The Little Things Matter

With all the big deals in the game of baseball the past couple of days, I wanted to make sure I didn’t neglect a couple of the lesser names on the market, either those that have signed or those that are on the brink of inking a new deal.

Why is Marlon Byrd such a hot option? I know he had a nice season with a .283 average, 20 homers and 89 RBI for the Rangers, but does any of that really excite anyone in fantasyland? Maybe not, but the Cubs certainly appear to want to add the 32 year old to their outfield for next season, that if they can ever rid themselves of malcontent Milton Bradley. As for Byrd, I know last season was his first full year in the bigs 9at-bat wise), but he has been over 400 at-bats in each of the past three seasons. Still, he has only one season with more than 10 homers, and he owns a career line of .279/.340/.422, and that ain’t much better than average folks. BY the by, here is how he has done per 162 games in his career: .279-12-69-78-8 with a .762 OPS. Don’t know about you, but I don’t think anyone should be too excited about adding that bat, especially the Cubs since they already have a virtually identical batter in Kosuke Fukudome who hit .259-11-54-79 with six steals last season.

Mike Cameron is a Red Sox. What can we expect from him in 2010? Glad you asked. You can read my thoughts in Breaking Down: Mike Cameron.

Jeff Francoeur hit .319 over his final 36 games last season, and overall he .311 with a .498 SLG in 75 games with the Mets, a marked improvement over his early season work with the Braves (.250, .352 SLG in 82 games). With late season numbers like that you would think that he was fully healthy at the end of the year. In fact, you might think he was injured earlier in the year given the struggles with the Braves. Well if you thought that you would be wrong. Turns out Frenchie had left thumb surgery after the season, and the thumb was so jacked up that the doctors needed to replace a ligament (one was taken from his forearm). He should be fully healed by the time the season starts, and he is clearly one tough cookie.

Matt Holliday was reportedly offered an 8-year deal for $128 million by the Cardinals. However, Buster Olney of ESPN refuted the St. Louis Post-Dispatch report and said the team doesn’t want to go beyond five years. No matter what the offer is, it doesn’t seem likely to be enough to entice Matt Holliday, at least for the moment. To read more about the whole Holliday saga give Ryan Boyer’s Is it five years or eight years for Holliday?

I gave my thoughts on the outlook of Hideki Matsui in his new home with the Angels in Breaking Down: Hideki Matsui.

John Lackey and the Red Sox continue to hold off on officially ratifying the 5-year deal that is thought to be worth $85 million. Looks like the Sox want to have the contract include some language in it to protect themselves from any previously suffered injuries, should the arise again. It’s really just semantics – don’t worry, the deal will get done.

Seems like Ben Sheets is still angling for a one year deal worth $12 million. Of course that includes a boatload of bonuses built into the deal, but after missing all of last season is there really a team out there that is crazy enough to offer him that much even if its almost entirely incentive based?

By Ray Flowers

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A Wonderful Wednesday

In today’s The Day in Baseball entry, I’ll highlight the plight of an all-time great, alert you to a guy who has been crazy hot of late, and point out a decision, about four months in coming, that might actually, finally, end up coming to fruition.

Did you catch Marlon Byrd’s act over the past two days? In case you didn’t, let me review it for you. Byrd played in three games, went deep twice, knocked in seven runners and produced nine hits. Yeah, he is pretty much en fuego right now.

If you missed it, Adam Jones’ season is over as he was transferred to the 60-day DL with a sprained ankle. It shouldn’t require surgery, or be a long term issue, but the team realized that he would likely need something like three weeks to recover, and that would basically take them to the end of the year (plus, putting him on the 60-day DL allows the club to add another player to the roster). As a result of the injury Jones falls just short of his first 20 homer season, he finishes with 19 long balls, though a .277-19-70-83-10 season certainly isn’t anything to be upset about in his second full season.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see Tim Lincecum return to the hill this weekend. He was in the dugout on Tuesday after being forced to miss the start because of a sore lower back, and he was caught smiling and moving around fairly well. As for the Giants offense, there is no word when it might be back in action. In nine games in September the G-men have recorded more than three runs just twice. Pathetic.

Could it finally be happening? Could The World’s Biggest Idiot, aka Phillies’ manager Charlie Manuel, finally be conceding that he is destroying the moral of his club by continuing to throw Brad Lidge out there in the ninth inning? “…I want to be loyal to him and things like that, but at the same time, like I told him last night, winning the game is the first priority.” Ryan Madson owners can rejoice. It looks like you might get a handful of saves out of the man you have held on to for months waiting for the Phillies to do the right thing. Of course, Brett Myers could end up swooping in to pick up a few saves chances as well, so perhaps Madson owners shouldn’t be too excited after all.

Albert Pujols hit two bombs today and is just three homers short of his first 50 season. Just spit balling here, but is it possible that 20 years from now we will be talking about Pujols as the greatest “steroid free” home run hitter of all-time? Let’s play a little game of what if. (1) Pujols is just 29 years old. (2) In nine seasons he has never hit fewer than 32 home runs in a season. (3) He has averaged 40 home runs a season over his nine year career. (4) If Pujols plays another 10 years while averaging 35 homers a season he will end up with something along the lines of 720 home runs. That would still leave him behind Hank Aaron and his 755 home runs. Just goes to show you how amazingly consistent that Mr. Aaron was in his career.

Huston Street continues to make progress with that sore biceps muscle, but the latest word out of Colorado is that he still isn’t likely to return to action this week as previously hoped. In his place, the Rockies will continue to go with Franklin Morales who has converted 5-straight save chances in his last five appearances during which time he has allowed only five base runners and not a single run. Overall Morales has a 2.60 ERA, a.1.13 WHIP and 36 Ks in 34.2 ABs, and that’s pretty darn good no matter where you are pitching.

Trivia Question: How many straight seasons has Braden Looper won at least 11 games? The answer is three – each of his seasons as a starter. Do you know how many NL hurlers have won at least 11 games each of the past three seasons if we include this season? Try seven (including Lopper): Jamie Moyer, Derek Lowe, Adam Wainwright, Ted Lilly, Jason Marquis and Chad Billingsley.

By Ray Flowers

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What is My Value?

I’m always fascinated by how people evaluate player worth on a weekly basis. Therefore, I’m always interested to see the weekly recaps of free agent bidding in the National Fantasy Baseball Championship, or the NFBC. These leagues are made up of 15 teams with 30 person rosters, so there is always a lot of prospecting going on each week as people are basically forced to pick up players, in most cases, that they hope will be able to help them in the future because very, very few full time players are on waivers at one time (therefore, anytime someone has a big week, you can almost be certain they will be a hot property). Here is a review of some of the players that were rostered off waivers this past weekend. Listed are the range of dollar figures for each guy, based on a season long budget of $1000.

Jeremy Accardo – $3 to $207
Wow, talk about a huge spread. Why everyone was so ga-ga over a guy who had spent the entire year in the minors is beyond me (I bid $18 for him in my league). If the club really thought he was that good, would they have let him toil in the minors all season? Anyway, my money is on Jason Frasor taking over the closers role with Scott Downs on the DL, though I don’t know about his long-term outlook. I bid $32 on Frasor, but was outbid in my league (someone went $177 on Frasor and $71 on Accardo in my league). By the way, Frasor went from $11 to $187 dollars overall.

Khalil Greene – $1 to $170
Back hitting home runs and playing third base. Of course, you could have had him for a $1 in about 95 percent of the leagues if you picked him up two weeks ago.

Livan Hernandez – $1 to $25.
You’ve got to be kidding me, right? You’d have to pay me to add him. Next.

Travis Ishikawa – $2 to $34
Seriously? Have you seen what the guy is hitting on the road (.102 with a .412 OPS in 49 at-bats) this season?

Pedro Martinez – $1 to $31
Trying to catch lighting in an old bottle. No team has signed this HOF bound all-time great as of this writing.

John Mayberry – $1 to $91
Will be playing full-time until Raul Ibanez returns, but then what? Most likely he will head back to the minors or be a rather useless fourth option for the Phillies given their top-3 strength in Ibanez, Shane Victorino and Jayson Werth.

Casey McGehee – $1 to $52
Hey, the guy is hitting .348 with 17 runs scored in 36 games. He should be on someone’s roster in a 15 team league with 30 man rosters.

Miguel Montero – $1 to $30
With Chris Snyder on the DL with a back issue, it shouldn’t take more than two weeks to heal up, everyone was on the Montero bandwagon even if they didn’t spend any dough to get him.

Fernando Nieve -$1 to $59
Keep pitching well for the Mets, and as of now he seems to be securing a rotation spot at the expense of the nearly healthy John Maine and/or Oliver Perez.

Scott Richmond – $21 to $122
Strike out 11 batters, and watch the dollars fly. I wonder how much Chad Gaudin will go for this weekend?

Ramon Troncoso – $1 to $28
Save prospecting as people were concerned that Jonathan Broxton might be forced to the DL with that sore toe of his. No such luck so far.

Oh, and one other moronic issue that I felt compelled to address…

The news broke today that Marlon Byrd has been working with Stan Conte, the man who ran BALCO and helped to destroy faith in baseball players with performance enhancing drugs like “the cream” and “the clear” What, was Satan or Mengele unavailable Mr. Byrd? Even if the supplements you are taking are “legal,” does it really make any sense to be dealing with the man who helped to bring baseball to its knees? Idiotic.

By Ray Flowers

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