Jays still owe Ryan money, even after he was traded to the Cubs and they’ve since released him? Damn.
Yeah a lot of these bad contracts will hurt us in the future (no more so than Vernon), which I think will cause us to be inactive on the free agent market again.
As for the dollar, it’s not too bad anymore, with a lot of people saying it may move past par with the greenback in the future (go go resources 
) so that isn’t too bad.
As for the Rios giveaway, while I am happy they were able to get the contract off the books, I still think they could’ve at least gotten some prospects for Rios at the least.
What I really think this does is that it allows the future President and possibly new GM (If the new President fires JP) of the Jays to rebuild and make their mark.
Kyle Lohse is back, Cards vs Yankees…bet it!
ps- cubs suck, Tulo hits for cycle even after they took his grandslam away, too good!
I’ve seen plenty of teams with great hitters have losing records but if a team has an ace and mediocre pitching around them they’ll win and probably make the postseason. If a team has 2 aces a postseason appearance is all but assured. I never said that Tim Lincecum is a better player than Albert Pujols but I do believe that he is more valuable to a team because pitching is more valuable than hitting.
There are many good hitters in the league ( though not as good as Pujols obviously) but there aren’t many good pitchers in baseball let alone those anywhere near Lincecum’s talent level. If Lincecum and Pujols went into free agency at the same time I believe that Lincecum could make as much if not more on an annual basis than Albert Pujols because of the premium that is put on quality starting pitching. As they say cost dictates value and if he’s as valuable as Pujols then he’s definitely more valuable than any other hitter in baseball.
Instead of taking subtle shots at me perhaps you should try to bring reasons as to why you feel “that over the course of a regular season, premium position players are worth more”. Please show me these numbers universally bearing that out.
It’s funny. The Cardinals have pitching and Pujols while the Giants have pitching and really nothing else yet both teams have the same amount of losses and the Giants are only percentage points behind them. Maybe that’s just me cherry-picking stats again.
they cut him and cubs signed him for the minimum for one year then he retired. so they owe him for rest of this year minus the minimum from the cubs and for whatever next year, its like 15 mil and 7 this year
kind of sucks like how the tigers are paying sheffield like 14 million, mets paying him 400k and he was doing decent for them
Still can’t believe that we got Peavy and Rios, this is so sick.
May sound dumb, but I predict the White Sox win the Series within the next 4 years.
I believe it’s been proven that position players are more valuable, but I can’t seem to find it, it could be the opposite though. My point is, I think that the question has been answered either way. I’ll keep on looking.
*Edit: it also depends on the position. SS and C being much more valuable than a 1B or LF/RF, etc.
The argument is that a pitcher only plays every 5th day.
He has a bigger effect on the game, yes, obviously, than a position player. A pitcher pitches to say like 40 at-bats a game, a hitter only gets 3-4 a game.
But a pitcher only affects one game out of every five. A starter only has an impact in 30-33 games a year. A position player affects 162, with his bat and his glove.
It doesn’t matter how much more affect a pitcher has in one game versus a hitter. He only plays in 30 a year. A position player that can significant affect the outcome of a game factors more into a team’s success than a great pitcher does over the course of a season.
You can compare VORP values as well, or runs created and runs saved, which can be converted to wins - there are direct comparables between pitchers and hitters, and great hitters always come out on top. This is not some comparison that no one’s ever bothered to quantify - there are hard numbers supporting this as well as just common sense.
Granted, that’s in the context of speaking about a 162 game season. If you’re trying to win a best of 5 or best of 7 series…then yeah, obviously a good starting pitcher becomes like 50 times more valuable. Good pitchers help you win specific games that they pitch. The worth of a good hitter is stretched out over the course of 162 games.
There’s a lot of stuff to bring out here, but I’m at work and have to keep it short.
Matrix, the argument you’re using for pitching is about scarcity, not about actual VORP values, defensive stats or win shares a player has. Pitching has too many issues (unreliability, difficult to draft, injuries) that don’t come up when drafting premium position players. (e.g. Joe Mauer or Mark Prior? Who do you draft first that year?).
The extra pay pitchers get is due to pitching consistency, postseason usefulness, and scarcity (1 SP can pitch 3 games of a 7 game series or be dominant like Hamels was last year…or randy johnson and schilling vs the yankees 2k1). The extra money teams throw at pitchers get you fewer win shares/VORP, etc. than at position players, but they’ll do it anyway because 2-3 wins more than a league average pitcher is often the difference in a tight division, whereas a good position player will net you like you 5-10 wins or more over the course of the season in sabremetric calculations.
You’d have go down a few slots in the yearly win share or VORP list before you get to a starting pitcher for precisely this reason.
Probably that Mark Twain quote in your sig got to me and I was snarkier than I usually like to be when posting, but you have a habit of picking out stats that don’t actually prove your point fully.
Pointing out that the Giants’ win/loss record is similar to the Cardinals’ in your last post doesn’t prove that an individual pitcher is more valuable than a hitter at all…and most projections at the moment still have giants finishing with ~6 wins less than the cards and missing the playoffs. Given Matt Cain’s history, he’s probably getting super lucky on his BABIP as well I suspect. It might normalize soon.
Anyhow, the Cards outside of Pujols aren’t really that great an offensive team.
In contrast, if you look up the actual runs scored and ERAs of teams like the Angels, TB, Yankees, Phillies, etc. versus the teams with low ERAs like SF and LA, you’d see that team ERA matters quite a bit less than you think in the regular season over a replacement value pitcher. Angels have a terrible ERA. Boston’s bullpen is falling apart without Wakefield chewing up innings.
A team like the Phillies last year shows you can get to the WS with one legit SP, league average innings eating pitchers, excellent RPs, and a lot of hitting.
Gotta go, will try to clarify more later.
I get the whole having 162 (more like 140-150)games worth of production from a position player as opposed to the 30 games or so from the starting pitcher. More is more. If my intent is to build a winning team however, I just can’t reconcile in my mind the idea of rather having a hitter over a pitcher if they’re anywhere close to the same talent level.
When C.C. Sabathia got traded to the Brewers last season it was a big deal. When Manny Ramirez and Mark Texeira were traded to the Dodgers and Angels respectively it was like well those are big moves but not as big as the pitcher being moved.
Even this season there was talk about Roy Halladay possibly being traded and it was in the headlines for weeks because of what it’s perceived that an ace can do for your team. Guys like Victor Martinez and Matt Holliday are actually traded and it’s like "eh that’s nice but it’s no Roy Halladay. He’s a better player than those two but even when a pitcher like Cliff Lee got moved it was considered the best acquisition by any team at the trade deadline.
Maybe I am making an argument about something different. As long as I’ve been watching baseball it’s seemingly always been the team with the better pitching that’s made the difference between having a winning season and a losing season, winning or losing a division title or a Wild Card, and ultimately winning in October.
I’ve seen teams in Texas and Colorado have incredible batting lineups yet constantly lose because they couldn’t pitch a lick. And then there’s teams like the Twins with light hitting but good pitching making the playoffs year after year.
Maybe it’s just a matter of degrees. Teams with Great Hitting and Good Pitching win and teams with Good Hitting and Great Pitching win. Teams with Great Hitting and Poor Pitching lose but it seems to me like more often than not we’re seeing the teams with the superior pitching staffs playing for something in October as opposed to the team with the star-studded lineup.
Yeah if you get a Sabathia and hes pitching complete 1 run games on 3 days rest down the stretch than you could argue a pitcher is AS valuable as a position player, but thats almost never going to be the case. As was said before in the playoffs pitching is more important, if you got two shutdown guys(carp and wainwright cough) and some clutch hitters you can beat anyone in a short playoff series.
Don’t really think drafting or injuries have much to do with what we are talking about. We are talking about the value of a fully healthy already proven pitcher or hitter.
What extra pay? Don’t hitters get paid just as much if not more than pitchers?
2-3 more WAR for a pitcher? Hmm I don’t think so.
http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=pit&lg=all&qual=y&type=6&season=2009&month=0
As you can see Lincecum is 6.9 WAR and Greinke is 6.7 WAR, not to mention there are plenty of pitchers with way more than 2-3 WAR.
And a “good” position player netting you 5-10 WAR is not accurate at all.
http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=6&season=2009&month=0
Again as you can see, only Pujols is at 6. 10 WAR is crazy 01-04 Barry Bonds type seasons.
It seems according to these numbers that both position players and starting pitchers are around the same WAR.
This is true but pitchers are up there too. Anyway here are the lists for this year and last year. I believe WAR is a better tool to indicate value as it takes into account defense and VORP doesn’t.
2009 hitter VORP
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/statistics/sortable/index.php?cid=204031
2008 hitter VORP
2009 pitchers VORP
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/statistics/sortable/index.php?cid=204030
2008 pitcher VORP
NOTE: I’m not an expert with understanding these numbers completely. I’m not trying to argue either way, I’m just throwing out stats and seeing what everyone can come up with. After realizing that all these stats were out there earlier this year, it has taken my love of baseball to a new level. 
Prett sure everyone knows this arguement.
Can you show me these numbers? I think the numbers I just posted say otherwise, showing that last year and this year both had similiar VORP and WAR values.
I knew I wasn’t crazy. I may be wrong but I’m not crazy.
You know what, I might be crazy.
I could have sworn that I was just looking at those very numbers not too long ago, and it was clearly hitters over pitchers. Must not have been VORP or win shares or whatever then…maybe some wacky stat that valued runs created a lot more. Apologies, I’m mistaken.
Kevin Youkilis sucks. I mean he doesn’t suck but he sucks you know what I mean. Rick Porcello hits him by accident so Youk throws his helmet like a girl and tries to tackle him but gets laid out. As a result Porcello gets ejected (I’m not sure why) and the Tigers have to start a scrub and basically forfeit a game. It’s not right.
If I’m the Tigers the first thing I do next game is hit someone. That way they get Josh Beckett to retaliate and maybe he’ll get ejected. Turnabout is fair play.
Funny, I seem to recall seeing older models of VORP valuing position players greater.
I did look up Bill James win shares briefly since that’s what I remembered and find that there are many complaints about his valuation of SPs. That’s the model I was using earlier which does put positions players far above pitchers. I also seem to recall seeing VORP charts with players being valued much higher so I guess that depends on who made the chart and when.
Mea culpa guys. I was posting from work yesterday without time to look things up. Sorry for the things I probably got wrong.
If WAR incorporates UZR well, it’s almost certainly a better system. Though I don’t believe UZR completely gets defense stats measured 100%, it seems to be the best system available.
Still, HanRam > Beckett by any measure I’ve looked at. 
Someone needs to let Pedro know that it’s 2009. The Soul-Glo look went out of style 20 years ago.
Carp goes 7 innings, 2er, 10 ks to bring his record to 12-3 with a era in the low twos(dont know what it is after this game). Hes not gonna give it to lincecum for free, although he slipped behind him in era 
If only he hadn’t missed those 5 starts, he’d be looking at winning 20.
I’m surprised that there’s no San Diego Padres fan around. They just nearly escaped with a win 6-5 with 2 outs and a runner on third with Mike Cameron on the plate. Pads have been playing good baseball with all these young players.
But then again, they’ve been playing against struggling teams (Reds and Mets comes to mind). Lets see if they’re the team to believe when they play @ Cardinals next series.
Griffey
:clapdos::clapdos::clapdos::clapdos::clapdos:
Fuck we should swept the White Sox we shouldn’t have blew that game last night in the 9th.