Another short little introduction here. While I was writing the Yonathan Daza breakdown, I wanted to check in on WAR and wRC+ for one of the most hapless teams in baseball, the Colorado Bud Blacks. The results will not surprise you whatsoever!
| wRC+ (League Avg is 100) | WAR | |
| Elias Diaz | 76 | -0.9 |
| C.J. Cron | 106 | 1.7 |
| Brendan Rodgers | 88 | 1.4 |
| Jose Iglesias | 91 | 1.4 |
| Ryan McMahon | 95 | 2.6 |
| Yonathan Daza | 97 | 0.8 |
| Randal Grichuk | 90 | 0.1 |
| Conor Joe | 88 | 0.1 |
| Charlie Blackmon | 87 | 0.0 |
Man is this bleak. Granted we know Kris Bryant has been hurt all season, yadda yadda, as they say. However, try to wrap your brain around only one hitter on the Rockies MLB roster with a wRC+ over 100. Has the Humidor finally conquered the climate-as-statistical-steroids boost that Coors Field used to deliver? I did find a 2016 article about the team raising the right field/right center field walls 8 feet:
“In a statement issued by the team, general manager Jeff Bridich said: ‘Armed with 23 years of statistics to evaluate, we are in a position to make this change, in a measured and educated way.’ ”
What can I say? This is so wildly amazing. At a time when we have interns quitting Rockies Research & Development and posting their fresh-out-of-college-the-world-is-my-oyster-gee-golly-gosh Medium blog, we yearn to be the fly on the wall during any Rockies meeting where “23 years of statistics” are used to author any major decision. Add in the fact that before Spring Training, due to former Nats R&D head Scott Van Lenten leaving only five months into his job, at one point there was only ONE SINGLE ANALYST in their R&D team. Could you imagine a team that needs analytics more than the Rockies? For pitching? Defense? But then to cite “23 years of statistics” as if this is a team that cares about statistics, and realize that nothing has changed for the past 6 years besides the name of the yes man Dick Monfort has conjured to replace the previous scapegoat.
Regardless, while Coors does rank up there on Park Factor, it is no longer the stadium that promised to turn a scrappy middle infielder into a top 10 counting stats machine.
As John Lennon once sang, “The dream is over.” He also screamed a lot too on that record. Listen to ‘Mother.’ That’s a track that’ll raise the hairs on the back of your neck with just a piano, bass, guitar, and a single vocal track. This was supposed to be short.
A Blurbstomp Reminder
We will analyze player blurbs from a given evening, knowing that 1-2 writers are usually responsible for all the player write-ups posted within an hour of the game results. We will look at:
- Flowery Diction – how sites juice up descriptions of player performance
- WARriors, Don’t Come Out to Play – Players IRL vs Players for Fantasy
- Q and Q – when a site contradicts a player valuation on back-to-back blurbs
- Bob Nightengale Syndrome – instances of updates that don’t update anything
The hope is that by season’s end, we’ll all feel more confident about our player evaluations when it comes to the waiver wire. We will read blurbs and not be swayed by excessive superlatives, faulty injury reporting, and micro-hype. I will know that I have done my job when Grey posts, and there isn’t a single question about catchers that he did not address in his post. Onward to Roto Wokeness!
Flowery Diction
Cole Ragans was racked for seven runs on eight hits over four-plus innings while taking a no-decision in Tuesday’s win over the A’s.
Ragans was split for a three-run homer by Dermis Garcia in the top of the first inning, with the 24-year-old southpaw giving up three additional runs in the top of the fourth before yielding one final run after trotting back out for the fifth inning. Ragans finished up having struck out five and walked one. Despite all this unpleasantness, the Rangers offense backed their rookie starter and came storming back from down 7-2 to take Ragans off the hook for what looked like an almost certain loss. A home matchup with the Angels shows next on Ragans’ schedule as he looks to shake off Tuesday’s tough show.
Source: Rotoworld
Put him on the rack! That’s all one hears when anyone says something like, “I’m racking my brain…” Very uncomfortable, putting your brain on some moldy wood and stretch its weird tendrils in twain. Probably a typo, and it’s then followed by “Ragans was split,” which means we’re reading a blurbist who went down the same Wikipedia “Medieval Torture” sub that your dear author finds himself inside. He was put on the rack and split? Was he drawn and quartered? Hung upside down for some blood letting? Good old Wikipedia. Combine it with insomnia and weed and soon you know more about missing frogmen from World War II than you ever will. You’ll not remember any of it the next day, is what I’m saying.
WARriors, don’t come out to play-ee-ay
Yonathan Daza went 2-for-4 in Tuesday’s loss to the White Sox.
Daza was the only Rockies batter to finish with multiple knocks — the team as a whole had five hits — in Tuesday’s loss. Over the course of 304 at-bats this season, the 28-year-old outfielder is slashing .309/.357/.391 with two homers and 29 RBI. He has now turned in two-hit efforts in five of six games since coming off a month-long stay on the injured list recovering from a dislocated left shoulder.
Source: Rotoedgesportsworld.com
The Rockies are ranked 22nd in the league for home runs. How can this be? Yonathan Daza and especially Conor Joe are Poster Children for the type of player that Bud Black and company have fallen for. Okay average, not a lot of speed, and not a lot of power. Sounds like the profile of a 5th outfielder, no? Their all-time season low is 152 home runs, and with Ryan McMahon, Charlie Blackmon, and CJ Cron as their power anchor, I do not see them hitting the 30 or so big bombs necessary to avoid another reason to feel sad for the players and fans. Usually, the Cubs are obsessed with (s)crappy little guys who can’t steal first. The Rockies wanted the full Cubs experience, so they got their little runts of the litter and overpaid Kris Bryant to be too injured to reach whatever potential he has left.
I want more Ellis Burks and less Ian Desmond. I want football game scores where they win via double-digit scores on a daily basis. Now to make blind guesses as to who the Rockies sign or trade for next season:
The list could go on, but I have a screaming baby in the next room and lord knows I don’t need any more negativity in my life.
Q&Q
Nelson Cruz departed Tuesday night’s game against the Orioles due to blurred vision in his left eye.
Cruz had a similar issue earlier this month and will be checked out by a specialist on Wednesday. The 42-year-old was 0-for-1 before his early exit Tuesday and is batting just .234/.313/.337 in 124 games this season.
Source: Rotoedgesportsworld.com
Why is his age the only thing we talk about? We’re not supposed to mention women’s ages, but now we’re expected to know the age of every baseball player? It’s a silly little thing that goes in some blurbs, probably to break the monotony of the task, but also to remind people who is approaching and who is far beyond the famed Year 27 Peak Baseball Performance. That’s no longer a thing, is it? Bill James apparently wrote an essay that promulgated said Age 27 myth, and now he’s a guy I blocked on Twitter for being an old hateful crank. The only age 27 rule that I follow involves Jim Morrison, Mama Cass, Jimi Hendrix, and Kurt Cobain: If you’re 27 and very talented, you will choke on a sandwich and the world will remember you.
Finally, of course, Cruz has blurred vision. He’s 150 years old!
Q&Q
Hunter Brown allowed two runs over six innings, fanning six along the way, in the Astros’ 6-3 victory over the Tigers on Tuesday.
Brown flashed unbelievable stuff, topping out at 98.9 mph with his fastball and an absurd 94.4 mph with his slider. He also managed just six swinging strikes on 82 pitches, a very low total for the arsenal he showed. He also had just eight whiffs in his debut last week. Brown did throw 66 percent fastballs in this one and got just three whiffs with that pitch. If he gets another start it would likely come in Tampa Bay early next week, but he might transition to the bullpen now with Justin Verlander (calf) due back soon.
Source: Rotoedgesportsworld.com
If we were just calling swinging strikes, this would be an issue. I guess his Stuff was beyond reality, but also not very great. Low whiff total. I guess he also had a low whiff total last week, but it was two whiffs higher than last week. I guess Brown threw a lot of fastballs, which only got three whiffs. I guess he may go to the bullpen.
So much about this blurb. Rotoworld/NBCSportsEdge/Yahoo blurbs have been pretty great regarding CSW results as soon as White Hat Data Miner Alex Fast’s shiny gold nugget of an article was released last year. The repetitive bumping of the swinging strike numbers from his starts seemed odd when coupled with a shock that his cosmically mighty Stuff did not prove better pitching numbers. Interestingly, Brown posted a 37% CSW for the night, teetering on the brink between “Great” and “Excellent” on Fast’s table of qualified quantities. In summation, he had a fantastic start against a rather drippy offensive team, as his CSW% would suggest.
That final bit regarding his use of the fastball seemed like it bordered on launching into another paragraph of analysis, something that we haven’t seen in the wild brushland of Blurbtopia. May we one day be blessed with such wealth.
Bob Nightengale Memorial Plaque
Franmil Reyes went 1-for-4 and scored a run on Tuesday night, helping to lead the Cubs to victory over the Mets in New York.
Reyes started a rally in the fourth inning with a leadoff single off of Jacob deGrom — ultimately coming around to score on a sacrifice fly by Yan Gomes that extended the Cubs lead to 2-0. The hulking 27-year-old finished the day 1-for-4 and is now hitting .229/.266/.390 with 13 homers and 42 RBI on the season.
Source: Rotoedgesportsworld.com
I’m begging all Blurbists to please either cite the player’s totals from the second half or for the last month. The first three months of the season seem like a year away, and for good reason. The human body replaces most of its cells over time, to the point that we are physiologically a completely different creature than we are at birth. Much like this example, these are different players. Taylor Ward has fallen off a cliff. Bo Bichette is suddenly hitting the baseball again. Albert Pujols has been resurrected from the amber encasement we were sure he would be stuck in for eternity. Phrases that need to be excised from all blurbs until the end of the season:
- For the season, he’s hitting/he’s pitched to a…
- For the campaign as a whole…
- On the season
- On Golden Pond
- Metamorphasis
- Grumpy Old Men
- Grumpy Old Men II
- No Country For Old Men
You get the picture(s). Just say the guy is hitting Whatever in However Many at-bats. Or better, can we just get the percentage of at-bats in a given season? I always assumed 500 AB’s for a great season, 600 if you’re playing every day near the top of the lineup. If a guy has 100 AB’s, one can write how well he’s done in one-fifth of a season. This will also exacerbate our tendency to prorate every statistical sample possible, but that’s fun! Random Guy just hit four homers this month! How many months in a season?! That’s how many he’ll hit all year! We’ll all be geniuses next year! No players we draft will get injured!
