The Cardinals won and the Braves lost, so only 2.5 games separate the two clubs in the National League Wild Card race. Here's the latest news from around MLB…
- Pirates GM Neal Huntington didn't say whether he intends to offer arbitration to Ross Ohlendorf this offseason, according to Rob Biertempfel of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Ohlendorf would earn a raise from his current $2.025MM salary if the Pirates tender him a contract this winter.
- The Cubs told scouting director Tim Wilken that he'll be back in 2012, according to Paul Sullivan of the Chicago Tribune. There had been some rumblings that Wilken would receive a four-year extension like the one director of player personnel Oneri Fleita obtained, but Wilken will return on a one-year deal.
- Giants officials acknowledged to Andrew Baggarly of the San Jose Mercury News that it will be hard to bring back both Jeremy Affeldt ($5MM option) and Javier Lopez (free agent) next year. The two left-handers could hit free agency this offseason.
- Jayson Werth told Bill Ladson of MLB.com that he still believes that the Nationals are headed for success. The outfielder hasn't lived up to his $126MM contract so far, but he says he has found his swing and regained his composure.
- Mike Mosa, the agent for Tim Byrdak, told MLBTR's Tim Dierkes that Byrdak's decision to sign an extension with the Mets had to do with the team's willingness to include an opt-out in his deal for 2011 (Twitter link).
- Dave Cameron of FanGraphs explains that serious analysts don't believe "that awards voting should be done according to an ordinal ranking" of the wins above replacement statistic. WAR is a tool that guides baseball fans, not an absolute statement about value or ability.
- In this week's edition of Ask BA, Jim Callis of Baseball America explains that he doubts we'll ever see an international draft because of all the logistics that would be involved. Commissioner Bud Selig has long supported a worldwide draft, which will come up during this round of collective bargaining.
Giants had better pick Lopez over alfeld
Is that “bled” as in past tense or did you misspell “bleed”? Are you a current or former Giants fan?
Bled because I didnt want to sound like a new giants fan who has just started bleeding lol. I got hooked growing up watching jeff Kent so I’ve been bleeding orange for a good 13 or so years
Sounds like you’re not the brightest orange crayon…
So basically, Neal isn’t sure if he wants to risk losing to Ohlendorf again?
except for his start last week against the Dodgers, Ohlendorf hasn’t done anything to deserve a MLB contract from anyone in 2012, let alone a raise
Way to find your stroke and regain composure at the end of the season Werth. Hopefully you still have it when next season rolls around.
So Jayson Werth said he doesn’t feel like he lived up to his contract, don’t think he did worse than Carl Crawford who he was compared to all during the free agent period.
Really glad Wilken will be back. Fleita’s extension was blown way out of proportion. Losing him would have been a serious blow to the development of the Cubs’ new facility in the Dominican Republic.
And that is one of the reasons I love fangraphs. Things like WAR are great in that they are better approximations than some traditional stats, but they are still just that, approximations- each metric has it’s own strengths and weaknesses which need to be understood and considered. It gives me a headache when guys are arguing about a 5.2 vs a 4.8 WAR player like there’s some significant difference there.
If you do implement a worldwide-web, the interest among latin americans will hugely decrease. These guys spend a lot of their time playing baseball so that one day they can get a big paycheck.