Tim

Hendry should have moved the vets when he had a chance. I'm curious, if Perez and Macias are so valuable why not see what worth they have in the open market? Maybe they can save another team from despair like they did the Cubs. I agree that Wood should get the surgery done ASAP so he will be ready for 2006. Interesting that you say that. I have read rumblings from different GMs around the league regarding moving the deadline back to Sept. 1st. The thought being there are still a lot of teams in the race at the current deadline, so there aren't many sellers. Meh. Don't push the deadline. Eliminate the wild card. Go to four divisions of four teams. Easier scheduling. You actually have to "win" something to reach the playoffs. The AL should add two teams to get to 16 and doing the same thing. I know, baseball revenues, blah, blah, blah. Put the extra teams in NY and LA and they'd do fine. And hopefully, they'd take enough revenues from the other teams there that it would level the playing field a bit.

Got something against Aikido?!?! Just kidding. I used to do TKD, but haven't in about 10 years. I think I'd rupture something if I tried some of those kicks at this point. Not stretched out anymore at all.

I would guess that Seattle will almost certainly be looking internally next year at SS. They have several options that could work very well for them. Between Lopez, Morse and Adam Jones I think they'll find a hot hitter to man the position.

Greenberg's on the 40 man and has started to play regularly again...

The people that operate the servers would be able to see how many simultaneous sessions were open.

Also, if Nomar never swings the bat again, he'll be close to eclipsing Ozzie (255, -19). for another perspective, ARod's three best seasons created more value than Ozzie's whole career (1996 - 67, 14; 2000 - 88, 15; 2001 - 88, 5).

Yeah, I didn't include Larkin since he's not a direct peer, but he's clearly a better player than Ozzie (312, 85).

If they offered something like: DeJesus, Grienke + Sisco, JH would be a fool not to take it. Of course, they're not going to do that.

1980's shortstops who should merit hall consideration if Ozzie was a 95% first ballot guy (41 career batting runs above averge, 241 fielding runs above average) (career 1978 - 1996): Allan Trammell (247, 102) 1977 - 1996: A direct peer of Ozzie's who is clearly ahead of him in career value Tony Fernandez (132, 120) 1983 -2001: A bit later than Ozzie, but only 30 runs short of him in career value Cal Ripken (366, 132) 1981 - 2001: Most of their careers overlapped and Cal absolutely blows Ozzie away in value. Of course, that's why he's a no-doubt HOF guy next year. So, after looking around a bit, I'd say that Ozzie was the third best SS in his era. The first is a lock for the hall, the second never even sniffed the required vote and Ozzie came close to, if not receiving, the record vote on the first ballot. Not bad for a guy with only 30 runs more career value than Tony Fernandez.

Yes. Smith was the greatest defensive player this game has ever known I've seen quite a few arguments that Honus Wagner was a better defensive shortstop than Ozzie. I also feel pretty safe in saying that throughout the long years of baseball history, there was probably at least one other shortstop who played defense even better than Ozzie, but couldn't hit well enough to hold down a job as a major league regular. Saying that Ozzie was the greatest defensive shortstop ever is a rather unprovable and, imo, unlikely assertion. Saying that due to his outstanding talent and longevity that he accrued more defensive value than any other player might be true, however. But I don't think the difference between his defensive value and, as someone else pointed out, Omar Vizquel's is enough to justify Smith as a HOF player over Omar, though. Or Pokey Reese, who is one heck of a defender out there.

+ Ainsworth for Ponson. Kurt developed health issues that made that a non-factor, but it was another trade of the future for a rental.

Tim, you've probably discussed this elsewhere. But how is that you still have Dopirak so high? It's his fourth year as a pro, and unlike Harvey it's not the first season that he's faced full-season calibre pitching. At 21 he's not all that young relative to high-A, he's an easy out there (OBP, BA) and has shown little useful power (12 HR's in August isn't very good, no matter how many he might hit in BP). And his defense is a liability. I guess I'd think that if a guy is going to be able to adjust to pitchers who can throw both 90's fastballs and curveballs for strikes, they should have begun to figure that out by their second year in full-season ball. The continues preference for Dopirak at least a gap ahead of Sing is intersting. I assume a major factor in this is age, that Sing is already 24, whereas Dopirak is only 21. But the current performance gap is enormous. Seems to me Dopirak's best and most optimistic hope would be to approach Sing's current AA performance at age 23, two years from now. (He's not going to both get a big jump to AA and raise OPS from .600's to 1.000's next year; either he'll need to do some repeat at Daytona or else repeat WTenn if he ever wants to match Sing's AA competence.) If the absolute best happens, and two years from now Dopirak is as good relative to AA as is Sing, will we then be badly sliding Dopirak because, at 23, he's almost too old to take seriously? I dunno, I think if Dopirak's our #2 position prospect, we're in deep trouble. I should probably put Harvey above Dopirak as he doesn't have the defensive questions. But I don't think there's a player in the system with as much offensive impact potential as Dopirak has. Pie's more complete game puts him at #1, but I don't see anyone in the system that has the potential impact of Dope & Harvey. Murton & Cedeno have risen quite a bit in stature this season, but neither guy projects much all-star potential. While Dope may be less likely to reach the majors than those two, I think he has a much better chance of being an impact player. Thus I put him higher at this point.

I'm basing that on scouting reports. I haven't seen any of them play. Chief's voice, for example, in regards to Harvey! On Dopirak, I've heard that from a Cub scout 2nd hand (Cub scout said that to friend after last season, friend passed it along...), and from several amateurs who went to several Daytona games this season. On Moore, got observation to that effect from amateur Cub prospect lovers who went to several Daytona games this season, and that was also the scouting impression I seem to recall from the Baseball America writeups. I'm not sure about Moore, but I've seen both Dopirak and Harvey struggle with sliders low and away.

Question: What "sure fire fixes" have there been on the market the past two years? Here's what I see: Beltran - big disappointment in NY Drew - hurt again Vlad - had back questions at contract signing, so was no sure thing at the time etc. About the only free agent signing that has gone gangbusters in that time has been Tejada. While I do wish that we had him, I have to admit that I didn't think he'd be this good, either. Well, me, JH and about 28 other GM's in the business who failed to outbid Baltimore.

Pie -- gap -- Dopirak Harvey -- gap -- Cedeno Murton Overall, there's a lot of depth and some true impact guys if they overcome certain flaws in their game. Of course, that isn't as common as we'd like.

I tend to think of this guy as a decent comp from a hitting perspective, though Sing walks more and is older at the same levels. Sadly, Branyan's development is one possible path for Dopirak to end up taking.

Who is "they". If its teh Stro's, i dont know. If you mean the reds, maybe they dont. I dont think its been reported or hinted at that they turned down an offer of Cpatt... at least not for dunn. Actually, I was referring to the people in this thread that talked about Lane as if he's light years better than Corey. As if his .280 OBP is soooo much better.

Can anyone tell me why they would consider Jason Lane more established or valuable than Corey? I don't get it.

Wow, now the Rockies will be contenders. I bet the fan base is sure to attend the rest of the games now!

I'll add it back to the front page when I give up on the division. :P Seriously, I'll probably add the WC standings towards the end of the month.

Bobby Abreu is the player people thought Carlos Beltran was during the offseason.

1) Jonny Gomes is basically Adam Dunn without the MLB track record (that's a good thing) 2) The Dodgers also have many more pitching prospects than Edwin that rate very highly within MiLB, so I think they could still out-prospect us. Their farm system is currently top 3-5 in MLB in my estimation.

Pratt led the IL in K's and walks the year before the Cubs acquired him. But it was mainly a function of IP instead of any astonishing strikeout rate.

You read BP, right? They've done a number of studies and found no evidence whatsoever that indicate that some hitters and "bad pitcher" hitters. Although I guess if we're just going to go with gut feelings about players who are great in order to declare them to be only good, we're never going to trade for anybody. I let my BP subscription lapse in March. I'll renew it soon, but I've got a couple of things I need to accomplish first. I read them for several years before this March, though, and I don't remember seeing any studies on it.

I was one of his strongest backers, and yes, he's a bust at this point. I'm not sure if it's the back and other problems that have put him on the DL periodically that have sapped his speed & power or if his skills just didn't translate well to MLB.