Hairyducked Idiot

edit: never mind I forgot how overrated Ramirez is

I have a feeling Fielder is going to drag this out for a long, long time. There's absolutely no hurry. Once Darvish goes, he'll be the only thing left worth spending on in a market where a lot of teams seem to have a lot of money.

There are pretty much three possible sources for that information. 1) Ryan Braun 2) Ryan Braun's agent 3) An official with the team that makes a lot of money off of Ryan Braun's marketability

I was referring more to the (still absurd) idea that a team like the Rays might bid something like $50 million to try to block the Yankees from getting him. There might be consequences after the fact, but it's not like the Japanese team would know immediately something was up when they got the bid amount.

The Japanese team will only know one thing: The total of the winning bid. They have to accept or decline based on that. They won't know what the other bids are and won't have the option of accepting one of them, and they won't know who made that bid until they've accepted.

Happy Koyie Hill Reverse Appreciation Day

no, a lot of people are saying it isn't PEDs. some sportswriter in milwaukee, ken rosenthal, etc. similar to how manny ramirez tested positive for a banned substance (a female fertility drug that's used by roiders to restart testosterone production at the end of a cycle). And where do you think those people are hearing it from?

If there is smoking gun evidence against you then good call.

I really don't see any way we can count on Cespedes to help immediately. To have a shot to win the division in 2012, I see three paths: 1) Fielder and Darvish 2) Fielder and two decent starting pitchers to slot in at four and five. 3) Some wild combination of trades that no one is even thinking about right now.

Apparently it's four business days and not four days as previously thought, so the bidding is closed late Wednesday night. Officially, Nippon has till a week from Tuesday to accept or decline the bid, and the team remains secret until then unless it leaks. So it won't be official until at least Wednesday night (14th) and possibly as late as a week from Tuesday (20th). Leaks could come sooner.

In terms of moral judgment, I am looking down on him more for the hypocrisy of his quotes after Rodriguez was accused than I am with the actual act of PED use.

Brewerfan.net was disappointing me with its rational take on this for the first hour or so after it broke, but once Braun super-duper-promised that he was innocent, it all fell apart. My favorite so far.

This is what you do when you get caught red-handed and you have not one ounce of regret or class. 1) Deny everything. 2) Muddy the water as much as you can to try to create even the slightest, tiniest, fractional percent of doubt. Then leverage that doubt into something much bigger in the court of public opinion, where people are stupid and don't understand stuff.

Obviously I am holding out the smallest hope ever. Braun knew he was off his cycle by then. Or mainlined masking agent.

Why? Because he wasn't as valuable as Kemp. Also because he did steroids.

The voting was already done before the test was taken.

Well take away Bonds, Sosa's, Giambi's, Pudge's and everyone else's. Deal.

http://espn.go.com/dallas/story/_/id/7338271/ryan-braun-milwaukee-brewers-tests-positive-performance-enhancing-drug Sample given during the playoffs. First triggered positive test by having elevated ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone (1:1 is normal, 4:1 or greater gives a positive test). Second test of the same sample detected synthetic testosterone. He can't explain this one away. This isn't a masking agent. This isn't a questionable supplement. This isn't even some super-designer drug that the league hasn't found a way to test for yet. He got busted on good ol' fashioned steroids.

MVP** (the first asterisk was because he wasn't really)

Nobody's guilty in Shawshank.

yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes This is better than Pujols leaving St. Louis.

He's got the yips bad enough as it is. Now you are erasing years of throwing practice and making him make a completely different throw to first.

Okay. So we still want the Cubs to be competitive in 2012. They clearly aren't there right now, but they also clearly aren't done. How much to they need to improve to get there? tl;dr warning

At which point I'm already wondering if the Cubs are overpaying. This offseason has set the marginal cost of a win up to at least $5 million, maybe even more. But let's go with $5 million for now. I think a good WAG for Garza's arbitration awards/salaries the next two years is $20 million. He was a 5.0 fWAR pitcher last year, but that was a huge career year, so let's say he's worth 8 wins the next two years, so that'd put his value at $40 million and his surplus value at $20 million. Throw in another 7.5 million for the value of the draft pick compensation and the right to negotiate with him before anyone else can (that's sort of a WAG, but THBT did do a study on the value of draft picks recently, and that's in the ballpark). So in generic market terms, I'd value Garza as a $27.5 million asset right now. Hanley Ramirez is due $46.5 million over the next three seasons. He'd be in the same compensation/negotiation category as Garza, so in order to match Garza in value he'd have to be projected to exceed his compensation by $20 million over the next three years. That'd be $66.5 million, and at $5 million/win, a total of 13.3 WAR. Can we project Hanley Ramirez as a 4.4 WAR player on the Cubs over the next three years? I'm going to argue no. That's going to sound a little crazy because he's beaten that total every year except for last since 2006. But bear with me. First, I think his defense is clearly declining at SS, and he refuses to be moved off of it. WAR really hates him, and I think it's reasonable to project him at -1.0 win/season defensively at 3b. With the bat, he now needs to be a 5.4 WAR player per year. That's almost exactly what Fangraphs has him averaging the last three years for his total WAR excluding defense. So at this point, it's almost a perfect wash. Now throw in that Ramirez we'll be buying age 29, 30, and 31 seasons from Ramirez, which I would call post-prime years, especially for a guy with 7,000 middle-infield innings on his legs. Garza's almost exactly the same age, but pitchers tend to peak just a bit later, so I think there's more upside on his side. And acquiring Ramirez also diminishes the value of our most valuable asset: Starlin Castro, who would have to move off SS. It just doesn't quite make sense to me. It wouldn't be a terrible move, but I think the value's just a bit negative for the Cubs straight up.

Matsuzaka was a 4-WAR pitcher his first year with the Red Sox and a 3.3 WAR pitcher in 167 innings his second year. That's pretty good. ERAs their last five seasons in Japan Matsuzaka 3.68, 2.83, 2.90, 2.30, 2.13 Darvish 1.82, 1.88, 1.73, 1.78, 1.44 I have no problem thinking Darvish can be a 5-6 fWAR pitcher immediately.