davearm2

You've made the point that Granderson has been productive despite his K rate, that's true. You've also made a separate point, that being that K's are no different than other kinds of outs. To wit: "Striking out isn't costing you a chance at anything any more than a popout or ground out does," and "it doesn't really matter how you're making outs." Both of the those quotes are from you in this thread, and both are foolish, as I've (attempted to) illustrate for you. Ugh, I'm saying that when you look at the outs AFTER the fact, they aren't really that different from other outs. Are you really not getting this? I'm saying that over the course of a full season, a .900 OPS guy with 140 K's isn't going to be much different from a .900 OPS guy with 80 k's. That's now 5 times I've explained it. And I'm explaining that looking at outs AFTER the fact makes you look foolish. The reason is simple. All strikeouts are outs. Not all balls in play become outs. You can continue tabulating the number times you've made ridiculous statements if you like, although I'm at a loss for why you'd want to.

The things you talk about are only relevant if we're talking about a young player who has K concerns and you're questioning whether or not he can succeed in spite of them. We're onot talking about that. We're talking about a proven player who has shown he will succeed despite the totals. When that's the case, no they don't really matter that much. And this "it's costing you a chance to hit" argument is dumb. Striking out isn't costing you a chance at anything any more than a popout or ground out does. They're outs, period. So yeah, if a guy has proven that he's going to perform (which Granderson has), then it doesn't really matter how you're making outs. This statement is only correct if you assume a 0.000 BABIP. I'd suggest you try harder to follow what I presented. I edited my post and added to that right before you posted that. But anyways, I suggest that YOU try harder to follow what I'm saying, considering that all your arguments directed towards me on this page are about things that have nothing to do with my original statements. I never ever said Granderson wouldn't be better if he K'd less. I never said strikeouts can't hurt a player. I DID say that K's don't keep a player from being productive as long as he puts up the numbers. Hopefully I don't have to explain it a 4th time. You've made the point that Granderson has been productive despite his K rate, that's true. You've also made a separate point, that being that K's are no different than other kinds of outs. To wit: "Striking out isn't costing you a chance at anything any more than a popout or ground out does," and "it doesn't really matter how you're making outs." Both of the those quotes are from you in this thread, and both are foolish, as I've (attempted to) illustrate for you.

Or it saved him from a double play and only made one out instead of two. You think strikouts are a lot worse than they really are. It's 2009. I thought these false beliefs were dead by now. The percentage of the time that a K actually hurts you more than a different kind of out is low. Most of the time it doesn't matter. It's like you have it stuck in your head that a ground ball out is usually going to be better than a K, when the vast majority of the time, it won't be. If a guy pops up with a guy at second, is that "wasting a chance to drive him in"? No, he had the chance and he popped out. Just as if he had a chance and K'd. Why are we comparing strikeouts to other kinds of outs? If you put the ball in play, you have a 30% chance of getting a hit and a 70% chance of making an out (give or take a few percentage points). When you strike out, you have a 0% chance of getting a hit and a 100% chance of making an out. Now do you still think striking out a lot is no big deal? Every time you're costing yourself a decent chance at a hit. Take one of those players on your list, whack his strikeouts in half, take the strikeouts that aren't strikeouts anymore and make 30% of those singles, and see what it does to the player's OPS. The things you talk about are only relevant if we're talking about a young player who has K concerns and you're questioning whether or not he can succeed in spite of them. We're onot talking about that. We're talking about a proven player who has shown he will succeed despite the totals. When that's the case, no they don't really matter that much. And this "it's costing you a chance to hit" argument is dumb. Striking out isn't costing you a chance at anything any more than a popout or ground out does. They're outs, period. So yeah, if a guy has proven that he's going to perform (which Granderson has), then it doesn't really matter how you're making outs. This statement is only correct if you assume a 0.000 BABIP. I'd suggest you try harder to follow what I presented.

FWIW following up on the post a few above: Take Granderson's career line, halve his strikeout total (from 618 to 309), and credit him with an additional 93 singles (309 * 0.300), and his slash stats change from: .272/.344/.484/.828 ... to: .308/.376/.519/.896

Or it saved him from a double play and only made one out instead of two. You think strikouts are a lot worse than they really are. It's 2009. I thought these false beliefs were dead by now. The percentage of the time that a K actually hurts you more than a different kind of out is low. Most of the time it doesn't matter. It's like you have it stuck in your head that a ground ball out is usually going to be better than a K, when the vast majority of the time, it won't be. If a guy pops up with a guy at second, is that "wasting a chance to drive him in"? No, he had the chance and he popped out. Just as if he had a chance and K'd. Why are we comparing strikeouts to other kinds of outs? If you put the ball in play, you have a 30% chance of getting a hit and a 70% chance of making an out (give or take a few percentage points). When you strike out, you have a 0% chance of getting a hit and a 100% chance of making an out. Now do you still think striking out a lot is no big deal? Every time you're costing yourself a decent chance at a hit. Take one of those players on your list, whack his strikeouts in half, take the strikeouts that aren't strikeouts anymore and make 30% of those singles, and see what it does to the player's OPS.

I would think most teams will at least be "interested" in Harden, with rumors that we aren't offering arbitration (no draft picks given up). Plus the fact he probably isn't going to demand much more than 2 years and not much more than $8-10 per. Also knowing the fact that he is presumably healthy now and when he is on there isn't a better pitcher in the game. It's an interesting situation. 3 years ago, indeed there would have been a long line of teams interested in a guy like Harden for 2 years at $8-10 per, especially given his recent health. But here in 2009, all we hear about is teams pinching pennies, looking to trade controlled guys like Hardy and Granderson, and declining arbitration on guys due to make "only" a few million. The climate has changed, rather dramatically. It should be interesting to see how that impacts Harden.

This sure sounds contradictory. How? a guy can fill a huge hole without necessarily being an all star or without necessarily demanding top prospects. If he'd be a huge pickup, then he's worth more than mid level prospects.

This sure sounds contradictory.

Add me to the "sell high on Marmol" bandwagon. The injury risk for a guy so reliant on the slider has been mentioned. My bigger fear, though, is that his control issues reach Rich Hill proportions, and his value disappears likewise.

Why do you wish that? And it's not cutting your losses when you actually decide to make things worse. Obviously the prevailing view within the organization is that getting rid of Bradley's attitude/baggage/etc will make things better, otherwise we wouldn't be having this discussion. Okay, so the Bears are in the process of making a bad move because they are influenced by piss-poor logic. Why do you wish fans just accept that? What I accept is that the folks in the Cubs' clubhouse day in and day out have a better handle on the Bradley situation than I do (and the rest of the posters here, I presume). Those folks on the inside seem to have concluded that the situation is irreparable. So I further accept that trading Bradley is for the best, even knowing that the return will be crappy, etc etc.

Why do you wish that? And it's not cutting your losses when you actually decide to make things worse. Obviously the prevailing view within the organization is that getting rid of Bradley's attitude/baggage/etc will make things better, otherwise we wouldn't be having this discussion.

I never knew it changed from the original discussion. You can talk up Bradley all you want, but the damage is done. Everyone knows that Hendry wants him gone. How much Hendry is willing to pay to make him gone is where interested teams are camping. Again, get Bradley into counseling, have a powwow with the teammates and welcome him back with open arms and hope the fans come around to him when he starts hitting the crap out of the ball in spring training. That's the best case scenario. Any other option is going to be a significant loss in terms of dollars AND talent. All indications are that the situation with Bradley is beyond repair. I wish folks would just come to accept that the Cubs are going to take a bath on this one, plain and simple. They're going to be paying a productive player to play for some other team, and the strong likelihood is they're going to replace him with a less productive player. The bottom line is Hendry and the Cubs rolled the dice on a guy with character issues, and lost. Now they've decided to cut their losses. It sucks, but as the saying goes, it is what it is.

I'm not following the irony. Maybe "irony" wasn't the right word to use, but it's very unusual for somebody to play for someone they were once traded for.Sounds like unusual is the word you were looking for. :shrug:

Put Soto in the package and have Gonzalez play catcher for a year. Brilliant!

Maybe Damon feels like adding to his legend by helping a third club end a World Series drought. :beg:

That's actually a good thing. It ensures a short-term deal for a team that desperately needs short-term deals. Cameron isn't going to give you stud numbers, but his physical conditioning has shown a shorter decline curve than you'd expect out of a 34+CF. i love cameron. but at some point he's going to fall off a cliff. we're probably just as well off keeping kosuke in cf without adding to the payroll. Why is it a foregone conclusion that Cameron (or any player) is going to fall off a cliff, rather than decline gradually over several seasons? Seems to me the latter would be the more common outcome, generally.

Actually what Cameron is a good litmus test for is, how much you believe in sabermetrics. I don't want to get into a big long stats vs. scouts debate, but suffice it to say that those dollar figures are not the be-all, end-all to determine who knows what the hell they're talking about when evaluating players. (30 HRs and 100 RBIs etc clearly aren't either, obviously.)

I had myself convinced that this Bradley situation would be resolved immediately after the WS -- like today or tomorrow. Today doesn't look likely.

Damon's arm is barely passable in LF (some would argue it's not even passable there). RF or CF? Forget it. Not a fit.

He was outrighted to the O's AAA team, not DFAd, so hes still under their control. I'm pretty sure Hill had to pass through waivers for the O's to remove him from their 40-man roster, so the other 29 teams would've had a shot at claiming him. Apparently none did.

I'd go so far as to predict that Bradley will be traded within a week of the WS ending, and quite possibly the next day (a la the Renteria trade in 2007). Unlike a lot of baseball deals, this one will not take long to consummate IMO.

I think it would be a great idea to bring Bradley back next year (rather than get nothing), but I don't have to play with him or be around him for 3/4 of the year. His statement about "nuked bridges and burned the blueprints" , although greatly exaggerated is probably closer to the truth, than any chance that Bradley returns. I'm not debating that at all. Really, I'm just nitpicking some sloppy logic from people. Will we keep him? No. The front office seems to have decided (for right or wrong) that he's too much of a distraction and we need to get him the hell out of here. But how some people make the jump in logic from we wont keep him to we can't keep him, is beyond me. If the front office had decided it was the best course of action to keep him around and try to salvage some value from the contract, things could have been glossed over in the clubhouse fairly easily, at least to start the year. Players get into fistfights with each other, use steroids, beat their wives, etc... and the situations are "handled" easily enough with an apology. And there is nothing from any of our players to indicate that if Milton came out the first day of spring training and said, "I'm sorry folks. I was an [expletive]. I'm in therapy now," that they'd tell him to get the hell away. It's really pointless to throw out statements like this unless you have firsthand knowledge of just how things were in the Cubs clubhouse (and batting cages, team flights, video rooms, etc). Really the only people qualified to make such a judgement are the ones who were around the team regularly and witnessed firsthand what the atmosphere was like, both before Bradley's arrival and after. I'm certainly not in that position, and I suspect nobody else posting on this board is either.

I don't know what variables has to do with it. But Bradley has nothing to do with the 2009 struggles. He was a disappointment, but a pretty decent player and probably better that whatever they plan on replacing him with. So not only do they have to get some old banged up dudes healthy, hope they stay healthy, and hope that some declines were flukey, they would have to do all that and hope to offset the decline from what Bradley provided. Backtobanks, to clarify, you believe there is a very limited market for Bradley and the Cubs will likely have to resort to some combination of eating salary/accepting marginal return (a reasonable opinion that I happen to share), but you also believe they have to trade him? I'm not sure how you reconcile those two opinions. If the market isn't there, they don't have to trade him. This is correct. I don't understand how people are saying it's not, unless their argument is that Bradley's attitude somehow made his teammates play worse -- a completely indefensible argument in itself. It's not a completely indefensible argument. It's just one that doesn't have a tidy statistical proof to convince folks. As Albert Einstein said, not everything that counts can be counted.

I was thinking more of the Sosa deal because Hendry has already put a spotlight that Bradley needs to go. And we know how much money the Cubs ate to get rid of Sosa. Hendry has proven that he does not handle these situations well. I have a fear that we will end up taking a bad contract from someone else. Which in my eyes would be the worse solution. At least Bradley is productive. Obviously Bradley's productivity isn't the issue.

Scioscia is a redass. He'll never take Bradley. I have to keep asking, why does this matter unless it's affecting play on the field? Has there been any indication that it has? At the end of the day, you either believe in the concept of team chemistry, or you don't. However there will never be definitive, quantifiable proof that it exists. As for the Cubs' situation, a few things changed from '08 to '09, most things stayed the same, and the team finished about 15 games worse. What role (if any) the Bradley Factor played in that outcome, nobody can say for certain.