EVIL~! alkeiper

My best guess. 1. Hanley Ramirez 2. Jose Reyes 3. J.J. Hardy 4. Jimmy Rollins 5. Stephen Drew 6. Troy Tulowitzki 7. Yunel Escobar 8. Rafael Furcal 9. Miguel Tejada 10. Edgar Renteria 11. Christian Guzman 12. Khalil Greene 13. Ryan Theriot 14. Alex Gonzalez 15. Jack Wilson 16. Luis Rodriguez Furcal missed most of this season and had an awful 2007. 2005-06 established an OPS+ level of around 104 or so. Escobar's career mark is 109. And did anyone notice that Stephen Drew led NL shortstops in extra base hits this season?

Cheech's questions are the most interesting right off the bat, but I'll get to all of them. 1. It almost has to be the Tampa Bay Rays. They won 97 games, their team is incredibly young and they STILL have good players coming up the pipeline. The Red Sox look good but they will need to develop superstars. It will not be long before they need to replace David Ortiz. If I were to pick a National League team, that's a harder decision. The Cardinals look surprisingly good with a future lineup of Pujols, Wallace and Colby Rasmus. 2. Teams will always find a place for their prospects. I think it is most disappointing for Hawaiian baseball fans. 3. I have not. I've done a Phillies top 30 though. I find it difficult to evaluate minor league prospects as a whole because I'm disconnected from most of the West Coast teams. I think Matt Wieters is absolutely the #1 prospect in baseball. 4. I have never used UZR. I glance at John Dewan's +/- system, but I am wary yet. It seems to me that a new defensive system pops up every five years or so. Sabermetrically inclined fans go ga-ga over it, let it override their entire scouting system and it ends up dismissed when the new defensive system disproves or replaces it. Lately I think we've found that defense carries more value than we previously anticipated. I haven't seen a study, but I suspect bad defense leads to poor pitching peripherals across the board. Either pitchers trying too hard to overcome their defense's shortcomings, or simply added fatigue. I do not think you can develop a perfect system. The best thing to do is take several systems into account, and listen to scouting reports. A good scout is the best way to evaluate defense, provided he knows what he's looking for. There is too much statistical noise involved in a defensive play to attach a number to it.

Here's the Nina Simone studio cut.

Jason Whitlock?

Putting Aubrey Huff at third base certainly won't do wonders for that defense.

If anyone here remembers Rob Johnstone, I actually had college classes with him a couple years ago.

The Braves could be dangerous next year if their pitching holds up.

I have an album version of Nina Simone's that is simply awesome.

The Phillies signed Chan Ho Park after he had a revival year in Los Angeles. Let's see. Home, 2.18 ERA. Away, 4.50 ERA. Doesn't anyone ever learn anything?

Utter domination tonight from Wladimir Klitschko.

Ten years ago, Baseball America started listing top prospects by team. The Phillies at the time had a weak system, and BA chose reliever Ryan Brannan as the Phillies' top prospect. Brannan never reached the major leagues. Over ten years have passed, so now it is apparent whether any of the Phillies' farm products at the time became successes or failures. Looking back, could any of their players made better picks as top prospects? I drew up a list of the top ten based on current career win shares. Players in the organization as of January 1, 1998 and claimed rookie eligibility status. 1. Jimmy Rollins, SS (18 years old) Sally League: 270/332/370, 46 stolen bases Impressive second year, as Rollins displayed a bit of pop, plate discipline, lots of speed. A shortstop who happened to be one of the youngest players in the league AND exceeded the league OPS is certainly a top prospect. 2. Randy Wolf, LHP (20 years old) NY-Penn League: 4-0, 1.57 ERA, 40 IP, 8 BBs, 53 K's. Wolf was the Phillies' second round pick in the 1997 draft. It is hard to put a lot of stock in 40 innings. Michael Cisco would qualify as a top prospect under the same criteria. It would be interesting to go back and read scouting reports on this one. 3. Marlon Anderson, 2B (23 years old) Eastern League: 266/318/374, 27 steals in 42 attempts. Those numbers are hardly impressive at all. Low average, little power, high caught stealing rate. Anderson would explode for 62 extra base hits the next year in AAA Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. Anderson spent a couple years playing second base for the Phillies before settling in as a valuable spare part for the New York Mets. 4. Desi Relaford, SS (23 years old) International League: 267/323/400, 29 steals. You want a higher batting average, but that's not bad from a 23 year old SS in AAA. Relaford bombed as a starter though in 1998. Relaford got mileage out of a career as a utility infielder. His placement on the list is due to longevity rather than real ability. 5. Johnny Estrada, C (21 years old) NY-Penn League: 314/341/489. 223 at bats, 9 walks and 15 strikeouts? How do you evaluate a player like that? Estrada never got his OBP up. He reached the Majors in 2001 thanks to an injury to Mike Lieberthal, but was terrible. He had a solid year with the Braves in 2004, but otherwise he was a poor hitter. A player like this lives and dies on his batting average and when you do that, it better be closer to .320-.330.[/i] 6. Carlos Silva, RHP (18 years old) Appy League: 2-2, 5.12 ERA, 58 IP, 14 BBs, 31 K's. Home run rates are unavailable, so I don't know if Silva's ground ball tendencies were readily apparent. While Silva crashed and burned in 2008, he's had a fine career thus far as a starting pitcher. 7. Adam Eaton, RHP (19 years old) Sally League: 5-6, 4.18 ERA, 71 IP, 30 BBs, 57 K's. Nothing in the stat line really stands out. The Phillies packaged Eaton to the Padres for Alan Ashby before the 2000 season. Eaton had a 4.13 ERA in 2000 and since then has NEVER posted a better than average ERA in a season of any length. 8. Bobby Estalella, C (22 years old) International League: 233/321/418 A beast. Estalella had power to spare, and was built like a truck. Unfortunately he had yet to hit for an acceptable average. Estalella exploded the following season in Scranton, posting a .993 OPS in 76 games. Estalella hit just .216 though in 904 MLB at bats. 9. Wayne Gomes, RHP (24 years old) International League: 38 IP, 24 BB's, 36 K's, 2.37 ERA MLB: 42.7 IP, 24 BBs, 24 K's, 5.27 ERA How the heck did this guy ever come around with those peripherals. Gomes had three decent seasons from 1998-2000, before losing effectiveness. 10. Derrick Turnbow, RHP (19 years old) Appy League: 24 IP, 16 BB, 7 K's, 7.50 ERA. Wow. Turnbow found his stuff for one good season in Milwaukee, but otherwise he had extreme control issues his entire career. I think Rollins and Wolf were obvious talents at the time. The rest are generally a collection of journeymen who had lengthy careers as reserves. In retrospect, Rollins probably should have been the number one prospect.

With six divisions, a wild card and three rounds of playoffs, it is really almost impossible for a team to buy it's way to a World Championship. The current system ensures a team controls a player for their first six seasons. Given that most players reach the majors at the ages of 23-24. that carries them through most of their prime. MLB success is usually determined via a team's scouting and development systems.

What the hell? There must be some behind the scenes stuff with Burrell that we don't know about. Not only is a far superior player than Ibanez, he's five years younger. The fact that he wasn't even offered arbitration, yet they went out and spent $30 million on Ibanez suggests that there is something fishy going on. I imagine the deal will look like 8, 10 and 12 million. Perhaps they felt that Burrell might cost in the neighborhood of $14-16 million, and they could not stomach the extra cost. This is a fine deal on its face. The problem is that it looks odd in the big picture. Two of the Phillies' best hitters are Utley and Howard, both lefties.* The Phillies have two reserve outfielders who both hit left-handed. They are going to need a righty presence beyond Jayson Werth.

The operative word being immediately available for comment. And the story was posted at 2:36am. I can imagine calling, getting the answering machine, and "PRINT!" It's a tremendous journalistic device.

Fantastic snippet from Joe Posnanski's blog, regarding the Kyle Farnsworth signing.

Yankee hating will never go out of style. If they lose 100 games, I want them to lose 105.

How about Andre vs. Big John Studd?

Do you wonder if 2006-07 was an unsustainable peak? His strikeout rates as a reliever weren't impressive at all until he exploded as a 29 year old.

This one puzzles me. Jaramillo had to go. The Phillies have three real catchers at the moment in Carlos Ruiz, Lou Marson and Chris Coste. One for the MLB starting job, one for the backup job and one as a AAA starter. Jaramillo didn't fit in there, so where does Paulino figure in?

I'm not tremendously high on J.A. Happ. How many good MLB starters were full time AAA starters at the age of 25? And Happ was good in AAA, not dominant. I've seen him live a couple of times, he never impressed me. Check the TSM blog for more thoughts on that. I'll be stunned if Happ is as good as Randy Wolf was from 2000-02. Coste is obviously expendable with Marson coming up and Ruiz possibly sliding into the backup role. I'd support the trade myself. DeRosa would replace Utley in the short term, and be a useful piece in the long term. It also helps that he's a righty hitter, and a UPenn graduate. Good points, as usual. But I think Ruiz will be the starter this season barring unforeseen events. His work in the playoffs will get him a year or two as a starter, imo. His OPS in the playoffs was .737. If the Phillies let that get in the way of a personnel move, they are delusional. I doubt it will matter, it will come down to Spring Training performance.

The Orioles got a good haul for Ramon Hernandez. Ryan Freel plus two decent infield prospects. Not bad for a catcher with a .308 OBP that was only blocking the best prospect in baseball.

He's no star, but there's definite value in a pitcher who never misses a start.

I'm not tremendously high on J.A. Happ. How many good MLB starters were full time AAA starters at the age of 25? And Happ was good in AAA, not dominant. I've seen him live a couple of times, he never impressed me. Check the TSM blog for more thoughts on that. I'll be stunned if Happ is as good as Randy Wolf was from 2000-02. Coste is obviously expendable with Marson coming up and Ruiz possibly sliding into the backup role. I'd support the trade myself. DeRosa would replace Utley in the short term, and be a useful piece in the long term. It also helps that he's a righty hitter, and a UPenn graduate.

I think it's fair to separate their 1987 WM match from the feud that ran in the first half of 1988. And yes, those matches were awful. What I've seen of the '80 series wasn't much better either.

62 saves is hyperbole, but Rodriguez does own a 2.35 career ERA. His career ERA is third among active pitchers with 100+ saves. Five of seven blown saves were two runs. Three of those came in one particularly bad week. The problem though is that Wagner was obviously pitching hurt. From my viewing experience, a normally fine pitcher with a spike in home run rate is a red flag as far as health. You're right about the tied and one run games, Wagner only pitched in ten of them. It makes me wonder about the obsession over a top flight closer in the first place. The real problem for the Mets appeared to be the 6th-8th innings.