The notion of “freely available talent” is something of a Sabermetric piety. Savvy waiver claims and judicious use of the Rule 5 draft are two sources, but it’s mostly by trawling through the minor-league free agents each year that many organizations fill their holes at the highest level.
I’ve gotten a lot of e-mail this week asking if I’m going to weigh in on the possibility of a Pete Rose reinstatement to baseball. This is in the wind because Rose met with Bud Selig to discuss how this might happen, and Selig, lacking both a backbone and any sense of integrity, didn’t say “You’re not getting back in, thanks for swinging by, I’ll have my assistant call you a cab.”
Cast your vote for this year’s Hall of Fame class.
I’m taking a quick break from writing my chapters for Baseball Prospectus 2003. I want to re-visit something I’ve already hit twice, because I’m a glutton for punishment. I wrote two articles where I took a crack at whether it ever makes sense to walk the 2002 Barry Bonds, first here and then on ESPN.com.
Among the numerous feats Bill James accomplished as an analyst in the 1980s, his greatest achievement was the way in which he legitimized the importance of minor-league batting statistics. Where once the remark “Yeah, but just because he hits in the minors doesn’t mean that he’ll hit in the majors” was an accepted, unchallenged claim, James’ work on the subject proved decidedly otherwise–eventually spawning an industry of minor-league analysis that still flourishes to this day.
Scot Hughes analyzes the rest of Montreal’s roster, which will probably be filled with players who are not yet arbitration-eligible.
The price of loyalty is $22 million and an extra year. The two contracts Jim Thome agonized over between turkey and potatoes were Cleveland’s five-year, $60 million deal, plus a vesting option year, and the contract he took, which started with six years for $82 million plus a vesting option year.
The week in quotes, November 19-December 1.
Thanks to everyone who suggested that
we post the HACKING MASS results for 2002 and let people figure out how
they did themselves–something we completely failed to consider–here are the
complete 2002 results.
The 2002 HACKING MASS Results: All Players, By Name
We list the 2002 HACKING MASS Results: All Players, By ESPN
One of the biggest questions this off-season has been what Major League Baseball will do with the Montreal Expos.