White Sox

[05worldserieschamps]

Having watched the Orioles waste a LOT of money on relief pitching, I would just say two things.

1. When you are 20 games from contending for the playoffs, all the relief pitching in the world ain't the problem.

2. Predicting which relievers will perform well from year to year is a fool's game. Linebrink may be great. And he may be a huge waste product.

OK, three things. The Swisher move is an elephant of a move. Since Quentin, I presume, replaces the awful LF combo, it's a doberman. The Cabrera move is an ant...ok, maybe a small rat. The Linebrink move is a microscopic speck of dust on that rat's hindquarters.

On the other hand, you've hurt your starting pitching and and your future. Unless you make another two or three big moves to improve your team without losing anything off the current team, you are still not in the hunt. And given that KW has started mortgaging the future, it's best to go all the way, rather than fail now AND later.

Wow, I think that was WAY off. The Linebrink move and the Cabrera move were much better than you made them out to be. You are sadly mistaken.

There is a difference in watching the Orioles spend money on crappy RP and some of the best in the game. Ill agree, for the most part, RP is a crap shoot. However, Linebrinks numbers are remarkably consistent and has never(5 full seasons) posted an ERA of over 3.75.

And again, it's just you being a foolish Oriole fan an underestimating how bad Uribe was and how much of a gain Cabrera is.(and dont feed me more crap about you knowing because his OBP was bad. learn there is more than just stats. Uribes sucks, Cabrera doesnt)

[GotowarMissAgnes]

1. Tell me how much Bradford and Walker helped the Orioles last year? No guy who pitches 75 IP per year can really improve your team much more than a tiny bit.

2. Latroy Hawkins had 4 straight years with no ERA greater than 3.83. How'd he work out for the Orioles?

RP is impossible to predict and marginal in importance. Until you learn the importance of stats and which stats are important and not, you'll never understand the game of baseball.

[Ender]

The Orioles aren't the best example because they had a lot of injuries in the bullpen. Most playoff teams have good bullpens so it is certainly important, they do pitch 1/3 of your teams innings and generally the higher leverage ones. Also RP's are not impossible to predict, people just use the wrong tools to judge them. Any time you are looking at ERA to decide how good a pitcher is you are on shaky ground unless you are looking at a multi year sample of innings.

It is true though that it is the bullpen as a whole that matters more than one individual guy and Linebrink's peripherals are going in the wrong way, I think he could be a real disaster for them in that park and at best is going to be a small upgrade.

[GotowarMissAgnes]

The Orioles aren't the best example because they had a lot of injuries in the bullpen. Most playoff teams have good bullpens so it is certainly important, they do pitch 1/3 of your teams innings and generally the higher leverage ones. Also RP's are not impossible to predict, people just use the wrong tools to judge them. Any time you are looking at ERA to decide how good a pitcher is you are on shaky ground unless you are looking at a multi year sample of innings.

It is true though that it is the bullpen as a whole that matters more than one individual guy and Linebrink's peripherals are going in the wrong way, I think he could be a real disaster for them in that park and at best is going to be a small upgrade.

Yes, your statement is a better summary. The overall bullpen certainly is important, but its importance ranks significantly below the offense and starting pitching, and even trails fielding. One relief pitcher's contribution, thus, is a very minor part of the team effort.

Even with peripherals, however, I'd argue that predicting RP is very dicey. Just a few bad outings can make all the difference when you are only making 40-70 outings. Even great relievers have an off year now and again. I think even you will agree that predicting which relievers will be tops in fantasy baseball is much, much more difficult than predicting who will be the top hitters or starting pitchers.

[bigh0rt]

And again, it's just you being a foolish Oriole fan an underestimating how bad Uribe was and how much of a gain Cabrera is.(and dont feed me more crap about you knowing because his OBP was bad. learn there is more than just stats. Uribes sucks, Cabrera doesnt)

Well now you just sound like an ignorant homer.

[Pogotheostrich]

Wow, focus of this original argument has gone away fast.

My point: Swisher replacing Owens is a signifigant change(for the best) to our lineup. However, so is Cabrera replacing Uribe. I think both are great deals that influence our team ABOUT the same. The Nick Swisher trade, going off stats only, is obviously much better than the Cabrera trade. But theres more than just stats. And Like I said before, we already have 4-5 Nick Swishers, but we dont have a solid player like Orlando Cabrera, which ups his value to our team beyond stats.

Going in a different direction, how much do these trades effect our team??? Here are the following trades in case you forgot some:

GOT/TRADED
Nick Swisher/Gio Gonzalez, Fausto De la Santos, Ryan Sweeney
Carlos Quentin/Chris Carter
Orlando Cabrera/Jon Garland
Scott Linebrink/Free Agency

I think the Linebrink signing is up there on importance. The Sox had terrible relief pitching last year and signing one of the best setup men in the game should help A LOT. Also, last year Kenny Williams had a lot of young, power arms in the 'pen. So hopefully, some of these guys will mature a little bit, Mike Macdougall will find his old self, I think this has the potential to be a very good bullpen. Jenks is a premiere closer, Linebrink is a premiere set-up man and I think Macdougall, in his good years, is a premiere set-up man as well.

Opinions?

While the offense is better but I still don't see it stacking up with Detroit or Cleveland. Detroit scored 194 more runs and Cleveland scored 118 more runs than Chicago last year. I don't think the Linebrink signing is that big. Let's just replace 70.3 IP (6.00 ERA) with Linebrink's 70.3 IP (3.71 ERA). That is only a 14 run improvement and if you expect him to repeat his success against AL lineups. The SP isn't improved at all and one could argue that Floyd will be worse than Garland. I just don't see them contending in 2008.

[05worldserieschamps]

1. Tell me how much Bradford and Walker helped the Orioles last year? No guy who pitches 75 IP per year can really improve your team much more than a tiny bit.

2. Latroy Hawkins had 4 straight years with no ERA greater than 3.83. How'd he work out for the Orioles?

RP is impossible to predict and marginal in importance. Until you learn the importance of stats and which stats are important and not, you'll never understand the game of baseball.

1. Of course, a few RP cant help you if you suck. They had(and have) no offense and little to none starting pitching. However with the White Sox, they have a good team now. And their bullpen ERA was well over 6.00(im pretty sure it was over 7.00). They needed another solid arm in the bullpen. And they signed another consistent arm with Linebrink. You gave to 2 perfect examples in Bradford and Walker on consistent relief pitching. They have always been very consistent. RP isnt impossible to predict. Thats stupid. Linebrink, Bradford and Walker are all perfect examples, along with many more, of consistent bullpen arms.

2. Dont make me laugh. That situation doesnt even compare to Linebrink. Linebrink has NEVER had a full season of over 3.75. Hawkins' career ERA is 4.68. Just because he has a streak of 4 good years doesnt mean anything. THAT is a good example of inconsistent RP.

[Pogotheostrich]

And their bullpen ERA was well over 6.00(im pretty sure it was over 7.00).

For the record it was 5.47.

[The Loveable Losers]

The only problem with Linebrink is that he's in decline and will now be moving to the less favorable league and in a less favorable park. Linebrink isn't an extreme fly ball pitcher but he's no sinkerballer either. He gets his share of balls in the air and pitching in U.S. Cellular certainly won't help that.

As for Linebrink's decline, here are his k/9 and k/bb numbers over the last 4 years:
2004 - 8.89/3.19
2005 - 8.55/3.04
2006 - 8.09/3.09
2007 - 6.40/2.00

Even if you're willing to write off some of that decline last year to sample size that still doesn't change the fact that he's slowly falling off. He's managed to maintain a fairly steady k/bb but the numbers make him look like a guy with eroding stuff that's slowly moving from dominance to mediocrity. There's only so far that k/9 can fall before the k/bb falls with it and last year showed what that can look like. Throw in a few more longballs and you've got a useful middle reliever on your hands - not the great late-inning option that Linebrink's been for years now.

[GotowarMissAgnes]

1. Of course, a few RP cant help you if you suck. They had(and have) no offense and little to none starting pitching. However with the White Sox, they have a good team now. And their bullpen ERA was well over 6.00(im pretty sure it was over 7.00). They needed another solid arm in the bullpen. And they signed another consistent arm with Linebrink. You gave to 2 perfect examples in Bradford and Walker on consistent relief pitching. They have always been very consistent. RP isnt impossible to predict. Thats stupid. Linebrink, Bradford and Walker are all perfect examples, along with many more, of consistent bullpen arms.

2. Dont make me laugh. That situation doesnt even compare to Linebrink. Linebrink has NEVER had a full season of over 3.75. Hawkins' career ERA is 4.68. Just because he has a streak of 4 good years doesnt mean anything. THAT is a good example of inconsistent RP.

Yes, Bradford and Walker came through. Their good performance replaced some really awful ones in 2006...and how many games did the Orioles improve in 2007? Hint: They actually lost more games. IOW, we made TWICE as big an improvement as the Sox did in trying to address bullpen problems, and it even worked, and we still didn't get better.

2. You do realize that Linebrink pitched in one of the best pitcher's park. For the record, here are his ERAs and Hawkins ERA adjusted for ballpark and compared to the league average:

Linebrink: 123, 181, 210, 113, 113
Hawkins: 210, 243, 167, 113

You're silly if you don't see that Hawkins was BETTER than Linebrink at his peak, and that both of them showed a significant decline heading into the year where they were signed as bullpen saviors.