S5Dewey

According to what I read the Phils are assuming all of Clay's salary.

This trade boggles my mind when I think about it in reverse. If the LT weren't an issue and we had a chance to pick up a guy with ace stuff but a history of injuries in exchange for a High-A player we'd be cumming all over ourselves, we'd be so happy. Speaking of which, WTF do we need a High-A 2B for

Ok. You're crazy. Signing EE now would create a huge logjam at DH/1B. It's an enticing idea nontheless

I don't see a downside to this for the Phils unless it's the salary vs. injury gamble. They gave up a low ML'er for him. This could be the steal of the century.

And very few things will turn someone into a fat slob any faster than eggnog.

or stay under the limit. Either is a good possibility.

IMO the Mets don't have much that they'd be willing to give up in order to get JBJ. DD likes defense and the price would be high. Really high.

I'm surprised as well as disappointed. I thought they'd get more for him than a High-A infielder. It's looking more and more like a salary dump all the time.

I find that I disagree with Moon at my own peril but in this case I'm being perilous. I agree with everything ^^ in principle but IMO there's something left out of the yearly numbers. Pedey is a player who can hit to his position in the order. If he needs to get on base he can get on base and if he's at a spot in the order where he needs some power he can do that too. IIRC his best two months of OBP were when he was moved to the leadoff spot which skewed his OBP upward. That's why I don't think his yearly averages are indicative of his ability as a leadoff hitter. You could be right about his slowing down but his BA in 2016 was his best year since 2008 and his SLG & OPS was his best since 2011. Is he ever going to slow down? I don't see him ever falling off the table but when he starts to slow down his physique (and his balls-to-the-wall power swing) tells me that the first thing to go may be his power. He could very well slow down in 2017 and still be a very good leadoff hitter.

My old memory is failing me. Lest I be corrected, it was James himself who said it when he made a guest appearance on an episode of The Simpsons. http://nesn.com/2010/10/sabermetrician-bill-james-pokes-fun-at-himself-on-the-simpsons/ In the words of Earl Weaver - "Being right isn't everything. Being able to prove it is."

Things are never as bad as we fear nor as good as we hope for.

And there, ladies and gentlemen, is the best argument against all this nit-picking against Pedey's abilities. I'm going to say this really slowly. One has to get on base to be a baserunner - and the only player with a better OBP than Papi in 2016 was Dustin Pedroia. Sure, it would be great to have the player with the best OBP also be one of the best baserunners but we have to play the hand we're dealt. Since the goal of a leadoff hitter is to get on base I'd rather have our leadoff hitter have one of the best OBP's on the team even if he's not the best baserunner. I'll be so glad when they're playing baseball again. There's entirely too much confusing and conflicting data floating around and too much of it is being 'jumped on' by people trying to make their own case for something. IMO Bill James' character on Family Guy was right when he said, "I've made baseball about as much fun as doing your taxes". But.. it's the off season and the team is pretty well set, I guess. So what else do we have to talk about?

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who gets involved in these pissing contests.

This is an impossible discussion to be having until we can quantify "much". How many post-season innings does a pitcher have before their post-season stats mean "much"? I maintain that no pitcher will ever meet the normal qualifications for having an adequate sample size to make their stats mean "much". That means that statiscially every pitcher in every game is on nearly equal footing. You could start Fernando Abad against Max Scherzer and since neither of them have a large enough sample size to be significant one would have to say that based on statistics Abad vs. Scherzer is a nearly equal matchup. And that's ridiculous. I fail to understand why some posters are defending Price's post-season numbers. Pressure does different things to different people. Since the only difference between the regular season and the post-season is that the post-season is...well.. post-season it's different. To say that an pitcher with an ERA of 3.21 in the regular season and an ERA >5.50 in the post-season is insignificant is sticking our heads in the sand. I'm not hating on the guy. I think he's a great regular season pitcher, but he is what his numbers say he is - a great regular season pitcher who pitches poorly in the post-season. I like having the guy on the team, but I don't think we should run him out there in a post season game and expect him to give up only 2 runs in 6 innings until he proves he can do it.

Sure it means something. It means that if David Price (post season ERA 5.54 in 66 innings) is pitching against Max Scherzer (post season ERA 3.74 in 74 innings) the smart money is on Schezer in spite of the fact that Price's regular season ERA is better than Scherzer's. When I was a young man I played on a team with some guys who were appreciably older than I was. I can remember falling behind early in a game and being told, "Don't worry. The cream will always rise to the top. And it did. Especially in the playoffs.

I agree that it doesn't mean much.. but it certainly does mean something.

Price is 2-8 in 15 post season games over the past ten years with an ERA of ~5.50. He will never have enough post season appearances to qualify for having a large enough sample size to form a definitive opinion on his post-season performance. So what do you do? Keep running him out there as our ace, hoping for something good?? I said in the beginning that Price has a history of being a pitcher who can get you there but can't get you out the other side. Truth. I have no problem with Price being our #2 or #3 pitcher in the post-season based on what he does in the regular season. However, I'm going to stand by what I said.. that I'm hoping that Chris Sale is something David Price isn't in the post season.

Yep. I'm very aware of small sample sizes, but when it's the only sample size one has it'd be foolhardy to ignore it.

My thoughts exactly. I will no longer refer to him as The Fat Man, although I still won't call him "Panda". That's a term of endearment and the only way he's going to endear himself to me is by playing well enough to earn that salary - which I hope he does. I'd like nothing better than to be proven wrong about BOTH Hanley and Sandoval and right now I'm One-for Two.

Sure, but you have to admit that we're probably going to feel a lot better going into the playoffs with Sale as our leading pitcher rather than Price.

Yeah. You're right. His inability to put up W's in the post-season was something we knew about when we signed him. To carry that bit farther, it can be said that signing Price has necessitated our signing Sale. Ughh. Now we have to hope Sale can be what Price isn't in the post-season.

As the dust settles in my mind I come to realize that picking up Sale was a move made to get us ready for the playoffs. We already had a pitching staff good enough to get us to the playoffs but we had nobody who could reliably withstand the bright lights of Playoff Baseball. (yes, that's directed at YOU, Mr. Price). Having Sale on the staff may actually help Price in the playoffs when he's not being relied upon to be The Horse.

If someone had told me in October that both EE and Bautista would be available one week before Christmas I'd have told them that they are out of their mind.

..and I will say that Tito at one time said he liked having Wake in the rotation because it disrupted the timing of the opposing hitters, often times for more than one game. Assuming that he knows more about baseball than I do (which I'm more than willing to concede ) having Wright as the 6th starter would put him just before our top starters, which could only be a good thing. That would send Buch to the pen, something I see as a terrible waste of resources. However, we do have "too much pitching" and someone has to go there so it may as well be Buch in spite of the fact that I've been lobbying for him as a starter.

Interesting question. I can make a case for any one of the three, and even for any one of the remaining two for game #2. IMO it's going to be David Price. He's the guy making the most money, put up 17 wins last year in spite of the rocky start, and frankly IMO he'd be the one who'd be the most offended if he didn't get to start game #1. Ya gotta take care of those egos! Porcello seems to be a guy who sees himself as a supporting player, someone who doesn't have the need to be in the spotlight, but IMO he'd get game #2 because, after all, he IS the CY winner! - and has the most seniority of the three Aces. (and we do have three aces now). Sale gets Game #3 by default, but I see him as being enough of a competitor that he'll be challenging the other two all season long. I can see all three of these guys having competition between them, seeing who can outperform the others. Yep.. this could be a very fun season.