Cool stat for @Vito Cruz (via this Grantland article):

Bartolo Colon has more WAR (0.1) as a hitter than he does as a pitcher (-0.2) this season.

<font color=goldenrod>Love Big Bart. He got the big screw in his last start tho which probably wound up causing him to go negative.

Flores botched a pretty routine play on the infield that still got ruled a hit. Like 4 runs came around to score as a result. None should have been earned.</font>

Quality Starts is kind of a basic stat too. If a guy pitched 6 innings every time and gave up 3 runs every time, his ERA would be 4.50. That's not very good.

I guess you have a point, though a sabermetrics fantasy league sounds like literally the most unfun thing of all time so whatever

<font color=goldenrod>Shit. RIP Darryl Hamilton.</font> :(

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/ex-mlb-...6317--mlb.html

According to ESPN's Outside the Lines report, a notebook was recently discovered that proves Pete Rose did bet on his own games while as a player. The book itself had been court sealed until recently with the Feds for years trying to connect his betting habits with the New York mafia.

http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/...ll-player-1986

When I was a fan, I really wanted to try a league with stats like FIP, wOBA and the like. Felt like playing fantasy baseball gave me a great perspective when I played in competitive daily leagues and an idea of saber stats before I realized what they were. Putting that to use with the actual data rather than using it to exploit categories like batting average and ERA would be interesting.

After that statement Frank, will you marry me?

Roberto Osuna is fucking tremendous.

How much money do you have?

About 50k a year, not including profit sharing.

Pass:p

My heart will never love again.

Maikel Franco, fuck yeah

Oh yeah, Pujols is definitely done. Right, everybody?

Depends which substances are banned

<font color=goldenrod>MLB scrubbed about 60-65 million All Star ballots. Despite that, most of the Royals still lead although some of the races are now very tight. Moustakas, Infante, and Morales all lead by very slim margins. Cabrera went back ahead of Eric Hosmer at 1B.

3B is the real shocker. Moustakas was ahead by a mile but Josh Donaldson (who has had a few celebrities campaigning on his behalf) got 5 million votes in the span of a week. He now has like 9 million votes to Moustakas' 9.3 million.</font>

If Infante starts the all-star game they should just cancel it and cancel the season and cancel baseball

And I say this as someone who kinda likes Infante and his super bushy eyebrows

<font color=goldenrod>Feel like Altuve will probably pass him now that voters are actively trying to boot out the Royals. Jason Kipnis is the real guy who should be starting, but he's not even close.

Ideally it'd be Kipnis starting with one (or two) of Altuve/Pedroia/Dozier as backups.</font>

I'd love to see Altuve start, but yeah Kipnis should be the rightful starter

<font color=goldenrod>Love Altuve in general. Probably the only player in the league shorter than me.

Luckily for him he's not white. Therefore he can avoid the obligatory "scrappy" label that every short white player in history has gotten.</font>

<font color=goldenrod>Come to think...it's probably time for me to get started on my annual "ASG Projections" that I do every year out of sheer boredom.</font>

Had always wondered why MLB decided on the number 35 for votes allowed.

Also supposedly MLB has been scrubbing fan votes for years but this year was the first time ever anyone bothered to ask them about it.

Ya. I assume many people will be voting for the person going against the Royal player in every ballot.

Nobody cares, but here's the ballot I put in 35 times:

AL:

C - Vogt
1B - M. Cabrera
2B - Kipnis
SS - Bogaerts
3B - Donaldson
OF - Trout, Brantley, A. Jones
DH - Cruz

NL:

C - Posey
1B - GOLDschmidt
2B - Wong
SS - Tulo
3B - K. Bryant
OF - Harper, Stanton, J. Upton

Absolutely beautiful day for a ballgame at Wrigley. Excited to see Joc for the first time. Has Puig been leading off alot for the dodgers this year?

No. Puig was injured for a bit. Peterson has been their primary leadoff guy.

This was pretty fun to see. Really cool when the crowd gave the guy a standing ovation when they saw the replay. Only thing better would have been if the ball was in the stands and he took the out away, legally, from Gonzalez.

Franco does it again! Goddamn this dude is fun to watch rn

Bogaerts over Iglesias? awful

<font color=goldenrod>I have a feeling Iglesias will wind up getting snubbed, unfortunately.

Escobar is way ahead in the fan voting. The players elect a backup at each spot. Feel like the players generally do a good job but I could see a lot of guys just looking at the stat lines (which don't include defense) and being like "oh...only 9 RBI? pass" even though RBIs are mostly a product of luck.

Bogaerts probably makes the team in any scenario because Boston needs a rep and there aren't too many guys from that team with a real case to be there. I could argue for Mookie Betts but the outfield options are way stronger than SS.</font>

Yeah I guess, it makes sense. As long as Miggy makes it I'm happy. Don't understand the votes for Avila at all though. VMart I can kinda get just based off his last year's numbers, even though he is entirely undeserving of it this year.

<font color=goldenrod>In the projections I'm working on, the Royals wind up only having 4 starters but still end up with 8 guys on the team.

Escobar, Perez, Cain, and Gordon as starters.

Morales as backup DH (should be Fielder but he's listed as a 1B on the ballot for some reason and the players ain't picking A-Rod).

Moustakas, Wade Davis, Edinson Volquez as managerial selections (Moose is top 10 in the AL in WAR, Davis definitely deserves to go, and Volquez...eh. There are like 5-6 AL SP on the fringe with nearly identical numbers. Could see Yost just going into FU mode given how salty he was about the voting controversy)</font>

<font color=goldenrod>I think the Tigers get at least 3 players. Miggy should start but even if the fans get Hosmer back into the starting spot, Miggy will be the elected backup. Price and Cespedes should get a lot of love from the players too.

Iglesias is the only wild card. I hope he makes it but I'm not sure he will. The players love to vote for guys with "reputation". Like I'm almost willing to bet Kershaw makes the NL squad despite the down year even though you could easily argue for a bunch of other SP in the pitching-heavy NL.

Not that Kershaw is awful this year, mind. But the players are definitely gonna pick him just because of what he did last year.</font>

I do think ARod probably "deserves" to start at DH for the AL, but agreed, not a chance in hell he gets voted as such

<font color=goldenrod>Yankees should wind up with at least 2 reps in Miller and Betances. The back-end of that bullpen is just absurd.

With A-Rod not likely to receive support the only Yankee hitter I could see making it is McCann. Figure Perez and Vogt will be there, but there usually are 3 catchers to minimize injury risk. Yost would need to pick between McCann and Martin.</font>

<font color=goldenrod>"All I know is we're not executing shit."
-Terry Collins

Funny he should say that, because I think I'd be okay with the Mets executing Terry.</font>

That was a tough choice. I know how good Iglesias has been.