Hairyducked Idiot
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Everything posted by Hairyducked Idiot
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I like the idea of Haren more the more I think/read about it. Fangraphs made a good case for him, and someone over at BN pointed out that he adds about half a win per year with his bat when he's in the NL.
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Yeah. I don't do that.
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2013 Mock Offseason Thread
Hairyducked Idiot replied to davell's topic in MLB Draft, International Signings, Amateur Baseball
Let the official off-season crappy pitcher roster church begin! (I know, we got that guy from the Twins, but the season was still technically going on then). #Cubs claimed RHP Zach Putnam off waivers from #Rockies. Putnam is 19-12 w/ 26 SV, 3.90 ERA, 270 K & 94 BB over 295.2 IP in 171 MiLB games. -
The Epstein Era: Love it or leave it!
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Umm, no. Let's not do that. Yes, lets. You win as many games as you can, and put yourself in position to win as much as possible. You can't control the rest. OK. But now if playoff appearances don't matter but only average wins do, they've put themselves in one heck of a hole to start out.
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IIRC, BA's #1 system was really highly correlated with a playoff berth within ~2 years. Not a high bar, but interesting that the state of those MLB teams was pretty varied. I can't find where I saw that, but my BA handbooks are next to me. 2005: Angels - playoff appearances in 2007-2009 2006: Dodgers - 2008-2009 2007: Rays - 2008, 2010-2011 2008: Rays again 2009: Rangers - 2010-2012 2010: Rays again (I think, I don't have the handbook and that's what google tells me) And the Cubs were No. 1 sometime before the 2003-2004/2007-2008 run, too. Good start.
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OK, point conceded. Yes, and no. The organizational infrastructure was a mess, but I'm not sure how much of that you can put on Hendry, who was not the team president or any such thing. The state of the organizational talent? I think people are underselling it a bit. It wasn't great, but it wan't terrible either. I was kind of hoping for a front office that wouldn't mortgage anything.
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Umm, no. Let's not do that. OK. So if you put enough context on it, our front office's plan might have us on pace to be a little better than Hendry. Hooray?
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It only "forces our hand" if one is under the bizarre but increasingly prevalent belief that acquiring prospects is the purpose of baseball operations for a MLB franchise. AFAIK, they still only give out rings for winning MLB games, so maybe that should be the goal instead. And we lost 100 games and didn't win the World Series, or even make the playoffs. That's a bad thing. The second one. We should definitely want the second one.
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When you combine this with the plans to blow things out before the new CBA and being in on Darvish and Cespedes, it sure seems like Hypothetical Theo and Jed are kicking some serious tail in some alternative universe while Actual Theo and Jed are floundering a bit.
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That's the deal with the devil small-market teams make. The Brewers had their run, then the Reds are having theirs. When the Reds peter out, maybe the Pirates will be having theirs.
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Neither are any of the other teams in our division. The Cubs have never been the biggest market, but they arguably have the biggest market advantage relative to their division. They have the biggest Market+, so to speak. So would I. But you can't, because the new CBA says you can't. All that's left is free agency and trades for impending FAs.
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And the Pirates and Brewers probably won't have any good seasons during that time, either. So we tank 3 seasons, then split the division evenly with the Cardinals for the next six. Congratulations, Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer, you just matched Jim Hendry's term.
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I'd love to see someone put together a history of the No. 1 rated farm systems and see how the results turned out.
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With the new CBA, every team has plenty of access to those assets. With the restrictions on amateur acquisitions, the new CBA only leaves two places where we can use our considerable financial advantages to try to defeat the other teams in our division: Non-player personnel and MLB players. Throwing away one of those two areas seems like an extremely counterproductive strategy, and it appears to me that the reason we are doing it has less to do with the needs of the franchise and more with an intellectually curious itch our new front office always wanted to scratch.
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The idea that we can reliably count on making the playoffs 6 or 7 straight seems pretty absurd to me. The other teams aren't going to just lie down and give up for those years, and some of the teams in our division are run by reasonably astute front offices themselves. And every time we get a new CBA, it seems likely that our advantage of being a big-market team in a small-market division will shrink. This method locks in the downside and counts on the upside hitting its ceiling just to break even.
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If we continue our trend of leaving half our best players in Iowa, that might actually be a good thing? In spring training Dang, never mind. That is a worst-case scenario, then.
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If we continue our trend of leaving half our best players in Iowa, that might actually be a good thing?
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He's a pitcher. The worst case is always that he blows out his arm or elbow and you get nothing.
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Now that the Dominican Academy is paid for, the stated $200 million baseball ops budget should easily support a $130-$140 million payroll right now, without any growth.
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I'm disputing the bolded.
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And they all missed the playoffs. Considering that the defense for these intentional losing seasons is that we're going to have a long run of making the playoffs at the end of them, considering how likely that long run is should factor pretty heavily into assessing the merits of the plan. If we throw away three seasons waiting on the impact wave of homegrown talent, then have a couple of 89- or 90-win, no-playoff seasons after, pretty soon the math just doesn't add up.
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You have the biggest Enzyte and Viagra induced doom boner that is possible. God you suck. I simply listed facts. Nobody likes to hear that the emperor is merely moderately dressed.
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Well, since I already don't deserve them, I'l have some fun with arbitrary endpoints and stripping the context out of facts: Teams GMed by either Theo Epstein or Jed Hoyer have 0 playoff appearances in their last five seasons. you stripped the facts out of facts, too- Boston made the playoffs in 08 and 09 Epstein 10 and 11, Hoyer 10, 11 and 12. If we don't make the playoffs in 2013, our GM will be 0-for-4, a playoff-missing streak longer than any of Jim Hendry's career.
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Well, since I already don't deserve them, I'l have some fun with arbitrary endpoints and stripping the context out of facts: Teams GMed by either Theo Epstein or Jed Hoyer have 0 playoff appearances in their last five seasons.