Northside Blues

Altuve's minor league numbers are impressive. He's small, but he's got a little pop and he's very young.

Or we could trade them a catcher...

I would jump all over Burnett for Soriano.Both guys make about the same, but I would think that Burnett would have a better chance to reestabish value and we could trade him for a prospect worth getting down the road.

What does the syllabus cover?

What topics have you covered in your mathematical modeling and probability course? Interpolation, numerical solutions to systems of equations, estimating eigenvalues, etc? If so, I have a pretty easy topic. For the statistics course what did you cover? If you're going to do the topic you want to do you're going to need to use play by play data, not sure how much programming and scripting you know in order to compile the data. For that course you probably haven't covered anything robust enough to reinvent the sabermetric wheel. Just do something that's been done before like comparing career averages to playoffs. Nothing fancy.

Eh, I was making the point that for a star like Pujols a 5.0 WAR season or less is fairly improbable, as long as he stays healthy. And I did say Yes, but if Pujols' distribution is something like, not that it's that. It's certainly not going to be a normal distribution.

I'm going to guess without knowledge that high-WAR players have a much larger standard deviation in WAR than more average players Yes, but if Pujols' distribution is something like 0.0-1.0 .000 1.0-2.0 .000 2.0-3.0 .000 3.0-4.0 .002 4.0-5.0 .015 5.0-6.0 .062 6.0-7.0 .161 7.0-8.0 .260 8.0-9.0 .260 9.0-10.0 .161 10.0-11.0 .062 11.0-12.0 .015 12.0+ .002 There's just a small likelihood of him being a sub 6.0 WAR player (1.7%). For comparison, a 6.0 WAR would have been 24th in MLB last year. None of these numbers were created out of thin air. I found the stdev for Pujols' career WARs and built the distribution on that. All WAR comes from Fan Graphs. And FWIW, Albert Pujols' standard deviation for his career WAR is 1.41 and his average WAR is 8.0.

Holliday for Car Go, Bradley for Ethier, Garcia for Floyd, Mulder for are a few I can think of off the top of my head. Carlos Guillen and Freddy Garcia for two months of Randy Johnson wasn't all that bad considering the M's traded quite possibly the greatest lefty of all time.

Ivan Rodriguez has been traded in the middle of the season twice. Mike Piazza was traded in the middle of the season twice, in the same season. We acquired Jason Kendall in the middle of a pennant race. Those are just off the top of my head.

Are the refs in the game really named Matthew, Luke, John and Mark?

Am I the only one who associates Rizzo with Rizzuto?

If he continues to walk and get pegged he probably will be alright, much like Brian Giles, but not as good.

Billy Beane's Christmas came early. He finally got his Kevin Youkilis.

Epstein may have also learned something from the Matsuzaka contract. Maybe he has since become less bullish on Japanese players and decided not to incur the risk again.

Its going to be a press conference to announce that tomorrow night ESPN will be airing a show called "The Decision" in which the Ham Fighters struggle with deciding whether or not to let their star go. It will end with their decision and the team who gets his rights.

How about 58,675,309

that was probably the wording of his source, not his..duh

Endorsements. Yep, coming to the US is certainly not going help you get endorsements. Ichiro Suzuki and Hideki Matsui have become unrecognizable in Japan since coming to the US. It's not as if Japan wakes up at the crack of dawn to watch them play. Ichiro Suzuki only makes roughly $10m a year in endorsements in Japan, but that's not as much as $6m. Honestly, it's not. You would even be able to reach the rabid Iranian contingent of baseball fans. I hear President Ahmadinejad is a big fan of baseball, and the US of course.

Okay, let's role play. I'll be Yu Darvish's money and you be the Cubs. You offer that. I say "No, I want guaranteed money." Now what? You have 40 million in guaranteed money. Go back to Japan. Keep in mind Matsuzaka only got what, 50mil? You could get 30 more than that. You do realize I make about $12 million a year in Japan and you are offering me less than that. I'll repost next year and see if the team that wins is actually taking this seriously. *click* Well, that was productive. Actually, you made about 6 million last year and you will be in Japan for 3 more years. Dont get hurt.

Okay, let's role play. I'll be Yu Darvish's money and you be the Cubs. You offer that. I say "No, I want guaranteed money." Now what? You have 40 million in guaranteed money. Go back to Japan. Keep in mind Matsuzaka only got what, 50mil? You could get 30 more than that.

If you're not allowed to do that. Just give him a bonus of $10m if he finishes top 10 in CY voting in year one (paid by 2m for the next five years). If he finishes top 8 in Cy voting he gets another 10m, top 6 another 10m and so on. Then in year 2 he gets an $8m bonus if he finishes in the top ___ (paid by 2m each of the next four years), and if he has hit that high of a vote before, he cant get the bonus (but can get higher ones).

Not if we make it such that one of the options will vest no matter what. It's very complicated and out of the box and Selig would probably step in, but hey worth a shot. Even if we dont, cant we include in his contract that we wont non-tender him until 5 years service time? If he gets 12 mil in year one, his contract can only go down a certain percent. If they vest no matter what, what's the point? is there a rule against a countract that says option A vests if one thing happens and option B if another does?

Not if we make it such that one of the options will vest no matter what. It's very complicated and out of the box and Selig would probably step in, but hey worth a shot. Even if we dont, cant we include in his contract that we wont non-tender him until 5 years service time? If he gets 12 mil in year one, his contract can only go down a certain percent.

fine then create a work-around. Have the contract be a one year deal with multiple options that work around that. if that doesnt work, then do the same plan as above but having to do with voting in the CYA, MVP and ROY.

I don't see why a team does not bid 60 million, give him a 5 year 40 million dollar offer with performance bonuses (relatively easily attainable if he is indeed a top 10 pitcher) that would increase the value to 5 years 80 million. Some set up like this: $8M base salary (his salary in Japan last year was 5 million) + $2M for 200K + $2M for ERA below 3.25 + $2M for 18 W + $2M for WHIP below 1.15 Also make all of the incentives kick in for that season, and every year afterwards automatically. For instance, if Darvish struck out 200 hitters in the first year of his contract he gets the $2m bonus for the entire length of the contract (ie his base would go up to ten). If he fails to have an ERA below 3.25 the first year, but does in year 2, he gets the bonus the last four years. And so on. Structuring the contract like this does two things from the teams perspective. First, it allows an extremely large bid to be placed. Secondly, if he's not a success, then we aren't really worse of if we would have done a lower bid and a larger contract (had it won). Also, one he puts up those numbers it would become obvious that he was the real deal and would have warranted a contract comparable to Cliff Lee or CC Sabathia. From Darvish's perspective he still gets better money than if he stayed in Japan. And, if he hits the bonuses he would make more money than he likely would have gotten in a deal without bonuses. I made the numbers up and the performance marks. You can adjust them accordingly. I don't see why we dont give Japanese players a fair contract that has risk (and upside) built in. It's not like Darvish has a choice to sign with another team. He can go back to Japan for 3 years if he wants to.