Ananas

It's hard for me to believe that someone who has been a fan of the Blue Jays over the last year could say anything so ignorant of the facts. What exactly do you think the gigantic investment in player development was about? The money spent in the draft? The 10 million for Hechavarria? The 5 million for two Venezuelan 16 year olds? The 7 million included in the Doc deal to improve the player package? Letting Alex Anthopoulos buy a draft pick? Paying for an extra minor league team? Re-opening the Dominican baseball academy? Doubling the scouting staff? That was ALL after Ted died. You can't market a draft pick. You don't add prospects to improve the bottom line. You build like this when you want to win consistently. If anything it'd be nice to see the Leafs, Raptors and Toronto FC have an ownership with a vested interest in winning. For the teachers it was all about the gates, merchandising and licensing fees. And the Leafs brand was always strong enough to hold no matter the performance. But for Rogers, the TV ratings are going to actually impact their bottom line. Simple fact is that a strong Leafs, TFC or Raptors squad will draw more TV viewers and as a result create more revenue for the team. I just hope that with a capped environment in the NHL, NBA and MLS, that some of that extra cheese will go to 1 Blue Jays Way. This could be exact sort of thing that gives the Jays leverage to spend dollar for dollar with the Red Sox.

I thought that was reported to be their opening figure? Back when he was trying to get basically terms and length to put him at free agency the same year as A-Rod? It's crazy and there's no way he gets it, but I don't see anything wrong for it if it's posturing to improve their offer. I doubt Jeter is asking for that any more, probably hasn't asked for it since his initial demand. If he is, he's the special kind of crazy.

I meant that if all goes well he'll be out of a catching job by the end of the season. And if that happens he'll be an average hitting DH making $12.5 million a season. And his defensive abilities really aren't underrated. Among everyday catchers last year he statistically had the second worst throwing arm and was 2nd last in DRS (defensive runs saved). Last in both categories was John Buck. If they're cool with having a bad catcher who can't throw in a division with Grady Sizemore, Shin Soo Choo, Juan Pierre, Alex Rios and Denard Span then that's fun, but they're going to pay for it. Financially and competitively.

Just shows you how weak the FA catching crop is this year. V-Mart is a Catch 22. He's got an above average bat for a catcher, but he can't catch. He won't do as much damage as a 1B or DH, but his bat isn't really a premium by those positions' standards. Plus they've got Alex Avila upcoming who may end up being a plus hitter and catcher, and he'll need playing time. And he'll be 36 by the time this contract's up. Contracts like these make the case for why teams should take all that FA money and just completely divert it into scouting and development. The premium catchers like the Mauer's or McCann's or Molina's (for the purpose of this example we'll go with Yadier) just don't become available on the open market. They just dropped 12.5 per over 4 years as well as forfeited a first round draft pick for a catcher who if all goes well may be out of a job by the end of the first season.

The BBWAA pretty much nailed the awards voting this year. Not that Josh Hamilton was that hard a choice. Cabrera was in the same ballpark at the plate (though Hamilton was still better), but given Hamilton's GG caliber defense it was an easy choice, much easier than the NL. As much as I loved watching Jose Bautista this year and I'm happy to see him find his way onto all 28 ballots (although how 10 writers managed to have him outside their top 5 is beyond me), there wasn't a valid argument to be made for him. Thought he was top 3, but they got #1 absolutely right.

Joey Votto won NL MVP with 31 of 32 first place votes. It's not like Pujols was in a class below or anything, but there was enough of a gap between the two to make it a pretty easy decision. My question is who left Pujols out of their top 5? Either someone hates the Cards or is just insane. Also whoever put Ryan Howard 2nd on their ballot should lose their vote. That's just absurd.

Dejan Kovacevic, a baseball writer out of Pittsburgh. I generally like his stuff, but that's bananas. He left Heyward off his ballot in favour of Tabata and Walker. Also this was just confirmed: to Atlanta - Dan Uggla, to Florida - Omar Infante, Michael Dunn. This was a real trade that happened in real life and not on easy mode on Baseball Mogul from someone playing as the Braves. Seriously.

Silly kids, Derek Jeter's value cannot be overstated. Just ask crazy Uncle Hal as he prepares his 3-year, 45-million dollar offer for the statistical 10th best shortstop in baseball this year. Statistically there was almost nobody better than Jeter at SS in the AL this year. Only 6 qualified shortstops were more worthy of the Gold Glove he just won for the 10th consecutive time. Of 9.

Just try to keep Markakis, Jones and Matusz around for a while. Manny Machado is only 4 years away!

So while you aren't allowed to trade for a draft pick in baseball, Jays GM Alex Anthopoulos proved yesterday that apparently you can buy one for about 500k. The Rockies apparently didn't want to pick up the option for 2011 on Miguel Olivo at 2.5 million (although 2.5 million for a catcher coming off a 3.2 WAR season is a veritable bargain, a mystifying decision); they also didn't want to pay the 500 thousand dollar buyout. Enter Anthopoulos, who agreed to trade a PTBNL or cash considerations to the Rocks for Olivo. The Jays, who have already exercised a 2011 option in Jose Molina's contract and intend to use him as a back-up to rookie JP Arencibia, don't really have room for Olivo so they declined the option and took the 500k hit. The reason? Miguel Olivo is a type-B free agent. If he declines arbitration (which given his 2010 season he probably will to seek a 2 year deal elsewhere) the Jays will get a supplemental draft pick between the first and second rounds. It's hard to put a dollar value on a top 50 draft pick in baseball, but I can't help but think it's comfortably more than half a million dollars. Should all of their type free agents decline arbitration and sign elsewhere, the Jays should end up with 6 picks inside the top 50 and as many as 9 inside the first two rounds of the draft next year. Coming off a draft year where they were able to sign their first 13 picks, 8 of which came in the top 100, the Jays will have the opportunity to make a major improvement on their farm system for 2 consecutive seasons.

Why on earth would Carl Crawford be pursued by the Yankees to DH? That'd be like trading for Michael Bourn on the condition that he doesn't try to steal bases. Carl Crawford is a plus-plus defender, and if he isn't giving you defense then he's less valuable to you than to other teams. I honestly don't think Crawford is that good a fit for New York. He and Gardner are both plus-plus left fielders, but neither really has the arm for right. Unless you move Gardner to CF, which he seemed to struggle with slightly in the 300 or so innings he played there this year. And that would require moving Granderson to either RF or the bench, which seems a waste of his value especially given his contract. Adrian Beltre to DH is especially asinine given that if you look at his last five seasons pre-2010 he's put up On Base Plus Slugging numbers of .683, .784, .802, .792 and .716. He's had two elite offensive seasons in his career, both contract years. Beltre is only an option if the Yankees are looking to expedite the move of A-Rod to DH, which I doubt they are given his obscene salary. More likely scenario is them hoping they can string that out another year or two then try to swoop in on a Zimmerman or Longoria as they get closer to free agency. Or move Jeter to 3B at that point and snatch up Stephen Drew or Troy Tulowitzki as they approach free agency because if we know one thing we know that the baseball Gods hate us. Also RIP Sparky Anderson

You feel that, folks? This is the weird feeling of actually being happy for a World Series Champion, the first time in a while. Congrats to the San Francisco Giants, 2010 WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONS!

I think maybe Ron should just let Mike Maddux manage the bullpen for the rest of the series. That was absolutely brutal. Managers who save their closers for "save situations" in situations like that absolutely deserve the negative results. You've got a day off tomorrow. You're down 2-0 in the game. You're 3 outs away from being down 2-0 in the series. They've got the top of the Giants lineup due-up. How do you let your closer sit on the bench through ANY of that debacle, much let all of it? O'Day is a very good reliever, but he'd thrown 13 pitches and gave up a home run 24 hours ago. Your closer, one of the most dominant closers in the American league in 2010, hasn't pitched in 10 days. You have to pitch to be IN the game, not just sit back and wait for a save situation. Absolutely wretched.

Well if we're going past 20 years, we can't leave out the three shitkickings the Yanks gave the Rangers in the playoffs in 1996, 1998 and 1999. Hell, that's part of what made last night so sweet.

Unfortunately I can't like this post more than once. So I quote.

Oh okay, so we're going to pretend that pitch hit Utley now?

As a Jays fan, I could hardly be more conflicted. On one hand Doc was the greatest pitcher we ever had and I wish him nothing but the best. On the other hand, the Jays have already cleared out their lockers and headed home. He's the greatest Jays pitcher of all time, but he's not a Jays pitcher anymore. What a pitcher.

Don't you jinx it, sahyder.

On your first point, I'm not sure what you call the entire package of plate performance if it's not value as a hitter. With nobody on, a walk is 100% of the value of a single. With a runner on first, the value is almost identical. With runners in scoring position and no force play, with constitutes an overwhelming minority of any batter's plate appearances, there is a definite increase in value between a single and a walk, but again this constitutes a minority of plate appearances. I think any measure at all which fails to account for walks is a flawed one. Mark McGwire's career walk rate (excluding IBBs) is %17.2. Wade Boggs' is %13.1. To exclude walks in the discussion is to unfairly discount more than a quarter of the bases McGwire was able to obtain at the plate. That's a significant amount of value being discounted, and if its not considered value as a hitter I'd like to know what it is. By the way, Mark McGwire's IBB rate is roughly 2%. Boggs' is 1.8%. You can't discount McGwire's 150 IBBs without discounting Boggs' 180 IBBs. On your second point, I think we're defining the same thing two different ways. I'm not trying to suggest that different players aren't better at driving in runs as an extension of their ability to hit for power. I'm saying that the ability to drive in runs given the opportunity and a high RBI count are not mutually exclusive. They're not - one is an extension of a skill set while the other is the confluence of skill and opportunity. I don't feel that a sabermetric perspective requires a complete ignorance to the idea that two players with equal overall offensive value can have varying ability to drive in runs. Baseball requires an assortment of skill sets. It's just that if you're trying to measure the skill set specially suited to driving in runs, which I think we've agreed is power, trying to gauge much with RBIs is wanting because of its assumption of equal opportunity.

But I think that goes to the different types of hitters. I wouldn't necessarily say that Wade Boggs was a ridiculously better hitter than Mark McGwire. Was he better at what he did? Certainly. But they bring different types of values to the table. In 10,740 plate appearances, Wade Boggs reached base 4,445 times (H+BB+HBP), while Mark McGwire reached 3,018 times in 7,660. So while Wade Boggs managed to almost double McGwire in hits (3,010 to 1,626), the latter's ability to reach base via the walk puts him within roughly 20 points of Boggs in terms of On Base Percentage (.415 to .394). In total bases, McGwire managed 3,639 in 6,187 at bats as opposed to Boggs' 4,064 in 9,180. In little over two thirds as many at bats McGwire managed more than 90% of the total bases. Extrapolate McGwire's slugging percentage (.588) over Boggs' (.443) amount of at bats and you get a pace for 5,398 total bases. So in terms of reaching base, Boggs was noticeably but not drastically better, while in terms of the advancement factor Mark McGwire was substantially better. I was a bit too simplistic in the sentence you highlighted. I didn't mean to say that there weren't guys who were better suited to producing RBI's than others given an equal amount of opportunities; what I meant to say is that skill isn't specific to RBI situations but rather their existing abilities. The distinction I would want to make is between result stats and performance stats. If Joey Votto puts up a triple slash line of .324/.423/.599 with the same situational splits in high/med/low leverage situations as now but has 78 RBIs instead of 98 to this point, is he any less worthy of the MVP?

I think it's because sabermetrics is based on empirical statistical analysis of performance, and that there really isn't information to substantiate that there are players who go from BJ Upton to Justin Upton based on the number of players they see on the base pads in front of them. Yes there are players who are great in RBI situations. They, over their careers, have always been great hitters. I think it's because many of us new aged stat guys don't believe that the ability to drive in runs really exists, just the ability to hit. Which, and you're right to say this, does warrant some consideration to batting average and the ability to actually hit, not just manufacture walks.

If by obscure you mean useful, then absolutely.

My hatred for RBIs? Mainly because people try to use it to evaluate player performance when it's almost entirely dependent on the people hitting in front of you. Statistically players have tended to hit close to their norms batting average wise when you add runners in scoring position (study after study has found anything to the contrary to be a statistical anomaly), so logically a player driving in a ton of runs is a function of his being a great hitter who comes up in a lot of RBI opportunities. My point isn't to say that Miguel Cabrera and Joey Votto aren't having phenomenal seasons, but that the RBI stat is an indicator of next to no use. They happen to play for two of baseball's 5 best hitting teams from an on base standpoint. If Votto and Cabrera were hitting this way for the Mariners they likely wouldn't have nearly as many RBIs, but they'd still be having sensational years. But they'd fall out of consideration for an award like MVP just because they don't get enough opportunities to factor in one of the three triple crown statistics? It's absurd. I'm not big on batting average or HR as divining rods either (one doesn't really gauge the full scope of batting since it ignores walks, the other is just one of three hits that constitute hitting for power), but at least I can understand they're representative of something in an individual player's performance. RBI's are just a bit more than happenstance, which are better represented by so many statistics.

Maybe it's just my hatred for the RBI stat, but I can't seem to care about the triple crown.

Well if you go by the Sabermetric Triple Crown (Runs Created, Total Bases and OBP) the leaderboard is a good deal more deserving than, say, Infante: Runs Created 1. Votto (CIN) 121 2. Pujols (STL) 115 3. Gonzalez (COL) 103 4. Weeks (MIL) 101 Fielder (MIL) 101 Total Bases 1. Pujols (STL) 292 2. Gonzalez (COL) 284 3. Votto (CIN) 276 4. Dunn (WSN) 261 5. Weeks (MIL) 258 On Base Percentage 1. Votto (CIN) .424 2. Pujols (STL) .410 3. Fielder (MIL) .403 4. Werth (PHI) .392 5. Willingham (WSN) .389