metafour

...which is exactly why trading him would be an absolutely retarded idea. BRB draft him Top 10, sell him a year later for terrible return when he hasn't played a single game.

We have beat lots of good pitchers this year. "Good/great" pitchers are typically going to beat most teams, otherwise they wouldn't be "good/great". You don't rock a ~2-3 ERA and pitch 6-7+ innings a start if you're getting beat around on a consistent basis.

It was Goins. Why would Travis be fielding a relay at the shortstop position?

Yup. Terrible throw by Goins.

Well, according to FIP, its just bad luck. Those meatballs right over the plate are just unluckily being hit to positions of the field that the fielders cant reach.

"None of the shows you listed are particularly good, but I probably haven't seen half the shows you listed".

Then why are you even commentating?

Arrested Development was the best comedy series in god knows how many years.

Was this trade made for 3-4 years into the future? When you make a deal under the notion that it is to improve your team NOW, and it does exactly that (to a degree even greater than you expected), worrying about what happens 3-4 years into the future is stupid. As long as you scout and draft players well, those minor league pieces are replaceable. 3-4 years from now we may have prospects even better than Barreto, at which point are you going to be crying that he was dealt for a 7+ WAR third baseman? If you want to argue semantics, theoretically we could actually trade Donaldson now for even more than what we gave up for him. Why? Because he's actually gotten better, and while I'm sure that when we acquired him there still might have been some doubt around the league that he was "playing over his head", his season this year likely cemented the notion the he is in fact a true superstar player on a hilariously team friendly contract. The point? Not only are we "winning" this trade NOW (Donaldson's value greatly outclasses the value produced by what we gave up), we could very realistically move him for assets that are "expected" to outproduce the package that we gave up for him. Under that scenario, we'd be winning in the "future" as well (as long as those said players actually produced at/near expectation). That is even looking past the fact that Donaldson in "3-4 years" could still easily be outproducing what we gave up for him by himself. Trying to paint this trade in any sort of negative light is flat out stretching to find some sort wart. You can find a "wart" in any good situation if you dig deep enough. You won the lottery? Maybe you get so caught up in your new lifestyle that you die of a cocaine overdose which was fueled by your new-found wealth, I guess winning the lottery wasn't so good after all?

I fail to see how it is a good trade for the A's. They had no reason to trade Donaldson, an MVP caliber player making peanuts. Just another example of crazy old Billy Beane overreacting. Given Donaldson's contractual standing, I don't even think they got enough in return.

By the way; I wouldn't beat your chest about Lawrie "proving us all wrong". His ISO power is down, his BB rate is down, his strikeout rate is way up, and even his defense is down. The only thing different is that his jump up to a .290 BA is being fueled by a ridiculous .379 BABIP. It is infinitely more likely that he reverts back to hitting like s*** in the future than it is that Donaldson suddenly falls off a cliff. He's literally striking out 8-10% more this season than he ever did in Toronto.

Isn't that expected when one team trades an MVP caliber player for a package mostly revolving around younger players/prospects? Whether or not the "gap closes" is irrelevant. The trade was made to improve the team NOW, most notably because the core of Bautista/Encarnacion/Reyes/etc. is only going to be counted on for ~2 or so more reasons realistically. The beauty behind the Donaldson deal is that he's not even an old/declining player, thus there is no reason to believe that he won't be well above average even 3-4 years from now. By the way: present value is worth more than future value in baseball just like money now is worth more than money in the future in finance.

Exactly. Advanced statistics can suggest that in the future his results will be poor. They can not tell you that what he has already done is "poor". They can suggest that he was "lucky", but "lucky" and "poor" are two separate things. Luck is a part of baseball, if you "luck" your way to a win, it is still a win. To suggest that he "hasn't gotten it done" would be glossing over what has actually transpired on the field. Pages back some of you tried to paint his 7 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 5 BB start as "poor". Really? That is a WHIP of 1.00, and if you want to paint his 2 hits as being the result of defense, he was actually incredibly unlucky in the sense that he had a whopping 7 pitches thrown inside the strike-zone that were called as balls, versus only 1 pitch out of the zone that was called a strike. So how many of those 5 walks were the result of the ump swinging a two-point play by calling a clear strike as a ball?

Your "hypothetical futures" are beyond the point of reason, in an obvious effort to paint a negative outcome to fit YOUR perceived opinion of the trade. There is no logical reason to assume that Donaldson's value will significantly diminish from ages 30-32 to the point where the trade looks "bad" for us. Your second hypothetical outcome about him "being mad" playing for a losing team isn't even worth anything, as you are literally making a wild guess that not only will we be bad in the future, but that being bad would somehow negatively affect Donaldson. Even if we are bad and Donaldson is upset, so what? Is he going to stop trying to play his best? Is he going to demand a trade? Neither of those outcomes are realistic, and making predictive assumptions on those factors is so stupid that it is the equivalent of me arguing that maybe Brett Lawrie hates Mexican food so much that two years from now he has a breakdown and demands a trade out of Oakland. Its a possibility! We gotta consider it! Hey, and maybe Franklin Barreto wraps his sports car around a tree like Oscar Tavares and they get zero value out of him...it could happen!

For the idiots that were under the assumption that 1 year of restriction vs. 2 years of restriction was "insignificant" because of a potential Intl Draft:

I get the feeling that you're literally just spewing s*** in order to make some sort of stink. Of course the players that the A's traded for have some sort of upside, if they didn't it would make absolutely no sense to trade an MVP caliber player in his prime on a hilariously team-friendly contract, now would it? What the f*** are you even proposing, that the only time you can ever make a trade is when the opposing team gets literally zero value in return? You have to win a trade 10 to 0 otherwise "the guys you traded away could haunt you!!"? You aren't fooling anyone with your agenda. I love how your two potential outcomes on Donaldson are that he either falls apart completely at only age 30-32, or that he somehow goes psychotic on a losing team "if" he's still elite...because apparently not only are you a world-renowned psychologist, but you're also apparently a psychic what with your ability to predict where this Jays team will be 2-3 years from now. Bravo.

They couldn't hit it hard last season when he was only walking 2.45/9 in relief either, with a 6.5% swinging strike rate while throwing nearly 90% fastballs. 90% fastballs, 66% groundball rate, .157 BABIP. Why couldn't they just hit it hard?

His BB/9 was down to 2.57 in his last four starts which spanned 28 innings (42% of his overall season innings). His ERA over those outings was subsequently 2.89. He's got the fastball to be a positive starter as long as his walk rate is manageable, even with poor strikeout rates.

...except that we can conclude that he's the worst starter in the league, right?

lol.......

Because a small sample is all we have. If you look at his profile from last season pitching out of relief, its the exact same thing except even better (as you'd expect coming from 1-2 inning outings). Obviously you'd need a bigger sample to conclude it as an actual "skill", but given the obvious talent in his arm, its not outrageous to assume that a guy throwing nearly 95mph with a two-seam/sinker is able to induce poor contact.

"Garbage" MLB starters put up the following batted ball stats? BABIP: .260 (T 16th among MLB starters) GB/FB: 2.56 (T 7th among MLB starters) GB%: 58.1% (4th among MLB starters) LD%: 19.2% (26th among MLB starters) Hard Contact%: 24.1% (T 15th among MLB starters) LOB%: 80.4% (10th among MLB starters) You can't simply look at K, BB, and Swinging Strike rates and form some sort of all-conclusive judgement. Nobody on here is arguing that Sanchez is pitching at an elite level, but to go out and make statements such as "he's the worst starter in the league" is an absolute joke. If you're going to act like some sort of Bill James wannabe, you can at least go into ALL of his advanced stats and try and decipher why "the worst starter in MLB" is currently fielding a 3.55 ERA despite battling atrocious K/BB rates for the majority of the season. Let me guess, its all "luck"? Potentially....or he is simply incredibly hard to hit, as evidenced by his well above-average batted ball profiles. What do we know about balls hit in play? Line drives are bad (Sanchez is above-average in this regard), ground balls are good (Sanchez is elite in this regard), and his elite hard-contact percentage means that all of those ground balls he induces are easily fieldable by the infielders behind him, because ultimately it is going to be the hard hit groundballs that will make it past defenders. Pitchers who are hard to hit DO exist. These guys CAN get away with putting balls in play, because they typically induce contact that is easy to field. FIP and xFIP has no answer for these pitchers.

Whether or not 27 is the "peak" or not, there is zero reason to believe that he will all of a sudden fall apart at only 30-32 years of age. Guys like Adrian Beltre were still elite players well into their mid 30's, even Scott Rolen despite injuries was well above average in his 30's. 30-32 isn't 'old' at all. To use that as your argument is just looking for some sort of excuse.

Go jerk off to spreadsheets. 7 IP, 2 H, 0 R start is "bad" because he didn't strike enough guys out LOL.

"Oh noez, the walks/strikeout isn't 10 to 1....s*** start". You retards do realize that pitchers like Sanchez can get away with things that your typical pitcher can't get away with, right? Baseball isn't played in a computer simulation.