Frayed Knot

Resigning Ichiro may or may not turn out to be a good move. They certainly got post-trade use out of him far beyond what they c/should have expected [sea 2012 = .261/.288/.353 vs MFY 2012 = .322/.340/.454]. They started off by telling him he was only acquired to bat 9th, hit just against RHPs, and for late inning defense because that's kind of what his profile suggested he was good at at this point in his career. But within a month in NYC he was playing every day and hitting leadoff again. Some of that difference can be explained by park factors, part to small sample size, and maybe part to 2012 simply being a good year to trade for Suzukis*, but with Swisher almost certainly gone they need somebody out there even with Brett Gardner coming back. I bring up Ichiro here only because it seems like the Yanx are taking his desire to be back in NY for granted to the point where his agent feels the need to flaunt that there's been interest from, I believe he used the word "numerous", other clubs in an apparent effort to light a fire under Cashman's butt. Both Ichiro (through his agent) and Martin have either stated or implied that they heard virtually nothing from the club whilst others came-a-courtin'. MFY mgmt, it seems, are so focused on their pitching that they've yet to even talk to their position players except to reassure Alex that they still love and care for him even if all the other kids in the class pick on him and call him names. * Kurt Suzuki's 2012 saw an OPS of 536 with Oakland then a post-trade 725 in Washington. Ichiro = 641 w/Seattle vs 794 w/Yanx Pre-trade the Suzukis hit 5 HRs in 680 ABs [4 for Ichiro, 1 for Kurt]. Post-trade they hit 10 in just 404 [5 + 5]

Back to on-field news: with Mariano back in the fold (at a wage cut) but not Russell Martin, apparently now Ichiro is getting itchy. He said ahead of time that he wanted to stay in the Bronx (it was his childhood dream you know) but that he's hearing a lot more from other teams lately than he has from the Yanx which sounds a lot like what Martin said on his way outta town.

No harm is finding out what's available. Sandy should walk into the winter meetings and announce that he's conducting a 'blow me away' contest with the winner getting his very ow RA Dickey - nail file, mountain climbing outfit, and other accessories sold separately. And if he doesn't get the price he wants then go back/continue to talk. If both sides seem OK with two years I'm not too worried about what the final numbers are (with the usual caveat about it not being my money). I'm always more concerned with the length of these deals more than the per/year cost.

I heard they considered signing both Arencibia and Saltalamacchia for the catching crew but didn't have enough A's for the back of the jerseys and [required 'pon joke]Jeff was too cheap to buy more[/required joke]. Both/either are higher-power/low-average types so would, on the surface, be a decent compliment to Thole. Arencibia bats RH, Salty is switchy. I don't think either is considered all that great defensively and 'lamacchia's power certainly wouldn't be at CF what it was at Fenway. Flores sounds tempting but, since his injury back in '09, is about .210/.250/.320 over 260 ML ABs and wasn't much better in AAA this summer either. Even with the Nats top catcher getting hurt he couldn't hang on to the regular job forcing the team to go out at mid-season and deal for the .218/.250/.278 hitting Kurt Suzuki (who promptly went .267/.321/.404 after the trade).

Yes, the NY Times article was the source of that photo. Here's something from the article I wouldn't have guessed -- ... Somers went to an elite magnet school in San Francisco and was valedictorian of his class Not that I thought he was a drooling dope or anything.

The Schmoozer himself. The photo is from 1982 when he was doing TV work, I believe in Atlanta. Five years before landing at FAN now 1/4 century ago.

Ashie62 wrote: Michael Kay Nope.

I included it in this forum because he does have to do with NY sports in general and baseball in particular - although, as you can probably tell by the hairstyle and graphics, it's not a recent photo.

Nymr83 wrote: I hope this blows up in the Braves' faces of course, but when have the Braves traded away a young starter and it worked out well for the other team? I thought they got killed on the Millwood deal at the time but he turned to junk quickly too. Jason Schmidt has a lengthy career including some real good seasons for Pitt & SF following his being dealt as a PTBNL by the Braves at age 23 Atlanta did get the then 27 y/o Denny Neagle in the return and got two good seasons out of him, but they would have been better off keeping Schmidt.

BP points out that the Russell Martin deal (2 yrs/$17 mil) becomes the biggest Pittsburgh FA deal ever! Prior to this, these were the largest. Clint Barmes: 2 years, $10.5 million Derek Bell: 2 years, $9.75 million Kevin Correia: 2 years, $8 million Jeromy Burnitz: 1 year, $6 million Lyle Overbay: 1 year, $5 million

Shit, how many relievers do the Braves need?!? Between Kimbrel, Venters, O'Flaherty, and now this guy it sounds like they're trying to turn everything into a 5-inning game. That said, Hanson never really developed the way peeps hoped. He was a major prospect just a few years back. Plus there's the old adage that if the Braves call offering pitching you should RUN the other way cuz if he was any good they wouldn't be offering.

The point remains that if the tabs got a hold of film-clips, cell-videos, snapshots, pictures, descriptions, or accounts of Jeter's dates they'd run the hell out of them. They may play it up nicely once they did but they still wouldn't be shy about running them. The reason they haven't - or why there have been so few examples - is that he goes to great lengths to make sure he stays out of range as has been detailed in various stories over the years. Some of those tactics may border on douchebaggery (you can't enter Derek's VIP room here without prior approval) but staying out of the press is not an easy thing to do in this city, with his profile, in this era, and I kind of admire the fact that he's been able to pull it off so well for so long.

Ceetar wrote: Edgy MD wrote: I have to say, Derek would have a hard time taking a less flattering photo. I mean, I can do it, because I'm routinely a disaster on camera. I dunno, sneaking out the back door of a club with a drunk girl on his arm? I'm not sure why there aren't pictures of this actually. I guess papparazzi don't stalk sports celebrities the same way as hollywood ones. Oh yeah they do. Jeter's greatest accomplishment of his career may just be that he's managed to keep himself out of the tabloids for the most part despite all the Hollywood tail he's been linked with over the years.

Not that I don't enjoy a good yarn that dishes dirt on Yanquis, but this sort of building a entire story based on one photo which, depending on the angle, posture, etc., may or may not show what they're claiming it shows reminds me of the 'baby-bump' "scoops" involving celebrity women. An actress gets snapped walking around in some outfit where it suddenly doesn't look like she's got a 19-inch waist causing all the tabloids go nuts and it's really tiresome. So I hope you've all learned your lesson for day and that there's only one conclusion to draw from this. And that's that Derek Jeter is clearly pregnant.

metsguyinmichigan wrote: And Russell Martin signs with the Pirates before the MFYs even make him an offer, supposedly. I suspect that if the Yanx didn't make him an offer by this point then they weren't really interested in doing so. Martin was their one unsigned guy where I didn't know where they were going. On the one hand his barely .200 BA all year (.211 at the end) and high Ks (95 in 422 ABs) were bad signs, but he still got his walks (.311 OBA) and, as with most of his crew, was a HR savant: 21 HRs (and 38 XBHs) in just 89 hits. Plus the guy's still not yet 30 (February), is reasonably durable for a catcher, and is pretty good defensively. They supposedly have some catchers in their system but I'm not sure any of them are ready for prime time. Not sure where they go from here.

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: Boo to this megathread. Upton & Span deals important enough to merit threadhood IMO. Yeah, my bad. And here I am, the charter member of the 'we have Too Many A-P Threads' club, and I go and fall right into the trap.

A trade involving the Nationals ... they acquire CF Denard Span from the Twins in exchange for minor league pitcher Alex Meyer Span, 29 in February, has spent his entire career with the Twins since being their 1st round draft pick (24th overall) in 2002. Career .284/.357/.389 hitter over five seasons and a definite plus CF glove (it seemed like he was a nightly hi-light film for a while there). He's signed thru 2014. Meyer, about to turn 23, was the Nats 1st round pick (23rd overall) in 2011 out of U-of-Kentucky. He split his 2012 between low-A and high-A where he combined for a 2.86 ERA and a 1.10 WHiP over 129 innings pitched This comes on the heels of my conversation with my Nats partial season ticket-holding cousin (cousin's husband actually) over the holidays. Rick's view was that all the Nats needed to do this winter was re-sign LaRoche, find a 5th starter to replace Edwin Jackson, then pack the trucks for Florida. I told him I though they'd like to find themselves a true CF rather than have Harper out there everyday even as he insisted that Harper was fine out there for two years until their minor league system would produce the next CF (Eury Perez). But now with Span presumably locked in as the regular in the middle for the next two years what this says to me is that LaRoche negotiations may not be going well and the plan may be to move big Michael Morse to 1st while Span roams between Harper & Werth (in either order). Or, if LaRoche is signed, they may trade Morse for pitching and use the five years younger Tyler Moore as their big RH-hitting scary guy off the bench.

Upton -- 242/317/436; 1,883 PAs; 404 Hits; 69 HRs; 174 XBHs Pagan -- 281/334/415; 1,824 PAs; 467 Hits; 26 HRs; 145 XBHs Bourn's totals over those same three seasons - the last one-plus with Atlanta Bourn -- 279/346/376; 2,030 PAs; 506 Hits; 13 HRs; 124 XBHs So clearly the Braves have upgraded their power, even if at the expense of more outs. I get the impression that Bourn is the best pure CF of this group (although not in a run-away) and is shirley the best base-stealer averaging 55/12 (SB/CS per/162) for his career. Upton is two years younger than Bourn. This also helps to balance the Braves lineup a bit more as the right-handed Upton replaces the LH-swinging Bourn and mixes in with the other left-swinging Atlantans such as Heyward, Freeman & McCann

duan wrote: I think it seems like quite a lot of dough. He was no better then Angel Pagan in 2012 & 2010. Interesting comp. Let's even throw Angel's sub-par 2011 into the mix so as to not seem as if we're just selectively cherry-picking our data here and look at their 2010-2012 seasons collectively Upton -- 242/317/436; 1,883 PAs; 404 Hits; 69 HRs; 174 XBHs Pagan -- 281/334/415; 1,824 PAs; 467 Hits; 26 HRs; 145 XBHs So Upton shows significantly more power [.196 IsoP vs .134] but you'd have to view that with home field factors in mind as Angel put up those numbers in two extreme pitcher environments in CitiField and Telephone Stadium (he didn't even get to use the "easy" version of CF) and virtually all the difference is 2Bs + 3Bs turned into HRs. Angel balances that out with making fewer outs [approx Lg avg OBP vs below avg] Both have speed: Upton averages 39 steals vs 12 caught [per/162 games], Pagan's at 29/8 Both play CF and are above average gloves. I get the idea that Upton is less erratic defensively but maybe that's because we got to witness the up-close/warts-and-all version of Angel on a regular basis. Angel has a rep for spacing out at times, Upton for dogging it. Now Upton is a full three years younger which is certainly a factor as far as the length & total of a contract. But both are FAs this year and while Pagan seems to be more of a late-bloomer, Upton has really never matched the season he had at age 22 in 2007. It's like he's anti-peaking.

metsguyinmichigan wrote: Jay Jaffe on SI: "It is also the one most fraught with controversy, as the top newcomers � Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa and Mike Piazza � have connections to performance-enhancing drugs to one degree or another." Has Piazza EVER been connected to PEDs, other than the writer and the back acne stuff? He later said that Piazza admitted to using Andro. I don't recall this. Do you guys? Via rumors, yeah. But that's how the majority of these guys are connected. Val is right about the guys who only vote for a couple of people and no more. When I worked in Flint, two of the writers had ballots. One was very thoughtful and had a whole set of criteria he worked through for every guy on the ballot. I didn't always agree with him -- he always insisted on Ron Guidry -- but I respected the amount of work that he put in to it. That, and he always let me photo copy the blank ballot, which looked even more amateurish than you can imagine. I was always like, "This is it? Seriously?" The other writer was one of those "Someone has to feel like a Hall of Famer" guys, and only picked two or three. Most of them Tigers.... But a writer not voting for ten guys isn't the same as saying he did so because he put some kind of artificial (sub-10) numerical limit on his ballot.

Career WAR (acc to BB-Ref) Bonds = 158 Clemens = 134 Bagwell = 77 Schilling = 76 Walker = 70 Trammel = 67 Palmiero = 66 Raines = 66 Lofton = 65 E. Martinez = 64 Biggio = 62 McGwire = 59 Piazza = 56 Sosa = 55 Wells = 49 McGriff = 48 Bernie Williams = 46 Dale Murphy = 43 Finley = 40 Mattingly = 40 Julio Franco = 40 Morris = 39 Reggie Sanders = 37

BJ Upton to the Braves - 5 year deal Essentially then he'll replace Michael Bourne. Younger than Bourne but with more power, lower OBP, worse defense.

Valadius wrote: I've been warning about the 2013 glut for something like four or five years now. It's really sad that we're going to have people waiting twenty years now most likely to get in via the Veteran's Committee when it should have taken six or seven, because some baseball writers give themselves bullshit cutoffs for their number of picks when they should be using all ten available. Really sad. Or maybe, just maybe mind you, they don't think that there are ten good choices each year.

Sad maybe, but also part of the game's history. The HoF is both a museum for the game's history and a gallery for the honoring of the game's best. I have no problem when there are conflicts within that dual mission.

Pettitte deal with the Yanx said to be done. The team of course has yet to say anything but, until after the ink is dried and physicals are taken, the Yanx tend to deny that they've even heard of the player that everyone on the planet knows they're in the process of signing or, as in this case, re-signing. Terms said to be for $12mil+, a significant jump over the $2.5 plus incentives he made last year although between his late start and his broken ankle they only wound up getting 12 starts out of him in 2012. He'll turn 41 during next season.