biggentleben

The Gophers got the type of win a Jerry Kill team should get, controlling the lines of scrimmage, running the ball down the opponents throat, and taking advantage of opposition turnovers while limiting their own. Feels very good to have the Little Brown Jug after a visit to the big house!

While Moore was criticized, this was something I read right after the trade that lauded him. Would you rather have: Zack Greinke, Wil Myers, Yuniesky Betancourt, Jake Odorizzi, Mike Montgomery, and Patrick Leonard or James Shields, Wade Davis, Alcides Escobar, and Lorenzo Cain I remember many people ripping the Royals right away, and while I didn't think it was a win for them, I didn''t think it a poor deal either.

ARod hasn't seen a clean and jerk in the weight room since his 14th positive test.

Shields has been exactly what they needed multiple times to stop a losing streak, which is exactly what an ace should be. Davis has been arguably the most dominant reliever of the second half and has been untouchable all season. Even if overpaid as a reliever, this is the time of year where a guy like Davis in your bullpen is invaluable.

Hart's taking over, but only to mentor a younger guy within the organization, a la his relationship with Jon Daniels in Texas. Wren's drafts were criticized once highly-regarded minor league director Roy Clark left the organization. There's a lot of friction within the front office, and Wren was apparently the sand in the gears in that organization. I seriously think they need to also make a change in manager as well, but right now, it sounds like his job is safe.

Cleveland's pitching coach is very, very highly thought of within baseball. The quote shared on Baseball Prospectus from someone inside baseball was that he's second to Ray Searage in pitching coaches in the entire game right now.

Not to be a jerk, but it's Nick Swisher, unless I'm missing some anti-Swisher meme.

Don't look now, but tomorrow's starter, TJ House might be their biggest find of them all this season!

Speaking of scouting - Dollar Sign on the Muscle is another great read.

It's on my list. I heard a one-chapter excerpt, and I absolutely had to get the book!

It spins religion and baseball, but "Sermon on the Mound" by Michael O'Conner is quite good. I also just read an old classic and will suggest it and another old classic for any baseball fan. The one I recently read was "The Boys of Summer" by Roger Kahn, and the other classic is Jim Bouton's "Ball Four", which is an absolute must-read in the life of any baseball fan. My last suggestion is a fictional baseball book - "Long Gone" by Paul Hemphill

They have to share all revenues across the league, though, so the only real local money you get is in ticket sales. That is the last review I've seen roughly the time of the NFL lockout, though, so the money could be changed some now. Baseball was far and above the highest percentage take away for the owners.

Never once is this claimed as the end-all, be-all way to value contracts, but it's one that we can measure at this point. Carlton and Baylor are short term assets that wouldn't even enter into this conversation. This was based off a discussion of whether or not long-term, high-dollar contracts ever earn their value, and in fact, a number of them do, but free agency is typically the toughest place to make that work.

Oh, the owners in baseball make out better than any other sport. It's part of why it's so hard to get into ownership. Every sale has to be approved by the owners, and no owner wants a new guy in who wants a more even split of money. Especially with the limited revenue sharing, what your team makes is yours more than it is in any other sport's ownership. The valuation numbers I'm using are based on what 1 WAR of player costs in the free agent market in that particular season. So if a 1 WAR reliever gets $12M and a 1 WAR bench player gets $1M, then the value of 1 WAR that offseason is $6.5M/WAR. It's not a perfect way to look at it, but it's a good idea of market value for a player's skillset. If every player was put on a one-year deal with no reserves to his current club every single year, that's supposed to be the contract he would earn due to his production. Part of the fault of the system is that it's a look-back, not look-forward system, so it can't tell you that based on some formula 1 WAR in 2017 will be worth $7M, in 2020 it will be worth $8M, and in 2023 it will be worth $9M.

I do think it interesting on an overall view (I did something similar with hitters a couple seasons back when the Braves were considering which CF to sign) that very few players actually ever earn the amount of value that they produced for their team. Albert Pujols, for instance, is considered dramatically overpaid in his current deal, yet he's given his teams just short of $340M in value, and by the end of his current contract will have been paid $344M total, so if he produces 1 more WAR in the rest of his career, his career value will be more than what he got paid. Situations like Zambrano are very rare. Even Santana outperformed his career earnings in spite of the bad contracts. Guys like Zito and Hampton underperformed, but they're often held up as bad examples for a reason. Kevin Brown, despite only earning 65% of his big contract, well exceeded his overall career earnings. Basically, even though they may not earn the value of their big deals, players are screwed over by the MLB pay system.

I only included total value on those guys who re-signed or signed an extension with the team they're on for the reason of your first point. I only wanted to count the value that the team got, so CC's totals are in parenthesis, but I was more concerned with the overall value he's given the Yankees.

Not to distract from the in depth thread on the Twins forum, but a point raised there has piqued my research interest. Many seem to say that long-term pitching contracts cannot produce any value for the team due to the inevitable decline. I decided I'd use those pitchers who had "earned" a $90M+ overall contract or a shorter term contract with $20M+ AAV. The lists: $90M total contract club - 15 members (don't count CC twice) Clayton Kershaw $215M 7 years, 2014-2020 Justin Verlander $180M 7 years, 2013-2019 Felix Hernandez $175M 7 years, 2013-2019 CC Sabathia $161M 7 years, 2009-2015 Masahiro Tanaka $155M 7 years, 2014-2020 Zack Greinke $147M 6 years, 2013-2018 Cole Hamels $144M 6 years, 2013-2018 Johan Santana $137.5M 6 years, 2008-2013 Matt Cain $127.5M 6 years, 2012-2017 Barry Zito $126M 7 years, 2007-2013 CC Sabathia $122M 5 years, 2012-2016 Mike Hampton $121M 8 years, 2001-2008 Cliff Lee $120M 5 years, 2011-2015 Kevin Brown $105M 7 years, 1999-2005 Adam Wainwright $97.5M 5 years, 2014-2018 Carlos Zambrano $91.5M 5 years, 2008-2012 $20M annual contract club (excluding those who are in the first club) - 3 member, one twice Roger Clemens $28M 2007 Roger Clemens $22M 2006 Tim Lincecum $40.5M 2012-2013 Roy Halladay $60M 2011-2013 So, I'll break them down a little bit. For a guy resigning with his original club when he hits free agency (or as an extension to avoid some arbitration years), there is very good value for the club (even Zambrano, which thoroughly surprised me). As an example of this, Clayton Kershaw will earn $215M starting this year and going into a current 6th grader's senior year of high school. However, including this year's significantly discounted first year of the contract, Kershaw has earned $23,844,000 in his career, and according to Fangraphs, he has delivered $166.4M of value, meaning if he pitches for the Dodgers the entire contract, they'll have paid him roughly $240M total for 13 years of play for their team. They've already earned $166.4M of that money, so Clayton really needs to produce roughly 14 WAR over the rest of the contract to earn the difference, and he's already had a 6.7 WAR season this year on the heels of a 6.6 WAR season last year, so barring injury, the Dodgers will likely make out very well in Kershaw's career. The short term deals pretty much all went belly up. Clemens earned $50M in 2006-2007 and produced $18.9M in value. Lincecum returned $10.7M in value on the Giants' $40.5M investment, though one could use my Kershaw logic to say they were already ahead, paying $24.55M for $110.6M in value produced. Halladay by far came closest to producing value in his short-term, high-money deal, earning $42.8M while being paid $60M. He was coming off a season after the Phillies traded for him where he gave them $24.4M in value for $15.75M in salary, meaning Philly paid $75.75M for Halladay's time with the team and got $67.2M in value, which isn't horrible considering he retired at the end of that contract. The third category is the straight free agent pitchers. These have had varying values. The guys in this category are CC Sabathia's first contract, Greinke, Tanaka, Zito, Hampton, Lee, and Brown. Sabathia currently has produced $112M in value since signing that contract and been paid $132.9M to do it. Not a great value, but certainly not horrific. Greinke has produced $33.5M while being paid $45M since signing his deal. Tanaka produced $16.8M in his injury-shortened season while being paid $22M. Zito was the big flop everyone refers to, producing $24.1M in value, meaning the Giants lost over $100M on the deal in salary paid vs. production. Lee has been one of the better signings, costing the Phillies $82.5M while providing $85.5M in value (and he was signed going into his age 32 season). Hampton and Brown started their contracts before FanGraphs valuation formulas begin, so they are both estimations. Hampton produced an estimated $33.7M in value for his $121M, though a big part of the lost value for Hampton, especially once he ended up in Atlanta rather than Colorado, was the games he missed, only starting 147 games in the 8 years of his contract, missing 2006 and 2007 completely, and only pitching 200 innings once in the entire deal. A bit of trivia on Hampton: he was one of two pitchers not named Greg Maddux to win a Gold Glove from 1990-2009, and all three have Braves ties (you can easily Google the answer, but try guessing first). Kevin Brown was the originator of the $100M pitching contract, and his is still seen as one of the better investments, and the values are hard to measure, but he earned an estimated $67M of value for his $105M cost. What did we learn? Honestly, not as much as you'd like. The free agent pitchers still under contract have earned 88% of their paid value so far in the contracts. Zito earned 19% of his contract, and Hampton earned 28% of his contract while Brown earned 64% of his deal. It is of interest to note that between Hampton and Zito's deals, there was a 6 year hiatus in big deals like this for all pitchers, and in general, the deals signed since Zito's have been fairly successful (or a reward for value already produced in an extension). Here's a quick list on those extensions - total value provided with team, total salary earned thus far, and total salary investment from the team by the end of the current contract: Kershaw - $166.4M value, $23.84M earned after 2014, $240M committed Verlander - $208.8M value, $86.5M earned after 2014, $226.5M committed Hernandez - $210M value, $85.2M earned after 2014, $217.5M committed Hamels - $152.5M value, $78.4M earned after 2014, $180.4M committed Santana - $54.3M value for Mets, $137.5M earned from Mets (career totals of $170.9M value and ~$161.5M earned) Cain - $120.4M value, $71.7M earned after 2014, $144.2M committed Sabathia - $112M value to Yankees, $132.9M earned after 2014 from Yankees, $185.7 committed overall by Yankees (career totals of $243.4M value, $169.4M earned, and $222.4M committed) Wainwright - $147.1M value, $56.2M earned after 2014, $134.2M committed Zambrano - $111M career value, $114M career earnings TL;DR, I know. Sorry. This was just freaking interesting as I dug into it more and more!

I swear we've had this posted here at some point, but I couldn't tell you when. It's been making the rounds since at least the offseason, and it's glorious!

August - .333/.405/.427, .391 BABIP, 11 SB, 9/11 BB/K September - .190/.261/.190, .267 BABIP, 1 SB, 2/6 BB/K

On the national front, the state of Virginia hosted a couple of upsets with Virginia beating Louisville at home and Virginia Tech getting beaten by East Carolina at home.

Iowa State does go into Kinnick and upsets Iowa 20-17. West Virginia beats Maryland 40-37, Bowling Green takes down Indiana 45-42, and Illinois is getting pounded by Washington. Michigan beat Miami of Ohio and Ohio State trounced Kent State. As I was worried, a tough day in the B1G.

Not a pretty game for the Gophers, but they didn't break when they found themselves down 24-0 at half. I had this one marked as the non-conference loss on first glance at the schedule, so I'm not horribly surprised by the result.

The Effectively Wild podcast on Friday interviewed 2014 St. Paul Saints pitcher and Wayzata grad Andy Johnson. It was a great interview about life in Indy ball, and Johnson was incredibly forthright and honest about his own abilities and those of guys he faced. Give it a listen here.

Ohio State taking out their frustrations from their first couple weeks on a weakened Kent State team. Yowza!

I wouldn't touch Volquez with a 10-foot pole. He has been doing well this season on smoke and mirrors, but looking at his track record, he's not done well multiple times in pitching ballparks. I'd stay away, and certainly stay away for any multi-year deal.