John Sickels at SB Nation's Minor League Ball is currently reviewing his Top 50 Pitching and Hitting Prospects from 2006.  They can be found here:

http://www.minorleagueball.com/2011/1/27/1954035/top-50-pitching-prospects-of-2006-in-review

http://www.minorleagueball.com/2011/1/26/1953803/top-50-hitting-prospects-from-2006-in-review#storyjump

It is interesting to note that the only two prospects to make either list from the Braves' organization are not in Atlanta's organization anymore.  Those two are Chuck James, who after experiencing limited success in the horrendous 2006 and 2007 rotations is now minor league filler, and Jarrod Saltalamacchia, who was traded to Texas in a trade that I am not regretting as much now as I did last year.  Furthermore, Sickels' 2005 and 2004 lists can be found here:

http://www.minorleagueball.com/2010/1/26/1269557/top-50-pitching-prospects-from

http://www.minorleagueball.com/2010/1/25/1269300/top-50-hitting-prospects-from-2005

http://www.minorleagueball.com/2009/1/16/725034/top-50-pitching-prospects

http://www.minorleagueball.com/2009/1/15/724771/top-50-hitting-prospects-o

Even if you disagree with this organization's recent free agent moves or trades, I believe that you have to give credit to Scouting and Development for taking our farm from being extremely weak to being the NL's best system within 5 drafts.  I don't believe that this part of the organization has really received the credit that they deserve for doing such a great job over the last 20 years.  They have: provided our homegrown talent (McCann, Prado, Hanson, Heyward, Chipper, Kimbrel, Venters, Freeman, Minor, Beachy, Moylan, Medlen); allowed is to trade for other stars (Hudson, Uggla, Jurrjens) or regulars (McLouth, Gonzalez); and, identified some great talent off the waiver wire (EOF); all while developing one of the top three Minor League systems in baseball.

I feel that enough words get printed over the way that our GM seems to manhandle or mishandle trades or free agency signings, but not enough get written about the people that scout out that talent that allows us to make trades or assemble low-cost rosters that allow us to pursue players in free agency.  So if you work for Braves' Scouting, and for some reason you are reading this, thank you for all of the work that you do to keep us fans happy about the state of this team.

I have an extremely quick question.  I don't think that its worth a fanpost, but I wanted to know where TC'ers buy apparel for their favorite team.  I've seen some stores that sell outdated players t-shirts and jerseys for discounts, but  living in Utah, I do not have many of them around. Merchandise has become expensive enough that the only reasonable method of purchasing it is finding it online, but I have yet to find any reputable websites from which I can order.  Any ideas?

Let's start with the basics.  Jayson Werth is a 31 year-old outfielder who, before 2008, had not been a starter for any team for a full season.  His UZR, sorted by defensive position and year, is as follows:

UZR/150

LF,

2008: 2.1

2009: -85.9

CF,

2008: 29.3

2009: -25.6

2010:-32.5

RF,

2008: 31.6

2009: 7.4

2010: -2.9

Total OF:

2008: 28.5

2009: 4.5

2010: -7.2

Now, to reiterate, UZR is definitely not perfect, and UZR/150 is seriously flawed if the player has not played the position for a daily basis through the year.  But 2009 and 2010 have to worry Nats fans.  For a guy with a sparkling defensive reputation, the numbers do not add up.  2009 was the second-worst year of Jayson's career for UZR, and 2010 was the worst.  Next, home/away splits:

2009: 

Home:  327 PA/ .265 BA  / .364 OBP/ .538 SLG/ .902 OPS/ 21 HR/ 13 2B/ .273 ISO

Away:   349 PA/ .271 BA/ .381 OBP/ .476 SLG/ .857 OPS/ 15 HR/ 13 2B/  .205 ISO

2010:

Home:  332 PA/ .320 BA/ .401 OBP/ .599 SLG/ .999 OPS/ 18 HR/ 23 2B/ .353 BABIP/ .279 ISO

Away:   320 PA/ .270 BA/ .375 OBP/ .463 SLG/ .838 OPS/ 9 HR/ 23 2B/ .352 BABIP/ .193 ISO

Something should already scream (CBP! CBP! CBP!).  But let's examine Jason's most recent year, 2010.  The RF was an absolute beast at home.  But somehow, with the exact same BABIP away and at home, and with the exact same number of doubles both away and at home, he was missing nearly .100 points off his ISO.  Of course, he also had twice as many home runs at home as he had away.  This positive effect will no longer apply when he moves from Citizen's Bank (1.125 for HR,)  to Washington (1.000 for HR).  Look for a pretty big regression here.

The contract:  Fangraphs is a relatively optimistic site.  But according to their research, even assuming that the average amount paid for a win on the FA market was 5 million this year and assuming that Werth will only atrophy 0.5 wins per year through his next seven seasons until he is 38 (after looking at his UZR numbers and home/away splits, one can reasonably assume that he will degrade at a faster rate), the contract will only be worth about 118 milion over the its lifespan.  For Jason to be worth his contract, the average value of a win on the FA market would have to increase 8 percent yearly for the next seven years (optimism that even the senile Bud Selig probably does not share).

Finally, the FA compensation:  The Phillies will receive a supplementary draft pick, but will not receive Washington's protected #3 pick for the 2011 draft. For today, the Phillies get worse, the Nats get better, and we stay the same.  This evens the division out, making our path to the crown much easier.  For tomorrow, this deal will probably end up being an albatross for the Nationals.  What's not to like?

If you're a Braves fan (and why shouldn't you be?), you should love this trade.

From Peter Gammons:

"The Braves have all kinds of pitching coming, but the current ownership has given indications that they're watching costs for a future sale; the fact that they're not interested in extending Frank Wren long-term after the job he did last season has been taken by many in the organization as a bad sign"

Please sell the Atlanta Braves to a owner that gives a damn about actually winning. I don't like you, and I hope that you burn in hell per the profits that you make selling pornography on your network.  I hope that the Colorado Rockies, the team that you most likely cheer for, finish last in the league every year from here on.  I hope that your CEO, who not only makes more money than would be required to feed hundreds of thousands of starving children, gets indited for fraud and gets sent to jail where he dies in a short time. 

I hope that one day you can understand how much we, as fans, love our team; and, we hope you understand the frustration that we feel when we cannot compete against other teams with competent owners.  I hope that one day, we get an owner that takes concerns for our competitive ability instead of insulting our intelligence by cleverly reducing payroll and then giving us a bulls*** explanation for how payroll is at the same level as it was a year ago. 

I also hope that you know that nobody.... nobody at all bought your and Bud Selig's agreement to keep this team 'competitive and viable' for three years after you bought it to evade certain taxes in your deal with Time Warner.  And while we're on that subject, I hope that you are remembered as the worst commissioner in the history of baseball, Selig, as the only thing that you seem to be concerned about is your public reputation.  Thanks a lot for voting to disallow the sale of this team to Arthur Blank, a man who could actually provide the economic capability to turn this team into the powerhouse it could be with our current minor league system and scouting capabilities. 

I'm sick of playing these tired payroll games a year after this team turned in a playoff worthy performance; a year after this team played as the best team in the NL.  I'm sick of having to roll the dice every year on a vast majority of this team, even though hiking the payroll by a modest 10-15% could provide us enough flexibility to have solutions to our yearly questions.

We pay for the tickets.  We pay for the products which in turn fund the TV and radio ads that are responsible for a good majority of this team's earnings each year.  We pay for the damn cable.  Whether you accept it or not, we, the fans, pay for this team.

What do you do with our money?  You give us the middle finger and pocket it yourself.  I'm sick of this.

Does anybody else agree that the Braves should trade Omar Infante this off-season? His already low walk rate (8.7% career high in 2009) is reverting to his Tiger days (3.7% in 2005, 5.7% in 2006, 5.1% in 2007, 6.3% in 2008 5.7% in 2010). His career BABIP of .313 had an insane spike in 2010 at .355. His ISO has been consistently falling from his career high in 2004 at .185 (.145 in 2005, .138 in 2006, .084 in 2007, .123 in 2008, .084 in 2009, and .096 in 2010). His O-contact in 2010 was an amazing 14% higher than his career average (72.4 in 2010 to 58.5 for career).

I think that he’s set to fall off a cliff next year. His O-contact rate is going to fall, leading to more K’s, and his BABIP is going to come tumbling done, meaning that when he does make contact outside of the zone, not many of those weakly-hit balls are going to go for hits. His power has been failing, and his low walk rate is not going to help things. All said and done, I think that he puts up a .280/.320/.370 line next year.

He seems like an extremely potent sell-high candidate. I could be completely wrong, and this could be what scouts had seen in him earlier in his career when he was a top prospect, but I doubt that. I think that it would be very smart for the Braves to trade him this off-season.

Thoughts?

Unfortunately, not all Braves fans live in areas teeming to the brim with other fans of this glorious team.  For this reason, I'm creating this thread to help us find one another so that we can meet up for tonight's game and watch it together.  Just post where you are currently living, and respond to anybody who posts that live near you if you are interested in meeting up with them to watch tonight's game. 

Go Braves!!!

P.S.:  Moderators, please feel free to delete if this is useless or has been done before, or promote if it is useful.

Wow!  Hitting the panic button already, with the team five games ahead over those Phillies?  Or are you cool and collective in your emotions and think that we've got nothing to worry about?  But wait!  Can hometown hero Jeff Francoeur lead the underdog Mets back to another postseason berth?  Are the Fish due for a division title, something they have yet to win despite having two World Series Championships in their history?  Step right up, and tell us your thoughts and feelings in this fabulous poll!

Sometimes, we meet individuals that just define certain characteristics in our lives.  I know a person that exemplified the definition of ‘stupidity’ much more than a video, shot through the unsteady hand of some mid-teen boy, detailing some fanatic idiot’s attempts at feats that defy the laws of physics, can.  I have had the glorious opportunity to meet (and take a class from!) a professor who either was the source of inspiration for Rowling’s Umbridge or whose highest desire in life was to imitate her, right down to the act of inflicting physical abuse on her students*.

*Alright, I’m showing my age here.  But as we would say, whatever.

    When I meet those with such vivid personalities such as these, I cannot help but create mental relations between the name of the character and his or her complexion, individuality, psyche, or makeup.  Let me throw out an example. 

    When I switched cities from the vibrant and lovely surroundings of Oak Park, in Illinois, to the dank and dusty slum that was Mesquite, Nevada, I met a few new people.  Unlike the colorful and rich, honest and charismatic individuals I had found in the refined city of the North, I ended up finding a culture of machoism and excessive, and often times, aggressive independence of the Southwest*.  My heart was with Oak Park.  Where there were parks, there was active and alive wood and fragrant grass, along with perfectly manicured baseball fields where a grain of sand was not out of place.  Where there were buildings, their foundation lay on bare stone and they overarched the onlooking streets with grim and stony faces.  Where there was a school, it was an institute of learning on one side, a cross-roads for the gathering of personalities on other sides, and a monument to school spirit and history on the football field and basketball court. 
   
    But in Nevada, everything was disgusting and attacking.  When you wished to waft in the  scent of running water and tread the grass, you were met with a stagnant pool and dying grass.  The buildings were shacks painted with contrasting hues, with chunks and parts of the wall missing in places.  If there was any progress on one side of the avenue, with chiseled masonry what was pleasing to the eye, there was sure to be a crumbling, peeling Dostoyevsky shade of yellow on the other side.  But alas, this was the contrast between the people, also.

    Where Chicagoans sought to meet you in your passions and goals, aiming to give you what you wanted, Nevadans were ready to tear you down, criticize your differences while ignoring your similarities with them.  I met one of these sort of individuals in a boy named Houston.  Houston embodied Nevada.  He was not the smartest kid in the class, nor was he the most athletic, nor the kindest (definitely not the kindest), nor the most popular.  All he sought to do was to break you down.  That is what he was best at- taking qualities away from you and giving nothing but pain and disappointment in return. 

*One of the formative memories I had of my time in this filth-ridden corner of the world occurred when I made a trip for football up to Dixie High School, in St. George, Utah.  Ultimately, I made many friends from that town, and even from that school, but I rolled my eyes at the first experience.  Everybody in St. George; not just students and parents and faculty and boosters of Dixie, but also of Pineview and Snow Canyon, flew Confederate flags.  It was the motif of that town, and it was disgusting.  You are not in the South, where there are beautiful forests, the trees are actually dark green and do not consist of pasty-colored branches that are two days away from death, two-foot wide pools of water are not considered ‘rivers’, and the opportunity to ski on weekends is not an event that occurs very often.  Also, you fought on the side of the Union during the American Civil War.  That should be more than enough.

    Now that I have lead you on enough of a tangent, let me make my point.  I hated Houston.  I was more than a match for him physically, and it once got to that.  But I hated his smirk, I hated his arrogance, and I hated his tinted glasses.  His name embodied that hate for me.  The next part is stupid- I could, for the life of me, bring myself to root for the Houston Astros, not when they were playing the Mets, nor the Phillies, nor the Fish.  I could not cheer for that team, or even have a sense of forgiveness ever time they beat a division rival.  My hate of a person- their qualities, mannerisms, and their disposition made me hate a name, which made me dislike a city. 

    You might be telling yourself that my emotions were stupid.  They were.  There was no logic behind them.  But look into your own lives, and ask yourself if even at the basest and lowest level, if you have been guilty of this.  Ask yourself if you had a tendency to dislike Ryan Howard from the television show ‘The Office’ even before you properly learned the mannerisms of his character.  I think that it is a common sin, especially for a middle-schooler. 

    Now where does the Boss play into all of this?  He had an aura, akin to (yet different in nature from) the one I had with Houston.  Because I have not had the opportunity (and I doubt many of us have) to meet the man in person, I have to confess that most, if not all, conclusions I make about the man have been reached from secondhand information about his life.  But even if I had met the man once, or once a day for a month, I do not think that I would have been able to extrapolate enough from the experiences to give a reader the general value of the man.

    But from all I have heard and read, I find that George Steinbrenner was, on the whole, a nice person, at least as a friend.  He was a philanthropist who, by most accounts, was gracious and receiving to whomever he hosted.  He treated you as if you were a clean and clear member of the public from whom he had made his riches and fortune (whether from the shipping industry in Cleveland or Yankee Nation or whatever).  I feel that the right word to describe Steinbrenner was this: he was the manager, and you were the customer.

    Which may explain why he was what he was to his employees.  By most, if not all accounts, he was ruthless in his search for perfection and success from those who worked under him.  I think that this is probably the most important facet to understand about his life.  As a manager, he was working for the customer- you.  And through his history, he did all he could possibly do for the customer, especially when it came to his Major League Baseball Club.  He gave meaning, form, shape, and function to the concept of free agency by developing a history of giving the hired arms and bats what ever they wanted.  He made sure that his institution was the pinnacle of whatever business he was in, and he did it in a manner never seen before in a sport.  He held himself accountable to immediately create the premium product on the market, and he did in the only manner that he could do with the constraint (in his mind) of time: through throwing money at whatever he could.
   
    Which explains why he wanted perfection from his employees.  He paid them.  He paid them absurd amounts of money.  He paid them absurd amounts of money out of his pocket, money that he could have kept for his own uses.  He paid them because he wished to uphold his end of the bargain to the customer:  you.
   
    But even men that wish to provide unparalleled experience only go so far.  They keep their personal feelings away from their business; they understand profit and loss and efficiency and proficiency as sets of numbers.  So here was the kicker:  George was his own customer.  George was a Yankee through and through, which is why it pained him when the team only made the playoffs or the championship series or the World Series.  He seemed to look at profit or loss with an utter disregard, and only with the results- to be the transcendent, unrivaled, and unsurpassed.
   
    This is why George loved Reggie. This is why George hated Winfield.  This is why he expected so much from his employees:  he looked at the level to which he held himself, and expected that others hold themselves to the exact same standard.  Which of course, none could do.
   
    George Steinbrenner made the Yankees.  George Steinbrenner was the Yankees.  And in that way, George Steinbrenner became New York.  New York was never the way the same way that it was before Steinbrenner came to to town.  New York, before the resurgence of the Yankees, was a crumbling tower, through which only a small ray of the illuminated glory still shone.  The Miracle Mets had won it all, but the sentiment remains, even today, that their nemesis in the ’69 series was still vastly superior than them.  And before, they had finished only ninth or tenth in their league, and even after, they were nothing glorious.  The Rangers were nothing.  The Knicks were waning.  The Giants were playing, but to no avail. 

    It may have taken him twenty years, but Steinbrenner changed the attitude of that town toward their sports teams.  He took a town that believed in their players and coaches and mascots, and he turned their belief towards something else- a God given Right, not privilege, but Right, to win, at all costs. 

    I started following baseball properly in the late glory years of Atlanta, around the same time the Yankees had marched their juggernaut out of the gates of Yankee Stadium II- around 1997.  To me, even to this day, the aura of the Yankees was not derived from Ruth, or Mantle, or Gehrig.  They were the Steinbrenner Yankees.  They would beat you, and they would want you to know that they beat you with fuel left to spare in the tank. 

    Posnanski wrote about the Big Red Machine.  This was, and still is, much more than any machine.  The Yankees, the Steinbrenner Yankees, have their gears and their cogs and wheels, but they have an untamable, driving spirit directly injected into them by the legacy of their Boss, the Boss. 

    New York did not mold Steinbrenner.  Steinbrenner shaped New York, and he leaves his telltale aura through his one great creation:  His Yankees.

    Sometimes, we meet individuals that just define certain characteristics in our lives.  I know a person that exemplified the definition of ‘stupidity’ much more than a video, shot through the unsteady hand of some mid-teen boy, detailing some fanatic idiot’s attempts at feats that defy the laws of physics, can.  I have had the glorious opportunity to meet (and take a class from!) a professor who either was the source of inspiration for Rowling’s Umbridge or whose highest desire in life was to imitate her, right down to the act of inflicting physical abuse on her students*.

*Alright, I’m showing my age here.  But as we would say, whatever.

    When I meet those with such vivid personalities such as these, I cannot help but create mental relations between the name of the character and his or her complexion, individuality, psyche, or makeup.  Let me throw out an example. 

    When I switched cities from the vibrant and lovely surroundings of Oak Park, in Illinois, to the dank and dusty slum that was Mesquite, Nevada, I met a few new people.  Unlike the colorful and rich, honest and charismatic individuals I had found in the refined city of the North, I ended up finding a culture of machoism and excessive, and often times, aggressive independence of the Southwest*.  My heart was with Oak Park.  Where there were parks, there was active and alive wood and fragrant grass, along with perfectly manicured baseball fields where a grain of sand was not out of place.  Where there were buildings, their foundation lay on bare stone and they overarched the onlooking streets with grim and stony faces.  Where there was a school, it was an institute of learning on one side, a cross-roads for the gathering of personalities on other sides, and a monument to school spirit and history on the football field and basketball court. 
   
    But in Nevada, everything was disgusting and attacking.  When you wished to waft in the  scent of running water and tread the grass, you were met with a stagnant pool and dying grass.  The buildings were shacks painted with contrasting hues, with chunks and parts of the wall missing in places.  If there was any progress on one side of the avenue, with chiseled masonry what was pleasing to the eye, there was sure to be a crumbling, peeling Dostoyevsky shade of yellow on the other side.  But alas, this was the contrast between the people, also.

    Where Chicagoans sought to meet you in your passions and goals, aiming to give you what you wanted, Nevadans were ready to tear you down, criticize your differences while ignoring your similarities with them.  I met one of these sort of individuals in a boy named Houston.  Houston embodied Nevada.  He was not the smartest kid in the class, nor was he the most athletic, nor the kindest (definitely not the kindest), nor the most popular.  All he sought to do was to break you down.  That is what he was best at- taking qualities away from you and giving nothing but pain and disappointment in return. 

*One of the formative memories I had of my time in this filth-ridden corner of the world occurred when I made a trip for football up to Dixie High School, in St. George, Utah.  Ultimately, I made many friends from that town, and even from that school, but I rolled my eyes at the first experience.  Everybody in St. George; not just students and parents and faculty and boosters of Dixie, but also of Pineview and Snow Canyon, flew Confederate flags.  It was the motif of that town, and it was disgusting.  You are not in the South, where there are beautiful forests, the trees are actually dark green and do not consist of pasty-colored branches that are two days away from death, two-foot wide pools of water are not considered ‘rivers’, and the opportunity to ski on weekends is not an event that occurs very often.  Also, you fought on the side of the Union during the American Civil War.  That should be more than enough.

    Now that I have lead you on enough of a tangent, let me make my point.  I hated Houston.  I was more than a match for him physically, and it once got to that.  But I hated his smirk, I hated his arrogance, and I hated his tinted glasses.  His name embodied that hate for me.  The next part is stupid- I could, for the life of me, bring myself to root for the Houston Astros, not when they were playing the Mets, nor the Phillies, nor the Fish.  I could not cheer for that team, or even have a sense of forgiveness ever time they beat a division rival.  My hate of a person- their qualities, mannerisms, and their disposition made me hate a name, which made me dislike a city. 

    You might be telling yourself that my emotions were stupid.  They were.  There was no logic behind them.  But look into your own lives, and ask yourself if even at the basest and lowest level, if you have been guilty of this.  Ask yourself if you had a tendency to dislike Ryan Howard from the television show ‘The Office’ even before you properly learned the mannerisms of his character.  I think that it is a common sin, especially for a middle-schooler. 

    Now where does the Boss play into all of this?  He had an aura, akin to (yet different in nature from) the one I had with Houston.  Because I have not had the opportunity (and I doubt many of us have) to meet the man in person, I have to confess that most, if not all, conclusions I make about the man have been reached from secondhand information about his life.  But even if I had met the man once, or once a day for a month, I do not think that I would have been able to extrapolate enough from the experiences to give a reader the general value of the man.

    But from all I have heard and read, I find that George Steinbrenner was, on the whole, a nice person, at least as a friend.  He was a philanthropist who, by most accounts, was gracious and receiving to whomever he hosted.  He treated you as if you were a clean and clear member of the public from whom he had made his riches and fortune (whether from the shipping industry in Cleveland or Yankee Nation or whatever).  I feel that the right word to describe Steinbrenner was this: he was the manager, and you were the customer.

    Which may explain why he was what he was to his employees.  By most, if not all accounts, he was ruthless in his search for perfection and success from those who worked under him.  I think that this is probably the most important facet to understand about his life.  As a manager, he was working for the customer- you.  And through his history, he did all he could possibly do for the customer, especially when it came to his Major League Baseball Club.  He gave meaning, form, shape, and function to the concept of free agency by developing a history of giving the hired arms and bats what ever they wanted.  He made sure that his institution was the pinnacle of whatever business he was in, and he did it in a manner never seen before in a sport.  He held himself accountable to immediately create the premium product on the market, and he did in the only manner that he could do with the constraint (in his mind) of time: through throwing money at whatever he could.
   
    Which explains why he wanted perfection from his employees.  He paid them.  He paid them absurd amounts of money.  He paid them absurd amounts of money out of his pocket, money that he could have kept for his own uses.  He paid them because he wished to uphold his end of the bargain to the customer:  you.
   
    But even men that wish to provide unparalleled experience only go so far.  They keep their personal feelings away from their business; they understand profit and loss and efficiency and proficiency as sets of numbers.  So here was the kicker:  George was his own customer.  George was a Yankee through and through, which is why it pained him when the team only made the playoffs or the championship series or the World Series.  He seemed to look at profit or loss with an utter disregard, and only with the results- to be the transcendent, unrivaled, and unsurpassed.
   
    This is why George loved Reggie. This is why George hated Winfield.  This is why he expected so much from his employees:  he looked at the level to which he held himself, and expected that others hold themselves to the exact same standard.  Which of course, none could do.
   
    George Steinbrenner made the Yankees.  George Steinbrenner was the Yankees.  And in that way, George Steinbrenner became New York.  New York was never the way the same way that it was before Steinbrenner came to to town.  New York, before the resurgence of the Yankees, was a crumbling tower, through which only a small ray of the illuminated glory still shone.  The Miracle Mets had won it all, but the sentiment remains, even today, that their nemesis in the ’69 series was still vastly superior than them.  And before, they had finished only ninth or tenth in their league, and even after, they were nothing glorious.  The Rangers were nothing.  The Knicks were waning.  The Giants were playing, but to no avail. 

    It may have taken him twenty years, but Steinbrenner changed the attitude of that town toward their sports teams.  He took a town that believed in their players and coaches and mascots, and he turned their belief towards something else- a God given Right, not privilege, but Right, to win, at all costs. 

    I started following baseball properly in the late glory years of Atlanta, around the same time the Yankees had marched their juggernaut out of the gates of Yankee Stadium II- around 1997.  To me, even to this day, the aura of the Yankees was not derived from Ruth, or Mantle, or Gehrig.  They were the Steinbrenner Yankees.  They would beat you, and they would want you to know that they beat you with fuel left to spare in the tank. 

    Posnanski wrote about the Big Red Machine.  This was, and still is, much more than any machine.  The Yankees, the Steinbrenner Yankees, have their gears and their cogs and wheels, but they have an untamable, driving spirit directly injected into them by the legacy of their Boss, the Boss. 

    New York did not mold Steinbrenner.  Steinbrenner shaped New York, and he leaves his telltale aura through his one great creation:  His Yankees.

So... I'm not a professional writer, by any means.  I appreciate the art of writing.  I find that conveying opinions through print can not only help change others' perceptions and beliefs, but works even more effectively when they are illustrated not in the manner of a comment or three-sentence paragraph, but through in logical, flowing, and narrative prose.

That being said, I have never been efficient at expressing my thoughts through this art form.  English was not my first language (that honor belongs to Hindi, which, for those not familiar, a complete garble of a language); in fact, I only started speaking and writing it when I was around seven years old.  Through my life, I have struggled with the mastery of communication both orally, and through print.  And even to this day, I have not found a repertoire on writing skills that has helped me to elevate my style.

That fact frustrated, and to a certain degree, still frustrates me.  To live in a country where success hinges not on communication, but on the ability to communicate and on the manner through which words are chosen and how they are said is cruelty in a guise, but is only one negative in the sea of positives.  To, however, have a society where there seems to be no practical application put towards teaching these tools of the trade effectively in what is otherwise an impressive education system* is cruelty to the highest degree.

* Yes, even coming from the Eastern Hemisphere of the world, where a four hour commitment to studying a day is a recipe not for success but for disappointment, I believe this to be sincerely true.  Although this is a subject that I do want to address sometime in the future, I believe that a simple thought is enough to explain my point of view:  In the US education system, you can become nothing.  But you can, with relative ease (compared to much of the world) became anything, or anybody that you want.  A little dedication, a foundation of hard work, and a coat of ambition will get you anything that you want in this country.  Anything.  And I cannot say that about any other place on the globe.

However, around three years ago, I found a man who taught me how to write.  His name is Joe Posnanski.

I doubt Joe is the smartest person in the reporting business.  I doubt that he is smarter than many of the people who compose studies for Fangraphs or Beyond the Box Score, or even this great site.  But of a few things I have no doubt:  Joe does not make arguments that he cannot argue fully, from top to bottom.  Joe instead does something that I have tried to emulate (rather unsuccessfully, given by record, I might add).  He brings the stories to the pubic in a manner quite unlike what you’d expect from a man in the media business- that is, he makes them simplistic.  He makes it so that it does not matter if followed him from his roots or whether you were picking up his work for the first time; you understood the point that he was trying to make.  He takes complicated viewpoints and spins from directions you could never have seen with your intellect or with your eyes, but he filters them down so that the excess clears away and you are only left with the simple, bare, and naked truth gleaming at you: a scaled down version of a  moment that is simply not found too often in life, such as your first serious kiss or the first sight of your own kid.  I am not ashamed to say that I have tried, and still try to emulate a bit of Joe every time I write.

I wanted to write about Omar Infante,   There are a hundred thousand words that can be said about the life of a human being.  There are still many more that can said about a person that reaches the zenith of what they have strived to do.  Yet even at that, much more, much much more, can be said about the soul who willingly changes their surroundings completely, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, to find and achieve their goals, for these are those who make the ultimate sacrifice in the pursuit; that is, they reject everything they have to turn themselves towards something they want*.

*That is a sacrifice, and no matter how petty the change may seem, it still remains a hard and arduous path towards change .  Think about this yourself, and ask yourself what the hardest decision you ever had to rule upon was.  I guarantee you that the decision involved two separate entities:  your life as it was, and your life as it maybe.  Now, for those of you who ultimately choose to go towards your goals rather than stay, ask yourself this:  how much harder would this decision have been if you had to give up your home, your family, and your friends?  These are the type of decisions that involve the ultimate sacrifice.

But today we do not focus on Omar: we do not focus on his past, or current, struggles and troubles of which we may have no knowledge; we do not focus on how he came to be or what he is now, even though, as I mentioned above,  he does fall in the category of those who have had to make the ultimate sacrifice.  I want to focus on the one thing that anybody ever focuses on when the topic of Omar Infante comes up- his selection.

Back in sixth grade, I was an awkward person.  I had come to America two years previously in my short shorts (yes, they were, and still are popular, in my home country), with an accent that may have hinted to others that I had been bitten by a rabid bat sometime ago, and with utterly no friends or self-confidence in this New Land.  But slowly, rock by rock, I had climbed higher and higher through the social ladder, and had made quite a few friends along the way.  One of my better friends was named Udallok.  Much like me, he had come from India (albeit three or four years earlier, although I cannot remember the specific date).  He had a heart of gold.  He was, and still is, one of the kindest people I have ever met.  But he was, well, also pretty socially awkward, but unlike me, he also caught a lot of flak for it.

But in sixth grade, other stuff happens.  All of a sudden, girls start looking cuter and cuter, and boys start veering away from being with each other towards hanging out with girls.  There was a girl that I and, I am very sure, every boy who had ever meet her or talked to her or even seen her had a crush on.  Her name was Paula.  If I remember correctly, she was from Switzerland, and she was undeniably, in my humble (yet I would have gladly picked a fight with any boy that year who would have said otherwise) opinion, the cutest and nicest girl ever.

In sixth grade at Gwendolyn Brooks Middle School in Oak Park, IL, still other stuff happens.  You were taught how to dance in your physical education class.  But the most stifling part about it was that for the entire two week course, you were paired up with a girl in your grade.  That was a problem.  We still do not know how it happened, but when Udallok’s name came out in the rough and raspy voice of our gym teacher, Mr. Gillespi, Paula’s name was announced right after.

I am pretty sure Udallok liked Paula as much as the rest of us.  But I am even more sure that if he knew how he was going to get treated for the rest of that year by every other idiotic boy in that class, Udallok would have cut and run right then and there.

Omar Infante has received much ire from the fans of the defensive wizard of Washington, Ryan Zimmerman.  And from the fans of any other team that held that they had a player who deserved to make the All-Star Game.  And from numerous announcers, reporters, and fans, who on any other day would merely question the early warning signs of degenerative brain disease in Charlie Manuel, who now believe that Manuel should be in a retirement home organizing lineups and pitching rotations in the local fantasy league.

Let's make a point clear.  There is very little criticism that has actually headed Omar’s way.  Nobody blames him for the All-Star nomination, and nobody blames him for his acceptance, because there is no point in laying blame where it does not belong.

But people need to stop questioning this decision as if it is akin to the United States deciding to carpet-bomb Darfur tomorrow.  This is not a major decision, by any means.  This decision will have little to no ramification in the long history of the baseball season, not to even consider actual baseball history, or even relevant events.

Sixth grade became hell for my friend, not because of his decision, but simply because of random events that should have been, on the whole, Positive, but yet seemed to conspire against him.  Nobody ever criticized him for not asking our gym teacher to give him a new partner as to prevent further abuse coming towards him.  Middle-schoolers criticized Udallok for no reason other than he was Udallok, the kid from India, and he had no business being with a princess from Switzerland in Paula.  Not once did these hurtful comments have a role in determining how the rest of the school year played out, let alone the three years that Udallok was at that school.  The comments did only one thing- hurt my friend, and make life hell for him.

The difference between Omar Infante and Ryan Zimmerman is not enough to dictate a win for the hapless NL over their statistically more powerful AL foes in this All-Star game.  That is a fact.  Another fact- the only thing that the Infante selection has done to this point for Omar is show him the ugly side of people he has never met, people who would not pass a second thought to him if he had not made the team.

But as Udallok would tell you, there is a price to pay for random chance.  By all means, a chance to dance and interact with one of the cutest girls in the school should have been an amazing opportunity and experience for my friend.  He got that chance.  It was utterly random.  And he ended up getting screwed on it.

It was by random chance that Infante got selected to the All-Star team.  It was by random chance the Bud Selig and the MLB made the rule which dictated that allowed both managers to choose one player to take out of the game, and put back in at a later inning; and, it was by random chance that Charlie Manuel choose Infante.  Omar Infante, by all accounts, is blessed to be an All-Star player.  But as Omar would tell you, there is a price to pay for random chance.

I'll make my point straight away:  I say we forgo the offensive additions if we cannot get a consistently upper-tier to elite CF.

I’m still convinced that Hart is having nothing more than a career year, and will become prohibitively expensive next year; the same year when arbitration raises to our foundation players, including JJ, EOF, Prado, and Escobar, are due. The other problem is floor. Hart’s floor is Jeff Francoeur, circa 2008-2009. Under no conditions should we have such a guy on our hands next year. I don’t think that he is worth even Mike Dunn, let alone Mike Minor. For the same reason that many are for trading Minor (above-average unexpected performance), we should be against trading for Hart.  A poster on Braves Journal (originally from Talking Chop EDIT:  Credit for the stats to Alvaro Andres Pizza Varela ) used this as evidence that playing Hart is actually worse than playing a Hinske/Diaz platoon:

Eric Hinske’s career wRC+ against RHP: 113
Matt Diaz’ career wRC+ against LHP: 139

Corey Hart’s career wRC+: 113
Corey Hart’s career wRC+ against lefties: 129 (Worse than Diaz)
Corey Hart’s career wRC+ against righties: 107 (Worse than Hinske)

Matt Diaz respective UZR and DRS in LF: 7.8 and 3
Eric Hinske respective UZR and DRS in LF: -0.2 and -6

Corey Hart’s career UZR and DRS in RF: -11.6 and 4

So, to sum up a trade for Corey Hart:

1. We trade a pitcher or position player of value from our farm system

2. We receive a player who will play below the level of our current LF platoon.

3.  We pay said player near 6 million in arbitration next year.

4.  We receive a player who just may implode after playing so far above his head that he become Francoeur V2.

Byrd doesn’t offer enough of an upgrade this year (read: 3.8 % BB. That is worse than Francoeur-eque.) to justify paying him during the time when we need to make deals with our arb-eligible players. This team’s ability to take a walk is the reason that we have an above-average offense this year- we are below average in just about every other category. I don’t think that we should pay the price for a second-tier free swinger in Byrd and expect him to carry us; this type of player will get carved up by the likes of the Padres’, Reds’, and even Mets’ staff.  Players who cannot take a walk can become utterly useless against pitchers who know what they are doing.  For evidence, take the following link and arrange by Walk %, and take a look at the lines of players who are last in the league-  http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=1&season=2010&month=0

I read an interesting article a couple of weeks back outlining spending in free agency. This gist of the article was to never over-commit to second-tier players, citing examples of both Derek Lowe and Randy Wolf, if first-tier players are available. It is better to lose money and receive above-average performance from an elite player than it is to lose money and receive average performance from a second-tier player. The article examined the Yankees free agent signings to reach this conclusion. The Yankees usually don't over-commit to second tier players, and so they never have contracts that are huge busts. They always over-commit to elite players; players that have a strong history of elite results as compared to second-tier players who ride one season to big contracts. This way, they are always guaranteed to get at least some value out of their signings, with the high chance of receiving elite-level results. This is in stark comparison to teams that commit to second-tier players, who receive nothing out of the contract if the player plays below his career norms, and only marginal value if the player plays to his career norms.

I think that the same concept applies in trades. If you are going to have to give up talent, go out there and trade high-level prospects for extremely good players rather than give up second-tier prospects for second-tier players. You are going to get results out of the elite player, even if they play below their career norms; whereas, with the second-tier player, you may get nothing if they play below their career norms.

There is also a further point in this- second tier prospects (such as Minor) will always have a chance, no matter how low, to become elite players. Second-tier MLB players will rarely deviate enough to become elite players. Minor probably won’t become the next Wainwright, but I feel that he has a higher chance of becoming elite than Byrd or Hart have of outperforming other Outfielders and becoming elite themselves.

Which brings me to my final point- if you cannot go out and get an elite outfielder (as we do seem to be set at the other positions, for right now), don’t try to compromise. Find an elite player that you can trade for on the market, and go get him. For this, I suggest Cliff Lee. Do we have enough starting pitching? Probably. But can Cliff Lee make enough of a difference to turn us from NLCS runner-ups to World Series Champions? In my opinion, he can. That is also not something that you can say about Byrd or Hart.

Edit:  I wanted to add this:

Look at Derek Lowe for 60/4, Randy Wolf for 29.750/3, Jason Bay for 66/4, Ryan Dempster for 52/4, Oliver Perez for 36/3, Milton Bradley for 30/3, Kerry Wood for 20.5/2, Edgar Renteria for 18.5/2, Aaron Rowand for 60/5, Carlos Silva for 48/4, Jose Guillen for 36/3, Luis Castillo for 25/4, even Torri Hunter at 90/5 to a certain degree, Carlos Lee for 100/6, Daisuke Matsuzaka at 103/6, Barry Zito for 126/7, Gil Meche for 55/5, Gary Matthews Jr. for 50/5, Juan Pierre for 44/5, Jeff Suppan for 42/4, and do I have to continue?

All of these guys, except maybe Jason Bay and Torii Hunter, rode mediocrity or mediocrity and one fluke year or early success followed by mediocrity to their contracts. And these were the guys who I could find in about three minutes. Even Jason Bay had WAR season of -.7, 2.9 with the Pirates in 07 and 08 before signing that contract in the 2009 off season with the Mets. Torri Hunter was riding 2.8, 2.3, 2.5, and 3.3 WAR seasons before signing that contract with the Angels. The Red Sox shelled out over 100 million for a guy with absolutely no MLB experience.

Overpaying for mediocrity will hurt your team, as will trading for mediocrity while elite talent is available.

I would like to make this something that we do for every series, but only if the fine posters on TC think its a good idea!  Basically, we are trying to gauge who the most dangerous player on the opposing team is.  In many series, it seems that the answer would be obvious; for example, Tim Lincecum would be the easy answer in a series with the Giants.  However, in series with the Marlins, it always seems like Cody Ross comes through more often than Hanley Ramirez.  I think that it would be interesting to poll the community on who they feel is the official 'Braves killer' on other teams.