Frayed Knot

metirish wrote: So , if they do this and retain Beltre as some suggest they might , who plays where?, Youkilis is still there right? The article suggests that this could signal the end of Beltre's stint in Boston with Youkilis moving back to 3B. If Beltre were to re-up, Youkilis would need to go to LF with Beltre & Gonzalez at the corners.

Barajas to the Dodgers on a one-year deal.

The Boston Red Sox have agreed to a deal in principle to acquire slugging first baseman Adrian Gonzalez, sources told ESPN The Magazine's Buster Olney on Saturday morning [and] have received permission from Major League Baseball to negotiate with Gonzalez on a new contract. The Padres would not receive any established major league players in the trade, but it's likely the Red Sox would include their top pitching prospect, Casey Kelly, sources have said. Red Sox prospects Anthony Rizzo and Ryan Kalish have also been brought up as possible pieces ... Currently, Gonzalez is signed only through 2011 http://sports.espn.go.com/boston/mlb/news/story?id=5882356

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: Well, that makes sense. Tweetin' Adam Rubin wrote: I'm told there's a rational explanation for Carter. You have to make 60% of last year's salary, even in AAA. That's expensive if demoted. about 12 hours ago via web 60% of 400K is expensive?!? And I'm not making the case that Carter deserves to have a place reserved on the '11 roster, only that it seems odd to pre-dump him this early when at worst it seems like he could be the the back-up plan or the throw-in on a trade.

Don't quite understand the reasoning behind non-tendering Carter as he was essentially making the ML minimum and was still two years away from being arb-eligible - but it's a pretty strong indication that they don't want him at any price. All non-tenders Trivia note: Neither of the two active Chris Carters are actually named Chris. Our (now departed) guy is William Christopher Carter whereas the Oakland guy is Vernon Christopher Carter. Neither should be confused with former Toronto All-Star Joseph Christopher Carter who shouldn't be mixed up with Virgin Island Met Joseph Christopher.

Big prospect w/Colorado at one point. Still young. And if he gets too wound up during a game we can all yell 'LIGHTEN UP FRANCIS' in unison. That'll be fun.

Dude went through a whole helluva lot just to get to age 70. Diagnosed with diabetes as a teenager in an age where you didn't want to tell your team about it lest they use it as a reason to toss you aside. For a while he only told one teammate (I think it was 2B Glenn Beckert*) who he instructed to look for signs of his blood sugar getting out of whack one way or the other so he could then sneak down the tunnel and either take a shot or eat a candy bar. The disease eventually cost him both lower legs (prompting a trivia segment during Cubs broadcasts where listeners were invited to 'Stump' Ron Santo) and almost his life many years ago when he passed out behind the wheel of his car turing the vehicle into, in the words of sportswriter Rick Reilly, a large chunk of 'modern art'. Hope they bury him with his hairpiece - if for no other reason than to just re-tell the story about the time it caught on fire when he stood up during a cold day and it got too close to the ceiling mounted space heater in the booth. * I can still rattle off most of that late '60s Chicago team: Banks, Beckert, Kessinger & Santo around the infield Williams & Hickman at the corner OF, plus a revolving set of CFs the most famous of which (at least in NYC) was Jimmy Qualls Randy Hundley catching a strong starting staff with the likes of Hands, Jenkins, and Holtzman

... the altitude in Denver is as much a part of baseball as the Green Monster, the wind in Candlestick Park, or the Astrodome. It's a ballpark feature. Deal with it. Bringing the Coors Field effect into the discussion IS dealing with it. That doesn't mean his accomplishments should be dismissed on account of where he played, only that they should be examined as to the context.

Vic Sage wrote: Isn't Olivo available, too? I like him as a pairing with Thole. He hits LHPs with some power, and is a solid glove, i think. And he's neither old nor broken down. Yes. Colorado traded him after the season was over to Toronto with an option year still on his contract. The Jays declined the option and offered him arbitration instead. Oliva then declined arbitration making himself a FA (Type I didn't mean to imply that those listed above were the only FA catchers around - only that, via the non-tender process, they could be joining the list of backstops on the open market.

Ceetar wrote: Edgy DC wrote: Mike Silva is pushing Roy Merritt, a Rule V-eligible 25-year-old lefty who held lefty batters to a .228 average in 2010, mostly at Bingo. granted we could protect him, but they haven't, so it's silly to pencil in him for a job no? When's the rule 5 draft? The Rule 5 draft is usually the last thing on the agenda during the winter meetings which start next week I believe - so we're probably talking about Wednesday or so.

Thursday night is the deadline for teams to offer contracts to their arb-eligible/pre-FA players. Several rumored players who may be cut loose are catchers, one or more of which might be the type we could hook up with Thole in Queens next season (as long as they don't hook up AS queens if you know what I mean). - Russell Martin - LAD Russell Nathan Coltrane Jeansone Martin is coming off two declining (and somewhat injured) years since his two consecutive AS seasons. Hits R and not even 28 until spring training (good). Not known for defense plus the whole injured and declining thing (bad) Of course if everything were good about him he wouldn't be on the list of possible non-tender candidates now would he? - Jeff Mathis - LAA The one-time hot prospect in the Angels system has never really hit (.199/.265/.311 in 1,000 ABs across parts of 5 seasons) and now has young'uns pushing him out. Also hits RH and will be 28 in spring 2011 - rep on defense is good - Dioneer Navarro - TBR One time MFY farmhand seemed to break-out with an AS season in 2008 - but then regressed the next year and even more in 2010. Was left off the post-season roster this year and, instead of traveling with the team in case a catcher went down, he pouted and went home to Venezuela. Switch-hitter who doesn't turn 27 until ST

and Mike O'Connor

Edgy DC wrote: The angle of his neck doesn't match a lot of torsos ... I think that's what a lot of the Oswald apologists said too.

And even at that, saying that you're going to get $16mil worth out of a ballplayer a decade from now is risky enough.

Edgy DC wrote: TransMonk wrote: ARod, Helton and Jeter were all better than this guy at the time they signed their contracts. Hell, Jeter had a handful of rings. Tulowitzki has already had 40% of his seasons shortened due to injury. But the money's right, right? And it'll only get righter. When a contract calls for an average of $19mil/yr and doesn't even begin for another 4 years it's not a done deal that the money is right and certainly not that it's going to be righter by the time 2020 rolls around.

Roxanne clearly fails the 'films named after a song' part of the equation.

The rumor that the Jeter (and Mariano & Cliff Lee) negotiations have caused Yanqui GM Brian Cashman to jump off a high building is only partially true

TransMonk wrote: I hadn't realized that Troy Tulowitzki was good enough to be locked up for the next 10 years. http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=ap-rockies-tulowitzki I'm still not sure he's good enough. That's interesting stuff - both because Tulo was pre-FA plus already locked up for the next three years, and because, aside from ARod, you just haven't seen contracts that go out that far in recent years. One of the last that did is actually the Rockies w/Todd Helton - an 11 yr deal IIRC which is slated to end in 2011. Rox got their money's worth in the early years there but Helton, while still decent, has been much closer to average in recent seasons and is simply old and slow now. The obvious comparison here is Jeter because of the position and age as Tulo is one year younger than Jeter was when he signed his just-ended 10 yr contract.

The consensus of most baseball folks is that of course McGwire deserves to be in *If Not For* ... -- while Bagwell is going to be looked at more cautiously by many and outright dismissed by some. But if I were to offer you an exact clone of each - meaning you get the same strengths, same weaknesses, same injury histories, same career length, etc. - and say he's your starting 1B for the rest of his career, who would you take? The only stats McGwire leads in are HRs & SLG. Bags racked up ~1,700 more PAs & ABs, 700 more hits, 350 more runs scored, nearly doubled Big Mac in doubles while triples & SBs weren't even a contest. He walked more (even IWs!), struck out less, and had advantages in BA (35 pts) and OBA (14 pts) - and then we can throw in the edges in fielding (huge) and base-running (also real big - above and beyond just the SBs). I've been of the opinion for many years now that I'd prefer to have Jeff Bagwell v2.0 than the McGwire clone and I'd have a hard time thinking that my HoF ballot would be any different. Not that you can't say 'Both' or 'Neither' in an HoF ballot as opposed to the 'one or the other' choice in this hypothetical exercise, but I'd certainly list Bagwell before I'd list the big redhead and that's without even throwing the steroids thing into the vat.

The achievement will underline that consistency is his hallmark, that what Babe Ruth is to home runs and Lou Gehrig is to runs batted in, Derek Jeter is to singles. Fixed it for you. What there is no fix for, however, is folks who see those as equivalents. The perfect modern player: can't be readily identified by consensus as an Anything. Not true, I instantly identify him as as asshole.

ESPN saying (or repeating from elsewhere) that the Uribe defection from SF to LA has prompted the Giants to contact Jeter's agent. Not that that means some sort of offer is imminent or that they're going to top the 3/$45 Yanqui deal if they do, but it is the first team mentioned since they told Derek that he should act like Smokey and 'Shop Around'

Gwreck wrote: Alomar was a first-timer last year and missed by like 8 votes or something. In that case he probably does make it.

This is the one who played hoops at Princeton. 32 y/o in May. The <100 IP over the last two years combined and the <200 over the last three are definite problems - but the stuff before that was pretty good. http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/y/youngch03.shtml

Roberto Alomar Jeff Bagwell Bert Blyleven Tim Raines I'm betting that neither Alomar or Bagwell gets in this time although both eventually will. Both are first-timers and between the stupid phobia some voters have against newbies and the stunted end of the careers for both of them I think they'll be made to wait. Maybe that opens things up for Blyleven & Raines, I dunno.

A Boy Named Seo wrote: Dodgers stay busy, get new SS in Juan Uribe for $21 mils over 3 years. If he was older and crappier and more intangiblerier, he could've gotten another 10-14 million per year, easy. And they're doing what exactly with Raffy Furball - who is signed for another year (at $12 mil) plus an option for 2012? My guess is that Uribe plays somewhere other than SS - which, if so, would make his signing less attractive than it looks at first blush. I mean, we are talking about a 31 y/o guy whose .310 OBA in 2010 was 10 points higher than his career average.