nilodnayr

Coghlan and prospects for McGee and Desmond Jennings would round out both the bench and bullpen pretty nicely. That would have to be some pretty decent prospect package as Coghlan isn't as valuable as either McGee or Jennings and the elite reliever market is pretty crazy right now.

I certainly wouldn't consider what happened last year as "complaining". Dude was asked by a reporter if he thought he should be a starter down the stretch/in the playoffs. Cogs was confident in himself and he was coming off a season where he was hitting 3rd and picked up an infielders glove for the first time in years. He was a useful, team player and he really only said, "yeah, I think I should be in the lineup". I think a Coghlan for Dyson swap would make lots of sense (even if we'd have to sweeten it a bit). While not right handed, Dyson is a super stud defensively and can sub in at all 3 positions (he's actually matched Kiermaier in UZR/150 in CF). KC needs pop with Gordon and Zobrist gone and already has a stud CF, although as of now Dyson is ticketed as one of their starting corner OFs. Dyson can be a late inning defensive replacement/insurance if Heyward in CF doesn't work/workable short term starting CF if they get a deal they can't refuse for Soler.

Fun fact, Castro and Warren have the exact same fWAR over the last two years.

I make that deal for Chris Sale and walk away with a massive smile on my face. Sale is durable, doesn't walk many batters,racks up plenty of strikeouts, is only 26, and is signed for four more years at very reasonable rates. While possibly getting 30 homers from a middle infielder is mighty tempting to keep, its not as if we haven't been burned by toolsy hitters with a piss poor approach at the plate time and time again. And while I'm a fan of Soler I wouldn't let him stop me from acquiring an ace with no major flaws (in his prime). I highly doubt Sale is going anywhere, but what about Quintana? I can't believe he hasn't been mentioned yet.

Haren OPS against 1st, 2nd, and 3rd times through the order are .672, .608, and .934. We know Maddon is all about TTO, so while he can go deepish in games, I expect we'll see him get early pulls and perhaps be in a loose piggyback situation. Edit: BTW, so far this year Haren during his first two times through the order has been essentially Cole Hamels (although very babip reliant).

Hi all, a few managers have abandoned the keeper league I run so I'm looking for new blood. Its a fun league, especially the keeper aspect of it and the other managers are neither too hardcore, nor too lax. Here are the specifics: Mixed 12 team (need 3 managers to get to 12), yahoo, 5x5 (standard) roto, 25 round snake draft, (c,1b,2b,ss,3b,CI,MI,util,4 OF,4 SP,2 RP,2 P,5 bench,5 DL). You can keep up to 5 players/year. The "price" for keeping them is using a draft pick (at least) 2 rounds earlier than you took them last year (FA/waivers can be kept with a 23rd round). With this format you can only keep a max of 3 of your first 5 round picks from the previous year (so a nice churn of very good players) and you get rewarded for finding the breakout sleepers. You can keep a player a maximum of 3 times. Ohh and its 100 bucks. The new managers will get some nice sweeteners, such as picking in the front of the draft and being able to chose their keepers from the entire pool of players not kept. Send me a message if you're interested. Thanks!

Seems like the current plan is to acquire/draft tons of volume/upside pitching prospects (TNSTAAPP) while you cheaply fill the OF with platoons and fill infield with mega prospects and strategically strike on younger/undervalued pitchers even if it means overpaying because you'll be paying league minimum for your infield and a few million per outfielder. Then when your position players hit arb, you'll bear the fruits of your pitching prospects and be able to pay them. This inessence is the wave theory: pay market/above for the right FAs while one group comes up cheaply and then when the cheap become more expensive, have another group of players backfill...the wave isn't a one time thing, it waxes and wanes. At worst through each of these cycles you open a few year window to compete and at best you continually sustain success.

Liriano in the first half of 2011 was exactly what we should expect Liriano to be in the first half of 2012 and the twins got absolute garbage from the Sox for him. Liriano is past the point even were his name has any value. That's b/c Liriano hasn't been able to get his stuff to translate into results, similar to when the Yankees had Burnett and there were wondering if the Cubs and Yanks would unload two bad contracts between Zambrano and Burnett, each had bad deals till the end of those contracts. Burnett went to the NL, improved his control whether he pitched to contact a little more is up for debate but he improved his stock greatly from a year ago. I'd be curious to see what the reaction was when Pitt acquired him. If Liriano can maintain his stuff and get his ERA to be near his FIP, possibly pitch to cpntact more as well as going from the AL to the NL, I think we will see improvement from him. I think we'll see Liriano have a much higher WAR than Villanueva during the durations of theses contracts. Also, if he shows any type of consistency or flashes like he had '10, with that cheap contract, he'll have more value than Villanueva. I would be willing to bet that Liriano has a lower FIP and a higher WAR two years from now. If Minn and CWS couldn't get him to pitch to contact, no one can. That's just not Liriano. That's like saying if we could just get Bourn to hit 20 hrs, he'd be great! Ohh and Liriano hasn't put up good FIPs.

Liriano in the first half of 2011 was exactly what we should expect Liriano to be in the first half of 2012 and the twins got absolute garbage from the Sox for him. Liriano is past the point even were his name has any value.

Neither. But if I had to pick, Ellsbury. Bourn pretty easily for me. Only 10 months older, and far, far more consistent. Ellsbury has been < 2.5 WAR in 3 of the last 4 seasons and is coming off injury, Bourn hasn't been below 4 fWAR since 2008. Well, the inconsistency has been due to injuries as opposed to just being bad, which is why I think some of us would prefer Ellsbury. He recovered pretty nicely in 2011. With Bourn you're likely getting more consistency, but it seems like Ellsbury's ceiling is higher if he can stay healthy. He consistently isoed ~120 his entire career, except for 2011, when it was 230. Look at his career other than 2011 and he is a 3 fwar guy. Now certainly you can't ignore 2011, but it wasn't a "recovery" because he had never played anywhere near that level in his life.

Yeah, I don't know where someone is getting $100m...I don't see how Garza beats Anibal's contract. While Garza has the one good season (which was preceded by a bad season), hes pretty much been a 3 fWAR pitcher and has recent elbow issues. Sanchez (who hit FA one year younger than Garza), just came off 3 consecutive 30+ start seasons where he averaged 4 fWAR.

I don't think I'd be opposed to giving him a 4 yr deal if needed. -< 30 -former mega prospect -strikes out a lot of guys -doesn't walk too many guys I'm kind of shocked that Theo is pounding his door down. If we had 5/77 on the table for Sanchez, we should be willing to go at least 4/55 for him. You left out 6 seasons of 30+ starts. Really no reason to not give him a 4th year. Over the past three years, he ranks 37th in the league (qualified) with a 3.74 xFIP (Sanchez had a 3.63).

The long-term cannot be the only focus. If you want him here for 4 years, or think you can trade him in 2-3 years, then sign him to a 4-year contract if that is what it takes. You cannot only work in the ideal. Maybe you wanted other people more, but if you aren't willing to spend on them you have to settle for your third or fourth option. You have to field a team. I think we can all agree that the primary focus of any transaction is the impact in 2015-2016, however, it can't/shouldn't be discounted that constructing a roughly .500 team in 2013-2014 could put a playoff appearance within our MOE in the next couple of years. Given that, while Sanchez has the talent and his peripherals are trending in the right direction (and hes a young FA), is he the right guy? His comments about his pain and scar tissue make me wonder if he has a greater chance of being injured by the time the cubs get to their prime competing years than Jackson or holding onto the money. Theres certainly a risk of holding onto your money if it ends up that theres no one to give it to, but you've eliminated the injury risk of investing in a pitcher now.

I wouldn't mind the Tigers signing Sanchez if it lead to them trading Porcello to us. I'd much rather have Sanchez than Porcello. Well duh, but he wouldn't be a bad consolation prize and while he's about a WAR worse of a player, he'd leave $ for other signings (although money should be no object, right guys).

I wouldn't mind the Tigers signing Sanchez if it lead to them trading Porcello to us.

Rank the following: Fujikawa, Uehara, Soria, Burnett, and Grilli

And the Rockies had the worst pitching in the league. And those 339 innings were all the sub-replacement innings the Rockies had. The Cubs 73.1 IP and -1.8 WAR worth of sub-replacement pitchers left on the roster. If the Cubs can somehow manage to field bad players at the back of their roster instead of abysmally horrible players, the gain in immediate performance should be massive. -2.9 of that bWAR came from starts in the last two months of the year from Germano, Rusin, and Raley, which was a product of trading two of our starters and Garza getting injured. Can't predict injuries, but I'd assume we are most likely going to trade away at least one SP next year as well. However, not only should Rusin and Raley hopefully be less terrible in 2013, but we've also added Vizcaino and converted Cabrera and potentially Loux or Rondon could step into the void as well. As Theo's stated the upper level pitching "wave" was nothing more than a piss ripple last year. Hes added quite a few interesting arms that could step into starting roles in the latter part of the season and perform somewhat admirably. Volstad was another -1.9 and hes gone and Dolis was -1.2. In fact, speaking of the bullpen, Dolis, Corpas, and Coleman added up to -2.2 bWAR. Replacing them with more Bowden and Fujikawa and the other arm they may pick up should be another big boost.

How about expanding this talk of Francoeur (blech) into something like Garza for Francoeur and Danny Duffy.

Absolutely. That said, if we get offered a couple of top 20 prospects from an average system for him, I'd just hold onto him. If we get a young major leaguer with upside or a prospect package at least as good as the Dempster deal, trade him. If not, what good does it do to get rid of him? Soriano is a sunk cost. He's not a sunk cost if you can get some salary relief from his contract. Why is covering all of Soriano's contract to get a decent prospect an acceptable usage of money (as opposed to say getting 5M/year in salry relief) whereas "overspending" on a FA by 5M/year is unacceptable? Because the FA will likely not help you contend in 3 or so years when the FO plans on contending, compared to the prospects who will.

I don't remember him even being an average defensive corner outfielder, so I'd have extreme doubts about third. With that said, I wouldn't mind him in RF. 8 years ago Morse had a godawful half of a season at SS. Last year he was godawful in corner OF and the year before he was godawful in LF and 1B. Nope.

Nice move for the Nationals. I'd trade a good low level pitching prospect to have Span at 2/12 with an option for 3/21. ...if we were planning on competing in the next few years.

I know he had a rough 2012, and that this is baseless speculation, but [expletive], I'd love to get ahold of Tommy Hanson. Especially if salary relief were their primary motivation. They are looking for a left fielder....

Let the Rays resign him and then we trade a bucket of balls to them for Ryan Roberts.

So is starlin Castro Fan graphs pegged Stanton at 5 and Castro at 41 (pre extension)

Sounds like a situation where the rangers gave us a pool of players to pick during the original trade and said if one got hurt we could swap him out with the other in the offseason.