Wolverineman

Dawson over Blyleven? Concepcion over Trammel? SOMEONE VOTED FOR JAY BUHNER? This whole process is a [expletive] joke.

Yeah I would go with Cutler as well. Although Javon Walker's injury might hinder Cutler's #s some. I'd rank the 6 like this: Cutler > Smith> Roethlisberger > Green > Delhomme > Garrard

In a private league at Yahoo I have quite a QB problem. I'm set at RB(LT & Alexander), WR(TO, Roy Williams, J. Walker), TE(Colston counts there), K(Graham), and IDP(Urlacher, Withersppon, Bulluck, Hawk, Merriman). My QB situation is a crapshoot though. I drafted Culpepper and well that failed miserably. I've been alternating Vick & Kitna most of the year, with Cutler starting last week. The playoffs start this week though so I decided to just drop every backup I had since I didn't really need them any more and pick up every QB I could fit onto my roster. Of course now the problem is picking the one that will be good. It's a normal scoring for QBs except that completion % matters(Completions=.55, Incompletions=-.60). Here are my choices: Jay Cutler @ Arizona Michael Vick vs. Dallas Jon Kitna @ Green Bay Vince Young vs. Jacksonville Brett Favre vs. Detroit Philip Rivers vs. Kansas City Rex Grossman vs. Tampa Bay I don't like Rivers because I have LT, but he's easily the best QB on the list so I don't know. Favre is enticing but also risky. I think the Jags will shut up the VY hype for a week so I'm not sure there either. Any ideas?

While it's a bad deal for the 'Stros, I hate the deal from a Cubs perspective too cause I'll really miss that out machine at the top of their lineup every day.

I'd say that last year's team true talent level was around 72 wins looking back on it. I think the Lee injury cost 3-4, managerial incompetence cost us at least 1-2, and various other injuries may have cost 1-2. The only signing that seems to me to be a big leap forward is the Soriano one, but he's a pretty big risk. If he happens to play like he did last year, he's maybe a 3-5 win improvement over Pierre. Lilly is probably around a 1-2 win improvement over Maddux/Assorted others, and I don't think 2B or 5th Starter are really improved at all. Even giving Marquis/DeRosa the benefit of the doubt, I only see this team around a 78-80 win level. Which as I said before is good enough to make the playoffs if everything goes right, but I don't think it makes it worth spending all this money. So I'm saying they've improved by around 8-10 wins(assuming Piniella doesn't make the stupid moves Dusty did) as well. The difference is you seem to think losing Lee cost us 10-14 wins, which is absolutely ridiculous in my book. I also disagree about the bullpen. It's good but nothing spectacular. IF Wood stays healthy and effective it'll be very good, but I'm not holding my breath on Wood staying healthy or effective. I'd like to see Wuertz get time at set-up or even closer but I don't think it'll happen. He's probably the best RP we have. Eyre and Howry are good #3/#4 guys in the pen. Of course considering the random nature of relief pitcher performance, it's kind of silly to rank bullpens at this point. But unless Wood is healthy and Wuertz gets a lot of time I don't see the 'pen being a major strength. I also don't see it being a weakness. I think what it comes down to is I can't see this team going anywhere if something major happens that is bad. Like a Derrek Lee or Aramis Ramirez missing a month or so. Like Z missing significant time. Great teams are able to withstand those losses. Look at the Mets last year. They lost Pedro for most of the season and almost made the 'Series. The Dodgers had quite a few injuries they battled through. St. Louis missed Pujols & Carpetner for time and rarely had an effective Jim Edmonds. Sure they got lucky that the Central sucked, but they were still able to win 80+ games after losing that much. We lost less and could barely do better than Tampa and Kansas City. Oakland probably had the most injuries in baseball last year and still made the playoffs.

Yeah, they are better. The problem is that for all the spending to make sense, they need to be an elite team this year. The roster, as of now, looks nothing like elite to me. I'd say they're around a true talent level of 78 wins. Sure they could get some breaks and get to around 88 wins and maybe make the playoffs, but that isn't very likely. People were upset about the Furcal miss because most felt that we were around a .500 team going into last season, and the upgrade from Cedeno to Furcal would have been big enough to increase our playoff chances drastically. I think most smart GMs would overpay by quite a lot to increase their team from a .500 team to a 89-90 win team. It's worth it. It's not worth it to increase from a crappy team to a mediocre one. I think the other reason people are pessimistic about these signings yet were still mad about the Furcal one is reliability and length. You basically knew what you were getting from Furcal. Great D, a .350 OBP and pretty decent power for a SS. Sure there was a possibility of him tanking(his first month he actually did) or catching fire(which he did his whole second half) but you basically knew what you were going to get(his total body of work was right around what I expected). Soriano and DeRosa are both coming off of career years and neither are that young. There is a lot more risk associated with their signing. If Soriano regresses to his Texas days without the motivation of a contract year or playing for the Yankees, his contract will go down as one of the worst in history. For the money paid I think Hendry is expecting him to come close to reproducing last year's #s. That tells me that if Soriano does that, he'll just be worth his contract, but if he falters, he won't even be close to worth it. That's a lot or risk. The Marquis deal is very similar, I think. I don't think he's as bad as his last year #s indicate, so he should be better. Hendry thinks Rothschild can fix him and get him back to just mediocrity instead of awful. That's fine. The problem is he paid him for his mediocrity, so Rothschild has to be successful for the deal to make sense. If not, it's a terrible waste of money. I don't think it's smart to spend that much on a project. If you can sign him for a 1 or 2 year deal with lots of incentives, then it can be smart because if he's "fixed", he way outproduces his salary and if he pitches like he did last year, you aren't saddled by his contract and can dump him into long relief or the waiver wire and not think twice. The Lilly deal isn't that bad. I really wanted Lilly before the offseason started, but that was mainly because I figured he'd go for like 3/21 instead of 4/40 or whatever we gave him. He overpaid, but not by too much. Overall, it seems like a last ditch effort to make the playoffs. At this point I don't think the team is near good enough to do that without a lot of luck. If we don't get that luck, we're saddled with another lousy team and the next GM is stuck with a bunch of horrendous contracts to deal with. I don't post here often so I don't know if my reasons are why people are pessimistic, but I know it's why I'm pessimistic about the season.

I'd go with Kitna. I probably would have said Bulger if it wasn't for Orlando Pace's injury. Without him, Jackson won't be as effective running and the Bears should get a good outside rush. The Bears are also one of the top 3 in defending passes to RB, so that part of St. Louis' offense shouldn't be that effective either. Detroit should be passing nearly every down since no one can run against the Vikings, so Kitna should rack up lots of completions & yards, and probably a TD or two.

Chris Chambers. He was my "Brandon Webb pick" as a player I took in just about every league because I was so sure he'd break out and have a huge year. He'd always been a great deep threat and Culpepper was at his best just throwing it up to Moss a lot. Hudson Houck had done a great job with their OLine the year before and was considered one of the best OLine coaches in the league, so I figured Culpepper would have time to throw and Brown would be able to run well enough to keep the defense honest. Thankfully I was right about Webb in the baseball leagues, but so far the Chambers pick has hurt a lot of my teams.

While I'm very happy for the A's, any team that starts JASON FREAKIN' TYNER at DH deserves to lose.

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/loser/rules.php ^^ Another fantasy league just like it. Run by BaseballProspectus' partners at FootballOutsiders. Same basic idea as the other one mentoined here, so I thought I'd post it. Deadline is Saturday.

I think the only thing left is for Zambrano to throw a no hitter and lose 1-0.

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/B07290CHN1989.htm <-- Theres the other game. Just a routine 10-3 game.

I don't feel like looking through a ton of players, but here's just 5 people I picked. This is their % of career homers with runners on. Corey Patterson: 42.7% David Ortiz: 37.4% Manny Ramirez: 51.2% Alex Rodriguez: 46.9% Adam Dunn: 42.2% Obviously Corey's sample is much smaller than the rest, but he doesn't seem to do that bad. On a somewhat unrelated note, has anyone else noticed that Adam Dunn is hitting .286/.435/.633 with RISP & 2 outs? Holy crap. Combine that with his numerous game winning hits this year, and I hope he's finally shed that silly "he isn't clutch!" label people always use against him.

Making the easy assumption that missed location will lead to better offense for the person at the plate, there has been studies to try to quantify that. The only one I can find right now can be found at THT(Part 1 and Part 2. I could have sworn I read a better one recently but I apparently didn't bookmark it. Its certainly not solid proof or anything, but its a good attempt and the way I see it, it helps put boundries on what value having speed on base can have to the hitter. Although that may not be entirely true.. its quite possible the POSITIVE value is higher than that, but its counterbalanced by the NEGATIVE value having a guy jumping around on first brings. I can't imagine thats not a distraction to some, if not most, hitters. Plus some hitters are probably told to take pitches so a guy can steal, and its likely that some of those pitches would be very hittable. As for the other part, The Fielding Bible tracks "Enhanced +/-" which takes into account the bases saved(or lost) against the average. Thats instead of their normal +/- which just counts plays above or below average. So those things are being quantified, though quite possibly not in the greatest way as of yet, but it is being done.

I think it would only make sense to bring him back if he's in absolutely no danger of hurting the wrist again and its basically healed or if its to the point where the only thing left to do is work through it and strengthen the wrist. Getting a month or so of real game time going into next season would be good for him and good for the team to get a better idea of what to expect from him. Now, I don't think he is healed and I have no confidence in the team to not rush him back if they think he's close...

Cantu is also terrible defensively. As a Rays fan as well, I hope they can get something of value, but I really worry about Hendry being the one to give something of value up.

I joined. I'm "Bingo Long All-stars". I've been looking for another league to get into so this will work perfectly.

While I agree with that, one thing I find fascinating is that Murton is FOURTH in all of baseball in GB%(Behind Luis Castillo, Joey Gathright, and Derek Jeter). Its obviously very hard to hit for power when you hit the ball on the ground nearly 60% of the time. My question to everyone here, how possible is it that Murton could change his swing some? Put some loft into it so he starts hitting the ball in the air? He seems to have quite a bit of strength as it is... I'd think changing his swing some would be more beneficial than harmful... its not like he's super fast and can beat out a lot of infield hits anyway. Thoughts?

Longoria has been amazing. I don't think I've ever done such a quick 180 on a player in such a short period of time. I was pretty pissed that the Rays took Longoria over Lincecum or Miller, but with how easily he's cruised through 2 levels, I'm a believer. It'll be interesting to see how he does in his 3 week stint in Montgomery to finish this season. I wouldn't be surprised if he got some time in Tampa after the minor league season ends, similar to Rickie Weeks in '03.

If the Cubs go the Herzog route, its probably because they're hoping to copy what Detroit did this year, so you're probably right. The nice side effect would be that Herzog seemed to like patient hitters and he valued OBP. Of course the downside is he seemed to value speed over everything else, but I would hope he'd be smart enough to realize that running now isn't as valuable as it was when he managed, especially since turf is all but gone. The one thing I don't know about Whitey, was he a players-manager or the opposite? I guess the move would work rather well if we're going to load up for a run next year... I doubt Herzog would want to stick around for a mini-rebuilding project.

Going forward, from now until he's gone(probably end of '08 since Hendry will probably pick up his option): .270/.295/.325

I think a good comparison for Izturis is none other than former Cub Corey Patterson, minus the power/power potential. Both players are allergic to the walk. Both players have good defensive reputations. Both players came up quickly through the farm system and were very highly thought of. Both struggled their first couple years in the majors before a breakout(or fluke) half season that was ended by injury. Corey never came close to his '03 self again, and I'd be surprised if Izturis ever comes near what he did in the first couple months last year.

That seems very likely. I would expect a run at Zito or Schmidt. Neither would make a ton of sense for their plan as they aren't groundball pitchers(40% GB% for Zito, 36% for Schmidt). Not sure if they'll get either as they both should get rather large contracts and could be blown away by an offer ala Furcal and go elsewhere. I would also expect at least one 2nd tier signing.. someone like Ted Lilly. Maybe swing a trade for someone unexpected(if we're going with good defense, Jake Westbrook would make sense and is reportedly available).

The big plan appears to be getting as much speed and defense as possible and making all of those players put the ball in play and hoping something will happen. Combine that with power arms that strike a lot of guys out. ...thats about as much as I could write without getting snarky about it. But that does seem to be their general plan.

Lists are fun. 1. Lou Gehrig 2. Jimmie Foxx 3. Frank Thomas 4. Jeff Bagwell 5. Dick Allen 6. Harmon Killebrew 7. Dan Brouthers 8. Hank Greenberg 9. Johnny Mize 10. Albert Pujols I really wanted to include Sisler, who is probably my favorite player ever(its between him and Max Bishop), but couldn't. I realize ranking Pujols that high this early is a bit risky too.. but he's just been too good and I don't really see him slowing down.