duan

but lets go back to the question, what player the other teams have acquired off us for their "really good player" has gone on to be a good player and if the answer is "not fucking many" than isn't that the sign of a front office doing a good job?

funnily enough though, Kevin Goldstein reckons he's the 4th most valuable 25 or under property the brewers have "What does one do with Gomez, a career .246/.292/.346 hitter who nonetheless still has dazzling tools? PECOTA doesn't seem to know either, as it�s projecting a small step forward in 2010, but his list of comparable players is loaded with superstars. I'm willing to let my bet ride on the tools for now." can't see the new comps but last year it was "1 David Green 1984 51 11 Curtis Goodwin 1996 30 2 Mariano Duncan 1986 41 12 Gary Geiger 1960 30 3 Ruben Mateo 2001 38 13 Luis Aparicio 1957 30 4 Lou Brock 1963 34 14 Ty Cline 1963 30 5 Bert Campaneris 1965 34 15 Bill Russell 1972 28 6 Johnny Damon 1997 34 16 Shawon Dunston 1986 26 7 Corey Patterson 2003 32 17 Lee Richard 1972 26 8 Carlos Beltran 2000 32 18 Coco Crisp 2003 25 9 Ryne Sandberg 1983 32 19 Junior Felix 1991 25 10 Ellis Burks 1988 31 20 Garry Maddox 1973 25 ? some very good players all right, but plenty who've had little above average value.

Gomez is at the Brewers, not a lot to suggest he's ever going to be much better then Jason Tyner.

Quite a few of the guys who we've flipped recently having been bouncing around the wire the last few days (Andreas Escobar Gaby Hernandez & Yousermio Petit were the guys who triggered this) and I was thinking with the exception of Scott Kazmir, I can't think of any guys who we've traded in "Major League" deals since AJ Burnett that have gone on to be good/very good Obviously we re-signed one of them this winter (Jason Bay who we dealt for Jason Middlebrook if I remember) but I'm thinking more of guys who were packaged for actual major leaguers, the Jason Bay thing was more the classic case on an undervalued late developer who bounced around a lot, plenty of people could have had him at any stage (and indeed did).

i said it somewhere else, but 2011's a year when a whale load of contracts & tendering rights end. in 2011 we're already committed to $108.613, 11 milion to Reyes and SEVEN players in arbitration which i reckon will get around 16-20 million. That's almost $140 already. but for 2012 we're commited to $60.875 in order of probably '11 salary beltran (20), perez (12), reyes (11), castillo(6), francoeur (6), Maine (5) are all free agents, plus francico rodriguez if option isn't triggered. *** way i read it, they are tight for money this year especially and that next year's the one where they can take the risks and especially deferred salary style FA deals. You're right in that Bay jars with that, and that if they weren't going to sign another big FA they'd have been better filling all the slots that they think might be below Major League average BP.com suggested - "Gregg Zaun, Adam LaRoche, and Johnny Damon to fill their lineup more evenly, adding about one win at catcher, another 1-2 wins at first base, and another two wins with Damon. The cost of Zaun was $2.15 million, LaRoche got $5.5 million, and Damon could probably be had for about $7 " and they'd have some flexibilty next year and even more in 2012.

jesus christ, that octopus thing is only half a step removed from sacrificing a chicken.

seriously steve, you manage to mangle your own point SOOOOO badly that it just makes you seem silly. 1983 mets did badly 1984 mets did well off season - not a huge amount happened, * it's simple, yet you seem to be trying to claim that 1 very good player (kh), one young breakthrough position player (ds) and a young pitcher were all that they needed to win. Actually as it happens the 84 squad were probably lucky to win as many games as they did as they were outscored over the year. Next years mets may/may not be a threat to the Phillies, but if they finish 12 games ahead of their expected w -l it'll be a good start.

em, I don't really care, you're suggesting that that 1983 team was in great shape because it had a coke addled 1st baseman who hadn't had a bad season. I'm saying a coke addled first baseman isn't the guy I'd like to be depending on.

Edgy DC wrote: Steve, if you're going to dismiss the presence of Johan Santana with "Needs to stay healthy and stop making excuses for pitching poorly" while holding up Keith Hernandez as unblemished, if you're going to dismiss the presence of four guys aged 27, 27, 31, and 33 with 15 total All Star appearances as being somehow incomparable to one 30 year old with two, I don't know what to do. I honor you with logic and you cover me in shit. Everybody needs to stay healthy. what's hilarious about the Keith Hernandez line is that at that time he was DOING LOTS OF THEM and while I don't particularly care about recreational drug use, it could hardly be considered *the best thing* for an athlete to be engaged in if you're depending (pun not intended) on him, the way Steve Rogers seems to think everyone was.

from memory, valentine was always very good at getting the best out relatively unheralded guys up from AAA, either by luck or by design. Benny, Timo, Mevlin Mora are the most obvious examples, but there's probably a few more.

lunch definitely can't win, can only tie. he doesn't have enough different answers to bgrimm to get past him.

smg58 wrote: Something had to have bothered Winn swinging righthanded last year. (I'm not sure what's more bizarre -- that he had a .384 OPS in 120 ABs righthanded last year after even platoon splits for his whole career, or that he was allowed to have 120 ABs righthanded under the circumstances.) If he's over that, then he's a great value at $2M for the Yankees, unfortunately. On the other hand, the Yankees now have two starting outfielders whose OPS against lefties last year failed to break .500. That's a potential weakness teams are going to try to exploit. so what does Gary Matthews have to do - be better then Randy Winn for it to be considered a victory for Omar? I don't know, I actually think people are underestimating how many things went wrong for the Mets last season. If Beltran, Wright, Reyes & Santana are all going to be fucked (wright just power wise) this season too, there's no amount of talent that you could have imported to make the team a legitimate contender. But before the season starts the talent from the core that we've lost is Carlos Delgado and I think replacing him Jason Bay is an ok if slightly expensive swap. Beltran's loss for a month - 6 week - who knows? is the imponderable but difficult to plan for. My instinct is that Angel Pagan is going to be ok, but they found him fragile last season which is why they've agreed to pay Matthews 2 million for 2 years. Someone who (rightly or wrongly) they believe can play league average CF and get towards hitting 350obp/400slg. This to my mind is a commitment to leaving Fernando Martinez at a level and hoping he gets his reps there and can develop. The biggest imponderable is what we get out of Maine/Perez/Pelfrey - but none of the FA options were without their knocks too. I bet the Ollie contract is the one thing that Omar regrets most though.

seriously if we'd signed Ben Sheets to a one year deal for 10 million plus 2 million in incentives people would have gone "Oh look at Omar overpaying for another injured pitcher because he's do desperate to save his job by making a big splash". Ben Sheets at that money is a significant risk and the upside, while obvious, is not necessarily going to be at great value. Even if Sheets has a good season, 12 million is a lot to pay when you've no further rights to him after this year.

I don't know you can't complain about getting someone for $ 3 million. Lord knows we may catch a bit of lightning in a bottle or he may get on HGH. We can so easily just waive him and forget about it if it's truly disastrous. Correct me If I'm wrong, but there seemed to be decent chunks of the year where rightly or wrongly Stokes went unused for five plus days (I seem to remember it being 12 at one stage) that means that the management don't trust him. If they reckon they're NOT going to revise that opinion, then moving him's cool with me. Although my surname is truly hurt.

seriously though, at what point in time does Tony Soprano come into the mets front office and say "Loose Lips Sink Ships". It's like there's NO WAY that they can possibly NOT say something stupid about anything. This could have all been handled privately, release the statement saying "Carlos Beltran underwent surgery, when he was unable to increase his training to the level he desired to get into shape for the new season. The decision was taken to undergo the surgery now to allow for the minimum disruption possible to the 2010 season. It is unfortunate that the need for the surgery did not become clear till this point, but as Carlos had been successful in playing a number of games in September he thought he would be able to work his way back to peak condition naturally." JESUS FUCKING CHRIST WHY IS IT ALWAYS NECESSARY TO TRY AND POINT SCORE IN THE MEDIA

"* Association Football - Giles Barnes, Craig Bellamy, Patrik Berger, Jimmy Bullard, Mark Delaney, Scott Dobie, Ian Durrant, Ricardo Gardner, Owen Hargreaves, Park Ji-Sung, Roy Keane, John Kennedy, Henrik Larsson, Martin Laursen, Joleon Lescott, Lothar Matth�us, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Michael Owen, Alessandro Del Piero, Linvoy Primus, Peter Ramage, Jamie Redknapp, Steven Reid, Ronaldo, Richard Rufus, Alan Shearer, James Vaughan, Lee Wilkie, Mark Wilson" loads of these guys have made very full recoveries. Knee injuries to footballers were like elbows to pitchers before tommy john surgery.

don't get me wrong, btw, I'm not saying he's a terrible player, or that Alex Cora is a million miles better then him, BUT just that acquiring Reuben Gotay for him was a plausible decision.

2008 OPS: .657 2009 OPS: .707 last season he mainly played 3rd, and in 08 when played SS for most of a season he was 11 runs below average by baseball prospectus' metrics and 14 runs below average by fangraphs. He's the kinda guy that if he gets hot for you it's great but for fucks sake don't think he's any better then a dozen or so dudes that are going to pass through waivers.

it'll be HARD for him to be worth 18 million a season for 2 years, and seeing as he was actually worthless last year our damage is unlikely to be low. I think the problem with Perez is that he's so potentially brilliant that you can't help but WANT TO BE THE ONE THAT GETS THE GOOD ONE and forget how bad he is when he's bad. Could be wrong, but I don't get the impression that he's the sharpest tool in the box, I some how think that and the inconsistency are in some way related.

I can accept them saying that they couldn't commit to 33 million for every year of the next 4/5 in 2 signings this offseason Winter of 2011 will see Beltran, Perez, Rodriguez, Castillo and Reyes (assuming option is picked up which it will be if he's fit) all being FA's, that's a lot of chunky dominos falling and I can see why they're trying to keep themselves pretty flexible for next years FA class where they'll have a better capacity to figure how many if any of the above they're going to want to retain, it also may be when we're best placed to roll the dice on a last hurrah of the current core. Tell you something though, they need another homegrown player or three to come through, we're about to start seeing the "value" days of Reyes and Wright come to a close.

i'm not sure about marty noble's logic about "for this year" thing. Either decide the fucker disgraced the game in a way that's unforgiveable or don't. Now, you can revise your opinion (and that IS fair), but to suggest (as Marty seems) that he's already decided to vote for him NEXT year is a bit off. The whole "not a first ballot" is bollocks full stop too.

i'm willing to give Omar a partial pass on the DL thing, people do it all the time (and other people are far too frisky at putting a guy on the 15 day to end up losing him for 13 days unnecessarily) and to some degree to me it speaks of the problem in the GM/Field Manager structure rather then of the actual GM. Jesus was bad. I'm ok with Luis Castillo signing believe it or not - it was probably a year too many and a million a year too much, but if he gives us 3 years of last year to go with the previous debacle we'll have got our value. We were paying a premium for perceived consistency and if you look at Castillo, he's generally been a good 2bman, while occassionally having a crap year. Ollie was a bad bad deal but it doesn't look a lot worse then the one Atlanta handed Derek Lowe right now does it? Looking the the free agent pitcher class that year in general it was pretty horrible below CC. In fairness to Marty Noble he argued Randy Wolf loudly and early - and I'm pretty sure lunchbucket agreed with him, don't know about the rest of us. I