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I don't think people remember the Jim Hendry all that accurately. If you don't think the problem with Hendry was that he overpaid for players based on past performance rather than future value, then I don't think you really understand the problem with the Jim Hendry era. Sending significant player value to Seattle for King Felix would be an excessively risky, short-sighted move intended to provide a patch job to a fundamentally flawed roster. It's not something that a team like the Cubs that's so low on the win curve should be looking to do. And luckily with Theo in charge we can be sure we've got someone smart enough to realize this.

I think people are way too rich with their offers here. King Felix is due roughly 3/60. He's not cheap. Also, he's got a very high injury risk, simply because all pitchers have very high injury risks. I don't think he gets dealt, unless maybe if Hal Steinbrenner decides to meddle on behalf of the Yankees. The Mariners aren't going to deal him unless they get a "King's Ransom." And rightly so, that fanbase is pissed off enough, dealing their one star for a mediocre package would cause riots. However, no well run team(again, except maybe the Yankees) is going to pay what he would cost, because when you account for his salary and his risk for injury, he doesn't have a ton of surplus value. In some magical world where pitchers aren't giant injury risks, yeah he's worth a ton. Something like Jackson, Mcnutt, and Vitters, plus maybe a bit more. However, we don't live in that world. In this world pitchers get hurt, constantly, and there's very little way to tell who will and who won't. I'm not sure he's worth that much more than Jackson alone when you account for pitcher attrition. He's certainly not worth Castro, that's absolutely laughable. Trading the farm for King Felix would be a Jim Hendry move, not a Theo Epstein move.

He and Vitters are the poster children of the poor approach to player development under Hendry. Overly aggressive promotions, no focus on controlling the zone, etc. Fortunately, I think they are both young enough to still make adjustments. Unfortunately, we may not have the new philosophy baked throughout the system in time to make that impact. Honestly I'm not so sure that the approach didn't start working on Vitters this year. His walks went down a little bit, but his K's went way down, and his power went up a little. That's encouraging overall. And all else being equal, a low K and low BB guy is better than a high K and high BB guy. I think the big thing with Vitters is more that he needs to stop making so much weak contact than it is that he needs to walk more. It's not so much that he needs to walk more - it's that he simply needs to become more selective. If that happens, he'll both walk more and make more consistently hard contact. Every report on him says that he swings on "bad strikes" and makes weak contact on them. If he'll let those go and wait on a better pitch to hit, he'll improve dramatically. Fortunately, that's exactly what the new regime will be emphasizing. Oh okay, yeah I totally agree with that. I'm just too used to people who write him off completely due to his poor walk rate. I think people get too caught up in the notion of "He only walks X% of the time that's not enough." There seems to be a pretty wide bias amongst most saber-minded fans against low K and low BB prospects when as far as I know there's not really a good saber reason for it. If anything, Vitters' biggest problem is easily his glove, not his bat. Being an above average hitter in the Southern League at age 21 is definitely being ahead of the curve.

He and Vitters are the poster children of the poor approach to player development under Hendry. Overly aggressive promotions, no focus on controlling the zone, etc. Fortunately, I think they are both young enough to still make adjustments. Unfortunately, we may not have the new philosophy baked throughout the system in time to make that impact. Honestly I'm not so sure that the approach didn't start working on Vitters this year. His walks went down a little bit, but his K's went way down, and his power went up a little. That's encouraging overall. And all else being equal, a low K and low BB guy is better than a high K and high BB guy. I think the big thing with Vitters is more that he needs to stop making so much weak contact than it is that he needs to walk more.

I think the thing with Castillo is that, if you like his defense, he's pretty much a lock to be at least a second division starter. He's not going to get on base a ton, but it seems like the power is real. If you rate the prospects not by upside but by pure value, I could see a real case for him in the top 5 of the guys in the upper levels, although I think like you guys I personally probably wouldn't. The comparison that I've seen that I like is Ramon Castro. Castro hits for a low average and isn't the best receiver, but he has very good power(25+ HR's per 550 at bats) and a very good arm. I could see Castillo being similar, although probably closer to 20/550 power than 25.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=15295#commentMessage As most of us probably know...Vitters was drafted as a 17 year old, and has been young for every league he's played in so far...That'll end if he opens next year in AA, but just further reason I refuse to believe he's a bust in the making. I saw that too and it is interesting, but I don't think it has much bearing on Vitters at this point. If you want to use it to go back and say the Cubs made the rate call drafting him, that works, but I think at this point he is what he is. He's a high-upside but flawed player who did pretty well while young for his league. Despite what some people would say he's still a good prospect, but some of the shine is off the apple and rightly so.

"If You Do This For Me, I'll Buy You A Hundred George-Michaels To Teach To Drive!"

If you go back through recent history in prospect for MLer trades, you'll find that the method cited earlier to value Mcnutt comes fairly close to the real market value of MLB prospects. It's not perfect but it's a pretty good rough estimate of his market value. And the bolded part is completely missing the point. The point, like has been said about a million times, is not Theo's value. It's Theo's value compared to the next best option, let's just say that's Hoyer or Byrnes. Byrnes + Mcnutt + Money >>>>> Theo

Ramirez's years in Pittsburgh tell a very different story, though. In the minors, it is true that he had good plate discipline and K/BB, but during his time with Pittsburgh, he racked up quite a few Ks while having trouble drawing walks. It wasn't until 2004 that he started getting a handle on his Ks in the majors. Vitters has yet to demonstrate the ability to keep Ks down while drawing a respectable number of walks over a consistent stretch, but the question was about pure upside, rather than what realistically can be expected of him. But what Ramirez did as a 21 year old in the majors really doesn't matter when comparing what Vitters has done to date and what Ramirez had done to date. Vitters hasn't shown anything that would remotely indicate he can pull off what Ramirez pulled off. They can both be described as free swinging hitter who relies on contact and power, but Ramirez walked more and struck out less, which is a pretty big dividing line when trying to pretend that Vitters has his upside. He doesn't. You desperately need to learn what the term upside means.

Yeah, from 2007-2009 Park's line as a reliever is: 120.1 IP, 118 H's, 44 BB's, 101 K's, 10 HR's, and a 3.29 ERA.

They're calculated based off of how teams scored on the road and at home, so it's obviously not a static number. There's a good deal of variance. That's why I gave three years. I understand how park factors are calculated. And it's flawed, as this example illustrates. A truly robust and reliable measure would have virtually no year-to-year variance, since the parks themselves aren't changing (with a few exceptions). That's not true at all. Any statistic, even the most sound and reliable, is prone to have variance within the course of a small sample. You're condemning an entire statistic based on the existence of an outlier. It's not just one outlier though. Parks move up and down these rankings all the time without any plausible explanation. That leads me to question the validity of the measure itself. It could be that extraneous factors (such as weather) are not being controlled for. It could be a sample size problem like you mentioned. Or there might just be too much noise in the data. Regardless, there's a problem (IMO). If you know how they're calculated like you said then you should know why there's so much variation. It's based on teams' run scoring/prevention at home versus away. There is nothing directly about the park that is being measured. And the ESPN ones in particular are very simplistic, which is why that one varies more. If you have a few guys on the team that just happened to have all their big hot streaks on homestands then that could cause a big variation. If you have a weird summer of weather that could cause a big variation. If you have September schedule of nearly all road games and you're out of it so you pretty much only play callups that could cause a big change. Etc. It's basically the same principle as why for an individual player you always want to use 3 year splits when possible, or why UZR is nearly useless under a 1000 innings. There's a lot of variation for a variety of reasons, but over a large sample that noise is greatly reduced.

It was on Jim Callis' chat yesterday on espn.com. He said he ranked Castro 13th on this list and that Vitters and Brett Jackson would be ranked in the 51-75 range. I wonder if that means he didn't have Jay Jackson, Cashner, and Lee in his top 100? Or if he just brought up the 3 highest? Cashner has to be on any top 100. Even if he's just a reliever he's going to be just sick. And I'd imagine Jay Jackson will be too. When BA did their NL Central podcast, one of the guys, Badler if I remember right, was real big on Jackson. And Lee I think has to make it on, although probably towards the very back end. The fact that he's so far away hurts him.

Talk about stats that don't pass the smell test... a ballpark went from 18th to 1st in one year? Absent significant changes to the field's dimensions, its park factor should remain essentially constant from year to year. So unless they moved in the fences 25 feet or chopped the foul territory in half of something, that just doesn't add up. They're calculated based off of how teams scored on the road and at home, so it's obviously not a static number. There's a good deal of variance. That's why I gave three years. I understand how park factors are calculated. And it's flawed, as this example illustrates. A truly robust and reliable measure would have virtually no year-to-year variance, since the parks themselves aren't changing (with a few exceptions). That's not true at all. Any statistic, even the most sound and reliable, is prone to have variance within the course of a small sample. You're condemning an entire statistic based on the existence of an outlier.

Talk about stats that don't pass the smell test... a ballpark went from 18th to 1st in one year? Absent significant changes to the field's dimensions, its park factor should remain essentially constant from year to year. So unless they moved in the fences 25 feet or chopped the foul territory in half of something, that just doesn't add up. They're calculated based off of how teams scored on the road and at home, so it's obviously not a static number. There's a good deal of variance. That's why I gave three years.

No one proved my theory wrong. And Wrigley is not a better hitter's park than Texas. Maybe Byrd will be awesome. However, I tend to believe that the extreme hitter's park that Arlington is and has been tends to give the appearance that hitters are better than they really are. It is though. That's not really opinion either, it's a fact. By ESPN's numbers Wrigley from 2007-2009 ranked 2nd, 8th, and 3rd in Park Factor. Arlington went 18th, 1st, and 7th. By Baseball-references numbers, Wrigley the past three years has been a 107, 105, and 111. Arlington a 97, 103, 105. By any objective measure, Wrigley is a better hitters park than Arlington. Not even mentioning that he's going from the AL to the weakest division in the NL....