Laika

Scouting scouting scouting Anecdotal *proof* that you can't nerd scout from your computer chair. Doesn't work. You need eyes on the talent and 20-80 grades on the tools! Only then will you be good enough to draft a Sonny Gray and lose in the Darrell Dynasty quarterfinals.

I think you could make a decent argument that David Price is done as an "Ace". That FB is down by a considerable margin, and I'm not sure if the new rock bottom BB rate is true talent / sustainable. I think you could also make a weak argument that David Price never really was a legitimate Ace! His fWAR pitcher ranks by year since 2010 are: 28th, 20th, 8th, 15th. His yearly peers are often guys like Kuroda, Shields, and Lester, all of which I would consider strong #2s and not Aces. I generally consider the "Aces" to be top 10 pitchers, and Price hasn't been that in 3 of his 4 full years. But then you look at 2010-2013 in totality and there he is, 8th in total pitching fWAR. If he's been a true Ace, then he's done it with consistency and not big upside. I guess you could say that he's a second tier #1. I mean, he's clearly been a rung below Felix-Kershaw-Lee-Verlander. And on top of that, there are several guys who might have leaped him this year in the arbitrary pitcher rank ladder, such as Fernandez, Scherzer, Sale, Darvish, Harvey , and Anibal.

And at this point last year, he looked like a Deck McGuire-ish bust

I said almost as much. I think Phillips would be worth a bit more. I'd almost prefer to have a guy like Morrow with big upside who hasn't demonstrated the ability to stay healthy, rather than a guy like Phillips who has recently demonstrated that he is mediocre and on the decline. "Consistent 3 win 2B", except for, you know, his most reason season. Fully healthy and only 2.6 wins. Mehhhh.

It's pretty bad. Like the guy said, it would be Dickey trade bad. Morrow himself, IMO, should be worth nearly as much as Phillips. Phillips is owed 49 mill for his age 33-36 seasons, and he just had a very mediocre year. Barely better than an average 2B. He doesn't exactly have old man skills. An Orlando Hudson-esque precipitous fall off to suckitude isn't out of the question. Morrow + a B prospect would be a fair swap in my books, but I wouldn't even do that because I hate Phillips. You don't send off an affordable young upside arm like Morrow + a good, cheap, controllable young arm like Hutch + a blue chip talent with massive upside like Sanch for one old, expensive, whiny, and mediocre player like Brandon Phillips.

I think you should make this quote your signature! It's perfect!

I'm renowned? As in, widely acclaimed and honuored; celebrated; famous? I had no idea you thought so highly of me!!! As an aside, I don't really appreciate being lumped in with that goober BTS.

I never thought baseball players were smart, but man, twitter makes you realize just how stupid most of them really are. It's remarkable how dumb these multimillionaires can be. You've got guys who went to college for three years that aren't smart enough to resist spelling mistake ridden and awkward hashtag laden tirades against e-haters... and then guys like Lawrie who are still trying to learn how to properly use punctuation. I don't even like following players on twitter anymore because I'd rather just ignorantly respect them the small little bit that I tend to by default. I always thought Price was a somewhat heady guy, for some reason.

LOL @ trading that stuff for Brandon Phillips' age 33-36 seasons. Although, it's so silly that I could actually see AA doing it. I could totally see AA selling low on Morrow, for one thing.

For a saber website run by nerds, Fangraphs can be a pretty stupid place. I especially like when they post full length articles that essentially boil down to, "This guy is playing poorly but he has a really bad BABIP and/or HR/FB or whatever so he'll probably improve".

Yeah, I don't really like it either. I know what most of the positional adjustments are anyway so I'd rather just see UZR or UZR/150. They should go super saber and just remove R and RBI from the dashboard, and then have battings runs, baserunning runs, fielding runs, and positional adjustment all right there. It's also stupid that they list BsR and then list Offensive Runs which includes BsR. I also don't really care though.

The only things in the WAR equation that are hidden now are the league and replacement level adjustments. Replacement runs are set at like 21 per 600 PA. And the league adjustment essentially makes total leaguewide wins above average = zero. Just go to the 'value' section for Hech and it will make sense

Nah, they changed it. -5.2 fielding / 8.8 pos adj / 3.6 defense Fangraphs used to show UZR/150 on the dashboard but they switched to what is now basically UZR + positional adjustment

seriously though, who geefs a fawk?

Relax, dick weeds. He's talking about people like radio call-in stooges who complain that the Jays traded all their good prospects. This article was actually pretty decent. Nice to see some of the high praise. Stoeten somehow turned a hobby into a full time job. I don't really think he needs blogging tips from you guys, sorry.

Big thanks to Dinger for doing all of this offseason admin work and getting our offseason started so swiftly. I haven't had much time to do this type of stuff in recent days so it's a pretty big weight off.

Yup, teams aren't competitive so you go to Hawaii and forget about them for the final month. Not a huge deal.

I just don't think it really matters enough, and finishing as high as possible carries some inherent value. I didn't win this year but I'm fairly pleased with finishing 3rd in a tough ass league like this. Winning your 5th place game or 7th place game is still a good achievement. One thing we've discussed doing is making the consolation winners actually get the better draft pick.

No rush at this point in time for a replacement, we need to give Sammy a bit more slack. Something could have happened IRL. But in a few weeks if he's still AFK, then I would second JFaS, if he would want in.

We had a chat window, but weird ppl with the PB link started posting in it and everyone wanted it removed.

You might get a 3rd rounder or something as the offseason boils down and someone is caught with a thin OF

AA is a simple man and a below average GM, but really, it's not fair to blame him for this specific season going wrong. This team should have won almost 90 games. Yes, depth was an issue, and that's his fault, but that doesn't account for anything close to a ~20 game swing. Too many players underperformed their projections and/or got hurt. That's it. I don't think it's really intellectually honest to try and construct some post-facto reason for why it all happened. Morrow: Expected 2-3.5. Got -0.1. Johnson: Expected same as Morrow. Got 0.5. Dickey: Expected 4-6. Got 2.4. Reyes: Expected 4+. Got 2. Lawrie: 2.5+. Got 1.2. Bonifacio: Expected 1. Got -0.4. Arencibia: Probably 1 worse than expected. Melky: At least 3 wins worse than expected. Maicer: ~3 wins worse than expected. That's up to 21.7 lost wins right there. Colby overperformed by probably 3, and Lind by almost 2. So let's say they lost about 16-17 wins through random performance fluctuations and poor luck. That turns a ~90 win team into a 74 win team. It really is a wonderful, beautiful turn of karmic justice after all of the bad process.... but it's not AA's fault. He still sucks though.

http://www.bluejaysmessageboard.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=363&d=1380500198

Henderson Alvarez now has about 2 fWAR in just 17 games, after his 9 no hit innings today. ERA/FIP/xFIP all below 4.00. Despite barely reaching 100 innings, he would be 3rd on the Jays in pitcher WAR, just a hair behind Dickey and Buehrle who have pitched full seasons. I'd say "salt in the wound", but when the wound is a 15 inch wide shotgun blast right through the soul, salt is a little superfluous.

Can't wait until they pick back-to-back unsignable overdraft high school pitchers at 10 and 11!!!!!