Oz27

For those who don't get it, Carson Cistulli's long-running Sherman Johnson love is kind of a long-running joke at this point. But I get it, too. The dude gets on base a lot. I hope he is given a chance in spring training.

Maybe? lol Out of interest, Anaheimbob, if you were the Angels GM and had the chance to trade Trout for Altuve, would you?

Wut? WAR is just a calculation of how many runs a player is worth. I don't get how that is "misleading to our needs".

Look, I didn't mean to come across as disrespectful. You're giving way too much leeway to Street though and nowhere near enough credit to Bedrosian. Last year didn't come out of nowhere for Street, it was the acceleration of a trend that had been coming for awhile. Like I said, his 2015 wasn't good and his finish to it was especially bad. He then followed that up with a horrendous 2016 and there isn't anything I've found which backs up the "he was injured all year" sentiment. As for why you excuse Bedrosian's previous seasons, you obviously factor those into any calculation of how much of a "sure thing" he is. But his performance fits in line with a typical age curve and it is hardly unreasonable for a player to struggle at 22/23 and break out at 24. As for "new school" style, there is nothing "new school" about just using Bedrosian in the seventh or eighth instead of the ninth. Scioscia has always stuck with set roles and has already indicated he will again next year, so I'm working within that parameter. In an ideal world, I'd love to see Bedrosian in the fireman role sabermetricians have longed for over many years. But just pitching the seventh or eighth, instead of the ninth, is not that or even close to that. In a traditional bullpen setup, the closer is probably the most important role and should go to your best pitcher. That, pretty clearly, is Bedrosian. Some of your points about Bedorisan not being a sure thing are valid, but he can still regress big time and be a lot better than anyone else in the bullpen. My point before was that who even is our second best reliever anyway? I guess it's one of Street, Bailey, Ramirez or Guerra, which is a pretty terrible field. If Bedrosian isn't our best reliever, well, who the hell is it? I never said anything about Scioscia never giving young players a chance, either. Sometimes he does. But he has a very long history of preferring veterans.

This is confirmation that we aren't spending big, right? At best we sign an Ivan Nova type but I'm thinking it's more likely we get a middle reliever and another fringe starter and call it a day. I'm expecting to head into the season as one of quite a few AL teams projected to win about 85 games. Sometimes teams at that level get a bit lucky, win way more games than their true talent and go on a playoff run. That level of talent isn't what we should aspire to (or what anyone should totally aspire to) but at least it gives us a chance, I guess. I see Houston as the best team in the division pretty comfortably, but we'll probably be somewhere in a wildcard battle with the likes of Seattle, Texas, Baltimore and New York (assuming Boston wins the east).

Yep. I suppose it's worth remembering his defense should be better than the projections, because he'll be playing an easier position full time. The more I think about this though, the more I feel Espinosa should be a platoon player rather than a full time regular.

You're right, I missed that. It still doesn't rate him at all though.

Steamer projects him at replacement level. I would be marginally more optimistic but a one win season from him would be a good outcome.

This isn't outrageous or anything, but Espinosa really isn't that good. He strikes out a lot and doesn't get on base. It will be fun to watch him play second but this is a marginal upgrade on what we had at second last year.

I expect we'll hear "experience" and "closer mentality" a lot in spring training.

If only we had Jose Altuve instead of Mike Trout they would be higher, right?

It's not a difficult stretch to understand part of his point, but his point overall is a difficult stretch. Firstly, Bedrosian's dominance last year blows away anything Jepsen or Morin ever did. They're not even in the same ballpark. Bedrosian did it at 24, a natural breakout year, and his previous struggles came at an age when most of his peers are still in the minors. It's extremely unlikely that success was a flash in the pan. Maybe he will regress, but not by enough to not be our best reliever. That is because he can regress a really really long way and still be our best reliever, as he was the best by a freaking mile last year and the next best (probably Guerra and Ramirez) raise pretty serious sustainability questions due to the fact they never strike anyone out. As for Street, his walks and strikeouts have been trending in the wrong direction for awhile. It's not like his collapse came out of nowhere either, he wasn't that good in 2015 and his second half of that season was really bad. His soft contact rate has been going down at a pretty rapid rate for years. He has been consistently losing fastball velocity for years and is now down to 88. He doesn't draw swinging strikes much at all anymore either. Last year wasn't an anomaly, it was the continuation of a trend and it's going to take something pretty out there - like him suddenly regaining velocity at 34 - to reverse it. Realistically, it would be very surprising for him to turn it around in a significant way.

Huh? You're kidding, right? Is Bedrosian an absolute sure thing to keep being really good? Probably not. Is there anyone in our bullpen who projects to be even as close to as good as him? Hell no. Who is our best reliever, besides Bedrosian? Street? Well he was as difficult to hit as a ball on a tee last year. Bailey? He's been terrible for years and improved to mediocrity in a brief stint with the Angels. Guerra? He has had one decent season and it wasn't anywhere near as good as Bedrosian's was. The gap between Bedrosian and the rest is f**king enormous. Bedrosian is entering his age 25 season, coming off a year in which his ERA and WHIP were barely over 1 and his K/9 was 11.4. That is pretty damn good. How is it even a discussion as to whether he is our best? I can't comprehend how you can seriously question that, it's just absurd. As for the veteran preference thing, there is pretty strong evidence which goes against what you say and little to support it. We just watched Jered Weaver have one of the worst starting pitching seasons ever and be allowed to see out the season. It's not all that long ago that Bobby Abreu was playing ahead of Mike Trout. It's hardly like those are isolated examples too.

In an ideal world I would love to see Bedrosian in a true fireman role. But if we're sticking with "traditional" bullpen roles, it's probably best to have the most talented pitcher in the role deemed most important. Also, Street is pretty clearly done. The idea of him pitching in high leverage spots is terrifying.

These projection systems always cop shit and you occasionally get obvious outliers. But trying to beat one of them is really hard because they are pretty accurate. If you took a random sample of PECOTA player projections and guessed whether each player would be better or worse than that projection, a coin flip would be right roughly as often as you would be. PECOTA will be out in a few weeks, I believe.

My head hurts.

Yeah, I really don't buy that theory. Pretty sure this was just about making a buck.

I don't get how Skaggs' projection is that optimistic, both in terms of performance and durability.

One bit that has been overlooked so far - the league clearly doesn't think too highly of Banuelos, since he went undrafted.

It's pretty unlikely it's for more than half a million I think - and it could be quite a bit less. I really don't know what that buys you, besides some yacht fuel *ducks*

That's the type of player I had in mind. Although teams do seem to have a strange obsession with having veteran backup catchers, which is probably a factor too.

Maybe so. I've tried to question teams less when they make moves for players based on their defensive skill set. As good as BP's catching stats are, for example, I'm sure teams have a complete metric which properly measures framing, game calling, blocking and throwing that could say something totally different to what we know.

You could make a good "Arte is cheap" argument, admittedly partially out of context, just by saying we've made two trades in five months in which one of the poorest teams - the Twins - has sent us cash.

I know this isn't the sort of thing that will keep any of us up at night, but I really don't get this.

Agreed (and I agree about the book too). I'm sure you're aware but if you're not, have a read of Tom Tango's blog. He's working for MLBAM trying to process Statcast data into publicly available defensive statistics and it's fascinating work. We're not far off having public data which is super reliable.