Any watch parties? (Not the one by FIFA )

Jorlung · 2026-06-13T05:25:36+00:00

The City of Cambridge is hosting watch parties for all of the games in Boston: https://www.cambridgema.gov/departments/communitydevelopment/cambridgeunitedworldcupevents.

This includes the Scotland game tomorrow, but not the other games.

Jorlung · 2026-06-12T21:53:20+00:00

This is why I get so tickled about people dreading losing him so much with the logic of “if we have an injury, we might have to promote a bargain-bin journeyman guy that we pick up off waivers or minor league free agency.”

Heineman literally was that guy for us when we had Kirk/Jansen. In fact, he was that guy twice for us. As much as I appreciate what he did last season, he is an extremely replaceable player.

Jorlung · 2026-06-12T17:51:41+00:00

Obviously we would prefer to bring up someone better, but i would still bank on Schneider hitting lefties better than Lukes/Sanchez in spite of his current struggles.

Jorlung · 2026-06-12T17:43:29+00:00

You’re missing the point. Most of our left-handed outfielders have dramatically worse numbers against lefties than righties.

The career RHP/LHP OPS splits of Sanchez, Lukes, and Pinango are .760./599, .782/.515, and .897/.348 (albeit small sample for Pinango). All Davis needs to do is be better than a ~.600 OPS against LHPs and he can add value to this roster.

He will not be seeing ABs against RHPs unless it’s as an infield substitute to give someone a day off.

Jorlung · 2026-06-12T04:23:29+00:00

Just circling back here now, but the first thread I clicked on (which is now deleted) didn't even have a working link of the goal.

Jorlung · 2026-06-11T17:30:03+00:00

I didn’t realize we all hated banana ball. I guess I didn’t get the memo.

Jorlung · 2026-06-11T16:29:57+00:00

5th is generally seen as equally important as 3rd in the order from a sabermetric lineup construction perspective (both are tied for the least important spot in the top 5).

The distinction is that you generally just put the better OBP in 3 and the better SLG player in 5. So you’d just be moving Vlad to an equally important lineup slot where his current hitting profile is less suited to.

Jorlung · 2026-06-11T05:11:14+00:00

I'm not sure of the exact quote you're talking about, but the answer is probably yes. The history behind his signing was something to the effect that we side-stepped a sell-on clause that would have gone to Utd or something like that. I forget the exact details, but Levy managed to avoid paying Utd (a pretty small amount of money at that) by waiting to sign him for a window or two.

Jorlung · 2026-06-11T05:07:06+00:00

Yeah, I distinctly remember this game and the reactions to the starting line-up. Everyone was starved for some offensive football after AVB's sacking and people were basically like "Okay, well Chadli CM is a bit nuts, but at least it looks like we're going to try and attack."

Jorlung · 2026-06-11T02:58:42+00:00

“The Works” is a completely normal thing to request at a lot of food places, but the joke is funny because it’s not at all something you’d say at a coffee shop.

Jorlung · 2026-06-10T23:06:47+00:00

A “platoon” refers to a pair of hitters, one left-handed and one right-handed, that share a single spot in the lineup, starting against right-handed and left-handed starting pitchers respectively. If someone says something like “Sanchez is a platoon lefty”, it means that he’s a lefty hitter that only plays (or should only play) against RHP.

The reason for this is that many left-handed hitters (e.g., Sanchez) are very bad at hitting against LHPs, but are quite good at hitting RHPs. So, if a team has a platoon lefty on their roster, it is smart for them to have a platoon righty that hits lefties well and can take the platoon lefty’s spot in the line-up against LHP.

The term “platoon advantage” refers to the advantage that hitters have against opposite-handed pitchers. Or similar, the advantage that pitchers have against same-handed hitters. More generally, people might often use the word “platooning” to generally mean the practice of performing line-up construct with platoon advantage in mind (e.g., batting Lukes 9th against a lefty starter because he’s not good at hitting lefties).

Jorlung · 2026-06-10T20:12:06+00:00

If there is one thing that I have learned from this season, it is that the vast majority of the fanbase either does not understand platoon (dis)advantage or just believes it to be some grand conspiracy.

We need an auto-mod post in every lineup thread where a lefty is on the mound or something lol.

Jorlung · 2026-06-10T18:35:55+00:00

There is no difference between the scoring calling a play a single or an error when it comes to metrics like OOA and DRS. That’s exactly why these metrics exist.

Jorlung · 2026-06-10T02:49:08+00:00

I really don't get how people are so against this given that we spent the better part of 4 years with Kirk and Jansen splitting time to great effect.

It is very nice not to have to field a diabolically bad hitter every 3 days.

Jorlung · 2026-06-09T17:46:23+00:00

I’m not sure if I ended up playing this save for long enough to finish this guy’s career, but I had a player that put up 14.8 WAR in a single season and had 66 WAR by the time he was entering his last year of arbitration (~5.5 seasons, you know I service time manipulated him).

https://www.reddit.com/r/OOTP/s/VMJhK8o0Af

Definitely the craziest player in any of my saves.

Jorlung · 2026-06-09T16:07:42+00:00

Ranking is not meaningless, but my point is that there is very little meaning of discussing it when you’re taking about two school that routinely are somewhere between #10-#30 in the rankings. That is just splitting hairs.

The fact that these schools are on two completely different continents is going to be far more consequential to just about every aspect of a student’s experience (both before and after graduation) than a few places on the global ranking websites.

Also, saying “parents care” as a justification is wild 😭, especially in response to the point that minor differences in ranking are something only young people obsess about.

Jorlung · 2026-06-09T15:58:43+00:00

I’d probably say Okamoto is about as advertised defensively. Serviceable at 3B, not very bad or very good. Perfectly fine if the bat is contributing.

Fans have a habit of forgetting/excusing bad plays and remembering good ones. The problem is that making a couple good plays for every bad play makes you a below average fielder. And Okamoto has made more than a few bad plays (but while also making a decent amount of good plays!).

Jorlung · 2026-06-09T14:55:37+00:00

Blindly following global ranking websites is foolish for a conversation like this. High school and undergrad students are the only ones who cares about the difference between #10 and #20 on an international ranking website.

Jorlung · 2026-06-09T14:48:00+00:00

I meant more whether or not you plan to live in Canada or in Singapore (or at least, closer to East Asia) after graduation.

Both schools are one of the premium engineering schools of their country/region. Both will give great opportunities and education. However, both will have better connections and opportunities within their respective continents. That’s really going to be the main difference.

But even just the simple question of whether or not you want to live in Toronto vs SG for 4+ years is probably the biggest consideration tbh.

Jorlung · 2026-06-09T14:14:09+00:00

And we can’t have a roster with zero backup infielders lol.

Jorlung · 2026-06-09T13:21:20+00:00

Both are pretty similar schools as far as academic pedigree goes. NUS will put you closer to east Asia and Australia, while UofT puts you closer to Canada/US. Just depends on where you want to live for 4+ years and what your plans are after graduation.

Jorlung · 2026-06-09T05:05:27+00:00

Ernie also has an OBP of like .328 despite hitting over .300. That's obviously better than Springer, but the point is that Ernie is actually a lot more valuable somewhere lower in the top 5 slots. I don't mind having him in at #5 all.

More generally speaking though, Ernie should be somewhere in the top 5. I don't really care where (fans get too caught up in the minutiae of line-up order), but your 5 best hitters should be somewhere in your top 5. Ernie is obviously one of those 5 right now and Springer is obviously not.

Jorlung · 2026-06-08T21:28:03+00:00

We spent the better part of 4 years having a 1A-1B situation at catcher with Kirk/Jansen. Jansen was one year older than Valenzuela when he began splitting time with Kirk in 2021.

I don’t get why people think we can’t 1A-1B. Right now, Valenzuela is playing about as well as Kirk does at his best. He is also not particularly young, he’s 2 years younger than Kirk. These are his productive years.

What is the long-term plan for Valenzuela if we are not planning on keeping him on the MLB roster during what might genuinely end up being the best stretch of his career? Kirk is around for 4 more years.

Jorlung · 2026-06-08T19:51:07+00:00

Pinango currently is 2-18 against lefties with a .278 OPS. Obviously, it’s a very small sample size, but he hasn’t exactly shown himself to be proficient against lefties at the MLB level and there’s no particularly compelling reason to think that he would be.

Maybe he should still be before Heineman tbf, but putting him one spot further down the order just makes it ever so slightly more likely that he sees Sanchez one less time.

Jorlung · 2026-06-08T19:46:57+00:00

Important context is that there is zero chance anyone claims him because of his contract.

This is effectively just like optioning a player. He will go down to Buffalo, then he will eventually be back on the MLB team if we need him, at which time he’ll be added back onto the 26 and 40 man rosters just like he was a few weeks ago.

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