55.023 – New GM Signs Old Players

[RonCo]

Byline: Max Offen Sichtlich

Off Topic

Mad Popes Drop Half A Mil on Couch Potatoes

July 21, 2055


Apparently feeling torched by his acquisition of Tsuyoshi Kobayashi (who managed a paltry 4-20 in his first week with Sacramento), and still Jonesing for something that might be mistaken for an offence, Mad Pope GM Ron Collins told a local meeting of the Youth Justice Committee that he had been a few minutes late because he’d “just signed off on contracts for four veteran players.”

Further digging reveals those four to be 1B Bob Dempsey, 3B Vasco Fonzarelli, and outfielders Curt Lehman and Lee Stone.

All four have been assigned to AAA with the intention of giving them a week to “shake the rust off” before joining the team at the end of the month. “It’s like a deadline deal, right? We get new players and don’t have to give anyone up?” said eight-year-old Timothy “Ostrich Kid” Mondrake. “What could go wrong with that?”

Poor kid.

Collins gave no further thoughts on roster moves associated with the acquisitions, but conversations with team insiders suggest the team would make room for Dempsey by optioning 22-year-old Yuu Suzuki back to AAA. Suzuki leads the team with 12 homers, but that’s like saying the snot-nosed kid with coke bottle glasses leads the School of the Blind Squirrels in identifying acorns. Big deal. His .326 batting average looks nice, too, but it’s about as hollow as the Hindenburg. At the time of this writing his WAR stands at 0.9. Meh. Send the kid back and let him grow, we say. How bad can Dempsey be? (Yeah, yeah, we know…don’t answer that with his years in Boise, all right. The guy’s had a solid year of sitting around and watching games on TV to get his priorities straight). At 29, maybe his can be the feel-good story of the year?

Likewise, Lehman is apparently slated to replace Kyuichi Mori, who has been playing a bit of left field and a bit of first base. He’s dropped -0.3 WAR in his 114 AB. Again, how much worse can it get. Of course, there’s this: Lehman signed a contract, went out and started a mega-workout procedure to get going again, and promptly fell victim to heat exhaustion. Perhaps not the brightest bell in the clocktower.

One is less certain of how Lee Stone or the Fonz play into anything, but that doesn’t seem to matter right now. One would have to start taking odds on Fred Madden having his stay in Sacramento made short. What do we know, though. Except that Collins has a checkbook and seems to know how to use it.

Throughout the news conference, assistant GM Carlos Camacho stood behind his boss, pantomiming a gag and rubbing his belly with woeful essence. When asked to comment on the deals later, Camacho gazed forlornly to the spires od the Basilica, then said “The fates of the field do not act from thoughts of benevolence; they deal with the people as the dog days of summer deal with outfield grass.”

POS	Player Name	Age	B	T	OVR	POT	Con	Con P	Gap	Gap P	Pow	Pow P	Eye	Eye P	AvK	AvK P
1B	Bob Dempsey	29	R	R	50	50	6	6	7	7	8	8	6	7	7	7
	Source		Ht	Wt	SPD	STE	RUN	CAB	CAR	IFR	IFE	IFA	TDP	OFR	OFE	OFA
	MLC		6'3"	205	3	5	2	1	1	5	5	3	2	2	1	1

POS	Player Name	Age	B	T	OVR	POT	Con	Con P	Gap	Gap P	Pow	Pow P	Eye	Eye P	AvK	AvK P
3B	Vasco Fonzarelli	29	S	R	50	50	5	5	6	6	9	9	7	9	4	4
	Source		Ht	Wt	SPD	STE	RUN	CAB	CAR	IFR	IFE	IFA	TDP	OFR	OFE	OFA
	MLC		6'1"	200	1	2	1	1	1	6	7	8	7	3	3	7

POS	Player Name	Age	B	T	OVR	POT	Con	Con P	Gap	Gap P	Pow	Pow P	Eye	Eye P	AvK	AvK P
RF	Curt Lehman	31	R	R	50	50	7	7	8	8	7	7	6	6	6	6
	Source		Ht	Wt	SPD	STE	RUN	CAB	CAR	IFR	IFE	IFA	TDP	OFR	OFE	OFA
	MLC		6'6"	200	9	9	9	1	1	1	1	4	1	6	7	8

POS	Player Name	Age	B	T	OVR	POT	Con	Con P	Gap	Gap P	Pow	Pow P	Eye	Eye P	AvK	AvK P
LF	Lee Stone	31	R	R	55	55	7	7	8	8	8	8	6	6	7	7
	Source		Ht	Wt	SPD	STE	RUN	CAB	CAR	IFR	IFE	IFA	TDP	OFR	OFE	OFA
	MLC		6'2"	200	2	4	5	1	1	1	1	3	1	2	6	7

[BaseClogger]

Lehman gave me a great 300 PAs a couple seasons ago. Decided to give him the job going into the next year and he fell on his face. He doesn't have big platoon splits but that's how I used him to success.

[JimSlade]

The Fonz is back, baby!

[Jwalk100]

Just hit on one or two and it will help your offense.

This team is changing before our eyes.

[RonCo]

It may sound odd to say, but I don't know that this offense is particularly well-designed for this park.

Our hitters, for example, have managed 19 home runs in our own park--but the opposition has 46. Despite a pretty much elite pitching staff. That's a 27-run deficit (assuming nothing but solo shots) in 45 games, or about half a run a game.

But what do I know? Shoeless is the one with the hardware.

[BaseClogger]

It may sound odd to say, but I don't know that this offense is particularly well-designed for this park.

Our hitters, for example, have managed 19 home runs in our own park--but the opposition has 46. Despite a pretty much elite pitching staff. That's a 27-run deficit (assuming nothing but solo shots) in 45 games, or about half a run a game.

But what do I know? Shoeless is the one with the hardware.

Best study would be the delta between your road wOBA and home wOBA compared with your visitors.

[RonCo]

It may sound odd to say, but I don't know that this offense is particularly well-designed for this park.

Our hitters, for example, have managed 19 home runs in our own park--but the opposition has 46. Despite a pretty much elite pitching staff. That's a 27-run deficit (assuming nothing but solo shots) in 45 games, or about half a run a game.

But what do I know? Shoeless is the one with the hardware.

Best study would be the delta between your road wOBA and home wOBA compared with your visitors.

Maybe there's a place to get wOBA someplace, but all I know how to find is OPS (well, and a few others. Here's the OPS chart for us:

	Road	Home
SAC Hitters	0.769	0.682	-0.087
Opponents	0.688	0.645	-0.043

So we're losing almost 90 points of OPS at home vs. on the road, while our opponents are losing half that.

[BaseClogger]

It may sound odd to say, but I don't know that this offense is particularly well-designed for this park.

Our hitters, for example, have managed 19 home runs in our own park--but the opposition has 46. Despite a pretty much elite pitching staff. That's a 27-run deficit (assuming nothing but solo shots) in 45 games, or about half a run a game.

But what do I know? Shoeless is the one with the hardware.

Best study would be the delta between your road wOBA and home wOBA compared with your visitors.

Maybe there's a place to get wOBA someplace, but all I know how to find is OPS (well, and a few others. Here's the OPS chart for us:

	Road	Home
SAC Hitters	0.769	0.682	-0.087
Opponents	0.688	0.645	-0.043

So we're losing almost 90 points of OPS at home vs. on the road, while our opponents are losing half that.

Well that’s damning.

[RonCo]

Well that’s damning.

Even more so when you split it into components and see that OBP does not have much separation (both SAC and Opponents lose about the same amount coming to the Basilica)

OBP	Road	Home
SAC Hitters	0.350	0.320	-0.030
Opponents	0.311	0.279	-0.032

But Slugging...

SLG	Road	Home
SAC Hitters	0.409	0.361	-0.048
Opponents	0.391	0.366	-0.025

We see that the park kills us simply because we cannot drive the baseball and other teams can. Our doubles and triples do great things for us in other team's parks. But in ours we can't get to the IP part of BABIP.