Wednesday, May 15, 2013
2013 MiLB #foodfight
(www.milb.com)
Hungry?
Fans are lining up for oversized sandwiches, massive plates of food or batting helmets filled with edible delights. Which of these 16 food items will be the Greatest of the Gut Busters?
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< 1 2 3 >Understandable from the Reds' perspective: they couldn't afford to risk a rotation slot on Volquez, and as good as Grandal might turn out to be, Mesoraco looks just as good. A healthy Latos gives them a reliable 2+ win pitcher with a considerably higher ceiling, a decent front three in Latos, Cueto, and Leake, and should push them into the 85+ pythag win range even if the rest of the club treads water. Don't know that I'd be comfortable putting all my eggs in one basket, particularly a 24-year-old pitcher, but Jocketty has never lacked a willingness to make gutsy trades.
He's a legitimate 1-2, top of the rotation pitcher.
I wish the A's could've gotten something like Alonso/Grandal for Cahill, or Gio even.
Take those numbers with a big grain of salt. The PCL and Tucson are hitter's havens. Tucson is dry and at a pretty decent altitude; it's not like Death Valley, below sea level, but at 2,643 feet. The balls fly there!
Not even a whiff as to why
Everyone in Cincy adores the guy and sings his praises
You think Grandal is ready to start at the ML level? I'd like to see what he does at AAA for a full season before Hundley gets moved.
Doubtful as Byrnes was not in the organization when that trade was made (Wow, has there been a lot of turnover in the Padres Front Office in the past few years!). The rest of your post was right on. Hope Alonso develops along those lines!
But it is a conservative, kind of provincial town--not a huge night life or media hub, obviously. Hot in the summer, humid as hell, pretty cold in the winter. Every team that plays there, even 35 years later, plays in the shadow of The Machine. My guess is that Latos won't like it there.
My contact with the Reds comes from checking out games on MLB Extra Innings, so I have never heard Votto interviewed on the radio. Eveything I have heard him say, however, indicates he is going to test the market. Can't speak to whether he hates Cincinnati per se.
Actually, that isn't so far off.
I'm kinda surprised the Reds gave up Volquez. It's not like they only need one starting pitcher. Right now their rotation looks like Latos, Cueto, Leake, Bailey and Chapman with Wood in the wings. That doesn't sound all that great to me.
This pretty much sums it up for me. The Reds gave up a lot, but none of the 4 guys going to SD have a high ceiling to the point where this would look really bad for Cincinnati in 2-3 years. Alonso and Grandal more than likely will become quality contributors, but not the type of people you build a team around. With the NL central up the grabs, and the only real hole this team has is a front-line starter, Jockety filled that problem without sacrificing anything off the 12-13 team.
When I first heard about this trade I was a little nervous about a pitcher moving from Petco to GABP, 2 extremes on the spectrum. Digging into Lato's numbers, it appears Latos is for real. A 24 year old pitcher under team control for 4 more years, with his kind of peripherals is an amazing addition for any team.
I'm so glad Volquez is gone. Now I don't have to be reminded about Josh Hamilton every 5 days. I also don't have to wonder if he'll ever find the strike zone again.
St. Louis seems like a midwestern city trying to be an East Coast city. Cincinnati seems like a midwestern city trying to be a southern city.
Its not great, but its pretty good (could be great if Cueto doesn't regress too much and Chapman can become a full time starter and come close to his potential), and Volquez wasn't going to make it "great."
This would be roughly more than what Matt Kemp got. (2 years less, and only $10 million less than Kemp's overall deal). This would be an overpay.
ESPN article from August, 2010.
TFA discusses the effort Latos made to change his attitude and the way he related to teammates before the 2010 season began, not sure if there are any incidents after that, or if his earlier reputation is still dogging him ...
It's gotta be the chili. That Skyline ####'s an abomination ...
(I'm not aware of any solid reason why it should play a role in how we evaluate Latos now, however.)
Holy shat, I had no idea Baseball Prospectus existed as far back as '99.
Agreed. Good God, you're gonna add cinnamon and chocolate and then pour it on spaghetti? That is a gross enough sequence of events as it is, but then a whole city has the nerve to call this perverted concoction "chili"!?!? Ugh.
I laughed.
He's a perfectly fine second- or third-tier hitting prospect (like Mitch Moreland, say), but in trade discussions this offseason he's been treated like a future impact bat, purely on the strength of a hot streak during a cup of coffee at the end of the season. People are ignoring the evidence of his minor league career and seeing what they want to see.
He's also a stupid pickup for the Padres, who have lots of holes and just spent their best trade chip to get a B grade 1B prospect when they already have a significantly younger and better prospect in Rizzo AND a palatable youngish veteran stopgap in Kyle Blanks AND a decent upper-minors talent in Matt Clark AND another strong hitting prospect who could be used at the position if necessary in James Darnell. With the exception of Darnell, none of these guys (including Alonso) can play any other positions.
There's still a good chance that this works out for the Padres thanks to Grandal, but it's hard to know what they were thinking by asking for Alonso instead of a player who'd actually make them better.
Latos isn't that yet but if he was and still this cost controlled at the same time the acqusition cost would be even higher .
Looks like a fair trade but risk is of course higher for reds
So Latos threw the ball into the third base coach's chest as a warning that he was going to throw a ball into the third base coach's chest?
Really? St Louis seems more southern than northeastern. We were a slave state and some people have a southern twang in their accent. Hunting and fishing are a lot more popular than skiing and sailing.
Its not great, but its pretty good (could be great if Cueto doesn't regress too much and Chapman can become a full time starter and come close to his potential), and Volquez wasn't going to make it "great."
When I said "not that great" I meant well below average. Volquez wasn't going to make it great, but he would have possibly made it quite a bit better. I also forgot about Arroyo, and he's certainly not going to make it better.
I mean, Yonder Alonso. How great is that?
I'm rooting for the kid to have a long career just so I can get a kick out of hearing him announced for a decade or more.
I've heard people call St. Louis the western most eastern city, and Kansas City the eastern most western city. You can basically use the James Carville saying about Pennsylvania to describe Missouri, it's St. Louis and KC with Alabama in the middle. St. Louis city is more East Coast/Midwest, but as you get farther out into the suburbs I'm guessing it gets more southern like. Missouri is a weird state.
From what I read about the civil war, St Louis was full of immigrants and not at all keen on slavery.
Alonso's minor league numbers are suppressed by a broken hand he suffered in 2009, which may have affected his power. I'm confident that he's a better hitter than Blanks, about on par with Rizzo too. Their lack of contact ability gets exposed to a greater degree in MLB. He's a legit hitter even at 1B (admittedly probably not elite).
Comparing Rizzo and Alonso minor league numbers side by side runs into a massive age relative to level issue
As a hitting prospect Rizzo is far superior ignoring that age difference or minimizing as some are doing is not analisys it is cannot wishcasting
Could Yonder turn out better than Rizzo? Sure he could follow the AGon path while Rizzo takes Marte's
Yeah, it really sucks when there isn't enough crime.
In high school? How do you not get permanently banned from HS sports for that?
Do you have any idea how bad Volquez was last year? OPS+ of 68? Giving up multiple 1st inning runs in seemingly every start. No control, never seemed to care while he was on the field. I'm so glad he's gone.
It's more along the lines of, "F*ck these f*cking guys, I am SO leaving this f*cking place"
I've listened to and read several interviews with Votto and don't sense any hostility by him towards the org. He's fond of Baker and seems to get along with his teammates. But he's been upfront about unwilling to sign away any FA years, so I have no doubt he wants to test the market. I suspect he'd prefer to play in a larger market where a baseball star could be somewhat anonymous, because he is a private man (especially after the depression issues a few years ago).
Non-snarky question: where could Votto go that he'd just blend into the background? If he keeps hitting like this, he'll be just about the best hitter on any team he goes to, and guys like that tend to get noticed.
Pedantic jackass alert.
68 OPS+ is pretty good for a pitcher!
I'd say Toronto would be a great place to fit that bill.
If it weren't for the fact that it's his hometown. If the Lawrie love is any indication a Canadian star would be the exception to the generally low-key Toronto media attitude towards baseball players.
Tampa? He'd probably be the No. 2 star on a team that hasn't exactly captured the public's attention yet.
Of course, when the Longoria-Votto Rays win the World Series, he may lose a little anonymity.
The Yankees. After the novelty of being the new guy wears off, he'd be just another hitter in that lineup, especially if he's just a relatively uninteresting 1B slugger. I live in NYC and no one really talks about Mark Teixeira.
This doesn't make sense to me for one particular reason.
The Cubs have a bunch of payroll coming off the books for 2012. Based on what's being reported it appears that the Darvish posting auction was won by Toronto which leaves Fielder as the lone remaining prime FA on the market. The Cubs could sign Prince and still be below the 2011 payroll level. Getting Rizzo would suggest they aren't acquiring the FA first baseman. It's going to be a rough offseason PR-wise if the Cubs decide to reduce payroll by $30 million in 2012.
Generally speaking? No... but ownership and marketing are going to be concerned about plummeting attendance and so forth if the Cubs are viewed as giving up in 2012.
By Cot's here is the payroll the last three seasons:
2011: $134,004,000
2010: $144,359,000
2009: $134,809,000
My quick analysis (which may be completely wrong, BTW) is that Chicago has about $73 million on existing contracts and if I replace Garza with a league minimum guy and ballpark some arb awards, the Cubs payroll obligations are below $95 million. That seems to be a tough sell to the fanbase when C.J. Wilson, Prince Fielder, Albert Pujols and Yu Darvish were all available on the market.
Maybe it was more about how other teams valued Latos rather than part of some larger plan to pass on contention in favor of some other time frame.
At any rate, Jim Bowden was reporting it and now Peter Gammons is saying a Garza/Rizzo deal is unlikely to happen.
They have been crappy and aimless. What they have not done is announced they have no chance to win. The Cubs have had a recent history of placating the fans by purchasing big FAs after bad seasons. They really haven't had a season where they were 1) really bad, 2) failed to add a FA perceived as a star - to provide hope and 3) significantly reduced payroll.
Obviously (1) has happened more than a few times but they have never had (1) and (2), much less (1), (2) and (3) at the same time.
I'm not saying it's a good strategy to follow every losing season with a big signing (that's how the Alfonso Soriano contract happens) but I am saying the Cubs are taking a risk here that they've never really tried before. They are electing to be bad, cheap and have no positive distractions to hide behind. Casual observers who parrot the notion that the Cubs will always sell out don't follow the team and see how carefully the image of a contender is crafted each season.
That assumes that they don't sign a 1B and don't sign any more pitching. I don't realistically see payroll below $100 million with Garza gone and likely above $110 million with Garza.
Well, yes, I'm assuming they are trading Garza in order to start Rizzo at first base.
As for pitching, I have no idea what they plan is there. I'm sure they are not done with the FA market for arms but what expensive pitchers are out there who Chicago might want?
EDIT: Who is the biggest name left out there? Javier Vazquez?
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