Chad ochoseis

Tobi Stoner as the paternity leave replacement?

You can keep your Molly Beerses, your Alicia Rickters, and even your Anna Bensons. I'm a Nadia Loney guy through and through.

Harper has always struck me as the kind of arrogant yet decent jock who would cut you off in his BMW on his way to conducting a clinic for impoverished kids.

I generally ignore individual awards, but a Cy Young and Silver Slugger for Syndergaard would be awesome.

Fernando Salas?

The guy whom I'm sure we'll be conflating with Josh Smoker five years from now...Tobi Stoner.

Josh Smoker

Josh Edgin didn't pitch at all in the bigs in 2016, I don't think.

Cowbell got some ABs with the Indians early in 2016. Handsome Anthony Recker made his way through a couple of orgs in 2016, but I don't think he played in the major leagues.

Edwin Encarnacion to the Tribe. 3 years. Some articles say $60M, others $65M. Completely mediocre as a Red and then a star with the Jays. Either way, he's a definite improvement over Mike Napoli, who was the Indians' DH last season. http://www.cleveland.com/tribe/index.ssf/2016/12/cleveland_indians_edwin_encarn_1.html#incart_most-comments

Born in Canada, Stairs' 19 seasons is the most of any Canadian player, and his 265 homers are second all time. Second to LARRY FRIGGIN' WALKER, today's birthday boy. And I believe Walker's 17 seasons are second only to Stairs. I made my case for Walker in my original post, but in a nutshell, .313/.400/.565 are absolute, no-questions-asked HoF offensive numbers, even putting aside 7 Gold Gloves and 230 SBs. The only argument you can make against him is that his offensive stats are purely a Coors creation. They're Coors-inflated, of course, but the non-Coors stats I calculated in my original post are still borderline HoF, and by excluding Coors, they exclude his age 28-36 home stats. Make some estimates as to what those stats would have been in a neutral ballpark, and you've still got a Hall of Famer. Or, you could just look at the 141 OPS+. I don't completely trust park adjustments, so I didn't give the OPS+ much weight. Speaking of OPS+, though, Sammy Sosa's is 128. That's in Rusty Staub/Norm Cash/Don Mattingly territory - very much on the border. And I lived in Chicago in the 90's and saw a lot of Sosa on the field. He was abysmal at the stuff that doesn't show up in statistics. I'm not talking about Jeteresque "intangibles"; I'm talking about taking first pitches when your team is behind and you need runners on base, catching baseballs with both hands, throwing to the correct base, etc. The Tom Emanski fundamentals. He sucked at them. So I can leave out Sosa with a clear conscience. Gwreck mentioned Mark McGwire, whom I said I wouldn't have voted for. He's off the ballot now, so the question is moot. But the points made in his favor are good ones; McGwire is a tough call.

He had more good years than I realized. His offensive production fell off the table after age 32, but that's not bad for a catcher. And I try not to penalize players who "stay too long" and hurt their average stats by becoming useful late-career part time players instead of retiring. As long as they're not stinking it up every day in a starting role (looking at you, Derek Jeter) and still making contributions above the replacement level, there's no reason not to stay around.

He's in.

Bagwell, Bonds, Clemens, Guerrero, Ramirez, Walker I don't like the fact that players used steroids in the '90s. Given that MLB turned a blind eye to it until they were shamed into enforcing their rules by the Mitchell Report though, I wouldn't make steroids a complete bar to HOF admission. The HOF includes sportsmanship as a criterion, and I think of sportsmanship as a deciding factor in borderline cases like Andre Dawson. Steroids = poor sportsmanship. So I'm fine with keeping a borderline HOFer like Mark McGwire out. But Bonds, Ramirez, and Clemens aren't borderline cases. Tim Raines isn't on my ballot. He was really good. But the way you get to be the second best leadoff hitter of your era is by not being quite as good as the better middle of the order hitters. Just for grins, I compared Larry Walker's batting stats outside Coors Field to Raines' total career stats. Walker still comes out slightly better than Raines. And this comparison puts Walker at a huge disadvantage by removing his home stats from age 28-36, which would have likely been his most productive numbers no matter where he played. I didn't see Walker play enough to say anything about his defense, but BBRef gives him a much higher dWAR, and he did win 7 Gold Gloves (for what that's worth). My memory of Raines is that he could make the catches, but had a weak arm. Both of them had long careers, and both of them were injury-prone. So I can't see voting for Raines and not Walker. Walker Excluding CoorsRainesPA552910359AB47718872R8001571H13462605HR229170RBI790980SB156808CS60146BB6271330BA.282.294OBP.372.385SLG.501.425 I could be convinced on Pudge. And Edgar Martinez.

2B, 1990, Carlos Baerga

It's not over yet. That 1988 pitcher is still open, and it's bugging me. Pitchers should be easy; the few pitchers who can hit - the Glavines, Smoltzes, Colons, Zambranos, Bumgarners, Hamptons, etc. - are all well-known, since every broadcaster in existence comments on their batting ability every time they step up to the plate. I did look up El Sid but, of course, he was still a Met in 1988. And though he was a good hitter, he never won a Silver Slugger.

Edgy MD wrote: Not that I'm saying you peeked, because I'm totally not, but I'd love to see you show your work. I mean ... Liván Hernandez! Meh. When I'm bored, I look at the batting records of good hitting pitchers on bbref. I was pretty sure he'd won a Silver Slugger at some point, and I thought he'd had a pretty weak season as the resident Crafty Veteran on the Mets a few years back.

Oh, hey, glad this kwiz is still on. Would the 2004 pitcher be Livan Hernandez?

I may be the first person to make a wrong guess here. Olerud, 1B, the year he hit .354, which I'm guessing was 1997.

Piazza, New York Catcher, 2000

Carlos Beltran, CF, 2006

Centerfield wrote: Napoli is a little surprising. 34 HR's, 800 OPS. You'd think he'd get a multiple year deal someplace. Maybe the Tribe can't take the risk that he would accept. Not all that good in a small ballpark. Park-adjusted, the OPS+ was only 104, which is weak for an iffy-fielding 1B on the downside of his career. And the Indians have Carlos Santana, who has a 2017 team option for $12M and is basically a switch-hitting version of Napoli in his prime. And, small sample size, but Napoli was awful in the post-season. I don't see anyone taking on Napoli for more than the QO. Indians also letting Rajai Davis go, which is less of a surprise.

Ah, what if? What if Jose Ramirez hadn't gotten himself picked off in the second in front of Chisenhall's single? What if Terry had seen that Kluber didn't have it (even his outs were hard, and he was lucky that Schwarber ran the Cubs out of the third inning) and brought in Miller sooner. Or taken a flyer on Salazar or Merritt? What if he'd pinch hit Naquin instead of Gomes for Perez in the 8th? What if there hadn't been a rain delay screwing with Shaw's momentum? Well, what the hell. It was the most exciting game I've ever seen. It would have been an exciting game if it were a mid-May game between the Angels and the Rays, and not Game 7 of the WS. First post-season game I've ever attended in my life. Though right now, I feel like crap. I yelled more than somewhat at the game, and afterwards had to make sure my buddy (an actual Indians fan) was OK, and then got to bike home from the ballpark after the sprinkle of rain that you saw on TV turned into a steady pour. The weather, otherwise, was strangely perfect - partly cloudy, mid-sixties, no wind. Worth mentioning because Cleveland doesn't get that kind of weather in November. The Progressive Field scoreboard is the one we wish we had. No ads, giant screen, clear and informative - provides names and uni numbers of every player on the field, plus clear replays, an informative scoreboard, etc., etc. That wild pitch in the 5th that scored two runs...I only saw part of the field and had no idea what happened. I'll still have to try to find a replay of it to understand it. As was noted on the board, the Cubs defense was pretty bad. But they sure can hit. The Cubs fans were generally fine, despite the post I made during the game. There was a group in front of us acting kind of douchy but, to be fair, my friend egged them on (and I'll admit to yelling "Wait till next century" at them after the Rajai Davis home run). But good for the Cubs; they were the best team in the majors this year by any reasonable measure. Thanks, everyone, for indulging my brazen affair with the Indians. Looking forward to watching a Metly WS in 2017.

Incredible. He was to the right of 2B, in short right center.

Looked fine to me, and I'm biased. And, yeah, holee shit on that Davis HR. Never heard a stadium so loud.