I had a smile on my face throughout all of last night's game because I knew he couldn't come up and pinch-hit.

about time

No, the Mets will rue the day they cut him.

Neyer has an interesting blog about how it's quite reasonable that if he hadn't played 5 years outside of MLB, he'd very likely have 3,000 hits by now. How about the arguments to be made for and against his HoF credentials, if that had actually occurred?

Even with 3000 hits, I don't think he's HOF material at all. I'm just so amused how he's almost 50 and still decent enough to be a bench player.

why is that?

I don't know, bad karma. Franco transcends a normal baseball player. Any team that cuts him doesn't get my support. :D

Fixed. Guy can't get around on an 85 MPH fastball.

Ichiro gets $18M per year. That's reasonable.

Yeah, 5/$90 is at the high end of the scale. Frankly, I don't think I'd want my team paying him that. But I was also one of the "Schmidt was a huge bargain" guys ;)

That said, he's a huge marketing tool and I'm just looking at it from a purely baseball perspective.

SI

Dunno how much stock you put in the number-crunching Tom Tango ('tangotiger') does, but he's done a ton of research on marginal win value - basically, the current market value for wins a player provides above a replacement-level player. From his calculations, he has Ichiro being worth (from strictly a baseball standpoint) at least $20M per year. Dave Cameron at USS Mariner runs similar calculations based off of Tango's work and has Ichiro being worth even more than that (he likely has Ichiro rated higher defensively than Tango).

Bottom line being, based off of where the market is currently - and keep in mind that's heavily influenced by the big spending boom last off-season - there are a number of strictly on-field numerical arguments that rate Ichiro's deal as at or below current market-value.

Now, there's certainly risk there given the length of the deal and his age - the M's have to assume there won't be a major decline in his productivity over the length of the deal. There are certainly valid reasons to think he'll age pretty well, but you never know for sure.

I'm pretty happy about it, and outside of a few cranks that have developed this misguided notion that Ichiro is a selfish, me-first player, pretty much all of Seattle and the Mariner fanbase is happy about it.

Brandon Inge is the fucking MAN!

Yay! Andruw with the clutch walk and Francoeur with the clutch hit! They're both so clutch.

Fixed that for you...;)

I just hope Inge gets half the press Jeter did for that play he made a couple of years ago. A foot to the right, and he would have hit the handrail and been messed up badly.

I haven't seen those numbers. I've just read some of the stuff marginal wins per buck and whatnot over at BP. Speaking of which, when did the Hit List become BP Premium?!? That's one of their biggest fluff pieces with hardly anything of statistical value but it was an entertaining read every week.




I think the first paragraph has the information that I'm going after. I posted in one of the other threads around here that I don't think this dollar flow increase is going to keep up much longer. People think this huge growth of the past couple of years is going to keep going infinitely. They thought that a few years ago, too, and then the market not only lowered its rate of increase, it actually pulled back. I don't think the latter is going to happen but the rate of increase is going to drastically slow in the next couple of years as most of the new stadiums are done and the rapid dollar growth from things like mlb.com are going from new income to expected with much less growth.

I think people think he's bulletproof and, while speedy players do hold up longer, he still is going to be 39 at the end of that contract. And the speed's definitely going to be much lower by then, which really will hurt his value as a player who derrives much of his offensive and defensive value from his fleet feet.

SI

Hahahahahahaha. You think something in Detroit will get as much attention as anything Jeter does? We heard more about ARod's wife and some swear word on a shirt than the average game for 2 weeks. But it's a nice thought anyways.

Awesome play, tho :D

SI

seconded

The Yankees/Rays game has been really entertaining. Back and forth, some great plays, and now the Rays attempting to mount a comeback against Rivera. Come on, Rays!

Freaking Rays threw away that game.

Fuck ESPN. Not only do I not give a shit about the ESPYs, but I'm sitting here wondering why I can't see any of the mid-afternoon games on the Extra Innings package, and then I realize that the ESPN Sunday Night game starts at 6pm because of the ESPYs, and I'm assuming they have an exclusive for Sunday night, so the Extra Innings package pulled all of the 4pm starts. Fuck ESPN.

Stupid. Now it looks like we're going to lose, because Teix just hit a go ahead hnomerun in the 11th.

Here's what I mean by stupid (re: Angels-Rangers today). It's the bottom of the eighth and we have the bases loaded with two outs. Joaquin Benoit is having some control issues. It's 3-1 to Jeff Mathis. One of the pitches he took as a ball was a high up fastball that curved to the inside corner. It was an obvious ball, and Mathis wisely took it. Move ahead to the 3-1 pitch. 3-1, mind you. A walk practically wins the game, because we're in Anaheim (and K-Rod's warming up for the ninth). Benoit throws exactly the same pitch as earlier--a high fastball, clearly out of the zone, curving inward toward Mathis. Benoit had just uncorked the pitch that would likely win the game for the Angels. So what does Mathis do? Does he take it again, as he did before? No, of course not, the stupid rookie flails wildly at it and pops it up for the final out. WTF. I can take trying and failing. But I hate stupidity. And that was just plain stupid, even for a rookie. And stupid for the coaching staff, too, because why wouldn't they have told him to keep his freakin' bat stitched to his shoulder unless that pitch was literally right down the middle of the plate?

Gah, I obviously care too much. Stupid rookies.

Andy Phillips did something similiar in the 5th against the Rays...Yanks have a man on by walk, Phillips swings and misses on 3-1 and what would have been ball 4. Except he got lucky and hit a liner to CF on the 3-2 pitch, and BJ Upton overran it, mised it, and he ended up with a triple. That hit was bizarre - the ball curved toward RF so Upton took off, and then at the last second, the ball appeared to curve back towards left-CF, and upton looked like an idiot flailing backwards to try to grab it.

Tigers about to split with Mariners...I'll take that.

Scary moment in the Tigs/Ms game for Ms fan as Ichiro took a Verlander FB to the knee. They say its just a bruised thigh right now though.

Wouldn't know, I couldn't watch it! :mad:

Phillies looking good in midseason.

Cubs pick up Jason Kendall for Rob Bowen and a minor leaguer.

Whoo.

The Blevins guy the A's got looks like he has some potential - nice deal by Beane to get something of possible value for the remains posing as Jason Kendall.

I know he's played like shit in Oakland, but 1) he's only 33, has at least a couple years left in him and 2) even if he continues hitting as he has, he's STILL better offensively than any Cubs catcher this year, post-Barrett.

I always liked Kendall. He was one of my favourite catchers when I first started playing Baseball Mogul.

Kendall was on steroids anyways. 2 HRs in 292 ABs for Kendall?? I mean seriously.

It's amazing how one team can be in the top 3 in every hitting category, and in the bottom 3 in every pitching one. I'm boycotting this season, at least as long as Jose fucking Mesa is on the roster.

Ditto (though it was OOTP for me). I was praying we'd nab Kendall a few years back when Hendry just ganked anyone and everyone from Pittsburgh.

About the only thing I can see going for Barrett is that maybe a move to the NL inflates his numbers a little.

He's been so awful as a hitter for the last 3 years that it's hard to imagine there's much of a chance of him rebounding in the future given his age and his recent trends. His power has completely deserted him, and his ability to draw walks has gone away this year. This would be at least somewhat palatable if he was considered a plus defensive catcher, but that's not the case either.

Outside of a couple of moderate rebound years in 2003-04, it's been since 2000 that Kendall was been a star hitter, and he's been flat-out awful since he joined Oakland. One of Billy Beane's few outright busts.

His numbers don't tell the whole story, though. He's a great situational hitter. He does the little things you don't see in the box score.

Ksyrup been hanging with Joe Morgan too much.

No, I've been hanging around here too much.

Like grounding into double-plays? :D

Actually, GIDPs are in box scores. I'm talking more about things like moving the runner from second to the dugout on a 2-out groundball, or straightening up the Gatorade jug and cups when a teammate throws a fit. He does rank #1 on the list of fewest times thrown out trying to stretch a hit into extra bases per number of career hits, since 1970. So when he gets that rare opportunity in Chicago, he'll be golden.

Jerry Narron had this to say: "He gives everything he has every day. He plays the game the way it's meant to be played."

not to mention he led the Pirates to their first World Series title in decades.

This usually translates to, "He sucks at baseball, but everyone in the clubhouse likes him and we're pretty certain he's not on steroids."

More chat fun:


Mark (Philly): I don't get it Rob. The Yanks have a good run differential so their record should be 53-37? Well guess what, It's Not! That stat is the dumbest stat I've ever seen, it means absolutely nothing. It's not like the league adjusts the teams records after the season based on run differential, so please stop bringing this up.

Rob Neyer: I'll say this real slow, Mark, so you might understand it (and again, I'm not judging you at all) . . . It. Is. Not. After. The. Season. Yet. And you know what? Even after the season, the run differentials will tell us some interesting things about NEXT season. I would admit the possibility that I'm wrong about this, except I've got a few thousand team-seasons backing me up.


Alas, no Joe Morgan today, I guess.

LOL, great response by Neyer.

I like Neyer, even though I don't really read him for much insight anymore. He was my (and I suspect many other people's) "gateway drug" into sabremetrics, and actually understanding things, rather than relying on tired cliches.

Jason Kendall says fuck you and the SABRhorse you rode in on, how about that cliche? :)

Really, that response perfectly sums up why I hate reading sabermetric sportswriting. Neyer is a condescending tool.

In his defense, (a) he's writing for his audience, and (b) that was the second question/comment of the chat about the same thing.

This was the first one. And usually, he gives about what he gets, and that one I posted above was not exactly a respectful comment to begin with from the poster.



Rob (Portland, OR): The problem with run differential, Rob, is that ploayoff teams are determinbed by RECORD. That's wins and losses. The Yankees have a great run defferentail, an all that its gotten them so far is a .500 record. .500 records don't make the playoffs in the AL, regardless of their RUN DIFFERENTIAL.

Rob Neyer: Rob, you're missing the point, Rob. It's NOT the end of the season yet. You can look at wins and losses all you like, but if you really believe in them, then put all your money on the Mariners. I'll bet you can get good odds.