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Oh. Shit. |
What's more surprising is that this has been relatively kept quiet.
The Philly Inquirer is reporting that the arbitator's hearing was shortly before the World Series. I'm surprised (and relieved) this wasn't released until now. Quote:
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Man. I'm horrified at hearing about how bad Ibanez is on D. We may as well have signed Dunn.
Sounds like Romero is getting a raw deal here. |
sounds like romero is getting a massively raw deal.
fuck you MLB |
It's also possible that Romero is just a liar.
But regardless, drug testing and the consequences of a positive test have to be 100% black and white, no exuses, no intent requirement, just strict liability. Otherwise the whole drug testing program is pointless, you can just put your personal trainer in charge of everything and claim ignorance. To the extent MLB offered to cut him some kind of deal during the season, it was a mistake. He should have been suspended immediately. |
yeah, but if MLB said that it was okay before he started taking it that's their fault not his
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I thought it was the MLBPA that said that (maybe I didn't catch that part). "Meanwhile, according to the arbitrator's report, Lien sent a sample of the supplement to MLB for testing. The tests showed the supplement contained a substance that could result in a positive drug test. A copy of those results was sent to commissioner Bud Selig's office in July. Considering it was the first time a banned substance was found in an FDA-regulated, over-the-counter supplement - one available to every major-leaguer and millions of youths - that should have sounded alarms. But no one from MLB, the players' association or the Phillies told Romero that there was a problem with the supplement." That part's just weird....So Lien got the results and he didn't tell Romero, or Romero wasn't interested in following up with Lien to find out what the results are? He just assumed that somebody would tell him if the drug he was using would cause a positive test? If a player is trying weird shit they've never tried before, they're playing with fire. |
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Isn't that what the NFL did to the eight players who were targeted for suspension a few weeks ago? If I recall right, most of those players fought that suspension in court and won (or at least won a stay, it may not be settled). |
BBTF's Transaction Oracle Discussion :: Rays - Signed Burrell
ahahahahahha. Serious - Pat at 2/16 makes Ibanez look even dumber than before. |
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This is correct. Plus, With a lineup of Utely/Howard/Ibanez, you've just given every manager the advantage to pull out his LOOGY for just that one sequence; while handedness is often overrated, tactically, this was an awful decision. Its made even worse by the fact that Howard should be sitting on the bench for LHP's - he's that awful. Now, Chase Utely is the best player in baseball, and hit LHP's pretty well last year, but in his career, has lost about 50 pts of OPS to them. Ibanez actually hit LHP's better last year but career wise, he's about a 120 pts of OPS worse. You've essentially reduced one of the best lineups in baseball to league average come late innings. Btw, on the Howard bit: Howard vs LHP: .224/.294/.451; seriously, to put this in context, the league as a whole hit .264/.336/.417 vs LHP. Given his "defense" and his position, Howard should never be out there. |
Jason Giambi, Oakland Athletics on verge of one-year deal - ESPN
Sweet Jesus. The A's get Giambi for 1/5.25 with an option year at 4 (with a 1.25 buyout). His OPS+ last year was 128. |
Oh my lord! Looks like the Burrell deal already has had an effect!
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Love this move...Giambi...Holliday...Cust...definitely looks much better than anything the A's penciled into their 3, 4, and 5 spots last season...or the season before, for that matter. |
Carl Pavano to the Tribe.
Championship! |
Apparently Romero will not appeal his suspension:
Philadelphia Phillies' J.C. Romero suspended for 50 games - ESPN |
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I think the next change we're going to have in sabermetrics is a readjustment of the value of defense. The rage right now is to greatly overvalue it in statistical analysis and claim you're being cutting edge by including defense- I saw a figure that Willie Harris and his barely-a-bat-in-a-corner-outfield-spot was worth $15M. That's different than in the game where a some GMs are coming around to defense but many still just look at the offensive numbers. SI |
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From BP http://www.baseballprospectus.com/unfiltered/?p=1141 Quote:
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*sigh*
*eyes the taint on the Phillies accomplishments last year* didn't he get the W in a couple games? clarifying: not saying that I'm bitching and moaning about it. more like waiting for the other shoe to drop and columnists and talking-heads to start freaking out about it. wondering what MLB's response will be then, if any. |
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Dude, never do that. |
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oh i'm not saying that i am doing that. more like saying that i can't wait for the inevitable articles freaking out about it. prolly should have been more clear. just wonder what baseball's response to this is going to be - if any. |
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- Defensive value is still much harder to gauge than offensive value (or pitching value), but sabermetrics is getting better at it - If you have a value you can assign to a player defensively, you can add that to their clearly definable offensive value to come up with an overall value that can then be compared to a baseline of replacement level performance - With said comparison to baseline level performance, you can then determine what teams are paying on average for each additional "win" value, and get an idea of whether contracts are at, above or below this current standard Now obviously you can argue defensive metrics. The current advanced metrics like RZR, UZR and +/- don't always agree with each other, and of course they often don't agree with "convential wisdom". But unless they differ greatly, they do provide some range of probable defensive value, especially when you look at a player's performance over multiple seasons. To me, that's the only questionable thing about current analysis that attempts to rate whether signings are within current standards of dollars per additional WAR (wins above replacement). Maybe it's crazy to think that a guy like Raul Ibanez could be giving back 20 runs of defensive value to counter the 30 runs or so of offensive value he provides. But the great thing is that as technology advances and we get more and better data to cull from, we're consistently getting closer to having accurate assessments of defensive value. Here's the interesting thing - as more and more teams are getting on board with valuing defense, what's the next undervalued area for a "Moneyball" approach? If bad glove/good bat guys like Pat Burrell, Adam Dunn, Jason Giambi, etc. are now in fact undervalued, will we see a rush by teams like Oakland and Cleveland to snap them up? Obviously Oakland thinks that Giambi is a good value at 1 year/$5.25M. Given that he's likely to be a DH and not give away any value defensively, that deal makes a lot of sense for them. |
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I think that's where we disagree. I think far too much values is given to fielding WAR because, again, fielding stats are in their infancy. As they should, the stat community is gobbling these up and trying to draw conclusions off of them. However, they are then putting them next to much more "mature" batting and pitching stats and saying they hold equal value, which just doesn't work when there's a lot of disagreement even among fielding stats. We're going to find out in a few years that "Oh, yeah, you know how we said he was worth -30 runs in the field and that equates out to X wins. Well, X is now 1/3 what we used to think for fielding runs"- something that drastic. And, yeah, I think we're going to start seeing some iron gloved guys get signed for a lot less. However, I think this year is an aberration. Don't mistake an industry wide pulling back of salaries for people all of a sudden wising up to these things. I think in the next couple of years, you'll see more of an adjustment and then there will be a chance for bargain hunting. But right now, there are still a lot of teams working off of "old school" baseball thinking so it's not like these guys would have been falling through the cracks in last year's economic climate. SI |
No, I think we're on the same page on fielding - it's not the WAR to $$$ formula that is really in question, it's the defensive values that go into calculating an overall WAR value. I agree that the metrics are new and are bound to improve in coming years as technology advances and more and better data is available to be analyzed.
As for the current market, I think it's probably a combination of a greater number of teams becoming sabermetrically inclined (and the commensurate adjustments in computing defensive value in overall value) and the current economic market. While there are still some old-school front offices (hello Phillies), they are fewer and farther between than ever - see the huge change in culture with the M's this off-season. Teams have always valued defense to a certain extent in contract offers; what's changing is the amount of value they place in defense and, more importantly, how the judge defensive value. Perhaps the defensive values spit out by measures like RZR, UZR & +/- are exaggerated, but I have little doubt we're a lot further along in understanding fielding value in baseball than we were even 5 years ago. |
Interesting off-season. 2 things stand out to me in terms of the next collective bargaining negotiations.
1. Too many free agents. There's so many OF/1B out there that you get them for nothing. I think the MLBPA will be willing to push back free agency a year and try to pass it off as some kind of concession that they should get rewarded for. 2. I've never, ever, heard such emphasis on the draft pick compensation for signing free agents. I don't think the MLBPA expected this at all. I mean, who in the world is going to give up a draft pick and even $8 million for Jason Varitek? It's just not going to happen. He could have gotten $10-12 million in arbitration, and what is he going to have to settle for? Will he even get a job? The MLBPA will make a big stink over this at the next negotiations (and try to keep more revenue sharing off the table). |
Jebus...Smoltz to the Red $ox. That is going be be almost as distasteful as seeing Greg Maddux play his home games at Chavez Latrine. :banghead:
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great pickup for the Sox.
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You obviously mean picking up Baldelli, not Smoltz, right?
After last years major injury and Smoltzy being 42... well, that's just screams "Danger" all over. |
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what are the contract terms? I haven't seen yet. |
From ESPN.com:
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yeah - i like that deal.
$5.5mil on a flyer for a guy who could spot-start or come out of the pen is fine. The team had plenty of $$ come off the books, I want to see them spend some of it. And if he earns the incentives then he'll be worth them. love love love the baldelli deal if it goes through and assuming it's for sane-$$. Local kid and if there actually is medically light at the end of the tunnel now he's a 5-tool guy. worst-case he's a pinch-hitter |
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In the Varitek situation, first of all he's a dumbass for turning down arbitration. Beyond that I've heard rumors that Henry is so disgusted with Boras and his negotiating tactics that he's willing to go into next season without Varitek, even if they don't trade for a veteran. |
The Braves offered Smoltz $3m according to the AJC (or $1m more than that POS Mike Hampton was offered). Some off-season we're having, ugh.
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Losing out on AJ Burnett is a good thing. Braves aren't winning anything this season anyway. Not sure what the fuss is over a 42 year old starter who will probably only make 20-25 starts anyway. The guy's been great, may as well let him finish his career with a good team. |
Looks like Hoffman will be the Brewer's closer next year. I'm not sure how that is going to work out.
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Better than Eric Gagne we can hope. That will at least put Carlos Villanueva in a role that won't waste his ability to go multiple innings. |
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Not that that was a bad offer. http://www.sabernomics.com/sabernomi...o-long-smoltz/ Quote:
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I didn't see it mentioned anywhere but John Patterson retired at 30 or 31. He was filthy when healthy, which was rarely. Really helped me in fantasy baseball his one "full" season. However, he was one of the Boras loophole guys so that's a bit of a strike against him in my book.
SI |
Chipper, incidentally, blasted the organization over the Smoltz thing in the paper today.
A couple of things stood out to me in the Q&A. talking about the absence of a contract extension for himself A. We’ve got over a month until spring training. Yeah, it could certainly happen. I’ve just been chalking it up to the Braves have bigger fish to fry. But it seems like somebody keeps coming along and eating all our fish. So far this off-season, Frank Wren looks extremely inept to me. Maybe that's the wrong word though, maybe more like completely out of his depth. Q. For those who say Smoltz’s taken less money to stay with the Braves before, how do you explain why this time is different? A. It’s easy. If the Braves would have handled this right from the beginning and gone ahead and bitten the bullet and offered him a contract, knowing that when John Smoltz sets his mind to it and says he’s coming back and is going to be back at full strength, that the second another team came into this, the Braves should have taken him aside and said ‘What do we have to do to make this work.’ John Smoltz has earned that respect. We’ve all taken less money to stay here, but the fact of the matter is that John Smoltz has nothing else to prove individually. He wants to win. Who has the best chance to win right now? Boston. At no point since the worst-to-first year could I imagine any Brave saying that out loud. Just really hits home how far down they are at this point. |
chipper can come to boston too if he wants
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FWIW, I'd rather you have taken him than Smoltz. At least Smoltz is a guy I find pretty likable, whereas Chipper (correct though he may be on this subject) is a guy I've been tired of for years. When he's hot he can really rake but he's the least durable position regular we've had since Bob Horner. |
Reading this reminded me of discussion past on this board.
Bloomquist To KC | U.S.S. Mariner Quote:
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Poor Royals. I like Kyle Davies, though, he works construction in the off-season.
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Why is that a bad thing? This seems like another version of blaming the best player when the team sucks. For the 130 games a year Chipper's out there, he's the best hitting 3B in baseball. You're tired of that??? You'd rather have someone who sucks but plays everyday? i do not understand. |
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Yeah, I hate a 3B/OF who averages 530 AB a season over a 15 year career. Especially one that had 530 PA last season and put up an OPS+ of 175. His career OPS+ is 145, insane.
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yeah. i'd take him in a heartbeat
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What a whiner. The Braves were given Smoltz what he was probably worth. Just because they didn't want to overpay, he's selling his loyalty? I thought we wanted our teams to not overpay. Smoltz just chased the money. That's all. |
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Considering the amount of money the Braves just wasted on acquiring a pitcher who at best is worth a damn for half a season, and that the f'n idiot GM actually made an offer to the useless p.o.s. Hampton, I don't blame Smoltz one bit. I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that our own Senator & Poli are better judges of talent for their respective teams than Wren. About all that's left would be for him to add further insult to injury by wasting a dime on Glavine. edit to add: And then most likely overpay for the round mound with no rebound to return as a rally killing doubleplay & strikeout machine. And by overpay I mean giving him the major league minimum. |
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And what I was saying was that would be fine by me. I've found Chipper to be an incredibly unlikable personality for several years now (his take on Smoltz is akin to a blind squirrel finding an acorn AFAIC) and he's about as brittle as the legendary Bob Horner. |
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Somebody tell that guy about Curt Flood and Andy Messersmith, he seems to be a little behind the times. |
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