Also it seems to be harder to send down 'blue chip' prospects. The Mets sent down Lucas Duda when his average fell to about .240 but Ike Davis struggled below .200 for 2 months and did not get sent down.

Its only in the last 2 seasons that the Wilpons have not been willing (or able?) to spend money. They spent money in the Minaya, Phillips and Duquette regimes. The problem in those previous regimes was that those guys weren't good GMs. Now they have a good GM and they aren't willing to spend. We just can't win.

One thing I found interesting is that his cutter doesn't break horizontally at all. My gut reaction is that it isn't a very good cutter then. An RHP's cutter should break away from an RHB and in on a LHB. His stays straight.

Fuck! that was not supposed to be a reply to another comment.

How about the Yankees signing Steve Kemp?

"Left-handed batters take about 1.6 percent fewer pitches that are called balls than do right-handed batters." Isn't it the other way around. Lefies get 37.8% called balls vs righties 36.2%.

I can only think of 2 incidents - the one you mentioned and the running across the mound (which I thought was nothing at all). So I don't know where you get 'long history of bush-league incidents'.

Maybe Riggleman suspected that they weren't going to keep him around after this year and he just accelerated their decision.

Ryan Braun 2nd highest hitter projection.

Uggh! Come on! It was a good article but any reasonable person would wonder if steroids helped Brown become the pitcher he became. He did bulk up and he did up his K rate. Yes, maybe he 'figured something out' but maybe he just got stronger and threw harder.

Good point about the fastballs down and in. He really hits that pitch well too.

His BABIP is .346. That may be sustainable or not I don't know. His walk rate is also phenomenal. His BABIP and his walk rate are the big reasons for his productivity. I agree with SydFinch about his looking overmatched against hard throwers. He just takes way too long loading up his swing and he is almost always late on good fastballs. I think most of his home runs have been on off-speed pitches. I don't know if their is a discrepancy really. Overall he's been very productive, but when you need a hit in a big spot against a good power pitcher he'll most likely strike out. It looks to me like he's so afraid of swinging at a bad pitch that he waits too long to swing, or he just takes a strike, putting himself behind in the count, making it more likely that he'll swing at a bad pitch. If he continues like this and amasses a 47 VORP for the season I'll take it but it sure is a weird way to get it.

The money lost by one team is gained by its competition. The fans don't pay less for admission because their team has racked up wins against opponents that were injured. There is no net loss of $$ due to injuries.

He swings late, A LOT! He crushes off-speed pitches but my impression is the he either swings and misses or fouls off anything 91mph or faster.

Isn't the Mets AA affiliate in Binghamton not Birmingham?

I think you mean 'implicitly' not 'inherently'.

You're being facetious right? You misspelled fallible. On purpose maybe?

I'd like a better baseline comparison. What is the similar breakdown at AAA? AA? A? top 25 DI college?

Agree. I was happy to see him come back because I still enjoy watching the games even if the team is not in contention and I would much rather see them win.

The people you know aren't McCarver's core audience. Your friends are probably not the average fan.

Please!!! The guy could barely contains his anitpathy for all the 'fancy new stats', like OBP. What's with the apologetics? McCarver and his like are just plain wrong to insist that OBP is not important for power hitters. They create an incorrect impression of the game and misplace the credit for success. Now that we know better, it really is an injustice. And McCarver and Morgan do that because they don't understand and resent it.

Jon Miller sometimes repeats what Morgan has said in a way that makes it sound subtly ridiculous. I love it when that happens.

I think a physical combine would be very valuable provided it tested the right abilities. I agree that watching infield practice or BP would have little value in determining future success at the major league level. However there are tests for core physical and mental abilities that could have enormous predictive value. I have in mind reaction time tests and tasks that test the ability for people to track moving objects with their eyes. Tests that could be done in a lab. New tests could also be developed once it was determined what the mental building blocks of hitting major league pitching are. Perhaps a timing test, similar to kicking off in a football video game where the pendulum swings and you have to click when its at the max. This is just an idea, I don't know what the best tests would end up being but I'm sure that very useful tests would could be developed. You could start by testing all the players and see which results correlated best with performance. The tests would need to be as different from actual baseball tasks as possible so that you aren't just testing what you already know, which is how good the players are at baseball.

Zimmerman passed judgment on Strasburg for not signing. Sheehan defended Strasburg. They aren't the same. Yes Zimmerman has a stake but he wasn't just saying that he hoped Strasburg would sign, he said that Strasburg 'should' sign and implied that he was being greedy and selfish by not doing so. Sheehan just exposed Zimmerman's position. There is no parallel.

This article was definitely enlightening for me. It changed my whole perspsective on the issue. I do wish there was some way to allow weaker teams an advantage in acquiring young talent. What I'm wondering is why can't young players sign incentive heavy contracts? Why can't Strasburg get a $5million bonus if he has WARP better than 6 or something like that? Do the rules prevent that? I can't blame these guys for trying to get as much as they can for signing when they have no leverage for such a long time after that.

Pelfrey wasn't a ground ball pitcher in the minors. Rick 'The Jacket' Peterson turned him into one in the majors. He lost velocity and strikeouts but gained in double plays and fewer HRs allowed. Still he has always seemed restrained. He never - I shouldn't say never - but very very rarely, really 'lets it go'. He almost never rares back and fires a fastball. He also seems to only throw 2-seam, sinking fastballs instead of the more swing and miss favoring 4-seam fastball.

I don't think Minaya is very smart either. People are sensitive about that suggestion though. They'd rather you blame his failings on something else. The analogy the article made was a little off. Getting back to Minaya not being that smart I don't think he did it for the same reason that McCarthy did. I think he was really accusing Rubin of being motivated by jealousy or for reporting on Bernazard.

I disagree. The moralizing is real and its irritating as hell. And really is just moral posturing. Noone really feels the game has been 'tarnished' and 'sullied'. Thats all BS. Everyone saying that has been watching all along and enjoying it just as much if not more. And all this 'what about the children?' stuff is just as bunk.

Bernie Madoff.

I disagree that steroids robbed baseball of true competition and made it WWF-like. Paying off umpires, or players throwing games would have done that but steroid users were still trying their best to win games so the legitmacy of the games themselves was still intact.

Alcohol and tobacco provide immediate pleasure to the user and are taken for that reason.

An overhead photo of Yankee stadium could be used to get the true dimensions. Its 90' to 1st base, you can assume that's accurate and use that and some trigonometry to figure out the actual dimensions.

The idea, if Jay McGwire is being truthful, is that once Mark McGwire admits he used steroids a burden will be lifted and he can get on with things without all of the speculation etc...

Sometimes thinking is hard and I don\'t feel like it. Can\'t I just use the sniff test then?

At least substantiate your declaration of the demise of JAWS with something. If no results were ever counterintuitive what would be the point of analysis, - of any kind about anything?

You\'re exactly right and 16 games is a very small sample upon which to judge a team. Fair? Yes, but not definitive. If you try to explain this to an unsophisticated NFL fan they will object citing the fact that the season is only 16 games long therefore it must be a definitive sample. They are confused. Simply because the season is only 16 games long doesn\'t make a 16 event sample statistically significant. Its something about the ratio between the variability in day to day scoring and the actual difference in skill level between the teams. 16 games would be definitive in a league with an NFL team, a High School team and Pop Warner team because the differences between the teams is much larger than the day to day variance in scoring. In baseball the day to day variance in scoring is larger than the differences between teams so you need a lot of games. That ratio is probably smaller in the NFL but its not small enough that 16 games is a definitive sample.