Thurston Fluff

If there is a place he can succeed it's in Texas. A hitter's park with protection in the lineup. I'm happy he's getting his shot but equally happy it isn't the Brewers giving it to him. I hope for the same with Gwynn.

They are owned by a cash strapped entity that has just filed for bankruptcy and they are trying to sell the team in a tough environment. Just prior to putting the team on the market they added a huge amount of payroll with Soriano, Marquis and Lilly along with huge bumps in salary for some of their own guys. Adding a bunch of overhead that inhibits the new owner from remaking the team as he sees fit does not help sell a team. Put all that together it's hard to claim trading DeRosa for what they did is anything other than a salary dump. I'm not sure if it was done to add flexibility to sign someone else for that money or just a way to trim the payroll. Either way it seems they are not going to be adding payroll.

The reason I think the Counsell signing and the Miles signing are not comparable is because of the makeup of the rest of the roster. Right or wrong Melvin signed Counsell to help the young core of players learn how to handle a pennant race all season long. The Cubs have a roster full of veterans, most of whom have several years of play of experience. Miles was singed for his on field performance alone. Counsell was for both on field and off field reasons.

That Harden/Gaudin pickup was a great trade imo. Sure, Harden has injury concerns, but no pitcher doesn't (even if his are stronger than most). When he's healthy, he's an awesome performer. He is an awesome performer for about 5 innings. The one knock on him, other than the injuries, is he rarely goes deep in games. In fact if you look at 08 he went 5.92 which was the inning/game rate since 04 when he averaged just over 6 innings over 31 games. 04 Was the only time he went 31 games with an ERA of 3.99. Add in the fact that he spent more time on IR than the field the next several years and it seems apparent he can not be reasonably expected to pitch an average of six innings ever again in his career. At this point it seems the best you can expect is 5ish inning and maybe he can go all year. Great pitcher to me means one who can ptich at a high level and eat innings. As long as you have a good bullpen behind him he's certainly one you can win with. But greatness to me are guys who can reasonable be expected to finish what they start a fair amount of time.

Miles OPS+ in 2008: 99. Counsell's was 76 and that was an improvement over the 65 and 69 in his other two seasons as a Brewer. Since Counsell isn't on the team next year what does it matter? If you are comparing Melvin and Hendry getting a 4th infielder it should be compared to what Melvin does for his bench for next year not what he did for last year's team. None of the moves either team has made so far are ones that has any sort of time restraint on them. This move could as easily been made in January as it was today so I don't know why it's a big deal that Hendry made it now and Melvin is taking more time to make that sort of deal.

I think the variance in systems for measuring defense is how they determine the significance of each skill. If you determine range is a high priority Hardy will measure a lot worse than if you think arm strength or consistency is. You can tell if a player is great or terrible if all the various systems agree but I think trying to rank them is nearly impossible.

#3 is a radical idea but it's at least interesting to think about. Don't know how it would work since teams fund the developmental leagues and supply them with coaches.

thats the beauty of the new value stats at fangraphs. giambi works perfectly since they have the win values starting in 2002, his first year in pinstripes. he was worth 73 million dollars over the life of his 115 million contract. in only three of the seven seasons did he earn his actual salary. Which is why I don't think the Hammonds singing was any worse than the Giambi one. Giambi was below his value for more years than Hammonds entire contract. His overall value deficit was more than Hammonds entire contract as well. The only difference is the Giambi contract didn't really hurt the Yankees because they could afford to eat that loss better than the Brewers circa 2002 could the much smaller Hammonds deal. If the Brewers made the same level mistake today they might not be harmed as much since they have internal options and better financial footing than they did then but all thing considered Hammonds is no bigger a mistake than Giambi. Even if he was a much poorer player over life of the contract.

Woodson was injured in the final year in Oakland and was battling some nagging injuries and was a question mark coming into that years free agency pool. Ryan Pickett is a spare part player. You're rihgt about Woodson but Pickett is a spare part? When oyu can get an above average player at his postion entering his prime via free agnecy it is hardly a spare part. If Pickett is a spare part then so is getting an above average 26 year old 3rd baseman. If you are going by Pro Bowlers as being a gauge to judge how good a player is in the NFL you are using the wrong indicator to come to your conclusion. If they play at that level I'm not. Woodson has clearly played at that level. Do you really think we would have been able to get him if anyone could take a chance on him with no worry about salary cap ramifications? Do you really think guys who collect big names like Jerry Jones or Daniel Schneider wouldn't have just taken him because of the name if they didn't have to worry about salary cap ramifications? The Woodson signing was the equivalent of the Yankees signing AJ Burnett. An often injured great talent. The only difference is the Yankees only long term risk is financial which is to say irrelevant. The same signing in football would also have a competitive risk even after the player is gone. That makes guys like Woodson more affordable if football than guys like Burnett in baseball.

You said that the Giambi deal made Hammonds look like a bargain. You are right I did overstate this point. There is no way the Hammonds deal is a bargain. Just because something is less expensive doesn't make it a bargain. But it does mean it won't hamper the team as long. It was the years that made the Giambi deal so bad and the Hammonds one not as dismal. The Brewers didn't get anything close to value out of Hammonds. There were certainly years where the Yankees got value and something close to value out of Giambi. The Yankees got something resembling value for their money three of the seven years. I don't know if he was worth his average salary over the life of the contract in any of those seven years but they did get more out of him/$ than we did Hammonds. That means the Yankees suffered with 4 years of sub par performance whereas the Brewers suffered with three from Hammonds. It is the length of the contract that made the Giambi signing so bad. Talyor was, at the very least, smart enough not to mortage the better part of a decade on what essentially is a gamble. Granted I overstated my case but I still stand by my statement that Taylor is as capable as Cashman if he was given the chance Cashman had.

Penny had other offers out there besides the one from the Red Sox. Someone posted this in the Transaction/Rumors forum "There were a lot of teams involved," said Penny in a phone conversation, "but I wanted to go somewhere where I knew we had a great chance at winning and Boston is that place." The Brewers aren't exactly bottom of the league with no chance of winning. They are one of 8 who are coming off a playoff appearance and had a better team than the one he just left. They have a good core of offensive players and the pitching staff would have been pretty decent if he is anywhere near what he was. In fact he would have been no better than a #3 starter on this team and we do have Bush and Soup who are more than adequate as the 4 or 5 even on winning teams. He may have narrowed his choices and may not have been interested in the Brewers but I don't think the above statement gives any indication he was not interested in Milwaukee.

Take this into consideration the Jets this year spent about $100 million in the off season. The Yankees could do that in a salary cap and still have gotten Sabathia and Teixeira and probably even Burnett also. The difference is in the NFL all the other teams could do the same. In baseball only about 5 teams can. The majority of the free agents in the NFL are either above their prime, have a lot of injury issues, or are spare parts or veterans looking for that last push for a championship. In the last couple years the Packers signed Charles Woodson and Ryan Pickett. Woodson was a probowl player before he got here and played like one while he was here. At this point Woodson's time in green Bay might be enough to put him in the HOF someday. Pickett was a first round draft pick who signed with the Packers at age 26. Hardly past his prime, never really injured and certainly not a spare part. The Vikings have free agents playing significant roles all over their roster. Bernard Berrian, Ryan Longwell, one of the Williams boys, probowl left Guard Steve Hutchenson and Darren Sharper off the top of my head. They were all either in their prime, coming off a probowl, at the top of their game or some combination of that at the time. That is just two team off the top of my head that certainly do not fit any of the categories you mentioned. They could do that because every one in the NFL has a chance to improve their roster in a fair and competitive way. Of course the teams must manage their cap well and make good decisions or they will end up like the Cowboys, Redskins and the Jets but that only make the point stronger. Can you imagine what the NFL would look like if Jerry Jones or Dan Snyder could buy anyone they wanted without consequence. If they failed with one guy they just dump him and overpay for someone else. No need to make good decisions since they have m ore money than the other teams and can just buy all the players they need. If the NFL was like MLB the Cowboys and the Skins would be the same as the Red Sox and Yankees.

Pavano, yes, Giambi, no way. Hammonds didn't have one good year for the Brewers. Giambi really only had one really bad year and one year where he missed a lot of time and was below average in the games that he played. I would say that Giambi had 4 good-very good years, and last year was so-so for his salary. Granted Giambi did have some decent years but if you add the very large difference in years and overall compensation the Giambi deal was no better than the Hammonds deal. Giambi made more in two years with the Yankees than Hammonds did his entire career.

You are talking about the same Dean Taylor that gave Jeffery Hammonds a 3 year $21M contract? The Jason Giambi and Carl Pavono deals make Hammond's deal look like a bargain. Which is more or less the point. Cashman has made some horrific signings but they go unnoticed. If you look at Taylor's time here he did everything well except some of his free agent deals. Add in the fact that Taylor was very limited in what he could look for in FA I think it's fair to say he could have done as well if given the same resources as Cashman.

Good question end. To me it means the ability for a team to compete on an equal footing for the limited available resources vs whether they are capable of winning with what resources they are allotted by their location.

The reason the pirate and the royals and even the brewers are/were bad for so long had nothing to do with market size and had eveything to do with bad managment. I think nothing and everything is a bit of a stretch. A bad decision by the Brewers hurts the them more and longer than the same bad decision would the Yanks. The real difference to me is the big revenue teams can win with adequate management where small revenue teams need excellent management to be competitive. I think if Dean Taylor ran the Yankees he would have been more successful than with the Brewers. In fact judging solely by Cahsman's success and failures of the last decade I think he would have done as well as Cashman has. If you took Sal Bando and had him run the Yanks he probably wouldn't be any more successful than he was with the Brewers. The difference is Dean Taylor, while not great, at least had the basic idea of how to run an team where Bando was clearly out of his league (no pun intended). You can win with average if you have the money to do so. You cannot survive with average management and little money. Sabathia would have still gone to a team with better endorsement opportunities I'm no tusre what makes you say that. Can you find one example in football that backs that claim? Conversely I can give you as many examples where this is not true as you wish. The Packers certainly do not offer bigger endorsement opportunities than NY yet Brett Favre never once became a free agent so he could go to a team with bigger endorsement opportunities. Ditto for Reggie White. As far as how to restore competitive balance in baseball I don't really know. It's easy to say salary cap but that won't happen. What to realistically do is harder. I think part of it is wait and see if the Yankee's spending spree actually nets them anything. Like most sports it's a copy cat league. Small revenue teams are far better off than they were in the 90's. Granted some of that is better revenue sharing but some of it is a couple teams like the A's, marlins and Twins found a way to be competitive despite their financial restrictions. Teams like Milwaukee have since followed that blueprint with some amount of success. If the Yankees spending gets them back to where they were in the 90's then i think we have a problem since all the bigger revenue teams are likely to follow. If they don't it might not become a trend. I think it's something that needs to be revisited in a couple years. Which, coincidentally, gets us to the end of the current CBA.

Strangest "gift" I've ever been given That beats me giving my wife a toilet seat for Christmas two years ago.

No your not stupid and quit calling me surly. I know, a long way to go for a Airplane reference but what the heck, I'm bored.

I'm stuck at work today as well. The bright spot is the officer who found our gorilla head in Minneapolis wants to get on survivor and asked us to help him shoot some footage and put together a video to submit so we have something fun to work on. We are in the process of reenacting the crime, complete with him arresting the culprits in full Viking gear and mullet.

The point is, who wouldn't trade 3 draft picks for 3 sure things and 3 of the best players in the game? Where's the cost to the Yankees here? The cost can come if they have some injuries and need to trade for help. If the Yankees had the resources to get CC last season they would have been the ones in the playoffs instead of us. They are setting themselves up to have to keep paying top dollar every year in order to field a good team where some other teams can fill those same holes from within. Small thing for sure but having a depleted farm system did hurt them this season. For what it is worth if the season started today the Yankees payroll would have gone down this year by a significant amount. They still have at least one player coming. Good point. That last spending spree didn't help them win a WS so maybe this one won't either. How hilarious would that be? I don't know if there is anything better than a Steinbrener whining about things being unfair.

If so, would they have then just drafted lesser guys in the following rounds to save some of the money they spent on all those high draft picks? If there are already 100 guys taken by the 3rd round how much does that really cost? It's so hard to determine the value of a player or how much they will get just by looking at the round they were selected in.

the Major League Players Association is the most disgraceful worthless garbage organization ever created. Don Fehr and Marvin Miller are absolute dirtbags and are lower than pond scum. The owners should shoulder some of the blame. They were the ones who thought making millions while giving their players thousands in the 70's was ok. If baseball makes billions I have no problem with players making millions. The problem is some owners want it all. They want to win and make a profit so they have no interest in competitive balance at all. I don't fault players union when the union was a natural response to owners greed.

My fastball in wiffle ball clocks at 13. I throw a real good tantrum. I can throw a dog fisbee with the best of them.

I'm with Danzig that I'm more interested in what happens in the NL. I'd much rather all the top FA go to the Yankees than have one of them sign with the Cubs, Astros or Cardinals. Not sure about anyone else but I never understood the fun of following a team that has so many built in advantages that it is nearly impossible to lose. They don't have to make astute moves or be a better run organization. There is no pride to be derived from being a bully. The joy of winning turns into relief since even taking second place would mean complete failure. Why not just watch TV dramas if the outcome is rigged? There isn't anything to be proud of in the team winning is there? To me it's like playing Madden football with the all madden team vs the worst team. You may win and win big but so what? It was nearly impossible not to.

I went to the mall with my wife, mother-in-law, and sister-in-law last night. Now I remember why I've done all my Christmas shopping online for the last 8+ years. Ugh. Ouch. My guess is the next posting we see from you is in the drunk thread.