Diffusion

You seem to have anger issues. Threats aren't appropriate here. I don't have anger issues, and I'd be right behind him the whole way. I have extreme anger issues, and I'm in. I don't even understand how Hendry could turn this into Maddux II? Maddux was a free agent that Himes played hard ball with and lost to another team. What similarity does that have with Prior voiding his contract and filing for arbitration? There's no real similarity. I was just joking. I can't speak for the others.

You seem to have anger issues. Threats aren't appropriate here. I don't have anger issues, and I'd be right behind him the whole way. I have extreme anger issues, and I'm in.

I think we should try and trump the record the Nationals currently hold of most players capable of playing second base on a roster at the same time! A few weeks ago, all of the following were on the Nats 40-man roster... Alfonso Soriano, Jose Vidro, Junior Spivey, Brendan Harris, Damian Jackson, Marlon Anderson, Jamey Carroll, Rick Short, Bernie Castro. That's nine! Out of a roster of forty! Impressive, no?

This is an interesting co-incidence... Grissom, .285/.336/.467 Restovich, .281/.336/.467 Those are career splits versus lefties. Just 146 PA for Restovich, of course. I wonder if there are any other .336/.467 types that Hendry wants to sign to a minor league contract any time soon. My personal opinion is that the eleven years nine months difference is what makes one deal a good one, and the other just a pointless one.

Trade Miggy after 2007 for a fortune in pitching just as he's about to explode into flames with $30m/2yrs still left on his deal, and play Asdrubal in his place! In the meantime, make sure before you deal Tejada you get the necessary big bat corner OF in place so that you can easily weather losing Tejada's production: signing Adam Dunn as a free agent after 2007 would work. So... C, Lee, 2B, Asdrubal, Ramirez, Dunn, Reed and Murton in 2008! Seriously, I dunno. I just liked the idea of it.

Why should the Cubs do this? It just makes no sense. Let's compare Adam Kennedy and Jerry Hairston. Adam Kennedy has hit .290/.349/.407 over the last four years (the most favourable split for him), Jerry Hairston .274/.346/.378. Jerry Hairston has hit .277/.354/.379 over the last three years (the most favourable split for him), Adam Kennedy .282/.350/.392. I think it's fair to conclude then that Kennedy is slightly better with the bat, but that the difference is very slim. The fact that Kennedy bats left-handed is useful too. Defensively both are slightly above average at second base, maybe a slight edge to Kennedy. Kennedy is also a better basestealer, though he's maybe not as fast as Hairston. I think it's fair to come to a conclusion that, overall, Kennedy is fractionally better than Hairston. Kennedy being four months older than Hairston, that's not really much of a factor, and because Kennedy's reasonably priced at $3.35m for 2006 (before becoming a free agent), salary doesn't really come into it either. Hairston's also a free agent next winter by the way. But what this boils down to is do you trade Walker/prospect for Kennedy and go with Kennedy(2B)/Hairston(Util), or do you go with Hairston(2B)/utility player to be named later (via FA, presumably, or Greenberg maybe), trading Walker, as part of a package if necessary, for the pitcher the Cubs are supposed to be looking for. There's simply no contest. You go for the latter option. I'd probably do the first part of the deal as it is, though I'd try and exploit the Rich Hill supposed untouchable-ness and first inquire as to whether Seattle might throw in, say, Asdrubal Cabrera too. He's pretty surplus in the Seattle system, because they're just loaded with shortstops: Yuniesky Betancourt, Mike Morse, Jose Lopez and Adam Jones are all ahead of Cabrera on the depth chart right now, but Cabrera's a very young gold-glove shortstop with a really promising bat: .272/.330/.427 in 2004 aged 18 in short-season ball (239 AB), .318/.407/.474 in 2005 aged 19 at Low-A (192 AB), then .284/.325/.418 in 2005 still aged 19 at High-A (225 AB). As for the second part of the deal, forget about it. We'd be much better off sticking with Reed, trading Pierre. One option would be to trade him for pitching (apparently he's worth a lot of that: Nolasco, Pinto and Mitre). Alternatively, try using Pierre, Williams and Cedeno or something like that to get Tejada, then the lineup would really be smoking: Barrett at C, Lee, Hairston, Tejada, Ramirez across the infield, Reed in CF and some combination of Ibanez/Jones/Murton in the corners. Plus Asdrubal Cabrera at Double-A maybe.

Jose Reyes projects as a backup catcher. Really, big deal if someone wants him really badly in the Rule 5 draft, chances are he's almost certainly not going to stick and even if he does, so what? As for your point about Van Buren, some negotiating 101 for you: you have a lot more leverage when there's no obligation on your part to move the player. Via the roster crunch, Hendry effectively gave himself that obligation, needlessly. Well from reports I've heard, Reyes could be a very capable backup catcher just based on his defense. If that it indeed the case, it would be a lot better to have your defensive specialist catcher at league minimum next year rather than paying whatever it is we are paying to Blanco. And Reyes is still very young. I would guess he will play in AA again this year, and will still be about average age at 22, correct? Trouble is the Cubs have three (future) backup catchers on the 40-man roster right now: Blanco, Soto and Reyes. At least one of them is entirely superfluous. Backup catchers, no matter how good, have very little trade value, and with little value to us either, the extremely unlikely loss of Reyes had he not been protected from the Rule 5 draft would have been just about insignificant anyway. Absolutely it would be better if our defensive specialist wasn't earning Henry Blanco money. Certainly, I wouldn't be complaining if the catchers on our 40-man roster were Barrett, Soto and Reyes. But Henry Blanco is around and he's earning Henry Blanco money, and he's not going anywhere until he's picked up every last cent of it. As a result, adding Reyes to the third backup catcher is just so unnecessary. Van Buren's mechanics pose for him three problems. Firstly, and most significantly, difficulty successfully hitting his spots on a regular basis. Secondly, a probable increase in the chance of injury. Thirdly, and least significantly, an occasional complete inability to field his position. Aside from that, Van Buren has excellent stuff and he has absolutely the right mindset: he's confident, aggressive, goes after hitters, gives them his best and asks only that they better it. In the minor leagues at least, more often that not they've simply not been able to. Again, consider his "stuff" numbers over the last two years, put up mostly at Double-A and Triple-A (with short stints at Low-A and the majors): 123 IP, 67 H, 8 HR, 144 K, 1.98 ERA. Those ratios are simply mind-bogglingly good. There's little reason to suspect that Van Buren's value is going to lower any time soon, short of him getting injured, which is obviously a possibility, but that possibility applies in some measure to all pitchers, and because of the way Van Buren's built, despite his mechanics the possibility may be no greater for Van Buren than for anyone else. Right now, short of someone ahead of him getting injured, he'll go back to Iowa, and he'll probably tear up that league again, strengthening the case for a major league promotion. His stuff is good enough to play in the majors, and any kind of success at all in the majors if he gets a chance will definately improve his value. If he fails, that's hardly the end of the world, for failure is something that the vast majority of pitchers experience when they first reach the majors. Let's though run with the possibility that Van Buren's value is never going to be higher than it is now, perhaps because he does get injured and he's never the same again. That still doesn't mean that you should content yourself with trading him now if, when trading him, we failed to cash in on his value being at its highest by moving him for cents on the dollar just because we needed to clear roster room. Had there not been a roster crunch, and had Hendry not had to move someone, Van Buren being the most convenient because of the interest in him, Hendry could still have moved Van Buren later this winter, without the Your entire argument hangs on the premise that had Hendry not moved Van Buren when he did, he never would have, plus the assumption that Van Buren's value is at its highest point now. I see absolutely no justification for either. I don't believe Van Buren's value is at its highest right now, because I believe he can fashion for himself a very decent career as a middle reliever. And, with Van Buren having more value to other teams than he has to the Cubs, I think that Hendry realised that his greatest value to the Cubs was as a trading chip, which was part of the reason why Hendry, needing to open up a number of spots on the 40-man roster, was open to moving Van Buren. Given the situation that Hendry was in, I don't think that moving Van Buren was indefensible, even though it's plainly not a good move. It was probably the least harmful of moves that he could have made in that situation, even though it's still harmful. Being punched in the face hurts, but it's preferable to being hit over the head with a sledgehammer. But that doesn't absolve Hendry, for he was entirely responsible for getting himself into such a situation. That is the entire premise of my argument, and absolutely nobody has successfully argued it. You want to give Hendry a free pass because maybe Van Buren won't turn out that great, or maybe the prospect he got for him will, or maybe this or maybe that. You seemingly don't realise though that all of that is completely besides the point. Irrelevant. It doesn't matter one bit. Which spot? Point is, thanks to Hendry's 40-man roster moves, there was no spot. The 40-man roster was full, and Hendry wanted to finalise the Bob Howry deal. Someone had to go. That someone ended up being Van Buren, mainly I suspect because, via the Red Sox showing interest, it became the easiest way out of the roster crunch (outrighting the lesser players on the 40 to the minors wasn't possible at the time because minor league rosters are frozen in the run-up to the Rule 5). And if you're in a position where you need to get rid of a player, then you have no leverage. Even you've just acknowledged that. As a result, the Red Sox got Van Buren a lot cheaper than they would otherwise have done had Hendry not needed to move Van Buren, or someone, because of the roster crunch. This has been my point all along! The Cubs had no leverage this year. The revelance of the possibility that they may have also had no leverage next year escapes me.

I want there to be, at most, just one of him. And the Cubs already have Neifi Perez. No problem. If I had to guess, I'd say that the hit by pitch has resulted in more serious problems for Greenberg than the Cubs have publicly let on: that would certainly fit with them purchasing his contract mid-season only to outright him at the end of the season, and if other teams were aware of these problems too, that'd fit with him successfully clearing waivers, which I found pretty surprising given that he looks/looked like becoming one of the game's best fourth outfielders. All of that's just a guess though, and I obviously really hope it's not the case.

If I had to guess, I'd say arthritis. But I looked it up and I was wrong. Grissom actually suffered two injuries in 2005. A bruise to his right knee cost him May 18th to June 3rd (14 games), and a strained right hamstring cost him June 14th to July 25th (34 games).

The trouble is that seemingly all managers find it just about impossible to orchestrate a perfect platoon arrangement, or even a near-perfect platoon arrangement. Greenberg's status: young and left-handed. As in, Dusty's not even going to look up Greenberg's minor league splits to explore the possibility of using him as Jones' platoon partner. Seriously, Greenberg successfully cleared waivers, surprisingly, so he's still part of the organisation but no longer on the 40-man roster. If the Cubs want to use him now, they have to purchase his contract again. Finally, the next time that Greenberg's designated for assignment he has the right to opt to become a free agent.

Career - .285/.336/467 (2641 PA) 2005 - .217/.245/.261 (49 PA) Age - turns 39 in April This is why he's getting a minor league contract with an invitation to spring training and not a guaranteed deal. If not for our manager, this would be a good risk/reward acquisition. I agree that it's not a bad signing. I've edited my original post to illustrate that I posted the numbers I did not because I'm against the signing, but I'm against Wheelimus' spin on the signing. Still, it's something of a pointless signing, because he's not really going to be needed at Triple-A, and he's not the best major league option out there if all you're looking for is someone that can hit lefties but does absolutely nothing else: .285/.336/.467 vs lefties isn't that special, and Grissom is a huge collapse candidate (if his 2005 is anything to go by, he's already collapsed).

Career - .285/.336/.467 (2641 PA) 2005 - .217/.245/.261 (49 PA) Age - turns 39 in April It's not a bad signing by any means because it's just a minor league contract. He's so old now though that past performance is no real indicator as to what to expect this year, and even if he can keep it up, the sum of his past performance against left-handers isn't good enough for him to deserve a spot on the major league roster, not when you consider how awful he is against right-handers and on defence. Players that are good for nothing besides hitting lefties are freely enough available.

That's about as stupid as arguments come. He did a bad job this way, but at least he's now doing a bad job in a more "proactive" way! Not to mention that trading a player because you forced yourself to have to cut someone because you messed the 40-man roster up is a lot of things, but "proactive" is not one of them. You kind of made my point for me. I acknowledged that he has messed up the 40-man by not dealing away these mid-level guys earlier. I am, at least, glad to see that he is trying to fix that issue, even if its a season too late. Moreover, IMO, we have a greater need for position-player depth than middle reliever depth. As such, I don't have a big problem with this deal. May be JVB will set the world on fire, but its far more likely that he won't. And thanks for calling me "stupid", BTW. I didn't call you stupid. I said "that's about as stupid as arguments come". So, unless you are a stupid argument, which I'm guessing not, you don't need to pretend to be so offended. How is Hendry fixing any issue here? You're rightly criticising Hendry for not dealing away Mitre, Leicester and Wellemeyer earlier. So he deals Van Buren when he still has three options years left (and not because he really wants to part with Van Buren, but rather because he needs to clear roster space) and you want to give him credit for not allowing Van Buren to reach a stage where he's out of options? You want to call him "pro-active" for forcing himself into making any Van Buren deal now instead of potentially making no Van Buren deal at all for the next three maybe more years? Ridiculous. The only reason you don't hold onto a player that's marginal to you until he's out of options is because you're not maximising his trade value. The possibility of an immiment journey through waivers, where teams will be able to have him for nothing besides the $20k price of a waiver claim really harms a prospect's value. That's why what Hendry did with Mitre, Leicester and Wellemeyer was wrong. The reason why what he's done with Van Buren is wrong is the exact same reason, only this time he's gone about it in an entirely different way. When a General Manager obliges himself to get rid of a player, he lessens the player's trade value. In this case it wasn't a case of the Sammy Sosa's or the Milton Bradley's, in was a case of there being a roster crunch. The reason for that roster crunch: the presence of numerous players on the roster that shouldn't have been there. As a result, with Hendry needing to clear roster room fast, when the Red Sox came calling offering just a PTBNL, Hendry jumped on it only because he saw an opportunity to lessen the roster crunch. I don't know much about the player Hendry got in return, except that he was 22 last year and playing in Low-A, which isn't particuarly promising. But that doesn't matter. What Hendry got back in this deal is entirely irrelevant. No matter how good or bad the player he got in this deal is, because Hendry failed to maximise Van Buren's trade value, via the roster crunch, he could almost certainly have got better if he'd had no good reason to move Van Buren other than to improve the ballclub. That is what's at stake here. Failing to maximise a player's trade value via a roster crunch is not progress relative to failing to maximuise a player's trade value via letting them get to the stage where they're out of options. If you criticise one, you have to criticise the other. It's the principle of not maximising a player's trade value that you're against, or you should be. Koronka and Reyes are uncontestable. Wellemeyer shouldn't be on the roster now and you've argued as much yourself. That leaves just the two hitting prospects... Dopirak is not in my mind a top prospect, bringing little to the table besides power, and he's absolutely light years away from the major anyway. Having completely flopped in High-A last year, the chances of him succeeding in the majors are none to zero. No team in baseball can carry a first baseman that won't hit anything whatsoever, not in the same way as you can carry a pitcher at the back of your bullpen: there's no need for a hitter to eat meaningless at-bats in the same way as there's one for pitchers to eat junk innings. And even if the Royals liked Dopirak, with Sweeney, Huber, now Mientkiewicz too, they have absolutely no need for him. As a result, as far as I'm concerned, the rostering of Dopirak is just an over-reaction by Hendry to the loss of Sisco. As for Scott Moore, a third baseman that hits .281/.358/485 in High-A with more than a strikeout a game and plays bleh defence (he'll probably end up at first base before long) isn't a candidate to be anywhere near good enough in the majors that a team would even consider selecting him in the Rule 5 draft. Consider, for instance, the fact that the unprotected older Brandon Sing wasn't selected. He doesn't have the same tools, but his track record is a lot better and at a higher level too. Why Moore was rostered I have no idea. I have even less idea why you agree with it.

Jose Reyes projects as a backup catcher. Really, big deal if someone wants him really badly in the Rule 5 draft, chances are he's almost certainly not going to stick and even if he does, so what? As for your point about Van Buren, some negotiating 101 for you: you have a lot more leverage when there's no obligation on your part to move the player. Via the roster crunch, Hendry effectively gave himself that obligation, needlessly.

There isn't a debate here about Van Buren's value. No, this is about how to put a 40-man roster together so that you don't need to cut bait with players you'd be better off keeping, if only for another trade later down the line. It isn't just the value of a player to our team that counts, it's also the value of a player to every team. As such, the fact that Van Buren was opportunistically gobbled up by the Red Sox while Macias cleared waivers tells you a huge amount about their relative values. As for value to our team, which of Van Buren and Macias has contributed more wins above replacement level (WARP1) over the last three years to the Chicago Cubs? I'll save you looking it up: Van Buren, in spite of throwing just six innings for this team. Yes, Jose Macias over the last three years combined has contributed a pathetic 0.5 wins above replacement level, a figure that Van Buren managed to surpass in 6 innings towards the back end of last year. Last year Macias was even below replacement level, and, turning 34 this January, let's just say I doubt he's going to get any better in a hurry. So, even if the Mabry and Pierre transactions had inexplicably fallen through, who cares if we'd already DFA'd Macias? For crying out loud, free agent demand for Macias is so great that if the Cubs felt they needed to bring him back, they could! And even if Macias felt so aggrieved at being DFA'd that he refused to come back, there are numerous other readily available replacement level players out there to be had that could do just as good a job. Numerous. You find me a readily and freely available Jermaine Van Buren, a guy with really good stuff that'll cost $1m over the next three years, and then you'll have a leg to stand on in this argument. Andy Sisco, Sergio Mitre, Jon Leicester, Todd Wellemeyer, Renyel Pinto, Jermaine Van Buren, Joe Borowski. The loss of all of these players (Wellemeyer will go, don't worry about that), and the pathetic return on them of about half of Juan Pierre, plus Matt Ciaramella, another PTBNL and maybe something for Wellemeyer, can be attributed to poor and inefficient 40-man roster construction by Hendry. That's seven players over the last two off-seasons, not one. In Sisco's case he inexplicably didn't protect him, and he lost him in the Rule 5 draft. In the cases of Mitre, Leicester and Wellemeyer he didn't show any foresight whatsoever, instead letting their value erode as they creeped towards a trip through waivers. In Pinto's case, Hendry added him to the 40-man roster a year too soon, and, in fairness actually showing some foresight, that Pinto as a result would be out of options next year was probably a factor in him being moved this winter. Van Buren and Borowski were forced out by a 40-man roster crunches of Hendry's own making. Borowski's a bit of a stretch, I admit that, because I didn't foresee what he'd do in Tampa Bay, I thought he was done, and I had no problem with the DFA at the time, which was the only real way to get him off the 25. All the same, that's six or seven players, and some serious value flying out the window there, squandered. I really really don't care at all about how Hendry stacks up relative to the Dodgers. I care only about how Hendry stacks up relative to the best job he could (and should) have done.

37 days from it being made public that Wood needed surgery to him actually going under the knife.

You're still not getting it. Macias could've been DFAd the day the season ended. Mitre could've been traded that same day and it wouldn't make a difference. A 40 man spot wouldn't magically open up if you removed guys off of it in a different order. The spot had to be opened up. Argue about keeping Koronka on the roster, or the utterly worthless rostering of Reyes(I'm assuming Wellemeyer will be cleared out for a bench guy at some point.), but bringing Macias into the conversation is inaccurate. I'm getting it perfectly well. Macias should have non-tendered in December 2004. Mitre should have been traded at the height of his value, when his two great starts in June 2005 were still fresh in the mind. In neither case is that just hindsight talking: that's what I was strongly in favour of at the time. I have certainly never argued for Mitre having a long-term role with the Cubs, I've never argued that Mitre should be used in short-stint relief, and I wouldn't ever have even thought about arguing that Jose Macias deserved a spot on the 2005 Cubs. Of course, replacing Macias may have refilled that roster spot, or, alternatively, as I argued, the Cubs could have almost certainly more than replaced him with internal already-rostered options such as Mike Fontenot or, later, Ryan Theriot. As for Mitre, whether or not that would have opened up roster spots obviously depends on the nature of the deal that any GM worth his salt should have been able to work out given a couple of months, damn it. And all of that ignores the fact that I named seven players that had no right to be on the 40-man roster the day that Van Buren was shipped out on the cheap to open up room for the not particularly high-impact signings of Eyre and Howry. Only one of them needs not have been there. Quibble about Mitre then if you will (Macias you simply don't have a case with, unless the date of his DFA was actually prior to the Van Buren trade, but I'm reasonably sure that it wasn't). That still leaves five that you chose not to contest at all.

Now on that I agree with you. Not protecting Hagerty was a defensible though somewhat risky move, and in the end, sad to say for Hagerty's career, it turned out to be the right decision. For the sake of historical accuracy, Hendry didn't actually just leave Sisco and Hagerty out there. He also chose not to protect Nolasco, Blasko and Connelly. And Hendry ought to have known since April 27th 2005 that Leicester would be out of options in 2006. He should have been aware since April 3rd 2005 that Mitre would also be out of options in 2006, and since April 12th 2005 that Wellemeyer would be in the exact same boat. And so far, he's taken these three decent (not great, but decent) pitching prospects that have long been somewhat superfluous with the quality and depth of our staff, and as such ought to have long been designated as trading chips, and he's thrown one into a deal that was already lopsided, he's turned another into a PTBNL, and the last one is still closing in on a trip through waivers. Some return.

I know we're supposed to be on the same tag team, so I should agree with you, or something, but Van Buren doesn't have a "two pitch repetoire". He throws fastball, slider, changeup and curveball, all of them are at least average if not better, and he's willing to throw all of them in pretty much any count.

Well ain't that a great logic. Its obviously not an overly developed argument, but I think Vance's point is that JVB did not have a place on this club b/c he projects as a middle reliever, so why allow him to languish in the minors where his value is likely to go down? If that was Vance's point, and it wasn't, then I wouldn't have disagreed with it. Van Buren could easily fashion for himself a decent career as a major league middle reliever, and the fact that he's got three option years left and will be cheap for a while makes him potentially pretty useful. At the same time, Van Buren wasn't going to make the club next year after the Howry and Eyre signings, injuries not withstanding, and the Cubs aren't exactly short of very good stuff guys with control problems anyway. As a result, you're talking about a very good trading chip - someone worth more to other teams than he's worth to you. He's not worth that much to us in the minor leagues, is he? And had he ever cracked our bullpen, he'd have been right at the very back of it, not worth that much to us there either. He's the kind of guy you can throw in to seal a big deal for an impact player. You take a look at some of the bullpens around the league and you put Van Buren in some of them and he's one of the better relievers. Look for instance at the Orioles' bullpen. Or the Phillies'. Or the Reds'. You know exactly who I'm thinking about. Instead the Cubs cut bait with him before they had a chance to put together a deal simply because Hendry doesn't know how to effectively put a 40-man roster together. Alone, one relatively small squandered opportunity cost isn't going to hurt us too much. The trouble is that with Hendry this kind of thing is typical, and put together Hendry's inability over the last few years to maximise the return on the pitching in the system has hugely hampered this organisation. Actually, I'd say Van Buren is a pretty unique kind of player. He has excellent stuff, but absolutely awful mechanics that lead to moderate control problems. His numbers over the last two years are staggeringly dominant: 123 innings, 67 hits allowed, 8 home runs allowed, 147 strikeouts, 1.98 ERA. Triple-A relief pitcher of the year for 2005 as named by Baseball America. Dime-a-dozen I really don't think is an applicable expression here. Sure, he's a long, long way from a top prospect. But no-one's arguing he's a top prospect. No-one's even arguing as though he's a top prospect. Compare, for instance, the Sisco backlash last year to the Van Buren backlash this year, and there isn't a comparison. That's about as stupid as arguments come. He did a bad job this way, but at least he's now doing a bad job in a more "proactive" way! Not to mention that trading a player because you forced yourself to have to cut someone because you messed the 40-man roster up is a lot of things, but "proactive" is not one of them.

Well ain't that a great logic.

Now you are stretching it. Nobody expected Derrek to have the season he had. He hit 6th the first week or so of the season, and nobody complained. He was soon moved to 3rd-4th and stayed there the rest of the season. Not only that, but Lee, at the start of 2005 a career .266/.353/.474 hitter (.276/.365/.497 for 2000-04), had made it publicly known that he preferred to hit sixth. Indeed, going into 2005, in a career totalling 4002 plate appearances, Lee had amassed 1957 of them batting sixth, relative to just 22 batting third and 452 batting fourth (the rest, for the record, are 3 batting leadoff, 294 batting second, 833 batting fifth, 367 batting seventh, 24 batting eighth and 50 batting ninth).

BECAUSE HE HAD TO CLEAR OUT JVB'S SPOT ANYWAYS. The 40 man roster is full right now, whether he released Macias first and then traded JVB or did it in the order he did it MAKES NO DIFFERENCE. The only reason the 40-man roster was full was because it was still populated at the time of Van Buren's DFA by Mitre, Wellemeyer, Soto/Reyes, Macias, Koronka, Dopirak and Moore. Mitre and Wellemeyer should have been traded already, one of Soto/Reyes is surplus, Macias should have long been DFA'd, Koronka, Dopirak and Moore shouldn't ever have been added to 40. Sorry, but needing to get rid of Van Buren was poor 40-man roster construction on Hendry's part, and so turning Van Buren into Ciaramella is not something that Hendry should be proud of. None of that means, as other people have written, that Van Buren was/is the second coming.

I think you could argue either way. When the A's signed Hatteberg, there were only two teams after him (I'll have to double check that, but they were either the only one or competing with just one other). But the point is that the A's don't target players because no-one else wants them, which is what you originally said. I do think Moneyball had a lot to do with it, particularly with the fans. I learned so much from Moneyball and I think everyone who read it did. However, you are probably right that it's too bold, any suggestions on how I could change it, still keeping that Moneyball has helped? My point isn't that it's too bold. I don't think it's impossible to back up the statement that "the publication of Moneyball changed the game", but I do think it's very difficult. Rather my point is that if you say something, you have to be able to prove it, you have to back it up with evidence. You didn't do that, and as such your assertion appears to be nothing but an unsubstantied opinion. And you don't want them in your essay. That doesn't mean that you should necessary cut the remark about Moneyball having changed the game. It just means that if you don't cut it, you need to devote time to backing up that statement. That might actually be a better approach in terms of the readibility of your essay - looking at the extent of the impact of sabermetrics and Moneyball as opposed to just explaining a list of statistics. Okay, so what I meant to say is that the faults in some statistics are the way they're set up, for example BA is fault because it's over at bats and not plate appearances, measures how much a person gets on base but only by hits, etc... No! What's at fault here is your interpretation of what batting average is about, not batting average or its design. Batting average exists only to measure how often a hitter gets a hit. And it does a great job of that. So what's wrong with batting average? Nothing as far as I can see (though I suppose you could argue that sacrifice flies should count towards the denominator). What's at fault here is your argument that batting average should exist to show something else, to show how often a player gets on-base. Here's how your argument should run instead: batting average measures how often a batter gets a hit. Nothing wrong with the way that it does that. However, how often a batter gets a hit is not a particularly good measure of his effectiveness as an offensive force (there's a lot more to being a good hitter than just getting hits often - the nature of the hits, how often he avoids outs by means other than hits, how he makes his outs, and so on). The problem is (as you put it yourself lower down) batting average "was [and I'd argue still is in a lot of cases, though to a lesser extent] the true measure of a hitter's ability". Traditionalists gave and in some cases still give batting average too much weighting in their evaluations of players. The fault lies with the people that make this mistake, not with batting average itself. Think of it this way: an apple is worth, what, 50 cents? If someone pays $50 for an apple, is that the apple's fault? No, of course not. The apple still does what it's supposed to do: it tastes good, it fills a hole. The fault lies with the stupid person that paid $50 for the apple. He overvalued the apple. He paid for the apple as though it was a three course meal from a top restaurant. Dumb move. It's not the apple's fault that it wasn't a three course meal from a top restaurant. It's the stupid person's. Batting average is the $50 apple. Think about it. I think it's clear what I'm trying to say, and why the approach you took to batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage is wrong. You were having a go at an apple for being an apple. Also a dumb move. What's S? Plate Appearances - Walks - Hit By Pitch - Sac Flies - S? Sacrifices, or sacrifice bunts, whatever you want to call it. Plate appearances minus walks minus hit by pitches minus sacrifice flies minus sacrifice bunts. I hope you can guess my response to this from my previous response. The point of OBP is not to tell you which player is better. It is to tell you which person avoided outs at a better rate. Yes, that every base is created unequal is a fault in the design of slugging percentage. In the long run the differences are marginal enough though. You're right that there are a lot of seasons. 9067 to be exact. That's 9067 seasons of 300 or more at-bats between 1959 and 2004. But the parameters are reasonably tight. If you extend the slugging percentage parameter to .380 - .420, you're looking at 296 seasons (out of 9067). Not a huge amount, but to say that it never happens, or that it rarely happens, is pretty ridiculous. If your point was that it's not often you find a player with a slugging percentage 100 points higher than his average, well there were 1143 out of 9067 seasons with a slugging between 90 and 110 points higher than average. Pretty significant. If you extend it to 80 to 120 points, 2173 seasons. Very significant. But I don't really know what your point was when you made that kind of statement. I don't know what you were trying to achieve by it. That's the biggest reason why you should ever reword to be a lot more specific, or get rid of it all together. My arguing the entire time then should be how slugging percentage (or any stat) is set up, rather than arguing why the actual stat has faults, correct? Your arguing really should be about how the statistics are wrongly applied, due largely to being wrongly perceived. Slugging percentage isn't a great example. Batting average is. It's perceived to be more important than it actually is, so it's overapplied in player evaluation. Player by player on a team, plugged into James's formula, and then added up to estimate how many runs the team would score vs. the actual amount they did. High correlation between the two. You need to state that in your essay, not tell me! I'm just trying to make a point that park factors have contributed to success and for those that have hit in pitcher's parks, they've been hurt. Any suggestions to rephrase it? I've got my own essays to write! You need to write this yourself. I suppose, if you wanted to, you could take what I've written, quote it and cite me in your essay. But that's boring. And, anyway, you know what you want to say. Your point about park factors is fine. Just make sure that what you write can't be read to mean anything besides exactly what you want to say. That was one thing I just added yesterday due to someone else's suggestion and I didn't check my facts. I just assumed AL would score more runs than the NL. Does the average AL team score more runs than the average NL team? Yes. You can tell more about a player looking at OPS+ than OPS, though. Same with ERA+ and ERA, which isn't included in the paper. Sure, but why not just avoid using OPS+ and OPS? You'd be better off for it. As for ERA, is there a good reason why you've not included a look at pitching metrics in this essay? It is an important part of the game. Fielding metrics too. Just wondering. I'm implying that they got good players in return for their two pitchers, and these players did play a role in the success of the A's. So in that way, yes, but their success wasn't directly because of the players they got back in the trades. Well spell that out with what you write in your essay. Always be more specific. Don't just leave things out there blowing in the wind. But, if you were to weigh salary and production, Hatteberg was an excellent pickup. Did he really get $6.5 for each season, or was it a 3-yr., $6.5M contract? Sure. But you need to consider every aspect to the deal to say whether or not it's an excellent pickup. The way you'd written it, it didn't seem as though you were doing that. I don't have a problem with your conclusion, I have a problem with how you presented the evidence that led to your conclusion. It was very one-sided. Even if the counter-argument (that Hatteberg wasn't a good pickup) is unconvincing, you should still address it, even if just to dismiss it. $6.5m over the 3 years, not per year. Maybe it would be better for me to mention the Blue Jays and Dodgers as a subpoint of the A's, as both those two guys were involved with the A's under Beane? Well I think you should first of all really get rid of all mentions of the Braves. If you want to be fair and balanced, objective even, you need to look at all the sabermetric teams, rather than just say "the Red Sox won a World Series with it, and Billy Beane is really cool", which while I'm being a bit melodramatic, is the still the thrust of your argument in favour of sabermetrics at the moment. Sabermetric stats > Traditional stats is the point of the conclusion, however I do want to redo the whole conclusion and I said that in my first post. Cool, no problem, but the bit about rate stats being better than counting stats is just rubbish, so make sure you get rid of that. How many games a year a player plays is obviously hugely important in any evaluation of just how good he is. Games played is a counting stat. Innings pitched too. VORP is a sabermetric invention, and that's a counting stat. There are numerous other sabermetric stats with silly acronyms that are counting stats - FRAA, FRAR, BRAA, BRAR, Win Shares and so on and so on. The key to effective statistical evaluation is considering both quantity and quality. You saying that you should ignore counting stats to better evaluate players is just completely and utterly wrong. It couldn't be more wrong. That's not what sabermetrics is all about. It depends what you want to get out of your essay. It would really help me to help you if you told me the question you set yourself to which this essay was a response. Or, if there wasn't a question, what you set out to try and say via your essay. What the goal of the essay was. And so on. Right now it's kind of hard to tell, and that's a failing of the essay. You're stuck somewhere between answering the questions "what is sabermetrics?", "why are sabermetric statistics better than traditional statistics?" and "does sabermetrics work in practice?". At the moment you're really not answering any of the three though. You'd be a lot better off concentrating on one of the three (and personally I'd go for the third, but, hey, it's entirely up to you, it's your essay) and really really answering that in a lot of detail, and getting rid of all the bits that right now are answering the other questions. Either that or you can try to answer multiple questions, but in that case the structure of your essay needs to be a lot stronger. Right now you're jumping from one question to another throughout. And it's hard to get a grasp as a result on why you've written the essay, what the essay is for. That's a problem. 17. Thanks. No problem. I've been pretty scathingly critical in a lot of what I've written in response to your essay. Don't be disheartened by that. It's nothing personal. I just want to try and help you write the best essay possible. Cruel to be kind, you know. Probably a bit too much cruel. Sorry about that. Direct any anger at me into your essay, a motivational "I'll show him!" kind of tool.

Diamondbacks' outfield situation also has Carlos Gonzales in the low minors...