angelduck

People put way too much emphasis on being able to bunt. It's a good thing to have a guy who can't bunt in the 2-hole so Scioscia isn't tempted to waste outs.

You know who else has had his chances? Bourjos.

Glad to see you finally coming around dude, its about time.

Conger is the new Napoli, and Hester is the new Mathis. It's really sad that a young local guy with decent upside with the bat isn't ever going to get a chance.

The Oilers really helped the Ducks by  beating Chicago.
 
Well done Oilers!!

Congrats on the win bucbrett

No reason to not have Calhoun
Calhoun, Wells, utility IF, and backup catcher would be the bench if carrying 12 pitchers.
Trumbo backs up 1B, and on those days Wells can DH. Calhoun becomes #1 backup OF.

He sucked in 2012. So another way to phrase it would be that for most of the time he was a good pitcher he averaged 92+MPH. And now he's at 88.

To be fair, they don't get the first pick of the donuts. Cold coffee and coconut glaze donuts is sufficient punishment. 

I've long (well, in the last year and a half) said that Wells is the third worst contract on the team. The two others are 10 year deals.

Was the other player wearing a Mike Scioscia hockey jersey?

Vinny Del Negro > Mike Scioscia
And, this is including the ability to manage a baseball team

They should have thrown Gonzalez out of the game. All 14 of them.

Agreed with Iannetta being the best option. His slowness could actuallly be a good thing if it helps keep Pujols from trying to stretch extra bases when he shouldn't
 
Where does Wells rank on your scale by the way?

the thing is, it hasn't played out that way so far. And I'm not convinced Callaspo will hit .280 .360 ever out of the 2 slot. he has never really hit that well there.

You seem to be getting hung up on the semantics, not saying that to be dismissive in any way, it just seems you just have issues with what is being defined as more than what it's actually trying to measure..  Would you like it more if they called it VAR?  Value over replacement?
 
WAR tries to assign a set $$ value to a win for the purpose of comparing value to a team.  Any player that does more to help you win (defense, playing time, offense), typically has more value.   People bring up that Harrison had a greater WAR than Weaver -- when you consider he pitched 24 more innings and may have done a better job of preventing runs after the park adjustments, it's really not as ridiculous as some are trying to make it.  Is there no benefit to a team getting more quality innings from a guy?  
WAR usez runs as the penalty/bonus simply because run prevention is just as important a factor as run scoring is.  Recent studies have shown that run prevention may actually have more of an impact on winning than offense.  The irony being that when it's all said and done all the math and new fangled formulas simply support the old notion that pitching and defense wins championships.  I understand your issue is with the values themselves but you cannot deny that position and defensive position has a massive impact on how valuable a player is.  A shortstop that will provide league average defense while hitting like a 1B is a massive boost to a team.  If you put a 1B at SS, how much would the pitching suffer?    If that SS is also a gold glover.  How much more valuable is he?   If that same team has a 1B above the league average for all players but below the league average for 1B, is it not dealing with a relative weakness at 1B?  Would that weakness be even more acute if he was also a poor defensive 1B?  That's the value WAR is trying to put a figure to.
If you were to consider the positional adjustment a BONUS to positions up the middle instead of a penalty for playing the corners does it somehow change things?
 
I think the biggest issues with WAR are tied into the defensive metrics in place.  They are still relatively new and much more volatile, as such there is criticism there. Even great defensive players can show some massive variances in the metrics from year to year.
 
Personally I don't see the mythical replacement player as a problem -- it's better to have that value be fluctuate based on league wide results than to have a fixed value that has little to no bearing on what the league tendencies are.   As an example, QUALITY STARTS.  If ever there was a stupid stat it's QS. it's defined by 6 innings and no more than three runs allowed -- a 4.50 ERA.   So, a guy goes 8 innings and allows 4 runs, still a 4.50 but no longer a QS.  A guy goes 9 innings allowed 4 runs, a lower ERA but not a QS.   If those values were based around the league average ERA -- then the QS data might be useful.
 
I think the people who have said that WAR is best used in conjunction with other stats have the best grasp on the situation.  It's a nice statistic to use for a quick and easy comparison, but it shouldn't be the end all be all.  
I don't think there will ever any one stat that can measure everything perfectly.

Yeah, I'm pulling for Conger too. I hope he makes all of his throws and does well defensively from here on out. I don't want to see Hester or Carlin as our backup catcher this season. Conger has an incredible bat and at best will catch 1-2 a week. He's proven he can call a good game too. 

Get ready to be disappointed.

Really bad article. The replacement player makes perfect sense when you think of it as a player who is on a AAAA level. Vernon Wells was worse than the AAAA outfielder in 2011. WAR really does make perfect sense, and it is effective when evaluating a player's total game (Baserunning, hitting, fielding). I personally prefer wOBA and WRC+ for offense over WAR though. And WAR for pitchers cannot be compared to WAR for a positional player. So the whole argument that WAR sucks because it says Kendrick =Weaver is bogus. The whole point of the stat is that it gives us a guideline of how successful a player will be in the future. This is why RBI's and batting average suck so much. A player could have 100 RBI hitting 4th in the Tigers lineup, but the same player could have 30 RBI batting first in the Astro's order for example. That's the same player, only difference is that one of the player's is in a shit lineup and the other is in a good lineup. It's useless, and it's kind of a shock to me that the MLB still uses them every time a player steps to a plate.

To be fair their are a myriad different ways to calculation a WAResque stat.
Oakland's internal WAResque stat actually had Miggy more valuable than Trout -- FanGraphs and baseball-reference's clearly had Trout>>>Miggy.
No WAR calculation without incorporating CERA or Erstad grit characteristics is disrespecting Mathis and Michael "professional hitter" Young. Why Anger Mathis and The Professional Hitter?

Blue Jackets win 4-3 in shootout.
 
 
2009-10:   Fall for Hall
 
2010-11:   No Wins for Hopkins
 
2011-12:   Fail for Nail
 
2013:        Slow, Painful Death for Seth

I'm not worried because of ST, I'm worried because of 3 straight post-seasonless seasons and big questions about the pitching staff after Weaver, healthy Wilson, Vargas, and Frieri. 

Burnett threw a bullpen yesterday and will throw another one tomorrow, and is then supposed to get into games later this week.
 
I don't think there's any reason to expect him to miss real games at this point.

After the season he had, a raise of only $20K and being moved to the corner outfield has to sting, just a little.

Daniels is really good. It was quite wise for them to promote Daniels in November per the report. As long as Daniels is in charge the Rangers are going to be dominant force in the AL.
I always thought Nolan was more of a PR stint than somebody who actually bad baseball operation decisions.

Don't have a huge problem with the contact play. I have a serious problem with how the Angels use it. In other words, I don't like that we use it every time.