a700hitter

Find me a single post where I called Youkilis "s***". Otherwise, shut up. I think he did better than most people expected last season, but I never thought he was a bad player. Duh? Did n't I post a couple of times that I was in favor of the WMP trade when it was made? BTW, WMP didn't have an accident or anything. He was a trainwreck. He couldn't field or make contact at the plate, plus he had no instinct for the game. Our scouting should have picked this up.

I appreciate your apology. With few exceptions, while we have disagreed passionately, we have managed to keep our exchanges respectful.

I don't know the full context of this post, but it seems that someone else compared Youk to Eckstein without power. My reply that "who needs Eckstein without speed" could have been sarcasm. While I have been in favor of trading Youk in the past, I would never have made that comparison in a serious vein. I can assure you that i wasn't the only one with those observations. Jim Rice and Jerry Remy openly questioned his big swing and advised that he should shorten it. I have very publicly admitted that I was wrong about Pedroia. So, your point is that if I am wrong about a player, my opinion should be disgarded? Should Rice and Remy be ignored too? What about all the NFL coaches and GM s that passed on Johnny Unitas and Curt Warner or the experts that thought Larry Bird was too slow and couldn't jump? Should all of their future opinions be disregarded. It's typical of a poor argument to bring up irrelevant situations to bolster a weak argument. We have not been discussing Pedroia or Youkilis. We have been discussing Arroyo's value as a #5 starter. He's solid. It can't be denied. You claim that this discussion is so unimportant to you that it is not worth your time to engage in a statistical analysis supporting your argument. Oddly enough, it is worth your time to research my posts from almost 3 years ago. What's up with that? Either you don't realize that this is irrelevant information that doesn't support your argument, or you are so obsessed with discrediting my opinion that you will research years of my posts to do so. Either way, you are being hypocritical and disingenuous when you claim that this doesn't matter to you. Other posters have pointed this out. BTW, bringing up irrelevant posts in an argument to discredit a poster with regard to a different topic is a smear tactic. You should stick with arguing a point rather than arguing with the poster. These were the lessons that I learned from the WMP trade I never said that it wasn't a reasonable conclusion, but you tend to state your theories as rock solid conclusions. They are not. They may be reasonable conjecture, but they are still conjecture. Maybe the Sox traded Arroyo, because they thought that he had topped out. If he had stayed the additional year and pitched well, the FO might have changed its mind about him, or he might have bombed out and ended up in the bullpen as a spot starter with no real FA FMV. Neither of us know how it would have tured out if he had stayed, but given his subsequent performance it is relatively clear that they should have gotten more for him than WMP.

When was this? And who is talking about Youkilis? I love the posters who look to tar me with a past opinion about a player that is not being discussed, but they will never hold the FO accountable for a truly terrible trade like the Wily Mo trade. Somehow, my judgment is impugned because of a past mistake, but the FO is still doing a great job, despite Wily Mo and Lugo and others. Anyway, to address the irrelevant case of Youkilis that you have interjected, prior to last year, it was my opinion that Youk was a .280 hitter with 15 Hrs and 80 RBI. I didn't expect him to step up his power game at age 28. Even though I would have sold high on him if the Sox got Teixeira to alleviate the logjam at 1st and 3rd base. I never said that he wasn't any good. While wins may not be the best indicator of how a pitcher oitches from year to year, if he consistently puts up 10 to 15 wins every year and 200+ innings, the guy has established himself as a very reliable back of the rotation pitcher.

The last time the Red Sox had a 5th starter with 10 or more wins it was Arroyo. Fifth starters with 200+ innings and 10+ wins are very rare. Just because the Reds overpaid the guy doesn't mean that the Red Sox would have done the same. If he had remained with the Red Sox, there is no way of knowing if he would have reached a $10 million/year fair market value. Bulcholz was a disaster last year. It was his terrible performance that was probably most responsible for finishing behind the Rays. As far as the difficulty of pitching in the ALE, I think there is a lot of hype. If you pitch on the Yankees or the Sox, you only have to face one of the big powers in the division, so it's not all that tough. Wakefield with his puff ball has put up 15+ wins a number of times. Burkett won more than 10 games. Moose won 20 for the only time in his career after he lost his velocity and was throwing slop.

Welcome. I feel your pain. I also live behind enemy lines. In what part of NY do you live?

:lol:Do you think the players hire agents to educate them about the details of the Collective Bargaining Agreement? The agent is hired to get the player the best financial deal. Boras screwed up, not Varitek.

I realize that it does, but I had never before heard or read anything making that connection. Even though he was being sarcastic, his sarcasm seems to be directed at some criticism he perceives regarding the 2000 team. I had never heard that criticism.

The last paragraph of this article is interesting. Yankee fans on this forum have claimed that the 2000 team went into cruise control in September when they almost blew their entire lead. Torre's book suggests that maybe they were drying out from roids in September and got a new supply for the playoffs. http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/yankees/2009/01/27/2009-01-27_in_the_yankee_years_david_cone_spills_ju.html

This is certainly not going to aid any reconciliation between the Yanks and Torre. I think it has closed that door for good. He did it to himself. He acted like a petulant child during his last salary negotiation and he followed up with insults in a book. His exit was not at all graceful.

Do the Sox really need to save face if they don't sign him? They sell out every game.

Your argument makes no sense in the context of our discussion. It went like this. You said the current offer was a genius offer. I said that it is only a genius offer if he accepts it. I don't know how anyone could dispute that. If he doesn't sign, not making any offer would be just as "genius" as the current offer. You asked me what I would offer him. I replied that I would keep the guarantee at $5 million but I would add incentives that would allow him to get to $10 million. If he hits the incentives, it means that he had a good year. That would be good news for the team. Again, I don't see how that point could be disputed. Here's where your logic went off the mark. You reponded to my proposed offer by saying "why would they offer him that contract when he already turned down $10 million guaranteed." The logical link is lost here. To boil it down. You like the current offer. I think he will reject it. I proposed an incentive contract. You say that he already turned down $10 million guaranteed. You are confident that he will sign for the current offer, but you scoff at my proposal, because he already rejected an offer for more? You think that is an effective response? Are you saying that an incentive laden contract with the same guarantee is too rich? If that is what you are saying, you didn't say it very clearly at all. If my proposal is too rich, then we can agree to disagree. I don't think he takes the current offer, and if he doesn't, there is no genius to the current offer. I think they need Tek in 2009, because the alternatives are not good ones. I am no big fan of Varitek's. I think that he should be PH for in almost every pressure situation from the 7th inning on. I just don't like Kottaras and Bard as the alternative. I think an incentive deal is the way to go. If he falls on his face, only $5 million is guaranteed. If he rebounds (a good thing), he makes more, but wouldn't he deserve more if he rebounds?

The question has never been whether there is or has been a market for this garbage. There is and always has been a market for scandalous information. How do you come to the conclusion that I am trying to deny that there is a market for this type of material? You are way off the mark. The issue is whether there has been a breach of trust. The issue is whether this action is antithetical to the image that Torre and the press cultivated for him for 12 years. The issue is whether this damages his image.

One thing about you Example is that you are consistent. You always get it wrong. I never said that I don't know the prospects or that I don't follow them. I just don't get excited about them until they hit the majors. Remember the whole debate where i told you that I don't get excited or emotional about guys that I haven't seen play. I do read the scouting reports and look at stats, and I have seen this guy in Spring games. IMO Bard and Kottaras are not okay for 2009. Neither one is ready to be the primary guy in 2009. When Tek came up, he caddied for Hatteburg for 1 year before he took the reins. Hatteburg was better than Kottaras or Bard. Nice try example, but as usual, you never get it right when it come to understanding the posts of other members.