Jake

QUOTE (bmags @ Mar 21, 2017 -> 09:39 AM) These deals often seem to go to players that didn't expect to be there. Gets himself some guaranteed money for life. Nothing is certain in baseball. It makes sense for Anderson to take the money here. He is very unproven and as a shortstop could be a knee injury away from being significantly worse at his job.

For the Sox, this deal makes a lot of sense. They're exposed to some risk because there are statistical indicators that Anderson would regress this year (though scouting reasons to expect improvement). But their current payroll obligations make it such that the franchise will be fine if Anderson fell off the face of the Earth. The upside is so high that we can easily stomach wasting $4M/year if he busts. If you give out enough deals like this, you only need a small portion of them to work out to break even.

I can't imagine any other team is as harmed by non-participation as Team USA. In particular, our pitching staff seems bafflingly bad. Here are non-participating Americans listed by 2016 WAR: 1. Clayton Kershaw 2. Noah Syndergaard 3. Max Scherzer 4. Rick Porcello 5. Justin Verlander 6. Chris Sale 7. Corey Kluber 8. Madison Bumgarner 9. David Price 10. Kyle Hendricks 11. Jon Lester 12. Jake Arrieta 13. Jon Gray and then you finally get to the first American WBC participant, Stroman. And then we can look at relievers specifically: We do have the best, Andrew Miller. Yay! And then... 1. Addison Reed (had to double take at that one) 2. Zach Britton 3. Tyler Thornburg 4. Will Harris 5. Mark Melancon and then we get to Nate Jones and after that, about 10 more until you get to Luke Gregerson. Of course the point isn't that 2016 WAR should be the main criterion for selection, but we're just not anywhere close to assembling our best. And let's think about some of the position players missing: 1. Mike Trout 2. Kris Bryant 3. Mookie Betts 4. Josh Donaldson 5. Corey Seager 6. Adam Eaton 7. Brian Dozier and then Ian Kinsler and Brandon Crawford, a few spots and you get Murphy and Arenado. The outfield stands out, though—why does Team USA have Christian Yelich batting 3rd? McCutchen probably shouldn't be getting the time, but I understand how some may not be inclined to penalize him as much for last year when he had been so sensational for years beforehand. Either way, I find it galling that the US has the world's two best players (Trout and Kershaw) and neither is out there. They have their reasons that are perfectly rational, but it doesn't mean I have to like it. It's also bad for the tournament. On one hand, nobody will like it around the world if the US wins every time...it has to be competitive. But few would deny that the US has the most talent in the world, so it delegitimizes the tournament if Team USA does poorly each time, as it has pre-2017.

I'll be sad when Hawk goes, but his eyesight in particular has gotten poor. I'm a big Hawk fan, but when he clearly can't see things it makes me feel bad for him and I don't really want to feel bad for him while I'm watching a baseball game. I do worry that I'll never get to have a broadcaster who gets excited when the Sox do well again. I don't live around Sox fans so it's nice to have a fellow Sox partisan in the booth. Regardless of the PBP guy, I can't stand Steve. I know he's Mr. Straight-Laced, Prestigious Color Guy, but his arrogance rubs me the wrong way.

I'm afraid the buyer would move the team.

My feeling has always been that when you rush a player with a strikeout problem, you make it very unlikely he ever manages to be something other than a very high strikeout player. Some do manage, but for the most part only the special ones.

My AT in college always said MRI just stood for "More Radiographic Income." Said a lot of common injuries (e.g., torn ACL) are accurately diagnosed manually.

Baseball has the best overtime of any popular sport since it always renders a winner and the gameplay is unchanged. Why ruin it? I'm happy for them to shorten minor league games, but if it is indeed seen as a test for a future MLB rule then I say it's a solution in search of a problem.

Never made sense to me to get mad at a teammate for playing badly. Low effort? Sure, get mad. Making preventable (mental) mistakes? Definitely, let him have it. The guy sucks? That's not his fault.

Honestly I've never gotten the impression that there's a bunch of pressure on the prospect pundits to be accurate. I think that would be especially true at ESPN, whose reputation is not at all at stake. Part of it is that I don't think anybody is really going back and checking all that often, not to mention that there aren't necessarily clear criteria for retroactively grading someone's prospect rankings.

Is the form on the throw really that different from an outfielder selling out on a throw to home plate?

I will say just from a pure fan perspective, that I liked having Eaton on the team. I thought he was dumb and wrong about the LaRoche stuff and I thought he was dumb and wrong about a thing or two he said on Twitter, but he was a guy who engaged with fans a lot and was very fun to watch play. With that said, if he was quietly hurting the team then I'm glad we unloaded him at such a high value...but there are going to be some painful games to watch next year, not that he alone could have prevented that.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 20, 2017 -> 11:36 AM) I don't know how someone could have a 10% state and local tax rate living in Chicago unless you don't ever have to buy anything. It's at least 10% every time you open your wallet. I don't know about Chicago, but most municipalities have a much lower or sometimes non-existent sales tax on foods. The poor will tend to spend more of their money on those things.

A lot of cities that are Chicago's size tax incomes. Found this somewhat outdated article interesting: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/american-cit...-182112538.html The average effective state+local tax rate for Chicagoans making $25k is 15.6% while it is about 10% for people making $150k, which includes the average property taxes paid by someone at that income level. The numbers for both are likely to be a little lower now since those numbers are from the 5% state tax year.

I think more of this trend could be age-related. We've seen over the past 10 years a trend towards fewer and fewer players being productive in their 30s, especially after 33 or so. Some people look at the trends and say the younger players are better than they used to be, but I suspect just as or more important is the implementation of steroid testing.

I can see the Yanks trading for Quintana, but I don't feel like they are a perfect match. I know they're up against the luxury tax and all that, but it just doesn't seem like their style to pay so handsomely for a player whose value is sky high in large part due to his contract.

I think a return of Glasnow, Keller, Newman, and Diaz is not something that you would want to shut the door on. I suspect that is something that Pirates are not yet comfortable with, actually.

I was always on the Sanchez > Johnson train. Who knew Sanchez could play this badly but still be a more useful player than Johnson

I think Newman is a nice prospect and would be great as a third piece, not ungodly bad as a second piece but puts pressure on both the first and third pieces to be good. I am concerned about the power but he did 5 HR in 101 games last year across two levels, already above SS2K5's nightmare scenario 3-5 HR/year rate. The ISO is at the absolute lowest acceptable level so far, but it's worth keeping in mind his strengths as well. He batted over .300 and walked more than he struck out. Sure he may not be likely to win any MVP awards but you can see he has a set of tools that make him unlikely to be bad, too. An .800-type OPS is fully within the realm of possibility and that would be excellent for a middle infielder, and good anywhere else. I'm unsure what to think of his D from what I read about him and the lack of speed is interesting in that as SS2K5 says, we're not talking about a toolsy player. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if we saw the power part of his game develop a little bit if we/the Pirates let him stay at AA this year. It can be hard to increase your power production when you get promoted every 50 games.

FWIW, from the little I know of Willy Garcia I don't see any good reason we chose him over Jason Coats. Garcia isn't super young, seems to be lacking in relevant tools, and hasn't shown a hint of production for any sustained runs at any level. For comparison, Leury Garcia is 18 months older, also has a plus arm but also plus speed and middle-of-the-field defense, and has vastly outhit Willy Garcia at the same levels. Maybe the Sox see something in him that they see as a doable change, but to me if I had to bet on which player would be putting up positive WAR seasons in the future I'd have my money on Coats.

For those who aren't familiar, Cabrera has had some off the field issues: March 2012 — Arrested for domestic violence against his wife. She said at the time that he hit her in the face and had slammed her head against a wall. He said that she had been hitting him and throwing glass kitchenware at him, causing him to act in his own defense (I don't think he conceded the head-slamming or striking her face). He said that scratches on his hand were from her lashing out at him. I did not see anything about physical harm to the wife. June 2012 — Cabrera shows up in court after rejecting plea deals, wanting to clear his name. Prosecution drops the charges without explanation. February 2013 — Biogenesis docs are leaked, Everth Cabrera's name is included among the clients. August 2013 — Cabrera receives 50-game suspension due to Biogenesis leaks, pretty much owns up to it all in tearful press conference. September 2014 — Cabrera is arrested for DUI (marijuana) while on the DL. Charges were ultimately not brought for DUI, but for resisting arrest and marijuana possession. September 2015 —After a miserable year in MLB (Orioles) and AAA (Giants), Cabrera is not called up to SF when rosters expanded. He was released after telling the AAA squad he was uninterested in playing for them in their last handful of games, expressing uncertainty about what the purpose of playing was if he wasn't getting called up to the big leagues. 2016 — ???, reports that he was playing in his native Nicaragua.

I honestly don't think Coats is definitively no good, but I don't think there's much ceiling there so I don't begrudge the Sox for risking him.

"tread"

Also possible that Gammons is full of s*** with the Astros proposals

I'm looking forward to seeing Tilson play. I really like him as the return for a Zach Duke. If we disregard the injuries which are becoming something of a pattern for him, he's relatively low risk in that there's little doubt that you have a reserve MLBer on your hands who can run and field. One of the reasons I see some upside is because he (more or less) never repeated a minor league level. Sometimes you don't really get to know what a player can be until you see him get settled in at a level. Maybe he's a guy who tops out during his first season at a new level and the roughly average-for-level production he has posted at every stop is all he can do at any level. But we just don't know. Since he clearly has a good hit tool and some ability to take walks, all he needs to develop into a productive hitter is just a smidgen of power. I think his physical tools dictate that he's not going to surprise us with an Eaton-esque power surge, but in the minors he's been more like Chris Getz in terms of extra base hitting. He only has to find the gaps here and there to start brushing up to an .800 type of OPS. Of course, if you told me the guy is going to be a decent CF with baserunning value and will carry a .700-.750 OPS, that's a nice player, too. But as we all know, players who were consistent in the minors don't always make the MLB leap as smoothly. His injuries are also a problem and might cause us to never really know what he could have been. Normally, Tilson isn't the kind of guy you're going to try and set aside a MLB position to get a look at, but the Sox are in a spot where he's the best option so we'll get to know him.