off season

[HawksFan83]

Jack Z said it him self, he wants to get younger and better....we have no reason to re-sign jack wilson and pay him 8+ million...he doesnt produce like branyan and his D is good but not great..if i recal he did have some pretty significant throwing errors while he played for us, could be adjusting to the new players but still.
JJ would be a good pick up but also we gotta remember, we could plug in Josh wilson for the year, and hopefully 2011 will bring in Truinfel, cant forget about one of our top prospects!

 

[Fenom]

So if Jack Z wanted to get young from the start, why did he trade away players to pick up Jack Wilson for a few months? It just doesn't make any sense. Yeah, he had a few problems, but that has to do with not knowing the ability of the guys around you and not knowing what they will do on any given play.

 

[HawksFan83]

Maybe he has some magic up his sleeve like unloading wilson on another team for a pair of prospects? cuz we have a couple ML ready players that could step in and cost us sooo much less than him.

 

[bobflipaburger]

Ackley wont be ready till about 2011,

I dont forsee Wilson playing on this team next year, and the pirates only picked up his salary for this season, he has an option for next season so we arent commited, like i said before, watch for a push for JJ hardy, he's young, and we all know he has great upside, just has to get back to his form, just had a bad year. Its just to expensive for this team to sign jack wilson, givin his age and now he's having leg problems.

Dont forget the bullpen could actually be upgraded this next season with Aumont and Josh fields coming in, both have great arms and are young and have really high upsides.

Our 2011 team will be a good young competative team, but as for 2010, look for a mix of vet and young players, while Z will want to win, he will still build for the future, so not signing to many vets is the key to getting that done.

Well, my opinion is that Jack Wilson will stay here. J.J Hardy would be a good pickup and Jack Z probably will try to sign him, but he won't let Wilson go. He is an experienced player with great defense and a decent bat. They gave Branyan a chance last year, so saying that they won't give Jack Wilson a shot because of injuries doesn't seem like a correct statement.

If they trade for Hardy (which is what they should do), there's no way they keep Jack Wilson. And you can't compare Branyan and Wilson. Paying $1.4 for an injury prone Branyan is nothing like paying $8.4 million for an injury prone Jack Wilson. Wilson seems like a nice guy, but it would be stupid to bring him back next year at that price.

Nick Johnson is another guy they should look at to bring in. He could probably come fairly cheap, is a decent left handed hitter, and could be the 2nd half of the DH/1B platoon with Branyan.

Why the hell would we platoon Branyan after what he did last season? I know he's "injury prone," but if we DH him that should help. I say start Carp at 1B. I think he's got a really high ceiling offensively and his defense is just as good, if not better, than Branyan's (who's defense surprised me this season).

And phaZe there's no way Beltre asks for more money then he was making before. There's no way. Remember he got a big contract after he led the league in home runs. He did nothing like that up here. He'll make less if he stays.

 

[bobflipaburger]

Maybe he has some magic up his sleeve like unloading wilson on another team for a pair of prospects? cuz we have a couple ML ready players that could step in and cost us sooo much less than him.

Who are these "MLB ready prospects" you speak of? Josh Wilson? Tui? I like Tui, but he'd be a disaster at SS... That's why he moved to 3B. And Josh Wilson will be a very good utility guy, but he's not an everyday starter. Triunfel lost an entire season this year otherwise he might be MLB ready.

 

[seahawkscott19]

"Why would you platoon Branyan?"
The first reason is because he's not going to last a full year playing 1st (as we saw this year), so giving him time at DH is going to help his productivity. And even if you want him as the full time DH, we need to find a 1B and I'd take Nick Johnson playing 1st full time over Carp any day. The second reason to platoon him is it's unrealistic to assume he's going to have another year like he had this last year. He had a career year, he's a year older, his back is obviously a problem, and if you rely on him as a full time player (1B or DH), and he craps out on us, we'll have no legitimate option to fill his spot. So either way we'll need to bring in a guy to complete the 1B/DH spots.

 

[bobflipaburger]

Johnson over Carp? Really? Carp is better defensively than Johnson and has more potential offensively.

 

[seahawkscott19]

I'd love to see anything that proves Carp is better defensively or offensively than Nick Johnson.

 

[bobflipaburger]

For the 2009 season:

UZR
Nick Johson: (-5.3)
Mike Carp: .3

Although that was in extremely limited playing time for Carp so this might be a better gauge:

UZR/150
Nick Johnson: (-4.6)
Mike Carp: 3.8

 

[seahawkscott19]

Well if you want to compare stats between a guy who's played 21 MLB games to a guy who has played 770 games, let's look at their WAR:

Carp - +0.5
Johnson - +2.5

I'll take the guy who's going to contribute more wins over the guy who, in his 21 career games, has been the better defensive first baseman.

 

[bobflipaburger]

The only way he's going to become a better hitter is by facing MLB pitching. I think Mike Carp has the make up of a very good major league hitter. He'll be a better hitter than Johnson too.. He just needs a chance. And I don't know why he didn't get more playing time when Branyan was out at the end of the season... I don't know what Wak had against him, but I would have liked to see would Carp could do starting every day.

 

[seahawkscott19]

You're not going to win games with a roster filled with guys who "have potential" or who you "think will be a good major league hitter". And I don't see Carp being anything more than a very average and forgettable major leaguer.

 

[bobflipaburger]

In the limited opportunities he got he had an OBP over .400 and showed very good plate discipline.

 

[seahawkscott19]

Yeah, lets just ignore the fact that we scored the 3rd fewest runs in the league and our team overachieved last year. Keeping the team exactly the same and expecting better results sounds like a good plan.

 

[bobflipaburger]

Over-achieved based on what? Our run differential? I personally don't think that's the end all be all of say we over-achieved or not, but to some people I guess that's a valid stat. And I'm not saying it's completely invalid, just not the end all be all of telling how good a team "should have been."

Nothing we do this off season is going to boost our line up all that much... I mean if we somehow added Hardy, Johnson, AND Holliday(which I highly doubt) we'd have something... With Hardy and Johnson we'd still be bottom 10 maybe bottom 5 in the league so I'd rather just build toward 2011 if that's the case and I think after a year in the big leagues Carp would be an above average MLB hitter. I see him as a guy capeable of hitting around .280-.300 with 25 HRs or so. Not a ton of power especially for a first baseman, but a very servicable MLB hitter.

It's hard to speculate these kinds of things though... I completely trust Z and think any moves he makes will be good ones.

 

[seahawkscott19]

"Overachieved based on what?"

This team overachieved in a ton of different aspects of the game. Run differential in definitely one. It's extremely unlikely that if we put up that low of offensive numbers again, we won't be above .500, especially with our questionable pitching. Our defense was insane this year, and you can't expect it to be as good next year, even if our team stays exactly the same. Those numbers are just too unreal to keep for 2 full seasons.

Then, you can look at the individual players who had a career year. Russell Branyan, and Jose Lopez both had career years offensively, Guti put up monster defensive numbers, Felix and Aarsdma both had career years pitching, and Washburn pitched better than he had in five years while we had him. Of all those guys, Felix is probably the only one that's going to put up the same type of numbers next year, and the rest will eventually regress toward the mean.

 

[bobflipaburger]

"Overachieved based on what?"

This team overachieved in a ton of different aspects of the game. Run differential in definitely one. It's extremely unlikely that if we put up that low of offensive numbers again, we won't be above .500, especially with our questionable pitching. Our defense was insane this year, and you can't expect it to be as good next year, even if our team stays exactly the same. Those numbers are just too unreal to keep for 2 full seasons.

Then, you can look at the individual players who had a career year. Russell Branyan, and Jose Lopez both had career years offensively, Guti put up monster defensive numbers, Felix and Aarsdma both had career years pitching, and Washburn pitched better than he had in five years while we had him. Of all those guys, Felix is probably the only one that's going to put up the same type of numbers next year, and the rest will eventually regress toward the mean.

Offensively Guti should only improve. Lopez didn't hit nearly as well as he's capable of hitting and still put up 95 RBI.Beltre had an extremely poor year offensively due to injury. Our catchers sucked, and we never had a good a very good bat in LF.

I hope Beltre comes back, but I have a feeling we're going to go with Tui...
Now that Johjima is gone we might address the issue at catcher... Johnson needs to go.
In LF... The biggest FA out there is Matt Holliday who plays LF, but I don't think he'll end up here... I doubt we'll even pursue him... I think our situation in LF is going to stay the way it is unless Z can work another miarcle deal and sell some players high like he did last season.

 

[HawksFan83]

Umm your to worried about LF, Remember Endy Chavez? he's supposed to be ready by next season so we shall see, and Adam Moore is the catcher of the future so that problem is solved. The biggest question right now is 3rd and Short.

 

[bobflipaburger]

Umm your to worried about LF, Remember Endy Chavez? he's supposed to be ready by next season so we shall see, and Adam Moore is the catcher of the future so that problem is solved. The biggest question right now is 3rd and Short.

This team's biggest problem is offense... I really like Endy, but he isn't exactly going to tear the cover off the ball.

As for 3B if Beltre comes back problem solved. If not the orginization really like Tui and he looks ready for the big leagues.

SS is a position we need to look at closely... To get the best defensive shortstop in the game I think it might be worth picking up Wilson's club option.