TruffleShuffle

40 runs is an awful lot, especially when Ibanez doesn't even OPS .900. 10 runs = 1 win? Yep. seems a little odd/arbitrary to me, but whatever. BP has gathright at 84 EqR in 839 PAs the past 3 seasons ibanez is at 311 EqR in 2042 PAs. so if you assume that each guy gets 650 PAs in full playing time, at their current level of production, gathright would produce 65 runs while ibanez produces 99. so 34 runs difference. i guess my figure was a bit high but not off by much, and i don't see how gathright is 3.4 "wins" better than ibanez in the field. Using wOBA, Ibanez projects around .345 for next year(James says .346, Marcel .344). With .328 as league average, that puts him about 10 runs above average. UZR has him around -24 in LF in '07 and -11 in '08. Moving to RF and getting a year older isn't going to help that, but let's say he's -10 to be simple and he's net zero above average. Gathright is a career +19 defender in LF, +13 in CF. We'll split the difference conservatively(since RF is between LF and CF, closer to LF, on the defensive spectrum) and say he's +15 in RF. To put him on par with Ibanez, he needs to be at worst -15 at the plate, which is a .302 wOBA. Marcel has him at .302(.264/.333/.329 slash line) and James .315(.281/.356/.321) next year. This is where I differ from Colin, since I think those projections are optimistic for Gathright, a career .293 wOBA guy who put up an awful .280 last year. I don't think he's quite on par with Ibanez or Abreu on that offense+defense basis, but it's not as far fetched as you might think from looking at them offensively. That said, the extent that you agree with the logic depends on how down you are with UZR. If you think being able to put a number on runs saved is preposterous, then it's not going to carry much weight. If you think UZR has been the leader in defensive metrics to this point, then it should at least give reason for pause, even if you don't ultimately agree. i think the projections are too low for ibanez on offense and too high for gathright on offense. ibanez has shown zero decline the past three years and while i don't expect him to stay good forever, he certainly seems like a guy who stays in excellent shape and will age more gracefully, rather than tanking quickly. i also don't foresee gathright putting up an obp in the .340 to .350 range unless he's very lucky on balls in play. i don't necessarily think it's a bad signing, especially if he has improved his basestealing proficiency. by all accounts, he's a top-flight defender, and with our outfield, having a very good defensive sub is a good idea.

40 runs is an awful lot, especially when Ibanez doesn't even OPS .900. 10 runs = 1 win? Yep. seems a little odd/arbitrary to me, but whatever. BP has gathright at 84 EqR in 839 PAs the past 3 seasons ibanez is at 311 EqR in 2042 PAs. so if you assume that each guy gets 650 PAs in full playing time, at their current level of production, gathright would produce 65 runs while ibanez produces 99. so 34 runs difference. i guess my figure was a bit high but not off by much, and i don't see how gathright is 3.4 "wins" better than ibanez in the field.

40 runs is an awful lot, especially when Ibanez doesn't even OPS .900. 10 runs = 1 win?

nilo, are you using any type of positional adjustment on these? i strongly doubt Gathright's more valuable as a corner OF No, I didn't really do anything positionally. The only statement I made was that Gathright defensively is a 1 win CF and a 2 win corner OF which is a pretty well established translation from CF to corner OF. So, if you want to compare apples to apples (or Gathright to other corner OF options), then use 2 wins on defense for Gathright. Now, with that being said, I'm most definitely not in favor of signing Gathright and calling it a day for RF. What I am saying is that Gathright does have value. He would fit in perfectly if we get Bradley as a pinch running double switch defensive replacement and would give us more flexibility to take advantage of and create highly leveraged situation (with his speed and defense) as well as give rest to injury prone players when the game is in very low leverage situations. Wait a minute here. You just laid out for us a bunch of win stats that indicate Ibanez = -1, Abreu = 0, Dunn = 1, Bradley = unknown, Gathright = 2. And then you followed that up with, "I'm most definitely not in favor of signing Gathright and calling it a day for RF." So do you not believe your own win estimates? The numbers you laid out don't really pass the smell test, and you seem to confirm they're bogus with the followup quote. yeah, is this assuming that each player gets regular-starter playing time? if so, i refuse to believe that ibanez is only 2 wins better than gathright. what does "plus 1" win mean - win over the average player, or replacement-level player? either way, i'd put ibanez at about 4 wins above gathright offensively, and I don't see how gathright makes up for that in defense.

I don't think that will happen. We're gonna hire from within (Tom Bradley) and give him a very long leash, because Paterno will be sitting in the background making it so. Or do you mean 20 years down the road? 20 years down the road, joe paterno might still be coaching penn state.

helllllllllllll yes

Buffalo won 7 regular-season games and needed a hail mary miracle to beat Temple, but yeah, the ONLY reason not to hire Turner Gill is his blackness. I'd go out on a limb and say that if a white coach had Turner Gill's current resume, he'd never have been interviewed at all for that job. Gene Chizik was a horrible hire, but there had to be other reasons in play here, and Chizik's previous employment at Auburn was doubtless one of them. buffalo might have been the worst program in i-a when gill got there; going 7-5 in his third year is a lot better than most people would have expected.

i don't really understand why the predictor is all about northwestern, since they've beaten a bunch of cream puffs and florida state, plus they played butler close (but b/c they play such a slow style, they're gonna play a lot of teams close, good and bad). amusingly, it has northwestern winning the next 20 games in a row (or at least more likely than not to win each game).

Shouldn't this be in green? That's the lamest excuse ever from universities. I guess the basketball players that play every weekday don't have finals. Or Division 2 football players. i'm not sure how bradford, tebow and mccoy are studying for and taking their finals considering that they've been making the rounds of various tv/radio shows and then the awards shows as well.

also, what is the point of having a playoff if you're still leaving out an undefeated team?

well we beat cindy and the pens yesterday, good stuff

dude bradley played in texas last year, i'm pretty sure that texas is more racist than chicago.

Carl Pavano was an average pitcher coming off a career year. Ryan Dempster has Carl Pavano part 2 written all over him. Demp was always a high ceiling prospect, and had started an all-star game before developing elbow problems. He's had a few healthy years since then. Burnett is a much, much better comparison to Pavano than Dempster is. no, burnett has been easily above average pretty much every year except very early in his career. pavano was above average only two years out of seven when the yankees signed him. plus since when was burnett not a high-ceiling prospect?

the sixers just played the cavs in back to back games, and after watching these games i have some inside info - lebron james is really damn good.

i've seen at least 20 flyers games against both teams, and it's no contest as to who whines/dives more. trust me, if ovechkin were anywhere close to as big a bitch as crosby i'd call him on it. plus check out , come on that is just embarrassing.

if he wants to be respected by his peers and by people who know the game well, he should cut it out. it doesn't really affect the game or how good he is, but it does affect how people view him. well clearly he's not about to stop. i'm pretty sure he doesn't care about the respect of others as he skates by them and picks up his 400th point of the season. everyone who "knows the game well" thinks he's a phenomenal player. that's not going to change because he cries to the refs. lots of great players did it a lot (forsberg springs to mind immediately as a diver and a whiner and no one thought less of him). forsberg isn't regarded as an all-time great. crosby should try to carry himself in the way that they did. i'm hoping that as he matures (he's only 21, after all) that he'll quit diving and whining so much. he takes it past the point of gamesmanship.

if he wants to be respected by his peers and by people who know the game well, he should cut it out. it doesn't really affect the game or how good he is, but it does affect how people view him.

Just sayin'. yeah good call dexter

oh the instigator rule has to go too. scott hartnell drilled rod brind'amour on a clean hit in the first period, one of the canes' players went after hartnell and fought him immediately after the hit - 5 each for fighting. arron asham went after the canes' player for boarding andrew alberts - instigation. wtf is the point of the rule if you're just going to be completely arbitrary in calling it? i want to kick both the refs of last night's game in the balls, what horrible ineptitude.

just name the major coach in waiting and be done with it...

from the onion:

more than $18 mil for aj burnett? the oft-injured starter who's on the wrong side of 30 and has a career ERA+ of 111? solid move.

Kerry Fraser? TERRIBLE night overall in the NHL tonight. nah it was devorski and dwyer. i actually think fraser is pretty good. the worst are mccreary, mr. magoo (think he retired though), koharski and furlatt.

crazy comeback for the flyers tonight, 4 goals in the 3rd period and then won in a shootout. and i must rant about the nhl officiating yet again. last week upshall got about the worst five minute boarding major penalty i've ever seen. tonight. one of our defensemen got boarded worse, got up and went after the guy who hit him, while another guy on the flyers ended up fighting the carolina guy. the result was 4 minutes for roughing on the guy who got boarded, while our second guy got 5 and 2 for instigation, while their guy only got 5 for fighting. so we ended up 2 men down (they scored) and then had another 3 minutes of power play (they scored again). worst officiating in professional sports, easily.

At this point they probably have to get a guy like Peavy in order to move Marquis. However, like leadoff, #5 starter isn't a position. And you can't deflect the negative value of his salary vs his performance. He's an overpaid mediocre 5th starter and because of poor planning Hendry will have to pay somebody else to take him off their hands. or you can just keep him around and let him throw a bunch of league-average innings. considering that two of the starters are rich harden and carlos zambrano, i don't think it's a good idea to just sell off a guy like marquis because nobody likes him.