bukie

So that makes the Cardinals, Red Sox and Cubs that need a new manager. Going to be an interesting game of managerial musical chairs going on this offseason.

This thread is only the 4th thing that comes up when you search for Puljos.

Maybe he can tell Pujols to stop calling his own hit and runs...

It's a difficult question because it's November 2nd and we don't know how the trade market will shake out. I don't know if Headley or Stewart is a cornerstone about to break out. But I'd rather roll the dice with Headley/Stewart and CJ Wilson than roll the dice with Ramirez and Wells/Cashner. The expected value in 2012 is about the same, and the potential value beyond 2012 is much greater. Is Wilson Betemit a passable fielder at 3B, and a FA this offseason? He might be another option.

Only above-average defender? Darwin Barney is going to throw a ball at your head. And he'll probably hit it, because he's a good defender. Jackson to CF, Byrd to RF and anyone to 3b should all be significant improvements over last year. Plus I'm projecting some improvement from Castro`. Is it wrong that I forgot Barney was a starter?

Presuming the removal of bad luck is not the same as hoping for luck. You've got a nice racket going. You get to make vague statements of doom and dodge any attempt to be pinned down to specifics. Then when someone disagrees, you either nitpick the specifics or accuse them of not providing any. Okay, this time with specifics for you to pick at: The Cubs got 0.8 WAR out of 72 starts (roughly two rotation spots) from the parade of awful replacement pitchers last year and the injured Randy Wells. They got 0.3 WAR out of RF. Matt Garza gave up 0.8 WAR worth of runs more than his FIP would predict. Ryan Dempster gave up 2.0 WAR more. (Obviously, defense was a part of that, but this is where we'll include the assumption that the Cubs have a better defense in 2012, which I think is reasonable). If the Cubs spend $30 million on pitching to fill those two rotation spots at the prevailing price of about $4 million per WAR, they get an upgrade of 6.7 WAR. If Matt Garza and Ryan Dempster get back to their predictive FIP rather than their descriptive ERA, then you get another 2.8 WAR back. That's 9.5 wins of upgrade without touching 1b. I don't necessarily disagree with most of what you're saying here, but I'm not sure it's safe to assume the Cubs will be better defensively when their only above average defender (Pena) is likely gone (although, Soto is probably above average at his position, though it's difficult to measure for catchers). The organizational philosophy will change, but I'm not sure the players will automatically be better defensively as a result. If the Cubs bring in Fielder, they may actually be worse.

Screw gold gloves, long live the Fielding Bible Awards

Maybe a thread on sabermetric theory would be a good resource around here. I don't have the time to get into it too deeply right now, though.

Without putting much time into it, Ramirez: 2.5 WAR Baker full-time: 0 WAR Best available $2M stopgap (Betemit/Cairo/Hairston/Chavez): 1.0 WAR

The biggest issue with treating WAR like a strictly summable statistic among players is that there isn't a linear relationship between WAR and value. At the far end of the spectrum at each position, a little increase in WAR is a huge increase in value, just to get on the leading edge of production at a position. If you have a team that can afford 25 above average players, or have an internal development system that is producing 3-5 cost-controlled high-end players, then you're in luck, but at this point, the Cubs have neither of those options for 2012. I was thinking about running statistics on BP's compensation listing against an exponential curve instead of a line, to see just how valuable the top end of the curve is and should be to a team.

That sounds like a flaw with WAR Not really, just that the spectrum from the worst 3B to the best 3B is narrower right now than the spectrum from the worst 1B to the best 1B.

Taking a look at BP's WAR numbers, it's amazing how similar Ramirez and Pena were last year overall. The big difference between the two being that Ramirez made much better contact while Pena was had much better strike zone judgment, but the offensive difference was almost completely made up in the defensive gap. Granted, it's also more difficult to find that kind of WAR at 3rd than it is at 1st, but they're practically identical players in terms of overall team value at this point.

One last marvel at efficiency: The Rays to this point have just $16M committed to salary for next year's roster for 7 players: Zobrist, Longoria, Price, Shields, Davis, Farnsworth and Kelly Shoppach.

I think we can come close-ish on the cheap. Ramirez basically a 3-WAR player at this point in his career. I think we can easily put together a 1.5-WAR platoon and spend the $13-15 million we save on something else. bpWAR isn't even that kind to him, listing him at 2.35 this year. The Cubs FO can likely spend that money more effectively elsewhere, like on the rotation or on 1B/OF.

That or we're making one hell of a run at the #1 pick. Can you imagine this lineup without Aramis and without either of those guys? I wasn't just talking from the perspective that we need one of them, but just pointing out when you have this much money to spend in free agency and you know you're not spending it on 3B, well.... how many other places can you spend it? A new rotation?

Also, using BP's definition of a 25-win replacement level team, say you want to build a regular playoff team, which we'll assume for this exercise to be a 95 win team. Here is the advantage of payroll: With TB's payroll ($43M), the roster would need to average about $615,000 per WARP, to a player. With the average payroll ($95M), the roster would need to average about $1.357M per WARP. With the Yankees payroll ($207M), the roster would need to average about $2.957M per WARP. So, essentially, the Yankees have more than double the cushion of the average team, and about five times the cushion of the Rays to build a winner. Incidentally, the Cubs ($134M) would need to average about $1.914M per player to win 95. The players the Cubs had on the roster that were more efficient than that average were Castro, Barney, Johnson, Marshall, Wells, Garza, Soto, and Cashner (and Cashner barely played).

Because I was curious... Obviously, Castro was the most value-efficient player on the team. But how does he compare to the rest of baseball? Well, turns out there were 14 players (that got more than a cup of coffee at the MLB level) that were more value-efficient than Castro this year: Player ($/WARP) 1. Alex Avila, COL ($66,350) 2. Clayton Kershaw, LAD ($71,376) 3. Andrew McCutchen, PIT ($85,792) 4. Mike Stanton, FLA ($86,703) 5. Ian Kennedy, ARI ($88,528) 6. Madison Bumgarner, SF ($92,852) 7. Daniel Hudson, ARI ($92,658) 8. Dexter Fowler, COL ($93,595) 9. Pablo Sandoval, SF ($106,793) 10. Carlos Santana, CLE ($106,888) 11. Justin Masteron, CLE ($108,082) 12. Elvis Andrus, TEX ($111,349) 13. Matt Harrison, TEX ($113,266) 14. Jhoulys Chacin, COL ($113,498) 15. Starlin Castro, CHC ($118,646)

I know a way to save $900,000. I'll be the backup C. I won't hit a lick, so I'll gain a reputation as an excellent defensive catcher that works well with pitchers.

There should be an "Everyone goes to the Yankees" control entry, and some kind of penalty for anyone who does worse than that. If that entry wins, then...I got nothing.

Well that worked out nicely.

What, you think a 30-year-old system to evaluate players might be a little dated?

I'd probably do Bumgarner, too. Maybe Upton.

Kelly Johnson, Ramon Hernandez...

Oddly enough, that Saints loss hurts the Bears' playoff chances, because they're the one NFC South team they don't hold a tiebreaker against.

Tebow has the Lions right where he wants them.