Rob

Or the steroids caused the injuries and cost him substantial playing time. Steroids helped him add a lot of bulk, but they don't do anything for tendons and ligaments. And the added strain from all that bulk certainly wasn't helping.

Grace was one of my favorite players when I was younger and didn't know that he was a douche. Now, I absolutely love hearing him tell stories for one half inning once a series against the DBacks... but I think any more than that would be pushing it.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/uzr-2008-to-2009

Rather than find myself in a pissing match with dexter of all people regarding which of us is cooler in real life, I think I'll gracefully bow out about now.

personally i'm disgusted with myself. thanks for showing me the error of my ways, rob. i'll long rue the day that i embarrassed myself on the internet. off to the bar now. i'll make sure to post from there on my iphone (don't wanna waste time talking to girls) Ha, the walking punchline makes a joke.

It's funny... in the process of a minor semantic argument where each of you tries to make yourself look smart, you're both looking dumber and dumber with every post.

Wow... that's awful. I posted this earlier in the offseason when Dye was brought up. It uses Fuld as a baseline, but everything points to Byrd being a league average defender in CF, so it stands true for him as well.

Thank god you're not our gm. Every other team in the league passes on a guy but people on this board still think hes great. :banghead: At anyrate, Dye would be great at the right price, there is a very good chance that Lee and or Soriano miss some time this year and the platoon with Fukudome would probably very productive. I would like this move I didn't say I wanted Murton and I certainly didn't say he was great. All I said was I wanted him more than Dye... Jermaine Dye has been below replacement level two of the last three seasons. If you aren't aware, replacement level is by definition those AAAA guys like Matt Murton who, by the way, only cost the league minimum. If I thought Dye would only act as Fukudome's platoon partner in RF, he might be worth it. But it's pretty obvious he'd get too much playing time and he simply isn't worth the marginal cost for a player who isn't any better than a couple dozen guys we could bring in on a minor league deal.

Actually, I'd still rather have Murton. Dye may be slightly better versus lefties, but he's much worse defensively, on the basepaths, likely more expensive and is much older and so carries a lot higher risk of decline.

Maybe, but is there anything more than just people speculating? I don't recall any actual accusations. I remember reading the SI preview issue the year after they started testing and they wrote about how Bagwell showed up to spring training that year slimmed down and had lost about 20 pounds. Not much more than speculation but that bit of info stood out to me back then. If I never heard anybody else playing jr.-steroid-sleuth, I'd die a very happy man.

This is gonna be my first year making it there. I'm very excited.

I don't expect us to address it, no. It would seem the Cubs are leaving the door open a crack and hoping that Starlin Castro force his way into the SS job in spring training, so we're leaving 2B open in case that happens. Fontenot isn't as bad as he was last year and he isn't as good as he was in 2008, though it seems we all have underrated his defense a bit. Baker isn't the answer, either. But he's a solid backup and can hit lefties fairly well. Given the available options at the moment, I'm happy enough with what can be assumed to be a decent platoon. And hey, if Castro isn't our starting SS and the platoon isn't working, there's always the trade market once teams start falling out of it. Yeah, but what worries me is we might be the team falling out of it. If we're going to fall out of it, I'd rather we did it in advance of the trade deadline than after. Lee and Lilly are in the last years of their contract and Aramis has an opt-out he may or may not take. Theriot may be expendable by the deadline as well, should we find ourselves out of it. What worries me is that we're 5-6 games back at the deadline, Hendry burns prospects acquiring a marginal upgrade somewhere, but it's not enough and we never sniff first place the rest of the season while missing the opportunity to see what we could have gotten for our guys. Then he signs them to extensions that are 2 years too long.

I really don't see us making a move in the middle infield. Everything I've heard leads me to believe that the Cubs brass thinks Castro will be our starting SS sooner rather than later (perhaps even by opening day), at which point they want to keep a place available for Theriot to slide over to.

Did I miss something about how he was actually connected to steroids or is every fluke season by a guy this board doesn't like going to elicit a stupid response about steroids? Did not realize a steroid joke about Neal Cotts was one of your buttons. #-o Beyond that though, I feel it's more than reasonable to assume or at least question anyone with a vast jump in stats over the last 15 year period or so. So when a guy as a few awesome years, then goes to total crap...yea Okay then. Using your logic, the entire Cubs starting lineup has used steroids. Geovany Soto - Never had an OPS over .756 at any level (except for one game at Boise at age 19) until his huge 2007 breakout, after which he got worse two years in a row. Derrek Lee - Massive 2005 season unlike anything in his career record, hasn't hit for near the same power since. Mike Fontenot - Huge 2008 season out of line with his career numbers. Was pretty bad last season. Ryan Theriot - Also never had an OPS over .756 at any level until his 2006 breakout with the Cubs, batting .328/.412/.522. Hasn't been the same since. Aramis Ramirez - Posted OPS of .666 and .778 in his last two seasons with Pittsburgh, began posting OPS over .900 since his first full season in Chicago, but has struggled with injuries obviously related to steroid use. Alfonso Soriano - Was coming off seasons with an OPS of .808 and .821 in his two seasons in Texas in one of the leagues best hitters parks at the time. Moved to RFK stadium (a pitcher's park) and posted an OPS of .911. Had two more very good years and then fell off a cliff. Marlon Byrd - In 4 seasons with the Phillies owned an OPS of .709. In his time with Washington, was at .683. Goes off to Texas, gets on the juice, and becomes a .820 ballplayer. Hasn't had his decline just yet, but it's coming. Kosuke Fukudome - After a subpar first year in the majors, juiced himself up and increased his OPS by 62 points. I don't doubt that I could use your particularly wacky brand of "logic" to "prove" that every ballplayer on every team used steroids at some point. You know why? There is an aging curve. The vast majority of players start bad, get better, and then get worse. Some types of ballplayers have always fallen off a cliff. That big, immobile slugger like David Ortiz or Travis Hafner? Just look at what happened to Jim Rice and Boog Powell and a thousand others tracing back to the beginning of the league. To use that kind of logic gets us nowhere. The problem is exacerbated when you try to use it on relievers of all things... they simply don't get enough innings for their peripherals to straighten themselves out, resulting in huge variability regardless of whether or not a player is clean. Look at Cotts 2006 season that made you say steroids a little bit more closely. His strikeout rate was up a tiny bit, but he's had better. His walk rate was down a bit, but again, he's had much better. The only thing that made his season look as good as it was is because his hit rate and HR rate were way down... so the difference was simply that the balls the hitters put in play were hit right at people or just missed the fences. You'd be hard pressed to say steroids were responsible for that.

What do you expect out of an evil twin?

I thought we had settled in on "obtuse". :D So the guy in charge of the board isn't disciplining personal attacks, but perpetuating them. Nice. if what I said constitutes a personal "attack" on you, then I'm afraid you really need to grow some thicker skin. I'll leave it to others to determine which side of the attack the post/attack the poster fence you're on there. I can certainly appreciate how carefully you've tried to toe the line without crossing it, at any rate. ;) Explicit namecalling, on the other hand, removes all doubt IMO. From the man labeling others as "know-it-alls", that's good to hear. And I'll come out and say it even if nobody else will. You're smart, but your entire process for deciding what to argue is "what is the opposite of what everybody else is thinking?" But you need to learn to pick your battles, because nitpicking in a thread like this is really beginning to cloud the occasional good point you do make. Now to this point I've read and responded your arguments as I recognize that I do need to be kept in line a bit. But if I can't call a nice little trade a very slick move without having to spend 5 minutes defending myself, I don't see you lasting long before starting to hit some ignore lists.

I don't expect us to address it, no. It would seem the Cubs are leaving the door open a crack and hoping that Starlin Castro force his way into the SS job in spring training, so we're leaving 2B open in case that happens. Fontenot isn't as bad as he was last year and he isn't as good as he was in 2008, though it seems we all have underrated his defense a bit. Baker isn't the answer, either. But he's a solid backup and can hit lefties fairly well. Given the available options at the moment, I'm happy enough with what can be assumed to be a decent platoon. And hey, if Castro isn't our starting SS and the platoon isn't working, there's always the trade market once teams start falling out of it.

That doesn't matter. At all. The traditional lineup is nowhere near optimized... at all. It takes players who are not among your best hitters and gives them the most plate appearances on the team. This is due to an overemphasis on speed, which is ironically better utilized when batting in front of players with less power.

I thought we had settled in on "obtuse". :D So the guy in charge of the board isn't disciplining personal attacks, but perpetuating them. Nice. if what I said constitutes a personal "attack" on you, then I'm afraid you really need to grow some thicker skin.

I don't see the problem, really. It's the same as posting WAR. The only problem is from people who use it as a bizarre absolute and don't realize that every metric has a bit of wiggle room to it. I solved that problem a long time ago by always including "about" in my head in front of nearly every comprehensive metric I see posted on this board.

nobody is saying it's a great move or even that kotchman is good. he's just a lot better than bill hall. hall is worthless. it's just a solid trade Only in your world is there a meaningful distinction between a "very slick move" and a "great move". It's garbage for garbage. Hardly worth a second thought, let alone a bunch of gushing. Due to his defensive prowess, Kotchman doesn't actually have to hit all that well to have value. That's not to imply one should write off his bat entirely however, as he's shown sparks in the past, was a very highly touted prospect and is entering his age 27 season. He's a great sleeper candidate who is still fairly cheap and has a couple years of club control left. Bill Hall was below replacement level last year and is getting paid 8.4 mil this season. Even if Kotchman is just a minor little something with a bit of promise, he fills a gaping hole at 1B and Jack Z acquired him for less than nothing. You can characterize it as "gushing" and slam the trade calling it "garbage for garbage" if you want, but it's becoming fairly obvious you're not even trying to think about whether or not your argument has merit before succumbing to your insatiable desire to be contrary.

Another very slick move by Jack Z. He's putting himself in the upper echelon of GMs pretty quickly. On a side note, why did I keep thinking the Mariners had already resigned Russell Branyan to a contract? Go out and get him Jim!

That's the truly interesting part and the reason I'm surprised they got a deal done. I'll be pretty interested to see if there's a lot of deferred money.

Great lineup. Still wondering if they are really gonna roll Martinez out there at C everyday. I guess when you have the money, you just sign the player no matter what. Man, baseball needs a cap. He'll probably DH when they face a lefty, but I imagine Youkilis gets the vast majority of starts at 1B... and if he has to fill in at 3B to cover a Beltre injury, you're probably looking at Kotchman getting the start more often than not. And I think you'd be shocked if you saw how little the Red Sox were actually paying. I know their payroll was actually lower than the Cubs last year at least. So they're going to platoon Ortiz? I was predicting a semi-platoon based on the idea of keeping Ortiz's knees healthy... but yeah, he hasn't really hit lefties for a few years and should probably be platooned at this point.

It's not overpaying. He's likely to be worth a good deal more than his annual value, at least for the first half of the contract. Even if he falls off and the Cards have to eat a bit to move him in the later years, he should provide around the value of the contract.