jimmer

The Giants reportedly will pay their newest left fielder $4 million in 2015. The one-year deal also includes a $5.5 million club option for 2016 and a $700,000 buyout, along with bonuses that could make the deal worth as much as $12.5 million. IMO, between the Hunter, Rasmus and Aoki deals, the Aoki one is very clearly the best IMO.

and an even better deal, Aoki for 2/12.5

good luck to Swarzak. He's one year removed from being very good. Hope he does well.

As far as replacing Laroche's production, moving Zimmerman to 1B hopefully keeps him healthy and healthy he's better than LaRoche. Rendon permanently takes Zimmerman's spot while Escobar takes 2B. Shouldn't see much if any dropoff.

My point was replacing LaRoche's loss shouldn't be that difficult and since he's a below average MLB starter overall, I'll stick with that point, regardless of your position on WAR in this instance. and something I was going to mention earlier but didn't. While the Nats may have only been 9th in the majors in runs, they were 3rd in the NL, which is who they compete most with. One of those teams ahead of them plays with an unfair home advantage and the other has the biggest payroll in the game. The DH in the AL is a big advantage and should be taken into account when comparing offense. Their offense is much better than you make it out to be and their starting pitching is likely going to be a problem in the next couple years as they very well could lose Stras, Fister and Zim.

sure is better than 1/10M :-)

Well, again, the number may say 210, but due to it being spread out, it's equivalant to 7 years /170M range contract as pointed out earlier. LaRoche over the last two years has been worth an average one 1 WAR. In fact, in his 11 year career, he's barely over 12 WAR total. Didn't lose much there.

it will be interesting to see what he gets from Houston.

Hunter's purpose is to get bottoms in the seats.

yeah, his BABIP is pretty high but he also had a horrible defense behind him and he played in the AL. Those things change going to the Nats. You should read the article I linked earlier. it goes into much more detail. But he won't even have to average 4.0 WAR to make that contract a fair one.

“I saw him, I think, maybe seven games or so (in 2014),” Twins general manager Terry Ryan said Wednesday. “His defense for me was more than adequate. He’s not the type of guy that you’re going to say, ‘Oh, he can go over there and play center for a length of time,’ but I would guarantee you he could go out and play center field for a couple days and you wouldn’t really miss too much.” Good, more than adequate, I guess it's a matter of semantics. I think adequate is pretty much the same as okay or good. Mirriam-Webster dictionary says adequate means : 'good enough : of a quality that is good or acceptable : of a quality that is acceptable but not better than acceptable.' And then add the 'more than' part to make it more than adequate as he said, and the part where he says he could go play CF and not really miss much, I think it's fair to say he said he's at least good. Again, though, semantics. Then you add 'more than adequate' to , seems he still thinks he's good. '“When you look at the rankings of the defensive side of the game, you shake your head many times. I’m not saying a lot of them aren’t accurate, because some of them are, but a lot of them aren’t accurate either.' I like how he says that he isn't saying a lot of the rankings aren't accurate and then later in the same sentence says that a lot of them aren't accurate.

And I completely agree that Plouffe's defense was very good. Having not watched enough of other 29 team's 3Bs play for the sole purpose of evaluating 3B defense, I wouldn't know how he compared against them to say he was the 4th best defensive 3B. I doubt any one person can honestly say they can either which is why sites like Fangraphs are so valuable. I definitely think he played very well and I trust that more than I trust that Hunter is still a quality defender out there in RF. He was horrible when I watched him and I watched the Tigers a lot.

I know this is a bit off topic but hopefully one can see a bit of a tie in when we talk about jack of all trades :-) So, back in the day, there were 4 man rotations and those pitchers went deeper into games. There were less relievers on teams then too and those guys went longer. Now most teams have a 25 man roster in which at least half are pitchers. Isn't it time for MLB to evolve and consider going to a 26 or 27 man active roster?

forgot to mention that according the Ryan, our soon to be 40 year old RF is also good on defense. :-)

Have to remember the offseason Morneau had prior to the 2005 season. Talk about being cursed. Man got slammed with ailment after ailment. He wasn't able to properly prepare for 2005.

I'm skeptical of Eduardo Escobar. I don't think one quality year proves he's a legitimate starting player for sure. At this point, I'd be happy if he could come close to replicating what he did last year and was a good utility guy.

I don't think we're a highly touted organization either at the moment. In the context of his post, in the way that paragraph was written, he was clearly talking about the farm system when he said highly touted.

Again, not trying to convince you my view is right, just sharing info. I enjoyed our discussion.

There were at least a few farm system rankings that had the Astros top 5 going into last season and it doesn't look like they've hurt that at all. In fact, Sporting News had the top three, in order, Astros, Pirates, Twins. Baseball Prospectus had them 5th. John Sickels had them 3rd. The Astros farm system is highly touted. Completely rebuilding that team. They aren't as far along as the Cubs though, another team with a great farm system with players actually right on the cusp already.

I'm guessing because people figure Gordon will be and Santana will be at the FA point. I wasn't fan of getting Gordon when we got him, so I'm not in that camp.

Sorry for all the edit's. I type fast but make up for it by typing horribly. :-)

I believe the analysis provided by Fangraphs in the three articles I've linked here is much better than the analysis in that article, assuming that article can even be said to have much analysis. He writes for rant sports. Their job is to pick the popular opinion and play to that audience by stirring things up. Comments like the following is, 'For his career Scherzer, has averaged 15 wins, a 3.58 ERA and 222 Ks. Based on these factors, it would appear the team just spent $210 million in the wrong area.' I don't think these stats are really that telling(but they are very popular among the casual fan) when there are much better stats to tell the story, yet that seems to be his jumping point. Additionally, his comparison of Scherzer to a pitcher who has one year behind his belt (Roarck) and who has only pitched in the NL and for a quality defensive team, seems odd. We just assume Roarck is going to have that kind of stats because of ONE year? Also Adam's conclusion in the article you provided:, 'It will be interesting to see how a seven-year deal for Scherzer, who will be pitching the majority of the contract on the wrong side of 30, will turn out. There has been a history of pitchers such as Mike Hampton, C.C. Sabathia and Barry Zito, who have received contracts of seven-plus years, all ending up flopping over the length of contract. There is no reason to think Scherzer’s contract will be any different.' Yet the article I just posted this morning from Fangrapgs shows MANY reasons why Scherzer's contract could be different than those pitchers he named. They do actual analysis to show why it could very well work out way different. Adam just picked three guys who it didn't work out for and said because of them, it won't work out for Scherzer too. That's not analysis. In any event, I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. Just providing links to stories with detailed analysis. People do with it what they will.

Here's a nice breakdown on Scherzer. It's a good read. At the end, it reads 'I am not and never have been a fan of the seven-year, mega-contract for starting pitchers, no matter how good they are. Even the Clayton Kershaw and Felix Hernandez deals scare me because of their length, and those are the two very best pitchers in the game. Given all of that, Scherzer’s peak will be higher, and his decline slope will be less steep because of his new club and ballpark.' When he brings up the new club, he's talking about the defense of the new club as opposed to Detroit's defense that negatively impacted his peripherals as discussed in the article. http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/max-scherzers-future-in-washington-is-bright/

Exactly. There were two pitchers with a WAR of 7.0 or higher and six pitchers at 6.0 or higher. Strasburg was at 4.3. I completely agree with you.

If Strasburg provided an extra 7-8 wins per season for the next two seasons that would mean he was likely the best player in baseball. One player isn't going to do that. Baseball isn't the kind of game where one guy is going to do that. Starting to really think Strasburg is one of the most over-rated pitchers in baseball.