Rob

You can offer your own free agents arbitration. If they decline, that's where draft pick compensation comes into play and the team who loses that player will get a pick or 2 if the player is rated at a certain level of all MLB players. huh? :? Essentially, arbitration applies not only to younger players under club control, but for any player whose contract is about to run out (remember: younger players are given one year contracts each year). You can offer arbitration to any player on your team whose contract has run out after the season. In the case of the guys under club control, they're stuck with accepting it. In the case of older guys, they have the choice to accept or decline. If they accept the offer of arbitration (as Walker did), they are automatically tendered a one-year contract for an amount TBD by an arbitrator if they are unable to settle on an amount. If they decline the offer of arbitration to sign with another team, the team that lost the player will be compensated with extra picks in the next draft.

Jesus, lighten up on the guy. Actually, I was making the joke to imply everybody else should lighten up. Though I suppose my deadpanning didn't come across well. baseball7897 and I are civil to each other now, policing me is hardly necessary. Edit: Almost forgot. I'm not actually Jesus, but I appreciate the notion I'm close enough to be confused for him.

"Well the key to this game was obviously this play. Watch Neifi there. Now when I'm fishing, I realize that the lure and cast are every bit as important as waiting for the big one to bite, dude. So watch Neifi lure the infielders in with what looks to be like a regular bunt. Then he just went and slapped that ball, dude. If the third baseman hadn't been right where he put that, the Tigers would have won this game."

This should be in rivalries.

Dear god, Make it stop. Amen.

Are they trying to get you to build the best overall team possible from a list of gold glovers, or pick the best team only taking defense into account? I'd assume the latter, but the former would make for a much more interesting discussion. I love Sandberg, but his defense is lacking when compared to a Mazeroski.

Aramis impressed me enough by leaving 40 mil on the table, he'd have to sit out til May without an excuse to bring himself back to breakeven in my book.

which is pretty much what a manager's job should be. I guess every single manager in baseball is doing his job wrong then. Earl Weaver was accused more than once of being a push-button manager. It works damn well if you know what buttons to push, as I think he showed.

Again, FWIW PECOTA predict a .278/.342/.426 line for Pagan, and .245/.318/.378 for Finley. I don't have time to check the other projection systems, but I can't imagine any being too high on a 42 year old who has suffered a severe dropoff lately. What does PECOTA draw that information from? He's never posted that high of an OPS in his entire minor league career (excluding extremely small sample sizes). His minor league career numbers are: .281/.340/.371 Well the average and on base percentage appear in line. Is it really too hard to believe a 25 year old will add some power?

While I blast Soriano as much as anybody... he did go 30 for 32 on the basepaths two years ago. Depending on which version of Soriano shows up on the bases, it might not be a huge deal for him to be running that often.

Again, FWIW PECOTA predict a .278/.342/.426 line for Pagan, and .245/.318/.378 for Finley. I don't have time to check the other projection systems, but I can't imagine any being too high on a 42 year old who has suffered a severe dropoff lately.

That seems about right to me. Murton should get every at-bat against left-handed starters. That should be somewhere around 200 PA right there. If he gets even 1/3 of the starts aginst right-handed starters, then that would put him at 350, and pinch-hitting and double switches could probably push him up to 400. Jones ends up getting the most at-bats because he is the only one reliable enough to play RF right now (I hope that Murton gets out there and gets acclimated quickly to RF so Murton and Floyd can play against some lefties, I don't want to see Floyd in RF at all), and Floyd takes the rest of the right handed at-bats from Murton and a few of the left-handed bats from Jones. I know many of you hate this practice, but history against certain pitchers might dictate some of the matchups. I don't mind it in a situation like this when the players are likely to be similarly productive anyway (although in different ways)-it's bad when you start Blanco over Barrett because of it, but I think it can be helpful in deciding between similar players for that day. I can also see Lou changing his lineup based on which way the wind is blowing at Wrigley. Forgot to factor in their PH predictions... that's another 93 PA for Murton, which would give him more overall PA than Floyd or Jones (they didn't predict PH for either of them...)

FWIW BP's depth charts predict Murton getting 40% of the PA from LF and 15% from RF for 401 PA... Floyd 373 PA... and Jones 484 PA. Doesn't seem too far from being logical...

Not a day off, just no Cubs pics. Ozzie looks to be checking out some ass: http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20070218/capt.azmg10302181934.white_sox_spring_baseball_azmg103.jpg The White Sox go to Arizona for spring training right? Or is it Florida? I can never remember. But either way, is the heavy jacket really necessary there Ozzie? Arizona, they're out in Tucson. They used to train in Florida, but switched to Arizona a few years ago (I don't recall exactly when). I'd be fairly confident in a prediction that he wears that thing in the shower. Guy is a sociopath.

I always conceed SV on Yahoo leagues. Hell, in my league last year I ran Liriano out of the RP spot (after he got moved into the rotation). It gave me a leg up on all the stats but saves... Granted, Liriano is a special case, but I'm sure you can find a couple solid pitching prospects who came out of the pen last year, or start this year in it. (Brandon McCarthy springs to mind)

On a positive note, I'll predict Scott Moore makes Lou think twice about his decision to carry 12 pitchers to start off the season.

At the expense of having a player who's a negative factor on the offense? You're right I don't. It's not mutually exclusive; you can find a good defense SS who isn't incompetent when he hits. I don't buy that Cesar Izturis can suck at the plate but be an asset simply because he plays good defense at SS. This team is not good enough to have a complete cipher in the batting order. 10 years ago, Cesar might have been a HOF cliber SS ala Ozzie Smith (career .262 hitter) Career 0.075 IsoD... compared to 0.035 for Izturis. And Ozzie was so much better with the glove it's not even funny.

Rotation is chock full right now... I'll go ahead and say Gallagher doesn't make the team out of spring training, seeing as how keeping him on the bench would be such a huge disservice to him and Cubs fans.

Much maligned though Cesar Izturis is (and rightfully so) take a look at his IsoD since he broke into the big leagues. 2001 - 0.010 2002 - 0.021 2003 - 0.031 2004 - 0.042 2005 - 0.045 2006 - 0.050 He's shown steady (if not spectacular) improvement in that regard, and he'll be working with a great hitting coach (two, if you want to count Lou) in his age 27 season. I don't like Izturis much either... but all the markers of a potential breakout season are there. Granted, his breakout would be a league-average offensive shortstop... but it's still something to be cautiously optimistic about.

Good, because signing Finley to even be on this team would be a mistake. I don't know... with Darren Baker gone who is going to sit on the manager's lap at press conferences?

Argh matey! Look for de torrent sites, yar!

Some of us don't have the ability to grow a good goatee or soul patch. :cry: That's a shame. *strokes his beard* yea, *strokes patchy stubble* Indeed. *strokes fantastic goatee.*

Fact: If you remove all the b's from the following sentence, "Jason Marquis beats children," it becomes "Jason Marquis eats children."

Of course we wont. The pitcher wont be batting 3rd.

This is either an omen, or Kerry is just getting his injuries out of the way early this season so he can be a monster the rest of the way. I haven't decided which way I'm leaning yet.