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You could goose the hell out of Bruce's past salaries without really making a dent in his edge in surplus value. And you don't really need to tweak them all that much, because three out of the five are his pre-arb years where he was earning near-minimum salaries.
Yes, but we already explicitly recognized and acknowledged Myers's bust risk elsewhere in the thread, in the comparisons to Kubel and Young and the like.
I believe that they plan to try and get a better pitcher than Myers is a hitter, as a way of compensating for that additional risk. That might or might not work, of course.
Is there much of a performance curve for pitchers? I thought the general rule was that within two years they were pretty much going to be the pitcher they are going to be.
I think Niese is a nice pitcher and a huge upgrade for the Royals, but certainly not anything you part with Myers for. Maybe Hosmer.
Maybe. Hosmer is definitely less valuable than Myers, no? He's older, has less cheap years, less years til FA, and has had one crummy season under his belt. He may have upside, but not nearly as much as Myers.
Well, two years of cheap service time is burned, and you've got a 1B with a career 97 wRC+, and bad D (~-10 by UZR and TZ).
He needs a huge improvement to be even average; he was -1.0 WAR last year.
He is being developed by the Royals.
I'm convinced some Royals fans have a death wish. They don't believe they deserve to succeed, so they want to trade away all of their good players with a rationale that "You have to give value to get value" (quote from Royals Review re the Myers rumor). Last year Hosmer was the savior, this year he struggled. So now we've got to trade him away for whatever the market will bear.
Hosmer is 22 and has been in the majors for two years after destroying AAA. He has a lifetime OPS+ of 100 and a great lefty power stroke. Just last year, there were some people lobbying to keep him stashed in AAA all year to manipulate his service time seven years down the road. He's not Jesus, and he's not a bust yet, either. Just play him and stop panicking. The Royals can easily survive one more year without Jonathan Niese.
No, it's the opposite. Royals fans have no conception that a Royals prospect will be less than a crushing disappointment in a Royals uniform, so they want to trade their prospects before they turn into massive flops and lose all their value. If Wil Myers had an identical twin with identical stats in the Braves organization, they would be desperate to exchange one for the other.
There doesn't appear to be anything unusual in the numbers; he wasn't hitting the ball as hard. Often that's a guy hiding an injury.
-- MWE
This is why we can't have nice things.
The Royals position players look like they might be better than league average, but I'd be pretty surprised if that happened in 2013 and 2014 might be a bit early as well. In the next five years, I would assume that the next two years are going to be the least talented Royals teams. Going all-in right now seems quite odd.
I would be curious to know how much of this may be driven by the fact that Dayton Moore views Wil Myers as being blocked since he's behind Alex Gordon and Jeff Francoeur on the depth chart.
Really? Who is coming along in 2015? They have some decent depth, but I don't think there are many impact guys. Starling strikes out a ton, Cuthbert had a terrible year, Zimmer has barely pitched, Ventura is probably a reliever, Odorizzi has a low ceiling, Bonifacio looks good, but is probably just a guy, and its too early to say on guys like Mondesi or Elier Hernandez.
I suppose you could assume the young guys they have now will be better in 2016, but if they're going to be good, its probably going to be in the next two years.
Well, they had Myers primarily play CF, even though its pretty obvious he's stretched there, instead of having him learn RF, despite the fact they had the worst position player in baseball in RF. They also had him play some games at 3B for the first time in his career. So yea, I bet they think he's blocked. Dayton is an idiot.
Even with very moderate development, I would imagine that Perez, Hosmer, Escobar, and Moustakas are going to be the core of a better starting 8 with a couple of more years under their belt compared to what they are right now. If they flat out don't replace Butler and Gordon with anything, then they might be worse five years out than they are right now. But I'll roll the dice that the hitting and defense is better in 2016 and 2017 than it will be in 2013.
Heck, just by not having Frenchy in the lineup, you have to favor the 2016 and 2017 group over the current lineup, no?
Would Buchholz actually be considered more valuable than Lester? I understand he's under contract for longer, but Lester is a better pitcher.
If Frenchy got moved for pitching, it would be about the canniest thing that Moore has ever done. Or dreamed about, probably. Trading an expendable player to get help at a position of need? You might want to write that one down.
One of my pipe dreams for the offseason was getting Gordon to be the new Red Sox RF. If only we had Jon Niese to trade for him.
EDIT: I just don't understand the Niese thing. He's not going to project any better than a league average pitcher, and his contract is not all that favorable once you account for injury risk. I can maybe see offering a package headlined by a borderline top 100 prospect for Niese, but a top 10 prospect or a major league star is so many streets ahead of Niese's value that I'm having trouble believing the conversation is still going. (Though it was sort of my fault with the snark in 121.)
I obviously really just don't get this. Niese is a legitimate #3 starter. He is signed to an extremely team friendly contract for the next six seasons. There are pitchers who rank between the #60 and #80 prospects in baseball who have projected upsides as #3 starters, and that's supposed to be a fair trade for Niese. I think a lot of people on this thread are either seriously underrating Jon Niese, or seriously undervaluing cost controlled mid rotation starters.
Prospects are cost controlled at 500k per season. Niese wouldn't be worth a damn thing if he weren't on a favorable contract, and prospects are effectively on far more favorable contracts.
EDIT: That last sentence sounds like I'm saying Niese is worthless, which is not my point. My point is that "cost control" makes Niese valuable, and if he were on a non-favorable contract, he wouldn't be valuable. The same is true of prospects, though they also tend to give you more significant upside as well.
Benji, it's worth re-mentioning that the GM you're complaining about snagged Zach Wheeler for a player, going into the 2011 season, everyone thought was valueless.
I know this isn't 2008, and Mets hijacks have gone out of fashion, but: their best play right now is to bundle Wright and Dickey-- those two together would be the sort of short-term swing that could turn an also-ran into a contender, similar to what the Marlins/Jays deal did for the Jays.
Jesus Montero and Hector Noesi for Miguel Pineda and Jose Campos
Delmon Young, Brendan Harris and Jason Pridie for Matt Garza, Jason Barlett and Eduardo Morlan
Andrew Miller, Cameron Maybin, Burke Badenhop, Eulogio De la Cruz, Mike Rabelo, Dallas Trahern for Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis
Andy Marte for Edgar Renteria. Traded a few weeks later with Guillermo Mota, Kelly Shoppach, Randy Newsom for Coco Crisp, Josh Bard, and David Riske
Hanley Ramirez with Anibal Sanchez, Jesus Delgado, and Harvey Garcia for Josh Beckett, Mike Lowell, and Guillermo Mota
Carlos Pena with Jeremy Bonderman and Frankly German in a three-team trade that netted Ted Lilly, John Ford-Griffin, and Jason Arnold
Brad Penny with Abraham Nunez and Vladimir Nunez for Matt Mantei
Paul Konerko with Dennys Reyes for Jeff Shaw
Ruben Rivera and Rafael Medino for Hideki Irabu, Homer Bush, Vernon Maxwell, and Gordon Amerson
That one really shouldn't count, since Tommy Lasorda was the GM in question.
Serious question, does Moore think the "real" Frenchy is closer to 2012 or 2011?
I mean 2011 Frenchy was actually a useful player, 2012 Frenchy was a suckhole of suck even by pre 2011 Frenchy standards
Having seen a good deal of Frenchy in his Met/Braves incarnations my take is that 2012 is much closer to the real Frenchie than 2011... but what does Moore think? Does he really think that Frenchy makes Myers expendable? Is that even possible?
Nobody is giving up massive prospects hauls anymore.
The Mets won't get a package like that for Wright/Dickey, at least not without sending some other parts along with them, but it's not like there's no precedent here. For not much salary, Dickey and Wright will provide a ton of value in 2013.
We can quibble over defining 'massive,' but teams would certainly give a lot for a Wright-Dickey combo platter.
How many of those 3 were top-100 prospects? Probably just Marisnick, and I doubt he's top-50. They didn't even get the Jays top prospect; they got #2, #5 and #8, as per BA.
I wouldn't trade Wright and Dickey for the Jays package, much less a lesser one. The Mets will have money when they get good. They can afford both Wright and Dickey.
Dickey, in particular, is likely to be very underpaid for his production, given the age/knuckleball. What other Cy Yound contender would even consider a 3/45 extension?
I don't understand their financial situation, which makes it really difficult to speculate. I don't see Dickey being part of the next good Met team, unless he ends up being good 4-5 years from now, but I've grown pessimistic about their ability to spend money in the short-term. If they give Wright 7 years, I think that will be a mistake-- the Mets should be able to afford those sorts of mistakes, but as of right now, they're not.
And last winter the A's got Brad Peacock, AJ Cole, Derek Norris and Tom Milone for Gio Gonzalez. The Padres got Yonder Alonso, Yasmani Grandal, and Brad Boxberger (and Edinson Volquez) for Mat Latos.
That being said, I think you're generally better off trading big players separately rather than together.
Again, I think you're underrating Niese. He was 52nd in the majors in WAR among starting pitchers in 2012 and 56th in 2011. Over 2011 & 2012, he was 44th. I've taken a quick spin through the lists, but even among good teams you might find 2 starters ranked higher than Niese. Sure, there are occasionally teams like the Giants or Phillies where Niese would be the #4 starter, but that's more the exception, even among good teams. Niese is a #3 starter for most every team in baseball and he's a #2 on a handful of teams.
Also, in a world where Kyle Lohse got 4/40 coming off of his 2008, I think you're way light on what Niese would get on the open market.
I really don't want to be the Jon Niese guy, but he's a good, young pitcher with an established level of performance who is under team control for a very long time at an under market rate. I don't think those facts are in dispute, and I don't see how those facts don't make Jon Niese very, very valuable.
You think Buehrle gets less than 3/48 in the open market? And, John Buck only makes $6M.
That just means that the amount of negative value is fairly small. He still wouldn't get claimed if the Jays put him on waivers tomorrow.
He just got a contract with a lower AAV last year.
The Mets better be getting a lot more than a single prospect if they are going to trade him. I wouldn't hang up the phone if I was offered Wil Myers for him, but I'm going to be asking for more than just that.
He just got a contract with a lower AAV last year.
And MLB got a dump truck full of money since then.
I'm sorry, but I really can't see this at all. I mean, look at John Danks... he's generally been more valuable than Niese, even if you assume that Niese's 2012 is sustainable, and Danks has never even made one All-Star team, much less 2-4.
It's hard for a starting pitcher to make an All-Star team. Half of them are made unavailable by their starting schedule and then half the places for pitchers are taken by token relief pitchers from bad teams.
Having said that, if Myers were a Yankee prospect I'd be hoping for a much better haul that Niese alone, and would be fairly disappointed if that's all he fetched in return.
Now we're going to get into semantics as to what it means to prevent runs and who bears responsibility for what. Suffice it to say I think that the component based metrics are better. The other way leads you to the conclusion that a pitcher who had a K/9 rate of 7.9, a BB/9 rate of 2.5 and a HR/9 rate of 0.8 (like Jon Niese in 2011) was below average at run prevention. That's fine if you want to make that case, and you're right in a strict sense, but I just don't think it's a very meaningful point, at least on a going forward basis.
Pitchers differ significantly in ability to prevent hits on balls in play, and ability to strand runners with situational pitching. Assuming those abilities away because they're hard to measure is bad analysis.
C'mon - do you think teams were ignorant about the future of baseball economics 12 months ago?
I would guess that his contract has neutral to slightly negative trade value. We will have a better sense once the FA pitchers sign. FWIW, Peavy got a worse deal than what remains on Buerhle's.
I'm not assuming those abilities away just because they're hard to measure. I'm assuming those abilities away because they are hard to measure, perceived differences in those abilities are more likely than not to be noise and because Niese just had a season in which he did the things well which he previously is alleged to have not done well. If the explanation for that is a choice between "He figured out the magic" and "There was no magic to figure out in the first place", I'll take the latter explanation. Of course, the former explanation would be a stronger argument for Niese in the future.
There's also Door #3: He got lucky for a year.
Projecting baseball players isn't about either/or. It's about both/and, properly weighted. Neither 2010 nor 2011 nor 2012 is sufficient evidence to demonstrate the talent Jon Niese. 2012 wasn't the season where he "figured it out" or "got lucky" or any of those, and neither was 2011. All of his baseball appearances are snapshots in time, with error built in, and we put them together to get the best composite projection we can.
That's fine. There's also: He was unlucky for the two previous years. I think attributing poor performance in certain areas in two years to lack of skill and then good performance in those same areas in a third year to luck, rather than increased skill, is really just a strained attempt to explain the data in a way that supports your prior opinion.
Sure, that's possible too.
None of it adds up to Niese being a "pitcher with an established level of performance", though, as you said in #140.
His peripherals are actually quite consistent from 2010-2012
what's not consistent is his BABIP/strand rate...
lets talk Brandon Morrow
2010: 10.9 k/9, 2.7 k/bb, good HR rate, yet somehow had an ERA+ of 93- a .344 BABIP will do that to you
2011: drops that BABIP a good 40 points, Ks over 10/9 again and raises his K/bb to 2.94- and his ERA+ gets WORSE, to 90???? batters hit .288/.366/.523 against him with RISP
2012: K rate plummets from over 10 to under 8, and yet has a career bets ERA+ of 144- BABIP of .253, held batters to a .182/.263/.232 line with runners on...
who is the real Brandon Morrow?
Nobody knows. As a Jays fan I certainly have my hopes as to what kind of pitcher Brandon Morrow is. But one thing he's not is a pitcher with an established level of performance.
I've seen him pitch a couple of times and been impressed, I've also seen him pitch a couple of times and cringed
He could be Ricky Nolasco and his 2012 could be Nolasco's 2008...
OTOH if he could have his BABIP hover around league average his ERA+ could probably hover around 100-110...
Who is Clay Buchholz?
I'm not sure but I do know this:
a 6.2 K -rate and a 3.5 BB rate should not turn into a league leading 187 ERA+ (he had a flukily good year in HR prevention and was absolutely unsustainably unhittable with RISP)
The Redsox really should have tried moving him after 2010...
Again, it depends on what metrics you pick and what you define as "performance". If you want the conversation to basically end after you cite ERA, I apparently can't convince you otherwise, but I think that's the wrong way to look at things.
The same would be true of Jeremy Hellickson, from the opposite side.
I don't think this is unreasonable, but I think you also have to determine a reasonable level of agreement. Does ERA, FIP, xFIP, WAR etc. have to move in unison, or can they vary from year to year so long as there is general convergence. I wouldn't have claimed that Niese had an established level of performance at at or above league average after 2011, but his 2012 gives me reason to believe that it was merely luck that led to his ERA diverging from his peripherals, and to rely more on the metrics that have been consistent in evaluating his true ability.
This may have something to do with the fact that Peavy's deal came after his first 200-inning season in 5 years, and Buehrle's came after his 11th 200-inning season in 11 years.
So you're arguing that B-R WAR is more predictive than fWAR. Good luck with that.
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