kramnoj

No I think it is borderline useless. Is there anything to support how useless you think it is? I'd be curious to see it. There are certainly players that OPS+ doesn't treat well. Ichiro for one. But for the most part, I think OPS+ is decent at what it aims to do. Does 2 healthy years out of 5 sound good? No, but it's better than 1 out of 4. 2 out of 6 would have been more representative than 1 of 4. It's true that Ellis has more often played in 120 than 150 games, and it is certainly a factor. But I would rather have Ellis for 120 games and random AAA 2B for 42 than some of the other 2B that are available. And by "I", I mean random MLB team. Each team obviously has their own needs and preferences.

My problem with Ellis is his stats really come from one single season. His OPS+ is better than league average in 3 of 6 seasons. OPS+ has its weaknesses, but I'm not really sure how you can say its borderline useless. It is what it is, it measures the player's ability to provide benefit with a bat compared to park and league average. He'll be 32 years old next year and has 1 fully healthy year in the past 4. You could also say he's been healthy in 2 of his last 5. Not sure why you would cut off that healthy year.

Hudson may not get that 4/$40M deal that his success would indicate. I don't know that there are enough teams that 1. Have a need and 2. Have the money, or the desire, to spend. He's good enough that he will get a deal, but the Mets would probably be bidding against themselves if they offered a deal that high. They could probably get by with a 3/$24M type deal. It's always risky doing that, you never know if some team is desperate enough to surprise you and outbid you, and you never know if an agent is making up false offers to solicit a higher bid from you. I guess it doesn't really matter to this discussion, though. I doubt Hudson is high on the Brewers wish list, and I agree that Hudson to the Mets makes the most sense. I guess someone is going to get Luis Castillo for cheap if they want this year.

I believe insurance frequency on player contracts has decreased with the recent rise of the salaries. The last I heard, only the first 3 years could be insured without paying exorbitant premiums. If a player like CC goes down, the money spent isn't really the loss, it was going to be spent anyway and you can't always get a replacement by just spending recovered money. The biggest loss is the productivity, and that's not something that can be recovered through insurance.

The importance of a leadoff hitter is exaggerated. Look at the teams left in the playoffs. There's good OBP but no basestealing, there's bad OBP and good basestealing and there's barely above league average OBP and very good basestealing. There isn't one leadoff hitter that is very good at OBP and a very good basestealer. Teams just need good players. If you have a guy that works well in the leadoff role, obviously you use them there, but it's not a need that needs to be filled to have a successful team.

I think the Brewers could benefit by seeing if Hall can be traded for something, or even given away to teams in need. The FA class for SS this year is quite weak. Furcal is probably the only guy that will get some big-dollar attention. If Bill Hall were available, he wouldn't have a good projection, but he would probably have the best history of offensive value. If some team was desperate to improve and wanted to take a chance, Hall might be worth a gamble. I've been looking through teams, seeing who they have in the system, who will have openings. There's a couple of teams that might want to take a chance on Hall at SS: Orioles: They had 5 different players start 20+ games at SS. Alex Cintron was the best of them, and his OPS+ was 81, and he should be a FA. The team was bad this year, and Angelos can't be happy about finishing last in the division. White Sox: Cabrera is a FA, and the Sox really don't have anyone at the position that looks ready to contribute offensively. Dodgers?: Obviously depends on if they re-sign Furcal. Don't see much depth at the position if Furcal leaves. I don't think this is likely, the Dodgers may feel pressure to focus on Manny and Lowe, the gamble of Hall probably isn't worth it to them. I wouldn't expect to get much, if anything for Halll in return, but it would be worth exploring whether some teams would take a chance on Hall regaining his form rather than going with youth or players who don't have the HR pop that Hall has.

2. At the time when Branyan had 12 HRs, he had only 20 RBIs, which did include a couple RBI singles, too. Granted, some of his HRs were pretty clutch and he gave the offense a good jolt. But the guy hardly did anything when anyone was on base. I think their grade for him wasn't far off. Branyan only had 62 PA when men were on base. His OPS of .722 was certainly low for him in those situations, but that's not far off from what a few Brewers had for their production. With RISP, Branyan's OPS was .742 in 38 PA. His production was lower compared to when he had nobody on, but it's not terrible production and it's a small sample. Looking at small samples is kinda crazy fun. In the 79 ABs that Branyan had with nobody on, Branyan had 22 hits. Those 22 hits included 9 HR and 6 doubles. So 15 extra base hits in 22 hits. 9 HRs in 22 hits. Incredible.

Who said anything about acquiring 3 FA pitchers? I don't even want to sign 1. Ajay's post: I love Sabathia, but maybe we would be better off having three good starting pitchers for that money instead of just one. The Brewers probably would be better off having 3 good starting pitchers for this kind of money, except that this kind of money probably only gets 2 starting pitchers in this offseason, and it may not even get 2 good pitchers, it may only get averagish pitchers. This of course assumes that you can get these pitchers to sign in Milwaukee, which can't be an assumption. That is the huge attraction of signing CC. He may be the best FA pitcher to be available for the foreseeable future, and he really enjoyed his couple of months that he had with this team, and it will give the Brewers some kind of advantage in retaining him. The advantage may be small, and it sounds like the only discount that the Brewers will get will be in years, not dollars, but it is an advantage that no other team that is likely to pursue him in FA this offseason will have.

If I had to construct a deal that was 5/$140M, I think this is how I would do it. 2009: $20M 2010: $20M 2011: $25M 2012: $25M 2013: $32M That gets you to $122M guaranteed, and leaves about $3-4M per year to split among incentives like IP, GS and Cy Young voting and CC is only 32 in the last year of his contract. Also, interestingly enough, 2013 would be the first year of the new TV contract. There are certainly all kinds of risks. The Brewers do this, and they really won't be able to sign any significant FA over the next 5 years. Pretty much every other dollar is going to go to retaining the stars that are currently in the system. The Brewers would be heavily relying on Escobar, Gamel, Jeffress, Salome, etc to be average or better Major leaguers from 2010-2013. They would need the current youngish players on the team to be better than they were this year. It's a huge gamble. In order for it to payoff, CC basically has to be Pedro Prime, except always healthy. I don't think any team has consistently devoted so much payroll room to one player and had it work out. Chances are that it wouldn't work out, too much of a chance of injury to CC, too much of a chance that CC regresses to being just a good-very good pitcher instead of the best pitcher in the league for 5 years, too much of a chance that other players on the team get injured or don't pan out, and the Brewers don't have resources to replace them. But the best chance the Brewers have of being a team that can contend for 90 wins a year is probably with CC on the team.

I don't believe he's had absolutely nothing to do with it, just that market size plays a larger role. He's done some good things & some bad things (like I already mentioned). I just think it's inaccurate to view him as the primary reason that the WS titles were won. Who here has said that Steinbrenner was the primary reason that WS titles were won? This is the definition of a strawman. You said that the Yankees success had more to do with market size. If that was the case, other big market teams should have won more often than they did in the time of Free Agency. The reason the payroll was low in the early/mid-90s was that Michael's skill in identifying young talent stocked the team with its stars (Jeter, Pettite, Posada, Rivera, etc.). The FA signings of that era were able to be kept at a more reasonable volume. Yes, this all occurred when Steinbrenner was owner. Steinbrenner changed. Whether it was by choice, because he had to, reluctantly, it doesn't matter. The Yankees had the best run in decades under the ownership of Steinbrenner.

One of the problems with the Branyan grade is that he is being penalized for being benched. It's not the Muscle's fault that Ned made a poor decision when he stopped writing Branyan's name in the lineup because of a small run of poor games. I think another factor is the desire to rely on batting average. Kapler's average over .300 is good! Branyan's average . 250 is bad http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/frown.gif. I think to some extent the writers are writing to who they perceive their audience to be. If the writers think their audience is going to rely heavily on BA to judge a player, the writers may let that influence their writing. The JS certainly has a platform to educate their audience and provide a more intelligent discussion, but they may feel that it would take up to much space to do, or that much of their audience wouldn't appreciate it.

The Brewers and CC could sign now if they want. I think there's a guideline where teams aren't supposed to announce hiring and firings during the playoffs so it's possible that a deal could be done and it wouldn't be officially announced until after the WS, but I don't think anything that big could stay secret that long. I believe there is a window after the WS where teams have exclusive negotiating rights before full FA starts. Certainly if FA begins and CC isn't signed, it wouldn't be likely that he would have chosen to stay. BTW, on the D-List this morning, Trenni said she heard from a friend in Vegas that they now have the odds of CC signing with the Brewers at 5-1. On Sunday it had been 100-1. Now, it's possible that Vegas has sources that have led them to change their odds, or some people could have placed so much money at the long odds that Vegas had to change just to cover themselves. I'm no gambling expert, but I thought it was interesting to hear.

I don't disagree that Steinbrenner has had some positive impact there, but I think assigning championships to an owner is assigning false praise. Like wins for a QB or P imo. This can go overboard. You shouldn't blame pitchers for not winning games if they have bad luck, but over a career, it is difficult for a pitcher to accumulate a lot more Wins than they deserve. You said that market size was responsible for the Yankees success, not Steinbrenner. If that was true, the Mets would have won more, the LA teams would have won more, the Chicago teams would have won more. I don't think the 5 teams in those markets combined equal the WS that the Yankees have won under Steinbrenner since he bought the Yankees. I don't know what percentage of credit Steinbrenner should get for the success under him, but someone should actually provide some level of detail to prove that he didn't have anything to do with it, if that is their claim. There are plenty of things that Steinbrenner did that Attanasio shouldn't emulate. I wouldn't want a repeat of the way Steinbrenner treated Winfield, I wouldn't want Mark to threaten to cancel his employee's dental coverage because of rising costs (he may have actually done it, I don't remember). I don't want a repeat of the way that the Yankees fired managers. But I think that Steinbrenner had an incredible drive to make his team successful, and he found people that he put in place that led to his team winning more than any other team. The Yankees current payroll advantage is obscene, but it wasn't always to the same degree. In the 90's the Yankees were always near the top, but they didn't always hold the top position, the Orioles were usually somewhat comparable in payroll to the Yankees and had a higher payroll in 98. And of course the Yankees recent obscene payroll advantage hasn't led them to the postseason success they wanted.

If Mark A feels he should make these decisions then let's just do away with the GM position like Jones did in Dallas (actually hias son is now the GM). Again maybe I'm overeacting (I sure hope I am) but I don't like the way this smells. I don't think there's any reason to think that Attanasio wants to be the GM of the Brewers. He presumably knows that there are details of being a GM that he isn't skilled in and wants someone with Melvin's experience to handle. But if he feels that a decision needs to be made and that Melvin won't make it because it's not the way things are done in baseball, Mark isn't going to let tradition stand in the way of making a decision he feels is right. It certainly sounds like Attanasio is very involved. I don't think it's common for most owners to have the level and frequency of discussion that it sounds like Attanasio and Melvin have.

That's not entirely true. The Yankees didn't always lead the league in payroll. The Yankees always leading the league in payroll came after the Yankees failed to win World Series. One example isn't really a discussion point. All people make bad decisions.

Is there an owner that has won more than the 6 World Series that the Yankees have under Steinbrenner? I would love it if Attanasio became meddlesome and produced that kind of success. Jerry Jones isn't really a good example either, since the Cowboys became successful again under him. An active owner has to walk a line where he is involved, but still respects the authority of the people who he puts in place. Jones obviously built a good team but let his ego get in his way. Attanasion needs to stop short of that line, and that doesn't seem like a problem to me. As far as the Molitor thing goes, its just a rumor, and we don't know what position Attanasio wants Molitor to have. Its surely jumping the gun to imagine motives when we don't have anything close to a full story.

http://www.baseball-refer...i/bsplit.cgi?n1=counscr01 is the splits page for Counsell. About 1/3 of the way down is the batting order position stats. I'm not sure how much you can learn just by looking at those lines. It's only natural to think that when Counsell was a better hitter, he hit earlier in the order, and when he was a bad hitter, he hit later. So it's not really a surprise that Counsell's worst OBP is when he hit 9th (It does look like he was a PH quite often while hitting 9th, so that partially explains poor performance if he was facing quality relievers). His OBP when he has hit 1st, 7th and 8th is .347-.349. It was .334 while hitting 2nd. All other positions are too small to really tell us anything. BTW, if you ever want to look at player splits, you go to the player page, and above the career batting numbers there is a line that has a few links and one of them is the splits link.

I didn't realize how awful Seattle's pitching was this season. I guess it depends on what the Mariners goal is in 2009. If they think they can contend in 2009, this might make sense. But if they are going to have to rebuild, it doesn't make sense to add 2 years of Suppan's contract.

I think Durham coming back depends entirely on how much money he wants. If his role is going to be platoon 2B and PH, I would have a hard time paying him what he is used to getting. Would he settle for making a mil or two and getting part time play? He doesn't have the experience (or defensive ability) of playing other positions, so he wouldn't even be the replacement of Counsell as Veteran Utility Infielder. Some of those who advocate trading Fielder aren't doing so solely because of money. Through September, Prince's poor defense hurt the team more than his bat was helping. He obviously had a great September, but Prince's weight struggles are certainly a concern, and his eating more payroll room has to be a consideration when trying to determine his future value. If Prince could be traded for a solid SP and the team could replace him with a reasonable stopgap, it has to be considered.

Here are the 2009 commitments for the A's Chavez 3B $11M Crosby SS $5.25M Street RP Arby $4-6M? Duchsherer SP Arby $3-4m? Cust LF Arby $3-4M? Buck OF Pre-Arby $.5M Casilla RP Pre-Arby $.5M Denorfia OF Pre-Arby $.5M Brown RP Pre-Arby $.5M Eveland SP Pre-Arby $.5M Hannahan 3B Pre-Arby $.5M Suzuki C Pre-Arby $.5M Sweeney RF Pre-Arby $.5M Barton 1B Pre-Arby $.5M Braden SP/RP Pre-Arby $.5M Devine RP Pre-Arby $.5M Gallagher SP Pre-Arby $.5M Carlos Gonzalez CF Pre-Arby $.5M Gio Gonzalez SP/RP Pre-Arby $.5M Ziegler RP Pre-Arby $.5M So I count at least $35 Million for 20 players. Some of those reserve OF could go to other players, but the cost would be the same. The A's opening day payroll was just under $48M this year, so it looks like they have room to spend. Needs: SP. They could really use some help here, they went with a lot of young talent that didn't work out yet. I don't see Beane signing any long term commitments, but I could definitely see someone getting a Lohse-type 1 year deal. 2B. Ellis is a FA. Eric Patterson has had decent numbers in AAA but hasn't shown it in the majors yet. Do the A's bring Ellis back for a year, or go cheap and young with Patterson? CF? They didn't get much offensive production here. Do they look for a veteran stopgap and let the kids get some seasoning in the minors, or just let the kids play and get big league experience? 1B? Barton really struggled at the plate. Same situation as above. Could be an interesting offseason for the A's. They could try to mix and match cheap veterans or just stick with the youth, have a payroll of around $40M and position themselves for 2010 and beyond.

2B don't seem to be compensated all that well, for the most part. It's a demanding position to play, and players careers end there earlier than any position but C, usually. Outfielders that have his talent get over $10M per for 4-5 years. It really depends on which teams need a 2B and how much they want to fill that need vs their other needs.

Here are the commitments for the Astros going into next year: Tejada SS $13M Berkman 1B $14.5M Oswalt SP $14M Lee LF $18.5M Matsui 2B $5M Valverde CL Arby $6M-7M? Wiggington 3B Arby $5-7M? Geary RP Arby $2M? Erstad OF $1.75M Backe P Arby $1-2M? Byrdak RP Arby $1M? Moehler SP $2.3M Wandy SP Arby $3M? Sampson SP/RP Pre-Arby $.5M Bourn CF Pre-Arby $.5M Pence RF Pre-Arby $.5M Abercrombie OF Pre-Arby $.5M I have about $91M, and maybe a bit more for 17 players. Needs: C (they have 2 guys on the roster in Towles and Quintero, but they were both awful as hitters. CF? Bourn was just an awful hitter. SP (Wolf is FA). Opening Day payroll was just under $89M, and they highest payroll they have had is $92.5. I don't really see the Astros being players in the FA market unless they trade away some of their high salary players.

I love roster construction, supply/demand, the whole thing. I've been following baseball for years at bbtf.org and every offseason fans are stunned by deals that players get. I think it's because fans often expect players to get paid similar to what other players have been paid in the past, rather than looking at who is available, what team's needs are, and how much money is available to spend. With that in mind, I'll start a project to look at each team, who they have, who is leaving, how much money they are committed to, and what needs they may have. This is all my speculation based on looking at baseball-reference and Cot's, and I certainly won't pretend to understand each team's needs, so I'm hoping fans will chime in with their own opinions and insights. Angels Hunter CF $17.5M Vlad RF $15M (this is actually a team option, but I think it's a lock that he's back) Kelvim Escobar SP $9.5M Matthews OF $10M Lackey SP $9M (this is another team option, but I have to think he's coming back) Figgins 3B Arby Guessing $5-6M, have heard he may be super utility Shields RP $5M Speier RP $4.75M Izturis UI Arby Guessing $2M Quinlan CI Arby He played Corner Positions, is 31 and had an OPS+ of 70. Seems like a non-tender to me. Morales 1B Split Deal (Most would be $.6M) Weaver SP Pre-Arby $.5M or so Kendrick 2B Pre-Arby $.5M or so Willits 1B/RF bench Pre-Arby $.5M or so Napoli C Pre-Arby $.5M or so Saunders SP Pre-Arby $.5M or so Santana SP Arby $4-6M? Aybar SS Pre-Arby $.5M or so Mathis C Pre-Arby $.5 or so So I count around $86M to 19 players. Needs: 1B, Closer Other players who may be in the picture: Brandon Wood, SS. Matthew Brown 3B/1B. Opening Day Payroll was over $119M. If they kept payroll the same, they would have about $33M to spend. Texeira is likely to get $20-25M and Rodriguez is likely to get $14-15M. If the Angels upped payroll, they may be able to retain both. Or they may let both go and look for other options.

Suppan for Matthews is interesting, but there's a couple things to point out. Garret Anderson may not be retained by the Angels, so the team may not consider Matthews expendable. While Suppan's remaining contract isn't going to be fun to endure, Matthews is signed for 3 more years, through his 36 year old season. I'm not sure that Matthews is so much better that I would rather suffer through one additional bad year over Suppan's contract.

Of course, since both of these samples are less than 50 PA, they tell you essentially nothing about his actual hitting ability, which is orders of magnitude beyond Escobar's at this point in their respective careers. How many orders of magnitude would that be specifically? Dillon didn't swing the bat that well this year, at any level. His one skill this year was walking.