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VMart is slotted to be our DH and get about 40 games at catcher. That might change when they realize that Avila is not the catcher of the future but Leyland can be a little slow on the uptake.

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Cardinals and Red Sox  

missed it by that much  

If you root for St. Louis and you're not from the immediate St. Louis metro area, you're a horrible person.

VMart is slotted to be our DH and get about 40 games at catcher. That might change when they realize that Avila is not the catcher of the future but Leyland can be a little slow on the uptake.
I thought the general consensus was that he would be getting overpaid if he played 1B, and probably more so if he only DHed (and caught twice a week, poorly). Of course all the huge contracts this week make V-Mart's look pretty reasonable. Obviously you know how good he is too, since he was on the Indians for so long. I'm still sad to see him go, I think you guys will be perfectly happy with him.
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That's a lot of money. Is Crawford really worth that?
It's not that hard to see Crawford being worth the contract. No guarantee, but he's far more likely to earn it than Werth is to earn his own. Dave Cameron's analysis: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/b...-carl-crawford/
Even as a left fielder, though, I think he can earn this money. If we assume Crawford is a +5 win player, $5 million per win is the going rate this winter, and a standard aging curve that knocks off half a win per season, inflation “only” needs to be six percent annually per year going forward for Crawford’s projected value to come out to $142 million. Given that Crawford is only 29, he might be able to sustain a +5 win peak for another year or two, which would push his value even higher.Are the Red Sox taking a big risk that Crawford won’t suffer some kind of leg injury that destroys all of his value at once? Sure, they are, but that risk is there with nearly any kind of player you sign to a deal this large. This skillset ages pretty well, and, barring injury, Crawford should be one of the premier players in the game for the next three or four years. Add in that the wins Crawford add could be the difference between making the playoffs and sitting at home in a tough division, and there are actually a lot of reasons to like this deal for Boston.They got a lot better today. Yes, it’s a lot of money for a guy who doesn’t do the things that traditionally earn a lot of money, but he’s worth it, especially to Boston.
Well here's the thing: Theo Epstein has, in his relatively short reign as GM, brought us TWO world championships, breaking the curse, all that (and brought us to the brink of another WS berth in '08). So he pretty much has my trust for the rest of his career.
Also having Bill James as a Senior Advisor on my team would make me a hell of a lot more confident that they knew what they were doing as well.
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I thought the general consensus was that he would be getting overpaid if he played 1B, and probably more so if he only DHed (and caught twice a week, poorly). Of course all the huge contracts this week make V-Mart's look pretty reasonable. Obviously you know how good he is too, since he was on the Indians for so long. I'm still sad to see him go, I think you guys will be perfectly happy with him.
Dumbbrowksi came out and said that he will catch up to 2 games a week. Clearly don't need him for 1B so DH it is. He was pretty much brought in to protect Cabbie in the order. I like him and all but I don't think he wins us the central.
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Good for ESPN. They finally got rid of one of their best writers. Or, less sarcastically, good or Rob Neyer if it was his choice to leave.
I'm thinking that it was definitely Neyer who decided to leave, as he's created such a following that I can't imagine ESPN would voluntarily cut him.
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Question: To the already-informed baseball fan, how important is Rob Neyer in a vacuum? That is, how much of his value was tied up in his writing for a major corporation as opposed to a smaller outlet? Wang's Answer: If Rob Neyer stopped writing today, I wouldn't miss the content much, if at all. If he'd stopped writing a few years ago, when I was in the process of becoming an informed baseball fan, it would have been very detrimental to my growth, but I did grow. And I probably outgrew Rob Neyer. I checked his space frequently, but not so I could read his analysis. Rather, I used him -- to paraphrase Jonah Keri -- as a gateway to other, better analysts. Soon, even that became tedious, as he tended to link to the same handful of sources every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I owe Rob Neyer a lot, but in the same way I owe my 8th grade English teacher a lot. I'm grateful for what I learned, but I would never take that class again. I'm upset he's left ESPN, but primarily because I like the idea of a strong SABR supporter on the espn.com/mlb front page. How many people are going to miss out on the exposure I had? Not as many as would have in, say, 2001 or 2005, but a fair number nonetheless. Hopefully ESPN does the right thing and offers Neyer's old spot to Jonah Keri or Tom Tango or Dave Cameron (who, assuming he has the journalistic background or could be taught the rules he needs to know, would be perfect for the role, and is, in my opinion, the best young baseball writer alive). And hopefully one of those guys steps up and says yes.

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Concur wholeheartedly. I wouldn't mind seeing Joe Sheehan in that role, but he's already doing that for Sports Illustrated. I like Jonah Keri a lot too. Dave Cameron doesn't sound familiar to me; off to google!Edit: I guess he's the USS Mariner guy and possibly a fangraphs guy too?

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Dave Cameron doesn't sound familiar to me; off to google!Edit: I guess he's the USS Mariner guy and possibly a fangraphs guy too?
Yeah, he's been writing at Fangraphs for closing-in-on 3 years, now, and his work at USS Mariner has always been fantastic. I mean, I have zero connection to the Mariners, and there was a time that I read USS Mariner daily, just because I liked his writing so much. http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/page/57/?author=4That's a link to the Dave Cameron archive, starting in April 2008. He started off pretty hot, and never really took his foot off the gas. He's stepped back a little bit -- Full Time Editor of Fangraphs -- but he still contributes tons of content, and his analysis has always struck me as very clean, level-headed, and logical, but never boring. He's a good writer, which means he can take "weird stats stuff nobody understands" and present it in a way that could reach a very large audience.
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Question: To the already-informed baseball fan, how important is Rob Neyer in a vacuum? That is, how much of his value was tied up in his writing for a major corporation as opposed to a smaller outlet? Wang's Answer: If Rob Neyer stopped writing today, I wouldn't miss the content much, if at all. If he'd stopped writing a few years ago, when I was in the process of becoming an informed baseball fan, it would have been very detrimental to my growth, but I did grow. And I probably outgrew Rob Neyer. I checked his space frequently, but not so I could read his analysis. Rather, I used him -- to paraphrase Jonah Keri -- as a gateway to other, better analysts. Soon, even that became tedious, as he tended to link to the same handful of sources every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I owe Rob Neyer a lot, but in the same way I owe my 8th grade English teacher a lot. I'm grateful for what I learned, but I would never take that class again. I'm upset he's left ESPN, but primarily because I like the idea of a strong SABR supporter on the espn.com/mlb front page. How many people are going to miss out on the exposure I had? Not as many as would have in, say, 2001 or 2005, but a fair number nonetheless. Hopefully ESPN does the right thing and offers Neyer's old spot to Jonah Keri or Tom Tango or Dave Cameron (who, assuming he has the journalistic background or could be taught the rules he needs to know, would be perfect for the role, and is, in my opinion, the best young baseball writer alive). And hopefully one of those guys steps up and says yes.
Agree with basically this entire post. I'm looking for ways to adjust it to more accurately describe my own feelings, but there isn't much anything written above that doesn't speak for me as well. I was introduced to Neyer around mid-2007ish, and he's certainly the writer most responsible for me diving into the world of deeper baseball analysis and re-kindling my interest in the game because there was all of a sudden a whole new side to baseball beneath the surface to analyze and I just loved it. Many others have certainly contributed more to the knowledge pool of sabermetrics, but I have to give Neyer props for being the forerunner in pushing it into the mainstream. And given the onslaught of terrific analysts/writers over the past 24 hours who have written their own article about their experience with Neyer, it sounds like we would have been robbed of quite a bit of content if Neyer hadn't sparked their own interest as well.I guess the only place I differ from Wang is that I still enjoy reading Neyer today, even if in some ways I have also "outgrown" him. I'll still be checking in on his work at SBNation.
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Agree with basically this entire post. I'm looking for ways to adjust it to more accurately describe my own feelings, but there isn't much anything written above that doesn't speak for me as well. I was introduced to Neyer around mid-2007ish, and he's certainly the writer most responsible for me diving into the world of deeper baseball analysis and re-kindling my interest in the game because there was all of a sudden a whole new side to baseball beneath the surface to analyze and I just loved it. Many others have certainly contributed more to the knowledge pool of sabermetrics, but I have to give Neyer props for being the forerunner in pushing it into the mainstream. And given the onslaught of terrific analysts/writers over the past 24 hours who have written their own article about their experience with Neyer, it sounds like we would have been robbed of quite a bit of content if Neyer hadn't sparked their own interest as well.I guess the only place I differ from Wang is that I still enjoy reading Neyer today, even if in some ways I have also "outgrown" him. I'll still be checking in on his work at SBNation.
I went back and read my post, and I was a little too harsh. I'd guess I've read 40-60% of Neyer's ESPN material in the last year, and though that doesn't qualify him for "must read" status -- Joe Posnanski, Tom Tango, Dave Cameron, and Carson Cistulli are all 90%+, for example -- I still, obviously, made it a point to read his material. Maybe a small part of it was "staying current on the sabermetric mainstream," but more than that, I honestly did care what he had to say. He's a good thinker and a good writer, and I'll follow him to SBN. He wasn't my favorite, but I definitely enjoyed him. I guess I wanted him to do more original work -- there is so much groundbreaking work being done, I guess I feel like "commentary" isn't as interesting -- but I still read him regularly, and recommended him to friends and family.
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And the Red Sox show the world that the MLB consists of two teams and many, many farm teams. Good work, Sox, you're finally starting to "get it."
Amazing as it is to say, there appear to be three MLB teams now with the way the Phillies are spending. Can't wait for baseball to get started.
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Amazing as it is to say, there appear to be three MLB teams now with the way the Phillies are spending. Can't wait for baseball to get started.
The Rays will be very, very good for the foreseeable future. That Longo contract, a stocked farm system, and a great business model will enable them to reach far above their small-market station.
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While reading the Hall of Fame thread, and the Steroids/Amphetamines discussion that followed, I was struck by a question, and decided to ask it here, as it seems less likely to be off topic than if I posted in the HoF thread:Why should steroid use in baseball be illegal?

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The Rays will be very, very good for the foreseeable future. That Longo contract, a stocked farm system, and a great business model will enable them to reach far above their small-market station.
Did you know they just signed Johnny Damon and Manny Ramirez?Re: steroids. I would think for the same reason cocaine isn't allowed.
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Did you know they just signed Johnny Damon and Manny Ramirez?Re: steroids. I would think for the same reason cocaine isn't allowed.
Yeah yeah, that one's been out there for a few days, I think. Apparently Boras insisted they came as a package. I like the signings; if Manny tries, he could provide millions in surplus value. A lot has been made about his demise, recently, but in the last two years he's been worth 4+ wins in 750PA. I think 400-500 PA of .380 wOBA ball -- something like .300/.400/.500 -- is a pretty fair estimate, and for the pittance the Rays are paying him (are the Dodgers still paying him?), they'll recoup his salary easily. If he fell a little short of those numbers, but made 600 PA, he'd probably come out to a 2.5-3WAR player. (I say "probably" because I don't want to do the DH vs bad outfielder adjustment.) If he put up his 2009 numbers and made 600 trips, he'd be over 3 WAR.We should expect some skill erosion, injuries, and the typical Manny-being-Manny attitude, which makes the O/U something closer to 1.8-2.0 wins, but for 2.0MM, he could show up for about 40 games and be worth the money. Damon is a decent bet to be worth the contract he signed, too, depending on how many PA he gets. EDIT: I should note, the Rays are a team who can definitely support breaking even on the free-agent market on a year-to-year basis. Their position on the win-curve means a single marginal win for them is (OPENEDIT2: inserting a word here) potentially (CLOSEEDIT2) worth more than it is for any other team in baseball. If I weren't lazy, I'd make an excel spreadsheet RIGHT NOW that had each team's position on the win-curve... actually, that might be kind of fun. Holy crap, that would be REALLY fun. Taking predictions -- BPro, Las Vegas -- and determining the marginal value of a single win for each team (a) at the beginning of the off-season and/or (b) right now, then viewing the off-season through that lens. That could be informative and valuable.Re: SteroidsWhy is cocaine disallowed? Because it's illegal? Or because it's dangerous?
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