Seems the fan posting has been a bit slow of late, trudging to the end of a deflating Cleveland Indians season like this one will do that though. So I hope you don't mind a post that is not directly related to the Cleveland Indians. I just finished viewing the baseball movie "Sugar" which was released in 2008, but only recently appeared available on my netflix account although I had queued it months ago before its release on dvd. Why I'm bothering to recommend this film isn't because I necessarily think its a great movie (it is a good one and kept me wrapped into the storyline), but rather because of the specific baseball setting that is presented within the film. The story is of a teenage Dominican Republic pitcher, Miguel "Sugar" Santos, who possess a solid fastball and developing "knuckle-curve", pitching in a Kansas City affiliated baseball academy in the Dominican. The film follows Santos as he signs a deal to come stateside and pitch in one of the low minor leagues. He faces difficulties both on and off the field, particularly the language barrier and the reality that only a minute group of players are able to advance through the levels and make it to the bigs. 

I figured I'd write up a little post about this film because I believe the typical LGT reader would really appreciate the setting and mode of the story. It touches on the experience of the majority of young players within the minor leagues and academies outside of the the U.S. rather than those already in the majors, which is not often presented in films involving baseball. Give this film a shot if you'd like to partake in October baseball, but don't want to numb your brain out to whatever "incredible" storyline the media creates for the Yankees v. Red Sox World Series.

So the Cavs missed out on Ron Artest, Trevor Ariza, and Charlie Villanueva. Well, so buttons. Let's take a look at what the team's (Boston and Orlando) the Cavs should be competing with for the East have done. There are many variables to be considered in evaluating how these off-season moves are going to affect the teams involved (playing time given to new players, playing time taken away from established players, adaptability to offense and defensive schemes, etc.), I'm not going to claim this to be an exhaustive cumulative end all be all of evaluation. The measure I'm going to use is Wins Above Replacement Player (WARP). I'm going to include the players Player Efficiency Rating (PER) and Offensive and Defensive Ratings from basketball-reference.com, which estimates how many points scored and allowed would a team made up of five starting versions of x player would score in 100 possessions, to add more depth, but it's the WARP that I'm going to fall back on in comparing what these teams really accomplished thus far.

What I want to bring to attention to is the end results, the net gain/loss for these teams thus far. The Lakers for example have made the headlines in bringing in Ron Artest, a big name in the free agent market for sure, but the cost of bringing him in was the loss of Trevor Ariza, who then signed with Artest's former team the Houston Rockets. So what will this mean if Artest now is replacing Ariza's minutes next season? Does this end up as an improvement or a loss in production and even more importantly (because it is too often lost in the media hype) how much of an improvement or loss will this be?

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