Clem Fandango

I'm not keen on the players union rules and what not. Can someone tell me how the players union benefits from Albert Pujols signing a huge contract? Do they get a percentage cut form his yearly salary or something?

lol...yeah, cuz otherwise he might have a [expletive] season with only a .980 OPS I can't afford that kind of a hit to my offense. I've surrounded Pujols with slick fielding grit monsters. He must obliterate every offensive record ever.

I'm just hoping he doesn't sign so this year turns out to be his contract year and my fantasy team benefits greatly from it

Pretty sure it's the latter. He's 31. Let it go people.

I love MLB network but their rankings are stupid, the fact that the analyst that present the show do not even agree with these rankings is pretty bad. Soto should have been between 4-7 on the list, i personally would have had him at 5th. Picking Molina, Santana, Buck, Wieters and Ruiz over Soto is BS. Posey is also another guy who has to do it over a full season to earn a higher rank if you ask me. If you had a gun to your head and was asked "Who will have a better season this year, Carlos Santana or Geovany Soto?", what would you answer be?

Soriano's contract is an albatross but Michael Young's isn't? Also, how on Earth can you call Marlon Byrd's contract a bad contract when it's only been one year and he's already performed at an above average clip? Even if Byrd loses a step this season he'll still probably play up to his contract

I believe davell mentioned a few pages back that the Cubs have a possible $46 million coming off the books next season. Even after arbitration raises I'd say there'd still be plenty of money available in the Cubs budget to fit a $30 million/yr contract for the greatest player to play the game so far this millennium.

He's not clutch

Liriano has had a history of shoulder problems and has an "inverted W" (if you believe in that, I don't unless said pitcher has shoulder issues). One of the seasons I was talking about was TJS, the other was prior to his trade to the Twins when he was in the minors. He was damaged goods when the Twins acquired him. Touché, admittedly don't know much about his history with the Giants

That deal would not net Liriano... If he is truly out there the Twins could net Montero from the Yankees. It will take 3 top prospects plus a 4th decent prospect minimum. I'm not 100% sure on that. Liriano is great, but he's had one successful and full season since his rookie year. He should cost at least one top prospect, even 2 top prospects if they want to get stingy, but based on his history he shouldn't cost more than that in terms of top flight talent. Cashner & Carpenter are two of our top young pitchers which I would imagine they'd want in return. Cashner could contribute immediately and possibly replace Liriano for the Twins while Carpenter is a good arm to boost their already respectable farm system. I don't know. Cashner, Carpenter, and maybe another mid-level prospect (not sure Burke could get it done) might be a good starting point. I think you have to keep McNutt after trading away Archer though. That being said, Cashner has a lot of realistic upside that could help us out immediately and costs us next to nothing that we'd be giving up for Liriano. So, pick your poison

Risky. As others have said, Liriano is probably more of a health risk than Garza. He's already had two lost seasons to injuries. Im not sure how much I'd prefer Liriano to Garza. He's better when he's healthy, but how long is that going to be? I'd probably rather keep Garza and the one or two prospects we'd save. We've already got enough health risks in the rotation and on the rest of the team. Also, the monetary price of Liriano will skyrocket if we sign him long term, and if he does get hurt, that's just a huge -15m on our payroll. Liriano's health issues are kind of an illusion. He had Tommy John surgery after he got injured his rookie season, had his next year off, and when he came back he was not the samep itcher. IIRC scouts said he looked like he was scared to throw his slider, which is his bread and butter, because he was scared he was gonna hurt himself again. Because of that he performed poorly and spent time in between the minors and the majors. He only missed one season due to injury, all the other time he missed he was spending in the minors getting his mechanics back. Also when he finally got them back the Twins refused to call him up for financial reasons to the point where Liriano and his agent were attempting to file a complaint or something within the players union against the team for holding him back IIRC. He's technically been (more or less) healthy for the last 3 years, it just looks like he hasn't been because he was in the minors for the majority of the 2008 season. Last year was his first year he was able to put it all back together. Tommy John surgery doesn't necessarily make you a further injury risk, it actually makes your arm stronger. His issues two seasons ago weren't related to his arm, if I'm not mistaken

Really?

I know I've posted this elsewhere before, but Liriano's season last year was great despite getting hit with some bad luck. His BABIP was .331, which was the 2nd highest amongst qualified starters behind James Shields (.341). His FIP was 2.66, good for 3rd best in the majors behind Josh Johnson and Cliff Lee. His xFIP was 3.06, 2nd best in the majors behind Roy Halladay. I know there's some discrepancies between BR's WAR and Fangraph's WAR numbers (BR lists Liriano's WAR as significantly lower than FG's), but Fangraphs has him listed a 6.0 WAR pitcher last season, which would make him the 8th most valuable pitcher in the majors. 4th best in the AL. The Dollars metric valued him a $24 million last season, even though he got out ERA'd by 36 other pitchers in the majors (more proof ERA is silly to judge a pitcher solely on at this point) Point is, Liriano was one of the best pitchers in baseball last season but his standard overall numbers don't necessarily suggest that, which combined with his injury history might make him come at a much lesser cost than what he's actually worth. He's not going to be cheap by any stretch of the imagination, but I think based on his bad luck and a general perception that he had a solid comeback year (but not a best in the league quality year like the metrics suggest) would mean he won't cost as much as he actually should.

He's more valuable than Pujols [/facetiousness] Seriously though, we probably can't afford him. His year last year was better than advertised when you look at advanced metrics, which I doubt most GM's put a lot of stock into when discussing the merits of a player during trade discussions. Maybe he wouldn't cost THAT much based on that plus his injury history, but I don't think the Twins are that dumb. They'd probably start the talks by asking for Jackson, or Cashner, etc. As much as I want him on the Cubs it's probably not worth the loss in farm system depth if Ricketts is heading down a path of lower payroll

That's ridiculously random

According to the "Dollars" metric on Fangraphs (not perfect, but useful), Albert Pujols should've earned $267,700,000 between 2002-2010 (they didn't have his 2001 numbers for it, but his numbers that year probably would've put him at $25M a year or more). Pujols actually made $83,000,000 during that time span. He has every right to demand $30 million a year over 10 years because that's exactly what he's been worth over the past 10 years, maybe even more than that.

I'm a little confused by the "In December" part of that quote. What does that mean? Was that a rumor back in December when we were rumored to get Davis?

Michael Young isn't a good hitter away from Arlington. He better pray he goes to Colorado otherwise he's not going to succeed much elsewhere

Starting to get ugly. On an unrelated note, Rotoworld has a new design that confused the hell out of me because I just checked their website 30 minutes ago and it wasn't like that

If Josh Vitters ends up anything like Ron Santo or David Wright, I'll gladly take it

If they can't justify a 10-year commitment to a guy who is not only the greatest baseball player of this generation, but who is the greatest baseball player in their franchise's history since Stan Musial, and who might even wind up substantially GREATER than Stan Musial when all is said and done, then they don't deserve to keep him. How stupid can you be to let Albert Pujols walk? He IS the Cardinals. Even at the tail end of a 10 year contract if he's fallen off a cliff and they're paying a mint for it, he still brings so much to the franchise because of who he is and what he represents to the team. The Cardinals are idiots if they let him slip through their stingy fingers

There was speculation that the O's might try and move Pie and/or Nolan Reimold. They figured Pie would be the first to go since he's out of options with no place to play, while Reimold still has options left and they can start him in the minors

Are we really upset over this? It's an over the hill Jim Edmonds. Let it go.

It is. He's not a bad pitcher by any stretch of the imagination, but he's often referred to in news outlets as if he's one of the Yankee greats. He's only had 4 seasons in his 16 year career with an ERA under 3.80. His 240 wins are largely a by product of playing on stout offensive teams, but dumb writers will attribute it to him being a winner.