can't wait to see lil' ben's "route efficiency" rating

Bucky wrote:can't wait to see lil' ben's "route efficiency" rating

It's always exciting to learn new ways to show how bad the team is.

6 years ago tonight. Never forget

all time moment there. still seems like yesterday.

Also this:



[/DiM]

Bucky wrote:can't wait to see lil' ben's "route efficiency" rating

got to wonder what the route efficiency is on a Dom Brown "let it fall in front of you" special.

got married the day before that. had sex, laid in bed and watched the comeback. Probably the highlight of that relationship.

phils' hitting probably will be sucky again next season (barring big steps forward from two or more of revere, brown, asche, and franco), but it's looking to me like the pitching is going to be much better. lee returning even at half his pre-injury effectiveness is at least a couple of wins better than any non-hamels rotation spot in 2014. non-herniated burnett should be a bit better than the 2014 edition. buchanan and williams were good enough that one of the two should be a solid #4. after that, the secret weapon is the set of youngish pitchers with proven upside coming off injuries that were part of the severe plague that hit young philliesstarting pitchers in 2012-14 (on top of the devastating but predictable injuries to halladay and lee). these are headlined by morgan, pettibone, and m.a.g. add in nola and you have 4 solid major-league-ready arms backing up the first 5 i named, plus maybe biddle by midseason. given that morgan is pitching again in the afl, m.a.g. finally made it to the bigs, and biddle just made a surprise spot-start in the instructional league, there really does seem to be good reason to believe that we'll have much better rotation backups (and long relievers) than the phils could call on in 2014.

a year or two ago, it looked like three or four of those guys would be contributing wins in this past season. the plague made amaro look even dumber than he was by erasing from the 2014 depth chart all of the solid internal rotation options the system had developed, leaving him scrambling for guys like hernandez and williams and sullivan and marquis as emergency rotation backups.

if i'm right in guessing that young starters will return to being assets, and that the young pen guys will continue to excel, improved pitching will push the 2015 win total into the high-70s, even without pleasant surprises from the offense.

then again... i've run afoul of the "young pitchers will break your heart" rule many times in the past, so i guess i probably should count on it happening again and just stick with the herd expectation of another 73 win season coming our way... sigh....

phorever wrote:phils' hitting probably will be sucky again next season (barring big steps forward from two or more of revere, brown, asche, and franco), but it's looking to me like the pitching is going to be much better. lee returning even at half his pre-injury effectiveness is at least a couple of wins better than any non-hamels rotation spot in 2014. non-herniated burnett should be a bit better than the 2014 edition. buchanan and williams were good enough that one of the two should be a solid #4. after that, the secret weapon is the set of youngish pitchers with proven upside coming off injuries that were part of the severe plague that hit young philliesstarting pitchers in 2012-14 (on top of the devastating but predictable injuries to halladay and lee). these are headlined by morgan, pettibone, and m.a.g. add in nola and you have 4 solid major-league-ready arms backing up the first 5 i named, plus maybe biddle by midseason. given that morgan is pitching again in the afl, m.a.g. finally made it to the bigs, and biddle just made a surprise spot-start in the instructional league, there really does seem to be good reason to believe that we'll have much better rotation backups (and long relievers) than the phils could call on in 2014.

a year or two ago, it looked like three or four of those guys would be contributing wins in this past season. the plague made amaro look even dumber than he was by erasing from the 2014 depth chart all of the solid internal rotation options the system had developed, leaving him scrambling for guys like hernandez and williams and sullivan and marquis as emergency rotation backups.

if i'm right in guessing that young starters will return to being assets, and that the young pen guys will continue to excel, improved pitching will push the 2015 win total into the high-70s, even without pleasant surprises from the offense.

then again... i've run afoul of the "young pitchers will break your heart" rule many times in the past, so i guess i probably should count on it happening again and just stick with the herd expectation of another 73 win season coming our way... sigh....

it's time

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005EO ... 937&sr=1-4

fine, here's the woody-fied version:
buchanan, morgan, mag, pettibone nola, biddle...

PHuture PHilly PHenoms PHinally PHit and PHruitful in PHifteen?

two guys who missed the season with shoulder injuries, another guy who missed time with an arm injury, a head case who got concussed by hail, a cheap #5 and a good prospect. hope you're not pinning a lot of improvement on their backs.

ReadingPhilly wrote:two guys who missed the season with shoulder injuries, another guy who missed time with an arm injury, a head case who got concussed by hail, a cheap #5 and a good prospect. hope you're not pinning a lot of improvement on their backs.

you did see the photo, and my reference to the injuries in both posts, right? and you do realize that we are talking out the 4/5 starter spots, right? so, no, i am pretty obviously not pinning a lot of hope on their backs. what can i do to make it more obvious? sheesh!

on the other hand, morgan and biddle returned to pitching this week, hail to the head isn't an arm injury, nor is the freak illness from the season before, and being a head case could well be a temporary side effect of the concussion. missing a season isn't the same as getting injured late in the season because it implies a great deal more recovery time. similarly, progressing through 4 levels after missing time with injuries is much better than getting injured after progressing through 4 levels. oh, and buchanan got a decent review this week from sickels. so i don't think it is reasonable to act like all of the above are dead as prospects, which is implied by several assessments of the phils minor leagues and 2015-17 rosters that don't include any of these guys other than nola. they all have a decent chance to make positive contributions in 2015, even if it is unlikely that more than one or two will do so. which is my whole point. apparently, neither long posts nor short ones, with or without humor are enough to get that across.

You seemed pretty optimistic about them in the prior post.

Yesterday, the Dodgers showed themselves to be the latest team with a firm understanding of the new world order, luring Rays wunderkind Andrew Friedman from Tampa Bay to reshape their organization despite back-to-back playoff berths.

You can talk about Yasmani Thomas and the recent amateur drafts all you want, but this is the kind of move that a true big market, big revenue organization makes when it feels itself slipping behind the rest of its brethren. There are proactive franchises, and there are reactive franchises, and there are whatever you’d consider the Phillies to be as they sit on their front porch, watching Main Street become an Interstate, yelling at the traffic.

Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/spor ... zIQ328l.99

"Get off my lawn!" -RAJ

Bless you Murph. Maybe his yammering won't change a thing. But it ain't hurtin.

that is really good.

ReadingPhilly wrote:... a cheap #5 and a good prospect. ....

lets talk some more about your cheap #5, by whom i think you mean buchanen.
it is tempting to think of him as kendrick2.0, given that both were surprise callups who succeeded in their first tour around the league despite underwhelming k-rates, and the fact that buchanen got the call at a much more advanced age. however, after his age 22 surprise, kk followed up with a predictably horrible age 23 season in the bigs, and then got hurt and saw limited action at age 24 (though that was one of his most effective partial seasons).
at age 25
nm ip k/9 bb/9 k% bb% k-bb% ld% gb% fb% iffb% babip whip oops fip xfip siera

kk 180.2 4.2 2.4 10.9 6.4 4.5 17.2 44.5 38.3 7.6 0.288 1.373 .807 4.88 4.62 4.83
db 117.2 5.4 2.4 14.1 6.4 7.8 19.3 50.7 30.1 14.1 .289 1.292 .721 4.27 4.14 4.21

db leads in everything but ip and ld%. ld% compensated by getting more popups. better groundball percentage than in any full season from kk. better k and bb rates than kk posted before age 27. lower oops than any full season from kk, including years when kk had an even lower babip.

kk was a cheap(ish) 5th starter. db was enough better at age 25 (and maybe at any age other than 22) that he seems to me to be a good bet to be a rung higher (e.g. cheap 4th starter) at ages 26 and 27.

According to a CNN article today, John Middleton is the richest person in PA. Please buy everything.

http://money.cnn.com/2014/10/15/luxury/ ... ?hpt=hp_t4