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i have a hard time believing that, considering that he didn't pitch many innings in 2006-07 and has just been average this season. He's making $7 million this year. You think he'll get a pay cut down to $5-something million? i didn't say that. but i don't think there's any way he gets into the $12-13M area. remember, the largest-ever arbitration award is $10M to ryan howard, after two years in which he hit 105 home runs, drove in nearly 300 runs and had an OPS over 1.000. harden will be coming off an average year, an outstanding year, and then two years in which he pitched well when he was healthy, which was almost never. i don't even think harden would get $12-13M on the free market, let alone in arbitration. i see $10M as the ceiling that he could ask for an reasonably get. Ah, ok sorry. The only number I saw quoted earlier was a $5.6 million number and I thought you meant that's all the Cubs would have to pay. I could see Harden in the $9-10 million range, but not likely much, if any, more than that.

If Houston continues winning, Kevin Sumlin might be an interesting option. As others have mentioned, Turner Gill, Brian Kelly, Mike Leach, Bronco Mendenhall and Chris Petersen should be at the top of pretty much anybody's interest list.

i have a hard time believing that, considering that he didn't pitch many innings in 2006-07 and has just been average this season. He's making $7 million this year. You think he'll get a pay cut down to $5-something million? I think the absolute minimum he makes next year, if he goes through arby with the Cubs, is $8.5 mil. something around $9.5-$11 mil. is the most realistic and reasonable salary IMO. I probably agree with that.

i have a hard time believing that, considering that he didn't pitch many innings in 2006-07 and has just been average this season. He's making $7 million this year. You think he'll get a pay cut down to $5-something million? Based on his 2006? It's probably based more off of this year and/or his last three years. He may not be in for a gigantic raise, but I really don't think he'll get less than he's currently making.

i have a hard time believing that, considering that he didn't pitch many innings in 2006-07 and has just been average this season. He's making $7 million this year. You think he'll get a pay cut down to $5-something million?

They're expensive, but there are still tickets available on the Titans' main site. They're going pretty fast, though.

that's comparable to what titans tickets cost this year....did you get any titans tix? Working on it. I'm hoping to get tickets to 2-3 games this year, but that all depends of funds, obviously. edited my last post...you may want to take a look...i think i'm going to pick up a couple of tix and go on sunday. I won't be able to go Sunday, too short notice. I'm hoping to get Colts tickets and maybe another game or two.

that's comparable to what titans tickets cost this year....did you get any titans tix? Working on it. I'm hoping to get tickets to 2-3 games this year, but that all depends of funds, obviously.

Between the Marlins and now the Jags, Florida needs to just have all their sports teams taken away from them. nfl tickets cost too damn much...i don't blame the people for not going. Same prices as college tickets. Cheaper in some cases. i've never paid for a college fb ticket, so i couldn't tell you that...and are you talking face value or scalper value? EBay and the like for college tickets. Considering I've never gone to a college football game other than in Neyland, I've only once bought face value tickets though - and they were $65 for barely getting in the stadium.

Between the Marlins and now the Jags, Florida needs to just have all their sports teams taken away from them. nfl tickets cost too damn much...i don't blame the people for not going. Same prices as college tickets. Cheaper in some cases.

Hmmm, it's dropped since I last checked then. I checked a few days ago and he was at .802 or so.

I was referencing his offensive numbers only when I said top 4-5 centerfielder. I know the metrics aren't crazy about him, but I don't know exactly how much his defense has hurt his value - though I wouldn't imagine that much. Kosuke is 13th among qualified CFs in wOBA. Link He's also 13th in EqA. I guess those two are more accurate than OPS - which I was lazily using. Still a very good year for Kosuke.

Yeah, and my guess would be there's not much else to adjust to, unless there's a health issue. Probably not.

Until recently it was a pretty excellent year for him. It was a good year, certainly a nice rebound from his 2008, but I wouldnt call it excellent, especially considering his expectations when first coming over. I'd say a top 4-5 center fielder in all of baseball is pretty excellent. Kosuke has been fine this year, but he's closer to 10th than 5th, maybe even on the other side of 10 depending on how much weight you give to defensive metrics. I was referencing his offensive numbers only when I said top 4-5 centerfielder. I know the metrics aren't crazy about him, but I don't know exactly how much his defense has hurt his value - though I wouldn't imagine that much.

I wouldn't count on him improving at this point. He has had 4 separate "excellent" months of the 11.5 he's played in the majors, so if he got to the point where he could maintain that for a year we'd see it. But he's also shown an inability to avoid prolonged bad slumps. And the big thing in my mind is he'll be 33 at the beginning of next year. I know the comparison is far from perfect, but Hideki Matsui had his biggest jump in his 2nd year in the majors (he was also 30). I would think that 2nd year would be the most logical time for such an improvement, and 33 isn't a great time to expect a career year. Derrek Lee surprised me with a resurgence at 33, but he's still off the pace of his career year at 29. I don't know, maybe Fukudome is still not 100% recovered from the elbow and he can flirt with a 900 OPS next year. But I'd guess he's going to continue being a slightly above average producer, maybe in the low 800s with solid OBP and more than acceptable from his position (unless they move him back to right). That's probably true, and that's what I'd consider the most likely occurence. My thinking was more on the idea that he might not be fully settled in and adjusted to the majors right now and with another full offseason, might be in position for a little better year next season (along the lines of hovering around .900 tops). Not likely, but just a thought I had.

Until recently it was a pretty excellent year for him. It was a good year, certainly a nice rebound from his 2008, but I wouldnt call it excellent, especially considering his expectations when first coming over. I'd say a top 4-5 center fielder in all of baseball is pretty excellent. Not by the ridiculous expectations LLF posted here. I remember Meph predicting around a .900 OPS, but that and others were very high end projections. He's done very well this year - .800+ OPS and decent defense in center is excellent. I'm curious to see if he still has room to improve, though. He made a huge jump from year one to year two and, while I'd be fine with him doing this next year as well, I wonder if he can make another improvement next year as he settles in more.

Until recently it was a pretty excellent year for him. It was a good year, certainly a nice rebound from his 2008, but I wouldnt call it excellent, especially considering his expectations when first coming over. I'd say a top 4-5 center fielder in all of baseball is pretty excellent.

I can understand this explanation and agree with it. I don't think Bruce's point was to point out Z's value, though, considering win total pretty much never is an example of a player's value. Bruce was just pointing out that people have talked about how Wells would have more wins if some of his great starts ended up in wins but have ignored that Z has missed a few wins as well. From what I could tell, he wasn't making a value argument. For a pitcher who is just going to be 29 next year and has a sub-4 ERA with a decent WHIP and nearly 2:1 K:BB ratio every year, I'd want a some good prospects. I'd much, much rather trade Lilly personally, but I'm not sure I'd be in favor dealing either of them unless we get blown away. We're still trying to compete and dumping either likely won't help us in that endeavor.

I don't understand how pointing out that Z pitched well enough to win a few extra games is cherry picking stats. The point is that there were games in which Z pitched well to very well in that he didn't get a win. You're in favor of a salary dump of Z? I wouldn't do that - I think he's too valuable for that.

It's not that it's worthless, it's that it's not of much use when trying to predict what a player is capable of doing in the future. A guy with 100 RBI this season with two guys with .400 OBPs hitting ahead of him may drive in 50 runs with two guys posting .250 OBPs in front of him next year. Unlike rate stats (OBP, SLG, OPS, EqA, etc), RBI is very dependent on the rest of the lineup, not just the individual player. For that reason, you can't use RBI to reliably predict a player's future production.

I love Tennessee and I don't like human polls, but this one's hard to defend. I realize they'll likely plummet after Saturday, but they're putting this much weight into blowing out Western Kentucky? Take a look at the #2 team in that same poll. True, but you can make a justifiable argument for the Sooners. I can't come up with any reason to put Tennessee in the top 30 at this point. I'd imagine that poll would be much more useful after, say, week 6 or so when blowouts of teams like Western Kentucky aren't skewing it so much. There really isn't a good reason to justify a #2 ranking for the Sooners at this point. Just about every undefeated team, especially every undefeated team considered "elite," should be ranked ahead of Oklahoma. I mean, yea OU has a +63 point differential, but look at how that margin came about. A 1 pt loss to a team that is probably pretty good, and a 64 pt victory against an FCS team that didn't win a game last season. Yeah, but due to Oklahoma's year last year and the players they have returning, there's some level of justification that their talent level puts them toward the top of the rankings. At least they're a top 25 caliber team. Tennessee, on the other hand, has done nothing to show it should be top 25 except blow out Western Kentucky.

I love Tennessee and I don't like human polls, but this one's hard to defend. I realize they'll likely plummet after Saturday, but they're putting this much weight into blowing out Western Kentucky? Take a look at the #2 team in that same poll. True, but you can make a justifiable argument for the Sooners. I can't come up with any reason to put Tennessee in the top 30 at this point. I'd imagine that poll would be much more useful after, say, week 6 or so when blowouts of teams like Western Kentucky aren't skewing it so much.

There are currently 4 pitchers being paid $18 million a year. They are Barry Zito, Carlos Zambrano, Johan Santana and CC Sabathia. Of those four players, none have ever won 20 games nor have they ever had 30 quality starts in a season. There has not been a pitcher since before 2005 (at least) that has had 30 quality starts in a season. There are a few in the 25-28 range, but that's as high as it gets. As for 20 wins in a season, there have been 9 pitchers in the majors to do that since 2005. Obviously, none of them are being paid $18+ million a year. You're expecting from Z something no other pitcher has done in the past 5 years (at least).

I don't. Yeah...I hope they get what they can for him. It's doubtful that he's going to get better moving forward. Exactly. He's been awesome this season but his value will never be higher than it is after this season. The thing that concerns me about that is we don't really know what the concept of selling high is, so we'll probably hold onto him. The Cubs will probably hold onto him because of his no-trade clause and his lack of interest in waiving it. Blast. Beat me by seconds.

They tried to trade him this past offseason and he wouldn't waive his NTC/10/5 rights. Even if they wanted to trade him this offseason, I doubt he'd agree to it.