New Format; Seager in the 2 Slot
Be Afraid, baby

.

gnatto sez,

.

doc, im not seeing a thumbs up option anywhere.

The other thing that would be nice is being able to click on the comments number at the bottom of the posts and when it loads it goes straight to the top of the comments rather than the top of the article, and in the article if you click that same comments number it takes you down to the top of the comments....

.

The thumbs-up option, is top left in any comment, or is the editor the only one who is seeing this at the moment?  Thusly:

Thumbs Up
Thumbs Up baby

I think (hope) next is the feature that turns a comment "green" for a certain number of recommendations.  Personally I am very strong on this feedback loop on an interactive website.  ... even if 10-15 guys are going through clicking on comments they agree with, it gives a nice sense of what the community trend is on a given issue.

.....

"Would be nice to click on the comments number at the bottom of the posts ..."   :: taps chin ::  Oh, you mean when you're in the carousel.  Ya, that would ideally take you directly to the comments area; that's standard and I'm sure the admins have this in their Change Request bin.  :- )

.....

So.  With any change in format, there is an "automatic sales resistance" because the old familiar format was easy for the mind to process.  Going from old to new is like going from QWERTY to DVORAK; of course DVORAK is going to draw scowls in the first few days ....

That said, I can't even remember what the old format was now.  LOL.  We have a nice carousel up top to scan articles -- I like the look and feel of it, think it's very appealing -- and then there's a HUGE Shout Box area for you feebs who think that's the best part of SSI.  The look of the top page reflects the personality of the users' habits.  Perhaps in the comments box below you'll be kind enough to put some "second stage" feedback as to the new platform?  

One of my own fave upgrades is that when you hit the "Active Threads" button, you get a big fat threaded menu with usernames and titles nested, most recent convo's at the top, which was wayyyy too much info to cram into a fraction of the sidebar.

Also, does everybody use the Single Column Shout Box or do some amigos use the multi-column?

.....

THIRD ORDER THINKING

McClendon likes Kyle Seager #2 because "he's a good fastball pull hitter."  Tony La Russa did this with Dave Henderson behind Rickey Henderson; Hendu was all about fastballs, and Rickey got him lots of fastballs.  Hendu had 130 OPS+ scores in 1990-91, at ages 31-32, the two years he hit behind Rickey; he was a career 100-105 hitter all his other years.

We sabes do not believe much in "ideal #2 hitters," but this is definitely an asterisk to it.  That's a manager's job, to create "UP" seasons for his players, as McClendon did with the relievers last year.  You can sometimes do this by putting a fastball hitter behind guys with high OBP's.

To which you can confidently say, "Where's the guy with a high OBP?  Wouldn't that be the 5 slot, behind Cano and Cruz?"  and you'd be right.

We sabes prefer Kyle Seager #2 because --- > you pile your best hitters into the high slots, getting them more AB's.  The M's are doing this and, perhaps not coincidentally, they've had 30 days as one of the top 6-8 offenses in baseball.

What I like is that the enemy SP comes under IMMEDIATE pressure -- sometimes this might rattle him and cause a night where he's out of rhythm.  As opposed to throwing the guy an easy 0 on, 2 out situation to start the game.  With bases empty and 2 out, your average return is like 0.2 runs, so you might as well say that you're spotting the enemy SP a free inning.  This puts him in a rocking chair for the night.

First-order thinking:  get a baserunner #1, and then get a bat-control guy #2 so you can hit and run.

Second-order (sabe) thinking:  Lineup protection doesn't exist because we can't measure it.  Get your best hitters to the top of the lineup.

Third-order thinking:  Disrupt enemy pitching in the first inning, which may frequently lead to bad nights for the other SP although you'll never be able to measure the effect.

......

Seager now has 57 career games at #2, with 250 plate appearances, and is hitting .295/.365/.480 there.  Better than at any other spot.  This year he's got 14 games there, batting .295/.350/.500.  Correlation doesn't apply causation; another way to put that is to remember that the rooster's crowing doesn't make the sun come up.  Seager might have gotten hot a month ago, and then been put into the #2 slot.

But it LOOKS to Dr. D like Seager flourishes in the 2 spot, perhaps because they pitch to him there.  That leaves Robinson Cano (#4 right now) as the guy "without protection," the guy who protects HIMSELF by not swinging at balls.  Not sure that you want to slide the better pitches to Seager rather than Cruz/Cano, but ... we've got a real-world return here.  This batting order has been ripping it up.

......

PROGNOSIS

Mike Montgomery has proved human, getting rocked in 2 of the last 3 games, but --- > he is allowed growing pains.  Last time out, he walked 5 and fanned only 2.  But Dr. D warned you that the lad's mechanics are suspect.  

So sue him.  He's got an extremely diverse arsenal, his change speed game is unquestionably plus, and his makeup is right where you want it to be.  We sent the Yankee$ a kid named Tino Martinez one time; the Yankee$ thought and thought and decided to send us Sterling Hitchcock rather than Andy Pettitte.  Purely on the basis of makeup; "Hitchcock gives up a homer and blames his catcher.  Pettitte scowls and figures out what he needs to do better."

Monty got swatted around by the Tigers and Angels, but in between was the 9-strikeout (all swinging) performance at New York.  You knew he was a rookie, no?  On any given night he has either shot himself in the foot, or made the best lineups in baseball look helpless.  Earl Weaver watched a baseball game by starting with the question, "How are the two starters THROWING tonight?"  The first 6-8 pitches for either SP can be fun to study.

BABVA,

Dr Detecto

Comments

1

And I use single threaded shoutbox only since you asked.  Multi-threaded is a good idea, but we need to figure out how to make it readable and easy to scan by topic.

I'd like to see an end to the hashtag stuff in the shoutbox - I have never once clicked on a hashtag to see who else was using that word because the engine they're using to match topics is terribly un-intelligent and connects single in the baseball sense to the dating site version...Montgomery is linked to the town in Alabama...etc.

2

No thumbs up where you point it out. I click through to the multi shoutbox when I am on a desktop computer which is rare, I can imagine it being utilized, however I feel like it has no real chance to catch on with mobile devices being the present/future. 

When you open an older article with new comments it would be good to see some indication of new ones that you haven't read. I've yet to see a website that can do it effectively but it sure would make a difference.

3

No thumbs up seen here, but it would be great. It was a feature of TopSports/SportSpot/MarinerCentral that I really liked. It rewarded solid contributions, made you feel rewarded when you put in some effort on a post, and probably upped everybody's game a bit.

Edited to add: It also helped newbies see the lay of the land, who has earned a lot of respect on the board, etc. I always feel for newbies whenever they get started on any forum frequented by really knowledgable people. See it happen all the time (on other boards, and a few times here) where a newbie comes on a little strong and doesn't realize who he's dealing with. Of course some people will do that anyway because they're jerks, but some people just need a little help with who deserves respect, sorta like in the movie Jurassic Park where Grant shows the kid rather graphically why velociraptors deserved respect.

Add comment

Filtered HTML

  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd><p><br>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

shout_filter

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.