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Actually both were traded prior, with both deals being announced within 48 hours of the Rule 5 draft. ...

That's because you think "making the team" means making the 25 man roster. It doesn't. It means making the 40 man roster. Hernandez is already on it. So is Holt. So is Rutledge. But the only way the Sox can keep all three is if Hernandez starts the season in AAA. Its exactly the same as the bullpen and catcher situations. And these things do come up every year. Some player has a great spring training and suddenly the team can't get by without him. Hence why I started using the phrase the Jeff Bailey Award, after a previous spring training hero...

I thought we learned a long time ago that spring training has no real significance with respect to who makes the team or not. Teams appear to value depth more than a guy who can hit minor league pitching in March...

I did get that one backwards. It does make me wonder why Dombrowski granted him free agency if only top select him in the Rule 5 draft.

What if the team that has the better bullpen arm decides to hold out for Vazquez?

Disprove. Including one quick read that concluded that Carl Yastrzemski was not as clutch as many believe. Of course, the study was done on hitters in 1969 and 1970 and therefore skipped what would have been the best clutch stretch of his career. ..

I think those clauses were added for steroid users who fraudulently inflated their own values and then got caught. They might be known some day as the Ryan Braun Clauses....

Actually I've come across a few that disprove varying definitions of clutch.

With the exception of the last sentence, that's basically what I have been saying for 31 pages. ...

Well, Castillo is being parked in the minors because his baseball abilities are such that no team wanted him when he was exposed to waivers. Right now, he is the world's highest paid AAAA player. Sure he might not have cleared waivers is he signed a deal worth $1-2mill per year. But I don't hear him complaining about the money...

Cherington couldn't have been too high on him. He traded him for a broken down Shane Victorino...

His chances this April do appear slim. For some reason, the FO likes something about Rutledge. While Rutledge does have to make the team or be returned to Colorado, it is possible that a deal could be made between the two teams that negates his Rule 5 status. But even then he still has no options remaining...

How so? According to Kimmi, "The idea that people have not agreed on a definition of clutch does not invalidate the research that's been done. In fact, it makes the point stronger, because no matter what definition of clutch they use, the results come back the same." That sounds like no matter the proposed definition of "clutch," the results come back disproving it...

Of the two, whoever brings back more will be traded. I want to ay that should be Vazquez, but there isn't much to support it...

So is that the definition of clutch you think we need to use? That clutch is love? It might be even more fun to get a definition of love...

No. I don't. I don't think too many players would ever rise to being one of the best 750 players in the world unless they were constantly focused...

That means you are operating on the definition that NONE o the definitions are accurate. Of course, if none of them are accurate, that means no one knows what clutch is, which means saying it does exist is a complete fallacy..

Leon is the journeyman getting by on a BABIP-fueled hot streak for his only offensive output. But of the two, he also might be the better defender..

Sample size absolutely matters. He caught 52 innings last season, and that was the only season he wasn't rushed to the majors out of desperation. 52 innings is meaningless. And the rest of his sample really just shows how unprepared he was. DRS is measured against a league average, and while he was well below it with a -9 that first year, did anyone expect anything else? If you want to cling to "he sucked" behind the plate, fine. But the sample so far really doesn't mean anything...

He caught 84 games over a 2 season stretch. That most definitely is a small sample size. And while he wasn't stellar, what was it about his defense that you claim "definitively sucked?"

In 330PA, A-Rod had a .365 OBP and a .457 SLG in 734PA. Jeter had a .374 OB and a .465 SLG. As he had over twice as many plate appearances, Jeter had many more opportunities (some of which were successful) to get meaningful hits. The end result was it created the clutch illusion around Jeter. A-Rod was a virtually identical hitter in the post-season, but fewer opportunities and successes have left him with the illusion of being a choker...

Is there? Players have also given us strong anecdotal "evidence" that hitting is tied to eating chicken and that pitch counts don't matter. Why is there belief in clutch and stronger than anyone else's? For that matter, the entire "clutch is not choking" argument is also probably as poorly supported. Fans like to believe in chokers, but the actual definition of one appears to be far more related to reputation than to actual performance. Take A-Rod. He is labeled a choker because he has a reputation for not coming through in the post-season. But has he really? He has an .822OPS in the post-season. For comparison, Derek Jeter has a career .838OPS in the post-season. Yet A-Rod is the consummate choker while Jeter is considered such a post-season legend, he was nicknamed "Mr. November" for his late season clutch hits. And the difference between the two is a whoppingly negligible 0.016 OPS points? Granted, not all post-season plate appearances are clutch situations (whatever they are), but then the post-season isn't the only time for clutch hits. It's just the most memorable one. In a very long career, Alex Rodriguez has likely had his share of successful hits in clutch situtations. But we as fans tend to give players "choke" or "clutch" reputations based on small samples and selective samples, usually spread out over multiple seasons. Sure, a player can come through in the clutch, and a player can fail (or choke, if you prefer) in a key situation, but you really should not try to support either a key attribute of the player by citing "these are human beings" and then go on to ignore that these human beings change from year to year physically and emotionally (the typical range for sample sizes)..

Which would put the Sox in a worse position than they are by not dealing Craig. In order to trade Craig and pay some of his deal, he first has to be added to the 40 man roster, and whatever they pay then counts towards the Luxury Tax. If the Sox don't deal him and keep him off the 40 man roster, nothing counts towards the Luxury Tax...

Evidence? Ummm no. Belief is not evidence. People believe in the Tooth Fairy, the Loch Ness Monster, Pukwudgies, that Obama wiretapped the White House after being born in Kenya, Nicholas Cage's acting ability. Belief alone doesn't prove the existence of any of these things....

Depending on whose posts you read, that arguably already happened.