Trent Steele wrote:Um, yeah. No one could have seen that coming.

feel like i've read this horseshit every damn day of the season. anyone could see nearly every plausible outcome in advance if they thought about it long enough

Stop it, barry. Saying no one could have seen this coming with Mike Adams (for example) is a bit of a stretch.

Saying that someone who has been as demonstrably bad as Delmon Young is not a stretch. It was not just a plausible outcome. it was THE plausible outcome.

"Well what do you expect for 750K?"

I expect the person won't bring negative value.

it's a terrible line of argument regardless of how accurate it becomes. the worst of the worst Monday morning quarterbacking. i'm not talking about specific examples

and don't condescend to me after you came crawling back from a banning, Jeff

Jeff is right. It's not about examining each plausible outcome, it's about trying to determine the most plausible outcome. No one is perfect, but the most plausible outcome for both Youngs and Revere was that none of them was going to improve the team significantly. Given his age, his declining velocity and the surgery he was coming off, I would argue (and did so at the time of the acquisition) that the most plausible outcome for Adams was very iffy, too.

My only problem with the critique of acquiring M Young is he replaced freaking Polanco, for god's sake. He's also clearly just a one year stopgap given he only has this year on his contract. Not trading him was the real issue but maybe they were really being offered a guy you're just going to cut from a single A team anyway.

vance worley sucks

JFLNYC wrote:Jeff is right. It's not about examining each plausible outcome, it's about trying to determine the most plausible outcome. No one is perfect, but the most plausible outcome for both Youngs and Revere was that none of them was going to improve the team significantly. Given his age, his declining velocity and the surgery he was coming off, I would argue (and did so at the time of the acquisition) that the most plausible outcome for Adams was very iffy, too.

It's about trying to determine the plausibility of each possible outcome. If you're hanging your hat on a mean projection instead of analyzing a spectrum of possible outcomes you're limiting the way you view risk/reward scenarios. It's easy to look at Delmon Young and say "this guy sucks" because the chances he doesn't suck are extremely low. But with Mike Adams, using Jeff's example, the risk/reward scenarios are completely different. You could have a guy whose hand never works the way you'd like, or you could have the best 8th inning reliever in the National League. Signing the guy depends on how much probability you place on those outcomes. So yes, WHO COULD HAVE SEEN MIKE ADAMS' INJURY PROBLEMS COMING? is dumb because it excludes the possibility that any of millions of other outcomes could come true. Maybe those outcomes were less likely, but there's a risk/reward scenario for every player on the market. This attitude pretends every decision is either colossally stupid or blindingly brilliant. That's not how the world works. Can we stop pretending it does? Or at least come up with some new, interesting way of doing it instead of CTRL+Ving the same bullshit in these threads every day?

Barry Jive wrote:

Trent Steele wrote:Um, yeah. No one could have seen that coming.

feel like i've read this horseshit every damn day of the season. anyone could see nearly every plausible outcome in advance if they thought about it long enough

Really not sure what you're getting at here. Coming into the season, I think there was a really good chance that Nix and Delmon Young were going to be awful. I think most people here on this board could see that coming as the most likely scenario. What is the issue?

It's also a response to the typical douchebag fucking response of "we're not perfect." How about being fucking competent? Whatever. Put me on ignore If you don't want to read it.

I don't mean to single you out, Trent. This has nothing to do with Amaro sucking. It's just gotten old seeing a disingenuous half-assed response to baseball decisions that require more than a win or lose evaluation. And again, I wasn't speaking with reference to specific examples because that phrase has been bandied about for pretty much every little thing that has gone wrong this season

Who in the world is pretending every decision is colossally stupid or blindingly brilliant? That's a straw man. Rube's made some great moves like the trade to acquire Lee or the Halladay extension or how he crafted Utley's extension. He's made some decent moves like the Ibanez signing.

But, you know what? He's made some shitass moves, too, like the Howard extension. And the far and away most plausible outcome for the sum total of this past off-season moves (both Youngs, Revere, Adams and Durbin) was that they weren't likely to move the needle significantly, unless you were counting on every other regular and starting pitcher to be both healthy and productive. And these outcomes were not only predictable, but predicted.

I get that nobody likes bad news. But since when was it mandated that that we can't criticize the bad moves both when they happen and when they turn to predictable shit?

JFLNYC wrote:And these outcomes were not only predictable, but predicted.

yeah, and lots of them weren't. We don't have any soothsayers on this board but people sure like to act like it. If it doesn't bother you, fine. It bothers me so I'm complaining about it. the end

I think Rube was caught flat footed by how quickly a 102 win team turned to shit. This off season was about filling out a line up card, hoping things would work out, and if they did, use mid-season moves to get the team back to post season. It wasn't a great plan.

This is the worst argument ever.

No one said the moves were gonna 'move the needle significantly.' It was always about Halladay and the core hitters.

Would you have felt better if Amaro did nothing or signed Hamilton and League? Wait, no, I know, the obviously awesome five guys available for $15M total.

The Nightman Cometh wrote:This is the worst argument ever.

well now it's official

And the risk reward measurement for just giving Ruf the OF job in ST and sticking through his growing pains was so much better than spending money and playing time on Delmon. And letting Frandsen and Asche split time at 3B was so much better (and cheaper) than spending lots of money on MYoung. And that would have allowed them to sign another decent starter (#3 type) rather than Lannan. And it would have yielded BETTER results.

Adams was a decent gamble. Durbin was pretty much guaranteed to fail. Revere was a decent gamble; looks like a winner given Worley's and May's struggles. Don't think everyone is simply responding negatively to every signing or trade simply because they're Monday-Morning-Quarterbacking. Some moves ARE stupid when they're made.

Barry Jive wrote:

JFLNYC wrote:And these outcomes were not only predictable, but predicted.

yeah, and lots of them weren't. We don't have any soothsayers on this board but people sure like to act like it. If it doesn't bother you, fine. It bothers me so I'm complaining about it. the end

This is total BS. I say sooth all the time. Sooth you!!!!

It's funny because a lot of guys "predicted" the Phillies would suck in 2007, 2008 and even beyond and criticized pretty much every move. They weren't "right" back then. But, if you do that, you will be "right" a lot because a LOT of moves don't work out great and a complaining about the guys who sit on the bench most of the time or reliefers is also great "predicting" because you will also be "right" about any teams 24th or 25th player sucking or some fungible guy being lousy.

WGAFF.

It is fun to tell the Sooth though.

GGSA.

Like Pierre last year, PC?

These are marginal things. It's the past commitment to the core and the future actions that matter.

Grotewold wrote:No one said the moves were gonna 'move the needle significantly.' It was always about Halladay and the core hitters.

Would you have felt better if Amaro did nothing or signed Hamilton and League? Wait, no, I know, the obviously awesome five guys available for $15M total.

Don't forget Youklis. We couldda had him.

Thanks Amaro.

smitty wrote:

Grotewold wrote:No one said the moves were gonna 'move the needle significantly.' It was always about Halladay and the core hitters.

Would you have felt better if Amaro did nothing or signed Hamilton and League? Wait, no, I know, the obviously awesome five guys available for $15M total.

Don't forget Youklis. We couldda had him.

Thanks Amaro.

I wanted BJ and was dead wrong. The patch up approach was right to me in hindsight. One that needed most stuff to go right to contend in 13, but one with very little impact on 14 and beyond.