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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Yea, yea, we all know about Varitek’s problem, wynette look elsewhere for baseball content…
No word yet on the Mariners’ next manager, but two rival executives speculated on Monday that the team will choose Red Sox bench coach Brad Mills. Their reasoning: Mills, after working for the Sox, is well-schooled in statistical analysis, and the M’s are forming an entire department devoted to sabermetrics. The department will be run by Tony Blengino, a longtime statistical analyst who came over from the Brewers with new GM Jack Zduriencik ...
More evidence that the White Sox will make a major play: The team has $92.185 million committed to 11 players for 2009, not including a raise for closer Bobby Jenks, who is eligible for arbitration for the first time. A trade of right-hander Javier Vazquez and/or a veteran hitter such as first baseman Paul Konerko would reduce that payroll number, leaving plenty of flexibility for a team that entered last season with a $121 million payroll ...
The Giants remain interested in right-hander Juan Cruz or another free-agent reliever even after awarding free-agent lefty Jeremy Affeldt a two-year, $8 million contract. Free-agent outfielder Pat Burrell also could attract the Giants’ interest, but such a move would require the team to trade another outfielder, most likely Randy Winn. The Phillies gave Burrell parameters for a new contract. The Dodgers could be another possibility for Burrell if they lose Manny Ramirez ...
Repoz
Posted: November 18, 2008 at 12:08 PM | 46 comment(s)
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Varitek is justified: He's ancient.
Boone batted only .202 at 36, but hit .295 at 40. Fisk batted .230 from ages 36 to 38, but hit .293 at 41 and .285 at 42.
That's 2. Out of how many catchers who played the game for awhile and fell off a cliff when they got old?
Any group of players, even if they are old and coming off a bad year, will play to their projections the following year. Even catchers. In Varitek's case, that's .230/.330/.380 or so, bad but about average for a catcher. If you have additional knowledge (injury, terrible conditioning) that might tell you that a specific player shouldn't be part of that group, and you downgrade the projection.
As far as I know, this does not apply to Varitek, who takes pretty good care of himself.
As far as I remember, "fell off a cliff" is a Baseball Prospectus phrase applied in an article about Tim Salmon. Who most definitely did not - he rebounded from a terrible 2001 to give the Angels 2 more good years.
I think so. I always thought he was great and hoped the A's would find room for him in 2002.
You can't possibly believe this.
Any group of players, even if they are old and coming off a bad year, will play to their projections the following year.
I always thought "fell off a cliff" referred to the bad year. The "fell off a cliff" is relative to past performance. They may play to their projection, but the projection includes a healthy dose of the terrible year. They are not expected to return to past performance.
Whereas, if a young player has an awful season, say Nick Swisher, you'd expect that, if there is nothing physically wrong with him, he should have a good chance to return to previous levels.
all those guys, and Mo Vaughn still won!
... Jason fell down, and broke his crown, and Heidi came tumbling after!
Yeah, that sounds like it's worth $10M/yr.
It is if you count the intangiblezzzzzzzzzz.
I'm pretty sure that I knew of at least one of these incidents if not both.
When was the second flu? Varitek hit like a pitcher in June, July, and September. Was it a magic virus that took a month off in August? Did the April virus simply take a month off in May? If Varitek contracted magical, arbitrary viruses, it suggests that he might have some super-freaky immune system, which would likely be predictive unless doctors find a cure for Varitek's Disease.
Or maybe, the viruses hurt him at certain times during the season, and ordinary stretches of bad hitting plagued him other times. Nah, that couldn't be it.
So, when was the other sickness?
After contracting the first virus, Varitek had about a week of bad play and then his best play of the season. So the first virus couldn't have totally wiped him out for very long. And if the viruses didn't actually wipe Varitek out for very long, then they're a poor reason for his steep decline.
That said, I think that marital troubles often impact player's performance more than some bug; unless the player's name is Enos Slaughter.
He only hits once every seventeen years?
All I'm saying is that the viruses could be a contributing factor (as well as his divorce) in his steep decline. The simple fact that they don't account for all of his lousy production in 2008 does not mean they weren't a factor in his crappy 2008. Then again, he might just have lost enough bat speed to make him a new, crappier hitter.
If he were a first baseman, no, of course you wouldn't pay $10 mil for it. Even a shortstop.
But a catcher? Really? The average AL catcher hit .258/.322/.393 last year. I guess you could argue this is really Varitek's fault for making Red Sox fans forget what league-average catcher production looks like, but seriously.
Ah, I see you favor the massive retaliation strategy of debate. Good on ya.
Oh, I'm just sick and tired of work intruding on my valuable BTF time. But I'm working an alternative as we speak.
Perhaps he meant that BPro made the term popular with statheady types. Rob Neyer did not coin the phrase "turn into a pumpkin," but he did make it a stathead's favorite.
Thanks, that is what I meant. The phrase may go back forever, but the Salmon article is what's led to the phrase popping up everytime a 30+ ballplayer has a bad season.
League average production is worth 10 million these days, in fulltime play. The only reason a league average catcher would not be worth that much is because catchers don't play every day. So 7-8 million is about right.
Don't get me wrong...at the time, I thought they should have left Thome at third and dealt with the shoddy defense. In retrospect, a lot of his ensuing offensive production seems to have been directly related to bulking up at the expense of flexibility, which means he'd probably have been an even worse third baseman had they left him there.
And as good as the Indians have generally been since Thome moved off third, they still haven't found any kind of long-term solution there. Matt Williams only lasted one year, Travis Fryman was very good twice and very horrible thrice, Aaron Boone was a complete clusterf**k, and Casey Blake was never anything more than a placeholder.
I remember thinking in '95 that I'd have voted for John Valentin for MVP, but Albert Belle had a hell of a case too.
I'd be willing to gamble that a Kottars/ Brown platoon could put up something close enough to that line (with better defense out of Brown's part) for the league minimum. The $7-10M Tek is "worth" as a FA can be better spent elsewhere.
You're just mad Brady's injury killed your fantasy team!
Varitek hit like a pitcher for 3 months and badly for a 4th month. He apparently had 2 illnesses, and after coming back from the first one, he played his best ball by far of the season, so how do those 2 illnesses provide reasons for his bad season?
I think that I now have the youngest team in that league. I was trying to figure out how many points Jerome Harrison scored for my bench last nite, but I don't care for Yahoo's interface. But it is free!
(I finally looked up the boxscore and figured it out.)
Hey, it took the Cubs 30 years to find a replacement for Ron Santo.
So, are you arguing that Varitek's illnesses could not have been a contributing factor in his shitty season?
Are you sure? That phrase has been generally used for a long time. I doubt that one BPro article popularized it, since BPro itself is not all that popular.
The most common use for it that I remember was in discussing what happened to Dale Murphy and how it affected his hall of fame chances -- a conversation that was taking place about a decade ago, and before Tim stumbled.
Too soon.
This is my favorite BTF post, possibly ever.
Killed my fantasy team, and I didn't even draft Brady. Stupid Randy Moss.
It took the Mets 40 years to find a SS.
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