Laika

Sign like, three or four of these guys and make them fight to the death for rotation spots (losers pitch in relief!): Kyle Kendrick 1/$3M (could actually accept a minor league deal) Joe Blanton 1/$4 Brandon Morrow 1/$4 Trevor Cahill 1/$5 Chris Young 1/$6 Rich Hill 1/$6 Tim Lincecum 1/$6 Bartolo Colon 1/$10 Cliff Lee 1/$15 (incentive based - not on Fangraphs list) Try to sign both of these guys if you can (it's okay if they won't): Ryan Madson 1/$5 Tony Sipp 2/$10 Sign one of these f***ers just because: Justin Morneau 1/$7 John Jaso 2/$12 Trade Revere for a SP if possible /offseason

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/fangraphs-crowd-the-top-82-free-agents/ Note that in past years the "crowd’s misses weren’t evenly dispersed, but generally included underestimating the contracts given to more desirable free agents and, in many cases, overestimating the amount received by more ordinary free agents." Pick your targets! Who jumps out as a great deal? Terrible deal?

McDavid injury is a gut punch for hockey fans. I can't even imagine myself getting back into hockey now for at least a few more months.

I don't like moving the goal posts at all. His walk rate in 428 PA was comfortably above MLB average. It is what it is.

ftfy

On today's episode of Fun With Small Sample Sizes TBH I'd be surprised if he touched 9% too. But the theory says that BB stabilizes in 200 PA, and he had over 400 to reach that 9% number. Also, from watching the entire second half, it certainly seemed like he underwent a skill change. He looked better.

If you're wondering about Goins' improved BB% and how real it was - walk rate 'stabilizes' in about 200 PA for hitters. So unless he reverts back to his old, terrible skill level - which is entirely possible - then his BB% in 2016 should be at least close to that 9.1% figure. Hopefully this question is irrelevant and he's a bench player for the entire year.

Things get pretty silly with big contracts, when you can slightly perturb your $/WAR and significantly alter how much a player is hypothetically worth. It's all a little ridiculous at that point and the analysis kind of collapses in on itself.

MLB offices for the most part don't use "WAR", per se. WAR is a descriptive short hand statistic and is really of little use to a front office. But they would all have internal predictive and descriptive measurements of offensive and defensive run values for every player. Whether or not they roll everything up into one number, who knows. And whether or not the GM and AGMs even care about internal nerd numbers, who knows. Most care. But some executives might prefer to simply classify players based on the 20-80 scale (i.e., this guy is a "role 6" player). I know of one front office that actually had their analytics department translate internal "WAR" into the 20-80 scale, for use by the executives (i.e., "the nerds think he's a role 5 player but I've seen him several times and he's just nothing more than a role 4").

Probably Shapiro's interview from years ago

It really doesn't matter. Pick whatever number better suits your argument.

sure it takes that into account it's also very possible that he misses almost an entire season due to being old and s***

OK Dwayne, please put Lowry and Val back in

And if my grandmother had wheels she'd be a bike what is this

(LINK) Spencer Estey of Breaking Blue shows that Tulo should still be a "surplus" player or thereabouts even at the end of his deal

Everybody not named Lowry looks dead. Need to shake things up. Why doesn't James Johnson ever play?

It's irrelevant because literally nobody here has any f***ing clue who would be good

This is fantastic. Is this Jesse G-S' blog?

Chad Girodo is for real, man. Lefties that throw 87 don't grow on trees! One guy that I consider a legitimate RP prospect who I hope stays in the organization is Ben Rowen

I think their farm is still fine. Below average, obviously, but there is still depth - especially in the low minors. The 50+ number is actually a little light, in all likelihood and if we're including guys with say, bench potential or 7th RP potential.

Most organizations do, but I'm not a f***ing scout. s***, John Mayo and John Sickels can sit at home in their pyjamas and name 30+ legitimate prospects with MLB potential in basically every MLB organization. Just because BA and BP do top 10 lists and most public sector scouts don't have the resources to properly evaluate the very low minors doesn't mean that potential real talent doesn't run 50+ names deep and all the way down to the DOSL and VESL. Just as a reference, before John Sickels does his offseason top 20 for each team he does a preliminary prospect list that tends to run 40+ names deep, and then gets community input on who to cut/keep.

It was super easy to build a farm back in those good old days, if you were rebuilding at the MLB level. ps - you are a bad mod

LOL no. It was fine. Probably above average. He wasn't some wizard farm builder though.

A lot of that "restocking" was just maturation from the previous rebuild phase. Examples: Daniel Norris was a 2011 pick that matured in 2014 Franklin Barreto was signed in 2012, in the old international prospect process, before international bonus slots, for $2M. Osuna signed before 2011 Castro signed in 2012 Pompey was a 2010 pick Labourt was signed before 2011 Tinoco signed before 2012 Cordero signed before 2012 Sean Nolin was a 2010 pick Alex Anthopoulos didn't do the Marlins and Dickey trades and then "restock" the farm system before spending a bunch of it this year. That's a myth. It's not possible to rebuild a farm system in a year or two without doing an MLB level tear down. In fact, to build the 2015 playoff team he very much dipped into the same prospect capital that he dipped into to get Dickey and the Marlins guys. He went to the same well in 2015. A legitimate farm system has 50+ notable prospects. In any given MLB draft + international signing period, a team is probably lucky (or has done well) to get 10 notable prospects. It takes half a decade or a string of very good drafts to rebuild a s***** system. There's a very real chance that Anthopoulos was mis-managing the team's farm system and young talent, and it just hadn't caught up to the organization yet. (Rogers, I need an advance on that next paycheque).

Yup. AA dug himself a little hole with the Marlins and Dickey trades, and his solution was just to keep digging until he hit playoff pay dirt. If extended and given autonomy he could very well have Amaro'd this organization, for all we know.