really though, the list of players who signed minor league deals that are better than Juan Pierre is pretty much an empty set. it was a pretty crappy market for reserve outfielders this year. Laynce Nix got a two-year deal because the Phillies had to outbid the Nationals. Ben Francisco blew last year and the Phillies actually got value for him.

Juan Pierre has OPS'd over .700 once since 2006

I mean for fucks sake

Players with more WAR's than our opening day LF last season:

CLIFF LEE
Hummus
Vanimal
Cyle
Exxon
Kratz
Sardinha
Orr
Bowker.

jeff2sf wrote:What's the fun in rooting for a team that makes such a stupid decision?

This is the core of the issue and the attitude I don't really understand. I'm happy to hear criticisms of the Pierre signing. I wasn't particularly thrilled about it. But why would that detract from the fun in rooting for the team? Every team I've ever rooted for made stupid decisions. I rooted for the 2008 team that gave Jenkins a two-year, $13 million deal. And it was fun! All teams make dumb decisions. They also make incredibly smart decisions all the time that I don't even notice and they don't get equal amounts of credit for them. The same people who signed Jenkins signed Jayson Werth off the garbage heap. I find that amazing in retrospect. I assume they know a lot of things that I don't and have to make decisions based on a lot of restrictions that I don't know about and some of the decisions I don't think are big deals at the time (Golson for Mayberry for example) turn out to be HUGE wins. It won't stop me from grumbling about bad decisions. It's like a manager bunting after a lead off hitter hits a double. I'm momentarily annoyed because I think it is so stupid but I don't let it ruin my enjoyment of the game. I realize it's just one little part of the whole ups and downs of rooting for a sports team. It seems like a bad strategy but once they decide to do it I root for it to work out. If you can't enjoy rooting for a team that is really good because of a handful of moves you consider dumb then I think you've become a fan of smart roster construction more than a team. Real teams have limited options and are not free to sign all 90 of the equivalent hypothetical players who are waiting around to sign minor league deals.

Barry Jive wrote:Now they're talking about the question marks in the bullpen after Papelbon. You're supposed to have question marks in the bullpen.

I hate to cherrypick, because in general this has been a really good conversation and it breaks up a lot of my stupid ass posts, but did this really happen?

Because I know Bill (and I like and respect him a lot when it comes to baseball analysis) has said on the record that he wouldn't have signed Papelbon or Madson. In other words, he would have gone with even MORE question marks in the pen.

jerseyhoya wrote:Juan Pierre has OPS'd over .700 once since 2006

I mean for #$!&@ sake

so you're saying he's due

Eem wrote:

Barry Jive wrote:Now they're talking about the question marks in the bullpen after Papelbon. You're supposed to have question marks in the bullpen.

I hate to cherrypick, because in general this has been a really good conversation and it breaks up a lot of my stupid ass posts, but did this really happen?

Because I know Bill (and I like and respect him a lot when it comes to baseball analysis) has said on the record that he wouldn't have signed Papelbon or Madson. In other words, he would have gone with even MORE question marks in the pen.

I'm not sure which of them said it, maybe Boye. It was during the discussion about whether the Phillies were the favorites in the NL East and they were just talking about things that could go wrong. Ultimately they all agreed that the Phils still are the favorites. I was just using that as an example of how overanalyzing one team makes you lose sight of how they compare to other teams in the league, which I think is pretty common among any subset of pessimistic fans.

etched Chaos wrote:

jeff2sf wrote:

etched Chaos wrote:I'd like to know this phantom list of players Jeff thinks we could've signed this offseason, for a minor league deal no less.

Take the top 50 Outfielders in OPS in AAA, remove the ones who are prospects and the property of other teams. Then add in about 20 outfielders from the majors last year who outperformed a .657 OPS in left field and signed for minor league deals. That's your list.

I looked at the LF OPSes with minimum 300 PA and there were 37 players who OPSed more than .657 last season, I removed all who had a sub .700 OPS because choosing someone with a .690 OPS instead isn't much of an upgrade. There were 28 players, of those 28 here's how many were signed on a minor league contract; None. Then I decided to lessen the required PA's to appease you and how many did i find then... None.

So, who are these players you keep yammering on about?

And how many of the top 50 OFers in AAA are not prospects and were free agents?

etched Chaos wrote:Players with more WAR's than our opening day LF last season

Pretty sure no one here is banging the drum for Raul either

Juan Pierre is about the worst choice in left field for at least four reasons I can think of

1) The 2003 Marlins. Fuck them
2) Chris Wheeler drooling over him is going to be obnoxious
3) He's really not good at baseball
4) There's a chance Charlie, who is old school in a bunch of ways, will stick with Pierre for his veteranocity and plays the game the right wayness, as he's stealing bases at a 60% clip and getting on base 32% of the time and throwing like a girl

jerseyhoya wrote:

etched Chaos wrote:Players with more WAR's than our opening day LF last season

Pretty sure no one here is banging the drum for Raul either

Juan Pierre is about the worst choice in left field for at least four reasons I can think of

1) The 2003 Marlins. Fuck them
2) Chris Wheeler drooling over him is going to be obnoxious
3) He's really not good at baseball
4) There's a chance Charlie, who is old school in a bunch of ways, will stick with Pierre for his veteranocity and plays the game the right wayness, as he's stealing bases at a 60% clip and getting on base 32% of the time and throwing like a girl

On the last point, I think we've thought that about a lot of guys, and the only one he's really stuck with is Baez, who actually did have some use as a garbage time innings eater we could abuse with no reprecussions.

Phdave put his finger on the nub of the issue: Of course there are guys who could have been signed instead of and outperformed Pierre. The problem is nobody will know who those guys are until after the fact. And for every one who will outperform Pierre, there will be 20 who won't. With the Phils' track record of getting performance out of guys off the scrap heap, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt for now about Pierre.

With the pitching they have, Rube and Charlie have time to figure things out. Maybe Pierre surprises people or Mayberry finds his stroke again or Nix steps up or they acquire Marlon Byrd. They'll figure something out in time. In the meantime, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest to see Pierre get hot for a bit and help the Phil's win some games early.

mcare89 wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

etched Chaos wrote:Players with more WAR's than our opening day LF last season

Pretty sure no one here is banging the drum for Raul either

Juan Pierre is about the worst choice in left field for at least four reasons I can think of

1) The 2003 Marlins. Fuck them
2) Chris Wheeler drooling over him is going to be obnoxious
3) He's really not good at baseball
4) There's a chance Charlie, who is old school in a bunch of ways, will stick with Pierre for his veteranocity and plays the game the right wayness, as he's stealing bases at a 60% clip and getting on base 32% of the time and throwing like a girl

On the last point, I think we've thought that about a lot of guys, and the only one he's really stuck with is Baez, who actually did have some use as a garbage time innings eater we could abuse with no reprecussions.

I guess. I am just afraid that enough people talking about how this team needs to manufacture runs through the things Pierre does in a mediocre fashion will lead to him becoming a fixture.

Also I really don't like him. Not sure I've made that clear yet.

JFLNYC wrote:In the meantime, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest to see Pierre get hot for a bit and help the Phil's win some games early.

This is one thing I think people have discounted about some of the Phils' players, namely Valdez/Castro and that group: they came up with some big hits or big moments defensively. I don't believe in "clutch" at all but I think big moments from role players have to be accounted for when analyzing their performance after the fact. Sure, maybe he lucked into a grooved fastball or something, but he got a hit.

Obviously, when you sign a Valdez, you don't want him to have to play full time. That's why he was available cheap. But if he delivers in some moments like he did (or Bruntlett, legendarily), he did his job for the most part.

Jeff, when did baseball stop being fun for you?

Since 2000, 117 outfielders have at least 2000 PA. 109 of them have been better (by OPS) than Juan Pierre. Including Scott Podsednik, Gary Matthews Jr, and Jay Payton.

He's a terrible hitter, with absolute zero power, and he rarely walks. He uses a ton of outs, doesn't advance base runners with XBH, and really isn't that good of a basestealer. Gets a lot, gets caught a lot. If he hits .300, he can be a league-average hitter. He's done it twice (been a league-average hitter), in 12 seasons.

John Mayberry's rookie year, where he hit .211 / .250 / .474 in 60 PA, was an 85 OPS+. Pierre's career number is an 84. I don't think it's very likely that Pierre outperform Mayberry.

Yes, that's why no one with a brain wants him as a long term solution. Seriously, if anyone here wants him to be starting, raise your hand now. The big thing is it's not the end of the world. He's a scrub. He's nothing. And he's not worth all this goddamned teethnashing.

jeff2sf wrote:Since you know how to find minor league deals, why don't you post all the NRIs in baseball this year and we'll go through em together and find 20.

I don't know how to find a full list of non-roster invitees without going through every MLB team's web site and finding them. I don't know for sure that there were any minor-league contracts given out to players with a better 2011 OPS than Juan Pierre posted (over 700+ major league PAs, for some reason). But to whittle this down, here's the standard I'll use:

Last year, the Phillies employed Ross Gload as a lefty specialist for an entire season. They had, in the minors, Brandon Moss, an outfielder who posted an .877 OPS and a 136 wRC+ good for fifth among International League outfielders. (wRC+ works the same way as OPS+ except it uses the more balanced wOBA instead of the mathematically flawed OPS. Just my preference. It adjusts for league and ballpark so I can compare across different AAA leagues for our purposes here.) Moss came up in September and was terrible.

I presume there may have been contractual complications with the idea of releasing Ross Gload and bringing up Moss at some point last season, but I also think if the Phillies thought Moss was better than Gload he'd have gotten more than the 29 PAs Gload got in September, or at least more than the 13 PAs John Bowker got. He didn't. He got 6 PAs and went 0 for 6. Bowker was 0 for 13 and he's in Japan now. Bowker's OPS in AAA last year was .830. Moss signed a minor-league contract with the Athletics and was sent to the minors on March 19. I'm confident Juan Pierre is still better than all three of those guys.

Here's the list of guys who had better AAA wRC+ in 2011 than Moss:

Russ Canzler
Jeremy Hermida
Brandon Guyer
Alejandro De Aza
Collin Cowgill
Ryan Langerhans

of those, the only two who were free agents this off-season were Hermida and Langerhans. Hermida signed a minor-league contract with San Diego, Langerhans with the Angels. It's possible we could have gotten one of those guys and that they'd be better than Juan Pierre. Hermida was a below-average full-time player back in his last full seasons in 2008-2009. He's been worse since. He might be a better hitter but it's hard to say. Langerhans might be a better hitter but it's hard to say because he's never had more than 373 PAs in a given season. But he's never been very good.

Here are some OF with better wRC+ (min. 110 PA) than Pierre's 78 in the majors who were FAs this off-season:

Rick Ankiel (wRC+ 83, re-signed a minor-league contract with Washington)
Conor Jackson (83, signed a minor-league contract with Texas, was released last week and signed with the White Sox)
Grady Sizemore (88, signed a major-league contract)
Raul Ibanez (90, signed a major-league contract)
Willie Harris (90, signed a minor-league contract with Cincinnati)
Ryan Ludwick (91, signed a major-league contract)
Nate McLouth (92, signed a major-league contract)
Juan Rivera (92, signed a major-league contract)
Kosuke Fukudome (93, signed a major-league contract)
Milton Bradley (94, free agent, has been out of baseball since his release from Seattle on May 16)

Ben Francisco also had a wRC+ of 94 last year, and the Phils traded him for a minor-league relief pitcher so I'll draw the line there. So there's your list.

Milton Bradley doesn't really count. He's run himself out of every clubhouse he's been a member of and is basically blacklisted. Willie Harris might have been a nice option. Conor Jackson hit .091 this spring before Texas released him so he could latch on with another team; he won't be in the majors this year unless the White Sox get into a team bus accident. Rick Ankiel might have been a minor upgrade over Pierre, but he played in Washington last year and his deal will pay him $1.25 MM as a major leaguer this year with considerable escalators for PAs ($0.2M each for 100, 150, 200, 250, 300 PAs. $0.25M each for 375, 400 PAs) according to Cot's.

Like Pierre, Willie Harris will make $0.8 MM as a major leaguer (though he'll make 50k each for 200, 300 and 350 PAs). Judging all of the above, it looks to me like that's the only option that would have been better than Juan Pierre.

Barry Jive wrote:

jeff2sf wrote:Since you know how to find minor league deals, why don't you post all the NRIs in baseball this year and we'll go through em together and find 20.

Judging all of the above, it looks to me like that's the only option that would have been better than Juan Pierre.

What about all the people walking around on the street?

WheelsFellOff wrote:Yes, that's why no one with a brain wants him as a long term solution. Seriously, if anyone here wants him to be starting, raise your hand now. The big thing is it's not the end of the world. He's a scrub. He's nothing. And he's not worth all this goddamned teethnashing.

What is the expected left field situation for April? Pierre starting most games with Mayberry starting against lefties?

Is that preferable to a platoon of JBerry and Nix? Or Mayberry getting the majority of playing time? Or Brown/Mayberry splitting time, shitty defense and all?

I dunno. Mayberry will play a better left field than Pierre...and will get fewer ABs than Pierre since Charlie will hit him 6th and not 1st in the order...and might accidentally hit a homer or two.

I understand that there isn't a huge groundswell here for Pierre to start the majority of games, but it seems like we might be heading in that direction. Isn't that worth a good bit of teeth gnashing? I don't give a shit if it's a long term solution or a short term one driven by injuries and lack of development from Dom defensively and a shitty spring from JBerry and Nix. It's still pretty fucking not optimal IMO even compared to the other crappy options available to us. And this is a good place to complain about such developments.

3 pages on a pissing contest over Juan Pierre. Jeff is the best troll on the board.