igor67

Other than some notion of having #600 happen in Milwaukee and possibly being nice to a veteran I can't find a good reason not to just let him go if you can't work out a trade. We've got plenty of decent arms that we can look at and still field a watchable team, there is no long term value. Granted it would be nice to get a nugget, but take the money and run.

He's dominating enough that you could think about jumping him to AA next year. They'll probably go for an A+ placement with an eye towards possibly moving midseason to AA. I think they were rather patient early on and I think his innings and other things are all in place for him to move as fast as he shows is reasonable.

The complete lack of recognition that he is actually fighting for a starting job is pretty delusional. If we finely parse best CFer into best defensive CFer only then he may have a case for parts of his statement being true. But while I expect confidence from athletes this strikes me as way up the Sanchez scale of denial.

Arguably it could be a managing issue, but the hard thing about young utility prospects is the sporadic playing time. If that can throw off the best of hitting prospects it makes for a huge hurdle for more marginal guys. So I agree in principal that you should generally be able to find utility players dirt cheap on the farm, but in practice developing those guys so you have confidence in them is quite another.

I posted in a hurry so I was somewhat vague earlier, but what I meant but upward movement was that in absolute prospect terms the vast majority of the top 20 guys rate higher now (for example on Sickel's A,B,C system) than they did to start the year. And you've had a couple of those top 20 spots open up due to graduations.

I generally agree. Just looking at the Power 50 the top 20 or so there is a lot of upward movement and excitement for those prospects. I think part of the reason it has taken so long is that a lot of the pitchers got off to slow starts.

There are two slightly different questions. The spectrum is order based on level of difficulty to play. The thread asks what is the order in terms of value, which I interpreted as defensive value. The two orders are not necessarily identical. 1st possibly being an interesting example. Lots of people can play it which may make it somewhat less valuable since replacements are easy, but with so many touches it could easily have more actual defensive value in a more absolute sense. For example in the extreme case where you play no one at a position, 1st probably becomes the most "important".

The weird quirk is that as the rare FA prospect he almost certainly has way more value to the market then the D-backs. Given his health he's probably only worth a couple hundred thousand vs. just taking the comp pick next year. On the other hand he's still a 1st round talent and even knowing he might have to sit out a year plus as a high schooler that's not such a bad deal from the team perspective.

I have reservations about trading Lawrie, I like a lot of our other offensive prospects and think they can be pretty good, but none beside Lawrie have that Braun/Fielder type potential. I think it's way to easy to over compensate and trade too many bats for pitchers and watch our team cycle down after Braun's done because we don't have any real massive middle of the order threat.

Somewhere along the line in here the discussion started to morph (shocking for a 3 page thread I know). But sveumrules comment about Casey being our second best chip is exactly the point. I don't think in the wide variety of threads I can recall anybody saying Casey wasn't a good find or a valued part of the team. Exactly the opposite he is rather valuable. However, you have to give to get on the trade market. The only potential alternative to trading the improve would be some variety of playing out the next year or two and hope that we can string together enough starters off the farm (plus whatever Prince nets) to get back squarely into contention. So the question in my mind becomes how do you change the complexion of the team into a contender. I've stated a few times that I don't think focusing strictly on getting better pitching is going to work because our current defense seems to turn #3/4 starters into #4/5. Which would mean needing at least 3 total #1/2 quality pitchers. Anyway Casey is pretty good and therefore has a nice chunk of value, which is only a starting point for why he might (you never can tell who another team might like more) make a good trade candidate. 1) The low cost and proven combo is really hard to find these days, and low cost frankly looks like the new market inefficiency in my book. 2) We have plausible alternatives to give similar value at his position. 3) I worry about his aging curve. Late bloomers relying a lot on plate discipline more than underlying skills can evaporate pretty quick. Even a little bit of lost movement and he might be locked into 1st base with a rather limited bat for 1st. Suddenly not so valuable.

Another possibility would the Braves try moving Glaus back over to third and deal for Prince? That would do a much better job of replacing Prince in the line-up this year and next

I was counting Green, probably less than Casey on the bat side but can make up for it with his glove. Given the number of trades vs. number of players "extremely unlikely to be moved" is not a very risky prediction nor does it answer the original question I posed.

I disagree we have 2 other guys who can at least come close to Casey's total production offense and defense. We've already gotten 2 of his 3 very cheap years, he is ripe for being over valued as both a proven and cheap player in this market.

Any thoughts on seeing how much the Braves would pay for a cheap 3rd basemen to help preserve a pennant run with Chipper down?

No stats cannot be accurately made to say whatever you want. If you leave out relevant details, don't include all of the data collection procedures, use biased samples, or selectively remove outliers you can get all kinds of wacky results, but it is a massive problem to resort to "you can make them say whatever you want". That's as valid as saying I can make myself a king if I proclaim it true. You then shortened my own comment in your quote to make it appear that I said Cherry picking in reference to a stat when I was criticizing your limited quotation of the source. That's twice you've misquoted to support your position in this thread. And yes I'm a bit critical about it, because when those sorts of things break down so does rational discussion.

Cherry picking a quote on correlations is not a good call. I will agree that I think the defensive stats overstepped a bit on perceived reliability, but clearly there is a substantial and quick correction going on right now. I could give a halfway decent stab at explaining the correlation gap. Bigtime sluggers are more likely to get the benefit of the doubt on error plays, and at the lower end quality bats that have low error totals are going to have a playing preference over error prone guys with range. Call it the Jose Valentin effect. And subjectivity is the wrong word. It's more accurate to say as Wyers did that their are hidden biases or reliability questions.

I kind of like the 4/100 or 3/85 idea. I don't know that it works, but particularly the 3 year deal makes him a FA again at 34. Still young enough he could sign another 3 or 4 year deal at the time for pretty good money if he played well up to that point. On the overall payroll side I agree with you X that there is no really good reason to think the payroll needs to shrink substantially. I do think it is reasonable for it to shrink back to say about 80 million for next year and given the amount of youth currently on the team I'd want it to drop some, so that we have some room to regrow it abit during the next couple of years.

I wonder if they are smart on shuffling the offense and defensive side I think there is a lot of room for improvement next year without going crazy. Particularly a nice defensive improvement helps the staff quite a bit along with having a nice stable of bullpen guys the shuffle around and find the effective mix sooner if things get difficult. With those elements I think Grienke is enough of a rotation improvement to give the team a shot without going so whole hog the ruin what is set-up to be a pretty decent run with lots of younger pitchers and seemingly enough position guys to keep churning guys every few years to keep the budget reasonable.

Seeing Cain have some success has definitely helped to open some options. I do think Melvin will try to do something like this for next year. I just hope he uses what time is left to try and acclimate guys as much as possible. One thing to think about is that LuCroy and Escobar give a lot of upside on next year's offense, along with a rebounding Braun, and replacing what Prince has done this year is a lot easier with his merely good performance.

Just a thought, but somewhat more cynically getting Hoffman to 600 might make it easier to trade him before the end of August. With the milestone out of the way and without having to be "the guy" he'd look pretty nice as a last minute bullpen guy for a contending team.

Can we actually say the price would be that high for 2 years of Grienke based on what we saw at the deadline? I think he's definitely worth a look if the Brewers are serious at being potentially competitive next year. We could reasonably trade 3 or so prospects from AA to low A and not seriously hurt the next wave. That would also seem to match up with KC's time frame.

MR or back end starter doesn't matter too much to me, any big league return on an 11th round pick is a big help in developing a good deep team.

I kind of like the Nolasco idea, the Marlins like their young guns, and they really tend to view prospects as cost controlled for more like 4 years instead of 6 since they aren't too fond of paying near market value. Giving that they keep running Emillio Bonifacio out there Casey might be a nice starting point. Maybe you find an interesting match if you do a 3-way and use parts from Prince to match up even better?

I guess I'd move Heckathorn up based on performance. Rogers has suddenly got very interesting with all of his pitches. Though it leads to some interesting questions. Have the results improved because it's really hard for batters to prep and guess on a guy who has that many pitches? Is it an issue of lack of a scouting report by other teams with the new pitch? Is it Rogers feeling more comfortable on the mound that he can throw what he wants? Or is it the case that he can pick and choose which pitches are actually working for him on any given night, instead of trying to force a pitch he can throw, but doesn't have the feel for on that night. It will be interesting to see how the last month of the minor league season plays out. Anybody think Rogers could get a call-up and maybe an extended look in spring if he keeps throwing so well?

I do think there is a decent case for this being a combination of flexibility and proactive decision making. Take this move, along with Prince, and the announcement about Lawrie and Gamel investigating new positions really does move the bar. Just a week ago we had all of this essentially pure fan wish casting about moving guys to get a better defensive alignment. I read this as pretty much a reshuffle of the bats after Prince is dealt. The flexibility is that Melvin seems to have set himself up to be able to acquire the best offense defense combo bat between OF, 1st, and 3rd after Prince leaves. He is even in a position to not necessarily having to acquire another player to replace Prince, just promoting from within and trying to focus on the rotation. It entirely reasonable to assume that Prince's bat won't be completely replaced (at least the near 1.000 OPS version), however I'd say most of the reshufflings of Gamel, Casey, Lawrie, and Hart have a higher defensive upside than any possibility where Prince is at first.