KingKat

Fair enough. I should have said they are on the cusp of a major overhaul as it becomes possible to test them against truer performance measures.

Was it just cash?

Negative fielder accoding to Fangraphs whereas Goins is positive. Of course, with MLBAM here, defensive metrics are on the cusp of obsolescence.

That's assuming of course that Hech's defense is legit. The stats were not kind to him last year so it's not crazy to think that even at ss, Goins would be better. In any case, unless he's getting Hech and Huch confused, I really don't know where the op is coming from. Consensus semms to be that Hech was an expensive bust.

Apparently Middlebrooks has looked terrible at 3B and Bogaerts has not looked so great at SS either and he would be better off at 3B instead of Middlebrooks. There's talk that playing SS for Boston may be back on the table for Drew.

Allow me to put on a tin foil hat... Anyone think he might just be sulking and the team is covering up for him?

And the big free agent rush begins...[TABLE=class: Table Table-mid Tst-transaction-table, width: 632] [TR] [TD=class: Grid-u-1-12 Ta-c, align: center][/TD] [TD=class: Fill-x No-pstart, colspan: 2]Tyler Chatwood Col - SP [h=6]Free Agent[/h] [/TD] [TD=class: Ta-end, align: right]London SlayersMar 7, 6:01 pm http://i.imgur-ysports.com/jGpKB8Ss.jpg [/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD=class: Grid-u-1-12 Ta-c, align: center][/TD] [TD=class: Fill-x No-pstart, colspan: 2]Tyler Lyons StL - SP [h=6]Free Agent[/h] [/TD] [TD=class: Ta-end, align: right]Jurrasic KatsMar 7, 6:00 pm http://i.imgur-ysports.com/bWWkHlfs.png [/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD=class: Grid-u-1-12 Ta-c, align: center][/TD] [TD=class: Fill-x No-pstart, colspan: 2]Robbie Ross Tex - RP [h=6]Free Agent[/h] [/TD] [TD=class: Ta-end, align: right]Los Osos BlancosMar 7, 6:00 pm http://i.imgur-ysports.com/tdbVwUMs.jpg [/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE]

Just reading the Wiki now. Quite the sordid tale: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Dunne

I may merely be pointing out the obvious here but in order to (please) avoid another s*** show, make sure to pick up your player before the FA dealdine of 5pm ET.

I'm kind of rooting for Micah to be a thing now so that this incident can go down in league infamy.

It's still a good thing to do even if it's not entirely disinterested and he makes a good point that at least he can do a re-pick whereas JaysBlue would be screwed.

And of course, the whole thing gets settled the other way just as I type this. We've turned over a new leaf.

Seems fair though. He had a year to fix his mistake and even though the mistake is obvious in hinsight, NOof49 probably wasn't aware of it when he drafted. The pick was made in good faith. It's only afterwards that North muddied the water's a bit by talking (possibly in jest) about the ways he could game the system.

It's not really clear to me what No49's shenanigans were exactly. This thread got pretty crazy in hurry and it was hard to keep up. This is what I was able to understand... 1) Discussion began about how to handle C.J. Edwards, Rosell Herrera and other prospects who are expected to reach AA before the June deadline and are part of the Yahoo! player pool. 2) NOof49 drafted Micah Johnson in the draft 3) Jaysblue said he owned Micah Johnson 4) It was then revealed that jaysblue had misspelled his prospect's name when he origninally drafted him and the mistake was never fixed. 5) Meanwhile consensus started to build Silvergun's proposal to lock down prospects who haven't reached AA until the June draft. 6) NJH proposed that Jaysblue and NoOf49 settle the Micah Johnson controversy themselves by just seeing who would be the the bigger man. 7) NoOf49 then started to make somewhat disingenuous arguments about draft strategy, whined a fair bit, proposed complicated rules changes and threw out hypothetical scenarios for gaming the system. This seemed mostly centered around the rule changes not the Micah situation which as far as I know still isn't settled. 8) Lots of people got annoyed with NOof49. 9) NJH told everyone dead seriously that NOof49's spot was open. Of course since it's NJH there was still plenty of doubt about his seriousness. He later said he wasn't serious but he still might give the spot to an extremely keen JFaS anyways and again no one really knows if he's being sincere given NJH's sense of humour. So basically we have a very successful league with a good group of owners that's run into it's first real conflict. The conflict seems to be centered not so much on the actions of an owner because, as far as I can tell, the only person who really did anything wrong was Jaysblue by screwing up his pick and it was an innocent and obvious mistake. The problem is that the conflict seems to have revealed that NoOf49 can be a bit of a poor sportsman and a stick in the mud. Did I miss something?

Is there anyone's tires that AA didn't pump in that interview? What a bunch of fluff.

The rotation sure looks a lot better now that Hutch looks better.

He has the impressive physique of a young Chad Jenkins.

Manny Parra

Since there's no ace, it's really a crap shoot between who will be the best pitcher between Morrow, Dickey, Hutch and Buehrle. There's no ace, it's just a question of who pitches the most like a solid #2. Hopefully it's not Buehrle again because that will mean everyone else crapped the bed. It would be excellent news if it's Morrow but I don't think he still has it in him (I wish I did). Hutch was pretty damn awesome in the minors. If he's all the way back (he clearly wasn't last year), he'll give Dickey a run for his money.

Why not the best? If we're going to start a bandwagon might as well go all out.

Pointless trade was pointless.

Sounds like Anthopoulos is using the back injury as a way of saving face rather than admitting that making Happ a lock for the 4th spot was dumb in the first place. and I say that as someone who doesn't hate Happ but he was hardly head and shoulders over the other candidates. Redmond and Hutch for the last two spots sounds good to me. Happ possibly starts the season on the DL and maybe re-enters the rotation down the road depending on how Redmond looks. Either one should be fine in a swing man role. Stroman is, figuratively, the ace in the hole.

Hutch for the home opener. It's gotta happen.

I'll have an open spot due to a N/A but I'm basically looking at 5th starter candidates. No one should be causing a mad rush or anything.

When can we start picking up FAs? As soon as the last pick is made?