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Elrhino

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Everything posted by Elrhino

  1. Elrhino
    Dempster chose a profession where even under the best of circumstances you can be away from your family for extended periods of time. I'm not really seeing how playing a 2 hour plane ride away from Chicago for 10 weeks is OMGZ Teh Biggezt decishuns of hiz lifes!!111
  2. Elrhino
    Im generally sympathetic to Dempster's situation, UNLESS he previously okayed to Theo that the Braves were a team he would waive 10/5 for. If at the last minute he pulls the rug on parameters he previously provided the Cubs simply because he fell in love with the idea of playing in LA over the last week, no sympathy.
  3. Elrhino
    Being an ump in AZL looks pretty sweet. Great view of the action and no fan razzing.
  4. Elrhino
    I think it's mostly Dempster being butthurt that he was informed about the trade 3rd party rather than in person by the front office. I'm sure he felt he had a good enough relationship with Theo that he throught he would be kept informed (thus the pre game sit down with Theo several weeks ago). In reality, this deal might have came to a head really fast and leaked through Atlanta's people before Theo could get the deal officially settled on and parlayed to Dempster.
  5. Elrhino
    I'm not really into the Dodgers system since Lee's velocity has dropped this year. Eovaldi and Gould don't strike me as TOR pitchers. I'm not really interested in a couple of mid rotation pitchers for Garza. The only way I'm not getting a potential TOR arm in return for Garza is because a super-super stud positional player is the centerpiece. Even Mike Olt better come with a Martin Perez or Cody Buckel because Olt is 24 years old in AA with a really high strike out rate, and not someone I consider to be a super-super blue chip. Cubs have a very unique asset in 1.5 years of a proven TOR at 28 years old. If they can't find appropriate value, I'd rather just keep him.
  6. Elrhino
    Matt Diaz? Yech. Now I could actually see why the Braves fans might be excited about a possibility of a Reed Johnson throw in.
  7. Elrhino
    Sounds like Demp really wanted to go to Los Angeles and had mentally "packed his bags", and is now getting his head around Atlanta. Since he previously approved ATL he'll probably come around in short order.
  8. Elrhino
    Theo just set his own bar for Garza's value.
  9. Elrhino
    You can read fangraphs write up on him as their 3rd best Brave prospect heading into this year. http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/top-15-prospects-atlanta-braves/
  10. Elrhino
    Delgado would be awesome.
  11. Elrhino
    If Theo is playing this strong of a poker face on Dempster, imagine how reticent he's going to be to pull the trigger on a Garza deal.
  12. Elrhino
    I'm not sure it can be considered rushing when you've been actively shopping him for weeks, if not months. And I don't think it's rushing for the sake of rushing, in so much as rushing for the sake that his value is never going to be higher than it currently is.
  13. Elrhino
    IMO, Theo is dragging his feet waiting for a 2nd team to seriously enter the bidding, because right now the Dodgers act like they're just bidding against themselves. Perhaps they are. The reports have been that they've been the heavy favorite for a trade possibility for upwards of 2-3 months.
  14. Elrhino
    Hoyer was pretty vocal that he felt he made a mistake rushing Rizzo to the majors. It's cool it didn't effect him much long term, but it was clear that it wasn't the preferred way Hoyer wants to handle players. I get the impression the new front office isn't going to bring up their valued prospects until they're fairly confident they have nothing left to learn in the minors. Vitters still has a lot to work on in patience and defense. And if the Cubs get an Olt or Castellanos in a Garza trade, Vitters probably has a position change in his future. He shouldn't be "bored" in AAA anytime soon.
  15. Elrhino
    I'm completely lost about the point you seem to be trying to make. If one claims that slow baserunning negates offensive production in Vitters case (which currently stands as a .872 OPS), exactly where is the arbitrary line drawn in the sand where the offensive production overcomes the liability of slow baserunning? I take it Votto's offensive production outweighs his slow base running. So does Vitter need to hit .920 OPS? .980 OPS? We used to make fun of Dusty for over valuing baserunning to this degree.
  16. Elrhino
    I had the same reaction when I heard that phrasing uttered.
  17. Elrhino
    the top 5 doubles hitters this year in major league baseball have a combined 19 stolen bases. doubles are for players who have power, not for fast runners. I just hope for Joey Votto's sake that he hits enough doubles that he still has SOME value left as a player once his lack of speed on the basepaths has chipped away at the good things he does.
  18. Elrhino
    Vitters sure is racking up the doubles for the second coming of Cecil Fielder on the basepaths. I dunno, maybe they're all ground rules.
  19. Elrhino
    people are coming full circle on the player evaluation thing. soon they will be all hot and bothered over BA/RISP again. Who knew Dusty was so ahead of his time.
  20. Elrhino
    Sorry, unless he's wildly and recklessly running into outs, I just can't buy into the idea that being a little slow on the basepaths significantly erodes the offensive positives of a power hitting 3rd baseman. Maybe if I could see it quantified some way, but I'm not going to just take it as face value. Doesn't pass the smell test.
  21. Elrhino
    Vitters is sniffing Top 5 in PCL for doubles after tonight. He was already tied for 7th. Hard to say it's just the PCL when he's hitting better than his (typically many years older) peers, particularly since he's playing in Iowa and not the more hitter friendly parks in the West. I highly doubt Vitters baserunning is that far below average of other power hitting 3Bers that it's a huge liability. How many hundredths of a of a point of a win share would that effect?
  22. Elrhino
    I think maybe a good comparison/precedent is Seattle shipping Jerrod Washburn to Detroit at the deadline in 2009. Washburn was 34 years old, in the last year of his contract, and was having a great/lucky first half of the season after a pretty mediocre career and dramatically overpaid previous 3 seasons. (He crashed back to earth with the Tigers the 2nd half of the season, and ended up retiring in the offseason after finding a soft market in free agency). The Mariners got 23 year old Luke French, who had already made it to the big leagues as an injury fill in starter that season (and performed well) but was a soft tossing low upside lefty, and Mauricio Robles a 20-year-old lefty who threw in the high 90s and was excelling at the High-A level at the time. So basically the Mariners got a cheap major league ready back of the rotation guy + a high ceiling high A guy. Dempster has been more consistently good than Washburn was at the time, so I would expect at least that kind of return and probably a little more.
  23. Elrhino
    No, his numbers haven't been awful, but they haven't been nearly what they could be. I've never been under the impression that he was overmatched or overrated, but that he was getting in his own way. I definitely have felt like his ability to make contact has been a double edged sword. My feeling has long been that if he'd swing at fewer pitcher's pitches at work counts into his favor, the power would follow. We're seeing some of that now (how much of that is him and how much is the PCL remains to be seen, but the correlation is encouraging). I've often been surprised at how many people write him off, given his age. I was always optimistic that his power would develop just by physically maturing a little bit. I saw him when he was 19 years old in Daytona and remember thinking that whatever his listed weight was (I believe it was 190) it looked about 15 lbs. generous. It was strange to see a Top 3 draft pick corner infielder with that kind of physique (or lack there of). To me suggesting otherwise suggest a pretty apparent agenda (as well as name callling).
  24. Elrhino
    I still have to wonder if so many teams are interested in Dempster because at this point in time, the market is limited to Dempster and Garza. It might not be long before they're joined Greinke, Hamels, Marcum, McCarthy, and Rodriguez, who I'm a bit shocked that he hasn't been involved in any rumors or not. Regardless of who's having the best season at the time, once more guys hit the trading block, it will take away from our leverage. Dempster is never going to bring in staff ace return, and even when those other guys hit the market there will be a team that will covets a good starter but doesn't want to pay staff ace prices. How many more wins over the course of half a season is Grienke or Hamels going to bring in over Dempster? Pretty negligible when compared to the difference in acquisition cost.
  25. Elrhino
    Not sure how anyone could say that the Rangers have taken an All Hitting organizational approach. They traded for Cliff Lee for what, at the time, was considered to be one of the Top 10 prospects in baseball, and offered him more money than anyone else in the market to retain him as a free agent. They made a flurry of deadline deals to bring in bullpen talent last year. They draft a lot of pitchers high in the draft. They've developed some good, not great, pitching in house. They haven't developed a true ace pitcher, but neither have most teams, and they can't attract one on the market because no one wants to pitch in that stadium in that heat. In the meantime they just spent $110 million on a Japanese import.
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