Kalapse

QUOTE (whitesoxfan99 @ Dec 21, 2010 -> 07:20 PM) I got to see Little Fockers for free, for the love of god, do not see that movie. I figured it would be brutal but holy crap the early returns have it on pace for a Razzie nom. It's at 9% on Rotten Tomatoes right now.

Favre's active and starting.

It'd be fine if they were forced to play on horrible field conditions on the opponents regular, home, NFL field but that's not the case here. They're putting the players at unnecessary risk playing a on field that's not meant to be played on at this time of year because they're so gun-ho about keeping the game in Minnesota rather than moving it to one of the readily available domes in the relative area. It's all just very silly.

$108.55M

QUOTE (JorgeFabregas @ Dec 18, 2010 -> 11:07 PM) How many tied games are closers supposed to leave with the lead with? Good call, worded that wrong. He entered 5 tied games and allowed the go ahead run in 3 of those. I can't think of a good way to word that.

QUOTE (JoeCoolMan24 @ Dec 17, 2010 -> 07:12 PM) Actually he really wasn't. Lot of bad luck, and most of his damage came in low-mid leverage situations. He was pretty nails in the clutch. In what world is a .306/.364/.449/.813 opponent's line "nails"? On top of the blown saves and outing in Minnesota where he handed a blown save to Santos he also entered 5 tied games and allowed the go ahead run to score 3 times.

QUOTE (Melissa1334 @ Dec 15, 2010 -> 09:51 PM) (he did do the towel drill too though) anyways, i dont like wood at the 2/12 that he wants, hes just now reliable at all. i realize u can say that about any reliever but i rather stay away, esp. since he doesnt want to be here. But if he does sign here then isn't that a moot point? He's not going to sign here if he doesn't want to play for the team, we're not the only organization interested in him.

If I had to guess I'd say it's something like $3.5M, $4.5M, $5M. Maybe 3-5-5. If it is $3.5M then we're at $108.05M for 2011 with 3 arb eligible players on top of that.

QUOTE (TomPickle @ Dec 15, 2010 -> 09:28 PM) Almost all relievers (non-closers anyway) are 1 inning set-up guys, what more do you want? And the relievers who consistently pitch multiple innings are typically pretty bad.

QUOTE (pittshoganerkoff @ Dec 15, 2010 -> 08:50 PM) I don't know. MLBTR is saying the offer is in addition to the Crain deal. I guess we'll have to wait and see. If it's in addition, a salary dump trade has to be coming soon. That's speculation on their part, all anyone has to go on is some tiny blurb from Dave Kaplan posted on the Trib website almost 2 hours ago.

QUOTE (Ranger @ Dec 15, 2010 -> 08:45 PM) You should be glad they're trying to address a need. You can't criticize a GM for doing everything they can to try and get some certainty (even if it fails). It may work, it may not, but effort is all you can ask for. Yeah, that's exactly what I said at the end. Good on Kenny for trying to improve the team, hopefully it works out. I'm just not going to get my hopes up since I know that these types of deals rarely work out, at least in recent years. You really don't know what you're going to get from a middle reliever from year to year, though it's definitely nice when they have good stuff like Crain.

QUOTE (SoxFan1 @ Dec 15, 2010 -> 08:27 PM) Didn't see this anywhere else but apparently the Rays are close to signing Bobby Jenks. That makes sense. Anytime his name was floated on the trade market it was typically connected to the Rays.

Eh, it's really hard to get excited about the signing of a middle reliever especially when we gave him 3 years, these contracts have like a 90% failure rate. But hey, at least we're trying. Gotta love that.

QUOTE (Pale Sox @ Dec 13, 2010 -> 11:37 PM) ? What two trades? It was all one deal. Anyways, it's all semantics. It really is semantics. d'Arnaud, Drabek and Taylor for Halladay and Lee for Aumont, Ramirez and Gillies In reality they're 2 separate trades taking place at the same time, there's no crossover with the prospects, the Phillies traded their own prospects for Halladay and the Mariners traded their own prospects for Lee. Aside from finances the trading of Lee did not facilitate the trade for Halladay.

QUOTE (Pale Sox @ Dec 13, 2010 -> 11:31 PM) Yeah, I wasn't saying it was a loss. I was just saying they didn't really get 3 prospects in return in the big scheme of the trade. You have to look at those two trades as separate entities.

QUOTE (Pale Sox @ Dec 13, 2010 -> 11:13 PM) They got 3 prospects in return, but they also gave up prospects. D'Arnould, Taylor, and Kyle Drabek (who, when combined, are much better than what they received). And in return for those 3 got the 2010 Cy Young award winner who is under contract through 2013. Now they have both of those starting pitchers and 3 prospects to show for it.

The Phillies dumping Lee a year ago doesn't look too bad right now (regardless of what you think of the talent): lose Lee for a year and get three prospects in return.

QUOTE (Leonard Zelig @ Dec 12, 2010 -> 06:58 PM) I don't think the 2012 option was never a team option, it was a player option and it has passed. I do believe this to be the case.

QUOTE (Kenny Hates Prospects @ Dec 10, 2010 -> 06:13 PM) Man, looking at that list is scary. I forgot about some of those. That Kobayashi deal was obscenely bad. You could actually go back quite a bit further also, when the Mets gave all that money to Schoenweis and Bradford and the O's gave out all that money to Jamie Walker the mediocre lefty specialist and whats-his-name, who pitched like a year in his whole contract, Baez. s***, just think about the best relievers we've had here in recent years. We've ended up hating just about all of them. Thornton is the one notable exception aside from guys on 1-year deals. Looking at the top non-closer relievers in baseball in terms of xFIP over the past 3 seasons, we're crazy lucky because Thornton is far and away the best, most consistent and durable: Thornton - 3 seasons with a sub 2.80 xFIP, at least 60 IP in each season, lowest xFIP of any reliever (including closers) since 2008 Kuo - 1 season under 3.00, only 30 IP in '09 due to injury Mike Adams - Padre (f***ing Padre relievers), 1 season with a sub 3.00 xFIP, 37 IP in '09 due to shoulder surgery Belisle - 1 season with a sub 3.00 xFIP, 2 seasons with a 4.00+ xFIP, only 60 total IP in '08/'09 Madson - 1 sub 3.00 xFIP season Carlos Villanueva - 2 sub 4.00 xFIP seasons, 3.39 low, 15 games started in '08/'09 Wuertz - 1 sub 3.00 xFIP seasons, 2 seasons at 4.00+, only 39.2 IP last season due to injury Bard - 2 sub 4.00 xFIP seasons, 3.25 low, didn't pitch in 2008 Downs - 3 sub 4.00 xFIP seasons, 3.18 low, spent time on the 15 day DL 3 times in the past 3 seasons League - 3 sub 4.00 xFIP seasons, 3.26 low, 3.95 high, spent half of 2008 season in the minors

QUOTE (knightni @ Dec 10, 2010 -> 05:49 PM) I agree with you. Downs is worth 5 mil for 2011. Whether he's worth 5 mil in 2012 and 2013 is the main problem with expensive relievers. You don't even know that; out of the 18 pitchers above only 4 of them were any damn good in the first year of their deal (Uehara, Affelfdt, Linebrink, Dotel).

QUOTE (knightni @ Dec 10, 2010 -> 05:27 PM) $5 mil isn't a lot for a quality reliever if he stays quality through the length of the deal. That's the main issue; reliever turnover due to regression. Your highest paid relievers from the '08/'09 offseason: Francisco Rodriguez 3/$37 Kerry Wood 2/$20.5 Brian Fuentes 2/$17.5 Damaso Marte 3/$12 Koji Uehara 2/$10 Kyle Farnsworth 2/$9.25 Jeremy Affeldt 2/$8 Juan Cruz 2/$6M Now how many of these guys have produced well enough over the past 2 seasons to justify the contract? Uehara? That's really all I got. How about the season before that? Francisco Cordero 4/$46 Scott Linebrink 4/$19 David Riske 3/$13 Octavio Dotel 2/$11 Eric Gagne 1/$10 Ron Mahay 2/$8 Troy Percival 2/$8 Luis Vizcaino 2/$7.5 Keith Foulke 1/$7 Masa Kobayashi 2/$6.5 Cordero? Maybe? Probably not. I'd say Dotel but others would probably disagree. That's the top 18 free agent relievers over 2 seasons and maybe 1-3 of them have panned out and that may be pushing it.

QUOTE (Kenny Hates Prospects @ Dec 10, 2010 -> 05:21 PM) Tony Pena was a really good young reliever. He looked so nasty when the DBacks were in the playoffs, almost certainly the closer of that team for the next several years. Now he's our long man. Really good relievers aren't necessarily really good. I hop Kenny doesn't do that. That's my problem with something like this, I have a huge problem with trading good major league position players and starters or very good prospects for relief pitchers. I'm just not so sure there's more than a handful of relievers who are good from year to year and even they can fall off at any time. You could pick who you believe to be the 10 best middle relievers/setup men in the game and I'd be willing to bet that at least half of those guys will be ineffective in 2011.

Over 16,000 outfield innings for Andruw Jones, with much of them played while overweight. The guy's body is so banged up and rundown you absolutely can not count on him to give you anything close to a full season. There's just way too much wear on those tires.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Dec 9, 2010 -> 03:36 PM) Grinder Rules was fantastic. I'm surprised Boyer went with this, or at worst I'm surprised even in their haste he allowed something that could have been designed by someone with 1 class worth of Photoshop 101 to touch the sky as a billboard. Yeah, it's pretty brutal. Perhaps they're saving money to go towards payroll but hiring a child to do all signage work for them, not to mention a bizarre choice for the featured players. For anyone that can't see the link here's the billboard:

QUOTE (chw42 @ Dec 9, 2010 -> 02:47 PM) That's probably due to his bad 2010 season. Well, we did supposedly dangle him for Adrian Gonzalez.