Rob

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.

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?

I couldn't care less if he looks impressive out there so long as he's getting it done.

Seems like everyone has jumped off the Soto bandwagon and forgotten about him. Soto is not going to be a #8 hitter for the rest of his career. I think he'll build on his 2008 season and put up some good numbers this year. And as Rob (I think?) pointed out, Soto and Fukudome were victims of some pretty lousy luck last year as well. Soto's year wasn't nearly as bad as his slash stats indicated. Yeah, that was me. Soto's luck was far worse than anybody elses, and we should have been looking at just about a repeat performance of 2008.

On the whole, our team was 16.7 runs below average in CF last season and 1 run below average in RF (that's despite Fukudome contributing 7.9 runs above average in RF). Even if you think Byrd is a -10 defender in CF and Fukudome is only +5 in right, that's a full win right then and there. And all available evidence points towards Byrd being an average defender and Fukudome being a +15 or so. That's about 3 wins... and there's no reason to change that downwards based on offensive performance (Fukudome, Bradley, and Byrd all had an identical wRC+ of 108, with little reason to expect significant dropoff from that number going forward). That's called improvement. Now whether the true talent level of the team is higher, that's certainly debatable. Expecting defensive adjustments in CF from Fukudome and an offensive rebound from Bradley might have easily given us the same improvement. But to say it's not improvement is being terribly dishonest or terribly ignorant, take your pick. Even if you don't trust UZR to be exact (and it isn't), the gap is simply too large to pretend otherwise. I don't put the same faith in those numbers that you do. Let's set aside the fact that Fukudome is a platoon player for the most part. Those numbers are mostly made up (not by you, but by the silly formula that is used) and don't equate to reality very well. There's simply no way that the defense in CF was that bad last year. And there is simply no way that moving Fukudome from CF to RF and replacing him with Byrd makes that much of a difference. You can trust the models, but I don't. Do you actually have any idea how the models come up with those numbers, or do you just not trust numbers in general? I'm especially interested to know if you realize how Dewan's +/- numbers are calculated, as they're largely in agreement with UZR and I don't think you'd have an easy time refuting them.

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.

On the whole, our team was 16.7 runs below average in CF last season and 1 run below average in RF (that's despite Fukudome contributing 7.9 runs above average in RF). Even if you think Byrd is a -10 defender in CF and Fukudome is only +5 in right, that's a full win right then and there. And all available evidence points towards Byrd being an average defender and Fukudome being a +15 or so. That's about 3 wins... and there's no reason to change that downwards based on offensive performance (Fukudome, Bradley, and Byrd all had an identical wRC+ of 108, with little reason to expect significant dropoff from that number going forward). That's called improvement. Now whether the true talent level of the team is higher, that's certainly debatable. Expecting defensive adjustments in CF from Fukudome and an offensive rebound from Bradley might have easily given us the same improvement. But to say it's not improvement is being terribly dishonest or terribly ignorant, take your pick. Even if you don't trust UZR to be exact (and it isn't), the gap is simply too large to pretend otherwise.

C - Martinez 1B - Youkilis 2B - Pedroia SS - Scutaro 3B - Beltre LF - Ellsbury CF - Cameron RF - Drew DH - Ortiz That's some serious defensive versatility and a pretty damn good offense. And with a bench containing Varitek, Kotchman, Lowrie, Lowell, and Hermida... A pitching staff with Beckett, Lackey, Lester, Matsuzaka, Buchholz and Wakefield to cycle in and out... not to mention Papelbon and Okajima to shut down games in the late innings. Talk about overpowered... The last few years, the Red Sox and Yankees have redefined what is expected of big market teams attempting to embark on a rebuilding process... the turnaround isn't 2-4 seasons anymore... it's maaaaybe one. I'll be real interested to see how our organization responds to the fact that the window is closing quickly on the team as it is currently constructed.

Park factors were never meant to be exact, and most satistics that adjust for park use 3/4/5 year splits. This argument is stupid.

USA Today's salary database. http://content.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/salaries/default.aspx I had to extract them one year at a time, but that was no biggie. Thank you. I hope you don't mind, but I took the exercise to its logical conclusion and calculated marginal payroll per marginal win for all 30 teams over that seven year span. (I only subtracted $65 mil from payrolls because the league minimum salary used to be a bit lower) Team mPay/mWin NY Yankees $3,187,708.68 NY Mets $2,653,616.93 Seattle $2,343,271.01 Detroit $2,131,146.89 Boston $2,115,821.57 Chicago Cubs $2,083,748.96 Baltimore $2,032,025.55 LA Dodgers $2,021,127.23 Atlanta $1,812,265.33 LA Angels $1,807,528.36 San Francisco $1,807,362.66 Houston $1,750,671.06 Chicago Sox $1,745,537.21 Philadelphia $1,721,229.02 St. Louis $1,613,370.36 Kansas City $1,612,677.30 Arizona $1,596,952.26 Cincinnati $1,571,711.55 Texas $1,506,534.09 Toronto $1,458,434.86 Washington $1,373,272.30 Colorado $1,361,277.14 San Diego $1,284,717.13 Milwaukee $1,260,474.12 Pittsburgh $1,226,321.84 Cleveland $1,201,639.26 Oakland $1,121,017.22 Minnesota $1,066,697.13 Tampa Bay $791,845.75 Florida $641,255.47 That's just the raw data, and it makes no effort to adjust for the fact that wins are worth much more to a team (and hence worth overpaying market value for) when they're in approximately the area the Cubs are (right on the verge of a playoff spot most years). Edit: I would like to draw everybody's attention to Minnesota, though. #6 in wins over that seven year span, and they manage it while being extremely cost effective.