2014 MLB Season: How Many Pitchers Will Die For Our Sins?

Word is that Rob Manfred is the front-runner to succeed Selig as commissioner, with Tim Brosnan as a dark horse candidate and a small cadre of owners pushing for Tom Werner (chairman of the Red Sox).

Two Selig cronies and a minority owner of a shitty organization. That's a hell of a shit sandwich.

 

David Lennon is kind of a shitheel and has made stuff up before just for kicks (he's also a blatant homer), so I'm taking this with a grain of salt. That being said, the Yahoo writer raises a good point in that there was no way the Yankees were ever going to land any of Boston or Tampa Bay's pitchers -- as I've said multiple times in this thread, they have no chits of real value to trade, because their closest prospects are still at least two years away and it's not like anyone was going to trade a Price-level pitcher for Ichiro's corpse or whatever.

In other news, the Cubs are the #mysteryteam that won the claim on Hamels yesterday. Hamels in a Cubs uniform would be cool.

 

The Cubs already had the Marlon Byrd Experience once, I doubt they're looking for an encore.

 

He's signed to a relatively exorbitant contract, but Rube is a barely functional moron, so I wouldn't be shocked if he took Vitters and Brett Jackson for Hamels.

Honestly, though, I think this was the Cubs' gameplan all all along. They are fucking stacked in terms of prospects -- to the point that they keep having to change everyone's positions in the minors just to have a spot for them in the majors (Alcantara and Baez for sure; Russell is blocked by Castro, and I will bet money that they're praying Olt and his service dog figure out how to get on base so they can flip him and make room for Bryant).

The Cubs have a pretty solid farm. Instead of getting caught up in the free agent feeding frenzy (although I'm sure they'll make runs at Price and Lester and Scherzer), they're going to try to flip prospects for pitching. They'll make a legit offer. Whether the Phillies accept it is another question.

 

He's 25 and just made his way out of the minors, which makes him pretty much ancient in terms of being a prospect. Great start last night, but he got tarred and feathered this season in AAA, so let's wait for a larger sample size than six starts.

 

Well, as we've discussed many times, pitcher wins and losses are meaningless particularly for starters (well, losses have a small amount of statistical relevance, but they still aren't an effective gauge for a guy's talent or performance) -- in fact, that loss to Texas was only his third-worst performance of the season, not his worst. His ground / fly ratio is worrisome and I'm not convinced that his K / 9 rate is sustainable unless he develops a reliable third pitch (his changeup is awful and he shouldn't even bother with his hilarious attempts at sinkers). He's not awful but his peripherals, combined with his rather poor pitch economy, are cause for concern considering he's 25 and has already had Tommy John. His numbers are also a tad skewed given that he's been able to throw against Cleveland, Baltimore and Boston (all of whom have had prolonged offensive slumps this year ... or in Boston's case they just suck out loud).

 

Yes, and that's reflected in other statistics. A pitcher can't win a game on his own (although he can lose one, which is why I said losses have a tiny bit of statistical relevance, which is more than wins have -- a pitcher can't win a game unless the offense scores runs). A win is "the rest of the guys scored more runs than I gave up" -- and that's not a statistic that a pitcher has any meaningful control over. There are statistical outliers like no-hitters (although A.J. Burnett once threw one while walking nine dudes -- that was not what anyone would call a great performance) but in the grand scheme of things wins and losses don't tell you the story.

As I've pointed out before, Jeff Samardzija was one of the top three pitchers in the National League during the first few months of the season and he didn't get a win until June 7.

Yes, and Mo pitched the ninth inning -- he wasn't a starter. It also helped that he was the greatest reliever of all time and had a fucking ridiculous cutter.

Baltimore's bats have been quiet since the start of July, with Chris Davis having the worst run of his career, Manny Machado looking lost at the plate and Hardy having an inexplicable power outage (and Cruz's batting average has fallen back to Earth, as well). I'm an O's fan but they've been winning on prayers, toothpicks and duct tape for the last 45 days.

This may surprise you, but elbows that have already had a UCL replaced are not, historically speaking, more stable than pre-surgery elbows. All I'm saying is that there's a reason Greene was stuck in the minors until he was 25.