Laika

Ten year contract plz

omg I hope the Leafs lock up Phaneuf forever.

Definitely

I don't think you'd have to project Salazar for even 150 innings for him to be considered a far better asset. Note that I'm not saying Salazar will be better in 2014 necessarily.

In the context of right now, making exactly zero assumptions. Just looking at years of control, cost, and sane, well reasoned projections. The only reason that Tampa hasn't already traded Price for Salazar (or a similar asset) is that they know they can get some buffoon in the fog to give them even more.

Which, of course, means exactly diddly s*** going forward.

In a rational market Danny Salazar would unquestionably be a more valuable asset than David Price. The Rays know that Price's perceived value is miles above his actual value, and they'll capitalize on it big time.

This news came out like, last week, guy.

He definitely does, and has been for a while. You're probably not reading the right people.

I think a lot of attentive fans are starting to notice some questionable compartmentalized thinking from Anthopoulos. He things the offense is fine and he only needs to add pitching. He thinks the team power is fine so he only needs to add contact hitters, or speed. etc. etc. etc. He definitely does not seem to think of individual players as holistic run machines.

I'd be inclined to agree, contingent on whatever the hell his medicals would look like. Contract stipulation: no head first slides.

I dunno, maybe, but I think a lot of vets would rather platoon on a really good team than start on a team that just won 74 games.

Like why the f*** would Mark Ellis want to come to a clusterf*** team up in Canada and play on plastic/cement when he's 37 years old and the Cards are offering him a better shot at a WS?

"Hey Mark, Alex A here, how about coming to Toronto to be our starting 2B for a year or two?" "lol" *click*

They probably want too much for him. The same reasons that you want him are reasons that the Nats would want a solid return for him. Last I read they are fine with keeping him as their Util guy next year. That's excellent depth if you're a team gunning for the playoffs.

Small SS. Minor league numbers are pretty good and projections aren't exactly pessimistic, and rightly so. He's not a good 2B or anything but hed be better than Izturis, and probably almost free.

Someone just said it on Twitter - Giavotella wouldn't be an entirely terrible 2B option.

That's a few too many games

Lol, thanks. I meant the sabermetrics of posting though. Did not mean that I'm the best sabermetrics wielding poster. The nuances of language...

The impact of knowledge. From the beginning until 2005, most teams and players in most years didn't really know what made a good hitter. Sure, they thought they knew, but in reality they were more in a fog than they realized. Players were thrown into the big leagues and natural selection took its course. Those that happened to develop the traits of a better hitter at the big league level survived, and the sample in general showed improvement based on natural learning until the late 20's (age). 2006 to the present, modern knowledge of developmental factors and hitting skill factors have wiped out this big league natural selection process. Most teams pretty much know what makes a good hitter. Young player development is streamlined and the natural selection process has shifted more to the minor leagues. Players now reach the big leagues as finished products, in general. We don't see nearly as many players throughout their 20's "learning" how to be better hitters. There's nothing for them to figure out on the field. Lots of players still do, of course, but the sample in general shows no improvement from learning. The physical peak of natural athleticism has and always will be something around 20 years old. This should be obvious. Increased knowledge has removed the foggy learning period. Modern baseball now explicitly knows from the get-go what old school baseball used to inexplicitly figure out via a slower, natural process. (this very probably is not true)

So I guess this this means that, sabermetrically speaking, I'm the best poster?

I'm not sure that you're really grasping the method used by the author. It's not just wOBA of all 21 year olds compared to wOBA of all 22 year olds, etc. etc. It's the delta between specific player's seasons at certain ages, weighted by plate appearance. So a guy like Stanton, his wOBA actually did improve from age 20 to 21, and then again from 21 to 22, so the data from Stanton individually would influence an improvement curve along that age period on the curve.

Hmm. I dunno. If you cut baseball into a bunch of 8 year bins and then make aging curves for all of them, there's probably a chance that a couple of them will look different. So I wouldn't really be inclined to buy the notion that offensive players all of sudden aren't peaking anymore and they're just declining from year 1. Also, if you include defense and playing time, a WAR curve might still have a productive peak. Maybe things like wRC+ and wOBA are appearing to start high and only decline because young players breaking in these days are more likely to be platooned or receive guarded playing time? Maybe young players in general are kept in the minor leagues for longer, so their less productive periods of skill improvement aren't showing up in a big league sample? It's interesting.

Weird.

True or false: The Leafs should not have fired Burke. ?