sneakypower

Or Jeff Francouer when he showed he had no ability to tell a ball from a strike as he put up hilariously bad numbers in the major leagues for 3 seasons. Or Brandon Wood who hasn't hit outside the PCL in 6 years. Francoeur's plate discipline alone doesn't preclude him from being a successful player (look at Kemp, Soriano, Crawford, CarGo, Hart, Pence, ...) and Wood's defense at 3B has been good enough he could still hit his AAA MLE of .293 obp/.416 slg and be an above-average player where are you going with this? my central premise was that these guys were underperforming their potential. Alex Gordon had 0.1 WAR the last two seasons, getting oft-demoted and i was (outwardly) hoping like hell we would heavily pursue him

the best part of that replay is Proctor's swan dive out of the box

Patterson compiled 4.7 fWAR and Choi 2.5 (in just 784 PA) in their two seasons after leaving the Cubs; they were both great reclamation candidates, but Choi's concussion problems likely ruined him in the end you also have to disqualify guys who have proven they don't have the requisite tools to succeed: like the DeWitt example, where we had known he couldn't defend at 2B or hit for any power to play 3B, or Clement, where he lost all value being moved off C

who is this Germano...

Montanez was "highly rated" back when Alfonso Soriano was a prospect good lord, i did not think it necessary to need to qualify my statement for idiots incapable of using common sense

this excites me to no end, the guy who is #1 on my FA wish list mortreport Chris Mortensen I say watch out for Lions and Bengals FA CB Jonathan Joseph 1 hour ago

i'm glad that i can still hate that guy with a fiery passion

this can't possibly be true. his wOBA was .317 in 2007 and .285 in 2008. his overall wOBA was .327 for those four years (side note: i don't think FG incorporates ROE into their wOBA calculation, which is a mistake)

i don't much care about losing McNutt if you can get back Ubaldo; same as the Archer/Garza thing also, it doesn't have to be an either/or proposition with Ubaldo & Wilson, especially with the former's team-friendly contract Ubaldo Garza CJ Wilson Zambrano Dempster/Wells and Cashner can replace Marshall in the pen - looks good to me

Albers was an example of big budget teams being able to find roster space for reclamation projects, nothing more I still hate the Burroughs example because he's atypical in that he'd been out of baseball for 3 years (and without the rare immense physical gifts of Josh Hamilton), but as an Arizona fan in a lesser-of-two-evils thing, I guess I'd still prefer them giving him ABs to Mora, Bloomquist or Nady Melky Cabrera had played at an above-average level for four years (at ages 21-24 no less) with the Yankees previous to his disaster with Atlanta last year, which has to be attributed to injury or some other extenuating factor given how anomalous his defense was that season Francoeur also showed enough skills - great defense, throwing arm, good power - so where all he needed was neutral luck with batted balls to make him a useful player. he's gotten that this year: babip and hr/fb right in line with his career averages Andy Laroche isn't currently worthy of holding out a lot of hope, due to his extreme GB tendencies, but you could do worse than letting your AAA hitting instructor experiment with his swing

i'd offer McNutt, Marshall, Vitters, Barney for Ubaldo

talking about impact, Albers, Morales, Miller, Hill all have had a better WPA for the Red Sox than Saltalamacchia but this meaningless semantical tangent obfuscates my easily understood point

not really, since he has no apparent skills remaining; even when we had acquired him, he had already proven to be a dismal defensive player at 2B and he had shown no semblance of a power swing in 5 years, so what could you have put his upside at? Alberto Callaspo? with Stewart, for example, he's given indications he can be a capable fielder at 3rd and can be a good to very good hitter when not besieged by babip woes. he has enough tangible upside to make the risk well worthwhile common sense obviously plays a part; it's not like scanning through old prospect lists and saying "hey lookie here, let's sign Nick Adenhart!" and btw, i love the idea that Ryan Webb and Edward Mujica are irreplaceable firemen while Matt Albers and Franklin Morales are non-contributors

so put them in AAA and let them force the issue. right now we've got 60 games left to play and several lame ducks; try swinging a deal for somebody who fits that mold and give them a couple months. it'd be inexcusable for Baker, DeWitt, Hill, Johnson to get significant playing time from this point forth

we use it up on no-upside stiffs like Koyie Hill, Montanez, Reed Johnson instead, and the Red Sox found spots for Saltalamacchia, Andrew Miller, Rocco Baldelli, Rich Hill, Matt Albers, Franklin Morales, Jeremy Hermida on their roster but what the [expletive] do they know?

Pie is the worst-case scenario, though; truthfully, he should have been sent to AAA awhile ago if a team is reasonable about it, you demote him when it becomes apparent work is needed on his swing, or a position change warrants consideration; it stands to reason the potential payoff still far, far exceeds the minimal risk involved

and beyond that, those guys collectively have already in just over 1/2 season, provided roughly $65-70 million of surplus value to their teams and most are cost-controlled for at least a couple more years the potential upside is simply too immense to ignore

in what's already a lost season, might as well give LaHair one last shot, and see if he can remotely approach his .277/.345/.519 MLE (unlikely) and maybe carve out a role as a bench player somewhere man, i do wish we had tried to sell high on Colvin last year

I think he's at the peak of what he can do right now. Twenty-three percent of his balls in play are flyballs, yet 14 percent are clearing the fence. There's nothing in his swing that says he will consistently hit over half of his flyballs for home runs*, so I think his slugging is inflated. I also question if he's really a .300 hitter. Maybe I'm wrong, but .300 hitters who hit 54 percent of their balls on the ground and strike out 16 percent of the time seems out of line. So over a full season, I estimate that he's a .280/.330/.390 hitter. *ETA: Sixty percent of his flyballs are going for homers. Not even Adam Dunn has done that. i have no clue where you're seeing the 60% figure, it's 9.1% for his career and 14.6% for this year he's as good a bet as anybody to hit .300 - he hits a ton of LD, GB and flashes moderate XBH ability - basically he's Howie Kendrick with better plate discipline

i'm not sure i understand your implication, Mojo; both of those names were in their 30s and had previous productive seasons in the bigs Diamond, Jerome Williams, Max Ramirez and especially Barrett are better examples of when Hendry's tried employing that strategy; in all honesty i was a big fan of all four acquisitions, and despite the former three not panning out i'd love to see much more of it

objectively, might Jay actually be the better player of the two? for the past two seasons, they've been virtually the same offensively (120 vs. 118 wRC+) and Jay grades out as the superior fielder in CF (8.7 vs. -2.2 career UZR/150 [in an admittedly small sample for Jay]), and there's only a year of difference in their ages

i could imagine Hendry insisting upon Pollock

...former top prospects whose teams have lost patience here's a likely playoff team team you could have compiled by purely dumpster diving (requiring roughly minimal compensation): C Saltalamacchia ('06 #18) 1.6 fWAR 1B Kotchman ('05 #6) 2.1 2B Sizemore ('10 #57 -BP) 0.8 (36 games) SS Hardy ('05 #28) 2.0 3B Wood ('07 #8) 0.6 (59 games) RF Francoeur ('05 #14) 1.9 CF Maybin ('09 #8) 3.3 LF M Cabrera 3.2 these 9 guys have been more productive than all but 10 teams in the league, as a whole among the teams who these players collectively outrank, are the Pirates, Braves, Giants, Indians, Tigers, Phillies (and us of course) who are other players in this mold worth looking into acquiring cheaply? Ian Stewart, Teagarden, Brignac, Barton, Hermida, Blanks, LaRoche, Gomez, Pie, Milledge, (Fowler?), (Rasmus?). all these names are (to varying degrees) much more intriguing to me than much of the slop occupying our AAA roster or serving bench roles on the MLB level there's seemingly far fewer examples for pitching (only Humber, Andrew Miller, Morales immediately come to mind) and you'd have a near-impossible time discerning targets without scouting due to skills erosion and injuries

http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=lf&stats=fld&lg=nl&qual=500&type=1&season=2011&month=0&season1=2008&ind=0 his defense is more than fine; stop being such a dumbass, davearm

not nearly, he can be a Drew Stubbs-type player, which has a ton of value