SB Nation User Blog: Matthew

Actually More on Brandon League

Matthew — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 22:59:17 -0000

More photos » by Reinhold Matay - AP

High socks have been scientifically shown to increase one's level of Awesome by 13% on average

No fooling this time. I promise.

I covered the Brandon Morrow is not as highly valued as we thought angle already. Now, I wanted to actually take a look at Brandon League and see what reasons I could find that might tell us why Jack Zduriencik wanted him here.

Brandon League in 2009 was a very different pitcher than ever before. Relief pitchers are extreme volatile commodities and so departures, even radical ones, from the norm have to be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism. The development of a new pitch, some sort of changeup or splitter, was credited with the success but we have all read enough of those stories to know not to simply trust what people say. Instead, I went digging into my pitch database for information.

League had settled in around the 8% swinging strike rate from 2005 through 2008. That jumped to over 14% last season. That's a monumental increase and that he sustained it over 1,105 pitches is encouraging. With that rise in missed bats came the expected increase in strikeouts. League punched out nearly a quarter of all batters faced after being about a 15% strikeout guy previously. Astoundingly, League recorded just six called strikeouts in 2009. The other 70 strikeouts were of the swinging variety.

Those extra strikeouts came as a result of League's new pitch. In 2008 a whopping 79% of League's pitches were over 95 miles per hour. 15% fell in the 85-90 bucket, almost entirely his slider. In 2009, those two figures were 40% and 23% as League was much more spread out in his velocity histogram. The increase in off speed pitches was also shifted away from his slider (which actually showed little horizontal break) and toward his changeup/splitter which acts more like you'd expect a change to, breaking slightly in toward right-handed hitters.

League threw his new pitch roughly 315 times last season, 128 times (41%) for a ball, which is bad but an astounding 35% of the time for a swing and a miss. League used this pitch on approximately 55 of his swinging strikeouts. That gives me a lot of hope that League's step forward is sustainable. For at least as long as League keeps that pitch effective, it's clearly a dynamite strikeout pitch.

How dynamite? And how astounding is that 35% figure? I wanted to know so I grouped every pitcher and pitch type together and then figured out how often each pitcher-pitch grouping was swung at and missed. Essentially, I created a ranking of the most unhittable pitches. Where does Brandon League's splange rank on that list?

Brandon League's off speed pitch was number 1.

Pause and read that again. Let it sink in. I had to put it in bold I was so excited. No pitcher in baseball last year threw any pitch that generated a higher percentage of swings and misses than Brandon League's splitter/change did. Second best was Ryan Madson's changeup, at 30%. League didn't just lead the Majors, his lead was so big, he was jogging the last quarter mile.

I wouldn't expect League to hold onto all of the gains he made in 2009. It's simply too difficult to keep missing that many bats and striking out that many people. But the amount that he embraced his new off speed pitch and the sheer level of it's effectiveness means we could be in for some fun in 2010 and beyond.

Wait, one more thing...

Happy holidays, everyone.

Mariners Add David Pauley to SP Depth

Matthew — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 18:24:53 -0000

Zduriencik and Co inked up 26-year-old starting pitcher David Pauley, formerly of San Diego, Boston and Baltimore, to a Minor League contract today.

Normally, minor league contracts are not going to get much coverage, but Pauley interests me a bit. Namely because of his minor league swinging strike rate. See, Pauley's not a Morrow replacement. He doesn't throw gas, sitting in the high 80s with his fastball. He's got some other slop as well, mostly a mid-70s curve, to go along, but the fastball is his predominant pitch.

Pauley has spent almost the entire last three seasons in Triple-A and has averaged about 9.3% swinging strikes while staying consistent in that range. He's a moderate ground ball guy, staying just north of 50%. Also, his inning totals in Triple-A? 147.2, 147, 150.1. His strikeout numbers? 105, 103, 106. His walk numbers? 48, 41, 44. I have a good feeling about what he'll do in Tacoma next year...

That's if he stays in Tacoma all year. My limited scouting sense wants to scream that this is just another guy who can get Triple-A bats out but who lacks the stuff to get Major League hitters out. A Quad-A guy in the vein of Bobby Livingston, Jakubauskas, and the myriad other guys whose names I cannot possibly be bothered to remember. The lack of turning swinging strikes into a significant strikeout advantage over three years points to that. If he were left-handed or a harder thrower, I would be more interested. Then again, he's never gotten a real shot in the Major Leagues, so maybe he might be a surprise.

Either way, he looks to be some solid starting depth for Tacoma, with no service time, added for essentially free.

Carlos Silva, A Recap

Matthew — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 06:30:23 -0000

by Mark Avery - AP

NO LONGER OUR PROBLEM!

View full size photo »

Just as a reminder, this guy is no longer part of our team!

Carlos Silva faced 821 batters as a Mariner. He, and his defense, and his park, managed to retire 546 of those, resulting in 182 innings pitched. For reference, that's just 18 more innings, nine per year, than Erik Bedard pitched while a Mariner. It's also 57 fewer innings than Felix Hernandez pitched. Last year alone.

79 strikeouts. That's 3.9 strikeouts per nine innings pitched, or put better, 9.6% of all batters faced. Among Major League starting pitches expected to toss at least 100 innings in 2009, a 9.6% strikeout rate would have been the second worst in all of baseball, a smidgen ahead of Jeremy Sowers. In 2008 it would have been third worst ahead of only Livan Hernandez and Kyle Kendrick.

While the league average swinging strike rate for starting pitchers hovers just below 8%, Carlos Silva had a combined 4.7% rate. That would have ranked fourth worst in 2008 and dead last in 2009.

41 walks combined between 2008 and 2009. That's 2.0 per nine, or 5.0% of batters faced. Due credit, that would have ranked 16th best in 2008 and 8th best in 2009.

25 home runs allowed during his Seattle stint comes to 1.24 per nine or just over 3% of batters faced, a slightly worse than average rate.

The league average for ground balls is just about 43%. Carlos Silva's 44% rate certainly did not do much to aid him while in Seattle.

A 6.05 tRA is over a run worse than league average. Carlos Silva was about as bad as Zack Greinke was good in 2008 or CC Sabathia in 2009. Silva was on the same level as 2008-era Paul Byrd or 2009s Livan Hernandez.

Add it all up and by tRA's measurements you have a pitcher that totaled 0.4 wins below replacement during his tenure with the Mariners. And to top it off, he spent 147 days on the disabled list.

Good riddance.

Beating the Market

Matthew — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 08:05:28 -0000

Dramatization. May not have happened.

View full size photo »

Let's return to happy thoughts, shall we?

Remember back before the offseason began when we were lamenting how difficult it was going to be to turn this team into a contender. That was because the team had some decent talent and lots of interesting depth, but didn't have a lot of high-upside or well above average players.

And while the team did have loads of money to spend, they were entering the winter as a ~75 win team on paper. Market value for a win acquired via free agency is about $4.25 million so spending all of our roughly $30M (p.s. Love ya, Kenji!) that way would have allowed the team to add about seven wins. In other words, we could have spent our way to about .500 baseball. Not good enough.

We know what happened instead, I won't bother re-hashing the actual moves. The thought did cross my mind today about just how much money Jack has saved the team in terms of acquiring wins though. Please note that this is not a full balance work up. Unlike Dave's post-Lee trade evaluation, I'm not going to talk about the value of the prospects we gave up, or the draft picks we've received back. For here, I am only concerned with the value into and out of the Major League roster.

Now then, the three main additions are Chone Figgins, Cliff Lee and Milton Bradley. Figgins is a 3-3.5 WAR projection offering a bit of an upgrade over what we would have figured to receive were Adrian Beltre to remain in the fold. Beltre entered free agency though, so that is not who Figgins was replacing. Rather he was usurping Jack Hannahan or Matt Tuiasosopo or some such at third base. Either one was worth about a single win, so Figgins is a 2-2.5 win upgrade.

Cliff Lee is a monster beast. He's been worth well over six wins the last two seasons and if he weren't a pitcher, I would feel comfortable putting him at six or above for 2010 as well. We don't even have to worry about the whole NL guy coming to the AL issue since the majority of his career has been in the American League. However, since he is a pitcher, I knock him down to the 5-5.5 WAR range. Thanks to the chained nature of pitching staffs, Lee knocks our worst starting pitcher, some Vargas/Fister/Olson hybrid, off. Once again, the incumbent had about one win worth of value, which makes Lee a 4-4.5 win upgrade.

Milton Bradley is the latest and not quite greatest* newcomer to the party posse. Bradley's injury and attitude issues make him a tougher bet to project forward. While he can certainly provide three to four wins, his best bet is around the 2 WAR range as our semi-permanent DH. That's not awful though since our other options at DH were excruciating, pushing the ceiling at maybe a half-win, making Bradley a solid 1-2 win upgrade.

*In terms of improvement. In terms of Not Silva, wooooooo!

Add them up and here's the facts. Lee, Figgins and Bradley are in the vicinity of 11 wins over generic replacement players and about 8-9 wins over the in-house options that they replaced. For that, their increased cost on the 2010 payroll totals $21 million*. Over the Mariner replacements, that means BlackJack Z spent about $2.5 million per win, roughly 60% of the market rate. If you want to stick to the traditional measure and compute it over league replacement, then the marginal cost drops to $1.9 million per win.

*If you want to consider Milton Bradley a $15 million increase then you also have to consider the saved roster spot from Carlos Silva going away since he departs from the Major League roster.

Jack Zduriencik arrived at the offseason, took a stroll around and cased the joint. And then he went home, booted up Photoshop, printed off some fake Half Off! stickers and robbed the place blind.

More on Brandon League

Matthew — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 21:11:45 -0000

There have been some passing comments mentioned about Brandon League possibly being a starter down the line so I thought I would address that along with a more thorough review of what he is as a player. League was drafted out of college a few years ago where he was a part time starter until his final season in which he finally was made a full time starter and pitched just under 100 innings.

Since being drafted, League has spent the majority of his time in the bullpen, with occasional attempts in the rotation to see if he could stick there. Unfortunately, his over-reliance on his fastball has made him a poor fit so far, though he does has a secondary pitch that he's been working on for a while and has shown flashes at times of being useful.

Yes, League has shown some electric stuff at times. That secondary pitch he's shown off can be superb breaking ball and he has a fastball that can touch 100. His issues have always been spotty command and frankly, it's shown little to no improvement over the past three seasons.

To be a successful starter, League needs time to develop those secondary offerings for sure, but working on those means working on his fastball less and it's not like his fastball is a finished product. It gets some good movement and it certainly has velocity, but his control over it has been come and go, at best.

In addition to the one-sidedness of his pitching repertoire, League would also need to prove that he can handle a bigger work load. He's never thrown more than 120 innings combined in any one season and even then has battled arm injuries so his future as a possible starter seems washy. If you wanted to try him there, one gets the impression that he might need a complete reboot, put into the Double-A rotation and pretend like the last couple years never happened.

League has upside, for sure. Somebody with that kind of stuff always will. Unless he takes a step forward with both his durability and his control however, he likely tops out as a 0.5-1 WAR player either in the pen or rotation.

Wait, one more thing...

I got my Brandons mixed up. Everything I wrote above is about Brandon Morrow.

It's common for us, as fans, to overvalue the potential of our prospects. Brandon Morrow's upside has been bandied about a lot post trade, and in the interest of fairness, I wanted to dump some reality* on the picture. People imagine Morrow as he was during his first start against the Yankees. Sure, he has that potential. But he also has Edwin Jackson potential. The Edwin Jackson that took years to show any real improvement.

*In full disclosure, reality may contain large amounts of rationalization.

Yes, Brandon Morrow has potential to be a dynamite #2 rotation guy. But the odds that he would turn into that while under team control are just so far out there. The notion that Morrow's a starter is basically been built out of 14 starts he made in 2005-6 and that he has a good fastball. He's never shown that he can handle the innings. His fastball, the one pitch he constantly sticks with, hasn't gotten better. He walks a ton of people and he's been put through the wringer as far as confidence goes.The far more likely outcome is that Brandon Morrow becomes about as valuable as Brandon League is right now.

To be clear, I am not enamored with this trade. But giving up on Morrow is not like giving up on Adam Jones. It's like giving up on Matt Thornton or Francisco Cruceta. Sometimes it bites you in the ass, sometimes the guy never takes that step forward or he gets hurt.

Furthermore, there's a decent chance that Brandon League is more valuable to the team in 2010 than Brandon Morrow would be. First of all, League is a better reliever. He balances a few less strikeouts with notably better control and an extreme advantage in ground balls. And if he maintains the gains he took in 2009 with his new splitter, then watch out, he's better than Aardsma. League comes with his own injury and regression concerns as well of course, but the injury seems to have been of a more isolated nature and was muscular, not ligament-related. And the dramatic difference in pitch selection in 2009 lends one hope of avoiding performance regression.

Morrow's slot in the rotation is now open, for now occupied with one of our plethora of back end fringey types like Jason Vargas or Doug Fister. There's also now a stocked bullpen which means Z's attention probably turns toward picking up one of the handful of veteran or injury-risk starters still hanging around, any of whom are likely better bets than Morrow.

It's not a fabulous trade, but if you are rational about what Brandon Morrow is, then I think you'll see this isn't a fleecing. A dynamite #2 rotation guy is what Morrow's ceiling was when drafted, I'm not sure he's any closer to it now then he was then and other teams know that too.

Too Easy

Matthew — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 21:52:45 -0000

Brandon League talks to Doug Miller of MLB.com

"I'm excited because [...] in talking with [former Mariners and Jays reliever] Miguel Batista, he had nothing but good things to say about the Mariners, the direction they're going," League said.

The jokes pretty much write themselves.

Also of note, Brandon League mentions that he worked with Rick Adair in 2004 while at Double-A New Hampshire.

Morrow On the Move?

Matthew — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 04:47:12 -0000

Update 23:02 - Brandon League confirms he's flying to Seattle for a physical.

You know, I was rather looking forward to working on some stuff that's been piling up for some time now, but our GM just keeps making moves. The latest, so it is being talked about by Ken Rosenthal, is that Brandon Morrow is being shipped to Toronto in exchange for Brandon League and an unknown prospect.

Stay tuned for any word on the validity of this, any mention of the prospect involved and some analysis on Brandon League. It seems like an odd one, so try to avoid getting too worked up until we hear more and/or from another source.

League, a right-hander, enters his age 27 season in 2010 and his second (of four) arbitration years. He's a free agent after the 2012 season. Morrow, meanwhile, is under team control through 2013. Known for his velocity, League spent some time on the shelf in 2007 after a great year in '06. He split 2008 between Triple-A and Toronto and was solid and was with Toronto all of 2009, posting an outrageous 14.3% swinging strike rate and striking out nearly one-quarter of all batters faced.

League is also a significant ground baller, relying on his mid-to-high-90s sinker as almost his only weapon. He introduced a changeup/splitter this past season to solid success. If you need a quick comparable, Brandon League is basically a groundballing David Aardsma, with more velocity. He instantly becomes a fantastic set up option and a very useful part of the bullpen. Relievers are volatile of course.

Just for funsies, here's CHONE's projections:

League - 60IP, 53K, 21BB, 6HR, 3.78 FIP
Morrow - 63IP, 60K, 33BB, 6HR, 4.10 FIP

Obviously, CHONE discounts Morrow's potential as a starter.

Why Adrian Beltre Makes Little Sense

Matthew — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 19:58:47 -0000

This post makes me sad. I'm so sorry, Red.

I love Adrian Beltre. I would love to continue being able to watch him in a Mariners uniform. But like Jeff's two posts on Felix earlier in the offseason, this one is going to take the rational approach.

Here is our situation as it stands now:
1B - Hannahan/Carp - 1 WAR, $400K
2B - Lopez - 2 WAR, $2.5M
SS - Wilson - 2 WAR, $5M
3B - Figgins - 3 WAR, $9M
Total - 8 WAR, 17M

Re-signing Adrian Beltre would mean that he reclaims his third base position and almost assuredly moves Chone Figgins to second base now that left field is filled with some rotation of four players (Michael Saunders, Milton Bradley, Ryan Langerhans, Bill Hall). Figgins is likely to be the same value at third or second, 3-3.5 WAR since the positional adjustments are the same and Figgins has familiarity at both positions. Figgins at second base means Jose Lopez is displaced either to first base or another team.

I covered what Jose Lopez moving to first base would be like (see? The dominoes are all falling into place now) earlier and concluded that he would not be significantly better than either of our already present options (Jack Hannahan, Mike Carp). In other words, whether Hannahan, Carp or Lopez, we probably only have about 1 WAR projected out of first base for now. Since moving Lopez results in no possible upgrade at first base, Adrian Beltre essentially replaces Lopez's production and Mike Carp's cost in the infield. That shuffling of the infield deck chairs represents a mere one win upgrade.

Signing Beltre, Moving Lopez to 1B
1B - Lopez - 1 WAR, $2.5M
2B - Figgins - 3 WAR, $9M
SS - Wilson - 2 WAR, $5M
3B - Beltre - 3 WAR, $X
Total - 9 WAR, 16.5M + X

In this illustration, you should clearly see the problem. We gained a win, sure, but because the only player bumped was one making the league minimum, the cost of that single win would be the entirety of Beltre's salary over that amount, a far too rich amount.

Clearly then, acquiring Beltre means that Jose Lopez needs to go. There are still problems with this. Even in the case where you just traded Lopez for something non-infield related, you still net just one win, however your marginal cost for that one win would be reduced to Beltre salary over Lopez's. The issue is how cheap Jose Lopez is. At just $2.5 million in cost, Adrian Beltre's additional win over Lopez would mean that we could offer Beltre about $7 million for what he would supply the team in marginal production under this scenario. I have a hard time believing Adrian Beltre is signing here for $7 million, much less that Jack Zdurencik is interested in paying full market price for wins.

Moving further into complicated land, we could suppose that instead of trading Lopez for non-entity's, Jack Z could turn him into a league average 1B (given that Lopez is a league average 2B, I'm not going to go any higher). In that case, the infield would then look like:

Signing Beltre, Trading Lopez For League Average 1B
1B - Trade Target- 2 WAR, $Y
2B - Figgins - 3 WAR, $9M
SS - Wilson - 2 WAR, $5M
3B - Beltre - 3 WAR, $X
Total - 10 WAR, 14M + X + Y

Now we have a two win upgrade over our current arrangement. We also now have two unknown salaries. Sticking with the best case scenario (see how flimsy this hope is getting?), and assuming the league average 1B we trade for is a 0-3 year player making the league minimum, we are back to Beltre's cost replacing Lopez's cost, but with the benefit of gaining us two wins instead of one. Two wins at market value is about $8-9 million which means the Mariners could offer Beltre $10-11 million a year and the deal would make sense from a marginal production point of view. As a quick side note, it's actually a little less than this because re-signing Beltre means we lose out on a Type B compensation pick, worth a million or so.

Two problems with that though. First, would Beltre accept that? He may want more. Secondly, and more damning is that while that offer would be justified in a vacuum, the Mariners are up against their budget. They cannot afford to pay fair market price for wins. Even with the creative additions of Figgins, Lee and Bradley all coming in well below market rates (discussed in future post), the team is still needing to address some holes and paying the market rate isn't going to do it.

In an ideal world, Lopez would fetch a good return after his high average, clutchy, 25-homerun, 40-double 2009 season. A return good enough to allow the Mariners to then pay Beltre what he wants. That's not likely to happen however. And even if it did, Beltre would have to want to come back and be willing to sign at below his fair market value. Remember, for Beltre, a 3 WAR player, he's worth about $12-14 million a year. On top of that, Jack Zduriencik would have to want to sign Beltre to such a deal and basically punt the rest of free agency.

I think we all figured that Beltre was gone as soon as the 2009 season ended. The reports that surfaced at the Winter Meetings about the Mariners being interested in bringing Beltre back probably renewed that hope for some people, but as things stand now, it's not an avenue that offers much sense to the Mariners at this time.

Why Jose Lopez at First Base is a Poor Idea

Matthew — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 07:09:45 -0000

More photos » by Chris Carlson - AP

Jose Lopez is willing to throw a temper tantrum right here in the store.

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This is not really a pressing issue at the moment, but some future posts are going to build off this concept and it's bound to come up in the future, so consider this a bookmark post. Feel free to refer back when the inevitable happens.

Jose Lopez the last two seasons has posted WARs of 2.0 and 2.6 and was at 2.1 in 2006. His dreadfully awful 2007 really mars the picture, but the outline is still clear. While Lopez has the potential to crater offensively at times, always a possibility with free swinging righties in Safeco Field, he is a decent bet to produce a final 2010 line close to this (figures are relative to league average):

0 run bat
0 run glove
+2.5 positional adjustment
+20 replacement level

That's a 2.25 WAR player, slightly above average. For the $2.5 million that he's slated to earn in 2010, that's a real bargain, on the order of an $8-10 million asset. What would happen if we moved him to first base however?

Well, he would no longer be playing second base, for starts. Second base is a nearly perfect position for Jose Lopez's defensive skill set. He has average range for a second baseman and he turns the double play well. Lopez's problem are the retarded errors that he tends to make, seemingly stemming from lapses in concentration that, along with his hacktastic hitting style, serve to profile him as a lazy player. Moving to first base would probably cut down on his error rate, as first baseman get involved in much fewer plays of the type that lead to errors and their dropped catches are always blamed on the thrower for some reason.

I would expect Lopez then to gain about three runs in defensive value from reduced errors and probably three runs or so from increased range. He would also lose about a run from no longer being involved in double play turns. In the end, about a five run boost in total seems reasonable. Incidentally, that's in close range to the increases in defensive value that Miguel Cabrera (from third base) and Albert Pujols (from left field) saw after moving to first base. Furthermore, moving to first base from a non-catcher or DH role seems to offer no increase in hitting skill.

The downside is that first base carries a 12.5 run penalty with it as it is among the easiest of all positions to fill. Coming from second base, with its 2.5 run bonus, Lopez would see an instant 15 run drop in positional value. Those extra five runs in defensive skill, from being compared to first baseman instead of second baseman, is not enough to make up the difference. Lopez's likely projection at first base would look approximately like this:

Lopez, at first base:
0 run bat
5 run glove
-12.5 positional adjustment
+20 replacement level

Moving Lopez to first base has the net effect of chopping about a whole win off his value. That $8-10 million asset is now a $4-5 million one. In addition, that 1.25 WAR or so does not constitute much of an improvement over what we would expect from Jack Hannahan or Mike Carp, much less from any outside options that may or may not be available.

I've been against it for years, every time it gets brought up in the media, or here, or anywhere. Jose Lopez at first base is a bad idea. It's an inefficient use of resources and represents a fractional upgrade at best over current in house options at the cost of opening a much more difficult hole to fill. If the Mariners find themselves in a situation in which Jose Lopez's services at second base are no longer desired or needed, then a trade is almost certainly going to be the optimal route.

A Milton Bradley PSA

Matthew — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 01:15:46 -0000

Dear fans of Milton Bradley's former teams,

It may come as a shock to you, but we up here in Seattle are aware of Milton Bradley's past behaviors. I know Seattle seems isolated from the rest of the country, but we have this interweb thingy that keeps us quite informed whilst we stay indoors from all the rain. Also he played for two of our divisional rivals so we've had some experience seeing him. We understand. Really. He's a malcontent. He's violent, explosive, unstable, unhinged, arrogant, pick your adjectives of choice.

We get it.

We know. We already knew. We knew two years ago too when we wanted to sign him then. It's part of the risk of Milton Bradley and we know that risk exists. If it didn't, Bradley would be one of baseball's stars, and one of its most-hyped given his hitting prowess and a lack of Black role models in baseball of late.

We get it.

It would be one thing if Seattle's postseason hopes hinged on Milton Bradley staying healthy and level-headed. If that were true, we would be a lot more cautious about this. But they do not. Realistically, Bradley pencils in as a 1-2 win improvement at DH over what we currently had. Milton Bradley is not the lynch pin on which our entire season rides. He is merely a possible high-upside addition. A guy who could explode for 4 WAR as he did in 2008. We welcome his arrival based on that potential, the positional flexibility he provides as a fill-in outfielder and his switch-hitting.

We get it.

We're not expecting Bradley to reform himself and become a model clubhouse citizen. We have merely pointed out that Seattle might be such an environment where Bradley might find himself comfortable in. We're pretty low-key up here and we have a good support staff in place in the coaches and even fellow Black teammates. Pointing out that Bradley might not be a total nutcase in Seattle does not mean we expect it to happen. Just as pointing out that he has high upside as a hitter doesn't mean we're going out and buying playoff tickets. Please stop confusing the acknowledgment of a possibility with asserting that it is the most probable outcome.

We get it.

We'd also understand a little more if we were, say, gaining Milton Bradley on a 2Y/$30 million contract. There would be a lot more discussion about his attitude and likely playing time issues if that were the case. Milton Bradley did not arrive here in a vacuum though. Pardon me for the assumption, but you know how much you seem to hate Milton Bradley? We hated Carlos Silva similarly and no more how jaded you are, you have to admit that Milton Bradley has more upside as a productive player than Carlos Silva. That's all we are caring about right now.

So If you want to feel better about yourself by coming here and trying to enlighten us all about the dangers of Milton Bradley, please keep one thing in mind and go find somewhere else:

We get it.

Hugs and Kisses,
Matthew Carruth