TruffleShuffle

0-for-1 for the home run monstrosity. hopefully the marlins hit zero home runs and the population of miami decides to burn it at the end of the season. and they throw loria and samson into the fire a la denethor in lord of the rings.

probably that i unchecked the option for teams not getting points for having an illegal roster. this doesn't seem to be a good idea because then people can't bench starting pitchers to avoid going over their start limit. i don't know if there's a way to manually remove points for those games, but there's no way i'm going through the transaction list and 16 rosters to figure out whose teams were legal for those two games.

I really, really wish we'd leave the FSL. if the cubs did leave the FSL, i hope it's for the carolina league and not california. too many parks in the california league are a complete joke, and i think it messes with hitters when they can go to high A-ball and put up monster numbers and start hitting home runs with relative ease.

Good memory. 6 for 14 with 3 HR yeah that is about the only thing i know about him... never had much major league success but the cubs somehow managed to make him look like a-rod in his prime for one series.

the marlins are being no-hit after 6 innings by the cardinals. normally i'm fully opposed to the cardinals winning or doing anything good, but the marlins are awful, and it would be funny to see them lose and get no hits to open their ballpark, as the world's most expensive lawn ornament sits silently beyond the left-centerfield fence.

this is [expletive] impossible

oh. my point wasn't that anthopoulos isn't someone you don't want to deal with, just that he's less likely to be a moron and give up way too much in a deal, because he seems pretty sharp overall.

He also traded Mike Napoli for Frank Francisco. not paying vernon wells $86 million over 4 years >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> making a bad trade of mike napoli. plus the napoli trade was understandable because they already had a 1b, dh and c. every gm has made a bad trade. anthopoulos' results have, as a whole, been overwhelmingly positive.

samardzija's command would have to improve markedly to be a front of the rotation guy.

who wants that junk? drabek bombed and may end up in the bullpen and snider keeps flopping in the big leagues. i'm hoping the jays have a good first half and are in playoff contention, and they get desperate. i like their system a lot. i'm really high on marisnick so i'd go after him... after that, a couple of pitchers like norris, syndergaard, alvarez, hutchison. even cardona and comer have high ceilings. the downside of dealing with the blue jays is that anthopoulos is probably one of the best GMs in the game.

far more excited about this than i am about the chicago cubs.

I think the only fans who don't have anything to be excited about are Astros fans. Is there anyone on that team who has a chance at becoming a star player in the next few years? cosart has really good stuff but is a very long shot to reach his ceiling because his results have been mediocre and his command is pretty lousy. george springer has star-type tools but has a lot of work to do. singleton is also a guy with a high ceiling, but the results haven't matched the tools. they also have the #1 overall pick, which should yield a guy with star-level ability. and they fired ed wade, which is reason enough for excitement.

from kevin goldstein's nl central preview:

0.0

way too high

yeah i'm fine with that... 2 strikes. btw i'll send a note to the league saying that this week will be 4 starts, and reminding people to add the players they picked in the prospect draft, if they haven't done so already.

i'm not high on alonso. but that's a reasonable position given the prospects they could have fetched for votto. i dunno, the fielder one is pretty crazy. he's already heavy, plays lousy defense and is a lousy baserunner. in a few years he's going to be a really damn expensive DH.

Then it's a bad deal outright, imo. That's 10 years at 20MM+ tacked on to the tail end of his prime. Votto's great, but not that great. Over the past two seasons, Votto has averaged a 7.1 fWAR. Pujols was right around an 8 WAR player. If Votto continues what he's done the past couple years, then he's one of the top 2-3 players in the game today and up there with some of the greatest players ever. If Votto and Pujols aren't worth this type of contract, then I really have no idea who is. And if nobody is ever worth this type of contract, then you're simply not going to have elite players. Votto is not Pujols. Even if Votto replicates his best season in each of the next two (which is quite optimistic, and taking him up to when his extension kicks in), his performance record will still pale in comparison to Albert's when he signed his 10-year deal. And that's not even taking into account Albert is far more of a fan draw. Votto would not have gotten what Albert got, much less anything north of that. well pujols had just posted his two worst years in 2010 and 2011 going into his contract. votto has actually been better than pujols (cumulatively) the past two years, based on fangraphs' WAR. it is quite reasonable to think that pujols' best years are very much behind him and votto is at his peak and likely to stay there for a couple more years. votto's last three years were .318/.418/.565/.983. pujols' last three were .313/.409/.598/1.007. there's really not much difference. i mean, i can see the argument from the reds' perspective that by the end of 2013 they likely will have gotten votto's best years, he's unlikely to be worth $225m over 10 years, so you just let him walk and decline for another team. realistically, you're not getting a player of votto's caliber without giving him really big money for something like 6 years ($25-30m) or giving him a deal near 10 years at $20-25m. if you're not willing to do that then you aren't going to be signing top free agents, and your only real chance of getting superstar production is developing it in-house.

yes, but he's a good athlete and plays the least defensively challenging position on the diamond. obviously there's some risk, but take a look around mlb. elite position players generally aren't getting 5 to 7 year deals when they hit free agency in their late 20s. obviously you're giving that contract with the assumption that he'll be worth more than $22m/year in the first few years, and not worth that money by the time the contract is about up. the alternative that would still have gotten a deal done is probably something like 6/170m. hoping that he would do 5-7 years at an AAV of $22.5m is an unrealistic pipe dream. Then you let him go, especially if you're a mid-market club. And really when did it become SOP to hand out decade long deals to players, regardless of whether or not they are elite? How many have we seen? pujols, teixeira, adrian gonzalez, fielder, a-rod (twice), jeter, manny ramirez, kemp, tulo, helton, soriano, mauer... not sure if any pitchers other than mike hampton have gotten an 8 year deal.

yes, but he's a good athlete and plays the least defensively challenging position on the diamond. obviously there's some risk, but take a look around mlb. elite position players generally aren't getting 5 to 7 year deals when they hit free agency in their late 20s. obviously you're giving that contract with the assumption that he'll be worth more than $22m/year in the first few years, and not worth that money by the time the contract is about up. the alternative that would still have gotten a deal done is probably something like 6/170m. hoping that he would do 5-7 years at an AAV of $22.5m is an unrealistic pipe dream.

I don't think I'd characterize any 10 year, 200MM+ deal with a full NTC as being reasonable, especially for a mid-market team. i suppose it's reasonable in terms of market value. let's face it, they either give him a deal like this or he stops playing on their baseball team after 2013.

i'd definitely rather have votto at 10/225 than fielder at 9/214. this seems like a pretty reasonable deal to me.

trust me, hamels doesn't care about being "third fiddle" or whatever. he's very laid back and probably prefers to have another guy on his team serve as the ace. if he does reach FA, i would guess that the cubs would have to massively overpay to buy him away from the dodgers. he's a SoCal native and kershaw is already the ace there.

Exactly. We'll have Cain, Votto, Kemp, and then some on the FA market. No reason to go after elite FAs this offseason. this is why, when a big talent guy reaches FA, people end up overpaying. the alternative is trading very good prospects for a small market team's impending FA (red sox for adrian gonzalez; tigers for miggy cabrera) and then signing them to a big contract anyway. and if a guy like pujols or fielder does reach FA there are loads of teams in the bidding. if you hold to not trading top prospects and not overpaying, you'll never get any good players.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/spring2012/story/_/id/7752571/cole-hamels-agent-philadelphia-phillies-discussing-extension whether they can afford it or not, there have been plenty of rumors this offseason that the two sides are close to a deal. sounds like the phillies are fine with paying cain/santana type money, they just don't want to go 6 years on a deal.