MPrior

So how does the value of this trade change if Boston eats a bunch of Manny's salary? Does it still suck for the Mets? If they get Manny Ramirez for three more years at a severely discounted price, that could very well put them right into the thick of things. And what if Milledge is the one they don't trade? By the way, these questions are not rhetorical. I really don't know, and I'm not taking one side or the other; I'm just asking what you guys think about it.

REAL Cubs GM press conferences should have a laugh track.

If you read the article more carefully, the Red Sox get Cameron and only two of the three prospects, not all three.

There are lots of places to look, but in the interest of promoting this site, why not look at They Call It Small Ball For A Reason written last year by one of our own regulars. Now the data in the article shows definitively that small ball is questionable in any situation other than 1-run games. But it supports usage in one-run games, even despite the fact that the article is clearly arguing against the usage of small ball. Personally, I promote responsible usage of small ball, which is sparingly and just the situations described previously. I also promote OBP and power. Unfortunately, in my experience, the anti-small ball crowd dismisses this combination and assumes for some reason it's impossible to have balance, and never appropriate to play for one run. This isn't on Hendry though. The GM has to assume the manager is responsible and only plays for one run in the late innings. And btw, I watch baseball daily, and I rarely ever see what you're describing, except for the last week of the season and the playoffs when desperation and pressure sets in. Not really true. As he points out, the correlation between SBS and Winning Percentage is almost negligible. And the article doesn't in any way control for (not that it could control for it; I'm not faulting the article, as I thought it was very well done) pitching, so a correlation with winning percentage would be largely meaningless anyway. Now, if you could show me a significant correlation between small-ball usage and runs scored in the late innings of tight games, then I'd buy it, because that would have nothing to do with the pitching.

This (and many variations of this) has been gone over (and over, and over, and over) in the transactions board - snoop around there for a while and you're likely to find what you're looking for.

I'd agree with you, if I thought that Pie was close to major league ready. I would like to see Pie spend all of next year in the minors, and then see if he is ready to start '07 in the majors, if not, he could be a call up. Pie has all the tools to be a great baseball player, he just needs more seasoning. That being said, Preston Wilson is not a bad CF offensively. I think a one year deal, similar to the Burnitz deal, with an option in 07, might work out for the Cubs. If, as Hoops and Cuse have said, the Cubs get a serious impact bat for RF (of the Giles/Abreu type, not the Jaque Jones type). As far as Cpatt, I wish he could play up to his talent level in Chicago, but I just don't think it is going to happen. I think, if you are JH, you have to improve CF and under no circumstances could you march out the same player who just had an absolutely miserable season. Also, something to remember, Patterson is no longer that cheap. I don't have the exact figures, but he might make 2 million this year through arbitration. That would be very similar to a Neifi! contract, and would be seriously ugly if he performed like last year. My personal CF wish is Mike Cameron. But I know Hendry has a crush on Preston, and, as long as he plays CF, I think I could live with him. You forgot that he also mentioned Adam Greenberg in there - who I'd rather see in CF than Pie or Wilson. Not that I want him to be there, but it'd be a better move than either of those two (there are a bunch of others I'd rather have, of course).

This is only marginally related, so I apologize in advance. First off, I like that team. Secondly, I hear people say all the time that our chances of landing Furcal AND Giles are very small. Well, that's true, but there's an important distinction to make - those chances are small because, statistically, the probability that two events will occur is the product of those two probabilities . So, for example, lets say - and these numbers are completely arbitrary - that our chances of signing Furcal are 1/3, and our chances of signing Giles are 1/10. Our probability of signing them both, then, is 1/30. However - and here's my key point - this difference does not in any way decrease our chances of signing Giles. That is to say, even if we do sign Furcal, our chances of signing Giles would still be 1/10. Of course, there are other concerns, like money, but I think we've determined that the Cubs have enough money that signing Furcal would not financially make signing Giles an impossibility. So unless Hendry decides, for whatever reason, that one big signing is enough, signing Furcal should not make signing Giles any harder than it already is. I guess the only reason I bring this up is that it seems to me that this argument is used often in a way that implies that signing Furcal means no Brian Giles - while this is most certainly not true. Now, do I think we'll be able to sign Brian Giles? No. But it has nothing to do with whether we sign Furcal or not.

This is the dumbest thiing I've read in a while. Our suckitude had nothing to do with a mediocre offense, a pitching staff in shambles, 3/4 of the season without Nomar, and a moron with a toothpick in his mouth. No, it all came down to the fact no player would police the team. That was the "something" that was missing. That cost us 30 games in the standings. Funny, I don't see where Carrie Muskat claims any of those things you are saying. Don't take things so literally. My point is, finding a guy who can police the clubhouse should be about priority 598 this off-season. However, the article assigns a fair amount of significance to that as a "need." There's no reason to put any emphasis on filling intangible holes when the team is riddled with very real ones that can be addressed. To be fair, she was responding to a question about chemistry. I don't think she was saying that should be an offseason priority. She was saying, as far as chemistry goes, that's the missing piece.

It seems to me that people are ignoring what Philly actually wants. So far, only one or two of the deals have involved sending a pitcher to Philly - and that's exactly what they need; they're relatively set in terms of position players. I'm too uninformed to really come up with a good trade option, but I think Philly would probably like a guy like Williams - and Mitre would be a good match in that park too. They might want more proven players, though.

I hope this is sarcasm.

Even if we are to acknowledge that chemistry does have some effect on winning (obviously we haven't come to this consensus at all, but just for the sake of argument), I think 5-10% is a ludicrously high estimate of its impact on winning. To say that chemistry can account for 1 tenth of a team's wins is ridiculous.

I just graduated last year from Communications - go NU! I wonder how many other NU alums/students are on the board?

Exactly; it demonstrates and verifies, but doesn't prove; failures falsify, or disprove. In reference to your boiling point example, it has not been proven that water boils at 100 degrees at sea level. It has merely been demonstrated to reliably do so. However, there very well may arise some situation in which water does not boil at 100 degrees at sea level, which would effectively disprove that notion. We just haven't found such a situation yet, so we say that it boils at 100 degrees because it's currently the most accurate and reliable working theorem.

Good call.

Pujols, Rolen, Edmonds, Isringhausen, Eckstein, Carpenter, King and Mulder account for $63M. Add another $4M if they pick up Suppan's option. The Cards payroll last year was around $90M. I haven't read all the reports, but I did see a few that suggested an increase to $95-96M range was probable going into their new park. Therefore, many think they can easily give Giles $10M a season, and still have money to address their other needs. Assuming they pick up Suppan's option.... 9 guys, 67 mil, best case scenario, 30 million left for 16 players. Workable Signing Giles 10 guys, 77 mil, best case scenario, 20 million left for 15 players. Very difficult. They could get Giles, but that would make the rest of their offseason pretty tight. I actually see them going after a Encarnacion or Jacque Jones type. What makes you think this? Not that I doubt it, I'm just wondering why. Cause I WISH they'd go after one of those, but I have little reason to think that they will.

So if the Cubs do what most of us want them to do, and overbid a little for Giles, we should be offering more than 10 per. So, if Hendry's willing to make the offer, the only reason Giles ends up as a Cardinal is if he thinks taking the smaller contract is worth the added chances of winning a title, in which case there's nothing we can do about it.

The Cards have oodles of money to spend? Don't they have tons of money tied up in Rolen,Pujols,Izzy,Mulder,Carpenter & Edmonds "oodles" is one of the last words I'd use to describe the Cards amount of free cash. Although I do appreciate its use. I think it's a great word, and should be used more often. Oodles. ha ha.

Now, I'm pretty skeptical of chemistry's value in baseball, but I pretty strongly believe in what Xzero is saying. And I'd just like to point out a pretty blatant contradiction in your statement. Refer to my two bolded sections there. Have you ever heard of the scientific method? It more or less boils down to the fact that nothing can be proved. Things can only be disproved. In essence, science (your ostensible field) is the exact opposite of what you said: It's not about proving anything. It's about disproving something. Who knew (before Einstein) that Newtonian physics were more or less inaccurate? No one. But Einstein disproved them. Of course, we still use them, because they're a pretty damn good approximation, especially if we're dealing with things that are on earth and not traveling anywhere close to the speed of light. But the point is, even our most trusted beliefs can be proved wrong. Back to chemistry. I'm not sure than anything regarding chemistry has been proved or disproved. But I am pretty sure that the notion that chemistry is a necessary factor to win ballgames has been disproved (see the Oakland A's). I am also pretty sure, if I am to believe this statement that losing clubs do occasionally have chemistry (although I've never heard of one), that it is also not a sufficient factor to win ballgames. So having "chemistry" is neither necessary nor sufficient to win. Do you want to know what is sufficient to win a lot of ballgames? Team OBP. No, not necessary (see the White Sox, Astros of this year). But sufficient (see the Red Sox, Yankees, Oakland A's of the past several years). Lights out pitching across the board. Not necessary (the Yankees and Red Sox won a lot of games this year without it). But sufficient (see the Angels, Astros, and White Sox). Chemistry? Regardless of whether or not it has an effect on winning, it is, at best, a tertiary issue (not to mention that designing a team to have chemistry is impossibly hard to do, since it's so hard to define; for example, this year's Cubs probably had the worst chemisty of a Cubs team for the last few years, but they were designed to have good chemistry, or so some seem to believe).

I'm not sure if you picked up on this or not, but there was a heavy dose of sarcasm involved in that last post. I'm totally with you. I, too, have always thought that Hollandsworth makes a great 4th OF.

Oh, by the way, I totally agree about the bullpen thing. It seems to me that the tried and true method for a WS-caliber team is super-powerful offense paired with a lights out bullpen. Obviously it didn't work out that way this year, but each team had at least half that equation, with stellar starting pitching to pick up the offense's slack. I'm all about putting together a shut-down bullpen. As long as we get some offense to go with it.

You've mentioned these "human variables" a couple of times so far. And you're absolutely right. There are TONS of variables that can affect the outcome of a single given instance. But that's PRECISELY why we use stats. Because the only way to reliably account for those variables is to look at how that situation panned out over many, many occasions. If you do this, it dilutes the effects of those minutiae, and you get a general idea of what the player, independent of those variables, brings to the table. You're right about another thing: stats don't tell you everything. But - and here's the key point - they tell you more than any other single method of evaluation, and that's why we use them. No, they don't predict what will happen in a single, given instance, but there is nothing that can do that.

Oh my god, would love that macias, Perez and Harris, what a bench. I heard that those three make the best cup of coffe in the league. I'm not sure any of the three should have ever been up to the major leagues for longer than a cup of coffee. But, BBB, Lenny Harris is the all-time pinch hit appearances leader! And that makes him good! Or at least the people at ESPN seem to think so, as they mention it EVERY DAMN TIME HE STEPS UP TO THE PLATE.

i'd love to have ARod in Chicago. i'd have to burn my "Jeter sucks ARod" t-shirt, but we all have to make sacrifices in life. :lol: You should NEVER burn that shirt, no matter what happens. That's awesome.

You KNOW if this happened he would find it again and tear the league up.

It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside looking at Prior's 2003 #'s. That's some pretty sick stuff. And only numbers like that will justify my saying that he "only" won 18 games that year. Secondly, it looks like one of the big problems for Prior, in addition to his walk rate, is his HR rate. He gives up way more now than he used to.