Cubs - Signed Marquis
Chicago Cubs - Signed P Jason Marquis to a 3-year contract worth $20 million.
Is there an emoticon for projectile vomiting? Maybe something like :-d~o~o~o~?
Marquis was a serviceable, though overrated pitcher for two years. As with Mark Mulder, the sudden drop in strikeouts should have been a warning sign - ZiPS say it as a warning sign but only bumped Marquis’ projection last year to a 4.68, miles away from the 6.02 he actually managed to put up in a pitchers’ park with a good defense. Marquis should immediately report to Dr. Andrews for Tommy John Surgery. After all, though we have no indication that he actually needs the surgery, it’s clear that his factory-installed ulnar collateral ligament isn’t getting the job done. It’s time to give tendons in his foot or hamstring a chance. I’m sure one of them would allow less than 35 home runs or walk less than 75 batters or at least strike out 100.
I can understand someone giving Marquis this contract after his 2005 season. I would’ve complained about it because of the strikeout issue, but it would’ve been defensible on some level. But giving this contract to Marquis after 2006? Cubs fans better hope Marquis is actually damaged goods because if 2006 (and honestly, 2005) represent a healthy Marquis, then there’s no hope of this working out well. The Marquis de Bad can’t even blame BABIP as he had a .283 this year.
The one thing Marquis had going for him is that he generally didn’t leave you in suspense and if he was having a bad day, it was bad enough that you know you could go home early. Despite an average Game Score of 43, only 1 of Marquis’ starts had a Game Score between 40 and 50.
Do I really need to say which way my thumb’s pointing? I’d rather watch a movie entitled “A Homoerotic Evening with Don Zimmer” than be paying Marquis $7 million a year.
2007 ZiPS Projection - Jason Marquis
——————————————————————————————-
W L G GS IP H ER HR BB SO ERA
——————————————————————————————-
Projection 11 15 31 31 191 203 105 31 70 111 4.95
2008 10 15 30 30 184 195 102 31 68 110 4.99
2009 9 15 29 29 175 185 99 31 66 107 5.09
——————————————————————————————-
Opt. (15%) 15 14 34 34 216 213 98 29 68 130 4.08
Pes. (15%) 6 16 26 26 153 180 111 37 66 90 6.53
———————————————————————————————
Dan Szymborski
Posted: December 13, 2006 at 04:03 PM |
47 comment(s)
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1. Hendry's Wad of Cash (UCCF) Posted: December 13, 2006 at 04:40 PM (#2260040)I need to go back and dig up the 2007 Cubs projection to see just how many of the AAA guys we ran out there last year project to be better than Marquis. I'm guessing there's at least one.
BTW, this is supposed to be vomiting:
:(*)
Though I think I like yours better.
Classic.
Mateo: 6-9, 4.64 ERA, 130 IP, 134 H, 16 HR, 45 BB, 93 Ks
Ryu: 6-8, 4.80 ERA, 148 IP, 160 H, 19 HR, 46 BB, 90 Ks
Guzman: 5-8, 4.90 ERA, 123 IP, 125 H, 17 HR, 51 BB, 111 Ks
O'Malley: 5-8, 4.98 ERA, 121 IP, 135 H, 17 HR, 37 BB, 60 Ks
Walrond: 5-11, 5.24 ERA, 139 IP, 142 H, 19 HR, 69 BB, 104 Ks
Marshall: 5-9, 5.34 ERA, 128 IP, 19 HR, 61 BB, 85 Ks
Marmol: 4-12, 5.79 ERA, 146 IP, 146 H, 22 HR, 92 BB, 112 Ks
I forgot how much ZiPS hated Marshall. He's probably the Cubs' first choice too, given that he got the most experience last year and actually pitched pretty well at the start of the season.
Those projections look about right to me.
funny...
Name ERA W L G GS INN H ER HR BB K
Zambrano 3.46 14 8 32 32 213.0 177 82 20 81 198
Hill* 3.65 12 8 31 28 175.0 148 71 25 56 190
Prior 4.09 7 7 22 22 132.0 117 60 20 44 147
Lilly 4.26 12 12 30 30 169.0 155 80 23 79 148
Mateo 4.64 6 9 29 23 130.0 134 67 16 45 93
Rusch* 4.68 6 7 37 16 125.0 132 65 15 42 91
Pignatiello* 4.69 5 6 38 14 117.0 117 61 16 44 93
Ryu 4.80 6 8 24 23 148.0 160 79 19 46 90
Guzman 4.90 5 8 27 23 123.0 125 67 17 51 111
Gallagher 4.94 7 10 28 28 162.0 161 89 19 82 123
Marquis 4.95 11 15 31 31 191.0 203 105 31 70 111
Miller 4.97 3 5 16 16 87.0 86 48 10 43 61
O'Malley* 4.98 5 8 30 17 121.0 135 67 17 37 60
In addition to Zambrano, Hill, Prior, and Lilly, the Cubs already had 8 legitimate candidates to fill the back of the rotation as well as Marquis. Gallagher would probably be better off with another year in the minors and the same could be said about Pignatiello, but even so, the Cubs have a lot of options. The only advantage of Marquis is durability, and this is cancelled out by the large quantity of pitchers available who can perform equally well. In short, I am completely baffled by this signing.
One other thing I won't miss about Jason Marquis is figuring out whether it's "Marquis'" or "Marquis's".
There's nothing like driving to a game, getting there a bit late and finding your team down 1-0 with two runners on and nobody out in the first. Thanks for the memories, Jason.
English is so ghey.
I caught that on the DISH In His Head Network last week!
On a side note, Internet Explorer is heading down to just over 50% of the site users, the 3 most popular languages of users are English, Spanish, and Swedish, and we're on pace for out best month ever, traffic-wise, despite being offline for 36 hours once and 12 hours another time (previous bests were August '06 and December '05).
Topic: Just finished reading the '07 THT Annual. There's an article about predicting players most/least likely to break out. (In the article, "break out" doesn't necessarily mean to be good, just to improve X-percentage over the previous season). Jason Marquis made the list of the pitcher's least likely to break out, with a 1% chance.
On an unrelated note, the BIS info listed Ronny Cedeno as the worst hitter in baseball last year, and the WPA info claimed he was the worst clutch hitter. Oh, and in not-so-surprising news, Jim Hendry did the worst job getting the best bang for his buck of anyone in baseball, but we all knew that already, didn't we? (Szym, if you're still there, you can probably expect a book review sent to you on it later today. Don't worry - it's only half as long as last year's review; so just really long instead of really really long).
Having said all that, according to Bruce Miles, the Cubs are concerned about how to spin this deal to Cubs Nation, realizing the lousiness of the 6+ ERA. The Cubs have justified the deal based on five things --
1. Much of the high ERA has come in two horribly bad outings and a lousy September (even though the rest of the year wasn't all that good either);
2. Hendry believes Marquis is an innings-muncher, having pitched 600+ IP over the last three seasons;
3. He's won 13+ games over the last three seasons and his teams have made the postseason in each of the last seven seasons (apparently completely the Cubs are ignorant of the fact that Marquis has played for very good Braves and Cardinals teams); and
4. Larry Rothschild reports that Marquis has looked good in offseason workouts.
5. Hendry considers him to be "relatively young" (apparently the Cubs consider someone who will be 28 to be relatively young, which says a lot about their philosophy).
He munches innings like Typhoid Mary cleans dishes. It'll get done, but at what cost?
Untrue -- it's Marquis's.
Though that spelling is acceptable for ancient/Biblical people (i.e., Jesus' or Moses'), that's the exception. There is no such general rule for "singular proper nouns," at least not according to Strunk & White or the Chicago Manual of Style.
Primates have been evaluating these contracts primarily in the context of "is there someone better you can get with the money?" but it does not seem like many GMs are thinking that way, or they are thinking "It doesn't matter what I do with this money, because I have more where that comes from."
So, an alternative question is "Is spending this money on XX better than doing nothing at all."
The primary reason, say, for KC to spend $55 million on Meche is to placate fans who may be riled over doing nothing at all. I don't really know of any evidence that this works; fans seem to whine about high salaries as much as they whine about teams not making moves.
So, are there arguments not to spend the money (even on player development)? There's at least two that do not get much discussion. One is that if you save the money, maybe you can get someone better next year. Let's say KC promotes Gordon and Butler, they win 75 games ~somehow~ and baseball sees them as the "next" Tigers or White Sox, or whoever. That might be enough to entice somebody to come there. In theory, they have the $11 million per year to spend, plus an additional $2 million per year that they didn't spend on Meche this year.
The other argument is this. Let's say Marquis was signed to a minor league contract as a NRI (which would be normal in past winters). He comes to spring training with a chance to make the rotation, but nothing guaranteed. Piniella gets to pick the 5 guys he thinks will have the biggest impact. But now, Piniella (and at least 80% of all big league managers) will say, this guy bites, but we're paying him $9 million, so like or not I have to trot him out there every 5 days. So, the big contract no only limits the front office, but perhaps equally important, it limits the perceived degrees of freedom for the manager.
I need lunch in order to make sense.
I have the Business Writer's Handbook in my office. Which does not agree with you.
Singular nouns ending in s with only one syllable have to get an 's for the possessive. Example: Jones's.
But singular nouns ending s with >1 syllable either ' or 's is correct, as long as you are consistent. So either Marquis' or Marquis's could be considered correct.
The exception to the about is that a singular noun which ends in multiple s sounds should only take an '. Example: Moses'.
Of course, the worst part is that as a Pirate fan, I lack standing to mock the Cubs properly for their foolishness....
Strunk and White trumps anything. If the BWH wants to be wrong, so be it. They're still wrong.
Regardless of the style used, it's pronouced the same as his proper name, i.e., "Mar-kees."
It does seem that there is a split of authority on the issue, although most tend to follow the Strunk & White style, such as with this online source, although some add a variant such as with the University of Minnesota (which will use the "apostrophe only" style when the next word begins with an s) or the University of Houston at Victoria (which follows the multi-syllable rule DCA outlined above). The AP method is to simply go "apostrophe-only" in all cases, but Wikipedia points out that one reason for this may be to conserve newspaper space.
I have not found a blanket rule for all singular proper nouns as Szym puts it. When a blanket rule is given, it tends to follow Strunk & White.
God middag. Jag har hört så mycket om dig! Jag talar bara litet svenska. Var kan jag hitta någon som talar engelska? Vad sa du? Jag förstår inte.
How many 28-year-old SPs with 3 consecutive seasons of 13+ wins and ~200 IP have signed minor league contracts for the following year?
3/20 might seem a little crazy, but let's not get carried away in the opposite direction. A relatively healthy guy with Marquis' (or Marquis's) track record should generally be guaranteed at least one more year in the majors by someone.
Can you spell "oxymoron"?
To wit.
Speaking of other subjects, it's entirely possible to get a Masters in Architecture without ever actually designing a building. As someone on another thread wrote, :-*)
I didn't actually view the site in Swedish, but I *did* view the site for two weeks when I was in Sweden last month.
Though that spelling is acceptable for ancient/Biblical people (i.e., Jesus' or Moses'), that's the exception.
I'm neither ancient nor biblical.
---
As for my thoughts on this signing: #### you, Jim Hendry and Larry Rothschild.
Simple solution: have Marquis warm up an hour early. Send out the top of the Cubs order. Have them pitch to him during BP as if it were a game. If he sucks, have a youngster ready to throw. If he gets them out, well, you've wasted an inning, but you know you'll have six good ones left that day.
What moronic GM was bidding 3ys/$18 or 2yrs/$15 that forced Hendry's hand to go 3yrs./$20? What a loser that GM must be. I'll bet if we ever find out who the mystery GM was, the one who bid up Hendry, then that foolish GM will be the laughing stock of baseball fans everywhere.
Maybe there were more than two other teams in a hotly contested "Marquis derby"? How cruel for the fans of those teams to have to put up with dunderheads like that running their organizations.
If BTF is like every other site on the internet, the usage percentage is probably something like ~50-55% IE, ~35-45% Firefox, and a bunch of other browsers eating what's left, with Opera getting about 2-3% of the remainder.
I assume you googled the words w/o the quotes...
at this time:
homoerotic don zimmer: 930 results
homoerotic pedro martinez: 755 results
The list of the top ten most similar pitchers to Jason Marquis (from bbref):
1. Joel Pineiro (979)
2. Rich Gale (976)
3. Jake Westbrook (973)
4. Gil Meche (972)
5. Scott Kamieniecki (964)
6. Adam Eaton (963)
7. Jason Jennings (963)
8. Ken Schrom (960)
9. Ted Lilly (959)
10. Armando Reynoso (957)
IIRC 5 of those pitchers (Westbrook, Meche, Eaton, Jennings & Lilly) were suggested/rumored as possible additions to the Cubs pitching staff in one forum or another at some time during the past 4 months.
Maybe Hendry has discovered Similarity Scores and figured that it didn't matter which of the "similar" candidates he signed?
Hell, I think at this point, Kamieniecki would be a better bet to produce.
Adam Eaton (972)
Roger Pavlik (972)
Jason Marquis (972)
In light of the Gil Meche contract, Hendry is a genius!
8-(*)=~*=~*=~*=~*
re: Post 20 - So, an alternative question is "Is spending this money on XX better than doing nothing at all."
The primary reason, say, for KC to spend $55 million on Meche is to placate fans who may be riled over doing nothing at all.
As an occasional Devil Rays observer, I'd say spending $55 million on any starting pitcher with upside is enough to spark at least mild interest. At the very least, I'd be into his starts for the first month of the season, just to see if the GM knew something the rest of the world didn't. (And the jury's still out on Friedman, so who knows.) Given the D-Rays' (D-Rays's?) rotation over the years, Meche would certainly have been an upgrade.
Looking a bit too closely at Marquis peripherals....
Among his 10 comps he has the worst HR rate- I dont have the era normalized figures handy- but he's significantly worse than worse than all teh pther post 1994 pitcher's on his list- the only one close is Meche (and given Meche's home park- that's pretty bad- Meche may actually be worse) There's an era adjustment to be made- but all of Meches have such a dramatically better HR rate I don't think it makes a difference.
Amomg his post 1994 comps only Scott Karl has a worse K rate
Among the post 1994 comps his K/BB is right in the middle- significantly worse than Piniero- but right there with everyone else.
Actually his statistical similarity to Meche is quite suprising- I never thought opf them as similar- I'm pretty sure Meche throws harder for one thing.
The track record for his comps post age 28 is pretty ugly- Stottlemyre actually pitched pretty well over his last 1300ip which skews the collective ERA+ just up over 90. I think Meche is more likely to pull a Todd Stottlmyre improvement than Marquis is- think we're likely looking at an 85-90 ERA+ pitcher over the life of Marquis' contract
The answer is Jim Hendry. He didn't take my first offer of 3/15, better bump it up to 3/18. Well a day has passed better add some more. Marquis is a sucker, he could've got 3/27 easy.
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