Sorry, but I haven’t written it. I’m experiencing my version of writer block. There, I will draft some sentences, with some thoughts out loud. I probably opened a draft of Clockwork Part 3 once a week, but I can’t finish it myself.
So I just pamper me a bit as I keep writing about things you don’t care about. Let’s write about baseball. I promise it won’t be that long and I’ll try to associate this with the deal at some point.
For you, other than baseball watchers, this guy’s name is Walkerbuhler. He is the Los Angeles Dodgers starting pitcher. It’s my favorite sports team around the world. He’s wearing really tight pants, he’s a bit of stupidity, and He’s really good at baseball.
It hurts it.
He used to be really good at baseball. Now he’s not.
It refers to Walker Buehler before 2022. This guy had one of the best four seam fastballs I’ve ever seen from a right-handed Dodgers pitcher. He could only spam the heater just under the pipe and still get a whim. He went to the record saying he didn’t care about walking hitters. He was sure he could go back to the wall and get out of any tough spot with the four seamers. Walker Buehler’s Cumulative WFA from 2018 to 2021 –Fangraph’s fastball is above average– 4th out of all 130 qualified pitchers. Only Gerrit Cole, Jacob Degrom and Max Scherzer were highly praised by the three WFA pitchers, winning six Cy Young Awards. One day, Walker Buhler thought he had a young man of his own.
Flashback to the 2020 MLB postseason. It is NLCS Game 6, with the Dodgers taking part in a removal game with the Atlanta Braves in 2-3 of the series. I’ll win or go home. Walker Buhler, defending his early 3-0 lead, faces a loaded zero jam after allowing three straight singles. Median results for loaded bases, zero-out jams are usually run twice. If it explodes due to the worst, you could lose the game here.
myself? I’m bracing for that worst. Their best batsman is up, he can hit a grand slam and we go from 3-0 to 3-4 down. The Dodgers are planning to make this a Dodger… Also. I’d be happy if I gave up on one run.
Walker Buhler? He’s not stepped-up in the moment, he feels a bit dirty. He doesn’t want to give up on the run at all.
Austin Riley, loaded up, no out. A strikeout swings with a fastball. 99mph.
Nick Marcakis, loaded bass, one. A strikeout watching the fastball. 100mph.
Christian Patch, loaded into base, two outs. Short out the destructive ball. No innings or runs allowed.
When he allowed three straight hits at the start of the inning, Walker was trying to maintain a balanced pitch mix with a cutter, a few curveballs, but it appears that it didn’t work. Back to the wall, his thinking has become Fuck this, I’m just going to spam my best pitch.
10 straight 4 Shichise first balls. They knew what was coming and couldn’t hit it.
Watching this video from the 17-second mark to the 1 minute mark makes the pitcher mentally tough like anyone else.
This is what Ace looks like. – Joe Buck
I remember thinking at that moment… oh. This man can throw those four sailors by anyone. He doesn’t care. This inning is, in a nutshell, a major walker. He’s a mentally tough power pitcher. The Dodgers won the game, won Game 7 and the NLC, winning their first World Series Championship since 1988. Walkerbuhler. Ace pitcher.
We all loved him. We all thought he was the guy who would take the old Clayton Kershaw Dodgers Ace Mantle into the 2020s. He finished fourth in the 2021 CY Young Poll the following year.
And then… sports happened
injury. 2022, Walker Buhler tore the UCL with his elbow and now requires Tommy John’s surgery. It was his second TJ surgery in his younger career.
He doesn’t pitch for almost two years. For those new to the rehabilitation process of TJ surgery, it’s a cruel mental sacrifice for competitors as they don’t sell the actual game counted for almost two years. You’re just preparing to do so. Physiotherapy and strength/conditioning for 3-6 months. Then you will then join a throwing program, throwing the mound and then throwing a bullpen session. Then, at least a year later, it goes back to competitive play-simulated games, and minor league games, throwing innings at most. Often, in these rehabilitation games, you just throw and the most important success metrics are not feeling pain the next day. The approximately 29-year-old career minor leaguer hits a 450-foot bomb from an unborn meatball on the pitch, and you need to take it and see it as part of the process. The process requires absurd patience and trust.
Can I link this to a transaction now? Okay, I’ll start now. In 2023, I had the worst trading year, but I started working with a well-known psychologist who works with traders. I just wanted to take a long time and get back to swinging things. Small business. Take the play that makes sense. Don’t worry about PNL by pushing too hard. He knew I was a baseball fan, so he made the analogy that the following month would be something like rehab. You are a minor and you are just trying to solve your fastball and see how it feels. It has not counted yet. Don’t try to chase after the feeling of coming back forever.
Back to baseball. It’s now 2024, and Walker Buehler is making his long-awaited comeback after a rigorous and intense rehabilitation. He did a very funny job, should he become an ace again? !
Well, it doesn’t work that way.
Starts at 14th. 5.54 ERA. Negative-1.2 War.
It’s not an ace. I’m not good at baseball anymore.
Could the once legendary four seam fastballs make an elite batter look stupid? Surprisingly bad 2024 -9.6 WFAranks 227th out of all 236 pitchers who recorded a 60-inning minium. This is what it looks like when your best weapon becomes your biggest responsibility.
His arms appear to be alive, and the measurement of speed, still sitting at 94-95 mph, suggests he is not too far from his peak, but a small margin of error could mean everything. His orders are also quite apart. When he tries to rely on the second pitch, he doesn’t know where they’re going. Everything starts is brutal to watch. He tried to defeat and chase after something special he once had, just to miss the Strike Zone badly. I was trying to get a heater with the top hitter like I used to, and now I see it floating out of the park. He’s not the same guy anymore. I feel blue. It reminds me of my own career mortality rate. I wonder how success has become easier forever, and it just disappeared like that, and what was in your control in the first place. You wonder… Can I get it back? Or is it over, should I make my peace with it?
Buehler will become a free agent in the offseason. If you ask me, his chances of resigning with the Dodgers aren’t that great. Writing all this is my way of dealing with the loss of “Walker Buhler, Ace Pitcher” as a baseball fan.
Reinvention?
I hope he proves me wrong. I think he can find a way to live a stable life as at least a solid #3 type pitcher, but he has to reinvent himself a bit. Maybe he has to create new pitches or find a low-speed ball pitch mix. Maybe he’s now like a finesse pitcher and now he needs to have a mental acceptance that he has to do less and more. I don’t really understand. You may need multiple seasons on multiple teams to get there.
I am in the midst of reinventing and rehabilitating myself. Unfortunately, there is no next number script for traders, just as the pitcher goes through three different phases of recovery and is with the whole medical team and the coaching staff around him.
I started trading lightly again in August. I have experienced several different iterations of what Peter 2.0 traders think would be. I give you some instances:
- Peter, author, day trader!
- Peter, research-oriented swing trader
- Peter, technical momentum-oriented swing trader
- Peter to, long-term investors in the public/private market
- Peter to, A+ Setup Only Day Trader, 10x A year
- Peter to, Liquid In-Play’s large cap day trader
- Some mixes above
I really don’t stick to anything. I was taking a break in half the time, I didn’t do shit, so I just watched TV all day. I had a mild loss. For example, I had a research-based biotechnology position with an IRA that exploded at me about a week ago. I was a small size, but just eating that loss made me feel like a scam. wtf am I trying to do my money like that? I’m larp-ing as a type of trader I’m not. But if we are to reinvent ourselves, wouldn’t we just need more patience to tinker and give room for mistakes? Do you need to show your heart and commitment? What is the correct conclusion here?
Let me know back in 2023 with that psychology and the cute lit rehabilitation analogy that we did well and how it worked. I traded small for a few days, but then I let it rip it hard and took some fat loss before it was obviously ready. I capsized my fastball and the market went to me in the yard.
Anything I choose, I have to do my job and commit to it, and I admit that I’m not doing it. I feel hopelessly checked out every time I trade. I’m easily distracted. I have very few “Dawgs” in the trade…I felt compelled to do what I used to be, in the sense that I didn’t want to compete for the best fillings, look at the market all day long, or go back positively. I want it to be easy, as if it deserves it for every year I put it in.
I’m thinking about the tedious process of pitcher rehabilitation. Throw and throw and throw to your spot and your spin and your release, and all those little details, then focus on the hyper, then repeat it over and over, waiting for it to feel like it used to be. I don’t know if that’s going to happen at night Until now I feel the same way. That’s the feeling I dealt with regularly during the first decade of my trading career. But for now it seems like I can’t deal with it at the point of my life, and now I’ve already made money and achieved success, so I can “choose” to avoid these existential fears. So I’m choosing exactly that – avoiding commitment, avoiding pain. Maybe that’s my final retirement catchphrase – I don’t want to do that anymore.
Or I can’t do that anymore. I don’t know if there is a difference.
