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2.) The further the team goes into October, the more revenue is generated.
In a vacuum, this statement is true for every team, including teams like the A’s, Rockies, and Marlins. Which underscores how there are a lot more variables in the equation that owners are trying to optimize/solve for.
Obviously, I don’t know anything about what happened behind-the-scenes, but at the time I kinda felt for him–local kid who is intimately familiar with the rich history of the franchise, it seemed like he genuinely felt he wasn’t worthy of the honor and was embarrassed by it. To your point, how one handles the situation is a completely different matter, but it seemed like his heart was in the right place.
Statcast thinks he’s been a bit unlucky: .152 xBA vs .083 BA. But his Barrel% is 0.0% (no, that is not a typo, he has yet to barrel a ball) and his HardHit% is a pretty weak 31.8%. In short, he’s probably been a little bit unlucky, but even if you adjust for batted ball luck, it still amounts to a lot of very weak contact. Also, he has a 36% GB rate (MLB avg is 45%), so he’s hurting his BABIP by hitting more FBs than ideal for a player with his speed/strength profile.
A 31% K-rate + a lot of weak contact = bad results.
With his swing, I can’t understand why he can’t seem to connect for more home runs. Right now, he seems best suited for a pinch hitting role. If he doesn’t get squeezed by roster reality when Nootbaar, Edman and Carlson return..
Perhaps you could understand better if you would actually listen to and engage in good faith with the many thoughtful, substantive responses/contributions that have answered your question(s) with a mountain of supporting analysis, data, and evidence.
Maybe he just doesn’t like the way he looks in a red blazer. You have to acknowledge that they’re more than a little gaudy…
Always remind me of Judge Smails’s dinner jacket in Caddyshack . . .
Brian — That’s interesting about Freese. Was he not familiar with the details of the process? Did he have an opportunity to decline to be placed on the ballot prior to its public announcement? (I.e., at the time of announcement, could the committee say a player was nominated but declined the nomination?)
* 44.7% Chase Rate.
* 5.6% Barrel Rate.
* 3.4 P/PA.
* 3.3% BB-rate.
* .200 OBP.The issues are exactly the same as in the prior two years: poor plate discipline, swinging at bad pitches, quick ABs, weak contact, poor power. They’re all related. The only difference is now he’s striking out more (27% K-rate).
Many of us told you to focus on process rather than fawning over SSS spring training stats.
Bicyclemike — Agreed re the split-fingered fastball. I made reference to that earlier in the thread, I think the fact that he pioneered/revolutionized a pitch that became such a huge staple in MLB–and that his name will always be associated with it–was a not insignificant factor in differentiating his “story” from other relievers’ who had pretty similar numbers but aren’t in the HOF.
What specifically did Jim Edmonds say about “Burleson’s hitting ability” today? What was the “praise?”
Quote? Source? Link?
And how much of a discount factor should we apply for the fact that he is a home TV commentator who is paid by the team?
So far, you’ve told us 1) Burleson has gotten “plenty of ABs”; and 2) he’s a “fabulous” hitter (at least against RHP, “flame-throwing” and otherwise).
So is there some definitive point in the future at which you will address/reconcile the fact that he is currently slashing .231/.289/.371/.663 with a 82 wRC+ against RHP in those “plenty of ABs?”
I’m still bullish on Matz. I know he’s got a clunker coming up, but we haven’t seen it yet. He keeps the ball down and in the park. This isn’t smoke and mirrors. Game Ball to Matz. Hat-tip to the pen.
He’s almost completely ditched his curveball, and it seems to be working for him so far. Could be spurious, but his pitch mix has been a little different so far this year.
I don’t think there’s any way to really know if the 1982 team couldn’t have won without Sutter. Remember, prior to acquiring Sutter, they already had Rollie Fingers, and Fingers ended up having a much better 1982 season than Sutter. It’s not like the cupboard was bare.
Burleson needs to get Wally Pipp-ed.
Difference is Wally Pipp was actually a decent everyday player who could field . . .
Burleson has always played mostly vs RHP. That he wasn’t originally in the lineup vs a lefty is nothing remarkable. When he plays vs lefties he does ok.
My prior comment was facetious.
In an admittedly tiny sample, Burleson has a 76 wRC+ against LHP. That means he’s 24% worse than MLB average. If that’s “OK,” I’d hate to see what “bad” looks like.
Substituting him in for a late injury scratch shows just how much Oli respects his hitting potential . . .
As an aside, in 1984 Sutter pitched 122.2 innings (with 45 saves).
Last season the Cards had one (1) pitcher throw that many innings. Just one. In 2022 the Cards had three.
I would never begrudge Sutter his HOF accolades because he was not only a pioneer, not only a dominant player during his time, but he likely had a much longer career stolen due to overuse.
AdM — The problem with that argument is that one of the main reasons Sutter accumulated an impressive 19/24 fWAR/bWAR in his career is because he pitched a lot of innings for a reliever. The fact that he pitched more than modern relievers was an important contributor to his value. Had he been used more judiciously by the Cubs and Cardinals, it may have prolonged his career, but there’s no guarantee it would have made him any more valuable/productive.
Why would you assume that people who examine the numbers don’t watch a lot of games? Who knows, perhaps some of them watch even more than you. When did people who watch games and dive into the numbers get excluded from “traditional baseball fans?”
The problem with just using the “eye test” is precisely that it doesn’t provide context. You can’t have the same set of eyes in 29 other cities at the same time. I’m guessing everyone on here, myself included, sees far more Cardinals games than they do of any other team. So how can one possibly contextualize and interrogate what one’s eyes think they’re seeing when one is only seeing the game through the prism/perspective of 1 of 30.
The eye test is fine, but like any tool, it can be well-used or misused: you can use it to confirm what you already want to believe; or you can consistently and rigorously test it through falsification, and that’s where examining the numbers is incredibly helpful–it checks what we think we’ve seen against greater context and a more objective lens or ruler. But it’s uncomfortable, because when we’re forced to look at our favorite team and players through an external, more objective set of metrics, the answers are often unpredictable and there’s no guarantee they’ll confirm our priors.
What does any of that have to do with Bruce Sutter and his individual performance? Are you saying if the Cardinals had been a juggernaut in the 1970s, Sutter’s HOF credentials would be diminished because he would lack those “intangibles”? For reasons that have nothing to do with him one way or the other?
Those arguments sound more relevant for the Cardinals HOF than the Baseball HOF. I can understand why that backstory might affect Cardinals fans a certain way, but why would anyone else care or think it’s pertinent to judging Bruce Sutter’s individual career as a pitcher? Particularly given that over 3/4 of his career value was generated with the Cubs.
As for that 1982 season and “it never [happening] without Sutter,” that’s impossible for any of us to say. FWIW, 1982 was one of the worst seasons of Sutter’s career, and Rollie Fingers out-pitched him that year–now, that doesn’t mean the Cardinals would have won the WS anyway, but it doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have, either. Remember in 1985 when Herzog said he was going to be “45 games dumber” without Sutter and it turned out the bullpen-by-committe was statistically as good or better? These are counterfactuals we just can’t possibly know.
I’ve always found the below interesting, especially Jay Jaffe’s alternate reliever WAR metrics. Again, I do think Sutter was a good pitcher, just not as good as a lot of people seem to remember him being, and not as good as some other names whom most wouldn’t consider HOF-caliber.
Brian, thought you might enjoy this Daily News article about the Yankees having similar issues with number retirements.
From the first graph: “As of 2023, the New York Yankees have won 27 championships; so, it’s probably not much of a surprise that they’ve also retired 22 player numbers, the most in baseball. The only team that is close to retiring that many numbers are the St Louis Cardinals, with 14.”
https://www.dailynewsgems.com/2023/04/have-the-new-york-yankees-retired-too-many-numbers.html
1TD — At his best, he was no joke. But it feels strange to say this, he was already starting to decline by the time he reached St. Louis in 1981. Look at his Cubs career compared to his Cardinals years:
Team/ IP / K/9 / BB/9 / HR/9 / ERA / FIP / fWAR
Cubs: 493/9.02/2.72/0.49/2.39/2.32/16.1
Cards: 396/5.88/2.52/0.68/2.72/3.28/3.2Don’t get me wrong, he was pretty good with the Cardinals, but not like he was in Chicago. For whatever reason, his K-rate really plummeted in his final year in Chicago, and never recovered. In his true prime, he struck out a lot of hitters and missed a lot of bats while carrying a heavier workload. By the time he got to St. Louis, his K rate was down almost 1/3 from his time with the Cubs.
