Jham

Why are people piling on Boyer? Boyer came from out of baseball to throw really well at times, poorly in others, but he was am important piece when not over used. His best was so far superior to Tonkin or pressley's last season, yet they are the ones with upside? I'd say they likely have Boyer upside. Signing boyer or kintzler costs nothing. Getting an arm at the deadline when your aaaa guys fail costs prospects and games. Be mad at Tonkin for failing 3 years straight. Be mad at pressley for wasting his hall pass and never developing a 2nd pitch despite a year in the pen to practice. Don't blame management or Boyer for almost making the playoffs or exceeding expectations.

I don't remember Quentin being that good in his prime. I thought of his as a bat first possible PED guy whose body would break down and whose game would fall off as soon as his bat speed dropped a half a mm. I'm much more concerned with Sano living up to huge expectations while shifting positions.

Everyone keeps citing his defense. If we've learned anything about defensive metrics, it's that a season's worth of stats isn't a big enough sample size. Does anyone remember seeing him try to go back on fly balls? It was horrible. Part of this could be made up for by playing deeper and just giving up more singles and first to thirds. Or moving to right and moving Sano to left. I like Rosario a lot. His game is almost exactly the same as another former fave, Jacque Jones. Jones was praised for D coming up, leading off and playing center field. But he was not a premium defensive player. Neither is Rosario. I've stated before, his maximum value is at 2nd base. His max value to the team may well be as trade bait. His quick wrists would play very well in the AL East for example. That said, I like watching him play for the Twins.

Meyer supposedly has a snappy slider. It didn't look better than average when he was up last year. He supposedly has a 98 mph fastball. 94 when he came up. He used to be all K's and BB's. Now they crush him all over the field. I wonder if his stuff is the same after the shoulder problems. With the stuff he has now, his best chance is to dial it down, refine the command, work on the change up, and stay in the rotation. If he doesn't have it by the end of the season. Start working on knuckleball.

The younger options aren't cheaper than Nolasco. They're more expensive. Obviously, you have to pay Nolasco either way. Personally, I'm hoping Nolasco has a bounce back year the way Pelfrey did last year. That would give the team a whole lot of options.

I think dozier's love of the slide into pop up throw significantly limits his range compared to running through the ball or diving. However he's more on balance for his throws so i dunno what the net is.

I agree with much of the prediction. Except i don't think we would necessarily see more free agents by moving the time or pay scale for team control because the analysis for the same would also slide accordingly. Players still risk injury, owners risk losing players or having to pay more. Buying out arb years may still make sense for both sides provided the dollars are greater and offsers are sooner. Poker strategy doesn't change just because the ante goes up. Never the less, these changes still favor the player more often than not

The only real difference between Milone and Buehrle is a HR every 5 games, a few more K's and BB's, and less GB. The GB rate must be offset by the K's since the FIPs and xFIPs are basically the same. Buehrle also dominated lefties from what I remember. I feel Milone is undervalued in the market due to his lack of velo and lack of upside. But being able to just plug someone in for a dozen wins is kind of nice. http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=225&position=P http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=7608&position=P

The team took a major jump last year. Little if any of that jump was due to May being in the rotation half the season. He made a huge impact out of the pen, however. I am one of the few who wonder if his success in either role can be duplicated. I do think his stuff plays much better out of the pen. I think his focus is sharper, his occasional wildness is less destructive, and his velocity and spin are way up. I am fine with keeping him in the pen. I don't like wasting years trying to build for the future, particularly when your team legitimately has some talent. I don't want to waste a year of Sano and Buxton, waste the last years of Mauer, Santana, Hughes and Perkins, and waste the primes of Dozier, Plouffe, and Gibson sifting through young starting pitching when we all know none of them are aces. By the time we've got our 5 guys seasoned to compete, at least one of them will have a major arm injury, and 2 of them will be replaceable 4-5 types, and 3-4 other young arms will be tempting us to move the timetable back another 3 years. Accumulate as much talent as you can. Play to win until the All-Star break and see where you're at then. I believe May in the pen gives us our best chance of winning. By the end of the season, Burdi and Reed may be up, and May could represent an upgrade in the rotation. Sorry if I don't see that as a tragedy.

May. His numbers were bolstered by a ridiculously low first-half BB/9 and HR/9 last year. I doubt he can keep it up, or throw 97 for a full season, even out of the pen. He's clearly better out of the pen, and can certainly be good, but I'm not sold that he really has the stuff to be consistently dominant like he was at the end of last season.

Interesting opinions. I've been a Shields guy since summer and would have even been willing to give up a prospect to have him for the playoff push. However, the Padres aren't going to salary dump him. 1) you have to field a team, 2) they're ownership is delusional about their chances of competing, 3) Nolasco (probably) sucks, and 4) IF Shields is available, a contending team that doesn't care about money will offer an actual prospect rather than (almost) guaranteed loss. Shields is just so far from a "cut your losses" contract at this point, it's not really worth taking seriously. Interesting debate though.

I should have used the qualifier "quality" in front of vets and rookies! Kevin Correia... gross.

Fien is not blocking anyone. Either he performs like he did the first half of last year prior to getting hurt when he was lights out, or he's not great in which case the only way he's not replaced by Burdi, Reed, Meyer, etc. is because they're also not great. Fien has potential value beyond being a place holder. He's a veteran, he's an emotional leader on the team, and I'd trust him in a big spot way more than any of the rookies we might call up. I sure regret having Santana, Hughes, and Pelfrey blocking Meyer and May last year, and having Escobar blocking Santana and Hunter blocking Arcia. Having too much talent on the roster isn't a problem. It's a lot easier to call down to the farm if a vet gets hurt or doesn't perform than to go get a vet if a rookie or soph doesn't perform.

I had these same concerns about Danny Valencia. He seemed to go from trying to drive the ball (7HR in half a season) to just trying to wait and slap. I feel like Lew Ford might have had a leg kick originally, maybe not... Denard Span was pretty successful with the Twins, maybe because he had that still wide-stance approach...

Which is a great theory. Some say it's a matter of time before we go to 9 men "rotations" throwing 3 innings at a time every 3 days. Of course, in modern practicality, it would be hard to talk a great arm into being a middle inning guy, and hard to talk a GM into paying big money for a guy to pitch the 5th and or 6th inning, and hard to convince an effective starter into giving up the ball early. It works if you've got 3-4 truly elite guys on the back end like the Royals. But that's probably as hard as getting 3-4 studs to lead your rotation at which point you can by with a shallower pen. But yes, if, hypothetically you can get Trevor May plus 3 guys better than Trevor May, well, you'd have the Royal's pen OR the Mets' rotation. Hey, we can't lose!

How severe is the penalty? Is it worse than the penalty of having to bring in Tony Fiore or Jefferson Starship... er Manship? Of course the more times the hitter sees the pitcher, the more the advantage sways to the hitter. But it all depends on who's starting and coming in.

Not trying to hijack the Park thread, but I wonder where people say he doesn't care. This is one possible explanation for his struggles. Yet another would be that he cares too much and thus doesn't handle adversity well at this stage. From what I've actually seen of him, he seems to care more about his team's success than pretty much anyone else on the team. He played super-hard when the team was terrible. I'm sure it was tough to have a good year going only to watch his team make a great run without him as he rehabbed injury. Then he got jumped by four, FOUR other prospects in the organization. The team needed his left-handed power bat, but he could do nothing to help. I'm sure he was beyond frustrated by that point, and I don't think he was ever healthy. He's simply better than what he showed last 2nd half. Something had to be wrong, and I do not see any evidence to suggest that the problem was that he didn't care enough. Regarding Park, you can point to other average players with big success in Korea, and you can point to Kang's late run at rookie of the year before his injury. There's evidence on both sides. His swing seems quick to the ball for a power hitter, while gaining some length when he deploys the kick and upper cut. The short quick swing should allow him to catch up to some high heat, BUT his shorter swing seems to be a compensation for him liking to let the ball travel deeper. This would indicate that he'd struggle with higher velos unless he can adjust and start his swing earlier in order to catch the ball in front. I know that Bruno has really worked with Mauer and Hicks on this with decidedly mixed results. Bottom line, there's nothing to say he won't be able to put up huge MLB numbers, nor is there any reason to assume he will be an impact player. He has the tools to adjust if he can remake his swing a little (which Parker shows that he's already done), but his success hinges on his ability to adjust. A statement like that is so obvious that it would not make for very interesting forum debate, although you'd probably get a lot of 'likes' for it.

Personally, I've always said Hick's D is way overrated in CF. Good corner guy, but struggles going back on balls and taking efficient routes, not as big a deal in left or right where the balls almost always tail toward the line. He may take away some singles, and cut off a few balls to hold guys to singles, but his misplays are always doubles, triples or inside the park jobs. No tears here.

Hmmm... Cards, Pirates, Cubs, Dodgers, Mets.... Royals, Jays, Yankees, Stros, and Rangers... The only teams without a true ace Cardinals and Yankees, had borderline aces and were eliminated at their first opportunity. The Rangers and Jays were out of it before dealing for aces. The Royals went and got Cueto who was fantastic in Game 5. If you don't have an ace (or several) you had better have a lights out rotation top to bottom. Arieta, Mets anyone, Price, and Cueto. That seems to make a pretty solid case for needing an ace to both make the post season, and win in the post season. Twins need an ace. Berrios, May, Meyer, Gibson, Duffey, Hughes, Santana.... very very very unlikely that any of those would turn out to be truly dominant. Especially in post season.

That's true. And Hicks doesn't have the protective layer of mohawk that Rosario and Arcia have...

I can't imagine Arcia was healthy. I think he wanted to get back to the bigs to help the club on it's wild card run. I'm guessing the trainers told him he couldn't injure his back worse, so he tried to fight through. I'm guessing he comes back and mashes like almost always again this spring. I'm guessing. Hicks was incapable of even a 5 week hot streak in prior years. He has most certainly progressed. I've always said his CF defense is overrated. I think he's a perfect part time player. Can take professional at bats, can swing for the fences, solid defensive player with range and arm to play all positions. By far his biggest problem is balls over his head. Well, he wouldn't have to worry about that with the wall in right... Rosario should probably be moved into the infield or two a team for trade value at this point.

For the record, Fangraphs has Blackburn's career avg. fastball velocity at 93.1 mph. http://www.fangraphs.com/pitchfx.aspx?playerid=4270&position=p&pitch=FA Really, he's more of an example of needing more than pure velocity rather than pitching to contact.... I remember him being a lot better when his fastball was diving at 91 than straight at 94.

Even when Perk was dominating his velocity was way down. His k's were way down. Last year he slid. He performed admirably when his control was pin point. Later in the year when he lost his feel and even more speed, he was pretty rough. He should have taken more off and continued to hit his spots, but seemed to consistently over throw instead. I saw Hughes pitch as well as I've ever seen him throw beating Kluber while not hitting 90 on the gun. He pitched to his health and figured out what he needed to do. Perkins never adjusted. Neither did Dozier who had somehow gotten a free pass...

In many ways, Milone and Pelfrey have epitomized our season. Just when you think they're done...