- Grant is dumb and will probably lose all his money (SBN warning), but I’m happy that he would take the over on the A’s.
- Mike already posted this in the lounge, but Balfour tore his meniscus (link by SuSlu) while throwing yesterday and will be out until roughly the start of the season. I’m not too worried because a) seems like he’ll be back in the Majors by mid-April even in the pessimistic scenario and b) we’ve got relievers coming out of our ears.
- I’m interested in doing some infield rosterbation.
- Assume. that OF/DH is well covered by mix-and-match of Cespedes, Reddick, Crisp, Young, and Smith.
- Put down Jaso and Norris for C.
- My nominal plan for a starting infield is Moss (1B), Lowrie (2B), Nakajima (SS), and Donaldson (3B).
- With 12 pitchers, this leaves two spots on the 25 man roster. The two players without options are Rosales and Barton.
- Rosie fills the standard utility man role, but perhaps that isn’t so necessary with Lowrie on the roster.
- Barton seems like a bad pick for the back end of the roster because he lacks positional flexibility… but I think we need an insurance plan in case Moss turns into a pumpkin. My gut tells me that Barton has a higher upside at 1B than, for instance, Sizemore (Steamer agrees, but Oliver predicts them to have very similar wOBA; does anyone know why they don’t have ZiPS projections on fangraphs?).
If I got to make the decision, I think I would keep Barton and Sizemore on the roster, count on Lowrie to back up Nakajima at SS, and then see if Rosales can pass through waivers. Other ideas?
Finally, happy Valentine’s day to all. This one is for our resident Love Guru, Kay.
Roses are red/ violets are blue/ they’re both hermaphroditic sex organs/ and that’s perfectly normal. Happy Sex Nerd Valentine!
@enagoski
Emily Nagoski, PhD
1. The Astros over/under is 59.5. WOW.
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And Grant makes the (fairly reasonable) case there for taking the under.
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That’s projecting like 4 wins of improvement too.
Talentless team is talentless (other than Altuve, who was one of my strong draft picks in nobody-cares-about-my-keeper-league)
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It’s also pretty non-controversial to note that the AL West is a stronger division than the NL Central.
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I have Altuve for $1 in my keeper league, too
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It still blows my mind that the A’s and Astros had the same record after 52 games last year. The Astros would win 33 of the remaining 110 games, while the A’s would win 72 of 110.
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Together, they almost won them all
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Imagine if you combined the rosters…you’d have the A’s with Altuve!
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heh
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Wow, that’s craziness.
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Wrong. We care very much about your league, just not at all about your team.
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Well then let me tell you…
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Actually, we don’t care about any of the other teams either.
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Liar. E/C seems to, and he singlehandedly outvotes you schlubs.
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He’s not a citizen. He can’t vote.
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There is so much win there it’s a loss.
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heh
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Yeah, we want to know about the good teams
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I’m feeling ok about this year, and great about the following year.
Chris Davis and Cameron Maybin are my oldest position starters, and they’re backed by a bunch of studs (Stanton, Posey, Altuve, Andrus, Cespedes) and a lot of upside (Ramos, Chisenhall, Gose, Espinosa, Eaton). Keep in mind this is a 24 team permanent-keeper league with two starting catchers.
My pitching… well… look! over there! Brett Anderson.
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Not bad at all. Do you draft minor leaguers every year? How big are the rosters? Salary cap?
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The way to add players is (1) a 7 round draft after the MLB draft, anyone not on a roster is eligible except unsigned foreign players (e.g., couldn’t draft the Korean pitcher); (2) post-draft FA auction with a fixed budget per team. Individual auctions run once/week. Eligibility is limited to players listed by CBS; and (3) in-season FA auctions, run the same way with fresh budgets and limited to players on 25-man rosters.
Rosters are 25 MLBers (C, C, 1B, 2B, SS, 3B, MI, CF, OF, OF, OF, UTIL, 5 SP, 4 RP, 5 bench) and 26 minors (no position rules, must be rookie eligible or less, and not on 25-man rosters). In season there are DL slots (unlimited, I think), but they go away at the end of the season (i.e. Charlie Morton counts against my 25 slots even though his injury began last year and will run into this year).
No salary cap. We did a huge draft (~50 rounds) initially, and that was for permanet rights. I think some people really screwed themselves by drafting older stars (Pujols went in the top-5, for example).
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Sounds interesting. Who are your best prospects?
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Well, Eaton and Gose until the season starts. And we all know Ynoa is a “ONCE IN A GENERATION TALENT!!!” But after that Tommy Joseph (because Catchers are so scarce), Wilmer Flores, Choice. I don’t have a sexy farm system, but I have a bunch of B/B- types.
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I was able to fleece my league ( I joined a dynasty league as an expansion team last year, and they just started using minor spots). It’s a seven minors per team, 14-team league and I have Profar, Myers, Bogaerts, Lindor, Taveras, Gerrit Cole and Jose Fernandez
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Yeeps. Did they give you some kind of special draft priority, or are they just unclear on the concept?
I can’t imagine a world where one of Profar and Taveras should fall to more than 5th position. And the others aren’t schlubs by any stretch.
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I could pick 5 active keepers and 4 prospects prior to the 2012 draft (because everybody else protected 5+5 from their rosters). That’s how I landed Profar, Myers, Cole and Bauer. Taveras, Bogaerts, Lindor and Fernandez I picked up during the season, because we expanded to 7 Minors at the ASB.
We can keep any Minors player on our minors roster as long as we want, given he had minors status we have obtained him and we never activated him. Once we activate him, we have two years to use him for the same price we drafted him.
During this two years we can prolong him (only one player per year) to a long term contract, at least three years. The catch is that AAV shoots up to whatever his salary is plus the number of years times $3 if you prolong him during his first year or $4 if it’s the second.
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Yeah. For me the no contract thing was appealing because all of that gets awfully complicated awfully fast. Also, not having to prep a full(ish) draft every year is a great bonus v. keeper leagues where you can only protect X guys.
Flip side is people who flubbed the opening draft are in deep poop.
Hurray for intersex empowerment!
I also think I would go with Barton and Sizemore. If we lose Barton we don’t have any real 1B on the 40 man outside of Moss. On the other hand, the A’s have done quite well recently with moving people to new positions.
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Plus, if Donaldson isn’t as good as DFA thinks, we can just put Barton back over there.
ZiPS
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So why do the Fangraphs player pages for Barton and Sizemore have Steamer and Oliver (plus Bill James for Barton only), but no ZiPS?
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They’re waiting for all the projections to come out first.
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Have any of you all been filling out fan projections on fangraphs?
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I have not, but they seen to be more accurate than one would expect for a crowd-sourced projection.
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I just did a couple. They made some good choices about what categories to ask people to project, like “double plus triples per 150 games played” and “HR per 150 games played”. I think this helps avoid Napo-isms such as “I can see X putting up a 290/360/450 line with 5 HR and eleventy bazillion doubles”. I feel a little bad doing it, because I don’t watch many games on account of being in the eastern time zone.
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They are very good for projected playing time and some projection systems actually rely on that (Steamer, for example)
I wonder if they’re going to repair the meniscus or just shave the tear and be done. Repairing usually is a longer rehab but it’s much stronger.
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Not sure if helps, but SuSlu was saying Arthroscopic this after and could be ready for the opener.
According to ZiPS, Straily is the #2 rookie eligible pitcher, behind Zak Wheeler and tied with Hyun-jin Ryu (who is coming over from the Korean league). I’m hoping for a big year from him, more like his minor league numbers rather than those 7 big league starts from last year.
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This is probably a much larger issue, but I keep noticing it in the projections, and then looking through real numbers as well… it’s amazing to me how much less valuable starting pitchers seem to be than position players, at least according to fWAR. Can somebody (EC?!) tell me about what exactly that means, and how it comes to be so? It strikes me as important, because one of the most useful parts of WAR is the idea that we can compare position players and pitchers in terms of value, despite the fact that they have different jobs. For instance, in 2012, there were 8 position players with more than 7 WAR, and 0 pitchers. The year before it was 8 and 3. In 2010 it was 6 and 1.
Is this showing that hitters are just better than pitchers in the current era? Or that pitchers are simply less valuable than hitters? Or that there is perhaps less variability in pitching skill? Or even just that the part of the WAR calculation which aligns pitchers and hitters is skewed…?
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I think it’s just the limitation that starting pitchers are only out there for one out of every five games, though they are the most important player on the field for the games that they do start. Given that huge difference between pitchers and position players, I don’t see a reason why we should expect them to live in similar WAR ranges. This doesn’t mean that we can’t compare their WAR, rather that the best hitters are really more valuable than the best pitchers. On the other hand, Old Hoss can start 73 games and put up 18+ WAR!
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A (healthy) full-time position players will get maybe 11% of his team’s offensive plate appearances, while a (healthy) full time starting pitcher might pitch 13-14% of his team’s defensive plate appearances.
It’s more what EC says, just a difference in the spread of talent among players in the league.
Also, I think pitchers are more likely to miss a significant amount of time with injuries.
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But defense also plays a role in run prevention so you probably cant give them credit for all of that percentage..
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Mostly it’s that the talent spread is bigger amongst hitters, as they are selected not only on hitting, but also on fielding. Average-wise it’s the same, 662 pitchers accrued 460 WAR, 962 hitters accrued 672 WAR, both averaging at 0.69 WAR
Magary gets it:
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This makes me feel a lot better.
For the rest of the day, I’m gonna keep telling myself that if Rickey Henderson was here, HE wouldn’t be depressed, and he’d be getting shit done while talking about himself in the third person all the while.
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I am putting this last paragraph on a poster on my wall.
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Yay!
It really worked, too!
Sort of relevant to my 1B speculation, but not really:
Does anyone think this has any chance of becoming a real thing?
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I’m probably the last person left (other than Taylor himself) who wants him to get regular MLB PA’s and see what he is or can be.
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I’m with you. I’m excited about this.
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Maybe they should give him a shot at SS…
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I do.
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Me too!
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I ‘m in there too, saw him at Fanfest, carp he’s a big boy!
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So I’m 1 of 5. I’ll take it.
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Carp just got DFAed from SEA. Don’t think he was at FF.
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Did he? Excellent!
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Why? you think hes going to be good?
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Actually, because I traded him in my keeper league.
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lol
Woah, that 95.7 Fake DJ thing is coming all the way out to my shitty uncultured suburb next week?
Nice!
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Do you plan to go on and demo a segment on what’s the matter with Timmeh?
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They’d hire me on the spot, no?
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There is no way you are worse than the dude they hired last time around.
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I heard him a few times. He’s bad
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I think the short hair is going to be worth 5 MPH. I WIN THE COMPETITION
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LOL at the list of celebrity judges from the last competition:
Something missing there?
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Altuve? They just overlooked him.
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Speaking of 95.7, and at the risk of rushing to judgment, the guy they brought in to do A’s Talk does not seem very good and he has this weird Christopher Walken type of intonation.
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You are not rushing judgement, he is kind of not-great and I think he’s gonna get eaten alive by the A’s Talk callers.
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Also I think that whole “Habermetrics” thing they have been trying to make a thing is absolutely idiotic.
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He was crap in Fresno, still don’t know how that translated into a promotion into the Bay Area…
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Maybe I should go to that thing next week and take his damn job.
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This. Do this.
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Did you get my email?
So do any of you guys know a company called Principled Strategies out of Encinitas?
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These guys?
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They have a lot of business jargon on their website. It makes me hate them.
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Thank god this happened in Russia so we have dashboard cam footage.
Also: Holy shit.
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Not only in Russia, but in a well-populated part of Russia.
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It’s not a meteor. It’s Cespedes’ jack from the 2012 home opener finally re-entering the atmosphere!
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On its return orbit from the sun.
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Holy carp, listening to SciFri they just said the new info is that the meteor was about 1/4 the size of the asteroid that just did the fly by.
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Negative. That bad boy will return in 2017, punch through the Earth, come out the other side, and keep going.
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But surely some Russian dashboard cam will see it when it does.
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Oh yes, without a doubt.
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So apocalyptic!
I think I’m in love with the Senator from New Jersey.
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Massachusetts. But yeah. She’s awesome.
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I voted for her!
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I’d have dropped everything to volunteer for her last year.
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Huh. Why did I think New Jersey?
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New Jersey: the land of unbridled hope and optimism!
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Sorry, but he’s more into Dominicans.
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Heh.
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Yes! She is awesome. America needs more of her.
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Oh. I thought you were referring to Kate Upton. But Warren’s cool too.
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Both, really.
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When i first read about her a year ago i thought it would never happen, and then she was elected (!!!), now Brown is a just ‘bloviator’ on FOX.
Sometimes we can have nice things.
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Clinton/Warren 2016?
This weekend is going to be so fking awesome. My gearhead boyfriend should be arriving any minute to pick me up to go to the AutoRama. I’m dressed up in my best 40′s office girl approximation, and he’s going to be rocking the fedora and tweed and retro camera (along with the DSLR, of course). Tranny car geek (clothed) pinup shots FTW!
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Have a great time!
I’m off to the airport now, flying SFO/ORD/LHR (indirect to get the upgrade), tickets to see Arsenal/Blackburn in the FA Cup on Saturday afternoon, a long-distance tribute to beer week on Saturday night, brunch with friends on Sunday morning, and a flight to Paris in the late afternoon.
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yay arsenal
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It was a ridiculous game. Arsenal had 70% of the possession (including a 12-0 advantage in corners in the first half), but no penetration. Lots of the regulars were rested for Bayern on Tuesday (Podolski, Wilshere, Walcott, etc), but they still completely dominated until they got to the edge of the area where they repeatedly stalled trying to pass the ball into the net.
Blackburn had no serious chances all game. With 20 minutes to go Wenger made 3 simultaneous substitutions, bringing on the bench to try to avoid the replay. While the new team was still adjusting positions Blackburn got a rare cross/shot that the keeper parried to the feet of the Blackburn centre forward who completely mishit the ball, driving it into the ground, but then it rebounded up and over the defender (who would have blocked a clean strike) with enough backspin to slip under the bar.
The rest of the game was a frantic but ultimately vain siege of the Blackburn goal.
Some of the chanting was pretty grotesque … not somewhere I’d want to take Lily.
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But think of all the colorful taunts she could learn to use on the Red Sox and Yankees fans!
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Not so much colorful as misogynistic and homophobic … I’ll pass.
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Oh well that’s no good at all!
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life sucks, huh?
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when it doesn’t blow
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Right now it does.
Threw my back out at Heathrow, got stuck at the back of economy on a 2-hour delayed flight, and when we finally arrived there was no gate so I had to carry my luggage down the steps which finished me off completely. Now I’m flat on my back and immobile in a freezing Parisian hotel room.
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:-(
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It took me 45 minutes to get from my bed to the door of the room this morning. The journey home on Wednesday is not going to be fun.
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Ugh, that is no fun. Hopefully it will be a bit better by then, otherwise I sense a new string of lights in your future.
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Could be!
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Man that really sucks , feel for you man.
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Thanks.
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Ouch. I’ve been there (severe back pain). I haven’t been there (Paris).
I think if I was struck with severe back pain in a foreign country, I think I would want it to be a third world country where you could cheaply hire local prostitutes to walk on your back.
Heal up ASAP.
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That’s awful. I hope you recover soon.
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Injuries when traveling are the worst. Sorry to hear that.
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If it cheers you up any, I think I may have a hernia. And no insurance.
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You think you have no insurance?
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I’m pretty sure on that part. Like, at least 79% sure.
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Not much cheer there – the hernia provokes my sympathies and the insurance makes me depressed and angry.
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Well, thank you for that. I hope you get to feeling better.
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jealous
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Sounds like fun! My weekend consists of… well, you’re looking at it.
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Mine too!!!
Pandora is unlocked at work finally.
I love the Punk channel so FKing hard.
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I want a Pandora with indie labels only, no majors allowed.
This is awesome. Greetings from the lovely state of Casco!
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I love that all the links to the place names go to to Wikipedia, except for my fair state, which links to the myspace page of the Mt. Shasta Band, and Atchafalya.
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I just noticed that we get Hawaii. I approve.
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FK that! Hawaii is for Mendocinans!
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If you want Hawaii, you best be prepared to give up Sonoma, Nevada, and Washoe counties. We want our wine, gold, and hookers.
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Pending a few minor changes to Mendocino state code, I think that can be arranged. I would gladly trade some of our surplus wine, gold, and hookers for the Hawaiian Islands.
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It is really cool, although I think Mr. Freeman underestimates the a bit.
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Now he just needs to put all the professional sports teams on there so we can see how the new states would be represented.
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This map would be a disaster for the Democrats, right? Just looking at the West, only Yerba Buena and Los Angeles would be reliably left of center (they would waaaaaay left of center), and cities like Seattle, Portland, Denver and Las Vegas would have their influence drowned out by rural expansion. Maybe that’s balanced out somewhat by the the reshuffling of Texas.
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Huh. That’s an interesting question. I didn’t think about it that way — I was mostly looking at the cool state names.
All of the states are designed to have a population right around 6 million. That method of dividing things up sort of ensures that each state is anchored around one or two metropolitan area. I think it might make things more Democratic because there are fewer fully rural states.
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But they drew the lines for Rainier and Shasta somewhat to the west of the current Oregon/Washington borders, which might alleviate that somewhat. However, including Alaska with Washington may tip the scales for Rainier to R; but including Hawaii with Oregon would make it pretty safely D.
Plus, as far as rural expansion, I’m not sure it’s reality. Rural populations are dwindling fairly significantly around here.
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Yeah, I was thinking the Alaska effect for Ranier. For Shasta, the question is whether Hawaii outweighs the addition of the far northern parts of California. Probably so.
Really, it’s the packing of almost all of California’s liberals into two states that would have the biggest effect.
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I bet it’d be a net win, only because GOP votes are way more valuable currently b/c they are in low-population overrepresentation states.
Eg. Instead of NY going to the Dems, there’s like 5 states worth of EVs that would be pretty safe.
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I think there’s at least 3 CA liberal states. Mendocino would probably lean safely blue. Yerba Buena & LA. Tule & Temecula while having major rural regions also seem to intersect with high populations that might fit. Less so with Orange, but that might only lean red.
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My favorite part is that Cleveland is in the state of Firelands.
Corrupt Chicago politician is corrupt
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Seriously. What are these people thinking? $43,350 for a watch?
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Maybe it tells really good time?
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He can’t be late for all of those important votes!!
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Morris Day follows you around announcing it.
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Antiquities of Nevada sounds like a cougar bar.
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Let’s just set DFA loose in that place.
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Congress? Yes please set me loose there.
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Loose even pelled correctly in that instance!
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Pelled? I’ll grant you that.
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Whatever Happens in Vegas apparently doesn’t stay there.
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Never forget.
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Daley was such an ass.
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Is the Miegs?
Kay bait:
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So is Selig good for anything?
First Montreal and now this debacle in Miami, he should be forced to sell like McCourt.
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Agreed.
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Loria is one of those people where I would not trust a single thing that comes out of his mouth. I’d be assuming whatever action is in his self-interest and my not-interest is what he’s doing at that moment.
Has this been posted? Politics and “Moneyball,” all in one very long article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/magazine/can-the-republicans-be-saved-from-obsolescence.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0
Slusspedes:
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smart man
Carl Pavano lives every Minnesotan’s nightmare (albeit in Vermont, followed by visits to some particularly shitty medical facilities in Connecticut). He went out to shovel the walk, slipped on the icy steps,
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When did the A’s sign him?
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If the A’s had signed him it would be the trainers who didm’t realize he had lacerated his spleen until the postmortem.
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Haha!
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#Win
From http://oakland.athletics.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20130217&content_id=41740470&vkey=news_oak&c_id=oak
Cespedes to SS!
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Imagine Cespedes with his arm behind the plate and a +12 positional adjustment. Oh lawdy
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What is the approximate talent level of the Mexican League? I think I’ve heard Single-A but I’m not certain.
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I think it depends whether you count the word “league”. In “Mexican” alone there is a single “a”
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Its more like a AAA- environment. There are lots of old former MLB wash outs.
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Is the talent level really that high? Lamas hit .336/.383/.523 with 15 HR and 34 doubles. He seems a little undersized, but that would be pretty excellent production for a 22-year old shortstop in a Triple-A environment.
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Thats why I put the – there. Its more like half way in between AAA and AA. We had that catcher a couple of years ago from the Mexican league who got hurt, but before that he went straight to AAA
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Oh yeah. I had forgotten about Joel Galarraga. Still a good performance considering his age. Any chance this guy is more than organizational filler?
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I have tweeted Jason Parks asking.
I don’t know much about him but his ARL is quite good.
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Jason Parks looks like the lovechild of Tom Selleck and Jason Lee.
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I was thinking the lovechild of Tom Selleck and the post-op Tom Selleck.
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that might just be a picture of selleck
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Ok, then Tom Selleck looks like the lovechild of Tom Selleck and Jason Lee.
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Aren’t there two leagues? Like a Mexican winter league with a fairly high level of play and a summer league that is much lower?
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I just answered my question via wikipedia. The Mexican League is AAA, like DFA says. But it has its own minor leagues — Liga Norte de Mexico, Liga de Beisbol del Noroeste de Mexico, and the Mexican Academy League, which is single-A in the summer and rookie ball in the winter. Plus there is the Mexican Pacific League, which is unaffiliated from the others but involved in the Caribbean Series.
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Well if youre going to answer your own questions what am I suppose to do?
The union will be filing a grievance for you doing bargaining unit work.
After Pitch FX, here comes goal celebration FX
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This is awesome.
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Yeah, the guy running w/ the leak was so random!
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leek* oops.
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I haven’t watched it yet, but I was so looking forward to seeing a guy running around with urine coursing down his leg.
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Definitely. Explosions everywhere!
This is interesting (to a wedding photographer, anyway).
http://annealmasy.com/an-open-letter-to-weddings-unveiled-magazine/
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Interesting to a non-photographer as well.
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A few months back, I got into a heated discussion online with a couple of photographers on the topic of shooting a gay wedding. The vast majority of photogs in that group were more than happy to do it. But there were a couple who felt that it violated their beliefs. Ok, whatever. But 2 of them insisted, absolutely insisted, that there are gay couples going around trying to hire Christian photographers just so that they can sue them when their business is turned away. Yeah, because people planning to get married have so much time for that. And because gay couples are so much more interested in putting bigots out of business than in celebrating their love and hiring a photographer who doesn’t get all uncomfortable at the sight of same-sex kisses.
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Ridiculous. “It might have an adverse impact on me, therefore it MUST BE A PLOT HATCHED BY THE GAYS!”
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You know what, Stuart, I like you. You’re not like the other people, here, in the trailer park!
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They’re a dastardly, nefarious bunch.
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In order to accuse someone else of such a dastardly plot, one must be capable of hatching or executing said plot oneself.
Point a finger and three point back at you, along with a thumb for God or the Space Station or whatever.
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It’s also an insanely stupid concept. Why would anyone do that? What do they have to gain. I can’t believe how easily people buy into ridiculous conspiracy theories. In my experience, most conspiracies require a lot more intelligence and cooperation on the part of the conspirators than they’re likely capable of.
Mr. Beane, Mr. Forst, go get this guy!
http://www.seattlepi.com/sports/article/Evan-Gattis-wanders-his-way-back-to-baseball-4301578.php#page-1
I could mojo the FK out of his plate appearances, seeing as how he’s a mystic and all…