XZero771679666304

Thanks, I forgot all about that. The site's still up, too.

Meph's massaging of his own outsized ego was a borderline insufferable ploy at convincing others (and himself) that he was smarter than everyone else. That said, he was right more often than not and offered impressive analyses. . Well he fooled you. How so? I don't think he was smarter than everyone else, he was just really good at math and had a very good grasp of sabr concepts before a lot of other people here did. He was spectacularly and hilariously wrong about a few things (J.R. Towles, anyone?) and was generally insufferable, but when he stuck to what he was actually good at (statistical analysis), he was usually spot on. There are many here who have some reverence for him, but i'm not one of them.

Meph's massaging of his own outsized ego was a borderline insufferable ploy at convincing others (and himself) that he was smarter than everyone else. That said, he was right more often than not and offered impressive analyses. I've just assumed Kyle's horn blowing was just some sort of sad attempt at "look-at-me" humor. If he's being serious...well, I'm not sure what to say.

What is he right about? Everything in the last year not involving the Sean Marshall trade. Yeah, okay. Anyway, you were right to say it's leap to assume absolutely that because his h/r splits were essentially even that he gained no advantage from Coors. That said, your original statement made it sound like you were saying that his decent numbers had been propped up by Coors, which seems like weak assertion given his h/r spits and the "just because his splits aren't skewed it doesn't mean he wasn't helped out" response a likely hedge from someone who hadn't actually checked the splits. And Warpticon never said Stewart was never aided by Coors, he implied that it was unlikely he had received much benefit, given his h/r splits. Which is a pretty reasonable assessment, imo.

I don't think Castro is a superstar yet. I'm pretty confident he will be in the near future, though.

The Royals' problem is that while they do produce players, they don't have the payroll for any of them to stick long enough, or to supplement the roster with FAs when there is an opportunity to win. It's the same thing we've seen with other low payroll teams (the Pirates also come to mind). Because those teams lack the financial flexibility to add elite talent, they need to hit on a very high percentage of their prospects during a given time frame to actually become a winning team. And the Indians did a pretty awesome job of building a very good team primarily from within during the 90s. But the keys are obviously a) being able to retain your good developed players and b) being able to afford talent to plug in around them when the become good at the ML level.

Yeah, it doesn't look promising. And there are posters here who have been predicting Jackson as a likely bust for a long time now, and unless something drastically changes it appears that is the likely outcome. I don't think anyone isn't alarmed by Jackson's inability to make contact, especially with pitches in the zone. It's not some sort of revelation, either. Even when he was performing well at lower levels, potentially serious contact issues were always looming.

I'm just completely missing something here. Isn't pretty much every player on that list better, both recently and historically, than Ian Stewart? Why would you want Stewart over any of them, let alone all of them? Well right off the bat, Rolen and Polanco are way too old to even consider. Which is silly. If it's a choice between an old, useful player and a young, horrible player, you might as well take the old one and try to Maholm him. It's not as if we get tons of cost-controlled years out of Stewart if he suddenly becomes useful. Assuming he's not non-tendered, he'll have one more arb year after next. With Stewart, you'd at least have a chance of turning him into a long term asset. Suppose he has a big bounce back year and you re-sign him. There's not a significant chance of that, but with guys like Rolen and Polanco there's no chance they become long term assets, and the difference they would make would be tiny when reflected in the W-L record. At this point, it'd be a total waste of time to sign guys on the decline with maybe a year or two left in the league at all. That would be the definition of just taking up a roster spot. There's not even a good chance you could turn them into a trade asset. I'd sooner give Valbuena another year.

There was a massive ton of reasons to think that his 2012 wouldn't be much like his 2010. All of which we hashed out in the pre-season Stewart discussions. 1) Wrist injuries frequently linger for a lot longer than just a year, or even two. 2) High K players are prone to falling off a cliff. 3) His 2011 suckiness pre-dated the wrist injury. 4) He wouldn't be playing 2010 in Colorado. Michael Barrett is a nice pull, though. I'm curious as to what better alternatives there were to Stewart (or another Stewart-like acquisition). Theo/Jed picked up their half of Ramirez's option, may have inquired on Headley and after that, there was a whole lot of nothing. They executives, not sorcerers. Honestly, they knew that the team wasn't going to be competing this year, so in the absence of more attractive options they took a low risk gamble on a guy not far removed from being one of the top prospects in the game, had shown flashes of brilliance in Colorado and was still young and coming off of an injury that could have explained his down 2011. Was this so egregious? Yes, there were signs the Stewart may well be a bust, but what was sacrificed by finding out for sure? Nothing as far as I can tell, aside from some ridiculous notion about "using up the 3B slot". And as bad as he was this year (post-early May), he was right at replacement level. Before his wrist really acted up, his K% was down, his LD% was up and he looked like he might actually have some potential. I know what wrist surgery can do to a player, but unless Theo/Jed can pry Headley away from the Pads or wrest a top 3B prospect away from another team this offseason, I'd be inclined to give Stewart another chance next year. And yes, you have some sort of weird anger regarding Stewart. You were waxing psychotic about him from the moment he was acquired. I just think that the Stewart trade and the announcement that he would be the starting 3B was probably the point where you realized that we were in for a full scale rebuild, and now you can't separate your anger about a couple of lost seasons from Stewart. Or you just can't recognize that it was a sensible low risk gamble for a rebuilding team with a hole at 3B in a market bereft of 3B.

Yeah. The guy lapped the field in the PCL in strikeouts, then is striking out even more in the majors, but I'm just blowing it out of proportion. Yep, because that's exactly what I was talking about. Nobody--not one single person--has suggested that his strikeout spike isn't a concern. As I said before, and you apparently chose to ignore, there is an enormous difference between being concerned about his strikeout rate and projecting a MLB-record-setting sustained 40+% rate that has no precedent. "Lapped the field" doesn't help your case for not being hyperbolic, by the way. He's not actually going to get the record because if/when he strikes out at that rate, he'll eventually find himself out of the lineup, just like all the other people in the world who can't hit advanced pitching. He struck out 158 times in 107 PCL games before his promotion. The next closest player has struck out 127 times in 134 games. Yeah, he lapped the field. Actually the next closest player has struck out 145 times in 121 games. To truly have "lapped the field", Brett would had to have struck out 250+ times. So yeah, hyperbole.

I'd pay $1.5 million to have him play for anyone else. I think it's worth seeing if surgery makes the early season Ian Stewart closer to being the current one (or perhaps, better than that). Yeah, I don't see any significant drawback to retaining Stewart and giving him another shot. Maybe his wrist was holding him back, and if not, it buys Vitters some more time at AAA. It's not as if there are any 3B prizes to be had on the FA market, either.

Of course this is the one game I forgot to set the DVR for.

It's great to get an exciting win, but the plate discipline was spectacular. I hope someone will be pointing to the young guys out the correlation between that and all the runs scored. When was the last time the Cubs walked 11 times in a game?

Out of the women shown, I'd go with Aura Avila (Ronny Cedeno's wife). Scotty Pods' wife looks like she might have once been a man, and Kendrick's wife looks like it still is.

Possibly, at least at the start. But unless Theo/Jed go outside the organization again, I'm thinking Stewart is still a distinct possibility. And if we're looking at another "lost" season, I'm fine with seeing how much of a problem his wrist really was. If Valbuena is the alternative, at least.

I'm not a fan of collisions at the plate, but the Harrison/Molina one last night was one of the cleaner ones I've seen. Molina had taken away the entire running/sliding lane to the plate and the hit itself didn't look malicious (as opposed to something like the Cousins/Posey play, where part of the plate was open, and Cousins looked like he was trying to kill Posey).

Nothing has happened over the course of the season to counter the notion that Theo wanted out at least in part to Lucchino meddling and diminishing his authority. All the rumors that Larry had a huge hand in many of the decisions made over the past 2-3 years are seeming more and more likely to be true.

Hanley (28) has looked like his old self since coming to the Dodgers, Crawford (31) was as well when healthy this year. A Gon's (30) has been pretty huge as well, and a change from the AL East to the NL West could be huge, assuming that he can stay healthy. With the possible exception of Beckett, and he's only 31-32, it's not like these are a bunch of over the hill, declining players heading off to die. These guys should dominate the NL for the next 3-5 years. Of course the same was said about the Phillies not too long ago. Why would moving to the NL West help AGone? I won't help him. If anything, it'll hurt him, for a number of clear reasons. Saying it will help him was ignorant at best. I actually very much meant Beckett there. Which is true for obvious reasons. You're either lying to cover your ignorance or you're spectacularly bad at English composition. I'm thinking both.

The all look so sad to be leaving Boston. I really, really would like an unadulterated account of what has gone on at the top of that organization over the past 18-24 months.

Hanley (28) has looked like his old self since coming to the Dodgers, Crawford (31) was as well when healthy this year. A Gon's (30) has been pretty huge as well, and a change from the AL East to the NL West could be huge, assuming that he can stay healthy. With the possible exception of Beckett, and he's only 31-32, it's not like these are a bunch of over the hill, declining players heading off to die. These guys should dominate the NL for the next 3-5 years. Of course the same was said about the Phillies not too long ago. Why would moving to the NL West help AGone? I won't help him. If anything, it'll hurt him, for a number of clear reasons. Saying it will help him was ignorant at best.

Frankly I'm bewildered that Boston is giving up Gonzalez. I suppose it's to offset the burden of Crawford and risk of Beckett, but he's still a cornerstone player who isn't very old. If they're doing this because of the reported rift between AGon and Valentine, their FO is even more dysfunctional than I've thought, which is pretty [expletive] dysfunctional.

Gonzalez is clearly the prize in the deal, imo. Beckett is a gamble and Crawford is a salary dump.

You're right. The Cubs won't sign any free agents, make trades of sign IFAs. It'll all come down to draft luck.

Who is saying that? I firmly in the "add if it helps but doesn't hinder the long term product" camp. In that mindset, adding Darvish/Cespedes would have made sense, but Pujols/Fielder would not have. At all. And I think the evidence indicates that Theo and Jed made legitimate plays for the former pair. I'd like to see more wins as much as anyone, but I'm not going to delude myself into the belief that with a few sensible additions the Cubs could have been good this year or next. You can say that comparing WAR and the like to gauge how many wins the team might or might not have had is silly, but it is at least grounded in some logic. WAR does provide some idea. Adding a couple superstar players isn't going to have a magical transformative effect. This isn't the NBA. In order to have fielded a team that was at all competitive, we'd have had to keep guys like Marshall, Cashner (given the state of the bullpen going into the season) and Ramirez, on top of adding 2-3 top tier FAs. You can go on all day about how the team could have been decent and the same system gains could have been made at the same time, but it doesn't make it true. Everything that I have read makes it sound like Cespedes wanted to play for the Cubs and the FO refused to shorten the deal. The bidding process on Darvish was expected to be in the $48-$51 million range and speculation is that the FO bid under $20 million. So how are those "legitimate plays"? That obviously isn't the case. There was a group of teams in the same range as the Cubs (who finished second) in terms of bidding for Darvish, with the Rangers waaayyy out by themselves. I say that it was a legitimate play in that they made what they believed to be a competitive bid. I don't think any of the other teams besides the Rangers saw the winning bid being where it was, and I certainly don't think every team but the Rangers was just screwing around just making pretense. If you believe that the Cubs were simply making a token bid they had no confidence was competitive, you have to believe that all the other interested teams aside from Texas did as well, and that strains credulity. And we don't know for sure that the Cubs were given a chance to counter Oakland's offer, but even if they were, they at least made a legitimate effort to sign him. I don't think they had any expectation of signing Pujols or Fielder, or that they made competitive offers, which I agree with.

They're getting enough talent back that I'd think it'll cost them some of the top prospects they didn't want to part with. Especially if Boston is sending cash as well.