Cliff Lee

I think Franklin Gutiérrez was rumored in the deal as well with Shoppach & Lee. Honestly, i still prefer the deal we got over this one. Lee is already 31, Shoppach 29. Gutiérrez seems like an interesting player, but has yet to post an OPS over .790 in his career….still fairly young though i guess.

by phil79 on Oct 29, 2009 1:46 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Lee > Bay .: Lee would have been traded for more than Bay brought, easily

All 2nd guess though

by God Loves on Oct 29, 2009 8:03 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

I hated the package at the time...

…and I was 100% wrong.

by Vlad on Oct 29, 2009 9:15 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Ditto.

http://fanhuddle.com/pittsburghpirates

by Nate Rose on Oct 31, 2009 2:41 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Yea this is torture watching Lee...

..I can’t blame FC for thinking maybe NH was a little too close to the Indians to make a clear headed decision, but I think NH had everyone fooled.

How nice would Lee, Duke, Maholm, Ohlie, and Morton look right now?

Lee is 31, but still, the guy dominates. Looks like an even better pitcher in the NL. Shoppach might’ve allowed the Pirates to trade Doumit back when he had value.

Let’s hope Andy makes us forget about this whole thing in the next few years..

by jlk9697 on Oct 29, 2009 9:44 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Refresh my memory

Would this have been for the Cliff Lee who has coming off a 5-8, 6.29 season and didn’t make it to 100 innings, and whose ERA had ballooned for two years?

I kinda feel like Vlad does. It’s like the supposed Benson-for-Howard deal, it just doesn’t matter now. I’m sure the Yankees would like to have a do-over on the Nady trade too,

by bucdaddy on Oct 29, 2009 10:37 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

no doubt

With trades there usually is regret on one side. However, this deal was a done deal, it shouldve gone through. This is an ex.of the results showing something different than the process. I don’t think any gm or analyst in the 07 offseason wouldve prefered the indians offer to be superior to what we eventually got, except 4 NH. I’m just trying 2 say let’s give NH some credit 4 seeing something that no one else did.

by Danatural08 on Oct 29, 2009 1:35 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions 0 recs

I'm not sure

I saw plenty of reports who still liked Lee a lot. The stories said he was coming off a minor injury. Moreover, Gutierrez was a 20-20 CF with good defense while Shoppach was a 20-20 C.

I don’t see LaRoche and all matching this return.

by Bernie6666 on Oct 31, 2009 1:42 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Mental refresher:

At the time of the trade proposal, Cliff Lee was coming off a year where he put up a 6.27 ERA in 97 innings. After considering his salary, he probably had negative trade value. Shoppach was a 27-year-old backup with a career line of .241/.292/.413 in 286 AB. Gutierrez was a toolsy young player coming off a .266/.318/.472 year as a part-timer, after several disappointing seasons.

I don’t remember reading commentary from a single analyst who liked it as a package for us. And I read a lot.

by Vlad on Oct 31, 2009 10:42 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Mental and fact refresher

The website won’t let me sign in so I had to create a new account to address your concerns.

Yes, it was the same Cliff Lee. I’ll be happy to refresh your memory. Lee suffered an abdominal strain in 2007, greatly hurting his effectiveness. Citing his numbers that year as example of his value is like citing Tike Redman’s and projecting him as an MLB star. You look at the entire record.

And silly me for suggesting that Shoppach was better than Ronnie. I don’t know how I could have missed that one.

Finally, I’ll be happy to share with you information from analysts who liked it. You just can’t google it and find it in the first 10 links. You need to go through a few hundred. You also need to read magazines. You need to watch specialized shows. But I guarantee if you look, you’ll find them.

by Bernie6 on Nov 1, 2009 12:23 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

The whole posting because I'm having trouble with the website

Yes, it was the same Cliff Lee. I’ll be happy to refresh your memory. Lee suffered an abdominal strain in 2007, greatly hurting his effectiveness. Citing his numbers that year as example of his value is like citing Tike Redman’s and projecting him as an MLB star. You look at the entire record.

And silly me for suggesting that Shoppach was better than Ronnie. Sorry, you are right.

Now what was the reason Shoppach was a “career backup”? Could it be he played behind an all-star catcher. And despite that, he still put him solid statistics.

Finally, Gutierrez was a player on the rise whose numbers matched Bays’.

Let me help you out, Vlad. Try going through Baseball Tonight transcripts and you’ll see other views on the trade. You should also go back to mlb.com and independent scouting blogs and magazines. There were plenty of analysts who liked the trade. It’s not how much you read. It’s who you read.

by Bernie6 on Nov 1, 2009 12:29 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

You want to look at the whole record?

Fine. Let’s look at the whole record. Coming out of the 2007 season, Cliff Lee had a career ERA of 4.64 (94 ERA+) and a career WHIP of 1.38, in 741 innings. Those are not Cy Young numbers. He’d had one strong season in the last four, and he’d burned all his pre-arb years, so he was about to start becoming expensive.

Shoppach was, in all likelihood, an upgrade on Paulino, but so were six million other catchers out there. Paulino was awful. You didn’t need to trade your best position player to find a guy who would be an upgrade on him. Indeed, we didn’t need to trade anybody: We already had a better catcher on staff.

You completely missed the point WRT Shoppach’s age and status. His lack of experience made him an unproven commodity, his time spent as a backup burned up valuable pre-arb service time (decreasing his value to us, since it decreased the amount of time he’d be under our control), and his age meant that even if he panned out he likely only had a few years as a productive starter in him, since the aging curve for catchers is brutal.

Why on earth should I spend hours rummaging through transcripts to try and find evidence to support YOUR claim about Lee? If you claim something, the burden of proof is on you. Of course, if you’re relying on Baseball Tonight, it’ll probably turn out to be a noted intellect like Steve Phillips or John Kruk…

by Vlad on Nov 1, 2009 1:24 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Vlad, you're wrong about a bunch of things here

and in the comments down-thread. In ‘04-’06, Lee had WAR values of 1.5, 4.0, and 2.6, according to fangraphs. He had just turned 29 at the end of the ‘07 season and was under an extremely team-friendly contract (not arb-eligible as you claim). He was definitely a risk with that injury at the time (though it wasn’t an arm injury, so it wasn’t terribly risky), but he definitely had trade value. He probably shouldn’t have been considered as good as Maholm is now, but he was definitely a good pitcher prior to the injury, and since he was signed so reasonably he should have had a lot of value. He also definitely had upside potential, considering that 4 WAR season he posted in ‘05. In short, I think that if you look at all the elements of Lee’s history, as Bernie suggests, you’ll see that Lee should have been considered a decent but risky pitcher who was likely to be worth his contract (9.5MM for 08-09, plus an 8MM option for ’10), and had good upside.

Shoppach was set to turn 28 at the beginning of the ’08 season, had good minor league numbers, a good defensive rep, and was coming off a season of league-average wOBA in limited playing time. Plus, he was not arb-eligible until ’09.

Gutierrez was about to turn 25, had been good in the minors, had just posted a league-average wOBA in limited playing time. He was/is an excellent defender and was not arb-eligible until 2010.

I don’t know that it would have looked as good at the time as what we ended up getting for Bay, mostly because two of the players involved were already in their late 20s, but even at the time that looks like a good return for Bay. I’m glad Neil Huntington saw that at the time (which is the point of danatural’s post).

by epoc on Nov 1, 2009 2:12 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

in fact

Wow, thinking about it now, considering their respective ages and contract situations, Bay for Gutierrez straight up might have been a fair deal. A 25-year-old cf with 5 years of service time left, +15 defense, with a good minor league hitting record and coming off a .339 wOBA season? Damn. I’m now getting kind of angry that FC vetoed that deal. Having McCutchen at AAA as a 20-year-old at the time is the only reason I can think of for not making that deal, and it’s not a particularly good reason.

by epoc on Nov 1, 2009 2:21 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

You might want to read what I wrote more closely.

I did not say that Lee was arb-eligible, I said that he’d burned all of his pre-arb time. For a player’s first three seasons (i.e. his pre-arb time), he makes league minimum or close to it. Those years are, by far, the most valuable portion of a player’s service time, in terms of $ per marginal win, and a player who’s exhausted them is thus much less valuable in trades. Since we were in a rebuilding situation, we needed to target players with as much pre-arb time remaining as possible, to have a chance of them still being under team control when we were good again.

If you want to call Lee’s contract “extremely team-friendly”, you can, but it certainly wasn’t seen that way in 2007. It was a lot closer to the Ian Snell situation, to be honest (complete with problems with teammates – i.e. several altercations with Victor Martinez over the course of 2007). The Indians shopped him to anybody and everybody that offseason, but couldn’t find any takers.

It’s nice that Lee had a 4+ WAR season on his record, but one good season doesn’t guarantee success going forward, particularly when it’s followed by years of lesser effectiveness. I mean, Josh Towers was also a 4.2 WAR pitcher in 2005, and he hasn’t topped 1.0 in any season since. Esteban Loaiza was 4.6 – he had 2.7 in 2006, was in negative numbers the next two years, and then was out of the majors. Bartolo Colon was 4.5 – his next four years went 0.3, 1.2, 0.6, and 0.2.

Gutierrez had been good in the minors…in 2007, in 129 AB, while repeating at AAA. He’d put up a .806 OPS there in 2006, which is a decent performance but nothing exceptional, and had hit .261/.322/.423 at AA in 2005. His performance looks better in retrospect because we know how he turned out, but at the time, he was seen as a B-grade prospect at best, largely on the strength of his tools. Guys of that pedigree sometimes pan out, and sometimes don’t (like Joe Borchard, for example).

by Vlad on Nov 2, 2009 8:30 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Yeah, Vlad, I read what you wrote closely enough. You're still wrong.

I’m sorry for assuming that you meant that he was arb-eligible, but you said, “considering his salary, he probably had negative trade value” and “he’d burned all his pre-arb years, so he was about to start becoming expensive.” Those statements are wrong. He was signed to a deal that guaranteed 9.5MM for ‘08-’09, plus a club option for ‘10 for 8MM. That is not expensive, nor is it a situation that would give Lee negative trade value. I pointed out Lee’s 4.0 WAR season to note that he had some upside, but mostly in the context of his overall performance, which was, in WAR, 1.5, 4.0, 2.4, and .2 from ‘04-’07. That ‘07 performance was in only 91 innings and was affected by injury. Since the injury wasn’t to his pitching arm, it should’t have been particularly worrisome. If you do a simple Marcel on those numbers, you’d predict Lee to be a 1.8 WAR pitcher going forward, which would more than justify his contract. He’d be a cheap back-of-the-rotation starter. But of course, as I mentioned, he had decent upside potential.

I was generous with regard to your Paul Maholm comparison, but your Snell comparison is off-base. First, Snell had never been as good as Lee was in ‘05. Second, Snell had never even been above average outside of 2007. Third, Snell’s psychological and social problems are way worse than Lee’s were (though if you want to argue against that, I’ll concede, since there’s no way either one of us knows for sure). Fourth, Snell hasn’t been battling injury; he’s just bad. Fifth, Snell was a year and a half removed from being above-average, whereas Lee had posted 2.4 WAR just a year earlier. Other than that, it’s a good comparison, and guess what: Snell was worth his contract this year, even though he was bad. And if you run a simple Marcel, you can project him to be about 1.5 WAR going forward. And he’s under a team-friendly contract. And he has potential upside. And his problems didn’t make him untradeable. All in all, Lee was a better bet after ’07 than Snell is, and Snell is a pretty decent bet.

Loaiza and Colon are somewhat comparable, yes. I think it’s worth noting that they were 34 and 32, respectively, in the 4.6 and 4.5 WAR seasons you mention, while Lee turned 29 at the end of ‘07, but still, yes, all things being equal, you would have predicted them to be pretty good going forward. They weren’t. It happens. Colon got injured, Loaiza just started to suck. But to match your two cherry-picked examples, I’ll note Vicente Padilla, who was .4, 3.9, and 1.0 WAR in ‘05-’07, but went on to be 1.5 and 2.0 WAR in the last two years. Or maybe Carlos Silva who came back from his horrible 2006 to be worth 3.3 and 1.5 WAR in ‘07-’08, before the Mariners stopped playing him. Neither are good examples, honestly, but Colon and Loaiza aren’t either. The point is, cherry-picking individual counter-examples is not analysis.

You’re missing my point about Gutierrez. He doesn’t look better in retrospect because after 2009 I know that he can hit league average in the majors. We knew that after 2007, when he hit league average in the majors. He was and is a young, cost-controlled cf who plays amazing defense. He doesn’t have to hit exceptionally. He just has to be decent, which he was in the minors and was in the majors, as you’ve pointed out. A decent-hitting cf who is +15 on defense and under control for 5 years is very valuable. As I’ve said, he was worth Jason Bay all by himself back in 2007. Of course, this is hindsight, but even back in 2007 you could see that he was a league-average hitter and an amazing defender.

by epoc on Nov 2, 2009 1:49 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

It's plenty expensive...

…given his 2007 performance. Now, some level of rebound was certainly possible, but who would take something like that for granted? Lee represented a significant amount of downside risk (in the event that his 2009 performance wasn’t solely the function of injury), and any assessment of his trade value at the time needs to reflect that.

Snell had a 3.5 WAR season in 2007, and while that’s not quite 4 WAR, I think it’s certainly close enough to justify an off-the-cuff comparison of style (i.e. “talented headcase” with a multi-year commitment going forward), particularly insofar as Snell was worth more WAR in the three seasons surrounding his “big year” than Lee was in the three surrounding his (2.0+1.4+0.9 = 4.3 WAR for Snell, vs. 1.5+2.4+0.2 = 4.1 for Lee). It’s not a given that Snell will recover completely from his psychological issues, but since it doesn’t involve his arm any more than Lee’s problems did, and his full recovery is no more uncertain than Lee’s was at the time of the offer, I don’t see why the exact nature of the ailment would invalidate the comparison.

I wasn’t “cherry-picking” examples to argue that Lee was doomed to failure. I was just pointing out that every year there are a few pitchers who poke their heads up above the 4 WAR line once, and then never achieve that level of success again. A 4 WAR season isn’t some kind of magic talisman that guarantees success in the future. It’s just a good year, and having had one good year two seasons before didn’t make Lee all that much more likely to have another good year in the future.

Lee may or may not have been literally untradeable, but the Indians shopped him very aggressively that offseason, and they weren’t able to put a deal together with anybody. That should at least suggest something about how he was viewed as a trade asset within the game.

If you project Lee forward as a 2 WAR player (giving him some credit for injury), that’s fine, but a healthy Bay was about a 6 WAR player in the two seasons prior to his injury-marred 2007. Return from WAR isn’t additive – three 2 WAR players aren’t worth the same as one 6 WAR player. As it turned out, Bay’s knee nuked his defensive value and dropped him down to a 3 WAR player, but since that couldn’t have been known at the time, it probably shouldn’t figure into a retrospective analysis.

You’re cheating a bit by calling Gutierrez “a young, cost-controlled cf who plays amazing defense”. He’s all of those things now, but at the time of the trade, he had a total of 17 ML games in CF, and less than 1,000 ML defensive innings of any sort whatsoever. If you were projecting him as a +15 CF defender at that point, you were doing it more on faith than on facts. Similarly, you overstate the established level of his offense. His 2006 struggles and mixed minor league record dragged down his forward projection somewhat. ZiPS, for example, had him at .268/.332/.422 for 2008 – and even that turned out to be excessively optimistic in the near term.

by Vlad on Nov 2, 2009 3:48 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

I’m going to show you how I would have projected each of the players involved after the 2007 season. If you would have projected them differently, that’s fine, but hopefully this will prove to you that an insightful analyst might have seen this as a good trade proposal.

Bay had wRAA of 50.9, 36.9, and -2.8 in ‘05-07. Regress 50% to league average at 200 PA (so 22% for 700 PA in ’05 and ’06, and 25% for 600 PA in ’07), and you get 39.9, 29, and -2.4 runs per 700 PA. Weight them 5/3/2 in reverse chronological order and you get a projection of 15.5 runs. After ’07, he had a UZR of -17.8 in 589 defensive games in corner outfield positions for his career (I use career numbers for defense because the stats contain so much noise). Regress 50% at 200 games and you get -3.4 per 150 games. Add the -7.5 positional adjustment for left field and the 20 for replacement level in the NL and you get 15.5-3.4-7.520=24.6 runs or 2.5 WAR. That’s my projection for Bay.

For Lee, he posted FIPs of 3.79, 4.73, and 5.48 in ‘05-’07. Regress to league average (4.5) at 60 IP and you get 3.95, 4.68, and 5.11. Weight them 5/3/2 (taking into account IP per season, meaning you weight them 97×5/201×3/202×2) and you get a projected FIP of 4.62. Using pythagenpat, a 4.62 FIP against a league average of 4.5 yields a win pct. of .487. Replacement level for and AL starter is .37, so that’s .117 wins per game. Weight IP 5/3/2 for the previous three years and you get 173. I’m not sure what to regress that toward, but let’s project 153 IP, which is 17 full games. .117×17=1.989. So my projection for Lee would be 2 WAR.

Gutierrez only had 2 PA in ‘05, but he was ~~5.9 and 1.9 wRAA in ’06~~’07. Regress 50% per 200 PA and you get -11.9 and 2.6 per 700 PA. Weight 5/3 and you project -1.3 runs per 700 PA. He had a career UZR of 9 in 114 defensive games. Regress 50% per 200 games and you get 4.3 per 150. If you use the same process with only his centerfield numbers, you get 1.3 per 150. As I said in my earlier post, I would have rated his defense much better, even at the time, largely because his defense was raved about even back in the minors, but to be fair, we’ll just go with the numbers we have. So add batting, defense, 2.5 position adjustment for centerfield, 25 run replacement level for AL, and -1.3+1.3+2.5+25=27.5. I would project 2.75 WAR.

It’s late and I don’t feel like doing Shoppach. But so far we have this:

- a 29-year-old, 2.5-WAR left fielder with two arb-eligible years left under team control

for

- a 29-year-old, 2-WAR starting pitcher with two years and 9.5MM left on his contract (plus an option for the third year at 8MM)

and

- a 25-year-old, 2.75 WAR centerfielder with 5 years left before free agency.

That seems like a good trade for whoever gets the latter two players. Just to peak ahead, while each of these players would beat their projections, Bay beat his by far less than either of the other two. Bay was worth 2.9 and 3.4 WAR in ‘08-’09 vs. the 2.5 I predicted. Lee was a freaking CY winner, as we all know, and Gutierrez was worth 2.2 and 5.8 WAR the last couple years.

This was fun. My favorite part was where Gutierrez was better than Bay even without the insane defense. I’d love to hear any issues you have with the methodology, but I think it’s obviously objective, so even if you take issue with it, I don’t think you can argue that I’m manipulating numbers in hindsight to pretend that Lee and Gutierrez were better than they really were. This suggests that even if you didn’t/don’t see it this way, a reasonable and good analyst might have seen this as a fair trade and might even, as I’ve said, have seen Bay for Gutierrez straight up as a good trade.

by epoc on Nov 3, 2009 1:03 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

The biggest and most obvious issue...

…from what I can tell is that you’re using Bay’s post-‘07 defensive statistics to create a post-’07 projection. If you’re trying to do an honest in-the-moment analysis of whether we should’ve made the deal or not, you can’t use information about future events in making that determination. Otherwise, you might as well go whole hog and say that we should’ve made the deal since Lee was going to win a Cy Young award.

I’m also curious about where you’re getting your UZR numbers, because they all appear to be different from the values listed at Fangraphs. They use BIS data – are yours derived from STATS’s numbers?

Oh, and if you’re going to project Gutierrez, you need to include MLEs for his minor league performance in the preceding seasons, since he performed at a significantly higher level in his cup of coffee in the majors than his minor league numbers would have suggested.

by Vlad on Nov 3, 2009 9:54 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

I am not using post-’07 UZRs for Bay. When I say “After ’07, he had a UZR of -17.8 in 589 defensive games,” I mean that at the end of ’07, he had accumulated that career total up to that point. I hope that clears up the confusion: 2.5 WAR was what we should have projected for Bay after ’07.

I am using fangraphs’ listed UZRs. I’m not sure why they look different to you. Maybe you’re looking at UZR/150?

You opened up a can of worms by demanding Gutierrez’s MLEs. I don’t have any problems using them, but if so, your objection to my +15 defensive evaluation based on the small major league sample goes out the window. If I’m using minor league hitting stats, I’m using minor league fielding stats as well. So:

Using the MLEs available at minorleaguesplits and a basic linear weights formula, I get -22.9 RAA in 418 PA in AA in ‘05; -3 in 74 PA in AAA. I get -8.5 in 406 PA in AAA in ’06 and 0 in 143 PA in AAA in ’07. Those RAA numbers are compared to major league average, since we’re using MLEs. Including all 3 levels in ‘05, you get -25.9 RAA in 494 PA. Although he got called up for a cup of coffee that year, it’s probably not fair to call him a major leaguer, so I won’t regress to major league average. I’ll regress to -.02 per PA instead. Using 200 PA as the 50% regression point you get -30 runs per 700 PA. For ‘06 you have -14.4 runs in 547 PA at two levels. Having held his own in the majors, I think it’s safe to regress to major league average, but I’ll do -.01 per PA to be cautious. That gives him -15.4 per 700. For ’07 you have 1.9 runs in 444 PA and I think we can finally regress him to ML average, which gives him 2.1 runs per 700 PA. Weight them 5/3/2 and you get -9.6 per 700 PA.

Minorleaguesplits also has minor league defense, though I don’t trust them as much as UZR, so I’m going to regress them very heavily before I add them to the ML UZRs and then regress that total again. In the minors from ‘05-’07 (the only years for which they have the stats), Gutierrez was 40 runs better than average in 152 defensive games (I found defensive games by reverse-engineering their runs/150 numbers). Regress 50% for 200 games and you get 17 runs/150. Since he conveniently had almost exactly 150 defensive games, I’ll just give him 17 runs in those 152 games. Add that to the 1.9 in 13 games in centerfield he had in the majors through ‘07, and it’s 18.9 runs in 165 games, which is 7.8 per 150 after regression. (In case you were wondering, if you add the defensive stats for his play in the corners and run it all the same way, you get 12 per 150 overall in the outfield.) Add it all together and he’s -9.67.8+2.5+25=25.7 or 2.6 WAR. So, not a big difference and still better than Jason Bay.

Hope that clears up any confusion and convinces you that a reasonable person could have really liked this trade proposal at the time.

by epoc on Nov 3, 2009 2:23 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

On the “after ’07” thing: Ah, that makes more sense. Sorry I misunderstood.

On the UZR numbers: I was using the defensive inning totals and then converting those into 9-inning games, where it looks like you were using raw games played totals, accounting for the disparity. It wasn’t a big gap – just seemed odd, so I wanted to examine it.

Using minor league defensive stats the way that you are is reasonable, as long as you bear in mind that there’s a huge error bar associated with them (due to the impact of poorer-quality fields, erratic official scorers, poorer-fielding teammates, uneven BIP distribution, ballpark/positioning eccentricities, etc.). It’s less problematic for an OF like Gutierrez than for an infielder – I wouldn’t trust them there at all.

Nice bit of work. I’ll concede your premise, though the high amount of potential variance on the projections for Bay, Lee, and Gutierrez (due to injury in the first two cases and the high degree of estimation in the defensive valuation of the latter) does still leave it as a very risky proposition.

by Vlad on Nov 3, 2009 3:59 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Thanks. Like I said originally, I don’t think I would have liked this deal as much as the one we ended up making, and it did have some risk, but I like it. I agree with the original post that NH deserves a lot of credit for good evaluation skills on this proposal.

by epoc on Nov 3, 2009 4:19 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Pitchers don’t usually come back from injuries at age 30 and pitch far better than they ever have before. I don’t see how anyone could have foreseen Lee’s 2008 and 2009 performances.

by wickethewok on Oct 29, 2009 1:06 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

The injury was an abdomen strain

It was not an elbow. It was not a shoulder. I agree that you could not have predicted he would win a Cy Young. But he was a solid #2 or #3 pitcher in the AL before he suffered an abdominal strain.

Moreover, his type of stuff projects well to the NL.

by Bernie6666 on Oct 31, 2009 1:44 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

The year before Lee's lost season...

…he had a 4.40 ERA and a 1.41 WHIP. Two years before that, he had a 5.43 ERA and a 1.50 WHIP.

So you’ll have to excuse me if I think it was less-than-obvious that a guy who’d been a poor man’s Paul Maholm up to that point in his career was a cinch to suddenly become a front-of-the-rotation starter.

by Vlad on Oct 31, 2009 10:44 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

That's an misuse of statistics and you know it

That’s a ridiculous use of statistics. You know you are cherry picking poor years and categories. You also are only listing a few of the statistics in 2006, for example, that support your argument. Look at them all.

Look at his entire record. Look at his prospect rating. Look at the scouting reports. Look at the division he pitched in.

No one is saying it’s obvious he would become an ace. But calling him a poor man’s Paul Maholm is unfair and you know it.

by Bernie6 on Nov 1, 2009 12:27 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

How is it "misusing statistics"...

…to point out that Lee had had one good year in the last four? It’s what he did. It’s all that there is. ERA and WHIP are about as basic as stats get, and stats are nothing but the record of what happened.

I’m not even sure what statistic from 2006 I’m supposed to be ignoring, that would magically prove your point. The drop in his K rate? The increase in his walk rate? The HR/FB that was a bit luckier than league average? What?

I don’t understand why you object to the Maholm comparison, either. Look at the first four seasons both started a year in the rotation, ranked by FIP:

3.79 – Lee, 2005
3.83 – Maholm, 2009
4.15 – Maholm, 2008
4.60 – Maholm, 2007
4.73 – Lee, 2006
4.81 – Maholm, 2006
4.97 – Lee, 2004
5.48 – Lee, 2007

Seems like Maholm was the better pitcher, doesn’t it?

by Vlad on Nov 1, 2009 1:41 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Why are we knocking this deal?

Would you trade your best trade chip for a no-hit, good-glove outfielder, a backup catcher and a pitcher coming off a season where his ERA was over 6 or a top 50 prospect, two former first rounders, and a mid 20s outfielder with a taste of the bigs?

Its not even a contest.

So take your 20/20 hindsight back to the PBC blog.

by MrPedriqueIfYoureNasty on Oct 29, 2009 2:16 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

The reason that Lee was still an Indian when he broke out is because no one, I mean NO ONE, would give up anything remotely of value for him.

by MrPedriqueIfYoureNasty on Oct 29, 2009 2:17 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Are You Kidding me?

I was simply giving NH credit seeing something in a player that no one else was.

So when you say “take your 20/20 hindsight back to the PBC blog.” Who do you think that you are that’s so knoledgeable about baseball and so tough? I wasn’t ripping on anyone, especially not NH(which I’ve been around this website long enough to realize that when someone ripps a front office move, someone reminds them to go to the PBC blog because we’re the “knowledgeable fans and the PBC bloggers are the yinzers” which is usually true). Seriously nasty, reread the post, and if you still think I’m ripping NH:

1. take your head out of your ass
2. then insert it into the toilet
3. flush

by Danatural08 on Oct 29, 2009 7:34 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

lol

“flush”

That’s GOLD! :D

by BlindSquirrel on Oct 29, 2009 7:51 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

For real...

I hate all of the know it all jagoffs on here that think you crawled here from the PBC blog if you say something they cant comprehend.

"So you think 25 percent of the country is retarded?! Yea. Atleast 25 percent. Well lets so a sample. There are 4 of us an you're retarded. Thats 25 percent." Southpark; Mystery of the Urinal Deuce

by gorillakilla34 on Oct 29, 2009 11:59 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

My bad

I had just had that exact argument at work with a Pirate fan about how we blew it by not trading for Cliff Lee and then logged in to Bucs Dugout to get a breather, saw a FanPost about Cliff Lee and everything went red.

I tried flushing though and it didn’t make me feel any better.

by MrPedriqueIfYoureNasty on Oct 30, 2009 10:19 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Understood

apology accepted

by Danatural08 on Oct 30, 2009 7:59 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I just disagreed ...

I never viewed Gutierrez as a no-hit, good glove CF. Check is 2007 statistics. They equal Bay’s.

Shoppach had shown 20-hr power as a catcher.

Lee had an abdominal strain, but had been viewed as a Cy Young candidate in the Spring.

Also, I’m no sure I’d list Bay as the “best trade chip.” He had had knee trouble for years. His numbers had fallen dramatically. His defense was weak.

There were plenty of people, including myself, who liked the deal at the time.

I also liked the Bay Boston trade at the tim.

My issue is that I wish NH had been allowed to make the deal he thought was best. I think FC needs to intervene carefully.

by Bernie6666 on Oct 31, 2009 1:48 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I would love to see...

…a link to someone reputable who called Cliff Lee a Cy Young candidate immediately before the 2007 season.

Go ahead. I’ll wait.

by Vlad on Oct 31, 2009 10:47 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Would you like to make a donation to charity?

Not only will I show you. I’ll give you the opportunity to make a $5 donation to charity. If I can show you a reference to Cliff Lee as a Cy Young candidate, you’ll give it to a charity of my choosing (World Vision). Otherwise, I’ll do the same for your charity. Deal?

Check the transcripts of Baseball Tonight during Spring Training 2007. Cliff Lee was one of five pitchers talked about as a Cy Young candidate by its panel of experts.

Let me know when you send the money in.

by Bernie6 on Nov 1, 2009 12:25 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

A link to a REPUTABLE analyst.

Most of the people on baseball tonight are not reputable analysts. For example, John Kruk is not a reputable analyst. Steve Phillips is not a reputable analyst. Etc…

Find me someone reputable (we can use someone like WTM or Ddtoddwin or Charlie as an arbiter as to whether an analyst qualifies as “reputable”), and I’ll admit that I was wrong. You won’t be able to, though.

by Vlad on Nov 1, 2009 1:44 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Just so you know what I'm talking about...

…WRT Phillips and the caliber of analysis you were getting from BBTN personnel in 2007, take a look at this. Or this. Or this.

by Vlad on Nov 1, 2009 1:52 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Here’s the topic here on Bay to Cleveland from when it was happening. No one seemed like it. Guittierez is never mentioned in that post, not sure if he came up later or what.

http://www.bucsdugout.com/2007/12/3/1786/21635

by ElDuce on Oct 29, 2009 2:41 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Thanks for the link...

I hated the trade when they proposed it. There’s no guarantee that the Cliff Lee we would have gotten is the same one who is pitching for the Phils now. There’s a lot of variables. I think NH did the right thing and played it safe.

"Baseball is better than football. Think about it, eighty degrees, a cold beer and a short-sleeve shirt is better than 30 degrees, a hip flask and six layers of clothes under a lap blanket. Take your pick: suntan or frostbite. " - Thomas Boswell

by Ketcham Bruce on Oct 30, 2009 6:22 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

veto??

Thanks for posting that link. That was what I remembered, that no one liked that deal, but it is good to see it in black and white. I also remember that Guiterrez was mentioned, but no one thought much of him either. And I second the comment above that the time, Cleveland was trying desperately to dump Lee’s contract on anyone who would take it.

My question is who says that NH agreed on this deal and Coonelly vetoed it. I don’t remember anything like that. I just thought everyone in the FO decided Cleveland wasn’t offering us enough.

by basmati on Oct 29, 2009 3:51 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Some reports also claim that Coonelly was the one who shot down a nearly completed Bay to the Braves deal, although that trade actually looks pretty awful, so if he did then he did a pretty good job there. It was almost like a weaker version of the McLouth trade.

The front office denies both reports, though. Who knows.

by ElDuce on Oct 29, 2009 4:23 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

The package Cleveland received for Lee (assuming we’d have made the same deal if we had Lee this year) is better than the package of players we received for Bay. But there aren’t any game changers in the Cleveland package that would make me lose any sleep. The best prospect in the mix is Carlos Carrasco, who was ranked 41, 54, and 52 by Baseball America from 2007-2009. Andy LaRoche, on the other hand, was ranked 19, 19, and 31 from 2006-2008.

The other hidden variable is that we would have had a better record in 2008 with Lee, but that wouldn’t have mattered for the draft because the player we picked would still have been available. But the 2009 record might matter for the quality of who we get. If Lee pitched here for half a season in 09, we might be picking 5th next year and that may be a big dropoff from the 2nd pick in the 2010 draft.

by Adam Reynolds on Oct 29, 2009 5:00 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Prospects

Cleveland made a bad trade. I think they thought Philadelphia was going to take Toronto’s offer and came down in price to dump the contract.

They were having real issues with payroll.

But Lee should have brought much more.

by Bernie6666 on Oct 31, 2009 1:51 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

also...

I’m not all that confident that the FO would be able to pay him enough to stop Lee going for FA at the end of his contract. (Assuming that he would have picked up the pieces as well in our farm system as he did in Cleveland’s)

by BlindSquirrel on Oct 29, 2009 7:56 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

“Not confident” is probably a bit mild. Lee’s looking at a $100 million plus contract after next year.

by ElDuce on Oct 30, 2009 12:34 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

veto?

I wasn’t aware that FC had veto power over baseball moves. Is that still the case? Maybe it works for them, but that doesn’t seem like an ideal arrangement.

by epoc on Oct 30, 2009 7:39 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Cleveland deal

I liked, but did not love, the Cleveland deal at the time. Here’s what the reports I saw had the trade as:

Gutiérrez
Lee
Shoppach

for

Bay
Paulino

Here’s why I liked it: Gutiérrez is not the no-hit guy portrayed on the site. He was coming off a year with 271 AB, 13 2b, 13 hr, 8 sbs, .266 average.

He also was a much better defensive player than Bay.

Kelly Shoppach also showed 20-20 power at catcher: 161 AB, 13 2b, 7 hr, .261 average.

Lee was the key. He was a solid buy-low candidate. ESPN had named him a top Cy Young candidate before he crashed in 2007.

The postings about Lee being injury prone are just wrong. As I recall, he strained his abdomen. That’s not exactly TJ surgery or a visit to James Andrews.

He was the perfect candidate to take a chance on. If you hit it, you could flip him for an enormous return.

Also, people have to remember that Jason Bay’s knee troubles were getting worse. His numbers had also gone down (21 hr, .247 average). His defense was weak. He later recovered some of his value.

A knee injury is much risker than an abdomen strain.

I do wonder why FC rejected the deal.

I think money was a factor. The Pirates didn’t want to deal one possible bad contract (if Bay continued to slide) for another possible bad contract (Lee didn’t regain form).

But clearly NH had this one right and FC did not.

LaRoche is nowhere near the return they could have had.

by Bernie6666 on Oct 31, 2009 1:40 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

He vetoed the deal...

…because the public would’ve seen it as trading the team’s only superstar for a pile of crap.

And he was right, as far as that went. They would’ve seen in that way.

by Vlad on Oct 31, 2009 10:48 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

and

as noted in the original post, bay was coming off a terrible year and a bum knee. no doubt part of the decision was based on bay’s value increasing as he showed he was healthy. which he did and it did. not only was it trading the team’s star for crap, it was trading him at the lowest value of his career.

by johnnycuff on Oct 31, 2009 11:16 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs