EVIL~! alkeiper

I ran both teams through my computer simulation. The 2004 Red Sox beat the 1998 Yankees in a 10,000 game series, 5,011-4,989. Eleven games in the span of 10,000 is essentially a dead heat.

Oops. I fixed that.

Teams looking for first basemen are out of luck this season. An extremely thin pool this year. I actually went searching through the minor league free agent pool just to finish this list. (ANd for the record, you could do a lot worse than taking a flier on Graham Koonce). 1. Carlos Delgado 2. Richie Sexson 3. Tino Martinez 4. John Olerud 5. Julio Franco 6. Travis Lee 7. Tony Clark 8. Todd Zeile 9. Brad Fullmer 10. Graham Koonce Carlos Delgado had an off year that was actually not bad at all. Delgado hit 269/372/535 in 128 games for Toronto this season. At 33, he has a few years left in him. It will be interesting to see if his stock fell far enough for the Blue Jays to resign him. They have no obvious solution at first, and $19 Million to spend. I think Delgado will stay. If not, expect the Mets to show interest. Richie Sexson missed all but 23 games this season due to a freak injury. Still, he is just 30, and is a monster power hitter. A team willing to take the risk could clean up here. The Diamondbacks are likely to take him back in an incentive laden contract. If not, the usual suspects apply. Tino Martinez poses an interesting dilemma. Can the Yankees resist the temptation to look towards the past as a way of solving the present? Martinez is fine for a team that needs a temporary fix, or as a lefty bat off the bench. John Olerud saved his career with an acceptable second half in New York. Still, Olerud has lost nearly all the power in his bat, and his OBP is declining. He is probably little more than a platoon player at this point in his career. Julio Franco continues to defy father time. All age-based assessments are off. Franco's age-based comps include six Hall of Famers, on the basis that most other people die when they reach his age. Performance wise, I would expect the usual .370 OBP off the bench that he has given the Braves over the last four years.

Essentially, Boston unloads the contract, and grabs a J.D. Drew or Carlos Beltran for the money they saved, and maybe a little extra.

Hypothetical situation: Cardinals GM Walt Jocketty pulls a sign-and-trade with Mike Matheny, sending him to the Jays for Orlando Hudson to fill the upcoming 2B slot. I think there's a rule in place that prevents a GM from pulling such a move, without the player agreeing to the trade.

Second. He's just about on the level of Damian Miller, and he's younger than all but Javier Valentin.

I think the Blue Jays will be much improved next season. Their pitching actually improved, but their runs scored fell from 2nd to 10th in the league. Just about all of their players performed at the bottom of their talent level. They should rebound, and Riccardi will patch the holes where needed. And they do have a great deak of young talent.

Quite frankly, 2 years, $7 Million is more than Paul Wilson is worth. He's a below average starter.

I'll try and do all the positions as time allows. Schoolwork has a nasty habit of taking up my time, however. I list the top 10, and evaluate the top 5. 1. Jason Varitek 2. Damian Miller 3. Mike Matheny 4. Gregg Zaun 5. Doug Mirabelli 6. Dan Wilson 7. Mike Redmond 8. Javier Valentin 9. Todd Pratt 10. Sandy Alomar Jr. Jason Varitek is a switch hitting catcher with power. The good is that he is easily the best catcher on the market. He is 32, so the usual concerns about catcher aging patterns apply. The problem with Varitek is that he is overrated. His .390 OBP was over 40 points higher than his career average, and it could be a fluke. He has shown inconsistancy in the past. He is good for a two or three year deal, but I would not bet the farm on him. I would be surprised to see him land outside Boston. Damian Miller experienced a career revival with the Oakland Athletics. Unfortunately, he will be 35 next season. Miller posted 15 win shares this season. In his five previous seasons, he posted totals of 10, 11, 10, 10 and 10. Alot of consistancy there. I think he will regress to his previous level. Miller is underrated, and the Athletics value his defense, so I expect he will stay in Oakland. Mike Matheny has been the Cardinals' defensive marvel for five seasons. He provides no offense whatsoever. His best career OPS was .679. The question obviously is how much do you value his defense? Yadier Molina can play defense, and at 21, he already has a better offensive season under his belt than anything from Matheny. At 33, Matheny is best served as a backup, but some team will likely hand him a starting job, based on his prior experience. Gregg Zaun posted a career best .367 OBP in 338 at bats with the Toronto Blue Jays. Zaun's had great years sandwiched between bad years, so it is tough to judge what kind of performance you will get. Make no mistake, Zaun is a very good hitter, and will make an excellent backup somewhere. I would love to see the Phillies make this move. I am hard pressed to say which teams are likely to seek Zaun, but many teams SHOULD seek Zaun for their benches, including the Yankees, Cardinals, and Astros. Doug Mirabelli's primary value is that you have to put someone at the end of a top five list. Still, Mirabelli has a career .331 OBP and .426 slugging percentage, about league average. And he can catch the knuckleball, so he has some obvious defensive skills. There are teams doing alot worse right now at catcher. Mirabelli is the kind of player the Oakland Athletics could plug in their lineup in a pinch.

Why? They've got money to blow and Sosa's still capable of putting the asses in the seats. He's not the big name in Chicago anymore, but he'd be a draw in New York. Big names get you in truoble like that. Bring in a player to your big market team who can produce, and he will become a star. Besides, why should the Mets target Ramirez or Sosa when J.D. Drew is available, for less? Drew has had injury problems, but he can't be more injury prone than an aging Sosa. I would take Drew over Sosa too, but you can't seriously be suggesting that he is a better player than Ramirez. I'm not. But Drew would cost millions less, which you can use elsewhere. Plus, you don't have to surrender players in trade.

As an aside, the nonsense with Sosa et al. is reason number one Dusty Baker needs to go. The first responsibility of a manager is to keep his players in line. Baker clearly failed in that regard.

Why? They've got money to blow and Sosa's still capable of putting the asses in the seats. He's not the big name in Chicago anymore, but he'd be a draw in New York. Big names get you in truoble like that. Bring in a player to your big market team who can produce, and he will become a star. Besides, why should the Mets target Ramirez or Sosa when J.D. Drew is available, for less? Drew has had injury problems, but he can't be more injury prone than an aging Sosa.

I think he should just retire. Most thought he was done before he got traded, anyway. Did anyone happen to look where Grudzielanek's stats ended up? 307/347/432. He's not great, but he'll give you league average offense, and not every team has that.

I have no issue with bringing him back, since they are unlikely to do much better.

Like KingPk stated, no more Red Sox/Yankees bitching or flaming in this topic. If you have something, take it to hardcore discussion.

People wanted to see the Red Sox/Yankees out of the offseason thread, but this nonsense has no business in the forum whatsoever. Take it to hardcore discussion.

We knew he wasn't going to be Schilling or Johnson. I think that's pretty safe. They tried to convince us that we were getting a ten-year-younger Curt Schilling. Instead, we got Curt Schilling ten years ago. Again, its easy to say that in hindsight. There were very real concerns about Johnson's ability to pitch effectively, due to his knee injury last year. I got him in the TSM fantasy draft in the third or fourth round.

This idea that younger is automatically better is one of the most asinine mentalities going around baseball these days. I don't give a damn how much older Curt Schilling or Randy Johnson are. Javier Vazquez just simply isn't as good. In five years, maybe. Not now. And this team, at this point, is not in the position to wait five years to let the guy pull his head out of his ass, only to find out that he'll never become as good as Schilling or Johnson. "But he's younger!" ::smacks head into wall repeatedly.:: I don't agree with the specific example, because we didn't know that Vazquez would perform so horribly before the season. But I agree with the overall point. I think those in the sabermetric community are too quick to criticize a team signing a veteran, when he takes the playing time of a younger player. Sometimes, this is valid, when the veteran is not as good as people think, and the young player has proven his ability (for example, the Pirates signing Randall Simon and Raul Mondesi when they had Craig Wilson). But sometimes, a young player might not develop as you expect, and a veteran saves your season simply by plugging that hole in your lineup. The problem with veterans is that signing baseball players is a risk/reward venture. You will always have risk when you sign players. The key is to minimize that risk. Veteran players have a habit of suffering more frequent injuries, and suffering declines in performances. So you need to factor that stuff into your decision making. But a smart club never entirely excludes a player based on a single factor (in this case age).

Vinny Castilla declined his option, and joins the free agency ranks.

That frustrates me to no end in my frequent trips into Jersey, because I am fully capable of pumping my own gasoline. It's much cheaper than Pennsylvania though.

Pavano and Benitez will demand more on the market. The rest are older guys who had career years, and can't be counted on to repeat those performances. As a Phillies fan, trust me when I say you don't want Mesa on your team. And his stats indicate an(other) implosion is imminent. They traded for him.

Bucky Jacobsen. The problem is that he's already 28. He's a nice hitter, but he's as good as he's ever going to get. As for Lowe, his 2002 was a fluke. He was average last year, and bad this year. I don't trust three postseason games, and as a pitcher, he's worth no more than about 15-20 other starters on the market. Some team is going to stupidly pay him $6-$8 Million, and I don't want that team to be the Phillies.

Torre has been a manager for twenty years. I would think he would be capable of making his own decisions. Then again, when did Don Zimmer join the team? People forget that Torre had a so-so record before joining the Yankees. However, I am not sure how much the Yankees' playoff woes are due to Torre. Much of the Yankees' success from 1996-2000 was due to Mariano Rivera's success. Two of the Yankees' last four playoff exits were due in large part to Rivera's blown saves, which no one could really prevent. As for the bench coaches, I think its neither. You can't pass judgement on a bench coach because you don't really know his role. Does the manager trust his judgement? What kind of decisions does his advice upon? In regards to Zimmer vs. Randolph, I think Torre would tend to defer to Zim more often.

That wasn't an either/or proposition, and they got Millwood two years after they got Schilling. Schilling was traded for Vicente Padilla, who has been fairly good himself, for $10 Million less.

SWEET JESUS! I just checked all my Marlins site this morning so this is breaking news. That means one other thing... HELLO STADIUM! http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=1912223 Ugh. Why do sportswriters still buy this line of complete bullshit, ESPECIALLY from that scumbag Loria? Did anyone see the rings the Marlins got for winning the series? For a team that's supposively bleeding money, they sure have a budget for jewelry.