RotoChamp projections are now available in the sortable projections pages and player pages for the second year in a row. Big thanks to RotoChamp.com for letting us post these for the second straight year.
One quick note about projections this year is that you can filter by active team, giving you available projections for anyone who is on the current 40 man roster.
When Johnny says his last lines in “The Outsiders” — “Stay gold, Ponyboy. Stay gold.” — there’s more than a slight touch of mortality in the moment. There might even be outright pessimism about the directive. After all, the Robert Frost poem he’s referencing finishes: “Nothing gold can stay.”
Turns out Johnny and Frost know a little something about pitchers and strikeout rates. Thanks to the inestimable Jeff Zimmerman, we have strikeout aging curves for both starters and relievers. As dawn turns to day, it seems, pitchers also lose their gold.
Walt Jocketty and his Cincinnati Reds have signaled to the baseball community that they believe the NL Central to be ripe for the taking in 2012.
The organization has been extremely bold this offseason. They opted to leverage several of their young, valuable assets — namely Yonder Alonso, Travis Wood, and Yasmani Grandal — to acquire Mat Latos and Sean Marshall, in hopes of complementing a potent offense that posted the fourth-best team wOBA in the league last season and catapulting the team into the postseason.
Cincinnati ratcheted up that aggressiveness even further on Tuesday evening by inking closer Ryan Madson to a one-year, $8.5M contract.
Like many prospect mavens, Eddie Vedder is keen on Oakland prospect Michael Choice.
Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of Offseason Notes.
1. Assorted Headlines
2. Prospecting: John Sickels’ Top-20 List for Oakland
3. Crowdsourcing Broadcasters: L.A. Dodgers Television (Away Games)
Assorted Headlines
Bowker Released, Will Likely Play in Japan
The Phillies have released outfielder John Bowker to allow him to pursue an opportunity with a professional team in Japan, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer. Even as I type these words, I realize the reason I regard this news as noteworthy has everything to do with a .342/.451/.596 (.362 BABIP) line Bowker posted as a 25-year-old at Triple-A Fresno in 2009. In fact, he’s been worse than replacement level in over 600 major-league PAs.
Editor’s note: This previously unpublished interview was conducted in 2008.
Juan Samuel wasn’t the best second baseman of the 1980s, but he was definitely among the most exciting. The former Phillie was erratic in the field and he put up some scarily-bad BB/K rates, but he logged a healthy number of extra-base hits and he ran the bases with abandon. He also had some notable teammates and nearly found himself part of a Schmidt-Samuel-Franco-Sandberg infield.
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Episode 122
In this episode of the pod, we utilize veteran baseball writer Dayn Perry’s advanced age more for good than evil, as we use A Baseball Winter — Terry Pluto and Jeffrey Neuman’s chronicle of the 1984-85 offseason — as an entree into a discussion of baseball in the 1980s. Among the topics discussed: how exactly to pronounce Don Aase’s surname.
Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.
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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 35 min. play time.)
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Let me first preface this column by suggesting that I’m no great Hall of Fame historian; I don’t know as much about the history of this great game as my colleagues.
Today I seek to get a good feel whether or not Larry Walker is a legitimate Hall of Fame candidate. Indeed, much of my gravitation towards Walker is derived from his playing era; my baseball formative years started around 1993, which incidentally coincides with almost the exact time Walker rose to prominence.
Prior to researching for this column, in my view, Walker was a Hall of Famer. I guess you could say I’m going to either convince myself he belongs, or disband my #Walker4HOF campaign altogether. Nonetheless, it’s a case study in journaling the progress of determining one’s HOF credentials. Let us begin.
Monday’s BBWAA announcement that Barry Larkin would join Ron Santo in the 2012 class in the Hall of Fame brought few surprises in terms of overall balloting. Indeed, it’d be nice if Tim Raines and Jeff Bagwell, among others, would be joining Larkin and the spirit of Santo on that glorious late-July afternoon, but that’s neither here nor there.