Abomination

I meant that I think Jay is underrated as a player, not specifically as a center fielder or with the Cards. Someone will trade for him and move him into left field and get a very nice player out of the deal.

Maybe it's just me, but Jay seems very underrated.

I don't know, Dietrich could be rather interesting (especially if the Marlins would have let him properly bake in the minors instead of promoting him after a handful of games in AA).

You have to find the right fit for both teams though, which is why it worked for the Rangers and Tigers. If we wanted to do this with Buehrle, the analogy would probably have to be with the Angels for Pujols or Hamilton or something (and I'd rather have two more years of Buehrle than either of them).

I know Halladay had/has a knuckle curve, but I'm not 100% sure if he was the guy who abandoned it because he couldn't throw strikes with it or not.

I haven't looked at the numbers, but I would think it would have been more from swings. In the MLB Halladay originally had that big knuckle curve, which if I remember right he overhauled because it was so hard to throw for strikes that people were just laying off it. I kind of doubt that minor leaguers would have laid off it.

If that's true, the equivalent of 18M / year for Prince is a hell of a lot better than 24M. They'll probably get reasonable value on that. On the flip side, Detroit paying the equivalent of 22M / year for Kinsler isn't quite as favorable.

Wow, didn't expect THAT. In other news, Miggy's defensive value just went up.

Well, among qualified 1st baseman last year, there was only one (Napoli at 0.3)

I was looking at it more from the point of view that I consider Goins to be slightly better than Orlando Hudson was defensively when he was here, and according to Fangraphs Hudson's defense in his final two years here rated at 17.8 and 11.5 (which is adjusted for position). Excluding 2013 which I'll consider a bad outlier for him defensively, Ryan has varied between 12.8 and 19.8 the four previous years. In 2010 and 2012, Ryan hit at 55 wRC+ and 61 wRC+ with 19.1 and 19.8 defense, which worked out to 1.3 and 1.4 WAR. Based on Steamer Goins should be a little higher than that offensively (I really think Steamer's projection of 67 wRC+ is too low, but that's another discussion), and a little lower defensively (not talking Steamer projections on defense, since I think everyone agrees it is too low). I don't think it's a bad comparison provided that he can replicate again on defense the kind of range he showed this year in games.

I really think the Brendan Ryan comp I tried to make is a decent one. Both will probably hit fairly similarly, and Ryan over the last 5 years has been roughly worth 1.5 WAR / year.

I don't want to clutter things up by quoting Angrioter's whole post, but taking a (corrected) list like that and providing some stats for each player along with a short analysis would be a huge draw for our new site I bet it would get picked up by MLBTR too.

Well, ideally neither. I have doubts though that you could easily find a bench player that could match his defense and hit better, especially for somewhere in the neighbourhood of league minimum. Anyone I can think of would be a downgrade defensively (although still mlb average or slightly plus). Players such as Ackley or Espinosa (2013 aside) for example (which I would definitely be on board with for either). Neither are really bench players though. I would rather scenario B if I'm limited to the two choices above.

The range he displayed in game was elite level imo. I can't recall seeing some of those plays being made (and look so fluid in doing it) since Alomar was here. I don't think even a young Hudson could, although he would have been close. The small sample size is plenty to visually see his range and defense being exceptionally high level. It's not enough for us to nail down an exact number or predict a WAR value for or anything.

Yes. He's another plus defender with a below average bat. That's exactly what a AAA depth player usually is. I should mention that the reason I rate Goins as better is that I think he can provide elite level defense at 2nd, not just plus. Otherwise I'd consider him exactly the same.

You might want to read his quote again. He didn't say anything about signing Infante as AAA depth.

I see no reason why Goins can't provide similar value at second to what Brendan Ryan does at short. It would be nice to plug in someone with a better bat, but having him start there isn't a crisis or anything imo. As for preferring to keep him as minor league depth, Jonathan Diaz can provide that depth next year.

I don't think companies or individuals in the states are allowed to transfer money to Cuba, which would nix the posting concept. Could be wrong though.

Ryan signed with the Yankees.

Right now I think everyone is trying to forget about Izzy. He shouldn't be quite as bad next year though (nearly impossible to be worse).

I meant with the url, not the post itself. The date on the post is fine.

The answer is ideally neither.

The font change looks much much better imo. Under the sabremetrics article, I'd suggest setting the actual sections (hitting, pitching, base running, etc) to be formatted as headers, made slightly larger, and with some padding above them. It should make it a little easier to read, and make Google happier in being able to categorize the content. You might also want to make "non blog" articles like this one (which I'm assuming you'll make in some way sticky or permanent) have more defined urls (don't include the posted date for them in the url), so maybe make it breakingblue.ca/analysis/welcome-to-breaking-blue-and-sabremetrics/ or something similar. I'd also suggest getting rid of "category" in the url for other pages.

I think they get some extra perks and stuff too (housing, etc). They certainly don't get much though.

Good initial work! I've been finding out the hard way how difficult it is to properly get a site up for the first time, especially the responsive menu system. In terms of constructive criticism, it feels like the color scheme is a little off, and the content on the front page feels a little cramped (not sure if the two are related). Some of the mouse-over stuff may also be a little over the top and be distracting for people. On the article pages, I would personally choose a different font and maybe increase the line and word spacing a little. I've been playing with the Google font 'open sans' and quite like it, although there's lots of other choices to pick from. The text column should probably be made a little narrower on the full screen desktop setting. I've seen some reports that suggest no more than 10 to 12 words per line (although I think that might be a tad low), as going beyond that affects people's concentration due to being forced to move their heads while reading. If you look at a site like Sportsnet.ca along with many of the news sites, that seems to be how they do it as well. It might also be a good idea to either use a different font or font weight for the block quotes, or put them in italics to help them stand out better. The color of blue in the links on the content could probably be a little darker, maybe closer to the block quote blue bar. Interested to hear what you think on some of the ideas, as I'm trying to improve my skills as well (non sports related sites) so hearing from various sources and opinions is helpful.