Frayed Knot

Jim McAndrew from Lost Nation, Iowa

It is! I'd say that collapse can still be held in reserve for now.

]I dont see Chase bunting just for the sake of a hit, ala Rose I do, or at least I did. Well he tried anyway.

From this week's 'ASK BA': Q: What's the deal with Cuban national team second baseman Yuliesky Gourriel? There were reports that he had defected last week. Now we hear those reports may have been false. Can you give us a definitive confirmation as to whether he defected and tell us what kind of player he would project to be in the majors? A: There was quite a stir last week when several reports originated from Colombia that Gourriel had defected while there for the Central American and Caribbean Games. One Colombian newspaper reported that Gourriel quickly signed a deal with the Yankees. But none of that was true, and Gourriel returned home to Cuba after helping his team win another gold medal in international competition. Gourriel, 22, is the defending Cuban League leader in homers (27) and RBIs (92) in a 90-game season. He also batted .273 with two homers and six RBIs at the World Baseball Classic, where Cuba lost to Japan in the finals. After that tournament, one scout estimated that Gourriel could command a $20 million contract if he hit the open market. Gourriel has exceptionally quick hands and strong wrists, giving him tremendous bat speed and power. He's also a quality defender with above-average arm strength and range. He has played mostly second and third base for Cuba, and some scouts believe he could handle shortstop. He has inherited the mantle of the best young player in Cuba from past stalwarts such as Omar Linares (who never defected) and Kendry Morales (now with the Angels). Gourriel is unlikely to join Morales in the United States, however, because of close family ties he'd be reluctant to sever. His father Lourdes, a former national team outfielder, manages him on the Sancti Spiritus club on which he plays with his brother Yuniesky, an outfielder. -- Sounds like fans & GMs everywhere have to put it back in their pants.

I like archived threads where I still agree with everything I said 9 months later.

Martinez - 3.5 Beltran - 0.3 Reyes - 0.3 Valentin - 0.6 RHernandez - 0.6 Franco - 0.4 Milledge - 0.3

Not a good play by LoDuca who got caught in mid-transfer between glove hand and bare hand ... but it was an awful throw by Reyes who had all day to nail Jacobs and two-hopped a throw from just behind 3rd base.

Yeah, that was the basis of the discussions Bret used to bring up: how much does Reyes have to improve to the point where you'd discuss a long-term deal for him and for how much? What's happened this year is that he improved much more than the guestimate we were basing our hunches on.

Ordonez's deal was more like 4 yrs/$19mil. It was also given after his 4th year, meaning it bought out 2 FA years rather than just one. The problem was, of course, that not only was Ordonez not the player who needed to be "secured" but also that Phillips bet on an inflationary market and an improving player and got neither. As the 1999 season ended, Rey was coming off the best year of his career offensively while turning in an all-century defensive season and that's when he was rewarded with his contract. But by the spring of the following year, Rey had suddenly "aged" an additional 18 months when birth certificates were re-examined and was out for the season with a broken arm - never again to find his offensive & defensive peaks. Add that to the dot-com era spending spree suddenly reversing itself, and the Ordonez contract was out of date by the time it was a year old. The fact that it was backloaded made it even more impossible to get pawn off on someone else. Wright's a year behind Reyes in service time and isn't even eligible for arbitration until the end of '07. His deal may still be a year off.

As I recall, part of the head-banging frustration of that argument was one person's insistance (eventually retracted) that there was no middle ground between min-waging him and a $30mil+ deal that bought him out well into his FA years, and anyone who argued that there was was wimping out on the discussion.

btw, the Loretta walk-off hit that won the game last night was fun. The seriously, I just used a racist word when I really meant "Guardians" are using this guy (Cremora?) to close since they sent Wickman away. He was the one who served up the Ortiz tater on Sunday (97 mph fastball). Anyway, last night he got the first two outs, then went: HBP, HBP, BB, and finally the winning Loretta 2B. The fun part is that MFY fans are on the radio complaining that Cleveland "isn't trying hard enough" and it suxx how Boston is winning these games against sub-par talent. The Yanx don't play against those kinds of teams I guess.

]Russo is ranting - screaming that Reyes should fire his agent and mentioning that Omar Viaquel gets $5 million per. Didn't hear the original rant - but he did just say that the Mets got a steal since this 4-year deal buys out 3 arb years plus his first 2 years a FA-gency. Wow! Omar & Jeffie are so good that they managed to get a 4-year deal to cover 5 seasons! Give THEM LTBB deals!!!!

The 2005 list is done, but the overall list with the 2005 list incorporated is what needs to be updated into the system.IIRC, we (meaning Yancy) updated this place when we first got here a year+ ago taking it the order directly from the EZBoard list which had already been updated with the 2004 changes. Now, an update would need to be done from a spreadsheet.I no longer have such a spreadsheet.

]Does that postpone free agency by one year or two? He'd be at approx 3.5 seasons of service time at the end of this year, so, yes. This deal will cover his 4th, 5th & 6th years (the arb-elg era) plus his first FA year. ]I guess my question is, does he get credit for a full year of service time in 2004? I would think that he would. He didn't play much, but I believe he was on the major league roster the whole year, even though he was disabled. Correctamundo! ML DL time = ML service time ]LTBB? Long Term Big Bucks. It was a shorthand Bret used to use when discussing Reyes's future in general and specifically what he would need to do this season in order to justify giving him an "LTBB deal" as opposed to dealing with him one year at a time.

]We've had several discussions here about "clutch hitter". Some have come up with a number of different statistical definitions. Some have said it doesn't exist. As for me, I might not be able to come up with a definition, but the numbers FK posted will make me think of that term when I look at Big Papi. Of course no one really denies that clutch hitting exists. With nearly 2,500 games/yr there are tons of opportunities for clutch hits, clutch outs, clutch weeks, clutch months, and even clutch seasons. The main argument the "anti-clutch" camp makes is that past performance in some narrowly defined situation simply makes for a bad predictor of future performance in them and that "clutch" is not an ability that a player carries with him as if a genenic trait. It's not a settled issue, but it's an argument gets mis-stated by many (just recently by Keith on TV) and often intentionally so. So even with all the amazing-ness of those Papi stats, they're still just comprised of a sample size of less than 20 ABs spread over nearly 2 years and I don't think say much other than that he's on one hell of a roll is a set of very speicalized situations. Indeed, at least one of the guys at SoSH who dug up this stuff did so saying that he expected to find the truth to be LESS/u] amazing than what his/their minds remembered about Papi's recent past, so even the everyday observers were surprised at how stunning a run it's been.

So when are the 2005 results going to be incorporated into list, huh?David Wright is upset at being behind so many mediocrities simply because only his first half-season is included so far.

Trachsel - 2.5 Reyes - 1.5 LoDuca - 1.5 Delgado - 1.1 Heilman - 1.0 Wagner - 1.0 Floyd - 0.2 Chavez - 0.2

His full name is actually Roger Royce Ring, which led us earlier to the obvious nickname of R^3 (or R-cubed). One game during his first call-up he held the other team for an inning or so while our bats smacked around Ugeth Urtain Urbina, leading to the mathmatical equation of the night of: R^3 > U^3

I found that NYTimes list I was talking about earlier. It's a list of pitchers from this year's All-Star team, plus a handful of other active notables, who were traded and/or waived by teams before they were 27 y/o (about the same age as when Papi was non-tendered by the Twins). B Arroyo, C Capuano, T Hoffman (twice), B Jenks, S Kazmir, F Liriano, B Penny (twice), BJ Ryan, J Santana (twice), J Schmidt, D Turnbow (twice), J Bonderman, A Harang (twice), R Johnson, C Schilling (3 times), J Smoltz, D Willis, Chris Young (3 times), plus our own Petey Martinez Quite a list.

So now that we're back to 5, let's assume today in day #1 since Petey's going, which gives us; Martinez - Hernandez - Glavine - Maine - Trachsel Mnemonic that!

The Twins apparently thought he should be more of an opposite field, slap-hitter (acc to an SI article) and were weary of waiting for progress. And besides ... they had Doug Meintkiewicz!!! There was a similar list recently (NY Times I think?) showing all the [u:8df52d66f1]now[/u:8df52d66f1] All-Star pitchers who were released, traded, waived, or somehow given up on prior to turning 24. Off the top of my head: Willis, Liriano, Pedro, Bonderman, Kazmir, Arroyo, J Santana ... plus there were about 6 or 7 others. It all looks so easy with hindsight.

HIT was the proper call there. It was a CHEAP hit, but a hit none-the-less. You're not supposed to give an error simply because the play was too slow in developing and that's really al that happened there. Pitcher checked 3rd (stupid) then just took too long to spin and throw. By the time the trow got to 1st, Utley was clearly across the bag. At this rate, 13-8 Phils w/1out in bottom 8 and the Cards threatening for more, Utley may still get up again!

Tonight in Boston, Sox trail the whole game against Cleveland until the 9th when they put a couple on and get a game-winning, walk-off HR from .... Mark Loretta on edit: it was a walk-off 2B from (sweet) Loretta, I mis-heard earlier.

Sounds perfectly cromulent to me.

Wright's left a small village on base the last coupla days. - 3 Ks on Tuesday. - Then another today, plus a bags-drunk pop-up, and only a Cabrera error kept him from hitting into 2 GiDPs