metsmarathon

i'm planning to get 30 starts out of the combination of pedro and el duque, meaning that i'd expect to see about a full season out of el duque, and think very strongly that we should not plan on pedro pitching a meaningful inning in '07 maine, perez, and bannister get me another 60-70, with some help from humber and pelfrey. that leaves room for two starters. not one. i think he leaps headlong into $11M x 2 years. if he gets more, he gets it from a team that is not the new york mets. and wether or not he's a 15-7 pitcher or a 12-12 pitcher depends a lot on the offense. i think he will allow fewer runs than we will score in support of him.

iramets wrote: I don't think Glavine is the best player they can get for a superstar rotation anchor salary right now, and that's what he's seeking. i don't think that i've seen that anywhere. in fact, i'd be surprised if he got even close to mussina money ($11.5M x 2 years) i fully expect glavine to sign for about $9M, maybe $10M, for one or two years. and in this market, that's not ace money. its #3 starter money. obviously, if it comes down to signing tom glavine for $14M a year, or letting him walk, he walks. no question. but i hardly think that it'll come down to that.

albert falls face first into my biggest problem with mvp-voting - that somehow the quality of one's teammates determines one's eligibility for the award. if your teammates are too good, and you run away with a division, your contribution can be dismissed as your team would have won anyways. if your teammates are too bad, no matter how good you are, your contribution is considered meaningless as the team didn't win anyway.

with 22 quality starts last year (6th in the NL, 1 behind cy young winner chris carpenter, as many as carlos zambrano, and two more than dontrelle willis), i don't think tom glavine was all too much of a drag on the team last year, nor do i thik that characterizing his performance as mediocre is all that fair. was it great? no. mindblowing? no. dominating? no. but it was still good, and certainly better than average or mediocre. that said, bringing him back is a good move only depending on the money and the years, and what the rest of the rotation looks like. if we sign glavine, and fold up our tents and go home, then we're making a huge mistake. but then, we'd be making the same mistake if we just signed barry zito, and folded up our tents and went home.

i'm thinking kris benson, and that i hate gossip columns.

sharpie wrote: Kip Wells to the Cards for $850,000. The Mets' Eli Marrero era is officially over as he signs a minorleague deal. also with the Cards. espn sez kip wells to the cards for $4M.

from www.baseballlibrary.com ]First awarded in December 1957 by the Rawlings Sporting Goods Company, the Gold Glove Award honors the top fielders at each position in each league. Honorees, originally selected by a panel of distinguished sportswriters, were chosen by fellow players starting in 1958. Since 1965, managers and coaches have decided the winners. Beacuse of the subjective nature of the voting, the awards have often been criticized for honoring players based on reputation rather than statistics. Perhaps the most egregious example was the Gold Glove awarded in 1999 to the Rangers' Rafael Palmeiro, who had played just 28 games at first base and had just been named the league's outstanding DH. The most-decorated honorees are Brooks Robinson and Jim Kaat, both of whom won sixteen Gold Gloves in their careers.

so, the difference between josh gibson and sadahura oh is that oh was contractually obligated to remain in japan, while gibson was racially consigned o the negro leagues. oh's situation is more like if the national league had its own hall of fame, and didn't enshrine babe ruth or ty cobb, or why neither of those players will be in the mets hall of fame. my question is really, if oh had wanted to, could he have signed with an american team instead of a japanese team, or was major league baseball responsible for prohibiting asian players from entering the game?

Edgy DC wrote: Those guys who got Casey should be ineligible to also get Piazza, no? those guys who had a chance to get casey right but didn't prolly shouldn't be eligible for piazza either. but we'll see how that shakes out. That's a fun sheet. i'm glad somebody finally taught me how to use html! Juan Pierre confounded all seven of you. And his salary confounds everybody else. i imagine he won't be the last to do so.

what exactly prevented Oh from coming to america to play in the MLB?

hey, we should have our own hall of fame vote thingy!

Willets Point wrote: Crazy idea, but why not negotiate to re-sign Glavine and Traschel for the bullpen. They're no longer effective in long outings so letting them pitch only 1-2 innings at a time would be the best way to take advantage of their strengths. Actually, it occurs to me that if Pedro isn't able to fully recover from his injury to be an effective starter, he would make an excellent closer. Of course,dealing with the egos and the $'s makes the idea pretty pointless. plus, there's that wagner chap.

Nymr83 wrote: ]basically, i looked at production after the all star game. took the 100 AL players with the most at bats. then i ranked them by: R H 2B 3B HR RBI TB BB SO SB CS OBP SLG AVG OPS and took the average. theres many problems with this but here are a few: why only post all-star? if its because you believe the MVP is the guy who helped histeam down the stretch then you should eliminate players on bad teams and teams that coasted. weighing "CS" equal to any of these categories is probably a bad idea, you'd be better off with "net steals" in place of SB and CS. TB and SLG essentially double counts as does H and AVG (and to a lesser extent BB and OBP once you've already counted AVG) SO are arguably meaningless, if you're going to punish the guys who strike out you need to reward those who dont bounce into DPs (not coincidentally the same guys) OPS is obviously OBP+SLG so i dont know why you'd count it again seperately unless you're trying to give extra weight to them (a value judgment i'd agree with but still) i'd probably narrow it down to: R, RBI, OBP, and SLG. if you put a gun to my head and asked for 4 more i'd use PA, SB-CS, OPS+, and something that took defensive position into account if not defense itself (maybe using defense spectrum to assign a different multiplier to each position) ="that idiot metsmarathon"] its just me being intentionally somewhat dumb, and seeing what "the numbers" tell me. believe me when i say that i do not believe that the wacky tabulations i did would in any way determine the most worthy MVP, nor do i believe that the methodology i chose to use isn't at all deeply flawed. all i did was "look at the numbers" as a dumb voter might. i wanted essentially to widen the search to include enough stats that it wouldn't necessarily be prejudiced towards power numbers to the exclusion of other contributions. and i didn't want to think about it too much either! as to the specific points, well, i only looked at post-ASG because i don't think the voters care about pre all star, and primarily focus on august and september. since i don't know where to find "stats after date X" i chose to add in a smattering of july games. it was more about modeling "dumb writer" than modeling what i believe. the players on losing teams are important to the mix because you'll never hear somehting like "player X had the highest batting average of any player on an AL contender since june 8th" but you will hear that "justin morneau had the highest batting average in the AL since june 8th" its more about identifying valid candidates than it is in determining a clear winner. if teh top guy is on a team that's so bad that it'll preclude him from getting any votes, move down the list! SB-CS doesn't give you any way to differentiate between a guy who goes 10-0 in steal chances, or a guy who goes 20-10. my way prolly doesn't either. not that my way does it necessarily better.... either way, it basically violates the premise of my methodology, to just "look at the numbers". sure, i violate it later with OPS, but that's a bit more common a stat than net steals, and might be more likely to be used by a voter than net steals. granted, i don't think they're gonna look at CS either, but lets pretend. the argument for using both counting and rate stats is that i can give credit for both quantity and quality. i personally don't like my inclusion of hits into the mix; and OPS does give me a chance to add extra weight in a sneaky fashion. i do think it important to give credit to a guy who gets a lot of doubles and triples, instead of just smacking home runs, and just looking at OPS doesn't afford me that option. OPS+ i can't get at for post all star game, and i also can't get it in a nice handy sortable table that i can copy and paste into excel. i'm not willing to do taht kind of work for a quick dumb exercise. once i get into OPS+, or defense, i get into a place where i might as well just look at WARP, or VORP, or win shares, or Runs Created. and i'm working on that one in a wholly separate exercise. and to be honest, instead of ranking everybody from 1-100, i should be putting them all on a 100 point scale, with the top stat getter as 100, and the bottom stat-getter as 1, adding them all up, and then taking the highest point total. it would better account for players who separate tehmselves from teh pack, or bunches of players around the same stat level. but it still wouldn't come close to naming the player most deserving of the MVP. well, maybe a little closer...

As of the morning of 28 november... NEW TEAM metirish sharpie DocTee Nymr83 smg58 metsmarathon cleonjones11

and in the NL, my super-dumb methodology yields a surprise winner - Garret Atkins! WTF!!! 100 75 50 25 7 G Atkins 3B 1 1 1 1 13 A Pujols 1B 2 2 2 2 19 A Ramirez 3B 3 3 3 3 2 J Rollins SS 4 5 5 5 28 R Howard 1B 5 4 4 6 R Furcal SS 6 6 6 4 27 M Cabrera 3B 8 7 7 33 R Durham 2B 8 8 9 23 M Holliday OF 9 9 8 7 3 C Utley 2B 10 11 11 8 47 L Berkman 1B 11 10 10 64 C Beltran OF 12 13 5 H Ramirez SS 13 12 12 6 73 L Scott OF 14 20 24 A Gonzalez 1B 15 14 13 9 21 O Hudson 2B 16 15 15 11 9 T Helton 1B 17 17 17 12 11 A Soriano OF 18 17 14 10 44 B McCann C 19 18 16 55 A LaRoche 1B 20 20

ok... i hate myself for doing this... i just kinda sorta made a case for morneau, and it doesn't really require too much in the way of mental gymnastics and statistical calisthenics. basically, i looked at production after the all star game. took the 100 AL players with the most at bats. then i ranked them by: R H 2B 3B HR RBI TB BB SO SB CS OBP SLG AVG OPS and took the average. justin morneau came in second, behind vlad guerrero. jeter was third. those results held up pretty well when i cut the list down to top 75, 50, and finally when i cut it down to the players with the 25 most at bats, justin morneau came out first, mostly because vlad finally dropped off hte list. anyways... these are the results of the rankings. 100 75 50 25 26 V Guerrero OF 1 1 1 7 J Morneau 1B 2 2 2 1 67 D Ortiz DH 3 3 4 D Jeter SS 4 4 3 2 60 C Guillen SS 5 6 9 G Sizemore OF 6 5 4 3 21 M Teixeira 1B 8 8 6 5 35 R Sexson 1B 8 7 5 5 M Cuddyer OF 9 9 7 4 61 C Lee OF 10 12 48 A Rodriguez 3B 11 11 8 38 J Dye OF 12 10 10 28 N Markakis OF 14 13 9 81 M Teahen 3B 14 77 R Cano 2B 15 51 F Thomas DH 16 14 31 L Overbay 1B 17 15 11 64 J Mauer C 18 21 37 J Rivera OF 19 17 12 2 M Young SS 20 16 13 6 this doesnt account for any amount of weighing one stat more than another, or trying to estimate actual worth to a team, or defense, or playing for a contender/winner. its just me being intentionally somewhat dumb, and seeing what "the numbers" tell me. and after the all star break, you could almost kinda sorta say that if justin morneau wasn't the most productive offensive player, then he was the second most productive, and therefore could be considered a legit player to vote for as the league's MVP. and to be honest, i was really expecting this "analysis" to turn out differently. i'm gonna totally do this again for the NL... and of course, it is paramount to my self-interest to say that i do not consider this to be a good way to determine who the MVP is or should be, only that its a method that crossed my mind. if i could get at league-wide stats that only showed me post all star game in close and late situations, then i'd really be onto something that'd tell me if hte voters were really voting for what they claim to be voting for, whether or not i agree with them.

dwright looks like a tennis player, not a slugger, with that headband. sheesh! and, yeah, that's the faggiest bunch of hoodlums in that tunnel shot. all i can think of with wright's hat all askew is "give it to me, baby! uh huh! uh huh! give it to me, baby! uh huh! uh huh!"

As of the evening of 24 november... NEW TEAM metirish sharpie DocTee Nymr83 smg58 metsmarathon cleonjones11

its also the same guy who had pierzynski at #10.

As of the morning of 24 november... NEW TEAM metirish sharpie DocTee Nymr83 smg58 metsmarathon cleonjones11

the players suffer from the same problem as the writers - lack of exposure to the out-of-division teams. improved definition of the judging criteria, and enforced visibility into the votes is likely the best method, regardless of who actually pulls the lever or hangs the chad.

]Now, the plan appears to be Jose Reyes, David Wright, Carlos Beltran and an annually-changing cast of aging mercenaries. uh, wally... we're only about half a month into this year's plan. we scratched out heads at some of last years deals that turned out rather favorably. i think mabe omar has a tad bit more equity in the bank than ripping on him for not way overpaying for soriano, and seemingly sveltely getting a good deal on alou, at least comparaatively to what the rest of the marketplace is doing. sheesh.

its the offseason. what else is there to do than waste time with rankings both meaningless and meaningful?

vlad?!

my toe! my toe!! my toe!!! stepped on my toe!!!! i figured there was something to get, but only now on being prompted, do i think i've got it.