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the Soriano deal seems sane.
Carlos Lee signed for $100 million over 6 years.
> hit head against wall
You crack your skull against the wall.
** You have died **
So the bubble has burst and the Sox are going to still sign Drew for 2yrs/30M? Awesome.
JD Drew at 2/30 would be the steal of the off-season at this point.
Is Carlos Lee a very good player? That's the real issue. Accounting for defense, it's not clear to me that he's an above average talent.
This signing has all the earmarks of a stupid team overvaluing a player - signing for big bucks a corner outfielder (not properly adjusting for defensive position) who is past his prime, just had a career year in offense, has good garbage stats, and is a terrible defender.
No. Jason Marquis is still available...
AO
This offseason it might be one of the best contracts.
He plays worse defense than the Republican Guard.
Any chance he just had two bad years and will bounce back defensively?
I remember when Lee first came up. He was an absolute butcher in left field. He looked completely clueless out there. (I still have a memory of Kenny Mayne on Sportscenter saying just before a commercial break, "when we get back we'll give you the top plays of the week. Of course they're not all necessarily best plays, but most memorable ones, or else how could we show you this one" and as he spoke ESPN rolled a clip of Lee doing an absurdly bad job getting the ball.
Lee worked hard at it, and improved himself, eventually becoming reasonably competent. Reading on this site today people say he was a good defender when younger (well, I'll be danged). I guy works hard to get up to competence and then regresses . . . my guess is he's not too likely to bounce back. He had his fielding prime/peak and is now on the long march downward.
More like falling off a cliff.
-- MWE
Luke Scott's VORP with Houston: 29.9 runs in 249 plate appearances.
So, it looks like the Astros are paying $100 million for diminished production.
Luke Scott's VORP with Houston: 29.9 runs in 249 plate appearances.
So, it looks like the Astros are paying $100 million for diminished production.
Except that Lee won't be replacing Luke Scott. He'll be replacing Jason Lane.
And Preston Wilson.
-- MWE
Luke Scott's VORP with Houston: 29.9 runs in 249 plate appearances.
So, it looks like the Astros are paying $100 million for diminished production.
Except that Lee won't be replacing Luke Scott. He'll be replacing Jason Lane.
One thing that makes it tough to understand this move is figuring out where Houston plans on playing Pence, who should be ready in 1-2 years. Can Pence play CF? Scott and Lee are not bad bookends for the corners, ignoring the price tag for Lee.
The Lee signing will probably eat into Chris Burke's time, though.
-- MWE
MGL you think every team is "stupid". The Astros have had one losing season in the past 15 years. Maybe they have a ####### clue what they're doing. Jermaine Dye was the worst signing of '04-05 offseason. Remember? Alfonso Soriano for Wilkerson was the worst trade ever. etc. etc. etc.
This signing looks like too much time and too much money, but the Astros were under a lot of pressure from the fans and media to improve the offense. If this increases the chances that Clemens/Pettitte return than it can't be too bad.
so does Lane get another shot somewhere else? If so, will he bounce back from his horrible '06? I've nursed a pet theory that the friendly Minute Maid LF homer porch has caused him to contract pull-the-ball homeritis, but I don't see enough Astros games or really know Lane well enough to know if it holds any water.
Biggio's chase for 3,000 is what will really eat into it. But for that, I think Biggio would be done and Burke would be manning second, where his offensive numbers would be a plus.
And the money flying around these days in the game is just incredible.
Pence recently got kicked off his AFL team for a DUI. He wasn't going to have a starting spot on this team this year either way.
They played him in CF in CC even with a few better defensive CFs on the team to see if he could be a long term fit there. He played some CF in the AFL and got lauded for his defensive improvements.
And Mike Crudale.
Best Regards
John
Beltran never had any plans of staying in Houston. Boras blocked off face to face conversations between the Astros and Beltran.
Did MGL call Dye the worst signing of the '04-'05 offseason?
After re-checking the thread he called it "one of the worst signings" and "terrible" but not the worst.
Burke will see more time at 2b this year though and has been recently rumored in a few trades.
Joey B, I think you would enjoy this post
*making note to draft Lee for my fantasy team*
stubby's got it right, he's replacing Lane/Wilson, who were absolutely horrible. Looking forward to a very deep middle of the order. Still have a hard time with the bottom 3 (Everett, Ausmus, Pitcher), who are 3 of the worst offesnive players in MLB. Everett I can handle with his defense, but Ausmus is getting tougher to stomach if I'm going to accept Everett.
Would somebody else please rhetorically trade a top prospect to Kansas City, too? This offseason has been murder for Royals fans. No juicy KC rumors, not even any free agent contracts you can get steamed at the front office for missing out on.
..or maybe 2/12.5 Not a bad deal for a league average innings eater these days.
Are we talkin' about Jeter's date again?
Best Regards
John
Let's flip the question around: how much money would have to be floating around MLB in order for the recent big signings (Thomas, Soriano, Pierre, Hairston, Lee) to by and large make sense? Doesn't mean they all would have to make sense, but that on the average they'd be normal. Clearly there's a considerable uptick in how much players are worth.
The longer this off-season goes on, the better I feel about what I wrote at the top of post #2 of this thread.
And you would think the Astros would've learned from the financial sinkhole that the Jeff Bagwell contract proved to be. And Jeff Bagwell was a much much better player than Carlos Lee can ever hope to be.
I said it in the other thread, but I'll repeat it here: I'd rather have Scott Hairston in LF for the next six years than Carlos Lee.
I think that post is pretty accurate. Every offseason we go through the same thing. 90% of the signings are retarded and we find out how every GM is "stupid".
In a market where Soriano is worth 8/136 how can Lee be worth much less than 6/100? In a market where Padilla is "seeking" 4/44 how can Woody Williams be worth much less than 2/12? Maybe these contracts seem absurd now, but 2 years from now the going rate for these guys might be even more.
Despite the absolute statements of so many posters on this board the BTF consensus is wrong quite often. Remember when signing Lieber, Benson, etc. to 3/21 seemed absurd? I'd say that MLB teams have a better handle on what market value is.
most of the signings DON'T have a major positive effect on the team which signs the free agent...
It's not the money that's been bothering me.
It's the fact that the Astros have guys like Burke who will produce as much (or close to) as much on the field value, at a fraction of the cost.
The Angels could have brought in a half-dozen NRIs or traded for "AAAA" guys to find the next Gary Matthews (or at least provide 90% of his production.)
It's not my money, but it still offends my sensibilities. It's like a really rich guy paying $100 for a pizza; just because he can afford it doesn't mean it's not a ripoff.
Just for your convenience:
Carlos Lee's Top Ten PECOTA comps, and what their age 31 season looked like:
Ivan Calderon: (31) .209/.274/.280, (Car) .272/.333/.442
Kevin McReynolds: (31) .259/.322/.416, (Car) .265/.328/.447
Ted Kluszewski: (31) .302/.362/.536, (Car) .298/.353/.498
Jeff Conine: (31) .242/.337/.405, (Car) .286/.348/.445
Willie Horton: (31) .298/.361/.529, (Car) .273/.332/.457
Eric Karros: (31) .304/.362/.550, (Car) .268/.325/.454
Jim Rice: (31) .280/.323/.467, (Car) .298/.352/.502
Kevin Young: (31) .258/.311/.433, (Car) .258/.324/.438
Joe Carter: (31) .273/.330/.503, (Car) .259/.306/.464
Torii Hunter: (31) .Not Yet 30 years old, (Car) .269/.323/.463
Carlos Lee Career through Age 30 season (2006): .286/.340/.495
Just based on the 10 comps final career SLG it seems Lee will go through a drop as he ages. Most of them ended up with SLG's below .465. It seems his OBP may drop a bit as well, but not as much as the SLG.
I'm not going to try and value Mr. Lee here, because in this market he could be worth $1,000,000,000.
So I'll let you draw your own conclusions.
Burke's the future 2b or possible trade bait. He'll split time with Biggio at 2b this year (at least after Biggio gets to 3000) and he'll get some starts in CF, RF, and possibly a few starts at SS.
You have a point but I don't think this is not a good example to support your argument. Lieber, Benson, Milton, Wright, Pavano, Odalis Perez, Matt Clement ... those are the guys who come to mind.
And in the first two seasons of those contracts, those 7 guys combined for 1877 IP (average 134 per player-season) with a substantially below-average ERA. Lieber and Benson have been fine, the other five have pretty much been disasters so far.
OK, Derek Lowe has worked out very nicely though also one of the higher paid.
To watch, maybe. Williams in that bandbox--with Lee "ranging" in the OF--will get ugly, and fast.
Astros signed RHP Woody Williams, who had been with the Padres, to a two-year, $12.5 million contract.
The Astros are nothing if not predictable. We don't have a problem with this signing. Sure, Williams would have been better for one year than two, but it looks like every free agent will get at least one extra year this winter. The trouble with Williams is that his innings count has fallen every year lately, dropping to 145 2/3 last season. Also, he's not someone a team can have a lot of confidence in come playoff time. In an NL Central filled with mediocre, right-handed heavy lineups, he should post a pretty good ERA when healthy. The Padres will get a supplemental first-rounder and the Astros' second-round pick for losing him. Nov. 24 - 5:30 pm et
I remembered another one I was thinking of -- Nomar. They already have Loney and Betemit (neither a sure thing, of course, and Nomar is very popular.)
Remember though that the money they freed up in that deal was used on AJ Pierzynski and Tadahito Iguchi, and considering who they had at 2B and C before then, it was pretty siginficant.
Of course I don't think all teams are stupid. In any case, what does that even mean? Saying someone or some entity is "stupid" has little meaning in and of itself. I explained what that means in this case and why I don't like the signing. There is nothing left to say.
As far as being "wrong" about any particular projection, I would hope that I or the best forecasters in the world are going to be "wrong" (again, whatever that means) some percentage of the time, otherwise there would be something seriously wrong with the universe.
All I can do is take the data and come up with a projection for total player performance in terms of marginal runs above or below an average player at their defensive position. That is not that difficult to do. At least for me and other professional and amatuer forecasters. Everything else (good/bad signing, stupid/smart team, etc.) follows from that tautologically.
Man oh man. Levski, you also made an appearance:
I find this poetically just, since the D-Backs were the team that competed with the White Sox for Dye. The story is that Dye agreed in principle to a deal with the Sox, only to have the D-Backs call and offer more money during his physical. Needless to say, he turned them down, and the rest is history (See Series, World. 2005).
Baseball's a funny game. I'm sure if I looked hard enough I could find the comments in various threads over the 2005-2006 offseason where I pushed for the Sox to trade Crede and Garland for Blalock. Urrgh. What a bad idea that was.
Loney appears to be slated to replace Drew in right when Nomar is in the lineup, so he apparently isn't being blocked at all.
In a market where Soriano is worth 8/136 how can Lee be worth much less than 6/100?
They've been roughly equal at the plate over their careers, though Soriano is coming off of a season better than any Lee has had. However, Soriano is better defensively (and likely to improve as he gains experience at his new position). He's also a much better baserunner. Thanks to his speed and to Lee's apparent love of food, Soriano strikes me as being a much better candidate for aging well.
It's not that the Cubs didn't overpay in some sense, in order to make sure they got the player they wanted - it's that the Cubs at least got a player who is reasonably likely to be a plus player for much (though not all) of his contract. It's not clear that Lee is a plus player now, once defense and baserunning is factored in - and unless he controls his weight almost certainly won't be even an average player in a few years. The Astros are gambling that (1) they are very close to being able to win it all this coming season; and (2) that Lee will work harder to stay in shape now that he's set for life than when he was facing free agency.
Maybe this move gets Clemens and Pettite to re up with them - we don't know what the Astros have been told on that. That's about the only thing that makes sense to me, though. I don't see how the Astros can consider themselves a Carlos Lee short of championship caliber without those two, though.
Cool! I defended the Dye signing!
On the down side, I also thought Richard Hidalgo would receive a 2 year $9 million deal. What ever happened to that guy?
Obviously, someone needs to buy a dictionary and look up the word "sarcasm".
Is that right? I find that highly improbable given the fact that the Dbacks spent pretty much the entire winter before the 2005 season trying to engineer a three-way trade to send RJ to NYY so that Jeff Moorad could acquire Shawn Green from the Dodgers. And the player they had as a backup plan for RF was Jeromy Burnitz, not Dye. They even had Burnitz fly to AZ to meet the owners but once it became clear they would be able to acquire Green, they pulled off the offer to Burnitz off the table. But hey, the "White Sox steal Dye from AZ => World Series" is a cool story. Something Kenny W can tell his kids one day.
That's breathtakingly awesome spin. "I would hope that I am 'wrong' some of the time...'" Hello? Why is "wrong" in scarequotes? Is there some way in which you weren't wrong? And, isn't the question not that you were wrong, and you were wrong emphatically (maybe it should be WRONG!), but how often are you right ("right?")? My kids can be wrong about this stuff. You're supposed to know something. You shouldn't be THIS wrong. You should view that as a failure.
'Wrong' is appropriate. All one can do is make the best projection based on the data available, and you will do that and be 'wrong' fairly frequently. You're still making the best projection. People drive drunk and make it home safely -- that doesn't make it a good decision. The fact that baseball players and teams surprise us is one of the reasons baseball is worth watching. There may or may not be justification for referring to teams as dumb for failing to make the 'right' projection, but it's a fair caveat.
Regarding Lee, I watched the guy play this year, and I simply do not understand how he stole 19 bases and was caught only twice.
Does your UZR correct for balls taht are considered "in zone" but are, in fact, unplayable off teh wall?
Don't you think you're going a little bit far? What do you mean? Should he be able to predict every player's output within a certain range 100% of the time? If he's right on 50% of his predictions and normal people are right 25%, can't it be good?
Man, it's trying to predict the future...
Probably for the same reason Soriano was caught 17 times, i.e. some players are better baserunners than others irrespective of speed. (I say this having Lee play once, maybe twice this season, so I don't know. But 19 out of 21 tells me he knows when to pick his spots.) Now, if you combine Soriano's speed with Lee's instincts, you might have a player worth either of their respective contracts...
Sarcasm: A sharp, bitter, or cutting expression or remark; a bitter gibe or taunt. Now usually in generalized sense: Sarcastic language; sarcastic meaning or purpose.
"Muse, shew the rigour of a satyres art, In harsh sarcasmes, dissonant and smart."
- H. Hutton. Follie's anatomie: or satyres and satyricall epigrams. With a compendious history of Ixion's wheele
Hmm. That definition doesn't seem to fit, and neither does the quote. Oh, silly me, you meant retroactive sarcasm. Here you go:
Retroactive sarcasm: The act of covering your ass for being incredibly and aggressively wrong by pretending you were actually being "dissonant and smart."
"I was just being sarcastic about WMDs in Iraq. You actually took me at face value?!"
- Donald Rumsfeld
And since I've enlightened you once today, I'll go for the two-fer. Here's an article about Jermaine Dye turning down more money from the D-Backs to play in Chicago. Happy Thanksgiving!
One possibility about the 'smaller field doesn't change fielding value' suggestion (though it wouldn't necessarily apply to Fenway very well) is that the great majority of BIP might be in a range that all fields possess. Or, in other words, the 'excess' room in a 'big' OF versus a small one might come into play for so few balls that it doesn't really change uzr ratings much.
This signing seems clearly better than the Matthews signing to me, only because Matthews has really only had one year (or a year and a half) where he's a playable hitter. So not only are there questions about his defensive value depending on what metric you prefer, he very likely begins the contract as a mediocre bat as well. Lee is at least likely to hit for power with a passable (but not good) OBP for a few years.
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