nmrch

hey guys, i'd be interested in joining too, its pretty much free money as well.

I know people are gonna be offended by this but here it goes, "makeup" issues are thrown around pretty casually at black and latino players in Baseball, especially super athletic guys like Pompey. Its sometimes used as a codeword for "uppity" and less than humble/not subservient, and interestingly Pompey doesn't come across as cocky(which for some reason is seen as a negative trait in an athlete but only in selected cases, see Puig vs Harper) in interviews and on twitter.

nice, Steamer projects a 3.46 FIP

Jon Lester averaged ~3.8 xFIP in the three seasons preceding 2014, and he'll be 31 on opening day, yeah this will work out great.

There's a reason he has as many followers as he does compared to the average sports writer, people like hearing from him on all the non baseball stuff like books, fodie stuff, boardgames, some politics etc. In the sports world, he's not really a big thing, and ESPN is actually benefiting from him routing traffic to them from people who wouldn't ordinarily care about his stuff. And then there's the obvious fact about him providing a service free of charge, if don't like what he says on Twitter, just unfollow and move on. What on earth makes you think you're entitled to only read about what makes you comfortable.

proof? Prospects only get assignments after spring training, there is exactly zero chance Travis doesn't come north with the Jays or go to Buffalo

Man, some of you are bitter, i swear i literally don't see a thing wrong with Stoeten using his name for his website. Its very common for unaffiliated bloggers who have a following, this happens in many areas like politics, sports, entertainment, fashion etc etc. And say what you will, he does have a following, he's getting a 50-125 comments per article and he just started out, i don't know if you guys realize how hard it is to get those kind of numbers especially in a saturated market like sports.

I just hope Pompey is ready for this fickle fanbase who'll rip on him everytime he goes through a 2-25 stretch and god forbid makes a mistake in the outfield. I think there's a really good chance that he'll be solid major leaguer at some point but the rookie season will be tough and filled with growing pains, especially with the bat given how few reps he has had above high A ball. If he puts ups a 240/300/350 line that should be considered a success and something to be build upon but a lot of Jays fans would consider that a failure

I call it the sexiness bias, there's nothing sexy about DSJ so it clouds's people perceptions about him. You can't dream on him to play GG defence or hit 40 homeruns or throw 100mph with a wicked curveball but people are overlooking the things he can do. It wouldn't surprise me if DSJ has the highest career WAR out of the current group after Pompey. But then again, i'm much higher on him than others.

Is this a serious post? You don't have to fail as a starter in the big leagues to be a failed starter, Sanchez has had about a 100 starts in the minor leagues and by any measure he's failed, especially if you look at the last two years. There are plenty of failed starters who begin their careers in the big leagues as a reliever and never start because you don't have to see someone fail in the big leagues before you can properly assess them.

Aaron Sanchez is a ceiling guy? A failed starter who had 33 decent innings as a reliever? and in a 109 PA's, Max Pentecost drew 2 walks, with a sub .100 iso. The sample size is small but not meaningless, i know he was semi-injured too but those numbers are a serious red flag especially considering he was an advanced college catcher playing against kiddies in the GCL and the NWL. Say what you want about Graveman, but he put up a 2.92 FIP as a 23 year old in AAA, there's no reason to dismiss that.

Norris Pompey Hoffman Barreto Osuna Smith Jr:i know this is really aggressive compared to others, but i like him a lot, he's gonna be one of those guys that will have good and long MLB career while never being widely heralded as a prospect. This holds even if the 2B experiment fails and he's only a leftfielder Sanchez: no future as a starter imo, tempted to drop him further but the guys below him are very high risk Castro: likely reliever Urena Tellez: another aggressive ranking compared to others, but i like the K to BB ratio, the power could still come

We should be careful with using platoon split numbers in season long sample sizes, they can be highly misleading. His career wRC+ against righties is 128 in about 2800 PA's, that's much more relevant in predicting what he'll do in the future. 128 wRC+ sounds nice but its thoroughly replaceable when you're talking about platoon DH only bat.

How do you go "forward" with waiver pickups and trading the likes of Adam f***ing Lind who has no value?

who knew trading mediocrity for mediocrity would get the fan base this worked up. And Lind is nothing but mediocre, don't give me his WAR and OPS without understanding positional scarcity and the value lost by having to burn a roster spot on his platoon partner. WAR needs to be overhauled to account for this because right now it overrates platoon players, Lind isn't even worth his 7 million dollar salary and people are losing their minds because we only got a potentially decent reliever for him?

Hopefully we're rid of McGowan for good, jesus christ, the sense of loyalty they've shown that guy at the expense of on field results for so many years was gross.

oh please, a third string catcher making slightly more than the league minimum, do you guys like to whine for the sake of whining. The bigger problem is teh roster spot, i would personally get rid of Dickey to solve that problem but the team is obviously not that interested.

Miller park is quite homer friendly too, the Jays obviously expect some positive regression in his hr rate and overall numbers. Look at the 3 preceding seasons, xFIP's of 3.58, 3.48 and 3.63. Now obviously none of these are full seasons and Estrada could never go back to being that pitcher so its a gamble no doubt about that, but it might be a worthwhile gamble when you're giving up an equally flawed player like Lind whose value people keep overestimating because he's being protected against LHP. In the real world Lind is worth significantly less than his WAR suggests because the team holding him has to burn a roster spot just to cover up his shortcomings.

What planet are you people living on? Lind is barely worth his own salary, why would anybody give you anything much of a value for him. Estrada is actually decent return, he's in his Arb 3 year and when healthy can be relied upon to be a 4/5 guy and has shown potential to be better than in the preceding two seasons. He could also be a solid guy out of the bullpen if we go that route.

Nessy hit 9 homeruns in 51 games in 2012, this past year he hit 1 in 69 games while repeating A ball. That's a perfect example for why you shouldn't get carried away by numbers in short season leagues.

yes, Detroit is a very safe city compared to MC, never mind the implications of what exactly people are referring to when they talk about "crime" Besides, the main problem with Mexico City is economics, per capita income there is half of what it would be in the average MLB city.

yeah, can't blame people for focusing on what the death of a young man does to their make believe ********, nothing f***ed up about that

i've seen people on social media lamenting over how this effects their s***** dynasty team, and how they just traded for him, just unbelievable

Montreal does have some things going for them, chief among them being the lack of numerous alternatives for the Rays if they do intend to move. Lets look at some of the potential markets Another team in Texas, San Antonio? SA's a pretty big city but their metro population is much smaller than Greater Montreal Another team in California? Pretty much out of the question, there's San Jose but the Giants would object and A's have been trying to move there for a while. A team in North Carolina? no densely populated metro area, another problem being that NC is a bit like Florida, there's a lot of Northeast transplants that already have allegiances not to mention how dominant college sports are here. New Orleans? Too small of a market Portland? Too small of a market Vancouver? Too small of a market Las Vegas? Probably the most realistic outside of Brooklyn Another team in the NY/NJ area? ,pretty realistic, another team in Brooklyn could be possible, there's some possibilities in NJ too Montreal will have competition but the big thing is whether they can get an ownership group together, i can see Bell being really interested, give them a chance to finally control some content on their own.

i don't even want Melky on a one year QO, spend that money on a short term deal for McCarthy or Headley