Been a long time
 

Since we had a Ohtani is over rated thread. Anyone want to give it a shot?

I certainly don't think he's overrated but I think that not having the stress of pitching on his body, is allowing him to produce better. He's putting up career highs in every offensive category right now, clearly the not pitching is putting less stress on his body.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I think the best way to utilize him would be as a high leverage Reliever. Imagine him coming out of the pen for 2-3 innings once every 4-5 games? He would be able to throw as effectively and as hard as he wants and would most likely have less stress on his Elbow.

For $700 million? If that's entertainment for you, you can have it. I'm out. Have fun.

Just for fun, I'll try. He's approaching 30 and has 747 career hits and a .280 BA. And what made him special -- the pitching -- is gone and may not return. Does that help?:D

This is probably the best argument you're going to get -- something backward looking that focuses on career counting stats and BA. You could also highlight his strikeout rate. I'd agree that if the pitching is gone forever, then he will need that 3rd MVP award, a Gold Glove or two in the outfield, plus a WS ring to make up for it.

Of course, I suspect he will be worth the $700mm contract from a commercial standpoint after just one or two more seasons with the Dodgers, so long as he avoids the pedophilia problem that seems to afflict major league baseball players. I'd love to find out from some investment banker how much more the Dodgers are now worth as a franchise with Ohtani on their team.

I think we also have to distinguish that there's a lot more to the contract than just his production as well. I do agree the financial numbers are ridiculous, but most contracts in all major sports are trending this way. No player should be paid the amount of money they are receiving nowadays, but that's a different discussion for another thread.

Ohtani gives the Dodgers the Japanese market, plus he was one of the main reasons they were able to sign Yamamoto, and most likely the reason they will be one of the favorites to land two other NPB stars, Roki Sasaki and Munetaka Murakami once they are posted.

Ohtani is well on his way, assuming health, to winning a third MVP this season just for his offensive numbers. Every other 3 time MVP award winner is either in Cooperstown (DiMaggio, Campanella, Berra, Foxx, Mantle, Musial and Schmidt), bound for Cooperstown (Pujols and Trout), or in the category of having the numbers but being associated with PEDs (Bonds, Rodriguez). Ohtani will end up there one day as well.

The comment about pedophilia problems for MLB players surprised me. Care to elaborate? I know there have been accusations made about Roger Clemens and Pete Rose being involved with underage girls along with the ongoing investigation of Wander Franco, but making a blanket statement that it's a problem afflicting MLB players seems a bit over the top.

Yeah, sounds like a societal issue to me and not something baseball players have an issue with more than bankers, lawyers, and teachers. Weird comment.

Ohtani could get 6 MVPs in a row and there will be people who will say “yeah, but his time running from second to third base has really slowed down……. And he’s getting a lot less walks.”

I am loathe to run a statistical analysis of the industries most associated with pedophilia. I made my comment after reading about that guy from the Red Sox who was literally taken down that day. You've got Wander Franco. You've got Dustan Mohr, Mel Hall. A little bit of Felipe Vasquez. Sergio Mitre. Chad Curtis is in there. Luis Polonia. That's from a very cursory google search.

I won't count John Wetteland, accused three times -- but not convicted. Nor will I count Pete Rose or Roger Clemens. I didn't realize that the standard for posting is statistical robustness. If so, my bad.

Yes it is the standard. If you're going to post that X group has a problem with being pedophiles, that group better turn out to be statistically prone to that charge. When you say a group or organization has a problem with being pedophiles, obviously that should be a statistically valid claim. That's an extremely serious charge, why shouldn't the claim be statistically robust? A few names out of many thousands to paint MLB as having a pedo problem is pretty weird and so far out of left field nobody saw that ball coming.

Ok fine. I'll play a bit more. According to the Baseball Almanac, there have been 20,618 players who have played in an MLB game since 1876. The number of players who have played since 1947 is around 11,000, according to the Society for American Baseball Research. I recall reading somewhere that Albert Pujols, who started in 2001, was around player number 16,000. In any given year, there are about 1,000 MLB players on all the rosters. I'm going to estimate that the number of of MLB players who have played since 1996 is around 5,500, or half the total who have played since 1947. Happy to be challenged on the exact number, but I cannot find it easily.

I use 1996 as the base year because that was the year that New York passed the Sex Offender registry law, and there is online data available. It also happens to be the case that the 8 players that I named in my last post all played after 1996.

I compared the convicted sex offender registration rate in the top 15 wealthiest zip codes in New York (adjusted for the number of males between 18-64 in those zip codes) with that of the estimated MLB population since 1996. Why do I choose the 15 wealthiest zip codes? It's not perfect, but someone made the point that pedophilia might be as common among bankers, lawyers and teachers as it is among MLB players. I thought that bankers and lawyers, at least, might be more represented in the top 15 zip codes than in other areas. MLB players are also more likely to themselves be in a high income bracket.

The result is that the MLB sex offense rate is more than 2x that of the 15 wealthiest zip codes in New York. If you break it down by individual zip code, the MLB rate is higher than 13 out of the 15 zip codes. (For those who are curious, MLB did better than zip codes 10007 and 10013, which accounted for only about 7.5% of the total population set.)

Note that the sex offender registry includes all sex crimes, whereas my MLB examples only included offenses against underage victims. If I had the stomach to go case by case in the New York registry and strip out the guys who only commited offenses against adults, I suspect that the numbers would come out even worse for the baseball players.

I suspect a Major League Baseball player or former Major League Baseball player or former Hollywood actor is way more likely to have charges pressed against him than someone’s weird Uncle All who is a refrigerator repair man.

Points to you for doing it and piecing together a proper argument for the claim. I don't know what this has to do with Ohtani, but non-sarcastically - points for you for going back and doing a real argument for it.

+1 Follow the money....

I'm not sure how you identified the 15 wealthiest zip codes or found the male populations (ages 18-64) for them, but I imagine I could find the same information if I wanted to spend the time searching for it. However, I did take a look at the New York Sex Offender registry, and it indicates that there are levels of risk from 1 to 3 (based on risk of re-offending). The search results that are available on-line only returns people who are at level 2 and 3. I don't know the percentage of people at each risk level, but since the results you used exclude level 1, it may not be a completely valid comparison to MLB players.

The best $250 I ever spent. Thank you, Tommy John:

https://live.staticflickr.com/1876/2...0f1b2cb1_w.jpg

On the flip side, Francisco Lindor can continue to hit around .200 and you’ll still say he’s amazing.

Yes, I considered this as best I could: the fact patterns with the 8 examples I quickly found from the MLB population set is much more consistent with the fact patterns that would put someone in Level 2 or Level 3 in New York than a Level 1. This said, it is fair to say that since none of the 8 MLB cases that I cited were adjudicated in New York, we don't know with absolute certainty.

Two nights in a row, 450 foot plus home runs.
OPS over 1000 heading into July.
Guy is way overhyped for sure.

People way smarter than me can point out the concerning trends in his stat line.

If Babe Ruth had had the availability of Tommy John surgery, would he have pitched longer? Hmm......

I agree that the future of Ohtani's pitching career is highly speculative at this point, but if he does resume pitching, he could set the lifetime record for the most Tommy John's in a career.;)

If he continues to hit at this level, IMO the Dodgers would be well-advised to drop the pitching thing and not chance re-injury.

Yup and now all he has to do is hit .342 for the next twenty years.

Actually, let’s see him hit .342 just once….

https://x.com/barstoolsports/status/...B-5AcILGXST1WQ

Maybe this one will work?
https://www.foxnews.com/sports/dodge...-reaction-time

That's the best Dodger highlight since Trea Turner's perfect slide!

Anyone got a link to that?

Found it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmdxWPhk7Ug


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