3E8

How bout Vernon Wells?

It probably has to end somewhere. In 5 years we will have basically traded Carlos Lee for our entire team + spects.

QUOTE(Jenks Heat @ Dec 14, 2005 -> 12:38 PM) Garland was more major league ready when he came up then McCarthy is now and how many people tried to run him out of town. When Garland came up he was younger, had less experience, and stats not as impressive as McCarthy's. How was he more major league ready?

QUOTE(nitetrain8601 @ Dec 14, 2005 -> 12:18 PM) But trackrecords have proven that if you stick him in the pen for a year, they won't suck when they do start. It doesn't hinder their development. Nothing too bad comes out of it. There's no point in rushing McCarthy out there to take on a full season if we don't need him to, which right now is the case. That's my point. Alright, I can respect the point you are conveying. It's just not how I would like to see things done but that doesn't really matter. I guess another starter could still get moved before next year in which case I will have argued for nothing.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Dec 14, 2005 -> 12:06 PM) Roger Clemens - Pedro Martinez. He was using Martinez as an example that you don't mess up a guy by putting him in the pen. No one claimed you mess up a guy by putting him in the rotation, so throwing Clemens name out there is pointless. I'm not trying to prove putting a guy straight into the rotation doesn't mess him up. I'm trying to prove it's a path many young pitchers take on their way to success and I'm strongly against keeping McCarthy out of his future role for an entire season.

QUOTE(nitetrain8601 @ Dec 14, 2005 -> 12:04 PM) Curt Schilling. Mike Mussina. Seriously, which team has been the best at developing young arms the past few years? Oakland. Look how many starts from the bullpen that Mulder, Zito, Harden, and Blanton have logged.

QUOTE(nitetrain8601 @ Dec 14, 2005 -> 11:52 AM) Include the playoffs. Also, stick McCarthy in AAA if you don't want to "mess" with him. You want a better example, look at Pedro Martinez. His rookie year he made two starts and 63 appearences out of the bullpen. You act as if moving a rookie to the bullpen is going to jack him as a starter forever. I don't think it will jack him forever. Just doesn't make sense to halt the development process for a whole year just because we're running low on arms in the pen and a starter might get injured at some point. He shouldn't have to be working long relief one month then on a whim be a starter and go back and forth. For every all-star stating pitcher you show me that made appearances out of the bullpen, I will give you someone who didn't. Roger Clemens to match your Pedro Martinez.

QUOTE(nitetrain8601 @ Dec 14, 2005 -> 11:43 AM) Both McCarthy and Buehrle are the same. They're not power pitchers so you don't have to worry about endurance as much as you would for a guy who throws a 99mph heater and a hard slider. McCarthy is like a righthanded Buehrle in terms of type of stuff. Many people thought Haren's arm shouldn't have been relegated to the bullpen and that worked out well for the Cards, A's and Haren. I don't think you can really call them the same. McCarthy uses a 4-seamer much more often than Buehrle and it probably averages about 4 more mph than Buehrle's. As a starting pitcher McCarthy puts more strain on his arm.

QUOTE(nitetrain8601 @ Dec 14, 2005 -> 11:37 AM) Also look at the formula St. Louis had with Danny Haren. It looks like that helped out in Oakland. Haren was a starter every game he appeared in for his rookie year with the Cardinals. Next season he made 9 appearances from the bullpen. Are you telling me it was those 9 games he worked out of the bullpen in St. Louis that solidified him as a starting pitcher one year later? Give me a break. Things worked out for Haren because he is a starting pitcher and was given a full season to acclimate himself to the role.

QUOTE(nitetrain8601 @ Dec 14, 2005 -> 11:25 AM) And he only has 1 that he throws great. His fastball is too straight and there's not enough power behind it. His changeup stinks, but it's a way to keep hitters off-balance. He'll work nicely the first time he faces teams, but the 2nd time around, it'll be alot harder. Now if he were to develop a cutter or a slider, then he would be much better off. Let's not forget the games he was rocked or the games in which he should've gotten rocked(Detroit last year) Pitchers that log over 500 K's and maintain a K:BB ratio over 5 in the minors are something special. They don't do it on one great pitch, I can guarantee you that. You do not relegate an arm like McCarthy's to the bullpen. We all know Buehrle started out of the pen and that's all well and good, but it's easier to shorten and then re-lengthen an arm like Buehrle's than it is McCarthy's because of the type of pitchers they each are.

QUOTE(nitetrain8601 @ Dec 14, 2005 -> 02:46 AM) Kenny Williams is a smart man who knows what he's doing. I don't but this whole, "McCarthy doesn't deserve this" jargin. McCarthy in the pen would be excellent for us because he would still get his time in. You act like we've never thrown someone in the bullpen and let them start as well. Look at Buehrle. He was a bullpen arm for us in 2000 and started in 2001. I like my pitching staff to be deep. Without McCarthy we have no insurance just in case 1 memeber of the staff goes down. That's kind of the path Garland entered on. He started about a dozen games the first year, worked a couple games out of the pen. Second season he worked more out of the pen than he did start games. I think if the young pitcher is meant to be a starter, don't retard development for his future in that role by sticking him in the pen without regular starts. Maybe a commitment to Garland's future years ago would've let us have one more year of the 'new' Jon.

QUOTE(SSH2005 @ Dec 14, 2005 -> 02:28 AM) Well, we subtract El Duque's $4.5 million for 2006 and add Vazquez's $11.5 million in 2006 and $12.5 million in 2007. So that's $7 million added to our payroll in 2006 and $12.5 million added to our payroll in 2007. I still hope the Diamondbacks are sending us the Yankees $3 million per season for Vazquez's contract. That would make Vazquez's contract a little easier to stomach. Haven't seen anything stating we will be getting cash. With Vazquez, I have us just under $80 million with more than $15 million in deals left to go (if Garland stays). EDIT: I should say I included buyouts in there. Drop $4 million if you don't count them.

I don't really like BMac using a year of service time in the bullpen. Especially after what he showed at the tail end of last year.

QUOTE(sircaffey @ Dec 14, 2005 -> 02:10 AM) Work on a forkball??? GYROBALL

Game Theory is another easy Econ class if you have any background in Calculus. Not too boring either.

QUOTE(AddisonStSox @ Dec 13, 2005 -> 02:46 PM) One humble request: Can someone please post the groundball-flyball ratios for both Garland and Vazquez. That is something that needs a serious looking-at. Garland has consistently put up a G/F favorable for a pitcher in the Cell. His career average is between 1.3 and 1.4 I think. Vazquez is hard to figure out. He's had a G/F ratio as high as 1.51, and one as low as 0.83. So he's thrown as high as 60% ground balls in a season, but gone down to 45% ground balls as well. I haven't followed him nearly enough to know how his pitch selction tendancies have changed over the years, if at all. That's the only obvious reason I see as why there would be such a discrepancy. It should also be noted that Vazquez had one of the highest BABIP for all pitchers last year, which could suggest he was a tad "unlucky".

Raising the terms to a power of 1.83 is more accurate I've seen.

I'd really like to know the specifics of the 3-year deal Garland turned down to put this into a better perspective.

My buddy's dad bought old seats from Soldier Field and bolted them to his deck outside. It's a nice touch.

QUOTE(Rex Kickass @ Dec 12, 2005 -> 09:27 AM) Oh yeah, by the way, anti-semites hate Jews and Arabs equally. Because they are both semites. I thought the word anti-Semetic was reserved for someone hostile towards Jews only? Even though a Semite in definition could be somebody from a different number of affiliations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Semite

What I'm looking forward to most are people quoting the shows ad nauseam. That never gets old.

TUES: Fiber Optics THURS: Money & Banking, Industrial Economics (back-to-back) FRI: Semiconductor Devices It will be a long week.

QUOTE(3E8 @ Dec 11, 2005 -> 03:51 PM) GO JAGS! YESSSSSSSSS. Only down 8 with all timeouts...

QUOTE(WilliamTell @ Dec 11, 2005 -> 03:36 PM) Jacksonville is officially has no chance of winning now. We're getting switched to the Browns and the Bengals. Go Browns! GO JAGS!

BurnWorld