BBA Today #65 - New Stadiums, Arbitration, and River Monster Trades, Oh My!

[Ted]

Ron Collins and Ted Schmidt discuss the new stadiums in Sacramento and El Paso, as well aa Chicago's renovation. We then move on to arbitration, before getting to Schmidt's whirlwind 24 hours of trading this past Thursday night and Friday morning. The Warren Moore, Felix Vidica trade is inspected. There's a discussion of win now strategy. As always, we also get off track into other stuffs.

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[shoeless.db]

Another great episode. Great work, gents.

Re: My new stadium
You guys hit it on the head that I was looking to build a stadium that played to the type of baseball I enjoy. If that makes my team awful, well, I'll live with the consequences. I personally couldn't care less if we went a full season without my faithful Pope fans witnessing a homerun in the new ballpark, and if one is to be hit by opposing teams, it will be off a generally decent to high movement Sacramento pitcher. I actually played quite a bit with the Park Generator to better understand how the park factors were calculated from the distance/fence height adjustments. The default park factors for Sacramento already put hitters in a deficit (.972 averages, .952 homeruns), so turning into a hitters park (even for lefties or righties) was out of the question as it would make my cold weather months and warm weather months diametrically opposed (cold: no hitting; warm: good hitting). I felt it would be too difficult to put together a more consistent squad. And, to be honest, Quant Kouros and his ratings profile have proved a non-power hitter can be consistent throughout the season in Sacremento's weather, whereas even David Simpson and his power have massive ebbs and flows with the weather. I'm unsure how well the Park Generator mimics the inner workings of the OOTP engine, but as homerun factors moved, so did averages. Well, I wanted to remove the batting average bump for power hitters as moving a fence in or out should not affect the Tony Gwynn's of the BBA. I'm sure I'll regret it all in a season and write a bunch of awful team news to alter the factors...

Re: The Vidaca, et al./Moore Trade
Can I blame it on the hard egg nog my wife and I found at Costco? It's so fucking delicious -- I hope to not be sober until Christmas. But, I pulled the trigger as I wanted another starter who was BBA ready by 2046. Vidaca will likely be amazing, and I'll regret it entirely apart from him being in the Johnson. But, I felt those two were a push and I basically paid for the Prickly Pear's advanced development with the stupid knuckler and Ma (side note for Ted... he wouldn't take Useless Tilley instead of Mahadevan). Also, I really like the fact that Moore is a lefty. I wouldn't have done it if he was right-handed. I'm cautiously optimistic of my 2046 rotation (there's little chance Moore sees Sacramento prior to the all-star break) of Pollock, Winston, McCartney, Moore, and Andres/O'Toole (4 lefties and Winston, an elite movement righty).

[Ted]

@shoeless.db I like that we both call him Useless Tilley.

I am by nature a "what could go wrong" person. I know I come across as overly critical because of it. I apologize for the "doubtiness" of my tone. Frankly, the biggest reason I hate extreme parks is the difficulty it gives me in understanding what I have on my roster. As Ron has said many times, overall ratings are pretty vague/borderline useless. So any additional factor that makes it harder for me to evaluate my own player's performance is a no go for me. Anywho. Best of luck with the new park. April in cold, sea level, pitchers park Sacramento can go fuck itself.

[Jwalk100]

The moves you are making will change the landscape of the Frick. There will not be a team winning 116 games next season.

Great podcast!

[Ted]

The moves you are making will change the landscape of the Frick. There will not be a team winning 116 games next season.

Great podcast!

I feel like everyone is over-rating how threatening my team is. TWC won 68 games last year. Those trades at best, in the luckiest scenario made me an 85 win team. If I have a monster FA, maybe I can get to 100 wins. Both of those results are at the far edge of the probability curve. In all likelihood, trades got me to around 78-80 wins, and FA will get me around 90-92. And I'm not going to have much depth, so a major injury could screw me. It takes a perfect storm to do what Stephen did last year, and he had far better pitching than I do.

[Fat Nige]

I must admit I have absolutely no idea about park factors lol, I just entered the general fence distances that Wichita had and it spat out what it spat out. I wasn’t even aware that El Paso was up in the high altitude zone but having found that out I’m quite pleased that the ball looks like it will be flying out. Given where my team is in terms of skill levels I seriously doubt that any park would help me at the moment.
Just really a case of seeing how it plays the first year and then hopefully beginning to then build the team towards what the park is doing