Making History: Panda and Hanley just had the 2nd and 3rd worst first seasons in free agency history

[nvalvo]

Gray, we are singing from the same hymnbook about this panda. Watch out for Nvalvo though. It's funny how people can seemingly ignore your posts and then all of a sudden pounce on them like a duck on a snail.

I heard that!

Maybe I came down on you too hard, Al, but I'm not convinced that his weight and his performance correlate all that well. I admit it's intuitive that it would be harder to play well while fat, but the more I reconstruct his weight history, the less it squares with his performance history, at least on offense — which may well be an important caveat. He lost a ton of weight before 2014, and then started the year terribly. He gained both pounds and points of OPS as the year went on. How does that square with the theory?

I'm not sure what to make of it, and the weight stuff is mostly anecdotal, but the pattern does not scream monocausal explanation to me.

 

[Twalk]

Meanwhile.... While Pablo crushes Baskin Robbins his replacement is getting ready for the new season. I'm actually optimistic that Panda will have a rebound year. As some have already mentioned its going to be hard to not the bar is so low. Still i could help but feel sick seeing this instagram of Matt Duffy. The Giants must feel good with the way things played out trying to resign Pablo.

 

[koufax37]

If the Sox conclude that

...

(c) they are likely to continue to have negative WAR numbers, and

...

Hanley hurt his shoulder after an excellent offensive start, and seemed impacted by playing outside of the infield with Manny-like quality. Hanley the healthy 31 year old 1B might not be Hanley the 25 year old SS, but I will definitely expect him to be more valuable than Hanley the injured 30 year old LF.

While I am less optimistic about Panda and the aging curves of swing at everything players, we are talking about a 28 year old player who has had value every year but one, that screams adjustment outlier. I don't know how much he bounces back, but expecting him to be a repeat of 2015 seems very pessimistic.

Neither of these players will live up to their contracts, but I think both will perform well enough to be productive useful MLB starters for a playoff team.

We will have to be thoughtful about what happens to each and how they evolve, because the downside potential for 2018 to 2019 isn't pretty and could eat up a lot of of the value of peak cost controlled Betts/Xander. My thoughts are that Hanley will be a productive DH and Panda will end up playing for a small market team as a slightly above replacement fan favorite with the Red Sox eating some big dollars.

 

[In my lifetime]

Meanwhile.... While Pablo crushes Baskin Robbins his replacement is getting ready for the new season. I'm actually optimistic that Panda will have a rebound year. As some have already mentioned its going to be hard to not the bar is so low. Still i could help but feel sick seeing this instagram of Matt Duffy. The Giants must feel good with the way things played out trying to resign Pablo.

I am hopeful he figures out that this type of treatment is not a PED: