CubinNY

How many 5'9" LFers are there in MLB? That should tell us all we need to know about this guy.

Roy Oswalt is the biggest douche in the history of the douche bag. He's a bigger turd than Bono. Hey Roy, you played with Caminetti, Clemens, Tejada, and Pettitte, not to mention the other guys we don't know about cough*Richard Hildalgo*cough. Your only world series appearance is an abomination you bumba-clot.

Who's going to pay them? I'd rather see a bunch of minor leaguers/college kids and make it like the Olympics or something. They could bill it as the future of the sport. However, Cuba, Korea, or Japan would win every year.

Here's my deal with the new defensive metrics, they don't work. There is a huge spread of talent when it comes to hitting, hitting with power, and speed. In other words, the SD of MLB ballplayers in those regards is pretty big. A big SD and the further away from the mythical average player the bigger the difference you make (bad or good) When it come to defense, speed plays a roll in as far as position one plays but you are much more likely to see a lumbering LF/RF than you are a track star (barring late inning replacements). In addition, the spread of ability when it comes to catching a ball at the major league level is not very wide. In other words, the vast majority of guys are all bunched together near the average. With a narrow SD like that there are fewer outliers. Maybe Abreu is one of them but even if he's 1 SD or even 1.5 SD from the average player that spread isn't very far, so he's not that much worse than the average guy. I'd say the biggest difference in ability will come with arm strength and accuracy. IMO, that's where the cream gets separated, but again the spread is probably is not that big. Now about IF v. OF. By the time the ball gets to the OF it's a hit or its caught. Most of the time its routine one way or the other. Sometimes a guy will have to go to the gap or head toward the wall to make a play, but that might happen 1 or 2 times a fortnight. Most of the time whatever damage was done was decided by the time the ball left the IF. The IF is different, however, guys who cannot cut it don't stay there long or they get moved to 1st. So again the spread is pretty narrow. The difference comes in as ability to get to a ball, knock a ball down, or dive substantially changes the outcome of a batted ball. That's not going to happen in the OF.

Whomever those some are, are drunken idiots. He's a friggen OFer. Is outfield defense not that important now? Yes. Of course not. but the frequency of chances is a lot less than in the IF and the opportunities to make plays that others wouldn't is pretty significantly reduced. Said another way, Bradley (or any other corner OF this side of Carl Crawford) isn't going to be making significantly more plays than Abreu. It's a distinction without a meaningful difference. Defense is the new OBP. Except the OBP thing was really important and the defensive stuff is just nonsense (with notable exceptions on both sides of the curve). We've all been through this before I'm not going through it again.

Whomever those some are, are drunken idiots. He's a friggen OFer. He's not the guy he once was and Bradley is by far the better player though.

It could mean that he uses the HBP like some guys use a walk. Begeio and Baylor just stood there and let the ball hit them. seems like a good strategy to me. I'm not confident that he'll learn patience (if can actually happen) in the Cubs system. It doesn't seem to have much value.

Maybe more if JH comes to his senses and trades for him next year.

Joe Borowski says hello :wave: from steroids-made-me-millions-land. The dude was out of baseball and pitching in Mexico when he magically found 10 mph on his fastball at age of 29. Edit: According to bbreference he's made $13,000,000 during his career. Yep, I would do steroids too if at age 37 I would have made that much money.

Good pickup for the Nats. I'm sure they are going to get a bargain for his level of production. I kind of feel sorry for Dunn, but then again he's a multi-millionaire playing a game I would for free.

He has a plea arrangement in place. We'll know what the terms of that plea agreement are in the near future. More names in exchange for leniency? I'm guessing it was more of a cost/benefit analysis on the everyone's part. Tejada has a lot of money and can hire some really good lawyers. A trial would have been a media circus and could have dragged out in impressive fashion. Tejada could have lost playing time as a result of a trial and could have received some serious penalties if he was found guilty. My gut is that neither side wanted to go to trial and they worked out an arrangement. Very well could be. Usually the authorities try to get the supplier out of a person that gets pinched, though. I was at lunch and the bar had on ESPN. From what I gathered Tejada is being charged with lying about whether some dude was using, not that he used. It's all nonsense anyway. When is someone going to go after Bud Selig for his knowledge of what was going on under his watch. He had to know and he testified he didn't. He's a god-damn liar just like all the rest.

Great article. Any yes, I loved that. "Welcome to the big leagues" That was a good essay. The ONLY reason A-Rod was outed by someone at MLB was destroy his reputation.

Exactly. I don't know what Rodriguez did to deserve this, but the person in NY that did this must really not like the guy. I'd be willing to put a lot of money on whomever leaked this being a Yankee fan. I don't understand why many Yankee fans dislike A-Rod so much.

They all magically turn into ***** when the sign with ND. Charlie Weiss is dreamy.

It makes sense if FontenYES is dealt for Jake P.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but what Meph is not attempting to say is that PECOTA doesn't have enough data to make an accurate projection on The Shark. The model is much less accurate for minor leagues and guys with not a lot of PT in the bigs, It's the preverbal "sample size" issue (That's what she said).

If you disregard the Dusty factor, these seem like two no-risk signings for the Reds. I think quite a lot of teams will have a couple of MLB vets as NRI's in spring training; it seems to be part of everyone's annual "you never know..." routine. Yeah, I don't think either is a bad signing on the face of it. The problems start when you consider Dusty is the manager. Ward will start every Sunday when Dusty sports his forefit lineup. Gawd that use to piss me off.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner. It's a pox on baseball that will live forever. No one in baseball (or many of its fans judging by this thread) will really give a damn though, because chix dig the long ball.

I'm not a huge fan of PECOTA projections for players, but historically it seems to be a good approximation model for teams. Last year, just eyeballing things in the NL it seems to have been well within the margin of error for most teams and got the standing almost exactly correct with a few exceptions in relation to order of teams. Last year it had the Giants in last in the West and the Reds, Cardinals, and Astros were off in both order and wins by a good margin. If the projection holds this bodes very well for the Cubs. At least it gives me some hope for my glass half-empty Cubs outlook.

All I know is that the cubs had him working on core training, something that was non-existant in his workout when he played in japan/last year. That's about all I've heard. What's core training?

I don't need to explain it to you. You already know. I'm not interested in a pissing contest here. UZR is not reliable and doesn't account for throwing and throwing is at least half the equation. It's not a measure of performance when it can show that player X is better than league average when a sinkerballer is on the mound and worse than league average when a fly ball pitcher is on the mound. The simple fact that variables other than defense are going into the metric is enough to invalidate it. It's probably useful a gross measure but to use it to see who sucks worse seems a little overblown to me. Explain these UZR numbers for Omar Vizquel: -8.4 2002 2.8 2003 -.2 2004 10.1 2005 6.7 2006 19.9 2007 5.3 2008 Nobody plays that inconsistently from year to year. And that is just one example.

It's awful because it is not a reliable tool. Why should a player's defensive ability fluctuate with whomever is on the mound, or in a different ballpark, or vary wildly from year to year? I know you don't think I know anything about UZR, but I do. I'm just skeptical of judgment aids that are so unreliable. If you do know, then explain it. It's awful because it is not a reliable tool. See above. Reliability and validity are the defining quality indicators of any measurement device. If you don't have one or the other the tool is not useful.

It's awful because it is not a reliable tool. Why should a player's defensive ability fluctuate with whomever is on the mound, or in a different ballpark, or vary wildly from year to year? I know you don't think I know anything about UZR, but I do. I'm just skeptical of judgment aids that are so unreliable.

I don't need to when you can look it up.

Those "stats" are horrible. They are especially horrible for OF. If you've got better ones, feel free to volunteer them. *crickets* the fact that you don't have anything better than a magic rock to keep tigers away doesn't mean you should use the rock (and yes, i realize i've completely changed the context of the reference; i have no idea why this scenario came to mind, but it did) But along the spectrum of magic rock to measuring tape, UZR falls closer to measuring tape than magic rock. No one is saying its perfect, but horrible is a wee bit extreme. Just look at fielding % (catching) or OF assists (throwing). Simply because something is new and shiny doesn't make it useful. It's not like either Duncan or Dunn are super good route runners that get errors on plays others guys wouldn't get to. In addition, UZR and the rest of the fielding stats that try to quantify defensive prowess aren't reliable enough to even cite at this point in time, using them as a judgment aid is about as useful as a magic rock.