Ennder

Teams are valuing defense more and more which makes a lot of older players less attractive. Steriods obviously has some sort of an impact on this. Teams are going global more and a lot more international players are coming into the league so the overall player pool is expanding making vets more expendable. The economy has teams wanting to cut payroll a little so they have gone with younger rather than more expensive. I'm sure there are other reasons I'm missing.

We have so many question marks in the lineup that I don't think Macha can really know what the long term batting order is going to be. Will Gomez or Escobar get on base enough to bat higher in the order? Is Hart going to hit at all? Is McGehee going to be a viable 3B or was last year just a fluke? Is Weeks going to be healthy and productive? The lineup is Fielder and Braun and a bunch of I don't knows.

Peak age has gotten younger, it is generally considered to be more in the 25-28 range now. You are over the hill by 30 most of the time. Game just keeps getting younger and younger since the steroids testing.

This is one of those situations where if they were allowed to pick the number between the two offers they probably would have. $7M seems like too much for Wandy given he still has another year of arbitration left. He has been hurt a lot over the past 3 seasons missing at least one start(and usually more than 1) 6 different times due to injuries. He has only pitched one full healthy season in the majors so far. His 3 year ERA is 3.70 which is good but not elite. I'd think if he repeats last year he gets a huge raise in his final arbitration season.

But I didn't, my argument had nothing to do with market size. Just that baseball is competitive for the majority of teams. All I did was show that about the same percentage of teams made the big game between the two sports. The numbers posted really have no meaning in the context of the sports because market size is only a tiny bit of the puzzle for why one team would have an advantage over another.

Those ratings are meaningless without some context though and it isn't very useful comparing them across sports with such different structures. Pitt has the 20th size ranking but they are more equivalent to an MLB large market team for the NFL than say Arizona is ever going to be. On that NFL list the impressive teams are NO, BAL, STL, CAR and IND and maybe sneak in SEA. The rest of those teams might as well be large market teams in the context of the NFL because they are places free agents are going to want to sign and places that probably can sign players for below market value. MLB teams I"d be impressed by are TB, COL, FLA and ARI. STL might be a smaller market but they've always had a healthy payroll so hard to include them on the baseball side. Baseball should be judged more on team payroll than anything with market size being a distant 2nd since endorsements don't mean quite as much to the baseball player while they are a large part of why a football player will pick one team over another. As for most teams can't hope to make the playoffs. AL West - Rangers, Mariners and Angels all should be considered strong contenders and Oakland could sneak in with some health from Sheets/Dusch. AL Central - Twins, White Sox, Tigers can all make very strong cases for being contenders. The Royals are run horribly so like the Lions aren't in the discussion. Cleveland is probably in rebuild mode. AL East - Rays, Yankees, Red Sox are all strong contenders. The Orioles and Blue Jays could be contenders in a different division if things bounce right with their young players. This division is obviously the problem, it all revolves around the Yankees needing to be fixed. I'd say 12 of 16 AL teams have a real shot at making the playoffs. NL West - Dodgers and Rockies are strong contenders. Giants and Diamondbacks could easily be in the picture with some good health. NL Central - Any team but the Pirates could realistically win this sad division. Cardinals are the favorites if they keep the big 4 healthy all year but hard to put odds on Carpenter with his injury history. NL East - Nats probably don't have enough and I'm not seeing it with the Mets. The other 3 teams are all strong contenders. As many as 12 of the 14 NL teams could have a shot to make the playoffs. I'd say about 10 of 14 have a real shot. http://www.beyondtheboxsc...probabilities-simulation Using PECOTA simulations there were 4 teams that came out with an under 10% chance to make the playoffs for 2010. 17 of 30 had a 20% chance or better. Baseball needs some work still but it isn't anywhere near as bad as people try to make it sound like. A salary floor would certainly help and better media revenue sharing is an obvious next step as well.

Teams that made the World Series in the past decade. Only one team has made it more than twice and 14 of 30 teams have made it. 53% of the teams did not make it this past decade. NYY - 4 NYN - 1 PHI - 2 TB -1 BOS - 2 COL - 1 STL - 2 DET - 1 CHA - 1 HOU - 1 FLA - 1 LAA - 1 SFG - 1 ARI - 1 Teams that made a Super Bowl the past decade. Only one team has made it more than twice and 14 of 32 teams have made it. 56% of teams have not made it this past decade. PIT - 2 ARI - 1 NYG -2 NE - 4 IND -1 CHI - 1 SEA -1 PHI - 1 CAR - 1 TB - 1 OAK - 1 STL - 2 BAL - 1 TEN - 1 This entire concept that Baseball is not competitive at all and only the big market teams have a shot has been debunked in so many ways now that I'm always surprised people still make the argument. The cap doesn't make things magically fair for every team, large market teams can pay their players less and small market teams still struggle to get free agents in the NFL. Baseball DOES still need some work especially as far as the Yankees are concerned but it isn't anywhere near as bad as people make it out to be. Baseball is always going to be harder to make the playoffs though because they play a real schedule and injuries don't play as big a role so any gap in talent becomes more apparent than in the NFL.

I'd say a healthy Zaun catches about 120 games or so. His injury history suggests he probably will have at least one DL stint though which cuts it down a little but will probably mean our #3 C gets some play as well.

The cubs won't win anytime soon because they have given a lot of terrible contracts to aging players who are trending the wrong way. Karma has pretty little to do with it.

You are looking at this completely wrong. These are projections and not predictions. A prediction is a snapshot of the results of a single season and you would want them to look like a historical season, you are basically making an educated guess on which teams will perform above or below their talent level. A projection is the average of the results of thousands of seasons, these are going to always lead to a set of wins-losses that don't look normal. If somehow every single team in baseball had exactly 81 win talent to start the season there would still be a few teams that won 90 games and a few that won less than 70. The proper projection would be that every team wins 81 games. A proper prediction would be a random guess on which teams had more players play to the top of their talent level or got hurt etc. They already admitted they should have put a beta tag on it for the first week or so, they rushed it out because people are always complaining they don't come out early enough. But the projections should change based on moves being made in baseball and playtime data being updated etc. They should be changing constantly throughout spring training for sure.

Because the market size by itself is meaningless? If we are the smallest market in baseball and have an average payroll we aren't at some extra disadvantage due to market size. You can pretty much look at team payroll over the past few years and you'll get a better idea of things than worrying about the market size. I would agree we need to get cheaper in the bullpen. Part of that is hopefully a scouting department that can pick/develop some pitching, something that we completely failed at under Jack Z. Most teams build at least half of their bullpen internally. The fact we've had what, 2 useful pitchers come up in our system in the past 5 years is hurting quite a bit. They managed to rebuild the offense since Melvin came to town but the pitching prospects we've had have been a disgrace so far.

Plus he has a pretty long injury history. I doubt Parra really has any trade value at this point. We just have to stick him out there and hope he puts it all together in 2010.

Especially when that one person is Suppan!

Considering who he was quoting I'd feel safe in this assumption. To be fair Willingham has had pretty chronic injury problems and is a downright bad defensive player. Hart has had a one non-injury DL trip and would probably be able to make a case for being average defensively(though I think he is below average). I think Willingham is a better player but I can see where they could get by using his numbers in the comparison.

The market size isn't important, the payroll size is. We have an average payroll with only 12 teams having significantly higher than we do. We have a very reasonable chance to sign him if we want to. Out of the 12 teams with significantly higher payroll than us a few will be looking for 1B in the near future I'm sure. The Mariners, Mets, Braves, Dodgers(if they give up on Loney), White Sox if Konerko gets too old. There are certainly teams that will be going after him out there.

They need to sign about 4 hitters so they have a major league lineup.

Something showing class or not is always going to be opinion as is the majority of what people post on forums in general, so there is no need to qualify the statement.

Sure you have the right to boo someone, but it shows a complete lack of class most of the time people do it. About the only time I would boo someone at a game is if they showed a lack of effort. Hitter hits a lazy pop up and doesn't run to first, guy drops ball but gets him out. That is about the only time I would personally boo a player.

Damon is about the only one, maybe Gomes. I imagine Dye wants more than $4.8M and I don't want someone like Emil Brown or Garret Anderson at this point.

Pay site so I can't post everything, here are the top 11 though. They don't think much of the system with only one 5 star and one 4 star and a 2 star making the top 11. That is very weak. Five-Star Prospects 1. Alcides Escobar, SS Four-Star Prospects 2. Brett Lawrie, 2B Three-Star Prospects 3. Mat Gamel, 3B 4. Wily Peralta, RHP 5. Cody Scarpetta, RHP 6. Jon Lucroy, C 7. Eric Arnett, RHP 8. Kyle Heckathorn, RHP 9. Kentrail Davis, OF 10. Angel Salome, C Two-Star Prospects 11. Logan Schafer, OFI was more than a little surprised by Gomez's placement in the all 25 and under list. I assume Braun would be #2 if he were younger. 1. Prince Fielder, 1B 2. Yovani Gallardo, RHP 3. Alcides Escobar, SS 4. Carlos Gomez, CF 5. Brett Lawrie, 2B 6. Mat Gamel, 3B 7. Wily Peralta, RHP 8. Cody Scarpetta, RHP 9. Jon Lucroy, C 10. Eric Arnett, RHP

A lot of the parity has nothing to do with revenue sharing. The good teams pay less for players and the bad teams have to overpay anyone to play for them. The big market teams also pay less for players as they know they can get additional funds from endorsements. The short schedule and lack of depth for injuries have more to do with parity in the NFL than the cap and revenue sharing. If baseball moved to a 40 game schedule you'd have parity in baseball as well because even bad teams can get off to a hot start.

There is no compelling reason to think Lofgren is a viable major league player so I'd imagine they offer him back to the Indians and stick him in AAA if the Indians don't want him back. I'm not too worried about guys like Iribarren losing ABs in spring training because he is unlikely to ever be a major league starter in the first place. There are usually more than enough AB and IP to around in spring training, especially on a team with so few roster spots with multiple options.

I was at a party of over 40 people for the Super Bowl and maybe 4 or 5 actually cared about the game. The ratings of any given super bowl really have no meaning in comparison to the teams playing, it has turned into a national holiday more or less and only a small percentage of those watching care about the football. This is true but if you take an honest look at the sports a large chunk of this is just in the formatting of the sport itself. If baseball had a 16 game season about 90% of the teams would have a shot at the playoffs too. The NFL has built in parity just because of the tiny schedule if nothing else. Out of all the major sports I'd say it is hardest to luck into the playoffs in MLB. They could probably promote parity by reducing the numbers of games played as much as by fixing the top payroll teams(which does need work for sure).

That is certainly true, I was making a rather large assumption that Bush will look reasonable after the injury. If it has a long term effect then he could lose his spot as well.

No that isn't true either. They were good for 1 year under Duncan and bad the next season. Jason Marquis 'fixed' by Duncan in 2004 with a 3.71 ERA. Next season 4.13, season after that 6.02. Jeff Suppan had a 4.37 ERA in 2001 in the AL and a 4.19 in 2003 and then went to the cardinals where he had one season with a sub 4 ERA and moved back to the low 4s. Wellemeyer was 'fixed' by Duncan in 2008 and then in 2009 posted a 5.89 ERA. Lohse was 'fixed' b Duncan in 2008 and then 2009 posted a 4.74 ERA which was higher than his career average. All of these fixed by Duncan pitchers had one career year followed by reverting right back to their normal stats. He hasn't really fixed any pitcher long term other than maybe Carpenter.