Laika

Hey, even if he can trade Lind @ $7M for a cheap and good reliever with some control, that could be a great move. Platoon DHs can carry some value but I'm not a huge fan of what they do to the roster.

I think it's plausible that they'd trade Alvarez given the emergence of Harrison and the fact that Pedro is entering arb2, but I guess I don't really see what the Pirates would want with Lind unless they don't like Ike Davis anymore.

Money being = would you want Melky or Markakis?

Pedro Alvarez would be a pretty sweet get for Lind. Sounds like Pitt could roll with Harrison at 3B. Toronto would get the age 28 and 29 seasons of a guy who is slightly better than Juan Francisco in every important way. I'd much rather go Alvarez-Reyes-Lawrie than Lawrie-Reyes-Goins/Kawasaki. They would NEED to sit Alvarez against most LHP though, so maybe get a RHB MIF for the bench and run the platoon with Lawrie bouncing from 3B to 2B. Charlie Morton would seem pretty redundant - not much different from Happ who is under control as the SP6 for similar monies.

Man, I feel like some team could make a huge profit out of a Colby Rasmus / Chris Young platoon in LF.

Not sure what to think about the Melky situation. On one hand, let's say "in a nutshell", I would never advocate for signing a free agent with Melky's profile. You can spend 30 or 40 million much more efficiently. On the other hand, you get the sense that if the Blue Jays don't sign Melky then they won't do f*** all this offseason, and they'll be happy to roll into 2015 with Pompey+Pillar/Gose as their two outfield positions (puke). I mean, I guess I kind of hope they manage to get him on a responsible deal like 3/$30 and he can somehow remain a league average LF for most of that term. Letting him walk and making no additions would probably crush team morale too, for whatever that's worth.

I wouldn't say that it's even true. It's just like any area of research though, future breakthroughs happen within the foundations set by past developments. It's not really possible to reinvent DIPS - but something like TIPS can be just as ingenious within the context of today as DIPS was at its inception. A lot of the steps forward today are more technical, less foundational, and within sabermetric niches. But that doesn't mean that they aren't important or aren't as creative and cool as the foundational discoveries which they operate within. So I would say that it's not that teams have diluted sabermetric research at all by hoarding intellectual capital, it's just the nature of research in general within any fairly new field. I mean, in some ways, you could say that there haven't been very many equally important leaps forward in genetic research since things like the discovery of the structure of DNA, the development of PCR, and the sequencing of the genome.

That's weird. I must have exited the document too soon.

The author's point seems to be that sabermetrics has been consumed by MLB teams operating like Wall Street firms because any public sphere sabermetrician who shows any sliver of actual competence or ingenuity gets gobbled up by a team almost immediately. What historically has been a collaborative outsider's hobby is now a war of secretive, proprietary discovery. Due to the great motivating power of market competition, a wonderful open source journal of baseball knowledge is now utterly and thoroughly an arms race of encrypted and guarded secrets. As such, sabermetrics as we know it is dead. I would reject his thesis based on the very nature of how ingenious discovery seems to work. If you've ever read one of Taleb's books you're probably at least somewhat convinced that game-changing discoveries cannot and do not come from targeted research. It is extremely difficult to cure cancer by hiring the five smartest research oncologists you can find and telling them to go "find a cure!". No, game-changing discoveries overwhelmingly tend to come from think-tank style environments - large groups of competent people collaborating for the sake of discovery with no particular goals aside from discovery and research on their own. Any actual leaps forward happen randomly from the collective goop of the think-tank environment. Think-tank style research environments for sabermetrics are stronger than ever, and they can't be harmed simply by MLB teams plucking out a few big dogs like Mike Fast and keeping their outputs under lock and key. Nobody can really know what aspect of baseball will be the subject of tomorrow's next big sabermetric thing, but what we do know is that it is far, far more likely to pop out of a Fangraphs "community research" page, or out of a blog like "Breaking Blue", than it is to pop out of the fingers of someone like Colin Wyers who sits down at his Thinkpad everyday and tries to find the next OBP level market inefficiency. Front office analytical departments aren't reinventing the wheel every day, what they're doing, in large part, likely amounts to basic application and implementation of publicly available saber knowledge, and very small tweaks on commonly available aspects of sabermetrics.

Do you think there's an exploitable opportunity with NHL FD or DK pools? i.e., if you buy in every day for $2 in a 50/50 pool with 50 or 100 entrants, and submit an optimal lineup, would you probably make a real profit? (or whatever other investment / pool arrangement)

How much do those big tournaments pay out?

Ok, I will think about joining since you guys seem to really need a manager and a lot of the usual suspects are in this thing. I like the hockeys and am only in one league this year. I'll let you know tomorrow.

# of keepers who else is in it other relevant mechanics

Deets?

I don't think I'll ever forget the True Cards' offense circa 2014. Not sure how you even made the playoffs.

Any time I think about jumping ship on a "broken" David Wright, I just make myself think about Ortiz' 2009.

I'm not so sure he could do that. It doesn't really matter how good of a hitter a guy is - if he's thirty f***ing nine, the only person that is paying market rate for him in this league is probably Dinger.

Your OF and SP core are so f***ing enviable. And you've got elite elite prospects in Russell and Giolito underneath that team. It's too bad that Mauer is losing C eligibility and Tanaka probably has to get cut in spring training.

The yearly wOBA leaderboards will have a lot of guys in their 20's, but most of these guys are a) functionally impossible to trade for in a dynasty league, or breakout guys from that particular season. So if you want to move into a new year with bankable offensive production, you probably want most of your positions to be around 30, or a bit older. You'd have to be the best drafter in the league by far + wait 5-10 years to get a studly offensive core that isn't around 30 years old on average.

I'd say because you're a huge pussy, but I think that was a rhetorical question.

God that is SUCH a jaysblue thing to do too.

Well then you f***ing cheated at the average age game you sleezy butt

Lots of guys get moved out from behind the dish after getting drafted for developmental reasons. I always wonder how good a guy like Myers or Harper or Lawrie would be defensively if they stayed behind the plate.

Los Osos Greypower ... wait, that doesn't make any sense. Los Osos Grises!!!

My starting 9 feel pretty old. Pinto - 26 Votto - 31 Walker - 29 Zobrist - 34 Wright - 32 Span - 31 Gordon - 31 Pearce - 32 Davis - 29 30.55 I guess it's not that bad, but Pinto is more of a hunch than a core player. Rotation is nice and young though with Scherzer, Salazar, Ryu, Arrieta, Moore, and Neise all 30 or younger next year. (apologies for the obviously rosterbatory post)