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I highly doubt 2/3 of the league would have ponied up that kind of money for Teixeira. My guess would have been 10 teams tops and many of them already have 1B filled.

He hit pretty well in AA outside of last year when he was hurt.

Two books I would recommend are Baseball Between the Numbers and The Book. The first is more of a primer on changing thinking towards traditional baseball thinking. Small ball and closer usage type stuff. The second is much more in depth and gets really heavy on the mathematics. They give nice summaries at the end of each chapter which you can skip to and read if you don't want to get into the math part. I also would recommend these sites. On the Shoulders of Giants. Compilation of saber type stuff. Sabermetrics Library. Weeks would be a guy to extend since he is not likely to cost to much. 2B in general don't get paid to much. According to Cot's Contracts.(great site for baseball contract and transaction info) Second basemen The highest-paid active second basemen, by average annual value: Chase Utley, $12,142,857 (2007-13)Brian Roberts, $10,000,000 (2010-13) Robinson Cano, $7,500,000 (2008-11) Brian Roberts, $7,150,000 (2008-09) Dustin Pedroia, $6,750,000 (2009-14) Brandon Phillips, $6,750,000 (2008-11) Orlando Hudson, $6,250,000 (2008)Luis Castillo, $6,250,000 (2008-11) Kaz Matsui, $5,500,000 (2008-10)Freddy Sanchez, $5,500,000 (2008-09) Mark Ellis, $5,500,000 (2009-10) Placido Polanco, $4,600,000 (2006-09) There are also quite a few who don't think it matters. The next guy is likely to be inept except in a different way. Most managers do pretty similar things. Witrado is not well liked around here. He is a Dodgers fan. His writing is poor. Some think he is a punk cause of how he acts.

They really need to separate out CF from the corner outfield spots. SS Hanley Ramirez 2B Martin Prado 1B Albert Pujols DH Ryan Howard 3B David Wright LF Ryan Braun CF Andre Ethier RF Corey Hart C Yadier Molina

It is harder for mosquitoes to land when it it windy. We use fans at work all the time to keep the mosquitoes away even if it is already cool.

I jsut can't believe how dismissive you're being. I guess I fail to see how looking at AA numbers with a little skepticism is being dismissive.

I am not completely discounting AA, I just take it with a grain of salt. At his age, the numbers are pretty impressive. It just seems like every halfway decent prospect tears up AA and is doesn't necessarily translate to AAA or MLB.

I haven't been early on the Fire Macha campaign, but he hasn't done anything in my eyes to show that he deserves to keep his job. I like how Macha finally put his 5 best hitters at the top of the order. Keep him or don't. I hardly think Macha is our problem this year and we are likely at best just exchanging one set of mistakes for another by changing managers. The fact that Macha was the lesser of 3 evils at the time of his hiring is really scary for our next manager search.

Not necessarily responding to your post but I think the league needs to be taken into account. All of our best prospects have torn up the pitching in AA. I don't like to put a lot of weight in the Huntsville numbers.

I agree. I think Melvin gets until the end of 2012 as the GM. We need to see how the MiLB pitching develops over the next year(or 2 years) to determine if Melvin has done a good job. If the MiLB pitching continues to develop well next year he keeps his job. If none of that pitching is contributing at the MLB level by 2012, he gets fired.

If you know anything about UZR you should know the folly of trying to use it to determine anything with any certainty at this point in the season.

all of the guys mentioned in rumors (Hart, Weeks or Fielder) are under team control next year, so it's not a move them or lose them scenario. Sure we have control of them but holding onto them isn't going to make us good enough to make the playoffs next year. We would still be a low 80's win team. If we are not going to make the playoffs with them we either need to extend them or trade them(provided we get a good enough return). I think Weeks is the only one of the three it really makes sense to extend.

Gomez is probably not the best CF ever (I don't think Al was saying that anyway), and probably not even the best CF of the last 20 years. But I would like to see a list of the "hundreds" of CFs that are definitely better than him.I don't think it is far fetched to say Gomez is better defensively than anybody we have had in the last decade though I think an argument could be made for Cameron.

Bush is an average pitcher who will be gone after this year.

From the previously provided link. Bats http://www.entomology.wisc.edu/mosquitosite/media/Little%20brown%20bat.jpg There is no evidence that increasing the population of bats in an area will reduce the numbers of mosquitoes enough to affect human biting rates. The claim that bats are particularly valuable as mosquito predators may have started with a mistaken assumption based on a real scientific finding in the laboratory. Research conducted in the late 1950s showed that bats released in a room filled with mosquitoes could catch up to 10 mosquitoes per minute (Griffin et al. 1960). The results have been extrapolated to suggest that wild bats can consume 600 mosquitoes per hour. Using that figure, a colony of 500 bats might remove 250,000 mosquitoes each hour and theoretically afford mosquito control for an entire neighborhood. However, a bat's behavior when locked in a room with nothing to feed upon but mosquitoes tells us nothing about behavior in the wild where the community of insects that can serve as food is much more varied. The diet of wild bats has been analyzed by dissecting stomach contents or examining fecal pellets. This research has shown that insectivorous bats are opportunistic feeders and that mosquitoes usually make up a very small percentage of their natural diet. For example, a look at fecal pellets for the little brown bat showed 71% small moths, 16.8% spiders and 1.8% mosquitoes (Whitaker and Lawhead, 1992) while the diet of the big brown bat was dominated by beetles and caddisflies (reviewed in Agosta 2002). Providing houses to enhance bat populations is an admirable activity for conservation purposes but it is not likely to help with a mosquito problem. Some of this information was modified from http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~insects/proprom.htm

Even going 9-3 in those 12 games only gets us 6 games closer. Calling our chances not great is being very generous. Our chances are very very bad. Of course it is possible to get into the playoffs. Playing the odds that we will get into the playoffs is setting us up as the Astros. Their organization is a wreck due their failure to admit their chances at the playoffs were slim to none yet still acting like they had a good chance at the playoffs. If you want to cheer for them to make the playoffs and still think they have a chance, fine. I believe they have no realistic shot. We just are not a good team and sweeping the Pirates certainly will not change my mind. We barely beat them.

Tearing the team apart would be a bad idea, but we are not going to be competing next year without some additions so guys like Weeks, Fielder and Hart who are not likely to be around after that are pretty expendable in my opinion. Although I hope they extend Weeks. We can probably replace Weeks pretty easily but I think he would come cheap(ish) and gives us more depth for trading in the future if need be. I am not really concerned with who we trade as long as we get good value back. I think we are going to be slightly disappointed with our return on Fielder. As long as we get better players back than the compensation picks a Type A FA will get us I will consider it a good trade though. There is a definite difference between tearing the team apart and making trades that will improve the team in the future. When people talk about selling I believe they mean trading away players to make us better in the future, not tearing the team apart.

After a little internet research it appears there is a mosquito specialist right here in our own state at Madison. Susan M. Paskewitz There is also a nice website about mosquito products. Looks like they even tried the product you are looking at.

No. No. No. UZR/150 is UZR averaged over 150 games.I know that. I also know about needing UZR for at least 3 years and you still have to regress halfway to project defense. Yes UZR/150 is better than UZR. UZR is a basically a counting stat. Nobody here is using UZR/150 for projecting defense. We are using it to describe what a player has done so far this year. Yes UZR/150 is better than straight UZR because you can't compare two players using UZR unless they have a similar number of games. UZR/150 can be flat out wrong or misleading without enough chances.

Please stop using UZR/150 without having played 150 games. That's like saying a guy is on pace for 184 HRs after the first week of the season. UZR/150 is better than using straight UZR.

The only thing off on Gamel this year appears to be his power. He still has a really good OBP. That may or may not have something to do with his shoulder injury from spring training.

I like a Friday Opening Day. I would have thought MLB would have done something like that before. Seems like you can really play it up and make it into a bigger deal if people don't have to get up early the next day.

Garza doesn't look all that special. Not sure why we would want him as the centerpiece of the deal. I also think the AL NL thing is overplayed. Theoretically it sounds good but the gulf between the hitters isn't as big as it is made to be. .261/.331/.410/.741 .257/.326/.403/.729 ERA 4.21 4.11

I would hope Melvin would be willing to deal anybody if some team is willing to give a decent value.

His UZR/150 is -0.8 but his DRS is 1. My guess is his low playing time is at least partially to blame. He looks good playing CF and has had a UZR/150 over 10 every year before now. He may not have had enough chances at difficult balls.