badnews

Dear Jim Bowden, Kiss my ass. Nobody wants anything from your lousy team. It couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Let's see him try and gouge anyone now considering you have nothing of the remotest of value. Remember the BS he pulled with Dmitri Young? What did he want from the Braves, Saltalamacchia and Tommy Hanson? I don't remember but it was stupid. It won't be a summer until some team like the Dodgers calls Bowden about Jon Rauch and he asks for James Loney, Matt Kemp, Broxton, Russell Martin, Clayton Kershaw, and Andre Ethier.

Let's ban everything and put everyone in a plastic bubble. Too many lives have been lost over not having people live in plastic bubbles already. The time to act is yesterday. Who could be the next victim? Maybe YOUR CHILD.

I never believed in the Mariner hype. Third Eye raises another point that has long baffled me - why did anyone think Silva, Washburn, and Batista were some badass kind of 3-4-5?

The Nats will give anybody a quick shot, it seems like.

Rich Harden isn't as cheap or as far away from free agency as some might think. The past two seasons he's pitched less than 75 innings total so if his season comes to an early end again this year Beane won't recoup any value on Harden most likely.

Someone remind me though - has this ever happened, or happened recently, with one of these touted college relievers? It didn't happen with Craig Hansen or Joey Devine, the Rockies drafted Casey Weathers, a better reliever than Cashner last year, and they didn't use him in September or the playoffs though he has definite swing and miss stuff. If the Cubs see Cashner in the bigs in 2008 I'll be surprised. And if we don't win in 2008, by 2009 it might be less useful. For example I don't see why a team like the Mariners grabbed Josh Fields. Anyway, those projections are a little silly. The 2011 bullpen?

I think you guys are underestimating what teams will pay for what looks like good pitching. If Dempster has a good entire season and finishes with fine peripherals, why couldn't he get that money? This isn't like Kyle Lohse, we'd be talking about a guy who would have shown actual results. I don't see why he'd take 3 years, $33 million when he could get at least 4/52 with those numbers I think. Who else are teams going to spend that money on? Most teams could afford him in that area, unlike Sabathia. As for Sabathia, I don't see how we're going to sign him, won't he get something like 6/120? His body will probably turn to mush after 30 anyway. I'm not advocating giving him that much money. I'm saying two things: 1- It would be very hard to get so close and let both Dempster and Wood go. 2- The Elias Sports Bureau isn't very generous to guys who have one good year it seems. They go on track record more, at least that's how it seems to me. Heck, Dempster and Wood could both be non-compensatory guys. It's unlikely, but it could be. Carlos Silva didn't net a pick for the Twins, and did Gil Meche? I don't remember.

But it presents an interesting dilemma, does it not? Let's say the team gets to the World Series and loses in 7 games or something, what do you do? Bring back the team minus its #2 starter and not even get two draft picks in return? Or heck, what about Kerry Wood? He could be another Type B free agent, a shut down closer all year, do you throw Francisco Cordero money at him? All of a sudden you're faced with being so close, yet needed to add another $24 million a year in payroll (to say nothing in backloaded contracts) just to keep the current team together.

Pop quiz hotshot. Let's say he finishes the season as a strong #2 pitcher. 3.40 ERA, good K/9, good WHIP, good G/F ratio. The kindly Elias Sports Bureau makes him a Class B free agent. What do you do? What do you do?

This reminds me of what happened to Zack Duke. You go messing with a guy's mechanics and boom, game over.

That production looks like absolute crap compared to every organization except the Giants. I mean come on. Oh wow, Fontenot, Hoffpauir, Murton, Pie, come on.

I have a hard time believing Hill is really finished. I don't really give a crap about Jose Ceda though, throw him in.

Is anyone else becoming more disenfranchised with Burnett? He gets strikeouts but he doesn't always (or this year, often) get results. A typical box score seems to be something like 6 IP, 4 ER, 7 K. Plus is this a guy who is going to bring his A game to the playoffs? I don't know. Burnett looks like he may pull a 2002 Brandon Duckworth, i.e. strikeouts and ineffectiveness.

I've liked what I've seen from Burke. He has good ABs, draws walks, plays a good OF, is sneaky fast, and has some pop. The only downside I've seen from him is a low batting average. It's a bit head-scratching that he has that problem, given his skillset. Nick Swisher, the Oakland version? Hopefully Vitters keeps hitting and can get back to Peoria at some point this year, as he'll only be 19 when the season ends. Heh,if he makes it to Peoria before the season ends, Vitters would only get 6 games at age 19 this season. Shows how young he really is. That is not impressive to me considering where Nick Noonan, Chris Marrero, Tim Alderson, etc. got. Heck Sean Gallagher moved faster than Vitters! I'm just curious here: how many high school position players taken top 5 have turned out to be good major leaguers after they're still BSing around in shortseason a calendar year after being drafted? A fast start in this case doesn't guarantee anything but a slow start seems to be a good sign of doom if you look at past track records. And let me put it this way: how many guys in the first round from 2007 are still in short season? If there are any, do you feel good about those guys?

You guys are something else. Apparently Rich Hill has worse stuff than Kirk Reuter but the fact that he had the 2nd best K/9 for a lefty in the NL in 2007 behind Cole Hamels is all some kind of phantom illusion. Weak. Every time people post about him his stuff gets worse. Guess what? Major league hitters don't have a K/9 of over 8 against a guy with an 88 mph and a loopy, cheesy curveball. They also generally don't have a 1.19 WHIP and a .235 BAA.

Morgan Ensberg is the new Richard Hidalgo, i.e. the guy you say "Damn, look at those numbers he put up not that long ago, let's give him a try!"

Borowski. And I don't agree. There are so many records out there that aren't even worth talking about that get set every day, and so forth.

Borowski had 3 games where he gave up 14 runs. Take those out and his ERA was around 3. Sure those 3 games blew his teams chance of winning but those 3 games over inflated his performance last year. It really wasnt that bad. 4% of his games pitched throws his entire season off. Okay I take back everything I said, he was just plain boss out there.

I don't understand why people keep trying to make that comparison stick. Ryan Theriot was a smallish guy with no power, an even K/BB ratio, and basestealing prowess who significantly could not hit righthanded pitching but mashed on lefties. How many lefty hitters can't hit righties but mash lefties? It just seems dumb. Like let's call Jemile Weeks Mark Ellis, or let's call Casey Kelly Jed Lowrie, or Jake Odorizzi Ben Sheets, because they're all on the same team/same position or whatever.

Bedard is not unmovable. I never understood why the experts were on the Seattle bandwagon. I always thought the Asdrubal Cabrera and Shin Soo Choo for Eduardo Perez and Ben Broussard trades were idiotic. He traded two of his team's top 10 prospects for both parts of a crappy platoon, and he didn't even do it at once, I think he traded for Broussard first and then, what? He said "Hell, Broussard is useless without Perez, I better go out and get him too!" People have really eased up on Adrian Beltre but I still think he's blah, even with the way contracts have gone up, he's not a clutch hitter, I don't know why people think a 100+ OPS 3rd baseman at $13 million a year isn't a bad deal. It is.

No, what about Carlos Beltran, Johan Santana, Mark Teixeira, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Yu Darvish, Ted Lilly, K-Rod, Pedro Martinez, they got them all.

People don't seem to understand that the Indians don't have to sell and probably won't to make a run at the World Series. I don't understand what kind of fantasy world some message board fans are living in. The Cleveland Indians are 3 games out at the deadline, and they trade Sabathia for a pile of scrap "because they can't resign him." So? They could make a legitimate run for it and get draft picks back. I'm a little dubious the Yankees will trade for Sabathia. For one thing, it will look like they're giving up nearly as much for Sabathia as for the superior Santana, and that won't look good. Second, if they trade for him, they'll be expected to sign him long term, and I can't see the Yankees do that. The Yankees put a very high premium on conditioning and athleticism (believe it or not, from some of their players) and a guy as fat as Sabathia may be fine now but at 31-32 he's going to be trouble. I don't think the Yankees are going to buy into the idea that this guy deserves a 6 year, $120 million payday. Who do the Yankees trade for Sabathia? I know a lot of people won't agree with me, but I SELL, SELL, SELL on Tabata and Kennedy. I don't like either of them much. I think you could come away with two better guys on your draft picks. You look at their prospects who have some track record, and the guy that really jumps out at you is Austin Jackson. But how do you trade for Sabathia and not get pitching back? I mean, Alan Horne, is that your big chip? I don't know, I actually haven't been paying much attention to the Yankees lately. Jackson is pretty neat though but I think you'd have to get better pitching back.

Translation, Grant Johnson Part 2? Both guys were "risk" picks who formerly had better stuff. The problem is both of these picks were made with, at least I felt, guys with better stuff on the board. Why do you take such a risk so high? Even the "upside" doesn't sound so awesome. Sounds like an Oakland A's draft guy a few years ago named Matt Sulentic. His career was down but is now up in the California League. As for Carlos Guillen, I hope that guy meant Carlos Guillen in the field, because a Carlos Guillen comparison with the bat seems like a joke.

Sorry, you can't win the "save stat and records are legitimately noteworthy and interesting too" battle, at least not in my opinion. My shot at Bobby Thigpen was to the guy trying to talk up the save. And it's just not happening. Absolute scrubs and bums are not at the top of other statistics year after year. And just for the record, I don't think too much of Trevor Hoffman either. Joe Borowski lead the AL in saves and had a 5.07 ERA and a 1.43 WHIP. So we're talking about a stat that rewards crappy pitching like virtually no other. I can't remember the last pitcher to lead the AL in wins with an ERA and WHIP as high as 5.07/1.43. I do remember laughing when people said the Diamondbacks signing Russ Ortiz was a good move because no one had more wins in the previous 3 years period. So the point is, I'm not going to get excited about the *possible* breaking of crappy records, the records of which are held by scrubs.

I agree with Hank for once. I'd rather see the pitchers do what they're supposed to, pitch, instead of pretending (like most everyone on this board does) that double-switches constitute fantastic strategy. I've said it before and I'll say it again: the idea that the NL has more "strategy" and this "strategy" makes the NL more entertaining is probably the biggest myth that still has a deeply hardcore following. Because by God a manager pulling a pitcher for a pinch hitter and then going to a reliever is the most amazing thing I ever dun saw. Insulting NL strategy never fails to bring out the most rabid pitchfork and torch wielding crowd you've ever seen.