Archive for May, 2010

Is Jose Bautista The New Ben Zobrist?

This afternoon, I mentioned Jose Bautista’s power surge over the last week, where he hit four home runs and upped his season total to 10, tying him for the 5th most in the major leagues. While it’s easy to point to Bautista’s career numbers (and the leaderboards, where he’s joined by Kelly Johnson and Alex Gonzalez, among others) and write this off as a small sample fluke, Dan pointed out in the comments section that Bautista started this power surge last September, when he launched 10 home runs in 125 plate appearances.

How striking is the difference? If you run Bautista’s career numbers from 2004 through August of last year, he had hit 49 home runs in 1,913 plate appearances, or one every 39 trips to the plate. Since September of 2009, he has hit 20 home runs in 292 plate appearances, a rate of one every 14 trips to the plate.

That’s the kind of drastic change in results that warrants a closer look.

For his part, Bautista claims to have overhauled his swing with Blue Jays hitting coach Dwayne Murphy:

“I was getting ready so late,” Bautista said. “Now, I feel like I can attack the ball in any count, and I’m on the offensive at all times and I’m not going up there to the plate trying to fight for my life.”

Overall, his batted ball profile didn’t change much last September – the main difference was that 25.6 percent of his fly balls went over the wall, a drastic increase from the 10 percent mark he’d run earlier in his career. He hasn’t been able to sustain all of that power this year, though his 18.9 percent HR/FB rate is still nearly double his previous career totals.

While it’s tempting to stick the “New Ben Zobrist” label on Bautista, we’re still dealing with under 300 plate appearances and a HR/FB rate that would put him in the same category as monstrous sluggers like Prince Fiedler, Adam Dunn, and Carlos Pena. Listed at 6’0/195, Bautista doesn’t look like those kind of mashers, and we shouldn’t expect him to continue pounding the baseball like he has been.

However, we can’t overlook the fact that he’s put up 28 percent of his career home runs in the most recent 13 percent of his career plate appearances. While ZIPS had Bautista posting a .161 ISO heading into the season, the updated ZIPS projection for the rest of 2010 has him at a .192 ISO, accounting for the fact that Bautista is showing a new found power stroke that hadn’t been part of his arsenal prior to last September.

The sample size isn’t large enough to claim that Bautista is for real, but it is too large to simply ignore the performance and assume he’ll go back to being the player he was prior to last fall. He is one player worth keeping a close eye for the rest of the 2010 season.


What the Mariners Owe Griffey

If nothing mattered in this sport beyond VORP or WARP, this would be simple. In this case, though, we have a human being involved. And not just any human being. A human being who has been one of the greatest players of modern times. And he matters…. People like Griffey can’t merely be crumpled up and fed to the waste-management trucks when they stop hitting. They deserve more. They’ve earned more. Clearly, the Mariners are wrestling with how to afford this particular human what he’s earned. And that means he can’t be just another name in the transactions column.

Jayson Stark, May 13, 2010

I don’t have a problem with Jayson Stark; I think he does a fine job. I don’t want to make media criticism a habit, but I do take issue with some of Stark’s comments on the Ken Griffey, Jr. situation in Seattle.

We’ve been over Seattle’s DH situation before, and nothing has changed. Griffey and Mike Sweeney are a waste of time and money in terms of their likely performance. Although I find the notion that Griffey makes up for what he costs in wins with merchandise sales dubious, that is not the issue, either. Hey, maybe there is some sort of CPAP cross-promotion that will give the organization more money to put into player development and free agency. Jokes aside, this isn’t about the “sleeping incident,” either.

This is not another re-hash of Griffey’s performance, (alleged!) clubhouse nap, or the value of the 38 Ken Griffey promotional nights the team still has remaining in the season. The issue is Stark’s moralizing tone. It is as if people are talking about sending Baseball Immortal Ken Griffey, Jr. off to the nursing home or the pound. Ken Griffey, Jr. is a “human being.” What, unlike Pat Burrell, Josh Anderson, Eric Byrnes, or scores of players who are let go (practically speaking) without asking their permission first? Were these violations of their “dignity”? Apparently, Griffey is “not just any human being,” but a certain kind of human being that can’t just be “thrown out,” and one who’s “earned more” and “deserves more.”

Ken Griffey, Jr. has had a great career and is a Hall of Famer. But “earned more”? Ken Griffey, Jr. was last anything like Good in 2005, and that’s about the only time during the FanGraphs WAR era. He was last great, according to Sean Smith’s numbers, in 2000, ten years ago with a 5.8 WAR season. To get perspective on how long ago that was, Yankee quasi-icon Bernie Williams, last seen being angry at the Yankees for not bringing him back for a fifth year of near-replacement performance, was still excellent that season, posting 5.0 WAR in 2000, with a couple very good years remaining.

That’s right — Bernie Williams, who has been out of the game for four years already (and was clearly finished some time before that) was a really good baseball player more recently than Ken Griffey, Jr. It isn’t as if the Mariners would be “throwing him out” as soon as he got bad. Griffey hasn’t been worth having around for a long time, and he hasn’t “earned” his giant paychecks in years. Since 2002, he’s been paid in excess of $60 million dollars by baseball teams (mostly the Reds) while being worth about a quarter of that. Maybe Stark just meant “hitting.” But it isn’t as if Griffey just started now hitting — as DH’s job is just to hit, and Griffey didn’t hit last season despite being heavily platooned.

This isn’t about whether Griffey can still play. Almost everyone agrees that he can’t. But what has he “earned” beyond that? Stark isn’t talking about money, of course. Respect? Dignity? A basic level of human dignity isn’t something earned, it is a universal right. Ken Griffey, Jr. is owed that. So is Pat Burrell. So is Eric Byrnes. So is Milton Bradley. Has anyone complained of such a “violation” when those players have been traded, cut, or DFAed without the players’ endorsement? No.

I don’t deny that the Mariners face a potential public-relations minefield in dealing with the situation, or that they might make decent money from Griffey promotional nights. However, those things have to do with corporate self-interest, not some extra obligation they have regarding Griffey’s “dignity.” Stark invokes some additional moral obligation to Griffey that he’s apparently “earned.”* He thinks Ken Griffey, Jr. is special in his own right, despite Junior last being useful about five years ago.

* Perhaps one could make the case on the basis of Griffey forcing his way out of Seattle in a trade that ended up being utterly lopsided in the Mariners’ favor (since Mike Cameron by himself blew away Griffey’s production in the succeeding seasons), but that isn’t Stark’s angle.

Publicity and performance aside, all the Mariners owe Griffey is what a team owes any player: a basic level of human respect and the prorated remainder of his guaranteed contract.


The League’s Offense

Something is amiss across the baseballing populace. Take a glance at the pitching leaderboard and note all of the high strikeout totals. More than a dozen starting pitchers are averaging at least one strikeout per inning and about half of them are averaging more than 10 strikeouts per nine innings. It would seem as if the league is striking out more batters than usual, and sure enough, a check of this handy dandy chart confirms that suspicion.

The league is averaging more than seven strikeouts per nine innings for the first time in the history of the game – note that the SO/9 ratio from last year is based on rounding rules rather than a true ratio over 7. This season hasn’t just given us the highest strikeout rate in league history either, though: the 4.17 league-wide ERA is the lowest since 1992. Home runs are also down, below one per game for the first time since 1993, and walks are actually slightly up – to 3.55 – despite intentional walks per game remaining static from 2009.

Before declaring this the great offensive depression or the golden era of pitching, it’s important to put these numbers into context. Specifically: Did the league struggle like this last season too? Here are the comparisons between the 2010 ratio statistics versus the 2009 statistics through the May 16th, 2009 slate of games (gathered thanks to Baseball Musings’ day-by-day database and an assist to Marc Normandin):

2010: 4.17 ERA, 8.70 H/9, 0.94 HR/9, 3.55 BB/9, 7.08 SO/9, 0.31 HBP/9
2009: 4.56 ERA, 9.14 H/9, 1.05 HR/9, 3.71 BB/9, 6.89 SO/9, 0.37 HBP/9

Offense is down in every conceivable way from last year at the same time. Pick the reason. From Houston and Seattle’s struggling run production, to an influx of talented young pitchers, to a league-wide shift towards defense and a league-wide acceptance of strikeout-heavy hitters, to the fact that this young season has already had a no hitter and perfect game occur, to hey, it’s just some variance and luck. None of those answers seem outrageous or outlandish and a combination thereof is probably the most likely answer.

It’ll be interesting to see whether the data holds up as the season progresses.


Draft Review: ’09 Over-Drafts

With the 2010 amateur draft less than a month away, it’s a perfect time for reflection. The ’09 draft featured some “over-drafts” in the first 10 picks that caused a little bit of controversy.

The first over-draft came with the fourth overall pick when the Pittsburgh Pirates nabbed Boston College catcher Tony Sanchez. The Baltimore Orioles then followed up with the fifth pick by taking California prep right-hander Matt Hobgood, leaving the likes of Zack Wheeler, Jacob Turner, Tyler Matzek, and Shelby Miller on the table. All four prep pitchers were considered to be more talented. The third shock of the Top 10 came with Atlanta’s selection of Vanderbilt lefty Mike Minor, an advanced arm with limited upside.

Just over 11 months have passed since the ’09 draft, so let’s have a look and see how the gambles are paying off.

Sanchez was the only catcher taken in the first round. The next backstop was taken by Seattle with the first pick of the supplemental first round (33rd overall) in Florida high schooler Steve Baron. With a brutal big league pitching staff in Pittsburgh in ’10, names like Mike Leake, Drew Storen, and Kyle Gibson are looking pretty good right now. Truth be told, though, there are few – if any – ’09 first round hitters performing better than Sanchez right now. The catcher has a triple-slash line of .310/.423/.491 in 116 at-bats in high-A ball. The (soon-to-be) 22-year-old Sanchez has been creaming right-handed pitching with a .338 average. He’s slowed in May after a scorching April, though, and has seen his OPS go from 1.082 to .692 this month. Defensively on the year, he’s thrown out just five runners in 35 attempts (14%).

Hobgood was initially perhaps the most perplexing selection. In fairness, though, the Baltimore organization redeemed itself later on by signing a number of promising picks to over-slot deals to sway them away from other commitments. Instead of spending all of its money on one high-risk, high-reward player, the re-building organization hedged its bet and spread the love around. Pitching in low-A in 2010, the 19-year-old Hobgood has allowed 33 hits and 17 walks in 36.2 innings of work. He’s struck out only 23 batters, but he’s given up just one homer and has a ground-ball rate of 54%. It will be a while before we truly know how the club made out with this selection, as we also monitor the development of Wheeler, Turner, Matzek, and Miller… as well as the players that Baltimore paid big money to later in the draft (like Cameron Coffey, Ryan Berry, and Michael Ohlman).

The Braves organization has a reputation for developing pitchers but the club historically takes prep arms. That hasn’t worked out so well in recent years, which could explain part of the rationale for taking Minor, 22. He had a rough start to his ’10 season with nine runs allowed in his first two starts (9.0 innings) but he’s been making the organization look smart lately. The “soft-tosser” is leading the double-A Southern League in strikeouts with 65 in 44.2 innings of work (13.24 K/9). He’s also given up just 32 hits. Minor may find even more success once he can get the ball down a little more consistently and get the ground-ball rate up over that 50% hump. The southpaw has been lights-out with the bases empty (.132 average) but he’s struggled with runners on and in scoring position (.320).

It’s still very early, but all three players are holding their own in professional baseball. There was plenty of second guessing going on at the time (by myself included) but each MLB club spends a lot of time and money to make the best selections possible for themselves. It will be interesting to see who pops up unexpectedly in the Top 10 to 15 picks of the 2010 draft. It will also be fun to revisit the above trio at the end of the ’10 season.


Nats, Rockies Headed In Different Directions

We are still at the point in the season where a single series can change a team’s outlook. No series exemplified this better than the Nationals and the Rockies this weekend. When it began Washington was 19-15, tied atop the NL Wild Card Standings. The Rockies, in typical early season fashion, sat below .500, 16-17, though just 2.5 games out of the Wild Card race.

A Nationals win in the opener on Thursday placed them in the Wild Card lead alone and put the Rockies 3.5 games out. That 3.5 games might be a bit misleading, because it’s difficult for any team to create real separation at this point. Houston, owner of the NL’s worst record, was just 6.5 games out heading into play on Friday. In just two days, however, the scene changed a bit.

After a rainout on Friday the they played two on Saturday, and the Rockies pounced. Only the Nats’ best hitters, Ryan Zimmerman and Adam Dunn, could put across anything against Ubaldo Jimenez, who made life easy for the Rockies offense.Livan Hernandez has impressed to this point, but even the three runs he surrendered were too many. Add in a Brian Bruney meltdown and it’s an easy Rockies win. In the nightcap the Rockies rode the return of Jason Hammel, who allowed just three runs and struck out seven in seven innings, to a 4-3 victory.

On Sunday the Rockies got another return, this time from Jeff Francis. He captured headlines this morning after a seven-inning, one-run performance that included six strikeouts. Scott Olsen went toe-to-toe with him, allowing just one run in 6.2 IP, but Tyler Clippard, while preventing two inherited runners from scoring, couldn’t keep the Rockies off the board in the eighth. Manny Corpas prevented the him from Clipping another win.

The Wild Card standings, of course, look a bit different this morning. San Francisco sits alone atop them, while Washington sits two games out. Colorado, now above .500, is just a half game behind them. Again, this is not surprising at this point in the season. A mild winning or losing streak can change a team’s outlook. Still, it appears as though Washington and Colorado are two teams headed in opposite directions.

Nationals: A realistic chance, or playing over their heads?

The Nationals certainly impressed with their 13-10 April record. After a season in which they held the league’s worst record and an off-season in which they made few roster upgrades, I’m not sure anyone could have expected such a performance from them. A few unexpected performances — particularly those by Ivan Rodriguez and Livan Hernandez — helped the team perform above their true talent level.

As Steven at Fire Jim Bowden noted on May 1, plenty of bad teams have posted winning records in April. We needn’t look further than last season to see the Pirates, who finished at 62-99, and the Royals, who finished at 65-97, with April records above .500. The Nationals could certainly fall into this group, as their 100 runs scored against 108 runs against suggests a decent stream of luck in the first month. But will they be 90-loss bad?

That could depend on how they deploy their reinforcements. They’ve already taken a step by removing Bruney from the bullpen and replacing him with Drew Storen. While Storen’s overall impact won’t be overwhelming — he might throw 50 innings out of the bullpen the rest of the way — his presence should help the Nats avoid the late inning meltdowns to which Bruney was prone. With Clippard, Matt Capps, Sean Burnett, and now Storen in the pen, the Nats figure to blow fewer games in the later innings. They could benefit even further if Tyler Walker cuts down on the home runs.

They will also call on Stephen Strasburg within the next few weeks. While it’s not likely that he dominates out of the gate, he’ll still represent an improvement in the rotation. Only one Nats starter, Scott Olsen, strikes out opposing hitters at an acceptable rate, so adding Strasburg’s strikeout stuff will only help. Add to that the possible return and the possible effectiveness of Chien-Ming Wang, and maybe the Nats have something going.

In May the Nats have won seven and lost eight. Even if they keep that pace throughout the season, they still have those 13 April wins. That means a 78-win season, which has to be considered a victory at this point. That’s the upside. The downside is that each day we’re likely to see them slipping down the Wild Card standings. A surprise run isn’t out of the question, of course, but given the team’s current run differential I wouldn’t think it likely.

Rockies: Why are they so bad in April?

During the past four seasons, the Rockies have played horribly in April, a 40-57 record. Yet in two of those seasons they made the playoffs, and still have a good chance to make that three this season. Again, they just boosted themselves over the .500 hump, and if past seasons are any indication they should be just fine going forward. That’s not just because of past results, but also because of where the team currently stands.

The return of Jeff Francis stands to upgrade the Rockies’ rotation, as will the eventual return of Jorge De La Rosa. One the whole pitching hasn’t been a problem, as the Rockies have allowed the fifth fewest runs per game in the NL. Adding Francis and De La Rosa to the rotation, however, should help them prevent opponents from putting up crooked numbers, as they have a few times this season. That should help them produce a record more in line with their run differential. The return of Huston Street, eventually, should greatly help the bullpen, which has seemingly performed above its head so far this season.

With improved pitching and a solid offense, the Rockies appear to be headed up in the standings. With a questionable pitching staff the Nats appear headed down. Will mid-season adjustments and reinforcements from the minors change either of their outlooks? I guess only time will…ah, forget it.


What We Learned In Week Six

After taking a week off, the things we learned make their triumphant return.

Jose Bautista is doing a pretty good Vernon Wells impersonation.

While Wells gets most of the credit for the resurgent Blue Jays offense (and rightfully so), Bautista is also whacking the baseball with regularity. He led all major league hitters in wOBA last week, putting up a .444/.565/1.111 line. Of his eights hits, four left the yard, bringing his season total to 10 – his career high in home runs is 16, accomplished in 2006 when he racked up 469 plate appearances. He’s always had above average power (career ISO of .171), but an increase in the amount of balls in the air has allowed him to act like a true cleanup hitter so far.

He won’t keep this up all year, but he will be an interesting trade chip for the Blue Jays. He’s capable of playing all four corner positions, makes just $2.4 million this year and is arbitration eligible at the end of the season, so he’s not strictly a rent-a-player. Come July, when Toronto’s efforts to keep up with Tampa Bay and New York have fallen short, don’t be surprised if Bautista is one of the more coveted guys on the market.

It’s time to start paying more attention to Tommy Hanson.

The Braves right-hander made a pretty nice splash as a rookie last year, running a 4.03 xFIP in 120 innings after tearing up the minors. However, while the results were good, the stuff was a tick below what it was in the minors, as his fastball averaged just 92.3 MPH after being consistently in the 93-96 range in the minors. This year, he’s found his old velocity (fastball is now averaging 93.6 MPH) and his strikeouts have been the big benefactor – he struck out 18 batters (while walking just one) over two starts last week, and his K/9 for the season now stands at 10.08, seventh highest in baseball.

Hanson was a strikeout machine in the minor leagues, and with his increased velocity, there are reasons to believe he can sustain his early season performance. Hanson is legitimately one of the best young arms in baseball, and given the way he’s pitching so far in 2010, he may be on his way to his first of many all-star appearances.

Jake Westbrook looks healthy.

Before Tommy John surgery cost him all of 2009, Westbrook was the classic model for how a sinkerball pitcher could succeed – pound the strikezone, get a ton of groundballs, and keep the ball in the yard. In two starts last week, Westbrook looked as good as new, running a 70.5% GB% while walking just three batters in 15 innings of work. He even tossed in 10 strikeouts for good measure, but don’t expect that to continue – he’s definitely still a pitch-to-contact guy.

With a 4.13 xFIP through his first eight starts of the season, Westbrook is pitching near his pre-surgery levels when he was an extremely effective innings eater. With the Indians seven games behind the Twins and Westbrook due for free agency at year’s end, it’s a pretty good bet that he won’t finish the year in Cleveland, but he certainly made himself more attractive to potential suitors with the way he pitched last week.


A Reality Check From the Draft Hype

The major league draft has come a long way in terms of coverage. In this age of twitter and blogs, we get more and more information on these prospective major league players than ever before. We also have seen two of the most hyped players in draft history set to go in consecutive years. Steven Strasburg received an insane amount of hype and continues to do so, while Bryce Harper made the cover of Sports Illustrated as a 16-year-old kid.

Around this time we begin to see mock drafts, hear rumors and get all sorts of pre-draft hype leading up until draft day. That’s all fine and good, and I’m not here to rain on anyone’s parade, but we need to counterbalance some of the draft hysteria with a healthy dose of reality.

Using Rally’s historical WAR database, I compiled the WAR figures for every player drafted in the first round in the 1990s. I only compiled the WAR totals for the player’s first six years of major league service, or in other words, his team-controlled years. Teams benefit the most when the player is a relative bargain, not when he’s being paid what he is worth on the free agent market. There’s many different angles we can look at with the data I put together, and maybe we’ll look at some later, but for now I just want to take a look at the attrition rates to help sober us up from the draft prospect propaganda.

-63.4% of first rounders busted, or produced between zero and 1.5 WAR.

-12.9% of first rounders produced 1.6 WAR and 6 WAR. These would be your role players; that is, your middle relievers, bench players.

-12.9% of first rounders were worth between 6.1 and 12 WAR. These are, but are not limited to, your starters on the fringe to average regulars.

-5% were worth between 12.1 and 18 WAR, 6.8% were worth 18.1 WAR or greater. That grouping includes some of today’s stars; Alex Rodriguez, C.C. Sabathia, Roy Halladay, Manny Ramirez and *ahem* Jason Kendall.

(Once upon a time, Jason Kendall was pretty awesome.)

So that’s about three-quarters of all first rounders failing to live up to the hype. Every team envisions their first round pick as a fixture in their every day lineup or pitching rotation, but the odds are they produce little to nil in the big leagues. I do not envy the job of the scouting director; it’s a job where you swing for the fences but often come up empty. On the other side of the coin, the payoffs can be huge for the ones that do pan out.


Why Craig Calcaterra Writes

Last week, I introduced to the wide readership a line of inquiry down which the very famous Jonah Keri had gotten me started. The line of inquiry concerns those bloggers who, despite almost no promise of financial compensation or notoriety, have persisted in their craft.

The question I posed — after having considered Will Leitch’s suggestion from his Costas Now episode that blogging is a really hard work — the question I posed goes like this:

Why do it? If, as Leitch suggests, it’s hard work, why do it? If, as I can tell you personally, it provides very little in the way of fame and/or cash money, why do it?

I’ve posed this same series of questions — or at least ones very similar to them — to some of the interweb’s more thoughtful baseball writers. Over the next week-plus, I’ll be sharing their responses in these electronic pages.

What follows is the product of a lightly edited email correspondence with Craig Calcaterra. Calcaterra, in case you don’t know, made his name by way of his ShysterBall — which blog eventually earned Calcaterra his own damn corner of Hardball Times. Last November, Calcaterra moved over to NBC’s HardballTalk, from which site he quietly manipulates the mind of the common man. (In a good way.)

___ ___ ___

Calcaterra: It’s all about the women, really.

Wait, that’s not true.

In all honesty, it began as escapism — I hated what I was doing as a lawyer day-to-day, and baseball was a nice way to think about things other than rich people suing other rich people for a little while. I couldn’t really watch games in the office, and I couldn’t sort baseball cards on my desk, but writing about it (a) scratched the itch and (b) made it look like I was working on real stuff, so no one bugged me about it. I wish for my legal career’s sake I was lying about it, but that’s the truth.

As I really got into it, the motivation to keep doing it became less of a reaction and more of a desire. I realized I was pretty good at it and people liked what I was writing. I got the notion in my head some time in late 2008 that maybe, just maybe, I could get a job doing it, and it was around that time — just before I moved the blog over to The Hardball Times, actually — that I began a conscious effort to make baseball writing a career.

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Teixeira’s Slow Start

Being a slugger brings with it perhaps the greatest glory a playing style can in baseball. Aces are elevated, high contact hitters occasionally revered, and lock-down relievers feared, but sluggers? Chicks have never adored the four-out save like they do the four-base hit. Being a switch-hitting slugger leads to even more hagiography. Mark Teixeira is that and fits the image of the imaginary basher.

Teixeira is tall at six-foot-three with sturdy forearms and an all-American jaw-line. His batting stance is rather simple to imitate, which cannot be said about the amount of force Teixeira’s bat strikes baseballs with. As such, the public perception of Teixeira is increasingly strong, especially when one combines the locale of Teixeira’s job – both on the field and a map – with the aforementioned style of play.

Teixeira neither is, nor will he ever be, the most prolific home run hitter — in output or length -– but thus far, launching bombs has been one of the few parts of Teixeira’s offensive game apparent in his .217/.341/.420 line. That translates to a .340 wOBA which is above the league average mark, but below the expectations from a first baseman and particularly a first baseman named Mark Teixeira. The good news for the Yankees, besides being able to whether the struggles with a strong record, is that little cause for concern exists.

Teixeira is hitting the same number of line drives, fly balls, and grounders as he always does, yet his batting average on balls in play is .223. Over the last three seasons, Teixeira’s BABIP have ranged from .302 to .342. To state the obvious: .223 is nowhere near the previous low tide. Teixiera isn’t even hitting more infield fly balls than normal; instead, he’s hitting fewer pop ups.

Literally the only conceivable explanations that do not involve a heavy dosage of bad luck is Teixeira’s amount of contact with pitches outside of the strike zone. In previous seasons, his O-Contact% bounced around between 40-60%. This year, it’s at 70%. That simply means that Teixeira is making contact with pitches that should be called balls.

That nothing short of his BABIP has changed seemingly supports the idea that this is just a dry run on good luck and should allow Teixeira to keep his slugger glory in tow.


FanGraphs Audio: Fantasy “Friday” w/ Sanders, Sarris

Episode Twenty-Eight
In which the panel mixes its pitchers

Headlines
Pitching Mixes and You
The Rangers’ New Dutch Boy
Proposals: The Trade Kind and Other Kinds
… and other cockamamie excuses!

Featuring
Zach Sanders, Northwesterner
Eno Sarris, Workingman

Finally, you can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio on the flip-flop.

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