Probably the two biggest mistakes that I've made:

1. JJ Hardy was a poor defensive SS.
2. Kentrail Davis would have been a good early round draft choice for the Pirates.

Although I'm sure if you search the archives you will find others.

-- MWE

PS I want to see Dial's list, too :)

Easily this one:
So very close.

In this discussion, Rany said:

When I got to the Brendan Harris write-up and looked at his numbers carefully, a strange sensation came over me. (Go ahead, Derek--make an Aussie crack; it's good to get it out of your system.) I checked the numbers, and lo and behold...well, look it up yourself:

Brendan Harris, 2002 = Albert Pujols, 2000

There are some differences--notably that Harris was a classification higher than Pujols--but the raw numbers are eerily similar. Harris is the biggest sleeper prospect in the game, and I was compelled to move him into our Top 20.

Okay, that's good too.

One of the first things I ever posted on this site, in the old Transaction Oracle, was the opinion that the Pirates didn't do all that badly in the recent Jason Schmidt trade.

They did acquire a future All-Star.

Memory tells me that very few Primates who had anything to say about the matter thought it was a good idea for their respective teams to get rid of future UPS* like Wily Mo Pena & Lastings Milledge.

*Useless pieces of ####

I don't think I have any written evidence, but I remember thinking, Jose Bautista for Robinzon Diaz? Sure the odds are long that Diaz will never make it...but he is still 24. I'm pretty sure Bautista's already had his shot and we know he's not a major league player.

My favorite bad predictions are when the predictor is almost immediately proved wrong (Cameron on the 2010 Rockies, moments before they went in the tank for the remainder of the season or Bernie Miklasz later in the year on the Reds being done after getting swept by the Cards in the Kickin' Cueto series).

Ideally, I think you want a combination of immediately being proved wrong and hilarious arrogance. If you gets someone sounding off about how ridiculous other people are, and then they're instantly smacked down by reality, that's the best. Like that podcast jsut before the 2008 Super Bowl where Bill Simmons and Aaron Schatz assured the world that anyone who picked against the Patriots was just doing it as a joke or something. Hubris, immediately corrected, is always funny.

Memory tells me that very few Primates who had anything to say about the matter thought it was a good idea for their respective teams to get rid of future UPS* like Wily Mo Pena & Lastings Milledge.

Man, I practically did cartwheels when the Red Sox traded Bronson Arroyo for WMP. I can't think of a reaction to a trade/FA signing I've had that I was more wrong about than that one.

I was also shamefully excited about Matt Young.

i had kind of a stroke sometime after i heard him say that, but i think his reasoning was something along the lines of "he hit .250 with 8 homeruns two years ago and he hit .290 with 25 homeruns last year, so if he continues to improve at that rate, he'll be the best player by a mile".

Bizzarely, I managed to see about 23 of Desmond's 25 home runs last year. Seems like every time I turned on the TV he was smashing one. So if I just double my viewing, he's down for 50 home runs.

Memory tells me that very few Primates who had anything to say about the matter thought it was a good idea for their respective teams to get rid of future UPS* like Wily Mo Pena & Lastings Milledge.

*Useless pieces of ####

Milledge wasn't a useless piece of #### in Pittsburgh. He was a nice kid, fun to watch and enthusiastic about the game. He didn't play particularly well, admittedly, but he wasn't even close to the worst guy on those Pirates teams, either.

Who the #### would ever want this iPad thing? It's too heavy to bring with you, it's too cramped to use at home. They'll sell a few to fans and gizmo freaks.

The finest moment in the history of Slashdot occurred on October 23, 2001, when an editor prefaced the story "Apple releases iPod" with this observation: "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame."

One of the first things I ever posted on this site, in the old Transaction Oracle, was the opinion that the Pirates didn't do all that badly in the recent Jason Schmidt trade.

When the Braves traded Jason Schmidt and Ron Wright to the Pirates for Denny Neagle, I was convinced that the Pirates would win the trade because Wright was going to hit 400+ home runs in the majors. Alas, his back exploded and his career consisted of one game of 3 ABs that resulted in 6 outs.

Hmmm ... whaddya know, I've never been wrong about anything. My cursive sucks though.

Long ago, a friend pointed out to me that, while I occasionally will admit it, I almost always say "you're right" not "I'm wrong." :-)

I got Arroyo for Pena right. That was one that somebody got colossally wrong, I think it was someone at BPro, who was so awed by Pena's power that they found some stat he shared with Babe Ruth. In fact I think that was the start of my "ahem, he strikes out all the time" crusade. And that "everybody needs 6 starters."

I was one of the people predicting Glavine's demise for about 10 straight years. Took me a while but I was right in the end!

This one never gets enough love

http://www.ussmariner.com/2005/12/29/papelbon-and-lester/

When I was trying to find my piece of Schmidt-Vogelsong idiocy (which appears to have vanished into the ether), I stumbled across a good one from you, Walt:

the Ramirez/Lofton trade was perfectly reasonable

Link

Alas, his back exploded and his career consisted of one game of 3 ABs that resulted in 6 outs.

It's even worse than that. While Wright was having an operation to correct the back problem, the surgeon accidentally severed one of the major nerves in his leg. It's a miracle that he made it to the majors at all.

http://www.ussmariner.com/2005/12/29/papelbon-and-lester/

The best part is that down in the comments, there's this, and I think it's from Dave Cameron, although I could be wrong:

Lester isn’t even the best LHP prospect this year. I’d rather have Francisco Liriano or Scott Olsen, and it’s not particularly close. Claiming he’s the best left handed pitching prospect in the past ten years is a total joke and shoots down any credibility you were hoping to establish.

Well, if anybody knows about having your credibility shot down as a result of something you wrote on USS Mariner, it's Cameron.

The one that sticks out for me is the fit I had about the Andy Marte for Edgar Renteria trade. Marte was going to be our David Wright!

Ideally, I think you want a combination of immediately being proved wrong and hilarious arrogance. If you gets someone sounding off about how ridiculous other people are, and then they're instantly smacked down by reality, that's the best. Like that podcast jsut before the 2008 Super Bowl where Bill Simmons and Aaron Schatz assured the world that anyone who picked against the Patriots was just doing it as a joke or something. Hubris, immediately corrected, is always funny.

I think this explains the long lifespan of #6org

Writer Ron Borges on the NE Patriots' 2001 draft:

"If you didn’t know better, you’d think the Jets sent Bill Belichick north to destroy the Patriots from within. On a day when they could have had impact players David Terrell or Koren Robinson..they took Georgia defensive tackle Richard Seymour, who had 1 1/2 sacks last season in the pass-happy SEC and is too tall to play tackle at 6-6 and too slow to play defensive end. This genius move was followed by trading out of a spot where they could have gotten the last decent receiver in Robert Ferguson and settled for tackle Matt Light, who will not help any time soon."

I think this explains the long lifespan of #6org

Also, Cameron's reasoning at the time was as disingenuous as possible. The Mariners got a boost for playing in a division with 4 teams that didn't apply to anyone else.

"If you didn’t know better, you’d think the Jets sent Bill Belichick north to destroy the Patriots from within. On a day when they could have had impact players David Terrell or Koren Robinson..they took Georgia defensive tackle Richard Seymour, who had 1 1/2 sacks last season in the pass-happy SEC and is too tall to play tackle at 6-6 and too slow to play defensive end. This genius move was followed by trading out of a spot where they could have gotten the last decent receiver in Robert Ferguson and settled for tackle Matt Light, who will not help any time soon."

So....for those of us who have never heard of any of those names, what happened?

So....for those of us who have never heard of any of those names, what happened?

Seymour played in 5 straight Pro Bowls (as both a tackle and a defensive end), Light played in two, and both were contributors from the start of their careers. Robinson had one good year, Terrell and Ferguson did very little. And of course Belichick destroyed the Patriots so thoroughly that they won three Super Bowls and have been a contender almost every year since he got there.

So....for those of us who have never heard of any of those names, what happened?

Seymour was one of the best players in the league, Light was a top-10 left tackle for a long time, Koren had a few very good years but was always a disappoint compared to his draft position, Terrell and Ferguson were never impact players.

edit: coke to Fernigal.

One of the first things I ever posted on this site, in the old Transaction Oracle, was the opinion that the Pirates didn't do all that badly in the recent Jason Schmidt trade.

I think I was the lone dissenter in the Josh Hamilton/Edinson Volquez trade. "He's got a history of drugs, he's got a history of being injured, he's probably a flash in the pan that we'll never hear from again. Meanwhile Volquez was part of DVD!!!!"

I also remember a long Posnanski article lamenting how the Royals could trade a sweet swing like Michael Tucker for a guy that swung at everything like Jermaine Dye.

Thank you, I had just finished googling all those names. Absolutely hilarious find. None of the players he is touting had a noticeable career(except for one guy was an all pro punt returner one year.)

I think I was the lone dissenter in the Josh Hamilton/Edinson Volquez trade. "He's got a history of drugs, he's got a history of being injured, he's probably a flash in the pan that we'll never hear from again. Meanwhile Volquez was part of DVD!!!!"

I don't know if I was vocal, but I would have joined you on that tirade. There was nothing to suggest that what Hamilton did was repeatable, in my opinion. Trade him while his value was at it's highest.

Richard Seymour is a Hall of Fame defensive end, Matt Light was an All Pro offensive lineman. The two other guys were total busts.

Coke to the others.

It's a very simple thing: if you're in the player evaluation business and you've never been severely wrong about a player, you're either lying or haven't evaluated many players.

I believe I've mentioned this before, but in 2000, after Jeff Cirillo went to the Colorado Rockies, one of the Mazeroski/Sporting News-type preview issues said that "it wouldn't be at all surprising" for Cirillo to bat .400. Reading that, I couldn't help feeling it would be a little bit surprising.

Is there a place to get the Mazeroski books from the early to mid-90s?

Or "The Bill James Baseball" Books. I have either the 1990 or 1991 edition. How many did he do?

I traded FOR the NL flavor of Eric Milton... twice... in 2005 - it cost me the title... I recalculated the standings after the season and discovered that I would have won the league if I replaced Milton with exactly nothing, never mind that I traded Rickie Weeks for him.

Then, because I'm a degenerate gambler who figures you should throw good money after bad because your number is DUE, dammit, DUE -- I traded FOR him again in 2007... at least that year, he mercifully hurt himself and missed most of the season after 2 starts.... so I "won" the second time.

It's a very simple thing: if you're in the player evaluation business and you've never been severely wrong about a player, you're either lying or haven't evaluated many players.

Or you're awesome at hedging your bets, like market commentators and astrologers.

I stopped reading this site almost 10 years ago precisely because of their insufferable nature, so the headline had me almost ready to forgive and forget.

Then I read the article.

#pass

I am prohibited from 'shorting' in my employ, but I would've shorted Google at its IPO and shortly thereafter.

Memory tells me that very few Primates who had anything to say about the matter thought it was a good idea for their respective teams to get rid of future UPS* like Wily Mo Pena & Lastings Milledge.

FREE ERUBIEL DURAZO!

BBTF would have absolutely no trouble constructing a Roberto Petagine all-star team...

I've made lots of dumb predictions, mostly about small stuff. One that makes me laugh: Chris Lubanski might lead the bigs in triples some day. A strange prediction and wrong in many ways...
I made fun of tablets too. I'm likely to finally buy one this weekend.

Cashing out and then spending my entire 401k on hookers and blow last December 20 probably counts as a dumb prediction... but they were good hookers and it was quality blow.

Cashing out and then spending my entire 401k on hookers and blow last December 20 probably counts as a dumb prediction... but they were good hookers and it was quality blow.

that's not a prediction--that's a feature

Not baseball-related, but back in '78, in a fanzine review of Talking Heads' second album, I opined that anyone who took the band's cover of "Take Me to the River" as indicating any sort of real interest in funk/soul was living in a fantasy world.

Funny, I never listen to the radio, but had it on the other day trying to figure out weather/traffic, and that song came on... which naturally made me find "Remain in Light" (their 4th album) on my iPod and play it straight through. It made navigating the mid-March snow storm much more bearable.

the Ramirez/Lofton trade was perfectly reasonable

Like I said, never wrong! :-)

It was reasonable in the context of the times. A total salary dump that looked like pretty much every other salary dump going down at the time (or now for that matter). I don't think you'll ever find me saying that it was a good trade for the Pirates just that it's what you expect in a deadline deal for an expensive, average player.

To that point in his career, Ramirez was a below-average 3B, 25, and not at all clear he was going to live up to his potential. He was already signed for the following season for $6 M (which was kinda big money in the Pirates' eyes). Lofton was on a 1-year contract and designed to be shifted at the deadline -- as I recall, Pirates fans were pretty annoyed that Sanders and Stairs weren't also shipped out. The Pirates got back a regarded (although fading) prospect in Bobby Hill and a pitcher.

One week after that trade, the Reds traded Aaron Boone -- a league average 3B albeit older than Ramirez -- costing about the same as Ramirez (hard to say as he would have been going to arb if he hadn't gotten hurt) and got back the fading prospect Brandon Claussen who gave 300 innings of 86 ERA+.

A couple of days before the Pirates traded Mike Williams for Frank Brooks. The day after that they traded Gonzalez and Sauerbeck for Brandon Lyon (which then all got turned back around). Two days later the White Sox traded some minor-leaguers (incl Frank Francisco) for Carl Everett. The Yanks traded Mondesi to the DBacks for David Delucci (lucky to get that much), the Mets traded Rey Sanchez for nothing. The DBacks traded Finley and Mayne for ... basically Koyie Hill. The Yanks traded Ventura for Crosby and Proctor. The Reds were able to trade Guillen to the A's for Harang although Harang didn't become good until 2005. And the year before the Sox had traded Lofton for a couple minors guys who never did anything.

It's probably too early to judge recent deadline trades but guys shifted for not obviously good return last year include Dempster, Soto, Broxton, Pence, Victorino, Liriano, Greinke, Scutaro, Hanley, Wandy, Infante and Sanchez, Myers and Happ and Lyon.

Now if you want to say salary dump trades are a bad idea, be my guest. Or you want to say you should never trade a major-leaguer under 27 be my guest. Heck, if you want to say that was at the lower end of the return you would expect in such a trade, be my guest. Or you want to say Littlefield should have been able to squeeze the desperate Cubs for more, be my guest. But the fact is that's the kind of return you would expect to get in trade for Aramis Ramirez then and it's about the kind of return you would expect to get in return for that version of Aramis Ramirez today -- a decent prospect and a piece (and Jose Hernandez to hold the fort for the rest of the season). Granted, sometimes you see trades like Swisher for Gio Gonzalez plus but sometimes you see trades like Swisher for Betemit.

Through age 25, ARam was at 263/312/441, 92 OPS+ in 2500 PA, good for 1.1 WAR. From 23-25 he was 270/319/466, 100 OPS+ in 1900 PA, good for 4.1 WAR including just 1.7 at age 25. He was a generally poor baserunner but had wrestled his way up to average defensively. Obviously he still had growth potential but nobody at that point would have projected him to put up a 129 OPS+ and 27 WAR over the next 9 seasons. And the Pirates only had (I think) one year of control left anyway. There were a number of folks (probably including Vlad) who felt ARam had been jerked around by the Pirates, played hurt, etc. and they were right about that but at the end of the day he was below-average, disappointing and "expensive."

The really weird thing about that trade is that apparently the Pirates didn't actually want either player. They tried to sneak Bruback off the 40-man and failed and they buried Hill in the minors (perhaps partly because they ended up with Freddy Sanchez after the Gonzalez-Lyon debacle).

Anyway, not my fault the 2003 Pirates considered $6 M a lot of money and traded away a guy who turned into a good player.

It's a very simple thing: if you're in the player evaluation business and you've never been severely wrong about a player, you're either lying or haven't evaluated many players.

I get that, but it's pretty funny when you're severely wrong about a player while insisting that anyone with an opinion different from yours is a complete idiot.

I made fun of tablets too. I'm likely to finally buy one this weekend.

I did too, and have been on the edge ready to get me a Nexus 7. But to be fair... 1. Bill Gates was touting tablets over a decade ago and it was during a period where I didn't trust Microsoft to ever do anything right. 2.The first windows tablets were junk. 3. The original concept was a mis step. Instead of concentrating on the user interface, they were concentrating on incorporating windows into a smaller computer which of course is already done with laptops.

It's a hard line to straddle though. If I and another person have a substantial disagreement on the value of a player, at some point the question becomes "by what process did each of us come to that conclusion?" And when the disagreement veers into the territory of elevating your favored process above the favored process of others, it's real easy for things to get personal if you're not careful.

I'd say this is the 6th best article I've read today.

Whoops -- sorry. Getting my "bad prediction" memes mixed up.

And another poem on the subject of Luke Hochevar, which sadly I don't think I can blame anyone other than myself for producing

Hopes were high (though God knows why)
As Hochevar took the mound on Opening Day
That the label “ace” may stick to the first overall pick
But the Royals lost in the regular way, with shoddy baseball play
And the fans doth barely restrain their sick

Primey!

Takes me back to the days when The Score Bard would post here regularly. That was around the time BBPro wrote the AL West preview Shredder links to in #10.

This article should have just been the words "Pete Rose" repeated 11 times.

This article should have just been the words "Pete Rose" repeated 11 times.

Nah, the name of that article is why Will Carrol was fired. I don't know if he was actually canned or if he left, but that incident clearly broke the relationship between him and BPro to an irreparable extent. Particularly the way Kahrl went to bat for Will, the only way he was staying after that was if he 1) was right, or 2) outed his source and his source was someone he should have trusted.

I give BPro a pass. Carrol had been important to them up until that point, his UTK articles gave people a reason to show up besides the stats and he was one of the big 3 that interacted with the regular media. The decision to make support of him the company line only really seems silly in retrospect.

edit: also, half those guys weren't there when Carrol was, and the ones who were weren't exactly the heavy hitters. Back then there was an entirely different crew running the show. Sheehan and Carrol are basically bloggers now. KG is with the Astros. Silver is doing his thing. Kahrl is with ESPN, right?

My worst predictions since I started getting serious about baseball - Cargo will suck, Rasmus will be an all star, oh and I used to like Tony LaRussa.

Best predictions are that Ubaldo was gonna suck soon (made during that ridiculously good year he had) and Alex Gordon was gonna be great (after everyone was down on him the firs couple of years).