (ugh)

SCPhillyPhan wrote:

Shore wrote:
Santana is 32, with an .818 OPS last year, .810 for his career.

Williams was .811 last year, and Altherr .856, and they're 24 and 27.

I like Santana, but it's not like his expected production fills some gaping hole we had last year.

Well that puts a damper on my Santana optimism.

Perhaps I'm being dense, but isn't the gaping hole the fact that Tommy Joseph existed for pretty much the entire season as the starting 1B?

I mean sure, they probably could have run Altherr-Odubel-Williams out there and slap Hoskins at first, if that's what you're getting at.

SCPhillyPhan wrote:

Shore wrote:
Santana is 32, with an .818 OPS last year, .810 for his career.

Williams was .811 last year, and Altherr .856, and they're 24 and 27.

I like Santana, but it's not like his expected production fills some gaping hole we had last year.

Well that puts a damper on my Santana optimism.

Nah, he's good. It's good to have more bats, too. Nothing wrong with Altherr on the bench.

I really don't want anyone thinking that missing the playoffs this year will be a failure of some sort. Klentak's doing a great job, IMO, and we're poised to do really good things. But the Eagles winning the Super Bowl, and the Sixers global dominance coming a season earlier than some expected, doesn't mean that the Phillies are automatically better.

We need better healthy arms that are ready to pitch at the ML level. They're on the way, and we'll buy others. And our prospects on offense have to be able to make the leap to the majors and be productive. Williams started to last year, but needs better strike zone control. Ditto Alfaro. Crawford has the zone control, but needs to freaking hit. And we have to figure out the 2B/3B configuration... hopefully, Santana and the coaching staff have an impact on Franco, and we actually have depth.

Lets all just remember the progress we've made: Amaro wouldve signed this guy Nov 1st for no less than 10 years

I still think Millwood stunk because Bowa immediately named him the #1 starter when he had been 4th (or whatever) on the Barves. It's not like he was an Alpha personality or had much confidence. Too much pressure. Sounds absurd I know.

CFP wrote:

SCPhillyPhan wrote:

Shore wrote:
Santana is 32, with an .818 OPS last year, .810 for his career.

Williams was .811 last year, and Altherr .856, and they're 24 and 27.

I like Santana, but it's not like his expected production fills some gaping hole we had last year.

Well that puts a damper on my Santana optimism.

Perhaps I'm being dense, but isn't the gaping hole the fact that Tommy Joseph existed for pretty much the entire season as the starting 1B?

I mean sure, they probably could have run Altherr-Odubel-Williams out there and slap Hoskins at first, if that's what you're getting at.

Yeah, being 5 deep at OF (I'm including Quinn) and a good 1B is more beneficial than running out ToJo and Saunders for the AB they had. Nava outperformed, though. Can't ignore that.

lonfident wrote:I still think Millwood stunk because Bowa immediately named him the #1 starter when he had been 4th (or whatever) on the Barves. It's not like he was an Alpha personality or had much confidence. Too much pressure. Sounds absurd I know.

still better than Eric Nied

You know, if the team isn't doing all that well, Arrieta could probably snag some solid prospects in a deadline deal.

(Perhaps this belongs in the unpopular opinions thread.)

Shore wrote:I like FanGraphs, but those standings predictions are AWFUL.

The average AL team is going to go 84-78, and the average NL team 78-84. The AL gains 30 wins from last year... interleague record last year was 160-140 AL. Only way Fangraphs standings work is if it's 190-110 this year.

The Dodgers are 17 games worse than 2017, the Brewers are 6 games WORSE.

It's a bad set of numbers, and it makes NL win totals artificially low, with only 3 NL teams winning more than 83 games. Almost every year, 6-8 NL teams win 83+ games.

i complain about their phillies win projections every year and even pestered them with complaints for a week last year... but...
fwiw steamer/fangraphs has beaten just about everyone else in just about all measures of projection error for the past 3 or 4 years. that includes vegas, pecota, zips, davenport, espn, si, and various collectives of fantasy players and message board posters. beyond the boxscore used to run a comparison every offseason, which you can find via google, and there have been some at the tangotiger and bp and davenport sites as well over the years. sadly, the only 2017 comparison i found was at some obscure team site i can't remember right now. iirc pecota finally caught up leaving the two systems pretty much tied. i'll get back to you soon with the actual correlations and error sizes if you don't find them yourself. my rough estimates of the rms error have varied between 9 and 6 wins over the years... i can't remember the correlations right now.

TenuredVulture wrote:You know, if the team isn't doing all that well, Arrieta could probably snag some solid prospects in a deadline deal.

(Perhaps this belongs in the unpopular opinions thread.)

maybe unpopular, but is true, esp if mr middleton will eat some dollars

SCPhillyPhan wrote:

Shore wrote:
Santana is 32, with an .818 OPS last year, .810 for his career.

Williams was .811 last year, and Altherr .856, and they're 24 and 27.

I like Santana, but it's not like his expected production fills some gaping hole we had last year.

Well that puts a damper on my Santana optimism.

the difference is that santana has a long track record of good plate discipline. altherr has been inconsistent in that respect. williams has been horrible. he was saved by a .375 babip last season. only 2 major leaguers out of 287 with over 350 pa's had higher babip's last season. only 51 of them had lower bb rates (one of which was odubel... which is why i hope/pray that altherr and quinn stay heathy and productive enough to displace odubel and williams as starters)

phorever wrote:

SCPhillyPhan wrote:

Shore wrote:
Santana is 32, with an .818 OPS last year, .810 for his career.

Williams was .811 last year, and Altherr .856, and they're 24 and 27.

I like Santana, but it's not like his expected production fills some gaping hole we had last year.

Well that puts a damper on my Santana optimism.

the difference is that santana has a long track record of good plate discipline. altherr has been inconsistent in that respect. williams has been horrible. he was saved by a .375 babip last season. only 2 major leaguers out of 287 with over 350 pa's had higher babip's last season. only 51 of them had lower bb rates (one of which was odubel... which is why i hope/pray that altherr and quinn stay heathy and productive enough to displace odubel and williams as starters)

I think Odubel (and Cesar) should be expected to continue having high BABIPs. Odubel does it by spraying the ball the opposite way or up the middle. They've both done it three years in a row so I think it's safe to say it's part of their makeup as a batter. I don't know if the same can be said about Nick Williams.

Praying that Odubel Herrera and Nick Williams suck is sort of uh, counterproductive, no?

Shore wrote:
I like FanGraphs, but those standings predictions are AWFUL.

The average AL team is going to go 84-78, and the average NL team 78-84.

what input did you use. standings page orojections gave me 82.4 average wins for the american league. above the 81.67 of last year, but not nearly as ridiculous as 84 (or even 83.5 rounded up).

CFP wrote:Praying that Odubel Herrera and Nick Williams suck is sort of uh, counterproductive, no?

thats not the same as praying for altherr and quinn to take their jobs. i believe that aa and q can do that by playing their healthy best even if odubel and nick are no worse than last year.

phorever wrote:

Shore wrote:
I like FanGraphs, but those standings predictions are AWFUL.

The average AL team is going to go 84-78, and the average NL team 78-84.

what input did you use. standings page orojections gave me 82.4 average wins for the american league. above the 81.67 of last year, but not nearly as ridiculous as 84 (or even 83.5 rounded up).

They re-did them today. Last night, Dodgers were at 84 projected wins, Nationals at 91 were only NL team over 90.
Yankees were at 105 (now 95), and entire AL East was improving by 30+ games total.

Still don't like the numbers, but at least they're not almost impossible to occur.