Poll of the Day > Sports Discussion Topic #176: Welcome back to another edition of the Sports Topi

(+) Yeah! (+)

But yes you get better info from just seeing the triple slash line

CaptainHammer posted...

OPS is very out of style

Yeah it's all about OPSBIs now

Wow they added flairs to GameFAQs but there isn't even a SPORTS flair for PotD! Outrage!!!

OPS itself isn't great but OPS+ tends to correlate pretty strongly with wRC+ and is easier to understand.

smh at there being an "off topic" flair on this board

Yeah I don't quite understand that one. Also you can only select one at a time. I know they like to roll things out first and get feedback later, but I think they could have a little more foresight than that

We will definitely have to use the Live Event flair because sometimes we post about games as they are happening

These are actually a really dumb idea for GameFAQs the more I think about it. I like the idea of being able to filter out politics topics but that's only useful if people actually bother to flair them. Enforcing it wouldn't really be easy either. There are like 80 topics a day made on PotD and there isn't a dedicated staff for just this board. Then think of some place busier like CE and how many hundreds of active game boards exist. It works on reddit because there are subreddits that have like half a dozen dedicated moderators and only ten topics get posted a day, and each subreddit can make their own flairing rules.

What a weird thing to add in year 800 of this site

[Live Event]

The Cardinals are down 4 runs in the bottom of the 9th and have loaded the bases. They will not tie the game.

Caps back to their usual selves....
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STLCards1991 posted...

OPS itself isn't great but OPS+ tends to correlate pretty strongly with wRC+ and is easier to understand.

wRC+ is probably where we should be moving to, just because it is super easy to explain.

"it measures how good you are at the plate, 100 is average, higher is better"
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TyVulpine posted...

Caps back to their usual selves....

Nah, they're tied after 4 games. The Lightning are stronger defensively, and the Caps haven't had Backstrom for a few games, either. They aren't in a terrible situation, and if they win Game 5, they're in control.
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Zeeky_Bomb posted...

STLCards1991 posted...

OPS itself isn't great but OPS+ tends to correlate pretty strongly with wRC+ and is easier to understand.

wRC+ is probably where we should be moving to, just because it is super easy to explain.

"it measures how good you are at the plate, 100 is average, higher is better"

Yeah but you gotta get into wOBA and park factors if they ask for an explanation.

That's why I say OPS+ is ok. OPS is a pretty easy calculation.

CaptainHammer posted...

Yeah but you gotta get into wOBA and park factors if they ask for an explanation.

Fair, although park factors is an easy enough explanation (and even when considered on a basic level, a fun element of baseball).
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TGIF fellas... Let's go get this paper

The Rockies are gonna win the NL West with 88 wins and a -40 run differential

Fangraphs currently projects Arizona to take it at 84-78 with a +9 differential. Weird season so far

Yeah it's a shitty division right now. Wasn't it supposed to be super competitive with three or four playoff contenders? Or I should say super competitive beyond the Dodgers who of course were heavily favored to win it

We all agreed the Dodgers would 100% take it and then we all had our opinions about the next three teams. I predicted that they'd all miss the playoffs because they felt like tweeners to me, and maybe they all are but that just means that 85 could get them into the playoffs. The Diamondbacks were looking good until this recent skid and now they're starting to have a lot of problems all at once

The season is young. The Dodgers will end up taking that division

I don't think so. Seager is done for the year, Kershaw is out again and maybe not himself anyway, Bellinger and Taylor have predictably regressed, Matt Kemp is like their best hitter, Kenley Jansen maybe sucks now. There are a ton of question marks around them this season and there would be even if they weren't currently missing their two best players. The rotation seems to be in decent shape but it's tough to rely on Ryu and Walker Buehler and whoever the 5th guy is right now. Wood is reliable and Maeda is reliably competent though

Plus without Kershaw the rotation is at best modestly better than the Rockies' and Diamondbacks' rotations, at least until the Diamondbacks shut down Patrick Corbin soon

I don't actually think the Rockies' pitching is really good enough to continue to hold up the team. They're giving starter time to two of the bottom ten WAR guys (Ian Desmond and Gerardo Parra). Carlos Gonzalez is also very bad. It's crazy how you can manage to put together one of the worst offenses in the league when you play at Coors

I don't think the Rockies are good either, I just think it might not matter. I'd still put money on the Diamondbacks winning that division

If the Rockies can stay afloat until July, are there any good 1B/OFs we can expect on the trade market? Or even just average ones would be an upgrade. Who was there this offseason? Obviously they had no chance with JD Martinez, maybe they should have gotten Hosmer... I don't remember what other big names there were

Off the top of my head, Lucas Duda, Logan Morrison, and Todd Frazier (he's a 3B but I'm sure plays 1B just fine) were all available. Frazier would have been a great add but the other two have been pretty atrocious.

Chewster posted...

If the Rockies can stay afloat until July, are there any good 1B/OFs we can expect on the trade market? Or even just average ones would be an upgrade. Who was there this offseason? Obviously they had no chance with JD Martinez, maybe they should have gotten Hosmer... I don't remember what other big names there were

The Brewers are always trying to shop around Braun, but he is not good enough for teams to overlook how often he gets hurt.
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I wouldn't be surprised if the Rockies get rid of CarGo at least, but I assume with how much money they've put towards Desmond they aren't going to do anything with him

I was about to say, don't the Rockies already have the best possible 1B/OF in Ian Desmond?

I'm meeting friend for the twins/pooers game, and nobody can get here until 6 and I was done working at 5, so I'm sitting at a bar alone like a cool person

I like sitting alone at a bar, I'm just too cowardly to do it most of the time

Half of the people here are #brewcrew. I really wish Wisco leaders would quit being the literal scum of the earth and allow their own people to get a job in their own state. Let us Minnesotans be miserable by ourselves

The Rockies should trade for Joey Gallo, just because.

Really, they should fill their line-up with three true outcome players. Grab Schimpf and Jabari Blash off the Angels for shits and giggles.
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Do they have some kind of cumulative metric for measuring basically how good of a "contact hitter" somebody is? Cause I have to imagine Gallo is the worst in the league after seeing some of the crazy shifts that have succeeded against him

My mom had the royal wedding on so I caught a couple minutes of it. It looked like the most boring ceremony ever. It actually seemed more like a memorial service. Even the bride and groom looked bored.

Well you'd have to be insane to willingly join the royal family when you didn't have to. Now that's your dumbass life forever

I'll take the dumbass life of royalty over the dumbass life of poverty any day

Something pretty strange happened at the ballpark last night. My friend and I were at the ATM because the lines for concessions were really long, and the hawkers who took cash had 0 lines. This guy wearing the same vest/hat/uniform that all the target field vendors wear comes up to us and asks us what we need, saying that he'll get it for us for cheaper. We said 4 beers, and he said he'll give us 4 beers for $20 (more than half off), and asks what kind.
Then he says ok I'll go get it, in the meantime, walk around for a couple minutes. When you see me come back, follow me into the bathroom. So we did exactly that, and got our cheap beer in the bathroom standing next to a line of dudes waiting to piss, like it was some kind of drug deal. I didn't see where the vendor guy went, but he clearly went to a stockroom, swiped the beer, and pocketed the money

That is pretty weird. In the spur of the moment, I would be running through a list of all the things that could go wrong in that scenario and I'd probably just decline. But I'm glad your bathroom beers worked out for you.

I'd decline because bathroom beer is gross to me

We just figured why not. Also didn't hurt that we were a couple beers deep at that point.

not long after that, we sort of snuck in to the lower level right behind home plate to meet up with some friends who had nice seats. It was like the 7th inning and the twins were losing, so the stadium was emptying out. After about 15 minutes, one of the ushers came to us and said we can't be sitting there if those weren't our assigned seats, so we left. Not sure how it is at other ballparks, but at target field they sort of check your tickets as you enter the lower level dugout area, but it's easy enough to just walk behind a group of people.

anyway, we get back up to the concourse and this guy who was behind us comes up and says hey we were just leaving, you can sit in our seats if you want, and gives us 4 tickets. According to the tickets, the guy is a season ticket holder with row 10 seats right behind home plate. Then we walked over to the same usher who asked us to leave and showed him the tickets. He said (not a direct quote): Ok you rascals, you can go down, but you have to stay in these assigned seats

Also apparently for row 10 home plate seats full season ticket page, seats are $66 each. pretty great price for an individual game, but for 4 all season that adds up.

MNTwins1991 posted...

Something pretty strange happened at the ballpark last night. My friend and I were at the ATM because the lines for concessions were really long, and the hawkers who took cash had 0 lines. This guy wearing the same vest/hat/uniform that all the target field vendors wear comes up to us and asks us what we need, saying that he'll get it for us for cheaper. We said 4 beers, and he said he'll give us 4 beers for $20 (more than half off), and asks what kind.
Then he says ok I'll go get it, in the meantime, walk around for a couple minutes. When you see me come back, follow me into the bathroom. So we did exactly that, and got our cheap beer in the bathroom standing next to a line of dudes waiting to piss, like it was some kind of drug deal. I didn't see where the vendor guy went, but he clearly went to a stockroom, swiped the beer, and pocketed the money

This kicks ass. Were the beers cold I hope?

SkynyrdRocker posted...

I'd decline because bathroom beer is gross to me

it was right past the bathroom door, quite a ways from any toilets, and the dude handed us unopened cans, so...

STLCards1991 posted...

This kicks ass. Were the beers cold I hope?

yeah they were cold. And another unexpected benefit is that they were unopened. Not sure if it's like this at sports events in other places, but if you buy a beer at a stadium in MN, the vendors are required to open the can. Like once I bought 2 and asked that they don't open the second can and they said no sorry, but we have to. It's annoying to walk around a stadium and go up stairs with an opened can.

That guy is a cool guy

Oh unopened cans. I was picturing those plastic cups of beer

One time I was at a game with my mom and brother. We were in standing room only for whatever reason. And a guy with his kids was leaving and gave us his tickets so we could get past the checker and sit 3 rows from the action. It was tight, except that the people sitting in that area were whispering about how we were just stealing their seats as soon as they got up. Fuckin rich people.

yeah that would be a bit of a different story

Yeah they open the cans everywhere. If the cans were unopened then that was really the best possible turn of events.