Rob

Because he's not as good of a hitter yet as the guys in front of him.

If he randomly attributes things to the law of averages four times, surely one of those will be correct.

Just because... RF - Fukudome C - Soto 1B - whichever big slugger we get 3B - Ramirez CF - Byrd LF - Soriano SS - Castro Pitcher's spot 2B - DeWitt / Baker platoon

2005 DLee He was first in batting average, second in homers, and seventh in RBI. He needed five home runs and 21 RBI to tie for the lead in those categories. I wouldn't call that close. If memory serves, he was right at the top of everything in early August. He just couldn't fell behind after that.

If a mod feels like editing my post to deal with the formatting, feel free. I'm just copying and pasting from my spreadsheet. Pick Team W L W% GB 1 Pittsburgh 43 87 .331 0 2 Baltimore 48 83 .366 -4.5 3 Seattle 51 79 .392 -8 4 Arizona 52 79 .397 -8.5 5 Cleveland 53 77 .408 -10 6 Chicago 55 76 .420 -11.5 7 Kansas City 55 75 .423 -12 8 Washington 56 75 .427 -12.5 9 Houston 59 71 .454 -16 10 Milwaukee 62 68 .477 -19

I'd love to have him sitting in AAA in case of injury, but the list of available 1B this offseason is way too good to settle for a guy like Johnson.

Disagree with you. Fuku's contract is a sunk cost. Colvin's contract in comparison is minimal. Colvin is younger, will be cheaper and is under team contract for longer than Fukudome. The team should be thinking about the future not this year. Wow... what the hell were you responding to? 1.) I wasn't trying to say whether benching Fukudome in favor of Colvin was the right move or not, I was just laying out the financial side of the argument. So the argument regarding Colvin as younger, cheaper, etc... is responding to something I never said. 2.) Fukudome's contract is not a sunk cost. A sunk cost is defined when you have no ability to recover any portion of the money. Even the most enthusiastic of Fukudome haters out there have to admit that before the benching, he had some trade value. We would have had to eat some of his contract, of course. But we would not have had to eat the whole thing. Therefore, not a sunk cost. 3.) Playing Colvin necessitates benching Fukudome. Benching Fukudome negatively impacts his trade value. Therefore, playing Colvin over Fukudome has a cost equal to the decline of Fukudome's trade value ... in this case, certainly a few million dollars. We aren't getting increased production out of Colvin, so the only real question to ask ourselves is are we getting our money's worth by getting an extended look at Colvin + any increased trade value Colvin may accrue?

Colvin is costing us money by virtue of the fact that starting him in place of Fukudome (without any real gain in production) has completely tanked what was left of Fukudome's contract... so we'll have to eat the whole contract to move him. Is the better look we're getting at Colvin worth that money? Time will tell. Colvin is paid less and is providing pretty damn close to equal production, but that doesn't mean starting him was the right move in the short term.

I wouldn't read too much into the Pods vs. Castro thing. It's all about which defensive stats they've chosen to use... Pods comes in at -2 according to TZ, -8.2 according to UZR, and -13 according to BIS. Castro comes in at -13 according to TZ, -1.7 according to UZR, and +5 according to BIS. Using more data is always a good thing, so to get a better idea of what all three defensive systems are saying as opposed to just the one we can average em out and you have Pods at -7.7 and Castro at -3.2 as defenders. That's four and a half run advantage for Castro instead of an 11 run disadvantage. That's pretty huge.

I don't get the Fukudome hate. I guess it's a combination of his streakiness and the contract, but still... terrible isn't an adjective that should be used to describe him.

I wouldn't mind receiving his paychecks.

It's especially troublesome when it doesn't fit your pre-existing bias on a player. Or when it's propped up by SLG and has a really bad OBP. Like Soriano's lifetime stats ? Except Sori's lifetime OBP is higher than Colvin's, and Sori's SLG isn't also propped up by an unsustainable HR/FB rate. In defense of Colvin, his HR/FB rate is probably due for regression, but he hasn't exactly been getting lucky here. He's earned that rate so far this year. http://www.hittrackeronline.com/parks/Colvin_Tyler_2010_scatter.jpg He probably isn't about to join the upper echelon of power hitters like his current rate would suggest, but this is an extremely positive sign from a young player entering his prime years.

Dunn does not have a skillset that ages well. If the contract is short and sweet, I'd love to have him. If we're talking 4/50, I'm out. I'll be real interested to see what he gets, since front offices seem to either love him or want to stay the hell away. Billy Butler > Adam Dunn (with short contract) > Adrian Gonzalez (with market value extension) > Adam Dunn (with bigger pact) > Adrian Gonzalez (let him walk after season) > Prince Fielder (let him walk) > Carlos Pena > Lance Berkman > Jorge Cantu > Derrek Lee > Russell Branyan > Paul Konerko > Lyle Overbay > AAAA filler > David Ortiz > Prince Fielder (with market value extension)

He was our cheater.

i spent so much (relatively) money as a kid trying to get that frigging ron gant fleer rookie card My first "major" purchase as a kid was saving up to buy one of the full boxes of cards, instead of just 2-3 packs at a time.

i spent so much (relatively) money as a kid trying to get that frigging ron gant fleer rookie card My first "major" purchase as a kid was saving up to buy one of the full boxes of cards, instead of just 2-3 packs at a time.

I've still got dozens of Doug Dascenzo cards... try finding anybody in grade school who wants to trade for that one. I think Topps was stacking the packs with those...

WWRDD has long been the motto I live by.

Sorry Castillo, you had your shot to really wow us. Hill will be the primary backup next season.

i didnt realize how great dewitt had been since coming over. that's encouraging. Those are the old numbers. Through tonight's game he's at .338/.405/.507

A promotion for Kyler Burke, Raisin? I'd think it's more likely he's working on his conversion to pitching than playing OF in Tennessee to start next year.

As if it couldn't suck enough to hire a manager that openly mocks sabermetric principles, we'd have to hire the one that was my favorite childhood player... That'll teach me.

LALALALALALLALALALA I'M NOT LISTENING Good work. Baseball before the 90s is still pure. That was a close call.

If only

Just because this seems as good a place as any for it... the NL's top ten WAR is as follows: 1. Ryan Zimmerman - 6.1 2. Andres Torres - 5.4 3. Albert Pujols - 5.4 4. Joey Votto - 5.4 5. Matt Holliday - 4.7 6. Aubrey Huff - 4.6 7. Dan Uggla - 4.5 8. Adrian Gonzalez - 4.4 9. Kelly Johnson - 4.4 10. Rickie Weeks - 4.3 Marlon Byrd ranks 11th on the list, also with 4.3 WAR. Edit: Oh, and if you buy into the idea that pitchers should be able to win the MVP, here's the list including them. 1. Roy Halladay - 6.5 2. Ryan Zimmerman - 6.1 3. Josh Johnson -5.6 4. Andres Torres - 5.4 5. Albert Pujols - 5.4 6. Joey Votto - 5.4 7. Adam Wainwright - 5.0 8. Matt Holliday - 4.7 9. Ubaldo Jimenez - 4.7 10. Aubrey Huff - 4.6