Amazing_Grace

For those who didn't read the beginning of the thread, Sullivan reported that Prior topped out at 89. Arg, that's a big difference. I read the post that said he was saying 83-85. So which is it actually? EDIT: OK, now I see, damn Mariners announcers causing a panic. Thanks Roast.

Wow, first Miller and now Prior topping out in the mid-80's. That's terrible news, unless your name is Angel Guzman or Neal Cotts. Guys don't lose 10 mph for no reason. There's a chance that it's simply because he hasn't pitched much since 2005 and has lost arm strength, in which case, if he stays healthy, he should be able to get at least some of his velocity back with time. On the other hand, the reason his velocity is down could be because of pain, or another undetected injury, or lingering damage from one of the previous injuries, or some combination thereof. Either way, Prior is young enough and talented enough that if he can get his fastball back up to 87-89, he could still be a good to very good pitcher. It's just going to take some time.

That's exactly how I feel. I thought, of all the choices for manager, Piniella was about the worst, but so far I'm liking most of what I hear. I hope his actions match his words.

Let it never be said that Carlos Zambrano lacks confidence. At least he's no longer referring to himself in the third person. This is his 2nd controversial media comment this spring, and we haven't played a week of games yet. Don't get me wrong, I love Carlos as a player, but I always find it distasteful when sports figures boast in the media.

Sounds good if Texas and NY would bite. I think the Cubs would have to give up a better prospect than Moore to go with Marshall, and maybe a starter to the Yankees instead of a LOOGY. Might the Marlins be moving Cabrera this season? I could see something like Yanks getting Cabrera, Jones, Cubs get ARod, Marlins get Scott Moore, Angel Guzman, + prospects from the Yankees.

He does indeed have NY by the balls. This situation is rather similar to Nomar in that the guy is persona non grata for the team he's on and he has a NTC, plus he has the option to opt out at the end of the season, making his position about as strong as it can possibly be. His team is left with the unpleasant choice of keeping a disgruntled but productive player around or finding some team that he'll agree to be traded to and get the best deal they can. Remember how little the Cubs ended up giving up for Nomar. Though the trade was complicated with 3 teams involved, the Cubs basically ended up giving up Brendan Harris, Justin Jones, and AGonz for Nomar and Matt Murton. That was a good deal. Only time will tell. A lot will depend on what happens during this season. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that ARod could be traded here midseason, but I think it would require a complicated 3 way similar to the ARod deal where the Yankees ended up with a 3b in the deal. I don't think the Cubs would, or should, or ultimately would have to trade Ramirez to get ARod. With the comparative ages of the two players, it just doesn't make much sense to me. I think the most likely scenario still is that ARod keeps his contract and demands a trade.

I agree, but I think it works a little differently. What they fail to do is recognize the damage of the caught stealing. So instead of overvaluing the SB, they undervalue the CS. You never hear about SB%, what you hear is "This guy can steal you 40-50 bases". It's similar to how they talk about pitchers. A 15-16 pitcher means you are "a 15 game winner", while a 10-2 record means you aren't a "15 game winner". Baseball people think in terms of counting stats, and ignore the rates far too often. Yeah, the counting stats are meaningless though, especially when you take the positives only like hits, SBs, wins, and ignoring the negatives like outs, CS, losses. Saying a pitcher has 15 wins like it's a good thing when they also have 16 losses is like saying Ford has 4 billion in revenues while ignoring the fact that the company's expenses were 4.5 billion and they lost half a billion dollars. Calculating value in baseball and business is not much different. If you want to know how valuable something is, you take what you invested, whether it's dollars or at-bats, and see what you got out of those dollars or at-bats. The more output you get out of your inputs, the more valuable an investment, business, or baseball player you have. It confounds me to no end how ignorant the supposedly learned "baseball people" can be. prime example: 2006 Juan Pierre lead the league in hits. He also lead the league in outs made. The result, 200+ hits and a batting average well under .300. 700 AB's for a leadoff hitter is inexcusable I was thinking of Pierre when I mentioned hits, he's the textbook example of why counting stats don't matter. His SB% is only a little above the breakeven point (around 74% last year), but a lot of people think he's one of the league's best basestealers because he gets so many.

Hey, I just saw this story on Yahoo and thought it was pretty hilarious. Apparently, someone at Topps managed to slip some extra persons into a Derek Jeter card without anyone being the wiser and it got into circulation. http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/photo?slug=nyr10502271904.jeter_card_nyr105&prov=ap

Maybe they wouldn't be interested in what the Cubs are offering and would be interested in somebody else's offer. I was just pointing out that opting out of his deal gives ARod the biggest freedom, without too much of a risk of throwing away money. That's true, but he'd have to take a discount to play for the Cubs. I can't imagine our budget could handle a 20M dollar player, not at least without trading one or more of Lee, Ramirez, Soriano, Marquis, Lilly and not re-upping Z. If he wants to play for the Cubs as this rumor suggests, his best shot to do so without giving up much cash is to get the Yanks to eat part of his remaining contract in some trade scenario. If he cares more about the money, he should opt out and sign with Boston, who would love the opportunity to pay back the Yanks for Clemens.

If ARod goes out and repeats one of his best seasons this year, I think he could surpass $20m. That kind of production dwarfs Soriano. The no-trade clause will help him prevent a trade to a team he doesn't like. But it doesn't give him full control of where he wants to go. If he wants to go to the Cubs, but the Yankees don't want to trade him there, he's in a bind. Opting out gives him complete freedom. That's true, but why would the Yankees not trade ARod to the Cubs, a team that's neither in the same league as them nor geographically close to them, when the alternative is to get nothing for him. I can imagine a scenario where ARod holds up the Yankees after this season by threatening to opt out at the last possible second, forcing the Yankees to do whatever trade they can just to avoid losing ARod for nothing. Now, if he doesn't opt out and then asks for the trade, he loses a lot of that leverage, and in that case, it would then come down to how badly the Yankees want to get rid of ARod, as I think they already do. EDIT: Also, if he wants to come to the Cubs, he's not getting 20M. Our budget will be pressed as it is, and that would make things unbearable. His best chance to play here is to get a trade and have the Yankees eat some of the remaining 3 years of his contract (aren't the Rangers technically still paying some). A lot of this rests on the assumption ARod WANTS to play for the Cubs. If he really only cares about the money, then he opts out and immediately signs with Boston.

I agree, but I think it works a little differently. What they fail to do is recognize the damage of the caught stealing. So instead of overvaluing the SB, they undervalue the CS. You never hear about SB%, what you hear is "This guy can steal you 40-50 bases". It's similar to how they talk about pitchers. A 15-16 pitcher means you are "a 15 game winner", while a 10-2 record means you aren't a "15 game winner". Baseball people think in terms of counting stats, and ignore the rates far too often. Yeah, the counting stats are meaningless though, especially when you take the positives only like hits, SBs, wins, and ignoring the negatives like outs, CS, losses. Saying a pitcher has 15 wins like it's a good thing when they also have 16 losses is like saying Ford has 4 billion in revenues while ignoring the fact that the company's expenses were 4.5 billion and they lost half a billion dollars. Calculating value in baseball and business is not much different. If you want to know how valuable something is, you take what you invested, whether it's dollars or at-bats, and see what you got out of those dollars or at-bats. The more output you get out of your inputs, the more valuable an investment, business, or baseball player you have. It confounds me to no end how ignorant the supposedly learned "baseball people" can be.

Well after 2007 he's owed 3/81. I think he could get a 5-6 year deal worth 100-120, so there would be value there. Plus, by opting out, he controls where he goes, as opposed to the Yankees controlling it. Wouldn't he have to waive his NTC to get traded to begin with, and couldn't he then say he wouldn't waive it to get traded to, say, the Royals. You may be right about the contract though. I doubt he'd get as much per season (27M is still insane even today) but he might be able to get more years for a greater total value. I don't see him getting over 20M per season again.

That's not necessarily true. I don't think anyone would blink if ARod were to replace DeRosa/Theriot at 2b.

Most likely scenario is A-Rod opts out of his contract (I think he has an out at the end of this year) and signs as a FA with the Cubs. There's no reason for A-Rod to do that though. It doesn't help him as, at his age, he's not likely to get a contract that matches the one he has now, and it doesn't help the Yankees as they'd get basically nothing for losing A-Rod (although they get out of his contract, though for them that's not a huge benefit). I think it's far more likely that he requests a trade and the Yankees happily oblige him. I think it's unlikely to happen this season because at this point, they'd have to pick up someone to play 3b, and I don't know of anyone readily available that would be of interest to the Yankees to fire up the 3-way trade discussions.

It is nice to see Soriano & Pie hanging out in many of the ST photos. Rookie phenom Felix Pie? I think that's a bit of wishful thinking at this point. He's a good prospect but as I recall he's not even top 50 in the league. Baseball America rankings: 49. Felix Pie in 06: 27 in 05: 31 in 04: 85 in 03: 72 Apparently my recollection was wrong :oops:

It is nice to see Soriano & Pie hanging out in many of the ST photos. Rookie phenom Felix Pie? I think that's a bit of wishful thinking at this point. He's a good prospect but as I recall he's not even top 50 in the league.

Why the Cubs organization all the way down didn't come to this conclusion a long time ago I have no clue. Jones came up as a CFer in Minnesota, and played the position in MLB. He's arguably a natural CFer. Why the Cubs were so reluctant to play him here is beyond me. I have high hopes that Lou isn't as stupid as Hendry and will correct this mistake.

I think the whole point everyone has been trying to make about SBs is that a good basestealer is a threat and a bad basestealer is just wasting outs, and that there are a lot of guys in MLB that are supposedly "good" basestealers but aren't really, like Alfonso Soriano and Juan Pierre. Because "baseball people" overvalue the SB managing baseball teams, they allow more attempts than are really justified, and end up hurting the team. I personally think having a guy that could really get on base at a .360-.400 clip and steal bases at a rate of 80-90% would be an ideal leadoff man, but the only player I can think of that would qualify would be Carlos Beltran, and he has enough power you probably don't want him leading off for an NL team (don't mention Soriano, I don't need to be reminded of it..grrr).

Wow, sounds like complicated stuff. Thanks for the explanation. I take it you like VORP better than WARP then. I think the concept is pretty good, as it allows you to look at how much a player is really contributing.

Wow, I'd almost forgotten Ordonez. The Cubs have really had some crappy players in recent history. There's Macias, Ojeda, Bynum, Lenny Harris, Mabry, Ordonez, Womack, Neifi, Rusch, Estes, the list goes on and on...

Just because they shot down the rumor doesn't mean anything. The rumor itself didn't really mean anything. It's no secret the Trib is having financial difficulties so the sale of the Cubs remains a possibility. Until the Tribune decides on one course of action or another, recapitalization, sale of part of the company, whatever, there's still hope that somehow the Cubs will get sold in the process. I still hold out hope that the Cubs will end up being sold, though I admit I'm not as hopeful as I was when MacPhail's resignation was announced. If they are sold, Cuban has as good a shot at being the buyer as anyone, probably a better shot, since there's no secret he's interested.

Ahhh, so the formulas are kept a trade secret then?

This is why I think having "power" at "traditional power position", is sometimes overrated. I agree, it's definitely overrated. You need power hitters on your team, that's certain, but what position it comes from is really irrelevant. I think that old baseball rule comes from the fact that there are more power hitting corner outfielders than shortstops and second basemen. However, that is itself a result of the emphasis of defense at other positions, so guys that are below average defensively but great hitters seem to invariably get moved to LF, RF, or if they're relatively surehanded and/or morbidly slow, 1B.

WARP-3 VORP Ok, but who is this replacement player anyway? Is he related to "player to be named later?" :lol: Or, to phrase my question in a serious way, how is the replacement level production determined? Do these stats take salaries into account? How are they calculated mathematically?

If he played any position other than corner OF, he'd probably be considered one of the most valuable young position players in all of baseball. He doesn't have the power to match most corner OF, so when you have a guy like Murton, you need to get power from elsewhere. The Cubs will be an oddity this year in that they'll get less power from LF and RF than from CF and C. If Soriano hits 40 HR again, we may get more power from just CF alone.