I have no joke here, I just like saying "Bill, let me show you how we do it in the Marines."

Schuerstruck!

(More effective if accompanied by AC/DC)

I can't think of anything G-rated to describe that.

Oh, wait -- yes, I can:

"There are no words to contain all my wisdom.  I am so cunning, crafty and clever, so filled with deceit, guile and chicanery, such a knave, so shrewd, cagey as well as calculating, as diabolical as I am vulpine, as tricky as I am untrustworthy...well, I told you there were not words invented yet to explain how great my brain is, but let me put it this way: the world is several million years old and several billion people have at one time or another trod upon it, but I, Schuerholz the Sicilian, am, speaking with pure candor and modesty, the slickest, sleekest, sliest and wiliest fellow who has yet come down the pike. "

He has turned down arbitration from the Reds

<Carson>Wow, that is some really wild, far-out stuff there</Carson>

What the heck?  I sure hope that Schoeneweis isn't looking for a long-term deal off the back of his 2006 performance, because it ain't happening for him.  Maybe the Reds told him he wasn't in their plans.

If Schoeneweis were looking to go back to the Angels, it wouldn't surprise me in the least.  Especially because the Angels need lefties - the only lefty to appear for them in the bullpen all last season was JC Romero, who was terrible.  (What a steal the Twins ended up getting by trading him for Alexi Casilla!)

Schoeneweis has often shown issues on the self-awareness front. Long after he had proven to be a washout as a starter, he still maintained he could start. Even when Toronto signed him, he threw the idea out that he could be a spot starter even though he was signed explicitly to be a reliever. And now, he may have no idea that he has little worth beyond being a LOOGY.

We may never know why he elected to walk away from arbitration, but if it's because he thinks the Royals will pay him $11M to be a starter, he may be suffering from a little self-delusion.

Would he really return to Anaheim? While they could certainly use a lefty, I thought that he left there on bad terms, having being pulled from the rotation and eventually traded to Chicago. And wasn't Jack Bauer, er Jarrod Washburn, his buddy? That's one less draw to return to Anaheim of LA.

Draft pick or not...all he did was cost the team wins

Were Toronto to have kept him and offered him arbitration, there's every risk that he would have accepted. That's why they didn't offer Molina arbitration. The risk of it being accepted was too high.

J.P. Ricciardi: Not bitter at all about Meche signing with the Royals: (From The Star)

"I mean, when you're talking to guys (Meche and his agents) about coming to a place that's very close to winning and they're telling you how important winning is to them — and then he chooses a place like that ... well, that might've been an eye-opener for us."

 I would guess Schoenweis is testing the market largely on the strength of his 0.63 ERA with the Reds. When he left the Jays, he had an ERA over six and was barely even getting lefties out. Would you really want to offer arbitration to that guy? There's no way he turns down arbitration without that sparkly finish in the weaker league.

 Yes, in hindsight, Ricciardi should have offered arbitration to Molina and Schoenewies (without trading him, obviously). But if he did that and they accepted, he could end up paying up to $10 million for two players he doesn't want or need. That's an expensive gamble.

The arguments of "well he could have accepted arbitration" is not a good one, because he didn't accept it.

I paid for life insurance last year. It was a poor decision. I didn't die.

My friend drove home drunk. It was a good decision. He didn't hit anything.

Managing risk means that you weigh, as best you can, the merits of a decision before you make it. You weigh the pros and cons and make the best decision possible with the information you have. Sometimes the decision won't be a correct one. But you hope that if you manage risk effectively, on balance the decisions you make will be the right ones.

It's not appropriate to only gauge the merits of a decision after the fact. Ricciardi was right to fear Molina accepting arbitration. Yes, it didn't work out. But it was the best decision at the time.

This is what I believe.

JP holds on to Schoeneweis, offers arbitration, gets a pick, the response here is "what a savvy move."

JP holds on to Schoeneweis, offers arbitration, he accepts, the response here is "well he's a serviceable left-hander, we could do worse."

JP trades Schoeneweis, the Reds get a pick and the response here is what is written above.

I pointed out that in "retrospect" it was a bad trade and it would have been better to hold on to Schoeneweis. Is there really an argument here? If you can get 55th overall pick, isn't it better to have it? It's a pretty simple observation. I just don't understand why everyone feels the need to defend the Jays stance. It was a good move by the Reds. Sure it was a small risk but it worked out. That is why in retrospect it was a bad trade. Even after the fact when we know what happened people are arguing that it wasn't a bad move.

Simple matter of cost/benefit analysis.

Assume that Schoeneweis leaving did cost the Jays the 55th pick in the draft (in fact, if he stays in Toronto doing his Amazing Grenade-Throwing Man act, there's no way he declined arbitration... but let's call it a given).

The Jays saved 47/180 of SS's salary by making the trade when they did.  That's $718,055.

(The Blue Jays also picked up cash in the trade... we'll ignore that for now.)

What is the value of the 55th pick?  Nate Silver over at Prospectus once did a great analysis of the value of first-round picks.  I think Nate comes to the wrong conclusion because he uses the free agent market for the estimator of the net benefit of talent, when he should use the average of all talent, but otherwise I love his system - which even includes bells and whistles like present-valuing the future contributions (the present-valuing needs some tweaking too... can it only be 15 months ago that inflation was that low!?)  The analysis only goes down to "Tier 4" of the first round, but concludes that a pick in that "tier" is worth $3.24 million in present value.

The number for the 55th pick isn't that high.  For one thing, the value actually drops off sharply all the way through round 1.  Second, there's the very high talent-cost that's used.  In the end, I would bet that the net benefit of the #55 pick is going to be just about what Ricciardi got for it.  I'm going to try to run the numbers on my blog (enlisting Nate's help, probably) and I will let you all know my result when I finish.

JP holds on to Schoeneweis, offers arbitration, gets a pick, the response here is "what a savvy move."

I think the response would be "J.P. got lucky / Schoeneweis is crazy."

  There's really no blind JP groupthink around here.  Have you seen the Royce Clayton thread?

By far the best line from the link to the article that Barry Bonnell posted is this:

"Beyond Roy Halladay and A.J. Burnett, Toronto's rotation is Olsen-twins thin."

The potential packages that he went on to describe - either Humber or Pelfrey along with with Milledge and Heilman for Wells - actually sound pretty appealing.  Sure, it's not addressing the major need at shortstop, but it would be nice to see some grade A prospects in the organization.

And regarding Schoeneweis, we have to remember that Scott Boras is his agent.  Who knows what kind of contract he'll end up with?  It will likely be bigger than the last one he signed with the Jays.

I do wonder about SS and I suspect some team out there made an offer, or suggestion of an offer that was better than he'd see in arbitration.  Why some team would do so is beyond me, but I'd have to think his agent wouldn't have told him to ignore arbitration otherwise.

One other thing to keep in mind about arbitration, the team can release the player and pay less than 100% depending on when they release him.  I can't remember the year, but one season around 1990 there were a batch of guys released due to teams deciding they weren't worth what the arbitrator gave them, guys like Pete Incaviglia - checking his BR page it looks like the winter of 90/91.  So if you were SS and the Reds already told you they would release you in the spring if you took them to arbitration wouldn't you keep looking rather than risk getting caught without a contract ala Molina last year?

I don't think it's insane at all to think he could have pitched the same in Toronto. He pitched really well in T.O. in 2005. He finished last year with an ugly 4.88 ERA and 1.39 WHIP and he is going to get a multi year contract. I don't think his 14 innings in Cincinnati fooled GM's out there into suddenly having interest. He is a left handed pitcher who can get out left handed hitters. That is why he will get a multi year contract and that is why the Jays gave him a 2-year/5 million dollar contract following a year were he had a 5.59 ERA in 112 innings with the White Sox.

If one wants to criticize Ricciardi for the off-season so far, there is plenty of material.

I see it all as one interconnected thing: Pursuing Meche, not pursing Lugo, signing Clayton. This sequence is quite easily the strongest disagreement I've ever had with a move / strategy from Ricciardi. I wouldn't feel differently if he had signed Meche. I say all this recognizing that Lugo's contract with the Sox is no bargain.

2006 .236 .330 .292

2005 .188 .258 .241

Wasn't it a bauxite that brought the sign indicating such to a game in '05?

He might have problems but getting lefties out isn't one of them.

 Schoeneweis was amazing against lefties in 2005, but considerably less so in 2006 - they may not have hit him very hard, but they also didn't have to wait very long to see four pitches out of the strike zone: He had a 1.35 WHIP against lefties. (compared to 1.03 in 2005)

 If a pitcher is going to get beaten like a gong against righties, he'd better be completely dominant against lefties. Both Downs and Tallet were more effective against lefties than Schoeneweis. The Jays were better off just leaving a righty in to intentionally walk any tough lefty batters, since there was a good chance they'd get that result with Schoeneweis anyway.

Those c********** at the Toronto Star have done it again.  The headline and sub-head from today's web edition (I assume in the paper too...)

I think he means this one.

I think it's clear at this point that the Star's headline writers either don't read the articles, or they're just jerks.

The article appeared on the front page of the sports section paper version a couple days ago. Talk about filler...

Three birthdays in Blue Jay Land. Best wishes to V-Dub, Jeremy Accardo, and Sparky!

Thanks Michael for that interesting link.  By percentage of runners who score, the two Jays' OF units rated 1-2 as opposed to 1-3 in terms of runs prevented.  Also, in percentage terms it wasn't that close.  

The plate-blocking ability of the Zaun/Molina combination (Molina decent, Zaun terrific) helps; the turf at the Dome (ensuring the single gets to the outfielder quickly) helps more; the Jays' powerful offense - preventing opposing managers from taking chances with one-run strategies like sending runners - helps even more than that; having three fast outfielders to cut off balls between them probably helps most of all.

Andy Pettitte looks as if he will be making his return to the AL East, reaching a preliminary deal with the Yankee$.  Yet another example of an aging star signing a big dollar-short term contract, with exactly the same terms as Barry Bonds received - 1 year, $16 million.  At least New York isn't getting any younger with this signing - but their rotation isn't looking any worse unfortunately.

Will Pettitte's signing be enough to convince Roger Clemens to return to the Bronx for one last shot at a ring?  

Player     Average 
Patterson  13.2 
Beltran    11.7 
Pierre     9.2 
Damon      6.4 
Anderson   6.3 
Granderson 6.1 
Taveras	   5.7 
Cameron	   5.6 
Wells	   5.6 
Byrnes	   4.8 
Edmonds	   4.2 
Gathright  3.4 
Duffy      2.6 
Figgins    1.9 
Sizemore   1.9 
Baldelli   1.6 
Clark      0.9 
Rowand     0.1 
Finley    -0.1 
Crisp     -0.8 
Hunter    -0.8 
A. Jones  -1.3 
Matthews  -3.6 
Kotsay    -5.3 
Sullivan  -6.1 
Lofton    -7.4 
Griffey  -14.3

Jamey Newberg reports that the Rangers have signed Kenny Lofton. This does not affect the Catalanotto compensation ranking.

Makes sense for the Rangers. Lofton for one year, then next year go hard for one of the DFW natives, Vernon Wells or (as I understand their preference) Torii Hunter to come play at home.