Harrison Greeley III

The Red Sox very obviously had a plan of attack to throw fastballs upper third or above. You can look at the pitch sequences on the mlb.com recaps. He is absolutely helpless up there. The only contact he made in the series was on pitches middle or lower third. I'm not saying he can't adjust, but there are more high fastballs coming his way until he does.

This one has legs for recurring articles.

I tend to avoid him in fantasy baseball because of the low strikeout rates and the unremarkable velocity. I like the look of his slider though. I think there's a possible Gerrit Cole/Charlie Morton/Martin Perez situation where he could change his pitch mix somehow and go from solid to great. I'd be more interested in doing that as an off-season acquisition though.

He had a 114 OPS+ with regular playing time last year. Since being back in AAA with regular plate appearances, he's got a .366 wOBA. He also doesn't hit arbitration till 2022. He's not a prospect to build a core around, but if you're entering a rebuild like the Giants you could do way worse than having him in the OF rotation. I can't imagine the market for Smith being all that robust considering the service time. I figure the Cubs will be interested, but they're pretty strapped right now on their farm. They'd likely also be offering damaged goods like Ian Happ, I presume.

Am I being a homer or does the Will Smith rental for Jake Cave seem fair for both sides?

Astudillo just has an adjustment to make. He came up and hit everything. So pitchers adjusted by throwing out of the strike zone knowing they probably won't walk him. If he adds a little patience to his approach, or if you just give him some take signs in early counts, he'd get more hitter's counts and the adjustment is likely made. That's a realistic possibility. I don't think Baldelli considers him a third catcher as much as he considers him a utility guy that's willing to put on the gear. Also a catcher getting hurt and needing an IL stint or just a few days off is a likely scenario. A player like Astudillo takes the pressure off a catcher to play hurt. Then consider his contact skills in a game where players are striking out more than ever. That's very valuable to a manager. I would hit him lower in the lineup, but Baldelli's going to be slow to send him down. It's easy to see why.

I would support the idea of trading Arraez some time between now and 7/31. His stock is high and could return something valuable. He has a really nice approach and he seems like a valid major leaguer, but given the lack of power, the depth in the farm, and depressed free agency if a seller wants him in exchange for a good reliever with at least 1.5 years of team control...

Here's a novel idea. If you feel disrespected, instead of threatening or possibly executing physical violence with your fastball that could harm a guy's career, maybe...just maybe... I dunno... don't. Text the guy after to say you didn't appreciate it. Strike the guy out next time. Ignore a harmless joke. There are a lot of other ways to go about it than act like an abusive idiot in response.

Co-worker calling him Barry....

Is it time to start thinking about who is tradeable/valuable in June/July? Am I wrong to start looking in Luis Arraez's direction?

Just saying... I think Ponder has done a good job of avoiding mistakes, making better decisions, and carrying out the game plan, but he has been relatively lucky on defenders missing gift interceptions. He has gotten better, but not that much better. The biggest difference this year is the play-calling and the game-planning. When defenses are showing a run-stopping formation, Musgrave is getting the ball to Percy in the flat where the field's open and he can make the first guy miss. When defenses are planning for Percy or a passing down, Adrian is getting the ball against softer fronts. This team is not 4-1 because of Christian Ponder, it's because the play calling on offense and defense has significantly stepped up. Frazier is also making some great calls on defense (particularly love the pass rushing 3 DE sets on 3rd downs, allowing more help in the zones from linebackers) and Musgrave is doing a great job breaking down the film and exploiting opponent weaknesses.

Terry's at least getting a phone call from Miami about Mark Buehrle, right? Miami only paid him $6m of the $58m due to him this year. So therefore he's got a 3 year, $52m deal ahead of him which I'm sure Miami will be looking to ditch. He's quite reliable though, and there's no better case study as to how it's possible to be successful with a Rick Anderson approach to pitching. I doubt anything would happen, but I wouldn't be surprised if I saw line items come across about this possibility on mlbtr this winter.

"Assuming his age is legit...." I hope this is the last time I ever read this, but I know we'll hear it throughout his career. It's very convincing in Pelotero that he did about 5 times what's expected out of most players to prove his age. And even then most teams shied away. It cost his family a good chunk of money and he'll probably never escape it even though it was only rumor-mongering by a corrupt scout trying to scare the Yankees and Red Sox away.

This is so obviously the truth. Last year and in 2010 they didn't have players like this. Even Cuddyer wasn't dead pull as much as he was a power alley guy. It helps to have a freak of nature like Jim Thome completely destroy some pitches to right field to fool some people into thinking this isn't the problem. But the more dead pull right handed the Twins can make themselves, the easier they'll make it on themselves. The ratio between Twins/opponent home runs at Target Field will become more even.

Which doesn't have much to do with television markets. I was looking at this. http://www.deepintosports.com/2009/07/21/mlb-baseball-television-market-shars-tv-households-nielsen-dma-payroll/ And again while the Rangers certainly have a larger market, it's not like they have a market that's almost 3 times the size of the Twins' market. Given the deal FSNorth got, that's apparently how the Twins evaluated the situation. I'm not arguing that the Twins shouldn't have received more money in their television deal. I'm only arguing your point that Dallas is comparable to the Twin Cities, which it most certainly is not. Which I already conceded in the last post. I still think their proportions of size are not even close to matching the proportional distances between TV deals.

Do they? When NBC Sports and Comcast merged, was it out of the question for them to make a play for the Twins? It appeared that FSN had the monopoly, but that wasn't going to last for long. Kudos to FSN for getting the deal locked up before the Twins had the sense to realize they'd have another buyer, I suppose.

Which doesn't have much to do with television markets. I was looking at this. http://www.deepintosports.com/2009/07/21/mlb-baseball-television-market-shars-tv-households-nielsen-dma-payroll/ And again while the Rangers certainly have a larger market, it's not like they have a market that's almost 3 times the size of the Twins' market. Given the deal FSNorth got, that's apparently how the Twins evaluated the situation.

The only thing I disagreed with Mackey on this article was the TV deal. The Rangers are somehow getting $80 million from their TV deal in a very comparably-sized market. FSNorth somehow got the Sunday games off of free TV and got their deal for $29 million. That makes this statement problematic. Maybe $80 million wasn't in the question but the Twins left a ton of money on the table, especially considering the new NBC Sports could have possibly offered a competing bid. But in the end, that only contributes to Mackey's point about the Twins' ability to wisely invest and spend their money.

The key difference is a point made in Michael Lewis' article about Shane Battier and the Houston Rockets front office from 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/magazine/15Battier-t.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=all Taking a baseball-minded stats approach to football just doesn't work. It's a systems game. It's a coach's game. It pains me to say it, but while I love baseball 10 times more football, football is more intrinsically a team game than baseball ever can be. Remember when Aaron Kampman was one of the best pass rushers in the NFL? Then the Packers brought in Dom Capers to go from a 4-3 Tampa 2 style defense to a 3-4? Kampman all of the sudden made no impact as a pass rusher while Clay Matthews rose to become a superstar. Did Kampman just lose his abilities? That's not a satisfying explanation, he lost the system that allowed him to flourish statistically. Or the fact that almost every single quarterback who worked with Bill Walsh was significantly better and more productive than when they weren't working with him. A more modern example would be the Packers seamless transition from Favre to Rodgers. Is it because Rodgers is just 'that good'? Maybe partially. But when you have a West Coast Offense headed by Mike McCarthy that is so locked in with every single member of the offense coupled with a talented receiver core, you have a myriad of outside factors that are going to make it easier for a quarterback to succeed. That's why when they could rest Rodgers, Matt Flynn could drop an easy 480 yards on a good defense like Detroit who was vying for playoff positioning. On the flip side, Jay Cutler has worked with a new offensive coordinator in all but one season. He's struggled to gain consistency, but it's extremely problematic to say it's because of his talents. So again, I'd stick by my notion that these advanced metrics are a 'waste of everyone's time'. People miss the point with football. I'm not overly concerned with Ponder 'Figuring It Out' or what his DVOA or DVOR was or can be. It's more of a concern as to whether or not Bill Musgrave can play chess with the top NFL defensive coordinators and communicate his system to the offense so they can carry it out to its maximum efficiency. If he can, you could even just plug Sage in there.

This is nice as a measure of the past, but holds next to no significance for the future. As you said, his targets and protection have improved. This has nothing to do with Ponder's performance from a improvement/stagnation/decline perspective, but it will certainly change the 2012 outcome prospects. This is why it's quite problematic to develop legitimate advanced metrics in football. NFL football is a head coach's chess match with tactical adjustments and schematic strategies. So trying to measure something comparable to VORP for a player is largely a waste of everyone's time. Many times it doesn't matter how talented a player is, it matters how well the player can be plugged into the 11-man system on a given side of the ball. It did not matter how good/bad Ponder played in 2011, it only mattered what he learned based on what he knows he can do well (speed, quick release, intuitive sense of pressure) and what he needs to improve upon (coverage recognition to prevent interceptions, offensive system learning curve, etc.). What is maddening about football to a sabermetric-minded baseball fan, is that the game is significantly more psychological. The more psychology that is involved, the higher the variance of outcomes, and the less useful advanced statistics can be. Also, I'm of the belief that the truly good advanced metrics in football (like the NBA) did not make the same mistake as baseball. That data is being processed and interpreted by people employed by NFL/NCAA organizations. That leaves the bloggers with the noisy stuff like DVOR/DVOA. They didn't ignore the Bill James' for decades like baseball did. They listened to them and hired them before they got blogs going. It is way too early to tell whether or not Christian Ponder will figure the game out at this level. It's nice to look at these numbers, but don't let anyone fool you into thinking these have any sort of predictive significance beyond noise.

This post needed to happen a long time ago. Thanks for taking the time. I might also throw in the excessive thread starting could probably use some discretion on everyone's part. We should have something like the 'Official Thread of __Player X__' so whenever there's a brag or a gripe about a given player/front office member/position, we can keep it all to one thread and organize the forum more efficiently.

Since we all know his slugging pct. is going to closely mirror his batting average, we should probably stop using OPS as a detractor. I'm only really interested in how well he's making contact and getting on base at this point. And I would agree that if he's not embarrassing himself right now, you might as well give him another shot while not contending and flushing that money down the toilet anyways.

If I'm another team looking for a center fielder, I'm calling on Revere. Range, swiping ability, serf-salary, service time, no walks but no strikeouts either. Yes, he's give or take the second coming of Juan Pierre. But Juan Pierre in his prime would give you between around 3.4 WAR a year. Since now we know he can make contact at this level, it's pretty clear exactly what you're getting and what you should expect to pay for it. I like Span a lot, but the armchair GM for an arbitrary team would suggest that the savings and the service time on Revere are probably more valuable in terms of building a team.

I lived in Chicago most of my life as a displaced Twins fan. The White Sox spent the 00's getting big name free agent signings every year, typically having a great team on paper that hit tons of home runs but frequently fell short of expectations in the win column. The Twins were the exact opposite in outcome. Their ability to field well, and be lights out in late innings in the bullpen allowed them to win more games than expected despite a statistically more modest team. I would wager the time Hawk Harrelson has spent pondering this decade ranges in months. And he is old-school. Love him or hate him, he is the sales representative for the White Sox to the fanbase. He spends each game selling the team, their chances, and their opportunities. He downplays weaknesses and competitor threats. This is annoying from an objectivity standpoint, but it creates a fiercely loyal fanbase. So you're going to get crackpot, lazy pieces due to this constant exposure of Hawk's cheerleading. I wouldn't put much stock into it, but I would say it's worthwhile to understand the way Chicago thinks about the Twins, especially after a dominating sweep.

Based on those pictures, you can also see that Parmelee has his hands higher too.