Monday, May 20, 2013
Joe Maddon calls ump’s position ‘baseball anarchy’
(www.tampabay.com)
Is this the MLUA
Or is this the MLBPA
Read More...Rays manager Joe Maddon insisted Monday he was right — and the umpires were wrong — in the interpretation of replay rules on Sunday, saying it was “baseball anarchy” and “sandlot” for crew chief Gerry Davis to “make stuff up on the field.”
But an MLB review found that that Davis did follow guidelines properly in awarding the Rays’ Matt Joyce a home run.
...“Regardless of what they say, that rule is not in the book where you can change a double to a ...
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Page 6 of 6 pages
< 1 2 3 4 5 6The same people who love Frenchy and have him locked into RF next year are the same people who thought it would be a good idea to make this trade. That should give you pause in deciding if it was a good move for the Royals.
the central is vulnerable, i get going for it now. however, it's not clear to me that kc is anywhere near ready to do so, nor that shields/davis make them that much better than myers/odo would in the here and now.
Hosmer had a negative WAR last year and about the same OPS+ as resident-joke Francoeur (in fact, over the last 2 seasons, Frenchy's OPS+ is 101 and Hos is at 100). Hosmer is obviously more likely to bounce back than Frenchy, but these are the facts.
Francoeur had a 98 OPS+ in his age 21-22 seasons. Hosmer's was higher mainly because he played more in his good age 21 season than Francoeur did in his. Francoeur was actually better as a 22-year-old than Hosmer.
The point is not that Hosmer is going to turn into Francoeur. (I actually believe he will be good). It is that he is far from a sure thing. He has clearly demonstrated that he is fully capable of washing out. To me, that is why you have to keep Myers. They haven't gotten their star yet from the "greatest farm system ever" (unless it's Perez). Myers is at least as likely as the rest to be the star, and, I think, the least likely to be crappy.
As for Moose, his defense (of all things) is saving his WAR right now. If he's an actual good defender, he won't have to hit as much. But he has only hit well in short spurts so far and has been really, really awful for long stretches. His career OPS+ is 90 so far (93 last year). Again (for comparison's sake only) Francoeur's career mark is 94.
Now with all the Frenchy comparisons done, maybe now I understand why Moore thinks he's going to be the 2011 version again. Maybe he sees him like he sees his prize guys.
am more than 250 posts behind, so I almost give up.
what about this kid Myers makes him undoubtedly a sure thing compared to, oh, Felix Pie and Ian Stewart at this point in their careers?
Again, that the Royals/Moore are STUPID for playing Francoeur (and paying him reasonably well) is not a counter-argument to "the Royals/Moore are STUPID for making this trade."
Just like early Union generals screwing up the ground war wouldn't have justified a daring shift to a balloon air force strategy! If your general is screwing up, the first step is to end his decision-making authority.
fact is that none of us have any idea whether or not myers can hit ML pitching
And none of us know if Shields arm is about to fall off. The notion that the risk/uncertainty with Myers is higher than the risk/uncertainty with Shields (or any other pitcher) strikes me as unrealistic.
guthrie/ervin santana???
Shields 2010-12: 680 IP, 8.4 K/9, 102 ERA+, 5.1 bWAR (something like 11 fWAR)
Guthrie 2010-12: 599 IP, 5.3 K/9, 100 ERA+, 7 WAR
Santana 2010-12: 629 IP, 6.9 K/9, 94 ERA+, 3.6 WAR
There's not actually a lot of difference among these guys, especially if Santana is healthy. Shields, with that K-rate, is definitely the best bet going forward but if you think Guthrie and Santana aren't decent pitchers, there's no reason (other than fWAR) for you to think Shields is substantially better.
James Shields is not an elite pitcher. Yes, Shields may be the best pitcher the Royals have had since ... 2010!! Wil Myers may be (or may not be) the best position player they've had since ... Beltran? One you get for 2 years for $20 M, the other you could have for 6 years and $20-30 M.
"James Shields is not an elite pitcher."
Really?
Who were the elite AL SPs in 2012 - and, for huge bonus pts - who will they be in 2013?
granting your guarantee that Myers is not Felix Pie or Ian Stewart.
;)
What about Shields makes him undoubtedly a sure thing compared to, oh, 2/3 of the pitchers in the history of the game?
Myers minor-league line is 303/395/522 and he was essentially that good at AAA last year at the age of 21 when he won the ml player of the year award. BA ranked Myers the #10 prospect prior to his age 20 season and he fell to the #28 prospect prior to his age 21 season. Consensus seems to be that, after his age 21 season, Myers is in the top 5-10 prospects (see earlier discussion earlier in this thread for example).
At 21 Pie put up a line of 283/341/451 at AAA. Pie made it as high as #27 on BA's list prior to his age 21 season; after his age 21 season he fell to #49.
At 21 Stewart was at AA putting up a 270/350/450 line; at 22 at AAA he put up a line of 304/379/478. After a half-season of rookie and a year of A ball, BA foolishly made him the #4 prospect. After his age 21 season, he had fallen to #46. After his good age-22 season at AAA he inched up to 38.
So Myers hits for as good or better an average, walks more, hits for more power and (unlike these two oddly chosen examples) saw his prospect status go up after his age 21 season in AAA rather than down.
And, by the way, the "other" guy in the trade has been rated the #68 and #69 prospect the last two years. FWIW, his minor-league numbers look better than Shields's minor-league numbers on the surface.
Now I don't speak MLE and I can well imagine that Myers hits in a better park than Pie (probably not better than Colorado Springs).
sometimes a team makes a bad decision (signing frenchy and continuing to play him). it does not mean that all other decisions are bad. and i disbelieve in WAR for pitchers/catchers. i know that shields is not an ace. but he has had better years except for that weird 2010, than the other 2 over the past 4-5 years. sure he COULD get hurt. myers could slip and fall and break his hip. youneverknow.
i know exactly zero about how generals operate or what they did wrong in the civil war besides lose/get shot, so that particular example is kind of not real too helpful.
back to myers/shields:
one, you got a guy you KNOW has gotten ML hitters out year after year, throwing 200 innings/year, 2 year for 20 mill
two, you got a guy who in 6 years might could be 6 years older. you could have 6 years for less than 20 mill. he is not a sure thing because nobody is. here and i thought alex gordon was the best position player they'd had since beltran. the reason you think myers WILL (hahaha) be better than gordon is???
three: what's the point of having myers 6 years for 20 mill when they don't have any pitchers who are any good? so you have a hitter. big deal. you think that is gonna make the team win in this supposed magic window opening up after 2015, why? what exactly is GOING to happen in two more years?
you know yourself that thinking that your team gonna have All The Pieces Of The Puzzle in 2 years does not necessarily work out. and the cubs got a LOT more money than the royals do - AND the royals don't have this huge income from tv contracts. and they won't. unlike the astros, they, for some reason, still got fans. and trust me on this, fans can and will finally give up in disgust. TRYING to win in a weak division instead of waiting until??? is not stupid.
thinking that francoeur is a ML regular - now THAT is stupid
You're right. Luckily though we have over six years of Dayton Moore as a GM to evaluate him and not give him the benefit of the doubt when he makes a move. Meanwhile a team like Tampa Bay has earned the benefit of the doubt.
yeh, i watched dave littlefield in pitt for years. almost all bad trades and a few good lucky (IMHO) ones.
i would think that by now you'd be tired of hearing about "the process" and the few more years stuff and would want to try to win. i don't see how myers could do that even if frenchy had decided to retire at the end of the 2012 season (i don't wanna say get hit by lightning - that's not very nice) because you gotta have pitching.
i know that it is really depressing to read all of the stuff about how wonderful luhnow is with all these young minor leaguers 5 years away and so what if the ML team has a 20 mill payroll and is filled with AAAA players. losing on purpose to get the #1` pick so you can play prospect churn ala billy beane is fun for all the fantasy lovers, but bad for the actual baseball TEAM
- oh yeah
and i guess that any time a team sheds salary for prospects it is a Win.
i don't understand why YOU GUYS want the payroll kept low. do you seriously think the owner saves it like in a piggy bank to go on a spending spree in 4 or 5 years?
The Astro's problem is that they don't really have any young talent who's major league ready. If you guys had a Myers who was ready to play a full season you'd be ecstatic.
If I was a Royals fan I would have been tired of hearing about "the process" three years ago and I would have no faith that the people who can't get "the process" to work can get this to work either.
I'm pretty sure David Glass would spend it, just not necessarily on the team.
Yea, stupid is thrown around too much about sub-optimal decision making, smart people make dumb decisions due to biases they can't perceive. McClellen was an intelligent man, a great war preparer and planner, but his exceeding caution in actual battle was a losing principle he was too inflexible to change.
Dayton Moore knows he has to show significant progress now to save his job. He knows he can't wait until 2014. So it's understandable he feels compelled to make strong, aggressive moves to ensure next year is a much better one. And when your ownership isn't going to open their wallets to help you, usually the best option to make a quick bid for success is to sell farm chits for existing major league talent.
So in general, the plan isn't stupid. It's the standard plan of the embattled mid to small market GM. But Dayton Moore's weaknesses and biases are what makes the plan so poor.
First, he suffers the bias of all of his recent position prospects struggling, sometimes for years, before some became useful or valuable. Now that he has another top position prospect he's not thinking how great the future might be, he's thinking about the failures and slow development of Butler, Hosmer, Moustakis, etc. He knows he can't afford Myers to struggle, even for a year. It doesn't matter to Dayton Moore if Myers is a 10 time All Star and 3 time MVP between 2015 and 2024 if Dayton is fired in 2013 or 2014.
And it also seems like Dayton is biased towards toolsy guys and the idea that he can predict development. He undervalues OBP, and over-values raw BA. He sees Francour as a solution, not a problem. He see's Myer as a potential bust with a hole in his swing (ignoring that if he's that prescient why did Butler, Hosmer, Moustakis, et all get brought up to struggle?). When you are a GM with a development background, you likely remember all your correct gambles and decisions, and relegate your mistakes to the periphery of your memory.
So he's also biased towards veterans who are proven performers. Shields is an ultimate performer, 220 innings a year, someone you can count on. Ignore the fact he's going from a great defense to a not great defense, Shields is still a good pitcher and Dayton is correct to count on him delivering. And with Davis, he's getting two "proven" pitchers, shoring up an awful rotation, while his young hitters mature and hopefully take a step forward. He can't count on Odorizzi next year, Jake's never proven his mettle in the show.
So this deal is somewhat understandable if you understand his motivations and biases. But it's still a horrible deal, one of the worst trades in recent memory, and the reason is because of his blind spots and biases and perhaps his owners .
What makes this such an awful deal is that Davis and Shields make $12M in 2013, and $17M in $2014. If the budget has $30M to improve the team over the next two years, it's clearly far better to spend it on someone like Anibel Sanchez and keep Myers, Odorizzi + 2 excellent lottery tickets. As Sanchez has asked for 6/$90M or 7/$100M, essentially a long term deal at $14-$15M per year, there is a deal there. KC probably wouldn't have to pay up much, it's unlikely Sanchez is going to walk away from a 7/$105M deal (given teams haven't jumped to pay his demands yet) structured $12M, $15Mx5, $18M final year that is hardly a franchise killer.
Sanchez/Odorizzi are likely to be roughly as valuable next year as Shields/Davis. Myers pushing Francour to the bench is a nice upgrade next year alone, and likely to be a huge win in future years. If Montgomery turns things around or Leonard makes it to the show, more huge win.
So why didn't Dayton do the obviously better deal? Perhaps Sanchez refuses to come to KC at any price, or Glass refuses to sign off on long term deals, even affordable ones for less than 20% of your current payroll (and much less of what your 2020 payroll should be). Or most likely, Dayton doesn't think Sanchez is an ace.
Dayton doesn't think the Dempsters & Sanchezes can save his job, he needs an ace, he needs a winner. Sanchez has only won 30 games in 3 years with a losing record, in the same 3 years Shields won 44 with a winning record.
Dayton won't count on prospects anymore to save his job, he's running out of time, he needs proven veterans. All your fancy WAR and defensive stats, and OBP value doesn't mean anything to Dayton, and never did. He's going to fight this battle like he's fought all the rest, no matter how bad the tide has turned against his methods.
If you can't accept that idea that someone might be stupid in some areas you might as well just not say anything critical about any transaction made.
Reposting the BA article for it's excellence at showing how narrowly the quoted scouts and un-named team personnel measured this decision within the framework of their own job silos.
All of them essentially measured the deal only by whether it made the Royals better next year, which it clearly does in a vacuum, while completely ignoring it's long term cost and any other potential options. I think some are also biased by their empathy over the hole Dayton is in, thinking "hell yes" they'd also sell the farm to save their jobs.
A lot of people are saying this and I suppose it's true. (Most divisions are "vulnerable.") But the defending AL Champion Tigers have won the AL Central two years in a row, winning an average of 91 games (97 if you count the playoffs) each year, and the 2013 team seems likely to be better than the 2012 team if not as good as the 2011 team.
The Tigers add Victor Martinez and Torii Hunter, lose Delmon Young and Jose Valverde. Seems like a net gain. None of their key players except Martinez and Hunter are really age risks (almost everyone will be 26-31 next season), and no one seemed to overachieve this year except maybe Austin Jackson. (But hopefully his improvement was real and sustainable.) They should be better this year at DH, 2B, and at least one corner OF position. Fielder and Cabrera might decline, might not, but should still be very good. Their top three or four starters look strong, the bullpen should be decent with Alburquerque healthy and Valverde gone. And they're probably not done adding players yet.
Divisions aren't won on paper, but the Tigers have to feel pretty good about their 2013 chances, James Shields or not.
Precisely! People don't seem to be acknowledging this point enough. If you actually look at history, prospects as highly regarded as Myers actually turn into very good players much more often than not. For instance, as RoyalsRetro posted on the last page, the position players who have won Minor League Player of the Year since 1992 are:
This is too simplistic; I think the consensus is that Myers is not quite as good a prospect as the average Minor League Player of the Year winner. But it pretty starkly illustrates the point. Almost all of these guys turned out well. We can ding Myers for having an apparent market value that doesn't match up with his consensus prospect pedigree, but I think about the worst we can say is that he has a ~60% chance of turning out well. I like those odds, especially given that he'll be cost-controlled for quite a while. Meanwhile, any pitcher, no matter how injury-free his history is, carries a major risk of missing lots of time and/or regressing. Dave Cameron (horror of horrors!) made this point today.
I agree that Shields is likely to be better than Myers over the next two years, but I really don't think he's any more "certain" to be good, and at any rate you don't want certainty when you have low-ish odds of making the playoffs, since upside as well as downside is reduced, and upside helps more than downside hurts for a team in such a position. I certainly see no way to justify the view that he'll provide more value (playoff odds included) to the Royals over the next two years than Myers will over the next six or seven. The Royals were way too likely to have a good team in 2015 with Myers and Odorizzi to throw them away for a long-shot playoff bid this year and next.
I don't think Cameron even made the point as robustly as he should have.
If Myers busts, KC would have been left with a cheap starter in Odorizzi, lottery tickets in Montgomery and Leonard, and $28M to spend.
If Shields needs TJ in 2013, KC has a $28M obligation with NOTHING left to show for it other than Wade Davis, who has proven in almost 400 innings to be at best a back of the rotation guy when pitching for longer than an inning or two. Of course it's likely KC will exercise Shields $1M buyout if he hurts his arm before 2014 instead of paying him $12M to rehab, so in that scenario KC is only spending $17M and 4 very valuable prospects to acquire Wade Davis.
KC took by far the riskiest course by giving up so much in prospects and cash to acquire the "safest" player in the deal.
...
First, he suffers the bias of all of his recent position prospects struggling, sometimes for years, before some became useful or valuable. Now that he has another top position prospect he's not thinking how great the future might be, he's thinking about the failures and slow development of Butler, Hosmer, Moustakis, etc. He knows he can't afford Myers to struggle, even for a year. It doesn't matter to Dayton Moore if Myers is a 10 time All Star and 3 time MVP between 2015 and 2024 if Dayton is fired in 2013 or 2014.
And it also seems like Dayton is biased towards toolsy guys and the idea that he can predict development. He undervalues OBP, and over-values raw BA. He sees Francour as a solution, not a problem. He see's Myer as a potential bust with a hole in his swing (ignoring that if he's that prescient why did Butler, Hosmer, Moustakis, et all get brought up to struggle?). When you are a GM with a development background, you likely remember all your correct gambles and decisions, and relegate your mistakes to the periphery of your memory.
So he's also biased towards veterans who are proven performers. Shields is an ultimate performer, 220 innings a year, someone you can count on. Ignore the fact he's going from a great defense to a not great defense, Shields is still a good pitcher and Dayton is correct to count on him delivering. And with Davis, he's getting two "proven" pitchers, shoring up an awful rotation, while his young hitters mature and hopefully take a step forward. He can't count on Odorizzi next year, Jake's never proven his mettle in the show.
So this deal is somewhat understandable if you understand his motivations and biases. But it's still a horrible deal, one of the worst trades in recent memory, and the reason is because of his blind spots and biases and perhaps his owners .
The sum of all these "biases" is that Dayton Moore is "stupid" as a GM. Maybe he's great at integral and differential calculus, but that description is pretty much the dictionary definition of a stupid GM.
Myers: .304/.378/.554, 45/98 BB/K as a 21 year old in AAA. The league hit .278/.345/.430.
Bonds: .311/.435/.527, 33/31 BB/K as a 21 year old in AAA. The league hit .280/.347/.411.
Adam Jones: .314/.382/.586, 36/106 as a 21 year old in AAA. The league hit .279/.346/.437.
Jay Bruce: .364/.393/.630, 12/45 as a 21 year old in AAA. The league hit .263/.331/.404.
Jason Kubel: .343/.398/.560, 34/40 as a 22 year old in AAA. The league hit .271/.337/.428.
Travis Snider: .337/.431/.663, 28/47 as a 21 year old in AAA. The league .272/.341/.418, his team hit .290/.354/.457.
Mike Moustakas: .322/.369/.630, 34/67 as a 21 year old in AA/AAA. The league hit .277/.348/.432
Billy Butler: .291/.412/.542, 43/32 as a 21 year old in AAA. The league hit .279/.346/.437.
Hosmer is hard to compare because he only had 120 PAs at AAA as a 21 year old, but he hit .439/.525/.582 with a 19/16 ratio.
I think it's very likely that Myers will become a good player, but as with Bruce and many others, it will probably take 2-3 years before he's productive.
EDIT: K and BB rates would be more helpful, but I'm too lazy to figure those out.
- i have, in fact, seen the rays
they got incredibly better when they hired gerry hunsicker and one of the first things they did was to trade off one of their number one picks. they also make mistakes with expensive veterans - see carlos pena this year. they first year they got good was the first year that they actually spent some money on the major league team.
tha As have NOT been very good this past decade - they won in 06 and 12 and were awful in between. billy beane made endless trades and signed bad expensive veterans. this is the first year his shtt has worked out. and we'll see how the 2013 team looks after this year's churning has been done. i don't have much faith in billy beane. and yes, i DO know that his owner doesn't want a winning team on the field because it might attract fans and this will make it tougher for them to move somewhere else, get a free taxpayer paid stadium and put all the money in wollf's pocket that he's been craving for the past whatever years he's owned the team.
what has become clear to me is that some owners aren't inteested in winning and all the "young player" and "rebuilding " stuff is just a way to keep payroll low while promising the fan base that is left that they will be respected in the morning.
- if we had myers - let's just suppose he's young albert pujols version 2
the rest of the team is flat out terrible - the ONLY good player is altuve. the starting pitching is lousy, the relief pitching is beyond lousy AND
you have an owner who has said MANY TIMES that he refuses to sign FA (more expensive than phil humber) or spend money on the ML team.
- you take a look at the pitchers in the astros minors. they couldn't find guys who could win at AAA last year. the pitchers at AA are nothing special. they have cosart, who looks good in comparison to the rest and looks like another jordan lyles to me. their best position players are at LEAST 2 years away.
so you have myers cheap for 3 years, then he goes to arb and the owner is going to have to PAY HIM. i mean, if he hit like pujols, he'd get a minimum of 10 mill his first arb year. so he's gonna get traded because the cheapo owner ain't paying out THAT kind of money. so we'd have a great player on a team filled with AAAA crap for 3 years, who is, understandably, counting the seconds until he can get the heck out.
so me, if i was the GM and i had one great player and a team full of crap and no one ML ready in at least 2 years, i would most definitely trade the guy for the best young players - hopefully ML ready, that i could get. and yes i understand that we could have missed out on a supa dupa stah!!!!
but one 10 war player on a team that is lousy is not as helpful as five 2 WAR players.
- oh yeah
i personally think that you CAN rebuild your minors without refusing to have any major leaguers on your major league team. you don't HAVE to sign FA to 9 year contracts. you CAN sign SOME to 2-3 year contracts.
and i think that flat out telling your fanbase, who has been sitting around during 6 years of "the process" that they are gonna have to take the losing for 2 more years, is not exactly good for business.
the astros new owner/GM have told teh fanbase - all 3 dozen of em, plus the prospect luvvers, that the rebuilding will take some 3-4 years. we have seen what goes on the field during the rebuilding. it's why the stadium is empty and so many free tix are floating around. and we can all count, too, and we know what the MINIMUM incoming revenue is and that over half of it is going in the owner's pocket. and THAT is "the process"
I'm at a loss to call Antietam anything other than a victory. True, he had it in his power to destroy Lee and didn't.
Also, why doesn't Malvern Hill count? True, it's mostly Porter (overall command on the field) and Hunt (overall handling of the guns) but it was on his watch and on grounds that he approved (to be sure Porter selected the ground, but Mac signed off)
As with Antietam, it's the aftermath of the battle that is so problematic. At Antietam he simply would not commit Porter (and other forces) and after Malvern Hill he needlessly continued his planned withdrawal.
bbc, after a typical .284 .396 .497 .893 at AA, you don't think Jonathan Singleton will be in the majors in 2014? Goodness, are we Phillies fans going to hate that Hunter Pence trade.
And the simplest way to show this is to bring Bobby Bonilla into the discussion. An awful lot of minor leaguers have put up better numbers than Bonilla (who never mastered AA)
The thing about bringing Bonds into the discussion is that as a young player he had a clearly identified weakness (could not turn on an inside pitch) and worked hard to overcome this.
It's fairly unusual to have an easy to identify problem with an elite prospect. And even so, it's also moderately uncommon for a young player to completely overcome a specific problem (at least not without causing problems elsewhere. It is for instance rare for a prospect who strikes out a lot to cut down substantially on the Ks and improve. It's common to cut down the Ks and stay broadly as effective and it's not uncommon to become a better high K hitter)
I think I posted this already, but FWIW, CAIRO has the Royals at 84 wins, 4 games back of the WC and 7 games back of the Tigers.
What is interesting is that I'd say slightly more than half (60% or so) of Royals fans love the trade, while a significant minority (40%) hate it for giving up on Myers. The fanbase overall is certainly not mollified by the stance of "going all in."
i'm kinda not sure about singleton, regardless of his numbers. they DO have brett wallace, who is cheap. and it wouldn't make cents (hahaha) to start singleton's arb clock on a bad, losing team that will be bad and losing for the forseeable future. i would be VERY surprised if he starts on the ML team THIS year. and i wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't start in 2014 - IF he's ready - until the super 2 deadline has passed. unless, of course, they have a trading partner in mind. i think it depends on how bad the pitching is and i don't think that phil humber and alex white are oswalt and miller.
yes i know they have altuve and are keeping him but i think they are gambling that a second baseman who has an average glove, is OK on the bases and doesn't hit for power, won't make THAT much in arb. either that, or they are planning to trade him when he gets over minimum wage and play junior deshields.
- oh yeah
you seriously think that dayton moore telling fans - well, we're still in "the process" and we're two years away, again, and i know the pitching is bad, again, but i am not gonna trade wil myers, who is gonna sit in AAA/PH in the majors this year (because for WHATEVER reason they are just NOT gonna bench frenchy - bad decision or not) this year because in the future, he will generate tens of millions of "marginal value" for mr. glass' wallet - is gonna sound good?
or even leaving out the parts where he tells the truth, just telling them that he is not trading myers because myers "will generate tens of millions of dollars in marginal revenue" is sure a heck not gonna make the fanbase happy, seeing as how pretty much nobody knows what "marginal revenue" is and that they already suspect that all this kind of revenue is going to the owner.
what they DO know is that except for 03, losing is the name of the game in KC, that myers wouldn't have any effect on this for a minimum of 2 years, and they want moore/glass to actually TRY to win
They do get to use the DH now, though, which would seem to suit Wallace perfectly.
with what all yall (and sickels) said about mcclellan, he sounds like ned yost - good at building something, bad at using what he built. sort of like staring at your beautiful shiny new sword you just made and standing there with the enemy rushing at you and you doing nothing because you don't want your sword all covered with nicks - as well as icky blood n guts
they should work GMing more like sales - a pitchperson and a deal closer
I don't think there was any way Wil was going to spend all of this year in AAA. Maybe a month to game his service time, but they were experimeting with him in 3B and he played a lot of CF last year. They kept saying they wanted to "increase his utility" and my guess is that his rookie season in KC was going to be spent playing RF when Frenchy needed to sit, CF when Cain got hurt, and 3B when Moose was struggling against lefties.
He outnumbered Lee something like 2:1, and they basically fought to a standstill. That's a draw, at best.
Stopping Lee's invasion was a given. He simply didn't have the staying powere for anything but a glorified raid.
they HAVE to use the repeat pinch hitter now, you mean.
wallace is a league average fielding first baseman to my infallible expert eyeballs. the talk about him playing 3rd or SS is beyond insanity. anyway, he is NOT mo vaughn or david ortiz with the glove. he runs like bengie molina, true, but that gots nothing to do with whether or not he plays first or pinch hits 4 times a game.
if i was the GM or owner and actually WANTED to win and wasn't focused on keeping as much money for myself as possible (it looks like the owner will be pocketing north of 40 mill this year), i would definitely play singleton - IF i had good reason to think he could hit ML pitching THIS year, and DH wallace, who does not appear to be a particularly good ML hitter. Actually, i don't see any position player in the minors who looks as if he's ready to come up and play THIS year, so i would have signed at least SOME major leaguers, even if they aren't exactly STARS!!!! to short term overpay contracts, if possible. ESPECIALLY because houston had trouble signing FA even when we, i mean they, had a large payroll. (don't get me started on carlos EFF lee, who wanted to come to houston and coulda been bought for cheaper)
i know what everyone here says about stopgaps, but i now know it is worse to watch a AAA team trying to play against ML teams in spite of them doing incredible things every 10 games or so, like beating aroldis chapman with 2 outs in t- he 9th). and as long as Old Guy is NOT gonna block a young guy who is ready to come up - which just might could mean trading/releasing said Old Guy and me eating $$$ it is a better idea. the reason in reality that it doesn't work is that most teams refuse to release/trade worn out Old Guy and play the young new guy who is ready (see pedro feliz/chris johnson)
you would know more about what the front office does than i do. i figured that they wouldn't start his service clock until later, and knowing how they feel about frenchy, well then, i didn't know if they would want to waste him as a pinch hitter - which, in my not so umble opinion, is a tougher job for a newby than playing a regular position.
also, unless they have given up on moose, he should HAVE to face leftys all the time with rare exceptions, seeing as how they want him to be a STAH!!!! so i wasn't expecting them to play myers at third.
i saw lorenzo cain when he was with milwaukee and have been not understanding why they kept him rotting in the minors for so long
Welcome to the Yankee Redneck Tinfoil Hat Club!
Wow! And that's before they add Curtis Granderson!
God, Houston must be terrible.
Coke product of your choosing.
Someone else probably already mentioned this too but there would have been a pretty good chance that the Rays would trade Shields a year from now, right? Branch Rickey would approve of this from the Rays' perspective.
I like the Angels winning 110 and finishing 22 back in the west.
And how!
They have lost the closer, the other closer, two SP, 1B, 3B and RF from the 2012 team (based on BB-ref's lineup ... most of them were traded mid-season), while adding Alex White, Phil Humber and Trevor Crowe.
They currently have four players making more than the minimum salary, for an estimated payroll of $17 million not including departed players.
Their 1B, 3B, LF, RF, and DH are believed to be Brett Wallace, Matt Dominguez, Fernando Martinez, Jimmy Paredes, and Justin Maxwell.
62 games out of first place sounds about right.
If by young hitters you mean every single player in baseball, yes, they do.
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