metsmarathon

gee, y'know, if carlos hadn't opened up his mouth, i woulda just thought the mets didn't give a rats behind, and were just content to go into the next season, collect a paycheck, and go home. but now, boy! i'm worried that suddenly philly isn't going to let us walk away with the division title and might actually try to beat us when we play each other.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/2008-02-14-clemens-pardon_N.htm ]Roger Clemens can expect a pardon from President Bush if the seven-time Cy Young Award winner is ever pursued for lying to federal officials, a lawyer involved in Wednesday's hearing told USA TODAY. "It would be a prospective pardon," Richard Emery, one of the lawyers for Clemens accuser Brian McNamee said Thursday. "They're perfectly legal and it would be typical of the George Bush White House. We'd expect Bush to call Clemens a 'historic figure' who has done so much for this country and then let him off." Clemens is a close friend of the first President Bush, even building a horseshoe pit at his Texas home at the suggestion of the former president. But even if he has a relationship with the family, that doesn't guarantee Clemens would get off the hook. and yes, it is just silly to think that bush would grant him a pardon... but not to wonder why it was such a painfully partisan affair. but, if it was less split down party lines, and especially if hte party lines didnt split the way they had, then it wouldn't even be necessary to wonder why the split split the way it did.

i love the damned apple. i just hope we get a new one, and not the same, dented up one.

clemens would've been so much better off if he had offered as meaningless an admission as pettitte did.

oh, i don't like my earlier method, btw. it needs negative numbers. i don't not like this new one yet, but give me time...

i'd suggest that the way to do that analysis would be to look at wins above average, not replacement. also, the other needed piece is how to adequately calculate value. right now, we've got low value as a positive number between zero and one, and high value as a positive number between one and positive infinity. low value should be negative. high value should be positive. average value should be zero. i'm stepping back from the notion that players should be grouped into various salary pools. when you're building a team, you're not required to have any number of players from each pool, just 25 (40?) players total. how you mix those roster spots up between the player pools is up to the team, as is how much each player should be paid. so i would suggest that the appropriate thing would be to look at player salary compared to average salary. i would define value as WAA(actual) - WAA(expected) where WAA(expected) = expected WAA for a player who makes n times the average league salary, and n = salary(player) divided by salary(league average)

right now, i might lean towards keeping it at 72, for entirely self-serving reasons. i no longer have access to fantasy sports websites at work, and as i'm learning in my basketball legues, i don't check in every day. now, with baseball, i'm more involved, typically, but still, anything shorter than 48 hours would put me at a disadvantage. so... 48 or 72 is my vote.

according to the mitchell report, it seemed to me that he was administering the illegal substances - not engaging in the trade or exchange of them. i could be wrong, but that is my recollection. oe. never mind... talking about radomsky... ofe. never mind never mind. i'm having trouble following simple conversations.

i'd guess more, as his only jeopardy is in lying to federal prosecutors, not from injecting anyone with anything. lying to the feds is a much more bad thing to do, in their eyes, i would imagine.

freedom of speech does not abdicate you of responsibility for that which is spoken.

in

AG/DC wrote: ="seawolf17"]Most likely because what he did was illegal, and what Pedro did wasn't. (Devil's advocate)Understood, but the key difference there is jurisdiction. That should matter to a DA, but should it matter to a team?(/Devil's advocate) i think that whether or not you are breaking a law influences the level of morality of your actions. i also believe that the type of animals you choose to have engaged in bloodsport also affects the morality of your actions.

if michael vick was running his dogfighting operation in a nation where it was both legal and culturally accepted, he would be gainfully employed by a football team today. unfortunately for him, he chose to do so in one where it is rather illegal, and widely unaccepted, and managed to violate both federal and state statutes in the process.

i'm actually not terribly surprised by it. it's smart of any little fish who helps some bigger fish break the law to keep records and evidence. and macnamee had been a cop, too, right? and really, what's he supposed to do, go to the beach and dump the bloody syringes?

moises alou debuted in late july, 1990. shawn green, late september, 1993. '98 would've been a more accurate reference.

i like a craig wilson signing. good idea if only for the bench. defensively, he's not good, but he has some potential to regain his stroke, i guess.

if pedro's going to be doing things that i find repugnant, at least he has the decency to do them in nations where it is both legal and culturally accepted.

i like the symmetry with jay satan welcoming johan santana

fun ruiner.

i decided to start with the 2007 trades and work my way backwards... - - year 2007 player total a$ 2.944556 Jose Castro - W3*sqrt(a/p) - - - W3 - - - p$ - Sean Henry - W3*sqrt(a/p) - - - W3 - - - p$ - Jeff Conine (0.12) W3*sqrt(a/p) (0.12) - (0.10) W3 (0.10) - - p$ 2.00 Jose Castro & Sean Henry for Jeff Conine 0 : -0.12 mets lose drew butera - W3*sqrt(a/p) - - - W3 - - - p$ - dustin martin - W3*sqrt(a/p) - - - W3 - - - p$ - luis castillo 1.07 W3*sqrt(a/p) 1.07 - 1.50 W3 1.50 - - p$ 5.75 drew butera & dustin martin for luis castillo 0 : 1.07 mets win Brian Bannister 16.42 W3*sqrt(a/p) 16.42 - 5.90 W3 5.90 - - p$ 0.38 Ambiorix Burgos 1.86 W3*sqrt(a/p) 1.86 - 0.70 W3 0.70 - - p$ 0.42 brian bannister for ambiorix burgos 16.42 : 1.86 = 8.83 : 1 mets lose Henry Owens 4.18 W3*sqrt(a/p) 4.18 - 1.50 W3 1.50 - - p$ 0.38 Matt Lindstrom 8.35 W3*sqrt(a/p) 8.35 - 3.00 W3 3.00 - - p$ 0.38 Jason Vargas (1.11) W3*sqrt(a/p) (1.11) - (0.40) W3 (0.40) - - p$ 0.38 Adam Bostick - W3*sqrt(a/p) - - - W3 - - - p$ - Henry Owens & Matt Lindstrom for Jason Vargas & Adam Bostick 12.53 : -1.11 mets lose Heath Bell 16.58 W3*sqrt(a/p) 16.58 - 6.00 W3 6.00 - - p$ 0.39 Royce Ring 1.67 W3*sqrt(a/p) 1.67 - 0.60 W3 0.60 - - p$ 0.38 Jon Adkins - W3*sqrt(a/p) - - - W3 - - - p$ 0.38 Ben Johnson (0.28) W3*sqrt(a/p) (0.28) - (0.10) W3 (0.10) - - p$ 0.38 heath bell & royce ring for Jon adkins & ben johnson 18.25 : -0.28 mets lose again! the number next to the player's name is his sum value, while the number below that is his total production, in warp3. to answer the question of who won the trade, you add up who the mets sent away, and if its higher than who the mets got, the mets lost the trade.

on the left, total warp3. on the right, yearly player salary in millions. i think the problem is in the salary scale. if a player makes league average money ($3M for roundness) and produces 1 win above replacement, he would be considered a tenth as valuable as a player who produced 1 win above replacement, but for the league minimum ($300k for roundness), and eight times more valuable than a player who produces 1 win above replacement and makes the league maximum ($24M for roundness). this means that production for production, a rookie produces has 80 times the value of an arod, thereby blowing up the scale to kingdom come. this is driving the numbers to silly extremes moreso than the exponent used. if i pull out the exponent, so that i'm looking at year-by-year value [warp3/(player$/avg$)], summed, i get 36.2:1 for the viola trade, 207.5:1 for the cone trade, and 31.61:1 for the hampton trade... cubing warp3 gives me 16.2, 743, and 15.5, respectively. and, finally, and i think i might like this better, as it drives down the dynamic range on the salaries, if i take the square root of the salary ratio, then sum the values, i get 12:1, 67:1, and 9:1, respectively. um, that means calculating for each year [WARP3 / SQRT (player$ / avg$)]. so now a league average player is about 3 times less valuable than a league minimum player per warp, and is also about 3 times less valuable than a league maximum player.

the frank viola trade (i'll post a chart later) comes out 832.3 to 36.1 against the mets. 23:1 against the mets hampton went 23:1 against he mets as well. and cone went 344:1 in favor of the mets. this could be a fun, albeit tedious project! whee!

i'm starting to wonder if there's an inherent flaw, or perhaps if we're just uncovering an inehrent truth, that trading away cheap production for more expensive, albeit potentially greater, production doesn't seem like the way to "win" a trade...

so, not production and cost of production, but flawed, anecdotal reckoning? go for it, i guess. year 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 player total a$ 1.998 2.264 2.383 2.555 2.487 2.633 Octavio Dotel 582.31 W3^2(a/p) 65 225 224 35 32 1 24.13 W3 2.8 5.5 6.4 4.7 6 1.2 26.60 p$ 0.24 0.305 0.435 1.6 2.8 4.75 Roger Cedeno 8.08 W3^2(a/p) 2 6 2.84 W3 1.7 2.6 4.30 p$ 2.4 2.7 Mike Hampton 24.52 W3^2(a/p) 25 4.95 W3 8.4 8.40 p$ 5.75 Derek Bell 1.44 W3^2(a/p) 1 1.20 W3 1.9 1.90 p$ 5 dotel provided a terrific level of production-value, especially in '01 and '02. houston definitely came out as winners here. keeping hampton wouldn't've helped even out the trade, as his production plummetted after the contract, while his cost skyrocketed.

Mark Healey wrote: Conversely, the Mets dealt Dotel (who, arguable could have been their go-to releiver/closer in 2001, thereby perhaps sparing us the back-to-back Franco and Milk Baby blowups when the Mets were making their amazxing comeback that year. i think you've got a long long way to go if you're going to try to frame any sort of argument wherein the mets, had they kept octavio dotel, and had the season unfolded in exactly the same way, would have pulled armando benitez from those braves games in favor of an unproven octavio dotel, who likely would never have had any save opportunities in the prior year, due in large part to the dominance of the actual closer. (and who posted a 5+ ERA in the real world with houston the prior year, netting only 16 saves) if they did still have dotel, there's simply no rational argument to be made that he would have been handed the keys to the 2001 season over armando benitez, who, to that point, had helped carry the mets through august and most of september, closing big game after big game. but, really, that's a [silly] argument and a beaten-dead horse for another thread entirely.