2016 MLB thread. THE CUBS HAVE BROKEN THE CURSE! Chicago Cubs are your 2016 World Series champions

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I hate seeing him in our hat . Thought I'd irritate deadset with this but I'm sick now ...
 
Don't jump just yet you old fart :lol:

Yankees Sign Jacoby Ellsbury, Bet On Speed Aging Well.

You’re going to hear Carl Crawford‘s name a lot over the next 24 hours. Carl Crawford was a speed-and-defense outfielder heading into his 30s and the Red Sox gave him $142 million over seven years, only to see the deal become an albatross almost immediately. Everyone who was skeptical of aging speed-and-defense outfielders was instantly vindicated. Everyone who is still skeptical of aging speed-and-defense outfielders is going to instantly point to the Carl Crawford deal when they hear that the Yankees have agreed to pay Jacoby Ellsbury $153 million over the next seven years.

Crawford is a data point in their favor, absolutely. He was a similar player to Ellsbury, and he got a similar contract to Ellsbury, and it didn’t turn out to be a very good idea. Crawford is absolutely evidence that this contract could be a big mistake. Crawford is a reminder that big free agent deals often turn out badly. But if you’re going to use Carl Crawford as the sole data point in your belief that players like Ellsbury are bad investments, you’re simply ignoring the fact that history doesn’t actually agree with you.

I published a piece here on FanGraphs a few weeks ago entitled “The Slow Decline of Speedy Outfielders“. It is hardly the first article published that note that players like Ellsbury actually have aged well historically, but it’s one I wrote and recent, so it’s the one I’m linking to. Many others have written similar pieces before, and this is not a new idea, but it’s one worth repeating. Most players that have had Jacoby Ellsbury like skills have performed pretty well in their 30s. Players like this age better than other types of players, not worse.

For those not interested in reading that piece, I’ll just repost the two tables. These are outfielders who, over the last 30 years, showed similar skillsets to Ellsbury from ages 27-29.


Name PA BB% K% ISO AVG OBP SLG wOBA wRC+ BsR Off Def WAR
Rickey Henderson 1788 14% 11% 0.165 0.285 0.387 0.450 0.374 133 28 99 6 17
Jacoby Ellsbury 1691 7% 14% 0.166 0.303 0.356 0.469 0.359 123 19 64 34 16
Ichiro Suzuki 2191 6% 8% 0.111 0.328 0.374 0.440 0.350 118 15 64 22 16
Kenny Lofton 1788 9% 11% 0.150 0.324 0.381 0.474 0.372 118 18 60 31 15
Tim Raines 1733 14% 8% 0.163 0.297 0.395 0.461 0.371 135 15 86 -8 14
Andy Van Slyke 1761 10% 18% 0.180 0.271 0.341 0.451 0.352 126 5 56 18 14
Devon White 1914 8% 20% 0.149 0.253 0.314 0.402 0.322 98 10 7 58 13
Derek Bell 1926 7% 18% 0.165 0.285 0.340 0.450 0.343 111 6 32 23 11
Aaron Rowand 1769 6% 18% 0.170 0.283 0.344 0.453 0.346 105 11 22 29 11
Steve Finley 1688 7% 11% 0.127 0.279 0.331 0.406 0.328 106 6 16 29 10
Marquis Grissom 1850 7% 11% 0.148 0.286 0.337 0.435 0.336 100 7 7 36 10
Average 1,841 9% 13% 0.153 0.289 0.354 0.442 0.349 115 12 45 24 13
And now, here’s how those players did from ages 30-36, the years guaranteed in Ellsbury’s new contract with the Yankees.


Name G PA BB% K% ISO AVG OBP SLG wOBA wRC+ BsR Off Def WAR
Rickey Henderson 869 3819 18% 11% 0.167 0.287 0.418 0.453 0.393 148 39 253 -10 38
Ichiro Suzuki 1115 5148 6% 10% 0.093 0.332 0.377 0.426 0.348 114 43 136 46 35
Kenny Lofton 940 4260 11% 12% 0.136 0.287 0.368 0.422 0.349 107 17 56 69 26
Tim Raines 834 3651 13% 9% 0.125 0.284 0.376 0.408 0.352 116 21 94 -38 18
Devon White 841 3640 7% 18% 0.163 0.272 0.332 0.435 0.336 100 12 11 48 17
Steve Finley 1041 4474 8% 13% 0.201 0.275 0.338 0.476 0.349 110 4 59 -25 17
Andy Van Slyke 557 2363 10% 15% 0.154 0.280 0.354 0.434 0.350 117 6 48 -8 13
Aaron Rowand 509 1865 5% 22% 0.142 0.253 0.310 0.394 0.309 88 -3 -29 12 4
Marquis Grissom 972 3952 5% 16% 0.149 0.264 0.304 0.413 0.311 84 2 -83 -5 4
Derek Bell 314 1373 10% 21% 0.135 0.241 0.323 0.376 0.311 82 0 -33 -17 0
Average 799 3,455 9% 15% 0.147 0.278 0.350 0.424 0.341 107 14 51 7 17
There are a few busts in there, and you can throw Crawford into that mix as well if you want even though we don’t technically know how his entire 30-36 span is going to go, but by and large, these guys held a large chunk of their late 20s value. Offensively, they hardly declined at all. Their defense got worse, but it didn’t become useless. They got slower, but were still better baserunners than most. They played fewer games, but most of them played enough to still be productive.

One cannot be intellectually honest while citing Carl Crawford if you’re not also going to simultaneously cite Rickey Henderson, Ichiro Suzuki, and Kenny Lofton. There are examples of every single player type that have signed huge contracts and immediately imploded. If we’re just going to cherry pick recent examples of contracts gone terrible, we could argue that teams shouldn’t sign any player at any position with any skillset. Power hitters who scare opposing pitchers? Meet Albert Pujols. Up the middle guys who can hit like corner guys? Hi there Matt Kemp. Elite aces in the prime of their careers? Johan Santana, come on down.

Carl Crawford’s production is not Jacoby Ellsbury’s fait accompli; it’s one possible path of many. Every player’s future is a probability distribution, bottoming out at completely and utterly useless. Every single player could turn into a total dud tomorrow. And every single player could actually play better in the future than they have in the past. There is no single example that represents the expected outcome for any other player, no matter how similar they might appear to be.

So, we have two options. We can either throw our hands in the air and say “who knows what the future will bring, sign anyone for whatever you want and hope for the best” or we can try to make educated guesses based on reasonable assumptions and decent amounts of data. Those decent amounts of data suggest that players like Ellsbury age well, even if Carl Crawford did not. That data does not support the idea that speed-and-defense players fall apart after they turn 30. If anything, the data suggests just the opposite, and says that big boned first baseman are the ones you should be really afraid of.

I know the Carl Crawford comparison is the easy one, especially because Boston is tied to both players. That doesn’t make the conclusion about Ellsbury’s future value based on Crawford’s failure any more true, however.

With that very long caveat out of the way, let’s actually talk about what Ellsbury is. Steamer and ZIPS both see him as roughly a +4 WAR player in 2014. If we do the standard half WAR per season decay for aging, then Ellsbury would project out to +17.5 WAR over the next seven years. Interestingly, that’s an almost perfect match for what the average player in the list above did from ages 30-36, so +17 to +18 WAR seems like a perfectly reasonable expectation for the next seven years. At $153 million, that would mean the Yankees were paying about $8.7 million per expected win, about a 40 percent premium over the cost of the deals we’ve seen signed thus far. Relative to other contracts already signed, including the Yankees own signing of Brian McCann, this looks like an overpay.

But there’s a caveat on every free agent signing with the Yankees, because their financial situation is entirely different than every other team’s situation. The Yankees have a crazy amount of money. The Yankees don’t really need to spend money as efficiently as possible. The Yankees can easily afford to pay more than the market rate for players and still be just fine, because they have more resources than any other team in the game.

So, yeah, this deal wouldn’t make sense for a lot of other teams. For a team with a payroll of $100 million, $22 million per year for Ellsbury probably doesn’t work. Even at $125 to $150 million, it’s probably too much. The Yankees, though, can afford it. $22 million to them is roughly equivalent to $12 or $13 million to a franchise with an average payroll. Even if the Yankees stick to their guns and come in right under $189 million for 2014, Ellsbury’s AAV would account for something like 12% of their total payroll.

The Yankees paid a lot of money for a very good player. That very good player is probably going to remain a very good player for the next few years, and then, like nearly every free agent, he’ll be an overpaid albatross in the last few years of the deal. For the price, the Yankees probably overpaid relative to the going market rate of wins. But because they’re the Yankees, the fact that they overpaid by $20 or $30 million doesn’t matter all that much.

It would hurt the Yankees more to put another mediocre team on the field in 2014 and watch their built in financial advantage begin to dwindle. The Yankees have a resource advantage to maintain, and the best way to maintain that advantage is to keep putting good teams on the field.

And Jacoby Ellsbury will help the Yankees put a good team on the field again in 2014, because Jacoby Ellsbury is a good player, even if he’s a good player because he’s fast. Runs created with speed and defense count too.
 
400


I hate seeing him in our hat . Thought I'd irritate deadset with this but I'm sick now ...

trust me, my friend...it hurts you a lot more than it hurts me. i haven't planned on welcoming him back to boston for months now :lol:
 
He gets on base a lot better than Gardner and doesn't K as much. Plus, guys like Ellsbury age a lot better than the usual suspects getting these deals.

Also, it makes Gardner that much more valuable. Move him back to LF where he was one of the top LF's for those two years before the injuries took their toll.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with having two similar guys in the lineup like Ellsbury and Gardner. However, since you aren't getting power from a traditional power spot like LF, you have to pick it up somewhere else. Like at second base where guys dont usually have power, maybe someone like Robinson Cano.... 
 
Definitely.

That's why I still lean they'll bring him back into the fold.

They're really not getting power anywhere other than C, 1B (if Tex is healthy, which is up in the air) and wherever they stick Soriano.
 
Well, I'm glad it wasn't us that doled out the 150.

Cubs have to do someting, though. How long does it take for Theo's plan to kick in anyways.

We've never had a farm system worth a damn. Suddenly we have several prospects we can grow with.

It's been 100 years, I think we can wait two more to see how his core develops. Then they can spend to fill in any gaps they discover.
 
I've been against this signing BUT a few things

The kid is very talented. I didn't mind us going for him but I was hoping for a lot less money.

He's injury prone and that scares me. If he stays healthy, I love it.

This also means the Yankees are back to spending money and not giving a damn :smokin

I'm expecting a lot of SBs and for him to hit a good amount of bombs. Hoping he can stay around .300 too

It also means we don't sign Choo, who is a BUM






Now we need to bump up Cano's offer. Tell him 200. If he says no, tell him suck a ****
 
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Definitely.

That's why I still lean they'll bring him back into the fold.

They're really not getting power anywhere other than C, 1B (if Tex is healthy, which is up in the air) and wherever they stick Soriano.

Kind of makes it important to go out and retain Mark Reynolds who is a good Righty Power hitter will get you 20+ HRs

Cano obviously.


Although it seems unfathomable.... Keep pursuing our OF targets, and move Soriano to DH.
 
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Projected 2014 NYY lineup, anyone :nerd:


Assuming they sign Cano

CF - Ellsbury
SS - Jeter
2B - Cano
DH - Soriano
1B - Teixiera
C - McCann
RF - ??
3B- ??
LF - Gardner

Reason I have Soriano 4th is because he is a straight fastball hitter.. You place him behind guys who get hits, you have to come at him.. Big reason why he was a beast last season was hitting around Cano.
 
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-Ellsbury is great, if he stays healthy. Deal is fine and he'll be worth it.

-They're saying Yankees will probably deal Gardner and try to fill in another hole.

-Cano will most likely sign with NYY still. Yankees will raise the offer to around 200 they're saying. I doubt he leaves unless someone offers him 230+ which I don't see happening. He doesn't sell out stadiums like Alex once did. Even Alex coming back this year sold more tickets than Cano did this year.

-I would have liked Beltran but not for three years.
 
Ellsbury deal not as crazy as it seems.

The New York Yankees' seven-year, $153 million contract with Jacoby Ellsbury, the second-best free agent available this offseason, seems shocking for its sheer size and for the fact that the Yankees already had a viable center fielder (Brett Gardner) on their roster.

But if Ellsbury can stay healthy even for most of the deal, it's actually quite reasonable, especially for a team on the verge of playoff status with the game's biggest revenue base.

Ellsbury's been good when he's been able to get and stay on the field, with an 8-WAR season in 2011 when he should have won the AL MVP award and a 5.8 WAR season (per both versions of the stat) in 2013. The former figure came in his insane power spike season, where he made a visible adjustment at the plate, dropping the bat head to drive the ball out to right and right-center and producing what is thus far the only double-digit home run season of his career.

What 2013 demonstrated is that he can be worth $22 million to a team like the Yankees even if he only hits 9 homers in a season: He's a plus-plus defender in center who hits for average and adds a ton of value on the bases. I wish he walked more, although at 30 years old he's not likely to improve significantly in that department, and even at his current level it's realistic to assume a 5-WAR baseline for him with a lot of variance on the positive side if he has another power spike -- and in Yankee Stadium, where a pop-up to right field can go over the fence if the hitter times his exhale properly, he might have a few of those.

His problem, as any scan of his statistical history will tell you, is that he's missed huge chunks of two of the last four seasons, both due to on-field collisions that required lengthy DL stints. He played through a stress fracture in his foot at the end of this year, and while it's unfair to call him injury-prone, it's just as unfair to say he's been durable when he hasn't had the opportunity to prove it. At 140 games a year, he'll be a good value for most of this contract. The question -- which I can't answer -- is whether he's more likely than your average 30-year-old position player to have a freak injury that takes out half or most of an entire year.

Ellsbury is a clear upgrade over Gardner, and while the Yankees could move Gardner to left field, they may find more value in exploring the trade market for him given how few center fielders there are with his kind of defensive ability. Gardner's a fringy offensive player whose production is mostly in his ability to get on base, especially against right-handed pitchers, all the product of a tremendous ability to foul off pitches he can't square up; he actually saw as many pitches per plate appearance as Shin-Soo Choo, and more than guys like Mike Trout, Joey Votto, and Paul Goldschmidt.

He's less productive against southpaws, albeit not inferior enough to merit a platoon, and he has always benefited from the short right field in Yankee Stadium, with just over 2/3 of his career homers coming at home. He can certainly be someone's center fielder everyday, and if the Yankees choose to keep him and play him in left, he's a brilliant insurance policy in case Jacoby Ellsbury collides with someone else this year.

The Red Sox will happily take the extra draft pick for losing Ellsbury and insert Jackie Bradley Jr. into his spot in center; Bradley's a plus defender already thanks to tremendous reads and instincts, and his approach at the plate will eventually lead to high OBPs as well as 15 or more homers a year.

The only other true center fielder of note on the market this winter is Franklin Gutierrez, who was one of the game's defensive players at any position a few years ago before injuries started crushing his value -- which is yet another argument for the Yankees to at least put Gardner out there and see who might be willing to overpay for him.
 
watching the transition from horror to acceptance to justification of the ellsbury deal for yankee fans is entertaining :lol:

not just on here, but all over twitter and on facebook as well :lol:


but as most have said, if they can keep cano as well...good for them.
 
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Ells to the Yanks :smokin I like it. However, still holding out hope they don't resign Cano and we make a win now move and bring him in :pimp:
 
:lol: i know, bobby

even if you were, it's fine. i don't blame anyone who does. it's an exciting player. and for certain teams, the dollars aren't a big deal. i'm guilty of it with carl crawford :lol:
 
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