Ennder

I get what people are saying with the Loney comparison but I think that is underestimating his power a good bit. I think Sean Casey with more strike outs is a better comp for him. 20 HR power, good but not elite BB rate, should hit for a decent average but probably not as high as Casey did.

The inexperience thing is pretty huge to me. I'd assume he is poor defensively to start and I'll be pleasantly surprised if he ends up average or better.

We don't have a true every day leadoff hitter on the roster(closest we have is Morgan vs RHP) and we have a whole bunch of #5/#6 type hitters. Optimally Gamel will produce and we can use his bat to break up the RH hitters some. I personally don't like Hart leading off vs RHP, he has a career .319 OBP against them. He keeps a lot of his power against RHP but loses all of the OBP so he should probably be batting 5th or 6th against them. vs RHP Morgan Weeks Braun Aramis Gamel Hart Lucroy Gonzalez vs LHP Hart Weeks Braun Aramis Gamel Lucroy Gonzalez Gomez

I won't take it because i don't care what WAR stats said about Casey last year, he sucked and if Gamel plays at the same level, he should be benched much sooner than McGehee was and i'm a big supporter of Matt. His defense really wasn't bad at all last year, wouldn't surprise me if he was actually above average there. I would tend to agree that he is a good case for those who dislike WAR though since he was pretty miserable overall. My post was meant to be lighthearted but it obviously wasn't taken that way given the responses to it. If Gamel can put up a positive WAR though I'd be fine with it even if it is just something like a 0.3. Obviously in his case it would probably be negative fielding and positive hitting. I'm betting he is more of a 1-2 WAR type player, .800 OPS with bad defense.

I strongly disagree, but McGehee had a positive WAR last year so I'd actually take it~. He kind of lucked into that WAR with what was probably a flukey defensive performance but I'd still take it!

Wolf was never meant to be a #2 pitcher and he wasn't paid like one. #2 money would be something like $14M a year like say Ryan Dempster or Jake Peavy made. #3 money is more like $10M a year like Ted Lilly. Wolf has been an above average #3 pitcher by stats so far during the contract so unless he falls flat this season it is going to come out as a big win. I was more than a little worried that this 3rd year is the part that we would regret so hopefully I was wrong.

The two provided essentially equal value last year. fWAR had Pineda 0.7 higher and bWAR had Marcum 0.5 higher. Pineda just does not have the innings built up on his arm to be expected to pitch deep into the playoffs after a full season in the majors. Most likely we would have either wrecked his arm or have to go into the bullpen for part of the year and hope that he adjusts to it ok to get him into the rotation for the playoffs.

Marcum was a pretty important part of the roster last year for sure and if he hadn't messed his pants in the post season he could have easily been the reason we went to the World Series, he gave us the depth in the rotation to have a chance and Pineda wouldn't have done that. I didn't have a big problem with the trade largely because I didn't think Lawrie would stick at 3B, if he ends up being an ok defensive 3B then my valuation was completely off and he is more valuable than I expected.

He took a big step up last year even though nobody seemed to notice. I don't think he'll ever be anything amazing as a 1B but he won't be a big hole on the team this season either. Just look at his K rates in the majors and minors to understand where I'm coming from, he got it last year, it just didn't translate into the slash stats as much as you might expect.

Like the .422 SLG that Haren put up in 2010 which was also a fluke seen by his 2011 or the .394 by Hamels which was a fluke etc. SLG just is not a useful way to try to judge pitchers over a tiny little 177 IP sample. We obviously are never going to agree on how to evaluate pitching but I'd think at the very least you could realize that one year of results isn't a very good way to judge the future because one year of results are erratic for all players. That is the entire reason people look at the underlying stats instead of the results, they are just downright better at predicting future success.

Assuming baseball doesn't leak this stuff as normal procedure we wouldn't know whether anyone ever successfully defended against a failed test in the majors because we would have never heard about it. Not sure why people keep pointing to that as the reason he can't get cleared.

I think Greinke is our best starting pitcher but I'd start Gallardo. Keep the pressure off of Greinke and go with the home town guy. Those post season stats are painful but I will give them a slight pass since the strike zone was so absolutely silly, when you can't throw anything inside and get it called a strike it is pretty hard to succeed which is why the NL pitching in general stunk in the playoffs.

I agree with almost everything so don't need to do one http://www.ezboard.com/intl/aenglish/images/emoticons/smile.gif. I'll take Greinke over Latos and Phillips over Weeks, rest of it I agree with and don't see where anyone can disagree outside of the Braun vs Holiday area. most of it is a complete no brainer.

Sure it is subjective, it just seems odd because in this case it is so over the top clear cut. Phillips WAR for the past 5 seasons.... 6.0, 4.4, 3.3, 3.3, 5.1. .784 OPS, very good defense. Weeks WAR for the past 5 seasons.... 3.7, 6.5, 1.4, 2.6, 3.4. .805 OPS, giving him the benefit of the doubt we'll call it average defense. Phillips has a better WAR over the past season, past 2 seasons, past 3 seasons, past 4 seasons and past 5 seasons. If you match it up by best season to worst season WAR Weeks loses almost every matchup as well. At best if both healthy I'd think they are a wash but Weeks has so much more of an injury history this should be clear cut. Most of it I can just think to myself I disagree but it is close enough that I can just chalk it up to being subjective, 2B is just clear cut Phillips to me.

Well if he is the 2nd best #2 out of the 3 teams it suggests that the #1's are all better than him and at least one #2 which makes him 5th best. I still think the biggest fault with this is Phillips not being the top 2B, he has just been better than Weeks over the past few seasons especially when you count durability.

Everyone is welcome to their opinion but I personally don't care about the results of 2011, that season is over. xFIP and FIP both show a much stronger year to year correlation than ERA is the reality and what I care about is what he is likely to do over the next few seasons. ERA is heavily out of a pitchers control over a sample of 200 IP or less. Even ignoring that as I posted he has a 3.41 ERA over his past 945 IP and that is playing most of his games in the AL and all of his games with horrible defensive teams behind him and his peripherals have improved over that time so nothing seems to be regressing here. That is why I said I lock him up now because hopefully the off season in 2010 combined with the goofy ERA from 2011 depresses his value and you get a bargain. As for luck, I doubt you can find a major league baseball player who doesn't believe in it playing a part in individual games. Just like Poker though when given a large enough sample luck (or variance) gets weeded out, 177 IP is not a large sample for ERA, it takes around 500 IP for it to really normalize.

I'd take Greinke over Latos, I'd take him over Gallardo too though. I'd give the edge to Phillips at 2B. Weeks might have a higher peek but Phillips has been better over the long term by a pretty significant amount.

He is actually a below average defensive SS and an erratic offensive player who is getting up there in age and starting to have injury problems. I'd have liked him too but not sure I want to pay him $6M and a player. He profiles much better as a 2B who backs up SS than a full time SS though so I think the Rockies makes a lot of sense for him.

Greinke was one of the best pitchers in baseball last year. I'd be looking to extend him now while his value is still low because after this season he will likely be asking for ace money assuming he stays healthy. Over the past 4 years he has a 3.37 ERA with 3.8 K per BB and last year he actually had better peripherals than in his CY year, he is on the verge of elite. My guess is we can't afford him though and I'd wait to see how Marcum pitches this year before discussing extending him.

It is certainly plausible that this years team is as good as the one we started the season with last year. A lot obviously depends on Braun. A million things could go wrong that could still make this team worse than last years though.

Well TV experts are usually pretty clueless about everything so I just don't pay any attention to them anymore. We'll see what the projection systems think about them, that is usually closer to the truth.

I agree over the whole season it is a myth, but just last year how many times was Prince intentionally walked in a situation to put the team ahead or tie only to have Casey come up and make outs? At the end of the year all the free passes make the OPS look good but when it comes to winning a game I don't think anyone would rather have Prince on first than at the plate. If they IBB Braun constantly he'll end up on 2B a lot and scoring from 1B on doubles. The speed makes a huge difference in this equation. Braun will also have someone better than McGehee hitting behind him.

I certainly agree. I was more talking about the people that seem to think that this somehow vaults the Tigers way up from where they were last season. The team they are putting on the field to start 2012 isn't really much better than the one they ended 2011 with mostly because of the huge hit they already took with the VMart injury. I think people are probably overstating Fielder's final seasons being a disaster. It is always a huge risk to sign any player to 9 years but Fielder is more athletic than most 'big guys'. The fact he is short in some ways gives him an advantage since it tends to be easier on your knees and back which is where the 'big guys' tend to wear down most often. Finally he doesn't have the typical old player skills either because you generally think of a higher K rate than he has shown, he can produce without the HR. Elite players tend to age differently anyway, they peak younger and longer. Finally he is 27 years old which means the deal is only through age 36 which is a rarity for such a long deal. He most likely will slip some as he approaches his mid 30s but I just don't see his bat collapsing and if he moves to DH in the next few years that will only help his health. As for this showing the evils of baseball. If you have a team full of good young players in the NFL you can't keep them all either. We could even afford to pay for Fielder if we had wanted to, the big issue is the guaranteed contracts meaning we can't just cut him if he starts to suck like in the NFL. The salary cap works in the NFL because of the structure of the league, it just isn't appropriate for baseball. But you are kidding yourself if you are trying to say that in the NFL this would never happen, players leave NFL teams constantly because the teams can't afford them.

Aramis will provide plenty of protection, the whole protection thing only really matters when you have a really weak player hitting behind you. Gamel has to step up to give us a power LH bat though or that could be a bit of an issue.

In the short run the Tigers payed like $20M to gain 1 win for 2012 because Fielder is a marginal upgrade over VMart at best. They are still a 87 win or so team who can miss the playoffs if things go poorly for them. 2013 this makes them a monster though assuming VMart is healthy.