Squire wrote:At some point I Hope that Rube is calling Garza and offering one year at 17m, 2 at 29m or 3 at 36m. His choice.

my guess is that jimenez is going to be the best of the remaining 2013-14 fa pitchers going forward, and maybe the best of the whole fa class. his velocity decline stopped and then reversed a bit over the season and in the meantime he found a way to make his slider and change more effective. a move back to the nl where his new style has been less thoroughly scouted could make that style even more effective, and he is one of very few starters a proven ability to deal with pitching in a homer friendly home park.

at the same time, there is talk of his crappy 2012 depressing his value, so he might also be the cheapest.

thoughts?

Don't want to give up a draft pick for him.

ReadingPhilly wrote:Don't want to give up a draft pick for him.

Some guys are worth the pick. With Morgan going down getting a MLB ready starter of UJ's quality may be worth it.

rolex wrote:

ReadingPhilly wrote:Don't want to give up a draft pick for him.

Some guys are worth the pick. With Morgan going down getting a MLB ready starter of UJ's quality may be worth it.

Is Ubaldo better than Garza + pick though? I don't mind adding a starter, but I'd pretty much sign anyone who doesn't cost a pick before I'd sign Jimenez. Garza, Capuano, etc. The org desperately needs another good to great draft this summer.

Ubaldo is terrible

Ok, I'm in on Ubaldo.

90 ERA+ the last three years with a 8.5/4.2 K/BB per 9 over that stretch and he's a right handed power pitcher turning 30 this year.

Sounds like a great idea.

Jimenez has the highest upside and most risk. If you can get him for something like 3/39 you jump on it. Remember money is the only advantage we have.

Ubaldo's mechanics, never all that great to begin with, really went to hell in 2012. He was a mess. Last season, the Indians pitching coach or someone, got his mechanics back to merely not ideal.

He has been pretty consistent in the xFIP arena, in the mid to upper threes for most of his career. He is a big guy, durable and athletic. A guy who should age well. He has good stuff. He can hit 95 with his four seamer and he has a pretty nice two seamer, a good slider and even a split. My Scouty insider believes he has a good chance to be a number 2/3 starter type for four or five more years.

But his mechanics aren't good. And they can go downhill fast which is a big concern.

He actually wasn't too good in the first half of last season. But he finished like a boss.

He is a big boom or bust risky guy. He'd be easily worth giving up a pick if he pitches to his ceiling. But he could just as easily go to crap again.

A great guy to take a chance on in a one year deal. Less great to ink to a long term big buck contract. And that's what you gotta do to get him.

I don't think there's any chance the Phils will sign him.

dajafi wrote:Jimenez has the highest upside and most risk. If you can get him for something like 3/39 you jump on it. Remember money is the only advantage we have.

Insiders are saying he wants 4 years in the 70-80 million dollar range.

I also don't trust Ruben to put together a low risk offer. We just gave Marlon Byrd two years

Of the pitchers out there to be signed not named Tanaka, Ubaldo may be the one most likely to get twenty wins for a team. A second rounder is not too much to lose to get a guy who can do that for you. If he is getting back on track like has was last season after the AS break, he's a good buy. Chooch might be good for him.

rolex wrote:Of the pitchers out there to be signed not named Tanaka, Ubaldo may be the one most likely to get twenty wins for a team. A second rounder is not too much to lose to get a guy who can do that for you. If he is getting back on track like has was last season after the AS break, he's a good buy. Chooch might be good for him.

This, though I'm not sure Tanaka is a better bet given his mileage and the differences between the leagues. And per rosenthal his people are now saying he's looking for $14m/year. There's risk with him, but he also could be a serious asset.

I'd like to see them sign both Ubaldo and Garza actually, then explore Lee trades. Embrace risk rather than just accepting the seemingly inevitable 74-88 for which we're now on track.

The latest episode of Hot Stove with Ricky Bo and Steaks was depressing as hell with them talking about July fire sales (CLIFF, Jimmy? Ryan?), being out of the race already and having no pitching in AAA with Morgan out

dajafi wrote:

rolex wrote:Of the pitchers out there to be signed not named Tanaka, Ubaldo may be the one most likely to get twenty wins for a team. A second rounder is not too much to lose to get a guy who can do that for you. If he is getting back on track like has was last season after the AS break, he's a good buy. Chooch might be good for him.

This, though I'm not sure Tanaka is a better bet given his mileage and the differences between the leagues. And per rosenthal his people are now saying he's looking for $14m/year. There's risk with him, but he also could be a serious asset.

I'd like to see them sign both Ubaldo and Garza actually, then explore Lee trades. Embrace risk rather than just accepting the seemingly inevitable 74-88 for which we're now on track.

The good news is that in some alternative universe that will actually happen.

rolex wrote:Of the pitchers out there to be signed not named Tanaka, Ubaldo may be the one most likely to get twenty wins for a team. A second rounder is not too much to lose to get a guy who can do that for you. If he is getting back on track like has was last season after the AS break, he's a good buy. Chooch might be good for him.

Good point regarding Chooch. A pitching coach who understands how to smooth out mechanics would help. I forget who our pitching coach is because he is apparently no good. The Cleveland guy did a good job with Ubaldo.

smitty wrote:

rolex wrote:Of the pitchers out there to be signed not named Tanaka, Ubaldo may be the one most likely to get twenty wins for a team. A second rounder is not too much to lose to get a guy who can do that for you. If he is getting back on track like has was last season after the AS break, he's a good buy. Chooch might be good for him.

Good point regarding Chooch. A pitching coach who understands how to smooth out mechanics would help. I forget who our pitching coach is because he is apparently no good. The Cleveland guy did a good job with Ubaldo.

i´m hoping chooch will also get the most out of hernandez and gonzalez.
on jimenez... there may well be enough teams scared of losing draft picks and of his erratic career that he may not get anything close to what he was hoping for. i would call his agent with a 2/25 offer and leave that sitting on the table on the chance that that is the best he gets.

Shore wrote:And that's how you get 47.7+20+14.6+1.5=83.8, then you add 1 win for luck, and round up. Then you're hopeful we can add the next Yu Darvish, though we're not linked to him at this point, and then with a little luck, compete.

It doesn't make you uncomfortable that Steamer, seemingly the biggest influence in your scenario, without Crash or other adjustments, has the Phillies at 72 wins? (47.7+14.1+10.6=72.4)

yesterday i looked again at steamer and oliver. it turns out i can address your very reasonable objection to the complexity of my estimate just by using steamer´s pitching and oliver´s hitting with appropriate ip and pa scaling.

on the pitching side, steamer is missing about 250 innings pitched and is missing a starting pitcher for 26 games. steamer and oliver agree pretty much on lee and hamels rate stats, but oliver´s innings and value drop for the combination looks a lot more like the usual 0.5 win/year drop... from 9.3 wins combined in 2013 to 8.0 in 2014, instead of steamer´s plunge to 7.1 wins. this is pretty close to just adding 20 innings to each to scale up steamer´s war and help fill in the missing innings. that adds 0.9 wins. scale up kendrick and hernandez by a little less than a third to given them more typical 3rd and 4th starter innings adds about 0.8 wins. give the 30ish starter innings of martin and half of pettibones starts and the rest of the missing innings to m.a.g. and assume he matches his fellow cuban hernandez and that´s adds another 1.9 wins via 125 innings from m.a.g. [in 2013 all of martin was about -0.45 starting and +0.05 in relief if i backward engineer the fangraphs roundoff fractional wins so that making him a pure reliever in steamer looks to add 0.35 wins giving us 1.7(h=m)+0.35(martin) -0.15(pbone) = 1.9]. steamer´s pitching with missing innings and m.a.g. added thus gives 10.6+0.9+0.8+1.9 = 14.2. no leverage adjustment this time.

on the hitting side, i can just go with steamer, the best 6-man bench (i send frandsen away in trade), other ¨replacements¨ at zero war value by definition, and bench pa scaling that matches up to typical team pa´s for each lineup spot and defensive position for a season. the only outlandish thing i´ll do this time the only outlandish thing i´ll do this time is to either (a) go with steamer´s more optimistic prediction for howard or (b) declare that the best all-steamer bench has howard on it, which isn´t completely implausible if his ankle gets sore enough.
i don´t have time to type the details now, but that gives me about 17 wins.
47.7+14.2+17 = 78.9 wins. i don´t think rounding to 79 is too ridiculous, do you?

bwar, which really is better than fwar, has a bigger spread of values for the 2013 phillies... positives more positive, negatives more negative, so that the fact that most of the biggest negatives have been removed while the positives are still around suggests that converting the projections from fwar to bwar would add a win or two. and i still thing well leveraged usage of an underrated pen is worth another 1.5+1.5=3 wins, getting me up to 83 or 84. but i´ll give you back the five wins to make up for the likelihood of me still being too optimistic in my use of the projections above.

79 wins with pitching from one projection system and hitting from the other with normal season ip and pa and no luck other than hoping for the best of the forecast options at 1b, and throwing out 5 wins worth of other things i think the fwar projections are missing. 79 is a heck of a lot better than the 66 ¨real¨ wins of 2013.

given that the standard error of win estimators for actual wins is around 4 (from a quick glance at b-p´s infamous w3), and that the error of projections is at least that big, it would be conservative to guess that the standard error for projections predicting actual wins is 8 wins (good guess... that matches cairo for 2013, which is one of the best if not the best). that gives the 90 win playoff threshold a z-score of 1.375 and a probability of about 8.5%. if you think you need 92 wins to guarantee a playoff spot, fine, make it a 5% or 1 in 20 shot at the playoffs without even adding a good pitcher.... which, for me, is the whole point of this exercise: pointing out that it really isn´t necesarily a bad idea to go for one of the good fa pitchers remaining.

add a 3 win pitcher and you double the playoff chances to one in 10, and make it easier to stay respectable after trading lee if all goes wrong. or, if i am right out 2 of my 5 extra wins, the chance grows to 1 in 7. if i am right on all 5, the chance is one in seven without that pitcher and 1 in 4 with him.

Curious: If you made similar assumptions/followed similar process for the rest of the teams in the NL East, what would there win totals be?

Trent Steele wrote:Curious: If you made similar assumptions/followed similar process for the rest of the teams in the NL East, what would there win totals be?

good question. i just took a quick glance at the steamer and oliver projections for the braves. the first things i notices is that there are far fewer missing pitcher innings in their list. the second is that it doesn´t look like the steamer-oliver woba, war, and innings projections differences for position players are as dramatic for the braves as they are for the phils. i could easily have overlooked something, but i didn´t see something for the braves as striking as the difference between the steamer and oliver projections for byrd and howard.

straight-up steamer for the braves looks like 81 wins, and i´m guessing the missing inning/pa adjustments would take them to something like 86. a higher baseline, but a smaller upward correction. i´ll try to check it out when i get a chance.