After Wednesday

In a previous post, I had stated that people can share with me any questions or comments you have and I will try and answer.  My brother wrote in the comment section at the bottom of the last post, "41 points of OPS (the difference between Sanchez and Bird) really isn't that much. It represents 20 points of batting average from a batter who hits no extra base hits, never walks, and never sacrifices. From a player who does hit X bases and walks, the difference in batting average will be less. So at best, you're saying Bird makes Sanchez look like a 211 hitter by comparison. And it's actually less. Yay. :-)" 

40 points of OPS is not a huge amount, but there is a difference.  My main purpose of the comparison was about the production difference 2.25x as many RBI's, it wasn't about a huge OPS differential.  Interestingly, after looking at Bird, I remembered that he didn't hit well last year and in fact, he also only hit .190 last year in 147 AB's.

Here are their numbers if they each had 230 Plate Appearances (Not counting Birds 0-4 Monday):

2017 Bird:    .190 BA, .710 OPS, 27 R, 09 2B, 0 3B, 12 HR, 38 RBI and 26 BB
2018 Bird:    .191 BA, .680 OPS, 08 R, 12 2B, 4 3B, 08 HR, 17 RBI and 08 BB
18 Sanchez:  .190 BA, .721 OPS, 33 R, 12 2B, 0 3B, 12 HR, 35 RBI and 28 BB

While this is not a statistically valid sample size, it does show you what 40 points of OPS looks like.  In the cases of the 2017 Bird and the 18 Sanchez, the main difference was 4 triples for the 18 Bird were turned into 4 HR's AND a significant amount walks differential.  20 more walks for Sanchez than Bird in the same AB's and 18 more for the 17 Bird.  Another way to look at this over a full year (tripling the numbers), 41 points of OPS means that 60 times Bird made an out where Sanchez walked.  I think that is more than "not a huge amount"...as subjective as that may be.  The other piece that stands out is how much less productive Bird in 2018 has been when you extrapolate the numbers this way; about half as many RBI's and about a quarter of the runs scored (probably from not getting on base).

Anyway, just another way of looking at things.

As for the game...

It is amazing how bad the Nationals were on the base paths.  They had 1st and 2nd with nobody out and got doubled off at 2nd on a line drive to the 2nd baseman.  Then the guy on 1st base got picked off.  In the next inning, they tried to stretch a single into a double and got thrown out.  Late in the inning after getting on 1st base they got picked off again!  Later in the game they got thrown out stealing.  That is a truly terrible day on the bases.

It worked out though as they got a cheap HR to left with 2 outs and 2 runners on that changed the entire game.  Gray wasn't sharp as he simply could not throw the curve for a strike, but his fastball had good movement. 

Bird showed some signs as he had a double and a HR.  I like that Boone has played Romine a little more and given Sanchez some rest.  We are seeing Romine cool off a little but until Sanchez gets going I agree to play him 40% of the time. If Romine continues to cool then you can reduce it as well.

One last note:

On Tuesday, CC got his 1500th strikeout as a Yankee!  The interesting thing to me was that he has more strikeouts as a Yankee than the rest of his career.   He has 2,893 strikeouts (107 away from 3k) and is 9 wins away from 250.  I never thought about it, but he has been a Yankee for 10 years.  He has been very solid and his only down years were 2013-2015 where he was transitioning from being a power pitcher to a crafty lefty.  His 3,380 IP ranks 85th all time; 10 behind Bartolo Colon on the active leader for IP.  I get the feeling he may catch Colon by the end of the year.  Incredibly, Colon is 8 years older.