Latest news with #JeffZimmerman
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
700 residents impacted by Aspen Place Condemnation in Gardner, Kansas
GARDNER, Kan. — Hundreds of people have until 6 p.m. on Thursday, May 8, to leave the Aspen Place Apartment in Gardner, Kansas. The city condemned the 180 units due to what they called, on Tuesday, 'significant safety concerns.' Downtown Kansas City business owners issuing a warning: 'This isn't a political issue—it's a safety issue' Cars lined Aspen Street late Wednesday morning as 700 people are supposed to be out of their homes by 6 p.m. Thursday. One resident named Danielle says issues have been going on at the apartments for years, but it got really bad around the holidays. 'Over Christmas Break, there were people without water,' she said on Wednesday. 'I mean, people were trying to have Christmas dinner, and there was no running water, no way to flush toilets, no way to take care of the babies that are here, the kids.' She says the little kids in the neighborhood can't comprehend what's happening. 'Even my kids, being older, she's a sophomore in high school, and all day when the news came through about it, it's finals week,' Danielle continued. 'There's no way that she was properly studying yesterday, and we were up until two o'clock in the morning, and then she had to go to school again today.' The KDR Group out of Lenexa owns the property, and while they wouldn't comment on camera, their attorney, Jeff Zimmerman, released a statement. 'We are working to figure out a system to refund the May rent that had already been paid by some of the Tenants and to inspect the units to release security deposits,' he said. 'The condemnation makes that process more difficult as the tenants are dispersing to comply with the city's order to vacate, which may affect the lines of communication. Ownership intends to go forward with the plan that was being put into place to overhaul the water system. That process will take about 90 days from the time the city approves the permits.' The mother of one of the Aspen Place residents called the KDR Group a slum on Wednesday. 'You really are,' Rhodes continued. 'The city, they've known this has been going on for years, and all they've done is give them citation after citation, and to me it's like a smack on the hand.' Kansas mom convicted for 2024 crash that killed 1-year-old son Our emails to the city weren't returned by Wednesday afternoon in time for our deadline. Golden Rule Relocation Owner and city resident Matt Thrasher was helping people move out on Wednesday. He was thankful for companies like New Haven Moving Equipment, which donated $1,250 in moving materials for people needing to pack. 'The city's known that there was a good chance that anytime that this place was going to go through this,' he said. A fire truck got stuck on a private access road in the complex Saturday night, and the condemnation notice from the city came out three days later. The road has a large hole in it. Since KDR took over the property three years ago, they've had to fix water line breaks. 'My clients are responsible property owners and bought this property to provide affordable housing,' Zimmerman continued. 'Keeping up with the aging water system became too much, so they decided to completely overhaul the system. The timing of the City's condemnation was unfortunate when the City's firetruck collapsed the water line. This has become a monumental problem and we are working to figure out solutions and will work with the City and Community Groups who are also working on this.' Grace Baptist Church hosted a meeting at 6 p.m. on Wednesday for Aspen Place residents. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports.
New York Times
21-03-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Eno Sarris' updated MLB starting pitcher rankings for the 2025 season
The news … it's not good. Arm after arm, it seems, has been felled by one injury or another. So it's time to update the rankings. For some, like Gerrit Cole, they're out for the year and it's as simple as removing them from these one-year rankings. But others, like Brayan Bello, Tobias Myers or Lucas Giolito, have entered a difficult period of dancing around the rankings. There are some silver linings, like the fact that Trevor Megill now gets a long runway in the Mets rotation due to some poor news there. Spencer Strider and Sandy Alcantara look pretty good after coming back from their ailments. Advertisement There is no way to give all of these injured pitchers a one-size-fits-all ranking — some fantasy players have injured list spots on their rosters, and can take these injured starters and stash them until they're ready. To them, it might not matter that their time on the IL came at the beginning. They should probably prioritize upside over health. But for those in leagues with no injured list spots, it's trickier. If the pitcher doesn't necessarily have the ceiling of an elite arm, then it matters more who is healthy and ready to produce right now. In those leagues, you might be pretty conservative with injury risks (represented here by Jeff Zimmerman's health percentiles, where higher is good), and want to avoid anyone who is currently nursing a sore something-or-other. For these rankings, I've found it personally useful to put the currently injured and high-injury-risk pitchers in little mini-tiers that you'll find at different pockets in the player pool. You'll see Tyler Glasnow and Jacob deGrom near the top, followed by high-floor, lower-injury-risk pitchers like Logan Webb and Hunter Brown. By putting them in pockets, I hope to make it easier for fantasy players to see the decision-making process in the rankings themselves, and then perhaps flip the weighting around to fit the specific settings in their league. It's a tricky dance, and with the news coming in so fast and furious, these rankings become a snapshot in time pretty quickly. It's still worth trying to figure out who the best pitchers are for your fake team in the coming season. As usual, these ranks include: • Pitching+ and the associated Stuff+ and Location+ models • Jordan Rosenblum's stuff-powered projections (ppERA% and ppK%) • Jeff Zimmerman's health grades, which he publishes in The Process • Hand-projected innings totals based on health grades, team tendencies, and depth charts Advertisement Plus some behind-the-scenes goodies to help properly value these pitchers. May all your picks be healthy and dealing. (When it comes to dealing, this Google doc has been updated with spring Stuff+ numbers, which have a wider spread for a few reasons. The spread of talent in spring training is wider, the new model fixes the average pitcher at 100 Stuff+, some data points are missing in the data set, it's not comprehensive because not every park tracks these numbers and lastly, the starters are airing it out in short outings early in the spring. It might make sense to note the good Stuff+ in the case of a pitcher like Kevin Gausman, and perhaps even move him up a few spots because of it as I did, but not to penalize the pitchers with lower numbers unless there's news about missing velocity or some sort of soreness.) (Illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic; Photo of Sandy Alcantara: Reinhold Matay / Imagn Images; Photo of Garrett Crochet: Kim Klement Neitzel / Imagn Images; Photo of Tylor Megill: Christopher Pasatieri / Getty Images)
New York Times
12-02-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Eno Sarris' 2025 starting pitcher fantasy rankings with Stuff+ powered projections
For years, it's been harder to project pitchers than hitters — for a whole host of reasons. They get injured more and stay injured longer, yes, but they also see their performance change dramatically and quickly in ways that hitters don't. Think of a pitcher debuting a new pitch: He's probably a whole new pitcher now, not just the same guy who will return to his previous norms. There really isn't a corollary for hitters. Advertisement But analysts have been hard at work narrowing the gaps. New tools that incorporate physical data from pitches as well as the pitchers' bodies, paired with better statistical techniques, have improved our pitcher projections. The rankings here attempt to synthesize contemporary research the best way we can. That work includes metrics that will be published here, as well as some behind-the-scenes help: • Pitching+ and the associated Stuff+ and Location+ models • Jordan Rosenblum's stuff-powered projections (ppERA% and ppK%) • Jeff Zimmerman's health grades, which he publishes in The Process • Baseball Prospectus' new arsenal grades • Hand-projected innings totals based on health grades, team tendencies, and depth charts The very best pitchers have elite Stuff+. They locate the ball well as evidenced by their historical walk and Location+ rates. They project well once their park, age, and relevant production are correctly weighted. They have good health grades based on their fastball velocity, age, and number and timing of arm injuries. And they have wide arsenals that can surprise the hitter with a mix of different pitches, shapes and velocities. They've built up the bulk needed to go deep into the season and are on a team likely to go with a standard five-man rotation. Well, wait, that's just Paul Skenes. For everyone else, we have to figure out how to weigh their different strengths and flaws. That introduces some human bias, but also some opportunity, because every projection system makes its own choices about what goes into the meat grinder, and so there's a little subjectivity in every effort anyway. A human might just find the pitchers who fall between the cracks in every system. As an example, Stuff+ has fared remarkably well in predicting the future based on a single model that uses only physical characteristics of pitches as inputs, but as the marketplace has produced more versions of the statistic, it was time for a refresh. The newest numbers, found here and also at FanGraphs in sortable leaderboards, split the single model into multiple ones (swing, take, foul, ball in play, etc), and added features like arm slot (which recently became available at Baseball Savant). In the future, we may find a way to fold in the type of arsenal work being done at Baseball Prospectus and Driveline into the stuff models to have a better idea of how starter's pitch mixes work, how they change performance and how they can be optimized. Advertisement In the meantime, a human can try to look at these different models and weigh them the best they can. This is a fantasy ranking, so a tough home park might hide the fact that some of these pitchers would be ranked higher in different parks. My bias is toward 15-team leagues with no injured list — you may find that if your league has unlimited IL spots, you'd want to push up the pitchers with great per-inning numbers and lower innings projections. They shouldn't be hard to find; they ended up clustered together. In a shallower league, you may also want to skip over some of the more boring veterans in the back half of the top 100 in favor of riskier, younger pitchers with less of a track record (say, pick a Kumar Rocker or Jackson Jobe over a Mitch Keller or Max Scherzer). If they don't work out, your wire is more likely to have a decent replacement waiting for you. As with years past, this google doc will house some goodies during the season like minor league Stuff+ numbers as well as deeper looks at the player pool. Last year, these ranks produced cheap gems like Seth Lugo, Nestor Cortes, Cristopher Sánchez, Michael King, Bryan Woo, Shota Imanaga, Luis Gil and Jared Jones — along with some mistakes we can learn from. Best of luck as you search for the right pitching staff in your leagues this year. (Illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic; Photos: Chris Szagola / Associated Press; Joe Robbins / Icon Sportswire; Duane Burleson / Associated Press)
