I'm not ignoring defense. His defensive numbers are sound. I don't trust those numbers as much as I trust the offensive numbers though, just based on the Soriano anomaly. I do trust the offensive numbers.

This should be a fun question. Take salary out of the equation. Who would you rather have Frank, Juan Pierre or Alfonso Soriano? I don't want a long, hemming-and-hawing answer. Pierre or Soriano?

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Fire Phil Emery

The grownups are talking here. Move along.

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Fire Phil Emery

I'll take Frank

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

I edited Irish Boy's quote because I made a mistake and it looked like it was mine, bonehead. I didn't change any of the post's content at all.

Any guy with a .400 OBP is going to be a better option leading off than a guy who only gets on 33% of the time. You may think a guy like Thome leading off is a radical idea and as I clearly stated in your defense, most- maybe all- managers agree with you. No one has done it. But the numbers obviously support it. That really can't be argued. I would think in this time when every team has SABRmetricians on the payroll, some manager would have been more receptive to it. But baseball is a traditional game and traditions- even silly ones like the idea that a fast guy who rarely gets on is a good leadoff man- die hard in baseball. It's not like it's never been done. Brian Downing was a poor man's Thome and he had success leading off for some good teams.

Since I hate seeing you get your ears boxed by a vile Cub fan, I'm going to give you a suggestion for your argument. SABRmetric guys hate Aparicio and Wills because they "didn't get on base enough". Yet those two guys were leadoff men and key offensive components on many, many excellent baseball teams. So maybe they're doing something that is not so easily measured as OPS. Perhaps the threat of running and what it can do to the psyche of a picther (in addition to affecting his rhythm by forcing him out of his windup) is more valuable than the concrete 90 feet gained by a stolen base.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Name WAR Dollars Salary Wasted Cash
John Danks 4.1 $16.50 3.5 -
Gavin Floyd 3.9 $15.50 2.8 -
Mark Buehrle 2.8 $11.30 14 $2.70
Jake Peavy 1.8 $7.10 15 $7.90
Matt Thornton 1.6 $6.50 2.2 -
J.J. Putz 1.1 $4.50 3 -
Bobby Jenks 1.1 $4.20 7.5 $3.30
Freddy Garcia 0.8 $3.00 1 -
Sergio Santos 0.7 $2.80 0.5 -
Scott Linebrink 0 ($0.10) 5 $5.10
Tony Pena -0.4 ($1.70) 1 $2.70

sorry that's hard to read. point is $13MM wasted on peavy and linebrink.not to mention the prospects given up for peavy.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

I don't understand that chart, Hatchetman. Are those the players with higher salaries than their value in 2010?

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Fire Phil Emery

yes. it looked good in excel.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

I would never bat a guy like Jim Thome or Adam Dunn leadoff, despite their outstanding OBP. They are sluggers, so you want them hitting with guys on base. Besides, guys like Thome, are not ideal leadoff men because he's more of a station to station guy, when running the bases. He really puts no pressure on the pitcher/defense to speak of, when on base.

But I think your basic premise is accurate. Pierre's got no power. To be really valuable a player should either have the ability to produce runs, (HR's and RBI) or be a guy that has a high batting average and on-base percentage, with good speed, who can score lots of runs. Pierre lacks the high OBP, due to his lack of walks. I understand Ozzie's desire to obtain a proven leadoff hitter. But the team plays in a bandbox (at home) and should tailor their ballclub to take advantage of it. Were they playing at Petco, having impotent waterbugs slapping the ball around, scratching out base hits here and there and trying to run the bases might make more sense. In their park, a left fielder should be hitting 25 or more Homers and knocking in 100 or more. The leadoff position should have been filled by a middle infielder.

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Go Cubs!!!!

Never mind, there used to be a way to imbed charts, but I can't figure it out.

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Fire Phil Emery

I guess that's what bernstein means when he says Player Z "owes" Team Y X amount of money.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

I think some of those numbers are a little misleading, Hatchetman, in that you are playing as much for future performance as you are for this year. Danks and Floyd are the most overpaid, but I think that's probably OK. The Buehrle contract is a little bit harder to stomach, and they would be really foolish to re-up him for anything close to that after 2011. The Peavy trade was probably bad.

Or, to put it another way, I think I'd rather overpay for Danks than underpay for AJ.

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Fire Phil Emery

Have you ever had an original thought?

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Fire Phil Emery

A couple things here. Every team would like to have Brett Butler leading off. He isn't available. The Sox are not getting production from the leadoff spot and they're not getting production from left or DH. Those things are all tied together. Let's leave Dunn out of it. The Sox couldn't have him without radically altering their payroll structure. But Thome was willing to come for nearly nothing. Instead, the Sox figured out a way to effectively replace Thome with Pierre. Does that seem like a recipe for a better offense to you? We all know Guillen would never do something as radical as lead a guy like Thome off, so maybe it's a pointless argument. In fact, Ozzie rarely does anything on offense that the other manager isn't expecting. That's a big reason why his running game is not effective. But that's another topic entirely.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

It's confusing, but his graph is supposed to illustrate that Danks and Floyd are most outperforming their actual salaries, as they have negative "Wasted Cash" amounts.

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1926-1931-1934-1942-1944-1946-1964-1967-1982-2006-2011

OK, I see it now. That makes more sense.

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Fire Phil Emery

the chart's too hard to read

danks is worth 16.5, he's making 3.5, therefore wasted cash = "-"

he's actually worth like 13 million more than he's paid. no wonder he passed on the long term deal they offered.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

I agree, that Thome over Pierre in their lineup is far better. I just wouldn't have bat him leadoff. I wouldn't want Pierre at all. I see his strengths and his weaknesses and in that ballpark, his strengths are minimized and his weaknesses maximized.

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Go Cubs!!!!

Yeah, I see that now. That makes a lot more sense, and lines up with intuition quite a bit more. Wow, that Peavy deal really did blow.

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Fire Phil Emery

Easy to say the peavy deal blows now. While most were celebrating the trade, I was critical of the deal and said the Sox would regret making it. (Also that Peavy would have an ERA at least a run higher, that Danks and Floyd would win more games and Peavy would spend at least a month on the DL)It's called having an original thought...

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Go Cubs!!!!

Where's the original part?
Seriously nothing groundbreaking here. Peavy always spends a month on the DL. He was a NL pitcher at Petco, OF COURSE it's going to be higher coming into the AL and to a hitter park. That just simply goes without saying. We all knew that.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

You also said his ERA would be higher because of US Cellular Field, which FAIL. Plus, none of those predictions were particularly uncommon at the time of the trade.

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Fire Phil Emery

I agree

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With what?

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

That you have to be high to think MLB is more popular than the NFL. I also think putting a power guy that is slower than a 5 year old in the lead off spot is baseball stupid.

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So you KNEW Danks and Floyd would both win more games than Peavy??? Okay....so when I made those statements and many said that Peavy would win 18 or more and with many hitters not having faced him before, he would dominate, you also thougth he would not fare as well and get hit more, as he did?? You say "OF COURSE" now, but you didn't say it then. I had all kinds of people claiming I was crazy to think Peavy would have an ERA a full run higher and that I was just trying to rain on the parade Sox fans were having, over getting Peavy. "We all knew that"....BULLSHIT!

I'm sure everyone including Kenny Williams knew all that too, when they agreed to take on that horrible contract, when the trade was made too HUH??

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Go Cubs!!!!

I don't want to go around and around with MLB vs. NFL again. First we have to agree on the definition of popularity. Then we have to be able to make an apples to apples comparison. Apparently football fans think the comparison of the television ratings of 1 of 512 football games to 1 of 4860 baseball games is an equivalent one. I don't.

As far as this conversation is concerned, why do you feel speed is such a premium in the leadoff spot?

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

He puts the ball in play. He is one of the few everyday players that have more walks than he strikes out.

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"I don't want to go around and around with MLB vs. NFL again, but now I'm going to type a bunch of stuff about it".

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Speed at the top of the lineup is good because when your best hitters come up (2-3-4) he can go first to third or 2nd to home or even 1st to home on a hit. Baseball is played 90 feet at a time and if you have the speed to take an extra 90 feet that is an advantage for your team.

He's about average when it comes to getting on base at best. I'm not going to sit here like Maddux Boy and tell you strike outs are good. But they're certainly not as bad as you're making them out to be. For the most part an out is an out. Yeah, a strikeout rarely advances a runner, but it's also never a double play. Unless Juan Pierre's dumbass is caught stealing on a strike 'em out, throw 'em out.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don