Andy's Mistakes

[Sports Guy]

That's scary actually. This year they improved their team and lowered their payroll. The table above shows they'll be down to $160mm after this season? Who's going to top their list this offseason?

They won't be in on any IFers, so that's good for us.

My guess is they will push hard for Holliday if he has a big year this year.

[RShack]

The good news is that teams only have 25 roster spots. That's why the MFY's can't buy perpetual dominance no matter how much they spend. There are more top-flight ballplayers than they have room for. They can pay through the nose for whoever they want, and there's still plenty of excellent ballplayers left over. Now, if rosters expanded by a factor of 4 or 5, and if FA kicked in sooner than it does, then we'd be in trouble. But as it is, once the O's get back to being good all the time, the fact that the MFY's are so rich and spend like crazy will only add to the satisfaction when we get back to a place where a bunch of home-grown Orioles kick the snot out of them.

[Orioles West]

They won't be in on any IFers, so that's good for us.

My guess is they will push hard for Holliday if he has a big year this year.

Agreed.

Holliday seems to finally be adjusting to the AL, his BA is climbing again, so the power numbers should follow. He tends to gain confidence moving the ball around the field and then can get in a nice power streak. In other words, I think he will have a solid enough year to be a main attraction for the usual suspects.

The Yanks, Bosox and maybe the LA teams.

-Don

[Sports Guy]

Jason Bay is another potential Yankees target as well.

[Crazysilver03]

Jason Bay is another potential Yankees target as well.

I would expect the Red Sox and Yankees to get into a major bidding war if that were to occur, which means Bay would probably get overpaid.

[Roll Tide]

There haven’t been many, IMO. But starting this past offseason in particular, I believe there have been a few. These are moves that I recall disliking when he pulled the trigger, not those that simply haven’t worked out as hoped-for or as expected. Here are the ones that stand out for me. All of these transactions wasted money that could have been better used elsewhere.

- Not getting enough net dollars recovered in the Ramon trade.

- Not getting even a single dollar recovered in the Freel discard.

- Signing Wigginton to a $6 mil deal rather than going with Salazar.

- Although I’m completely ecstatic that we finally signed Nick to a long-term deal and one which I believe was a pretty fair value for both parties, I still believe we could and should have signed him a year earlier, when it probably would have been much cheaper to do so (as Nick would have had one extra year at risk).

His infatuation with Cubs & their Ex players!

[Lucky Jim]

I've made it pretty clear I wouldn't have given him the deal he ended up getting.

The drop in K-Rate and increase in ERA are exactly what should have been expected. He spent the last three years in the second best park in the AL for increasing strikeouts. Knowing that, it is pretty obvious he wouldn't continue to strike out 9+ batters per game (assuming, of course, that the new stadium doesn't become a park for increased Ks). The ERA could be expected to increase due to going to a team with a much worse defense than he's used to.

As for ZiPS, they're still projecting all of his numbers to improve across the board, relative to now. The Yankees are three games short of the quarter pole in their schedule. I'd say that his current numbers project to a value of slightly over $10M - without the expected improved performance.

If his performance does improve (and I'd bet that it will), then I could still see him as having at least a $12M value this year - which is exactly what Cot's says he was due to make this year with the Blue Jays. Add in the improved ERA due to the increase in Ks and better defense behind, and he'd be worth even more. Which means his performance would have to have dropped off a whole lot next year for him not to be worth that contract.

One reason I'm arguing the $12M mark is that is what I would have offered him to come to Baltimore before he got the silly offers from Atlanta and NY.

As for your last comment, had he stayed with the Jays, as I pointed out above, I'm extrememly confident he would have been well worth the $12M he would have been due to make this year - and then some. He doesn't figure to have such a deep decline next year that his overall performance wouldn't have been well worth the total value of that deal. I'm not sure how the Jays are so much better off without him.

I love how people like to bring out the whole "he's injury prone" cry when he's been injury free for two years now. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, he appears to be past his injury issues.

As for his Yankees contract, I've never argued he'll be worth that deal - even if it was signed with the Yankees. But I do think he'd have been worth a 4/48 deal. In fact, Baseball Projections has his projected value over the 2009 to 2013 seasons as being $60.1M (which actually makes the Atlanta offer seem a little better - even though I'll be the first to admit that $60.1M is pushing it).

Honestly, I'm not sure why you're arguing your point when I largely agree with it. As I stated, I think he's worth $11-13m or so a year going forward - with the possibility of a dominant year offset by the greater likelihood of missed starts.

You can say he's "over his injury issues", but he's started 35, 25 and 21 games over the last three years. He may be healthier now than he has been in a while, but the fact remains, he's not a workhorse and likely never will be. He's pitched 200 innings 3x in nine years, and one out of three w/ the Jays. (In 2000, his erstwhile "rookie" year, he pitched only 82 innings w/ the Marlins, and only 12 in the minors. A grand total of 16 starts and 94 innings for a 23 year old.)

To be clear, however, whatever the reasons for the decline in his numbers (expected or not) or his ability to recover, I never accused you of supporting his Yankee contract or overvaluing him. I'm not even sure where this comes from.

You called me out - to use your phrasing. To which I responded and clarified my point, which I admitted wasn't particularly conclusive.

And finally, I didn't meant that the Jays were better off without him, exactly - but the fact remains, he pitched the most innings in his career last year and, in the past, the year following his 200 IP years resulted in 23 and 135 IP, respectively. Thus, I think there's an inherent risk that he may not be healthy and provide $26m in value over the next two years. Possible? Sure. But him leaving early after a great opt-out year guaranteed the Jays got value for him.

You can believe "injury problems are behind him" all you like, but as far as I can tell that's not available through statistical analysis and you haven't offered any reason for this to be the case. They may be. They may not. Who knows? But if you've got a starter who has - for a variety of unrelated reasons - started more than 30 games three times and pitched more than 200 innings three times in eight or years, I find it tough to think it probable that he's not going to miss a solid chunk of time going forward. You disagree, and you probably know him better than I do.

[crowmst3k!]

releasing Leo Mazzone.

[Skeletor]

People keep saying about the Cubs, but all the deals with the Cubs look to be turning in our favor.

[Crazysilver03]

releasing Leo Mazzone.

He didn't want to be on the team anymore with Perlozzo gone so it shouldnt be held against MacPhail.

[Anonymous]

He didn't want to be on the team anymore with Perlozzo gone so it shouldnt be held against MacPhail.

The main window we have to evaluate a pitching coach is through their interviews. On that admittedly limited and possibly skewed basis, how can anyone be less than highly impressed with Kranny?

[Sports Guy]

The main window we have to evaluate a pitching coach is through their interviews. On that admittedly limited and possibly skewed basis, how can anyone be less than highly impressed with Kranny?

Performance seems to be a way to evaluate too, don't you think?

[Anonymous]

Performance seems to be a way to evaluate too, don't you think?

Obviously, performance -- or rather the INCREMENT to performance relative to what would have occurred with a different pitching coach -- is the true measure of the coach's value (and to some degree not only current performance, but also whatever contribution is made in a developmental sense that will impact long-term performance.) But it's just too difficult for me as an outsider to know how to tie performance back to the coach. I keep thinking back to last year when our impatient hitting style kept getting attributed to Crow, when it ultimately turned out that he was preaching just the opposite. It seems that for a lot of the guys, it took another full year for his lessons to sink in.