1. The Blue Jays already flipped Mike Napoli to the Texas Rangers for Frank Francisco in what is a terrible deal for the Rangers. If they are serious about giving Neftali Feliz a shot at starting, they are left with Alexi Ogando as the only potential closer on the team with pretty much no setup man to speak of. At best, Napoli might get 200+ AB's as the RH half of a platoon at 1B/DH because he ain't gonna be catching many games.
2. Marc Kroons is an interesting signing by the Giants. He's a 38 yo hard throwing closer who's played the last 5 years in Japan and broke the Japanese League record for velocity 3 years ago with a pitch that hit 100.6 MPH(161 km/hr). He was given a minor league contract with a spring training invite. Man, Brian Sabean has developed a taste for relievers who throw 100 MPH, huh? He'll compete with Guillermo Mota and Jeff Suppan for the final spot on the pitching staff.
3. I hope everybody was as moved by the picture of Willie Mays sitting with the Commissioner's Trophy while it was on display in NYC. Loved the mccoveychronicles.com caption about too much awesome in one room!
4. Brandon Belt was #26 on mlb.com's top 50 prospect list. There were a lot of good names on the list, but I think Belt should have be just a bit higher and that Zack Wheeler should have made the list.
5. There's a link up on mccoveychronicles.com and on Splashing Pumpkins to an article about Voros McCracken, they dude who discovered the whole world of DIPS and BABIP. I believe that BABIP is a grossly misused stat by many internet commentators who don't really understand it, and there has been a lot of refinement to it since Voros first came up with it, but it's still a great story. Understanding that history as well as DIPS and BABIP are essential to understanding what's going on in the game today, from an understanding of hitting and pitching to a greatly enhanced understanding of the role of defense in baseball. This is a must-read article for any serious baseball fan!
6. BA.com comes out with their Top 10 Giants prospects tomorrow. We'll see how Baggs ranks them and hopefully get some insight into how the Giants see their own prospects as Baggs is the best source for that info. Time to run out to Barnes and Noble to see if they have the Prospect Handbook in or else order it directly from BA.
7. Chris Ray signed a minor league contract with the Seattle Mariners. IMO, Ray should have been offered arbitration instead of Ramon Ramirez, but it was obvious Bochy liked Ramirez better and he did do a fine job down the stretch. I just don't have a lot of faith in Ramirez going forward and think Ray has better stuff.
8. MLBTR had a poll today on who readers thought was the best remaining Starting Pitcher on the FA market. My choice was Rodrigo Lopez who pitched for the D'Backs last year and was a very nice innings eater for them.
9. Todd Wellemeyer signed a non-guaranteed deal with the Cubs. I didn't know there was such a thing as a non-guaranteeed deal in baseball. Since there obviously is, I wonder why we don't see more of them.
10. Armando Galarraga, of near perfect game fame, was traded to the D'Backs. I'm not too worried about this move. Perfect games can be very fluky and Galarraga's overall ERA was 4.49 with a measly 4.6 K/9. The BOB is a much more unfriendly place to pitch than Comerica Park. I don't expect Galarraga to do well there.
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Wheeler vs Matzek, who would you take, and why? The scouts obviously loves Matzek more (ranked #33).
ReplyDeleteWheeler vs Matzek? Really too early to tell. It's harder to find good LHP's, so maybe Matzek. I'm very satisfied with Wheeler though. Just out of the air I'd say Wheeler has a higher ceiling but Matzek may be more likely to reach his? Matzek's performance in the pros so far hasn't been all that. Matzek was one of the names on the mlb.com Top 50 list that kind of jumped out at me as "hey, if he's on there, Zack Wheeler should be too!"
ReplyDeleteI totally agree about the Rangers' trade, don't know what they were thinking. Well, other than that they want Perez to stay their closer. The only way that makes sense is if they believe he can't be a starter, but most commentators appear to think that he can be.
ReplyDeleteI like the Kroons pickup too. Should be good battle for the last spot, I hope Kroons win it, that would be a great comeback story for him (according to article I read, he made $13M in Japan, so he's not hurting, know what I mean?).
I was a bit shocked by Belt's spot in the list, most commentators I've read said that he is one of the best bats in the minors right now, so that is low relative to that statement.
Wheeler I can understand falling, as he was in the 40 range last season and he didn't really do much of anything in 2010 while a new batch of prospects came in.
BA agree with you in the Adrianza over Crawford arguments. They generally agree with your ordering where matching, but you have Neal ranked higher, as well as Runzler and Jones (they might have dropped Runzler, I recall somewhere someone noted that besides games, BA also go by number of days in majors, or something like that). Lastly, they liked Surkamp much more than you did.
Yeah, agree on the whole Voros and BABIP thing. It is much like the Moneyball thing, suddenly everybody hates players who hit .333 BA because he doesn't walk much, they don't understand the tradeoff in offensive value, went the opposite side of the pendulum there. BABIP they seem to understand how it works, but they don't understand that there are pitchers who can control their BABIP to be lower than others.
I liked Ray over Ramirez as well, mainly because of his successful closer experience. I think that is handy to have in bullpen. I see why the Giants chose not to offer both arbitration - else there would be no spot for improvement, but perhaps they would have been better off not offering arbitration to either but sign them to minor league deals like Mota and give him auto invite to battle for spot.
Heck, make the same offer to Ray NOW since they are letting others battle for that spot, he probably would have as good a chance as Mota, Kroons, or Suppan.
I can still hear the announcer at the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes vs. San Jose Giants during the playoffs: "Now batting... MIKE TROUT!" Nothing fishy about his play, I think. At least I got to see him early!
ReplyDeleteAnon,
ReplyDeleteYeah, Trout sure didn't do anything to detract from his ranking as the best prospect in baseball that night, did he? That was on impressive performance!