Bo Jackson much?

Raburn was also horrendous defensively, while Infante figures to be at least average. That's probably half a win right there.

The big problem with Porcello is that he's an extreme groundball pitcher on a team that has a terrible infield defense. He's just worth more to other teams than he is to the Tigers.

Sure, but what can the league do? Is there some formal mechanism for taking back revenue-sharing dollars? Or is it just a "stay in Bud Selig's good graces" kind of thing?

I'd be interested to hear from someone (Maurry?)what, exactly, the consequences of angering the player's association are. If the Marlins run out 25 league minimum players next year, can anything happen?

And all I got was this Hot Cocoa Sampler Box!

Fielder - Bad but not terrible. He's only signed through his age 36 year, so even if decline starts at 32 that's probably 2 mediocre and 2 bad years out of 9. And given his relatively good health he might start his decline later than that - it isn't out of the question that he maintains good-to-great performance through the contract. Hamilton - Older, more injury prone, other reasons to suspect a steep, early decline, possibly for the same AAV. Truly scary. Don't do it Mike! We'd like the Tigers to have a fighting chance even after you've passed on to the great owner's box in the sky.

No Pecota odds?

Is there data out yet on average ticket prices?

That would be a really interesting future article, though I imagine it would take a lot more number crunching. Maybe to make it easier, how many of Cabrera's former seasons would have won the Triple crown at least once over the last 44 years?

I was just thinking something like this. I'd love to see them just do a bullpen start. OTOH, given how their season has go so far I expect Saunders to pitch a nine-inning gem and a Os win 2-1 despite being out hit 10-2. Book it!

I think Larry's point is, why do we need to make the comparison? Miggy is almost certainly going to get the triple crown. That's amazing! Mike Trout is putting together one of the best single in the history of baseball as a 20-year-old. That's amazing! Sure, those few who vote on MVP awards have to decide which is more amazing. But the rest of us don't. We should appreciate that we get to see 2 amazing feats in one year, not get bogged down in flame wars over who is more amazing.

Assuming that those 29 games are in fact a random sample of all baseball games, you could use this to figure out how much he helps in the playoffs as well. (.11)/29 = .00379, or around 4 thousandths of a win per game. It seems like someone could turn that into expected increased win expectancy for having Billy Hamilton on the playoff roster. The question for the Reds, then, is whether that small increase in win expectancy is worth dumping their 12th or 13th pitcher. My guess is yes. But the difference is probably small enough that intangibles could make a difference. Maybe that 13th pitcher is a great presence in the clubhouse, or is buddies with Joey Votto, or whatever other reason you'd want to keep him around.

“I don't think anything is too much for Trout,� said another NL official. “It's just such a different situation given the leverage. If I'm the Angels, I'm looking to do something historic, and we're talking those 12-15 years, to make sure he is the man for our franchise for as long as possible.� The situations aren't terribly comparable, but replace Angels with Twins and Trout with Mauer and I think you have similar lines of thought. Mauer has been pretty good, but nowhere near worth what they're paying him.

This. It isn't AA dumping Vernon Wells, but it is dumping a big contract that seems well down the road towards going bad to a team that's willing to take a gamble in order to make the playoffs this year. I suspect that the vitriol is coming from a deep distrust of the Marlins. Dumping bad contracts is good if the money goes back into the team. If it just goes back to Loria (or the SEC), who cares?

And just continuing the saga: July 11th: Tigers: 32.3 Indians: 30.7 When the only new information to incorporate was Verlander getting rocked in the All Star game.

I'm still confused about the procedure here. Looking at July 9th and July 10th, I see the following: 9th: Tigers: 36.6 Indians: 27.6 10th: Tigers: 31.5 Indians: 36.6 Which seems odd, given that no baseball was played on the 9th. (I just picked those two teams, but there's a bunch of other odd movement). It doesn't appear that depth chart updates could account for these pretty wild swings either. The playoff odds report has been one of my favorite products at BP, but with all the arbitrariness that seems to have crept into these figures I'm mostly just confused when I load them up in the morning. Is it as simple as not enough simulations being run for the asymptotics to kick in?

ADROCK DIDN'T USE ALL CAPS IN HIS POST! AMERICA IS ALL ABOUT YELLING ON THE INTERNET! WHY DOES ADROCK HATE AMERICA!?!?!1/?!

Also, this only happens if the player spends 5 full years in the minors (i.e. isn't very good). If Soler spends five full years in the minors the Cubs aren't going to be very happy.

Interesting. Based on projected WARP, which are the most top-heavy teams this year? The Tigers, for all press they get, look to be solidly in the 40-49% range, the historic mode.

A joke that combines Star Trek and obscure Illinois political scandals. Gold Jeri, gold!

What's the story on Turner's short start?

Is there a possible follow-up column that would look at the most that any team has ever overachived? I.e., whether any team has come close to most of their players reach their 90-percentile forecasts?

How much do you think this changes they way we should very all the recent big-dollar, big-year contracts that have been handed out? The Votto, Fielder, and Pujols deals don't look so bad from a team perspective if the rate of salary inflation is 5-7% instead of 3-5%. Do you think that teams have looked at the big media deals and valuations, decided that salary inflation is going to be a big factor, and then decided that a 10-year deal might not be so bad after all?

Nice. Love LPR, I hope I can make it.

Thanks, I was waiting for a good BP take on this move. This move seems so wild, I almost think that the Tigers have to have some inside information that tells them that Cabrera can do it. I'm hoping so anyway. Losing Miggy for a month or two to injuries before the inevitable move to DH would really help bring the Tribe back into the race.

Very interesting. Which player had the highest variance in his offer?

Likewise. I think a look at the Tiger's finances in the wake of the Fielder deal would be a great follow-up article. My impression is that the Illich family's finances are much more stable, supported by profitable hockey and pizza franchises instead of loans and shady investments. The real danger is that when Mike Illich passes on to the great owner's box in the sky the next Illich will have less of a commitment to pouring cash from these other businesses into the Tigers. That would make the Fielder contract a bit of an albatross, but would still be much preferable to the slow-motion default that the Mets are going through. (aforementioned impression is based mostly on this article http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20120129/FREE/301299952/in-signing-fielder-ilitch-isnt-stretching-dough)

Wow, I had forgotten that you could get a save by pitching three innings at the end of a game, regardless of the score. Just when you thought it was impossible for a statistic to be more useless, you're reminded of something like that. Will you actually subject yourself to all 5+ hours of suck, or will you fast forward through the rain delay?

Was listing Hamilton as both a SS and a 2B intentional?

As bad as the early 00s were in Detroit, it's hard to imagine how terrible the Tigers would have been if they'd actually signed John Gone. Certainly his rejecting that contract helped us far more than anything he ever did on the field for us.

The thing to keep in mind is that the Rays could have him basically for free for the next three year. They aren't paying $14 million for five years. They're paying $12.5 million for the last two of those five years. And without this contract he'd be in arbitration anyway. $6 million a year for the first two arb-eligible years isn't too crazy for either side. A lot can happen to a pitcher in 5 years, and unless he's a super-star he wouldn't make much more than that in arbitration. However, the three club option years at $8 and change a piece are surprising for someone with his talent. There's no downside for the club in those, only the player. If he turns out to be a good number 2 that could be leaving 20 million on the table. More if he turns out to be more. If he bombs or gets injured then the Rays just drop him.

Yeah, I hate to be the "why don't you talk more about my team guy" but... Dotel?

Even if Pujols and Reyes perform next year, the chance that their contracts aren't albatroses in 5-6 years is vanishingly small, given Pujols's age and Reyes's health. Even in the best case scenario the Marlins become the Cubs of the 2016-2020 era, except even more so.

Are the incentives in Wang's contract less generous than those in the other pitchers listed there? If so, that could account for the higher headline price.

Kevin, for some reason the RSS feed version is 1.6 GB. I'd like to think that us non-iTunes people just get an extra 10 hours of you and Jason, but I imagine there was some technical error.

The King!

Does the current report reflect changes to the depth charts due to trade deadline action?

Good to great for the Tigers. Decent for the M's. I love that it isn't a rental for the Tigers - Verlander/Scherzer/Fister/Porcelle.Turner next year will keep them in contention. What is the chance that Fister doesn't hit arbitration until 2014, assuming that the current Super-2 rules don't change?

Love the King. It was a sad day when you stopped writing at Salon, I'll have to check you at at the Bleacher Report.

Nor for the Rockies.

One would hope, but the same was true with the Rangers and it is quite possible that the lower bid won there.

Interesting. Does this mean that these updates are going to be reflected in the playoff odds reports too?

Thanks, Kevin, for confirming my initial reaction that this was a terrible move by the Tigers.

Thanks, I was waiting for your discussion of this treatment.

The other factor is the chance that Super-Two status doesn't make it into the next CBA. If it doesn't, then all the teams that are keeping good prospects on the farm this year in hope of saving some money in 2013 will have wasted time and arguably hampered their rookies' development. Betting on the next CBA is dangerous of course, but it was probably a factor in their decision.

Holy crap: Zaun's website is awesome (though the link in your post doesn't go to it). Can we get a BP feature on best player websites? Or was there one and I just missed it?

Southern Texas could be reconquisted by Mexico, and this team has a decent in the Mexican leagues?

Also interesting how stadium locations might affect this. Do Jets and Giants players save money because their games are played in New Jersey, which while a high tax state isn't as high as the combined city/state rate of NYC? Suppose the Nats had followed through on their threat and moved to Northern VA while keeping the franchise name. Seems like that could have had a huge tax impact (though it makes you think that Redskins players wish their team had moved to, say, Fairfax, VA instead of Landover, MD).

Thanks Eric, interesting stuff. It might be interesting to look at the rate if you just took the highest marginal rate. After all, surely this is what matters if a marque free agent is deciding between eight figures from Texas and slightly higher eight figures from New York.

I do invite Neil to try to drive from Hoboken to Hartford during rush hour and see how that compares to the bay area.

Interesting. It would kind of be interesting to see the average career WARP from each slot, maybe in a different post? Would that actually tell us something interesting about the value of draft picks, or would it be too skewed by a few outliers (i.e. Randy Johnson at pick 89)?

How many stars would he have received?

I don't think the suggestion has ever been that Lee isn't money. It's that he might not be money 3 years from now, and probably won't be 5 or 6 years on. Getting merely good results from the last three years of a 25+ million a year contract will sink anyone besides the Yankees.

Another factor is that there are simply more batters vying for the MVP than there are pitchers. If we assume that only the starting rotation and the 8 starting position players from each team are realistically able to compete for the award, that's almost half again as many position players. I'd think that that greatly increases the chance that someone strikes gold and wins off of a very lucky season. This in turn would make repeat wins harder, even if amazing hitting seasons are no less repeatable than amazing pitching seasons.

Wow. So my Tigers really need to put it together this year or next, since by 2013 there's going to be a new Sheriff in town.

Inge is a fan favorite in Detroit, and gets some credit around here as the last survivor of the bad old days. I'd guess maybe one of those eleven million are a sort of mini version of the gift Jeter is about the get from the Yankees.

Yes, can you please post the vote totals, or at least the totals for the top ten players?

Pining for Brandon Inge as an offensive upgrade is never a good sign.

Any chance of doing Sparky Anderson at some point? And as a Tigers fan who was raised in Pittsburgh back in the days when Barry Bonds could fit into a normal sized-batting helmet, I'd love to see a Jim Leyland list at some point in the far off future.

Nights saying Ni. You owe me a new keyboard Christina.

Nothing on Zumaya?

Has anyone at BP every done an analysis of what gets a player All Star votes? Obviously market size has got to be a huge factor, but it would be interesting to see what kinds of performance voters reward (presumably HRs, RBIs, and so on) and what kinds they don't.

Has anyone played this and Baseball Mogul? Opinions on which is better than the other?

Fair enough, but you say the goal is to see "whether the ostensible winner will end up pitching more than the loser." That's not what you're looking at in a sizable number of these comparisons.

Also see Kaszmir (traded away by the Rays) Lee (Traded for by the Phillies). Neither of these are 5th or 6th starters by any stretch of the imagination.

At least some of the so-called 5th starters logged so few starts because they were acquired mid-year in deadline deals. I'm looking at you Jerrod Washburn. These aren't 5th starters in the traditional sense; their low number of starts is due pretty clearly to their only being around for half a year. It would take a bit of digging, but the comparison you want to be making is between pitchers who are the 5th pitcher to start a game for each team and players who are the 6th pitcher to start a game for their team during the year. That's a pretty clear expression of team's preference orderings coming out of camp, and would give a much clearer picture of whether winning the positional battle matters.

Even if Damon merely adds depth, isn't that a very valuable thing for a team that has two players with spotty health records in the outfield corners? It'll be interesting to see the Tiger's THR, but I doubt they can count on full seasons from both Ordonez and Guillen. In Ordonez's case they don't particularly want a full season, given his $15 million vesting option.

That's true, but I imagine most of the batter induced HBPs are not terribly dangerous. If you're going to get plunked on purpose, you're going to do it carefully, and you're not going to do it with your head.

Yes! Plus Damon/Guillen splitting LF and DH would mean a much lower chance of Maglio picking up DH PAs and thus vesting his contract. That alone has got to add a million or two in expected value of the signing for the Tigers.

Of course, the goal of the player's union isn't to get small market teams to spend more money on eventually contending. It's to make them spend more money on major league payroll period, whether or not that helps them. It's hard to see why they'd push for language that explicitly allows teams to spend less on major league payroll as long as they were spending more on scouting, the draft, etc.

I think the buckets idea for lower ranked players mentioned earlier is good. Often the decision in the mid-late rounds of a draft is "Do I grab this guy, or are there five others like him I can wait for?" Knowing roughly where players 10-30 stand would be more useful to me than knowing exactly where you think 10-20 will end up.

Interesting stuff. Can you post the complete list? My man Leyland isn't in either the best of worst set, but I'd be interested to see where he ranks.

If the cubs want to take Maglio's contract, we'll be more than willing to pass it on down. Strangely, no one seems to be taking us up on this offer.

I dunno, in this, a truly dominant year, he's only 11th on the team in VORP, 4th among pitchers. His consistency means that he consistently contributed about as much as their third starter, but that's still only as much as their third starter.

Shouldn't you weigh the contributions by the expected number of starts? In a five game series the front guy probably averages 1.2 starts while the 4th guy likely expects less than 1 start. Likewise, in a seven game series the first two guys are far more important, since the first guy is probably going to get two starts while the 4th guy can't get more than one. This would make the Cardinals look even more incredible, and the Dodgers would probably jump up a few spots.

Re: not using matchups in the 9th. It's true that saving a lefty for the ninth isn't much smarter than saving your best reliever for the 9th and ignoring any high leverage situations before then. But Joe's point wasn't that Manuel should have saved a lefty for the 9th; it's that he had two lefties in the bullpen ready to go and opted to stick with a righty who is particularly bad against left-handed hitters. That's idiocy.

True, but cost control will allow more big draft spending and potentially more free-agent spending, so Decent FA 2B and Decent FA SS become Good FA 2B and good FA SS. If the owners don't decide to just pocket the cash...

Any thoughts on Huston Street?

I think the effect could be much bigger than Rowan suggests. Sure, the chance that Pujols goes on a tear and wins the batting title is remote, but if he does he's almost sure to win the RBI crown as well. Similarly, in the unlikely event that he hit 20 more homers, the extra RBIs will almost certainly give him the RBI title. The interdependence between Pujols' average and homer run rate is less clear.

The bullpen had thrown 14.2 innings in the last two days, so I think that figured into Leyland's calculations.

So after all these depth-adding moves, where does the Pirates farm system rank now, after being 22nd at the beginning of the year? Up 10 spots? More?

Will these get used in the PECOTA part of the postseason odds report (or are they in there already)?

Is Granderson really only going to get 80 percent of starts? Not withstanding his injury last year, he's green on the team health report this year. Even last year he put up more than the 609 plate appearances he's projected at here.