third eye

I think that was the same interview in which he defended JD Drew's production, pointing out in no uncertain terms that the most important thing an offensive player can do is not make outs. Loved hearing that, and I personally don't care if it comes across as condescending. This is why I'm not too concerned about the rumors of Ryno managing the team. Either Sandberg's philosophies on bunting, productive outs, etc, will rule him out as a candidate or Theo will be sufficiently convinced that he wont manage the team with that outdated approach. Either way, I feel confident that the organizational philosophy will come from the top and be reflected throughout the system.

The difference between San Francisco and San Diego is an interesting one. Both teams have great pitching staffs with crappy offenses, though the Padres enjoy the less crappy offense. ERA and WHIP are comparable between the two, though San Francisco has benefitted from much better defense behind the staff. Baseball Reference shows a pretty large difference between the situational pitching of the two staffs though. Yes, San Francisco's pen has been well utilized in high-leverage situations, but there is a huge disparity in WPA/leverage innings. Can someone with a better understanding of win probability for pitchers shed some light on why this might be?

The $625 million number isn't that shocking. The Ricketts reportedly lined up $450 million in debt financing on a $900 million purchase for the Cubs. So if the Mets were valued at roughly the same amount, that would still leave $275 million in equity value to the owners. Now, trying to raise $200 million through a sale of a 49% stake is probably not going to work unless someone out there is willing to value the Mets franchise at just over $1 billion. That seems unlikely with the club's current cash flow issues. Still, I dont think the overall debt balance is quite as severe of a problem for the actual ballclub as the headline suggests. The situation sucks for the Wilpons in terms of diminished value of their ownership stake and ongoing cash outlays to meet operating obligations. But I wouldn't be surprised if they were able to line up $100-$125 million for a 49% equity stake.

Huh, he doesn't indicate why he thinks it would be a "certainty". Just because the Cubs could use him in the Central doesnt mean that the Rays have to trade him if they don't see good value. Not sure how Price came to that conclusion. Huh? A source told Ed Price they were certain he would be traded. They aren't going to explain why they feel that way. Ah, read that wrong. Stupid illiteracy. :blush: . Still, if none of the offers were sweetened, why would the Rays be so motivated to move him? They've already trimmed payroll significantly for next year. They could get a better return from motivated buyers at the deadline since he'd still be under team control for another 2+ years.

Huh, he doesn't indicate why he thinks it would be a "certainty". Just because the Cubs could use him in the Central doesnt mean that the Rays have to trade him if they don't see good value. Not sure how Price came to that conclusion.

The Cubs have talked about a couple things to make them better next year. One has been getting Colvin in the lineup everyday (or close to it). There was a slim chance he would move to 1B if they didn't sign one. But now that they have one, it seems to me the only realistic shot is in RF. There have been talks of moving Fukudome up until this fall. I happen to believe they want to do it now that they have Pena (another LH bat) and are still talking about mediocre pitchers (that will still cost millions). He is due $13.5m. If they can reduce their payroll but $7m+ by trading him, that will go a long way toward affording some mediocre pitching. If they trade Fukudome, who becomes the 4th outfielder? Isn't the team better off having Colvin as extra depth? To be able to stick Colvin in any one of Byrd, Fukudome or Soriano's spots if one of them gets hurt (none of them are spring chickens) seems like it would be better than getting rid of Fukudome and weakening the bench and the starting line up. Yeah I'd prefer to keep the outfield depth, with Colving getting around 50 starts between the three OF spots and maybe another 10-15 at 1B in case Pena gets hurt again. There will be plenty of plate appearances for Colvin even if they see him as an important piece for the future. It doesn't seem like the Garza or Webb additions would require Kosuke to be moved to clear payroll. The scenarios under which it was discussed before assumed we'd make a larger free agent $$ investment. That clearly hasn't been the case. I'm sure he was shopped at some point, and may still go for the right offer, but I don't see why it needs to happen even from Hendry's perspective.

Why are people under the impression that Kosuke will be gone? Obviously there are salary considerations, and I know that at mid season last year most people expected he'd be dealt. But given his second half compared to Colvin's, is that still the right assumption? Based on the payroll parameters under which Hendry has operated this offseason, I assumed he was budgeted into the 2011 plans. I also havent seen any rumors specifically about him this offseason. What's the latest?

There's not a whole lot of groundbreaking information in there, but it's really interesting if you want to see the inner workings of a baseball team. There's a ton of information in these documents. I'll be adding more teams as these documents become available. For now, the Pittsburgh Pirates are not happy. I'd say the $20 million dividend to partners in 2008 is more glaring than the $14 million in net income. There was no real dividend in 2007, but I'd be curious to see what the numbers look like in earlier years. Also, $39 million of revenue from the MLB rev sharing agreement, but only a $51 million payroll? Seems like these financials make a pretty good case for a salary floor in conjunction with revenue sharing.

Never. It's an excuse. "Clutch" is a useless distinction. It is useless as a predictive tool, but this article was backwards looking. It just highlights the fact that the results have been unclutch. No one here would suggest clutch performance is a good metric to use when evaluating an individual player's expected future performance, but that doesn't mean you have to turn a completely blind eye to macro results that seem pretty consistent over the course of a decade. It is at least worth considering whether there are outside identifiable factors. I will agree that it is too easy to make excuses for repeated failures, though, so seeing something like this can be kind of irksome. Wow, 6.5 wins in 2004. And this only counts high-leverage plate appearances, right? It doesn't include the high leverage innings blown by the bullpen? Yeesh, that hurts. If it's useless a predictive tool, it is useless as retrospective tool too. It's a mental masturbation tool, if anything. The main reason why it's useless in this instance is that "clutch" isn't a team statistic any more than wins are a starting pitcher statistic. Their are other reasons too but I'm not wasting any more time with the nonsense. First of all, the fact that this came from fangraphs rather than a meathead writer on ESPN makes it at least a little bit more interesting than the standard discussion of "clutch". They actually point out that the traditional regression/clean slate approach to normalizing for clutch variances from year to year dont seem to work here. It is a trend that has carried over through multiple coaching staffs, GMs and players. Maybe it is just flipping a coin and having it turn up tails 8 times in 10 years or 9 in 11. That's probably the most likely scenario. And I'm not even arguing for clutchiness as a cause here, because that would be crazy. I'm only saying that outcomes that are consistently out of the expected range, and by this magnitude, are worth examining further.

Never. It's an excuse. "Clutch" is a useless distinction. It is useless as a predictive tool, but this article was backwards looking. It just highlights the fact that the results have been unclutch. No one here would suggest clutch performance is a good metric to use when evaluating an individual player's expected future performance, but that doesn't mean you have to turn a completely blind eye to macro results that seem pretty consistent over the course of a decade. It is at least worth considering whether there are outside identifiable factors. I will agree that it is too easy to make excuses for repeated failures, though, so seeing something like this can be kind of irksome. Wow, 6.5 wins in 2004. And this only counts high-leverage plate appearances, right? It doesn't include the high leverage innings blown by the bullpen? Yeesh, that hurts.

How will the payroll support both tier 1 and tier 2 moves for next year? Replacing DLee with Dunn gets you about 2 million in payroll relief, Nady's $3 million will be split among the other scheduled salary bumps on the team and about half of Lilly's salary value will go towards arb eligible players like Soto and Marmol. The only way they can afford a tier 1 type of move is if Z and Kosuke are traded with the Cubs eating only a small percentage of the contracts (~40%), right? That said, if they could work those 2 moves in, I'd have to think they would be in very good shape for next year. Lee, Theriot and Aramis are the only regulars putting up sub 100 OPS+ seasons. I like Dewitt as a decent bet to be close to 100 next year, and Dunn and Aramis to be significantly better. This team's current OPS ranks middle of the NL pack at 9 so far this year (though only 12th in runs scored). Just replacing Lee's non-production with Dunn's and having Aramis and Dewitt provide league average numbers should put the offense into the upper third. That plus Cliff Lee, Dempster, Wells, Gorzo, 5th starter and a decent back of the bullpen in Marshall and Marmol should position them pretty well for 2011.

I wonder how those numbers look without Aramis. Since he has continually been slotted in the 4th spot, he's likely he's had a disproportionate number of those specialty situation plate appearances. Normally I wouldn't think that the difference between the 4th and, say, the 7th spot would be too impacted by the clutch performance of a single player, but his exteme suckiness may be enough to account for most of that gap between the Cubs and the rest of the NL. Add in DLee's performance in the slot above his, and these returns shouldn't be much of a surprise.

Cubs are still within double grand slam range!

Damn, was hoping to see a front flip scoring play again. :(

Sounds like the logic of why Dempster was moved to the rotation in the first place. And why Marshall was put in the pen this year. Dempster was making $5 million a year then and Mashall costs almost nothing right now, so it isn't the same situation. Dempster is getting elite starter money and actually living up to his contract. Why would he be the one moved into a less important role? Just saying, stupid reasons like "he's familiar with the role" aren't uncommon with this organization. Fair point. I shouldn't be counting on reason to ease my anxiety about dumb front office decisions.

Sounds like the logic of why Dempster was moved to the rotation in the first place. And why Marshall was put in the pen this year. Dempster was making $5 million a year then and Mashall costs almost nothing right now, so it isn't the same situation. Dempster is getting elite starter money and actually living up to his contract. Why would he be the one moved into a less important role?

Heyman's only logic in making that claim was that Dempster was the one starter with significant bullpen experience. But I don't see them moving him there when they haven't had problems with the closer. With Ricketts watching over him, I can't imagine Hendry being able to explain a $12 million setup/middle relief man - especially since it was his own contract and he's been the best of the bunch as a starter.

When was the last time Grabow didn't give up a run? Good god.

A quick check at BR shows the following plate appearances for the 2009 Cubs: Batting 8th: 647 Batting 9th: 623 Pitchers: 365 Pinch Hitters: 272 (looks like 268 of these were for the pitchers spot) So the difference between the 8th and 9th spots last year was 24 plate appearances, but pitchers accounted for less than 60% of the 9th position plate appearances (If we place all of the 365 in the 9 slot, which is an oversimplification). If you have a decent first option off the bench, the difference in plate appearances between the 8th and 9th spots is not particularly meaningful.

My gorilla math tells me it's about 30-40 PA's a season. I think the "more plate appearances" logic for lineup construction falls apart a bit at the bottom of the order. A team OBP of .350 yields about 41-42 plate appearances in a game, which turns the lineup over about 4.6 times. in order to turn it over 5 times a game, you'd need to increase the team OBP to nearly .400. Sure there will definitely be games where everyone gets 5+ plate appearances, but I don't know that the 8-9 slots would see a meaningful difference over the course of a year. And that's before you factor in pinch hitters for pitchers who will likely not even see 4 plate appearances in a game.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_costs#Loss_aversion_and_the_sunk_cost_fallacy Summary: The Cubs owe him money whether or not he plays, so decisions on his playing time should be made independently of that fact. Agreed, but that hasn't been Jim's m.o. at all. That's generally not most GMs' M.O. Though it's the right call. I don't know how much Hendry will be weighing that on Silva. Yeah, he has taken sunk costs into account in the past, but these are really Bradley's, not Silva's. He's not really on the hook for signing Silva to a huge contract, since it was a loss-cutting move. That said, a few decent starts in April would be way more than I could have hoped for out of him.

Seems like everyone has jumped off the Soto bandwagon and forgotten about him. Soto is not going to be a #8 hitter for the rest of his career. I think he'll build on his 2008 season and put up some good numbers this year. And as Rob (I think?) pointed out, Soto and Fukudome were victims of some pretty lousy luck last year as well. Soto's year wasn't nearly as bad as his slash stats indicated.

Does the Harball Times methodology use a variable scale for the +.120 factor or is there something completely different in the way they approach it? I'm curious why it impacts Fukudome more than the others. Thanks for posting this!

Yep, and not only was he unlucky last year, this supposed drop in production over the past two seasons is magnified by the fact that he was really lucky 2 years ago: Year/LD%/BABIP/OPS 2007/22%/.360/.913 2008/20%/.316/.858 2009/21%/.275/.780 2008 was the only year where his production was largely luck-neutral. Yes, his splits are still an issue, but the .100 OPS decline people keep throwing around is misleading.

Granderson seems like he had Fukudome-like luck last year. His LD%, strikeout and walk rates have been really consistent over the past 3 years, but his BABIP dipped 40 points last year. Even with his extreme L/R splits (the gap between splits last year was still pretty consistent with his career), I would expect there to be plenty of reason for him to rebound to the near .850 OPS range next year. Seems like that would make for a pretty productive outfield with strong defense at 2 of the 3 positions and passable defense at the third.