6-4-2 — an Angels/Dodgers double play blog: Pickoff Moves

Proceeds from the ads below will be donated to the Bob Wuesthoff scholarship fund.

Wednesday, May 26, 2004

Pickoff Moves

Up And Down

Hardball Times has an Ben Jacobs article on fantasy values of various players. Not surprisingly, Bartolo Colón makes his "In Free Fall" list:

Colon is now 4-2 with a 5.17 ERA, 1.41 WHIP and 41 strikeouts in 54 innings. He's not giving up a ton of hits, but his big problem is that too many of the hits he is allowing are going over the fence. Colon has already allowed 11 home runs, which would put him on pace to allow 44 if he makes 36 starts. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that he's going to be a big disappointment to everybody who drafted him unless he drastically cuts back on the home runs.

Eckstein makes his "Five on the Rise" list:

Eckstein finally showed some life, going 11-for-24 (.458) with a triple, five runs and an RBI in the last week. However, he's still hitting just .254/.322/.290 with no homers, four steals, 16 runs and seven RBIs. The paucity of steals is the biggest concern, as he's only going to be any help to your team if he's hitting close to .300 and/or stealing 25-30 bases.

Which is true whether you're a fantasy league player or David Eckstein. For that to happen, Eck's going to have to hit like a demon from here on out, especially with the season already about a third over.

Sons of Sam Horn Draft Study

Thanks to the Texas Rangers Blog for this interesting study about the amateur draft on the Sons of Sam Horn message board. The executive summary:

"About 15 good players will come from a draft."
"Most of them will come from the first few rounds though all individual picks have very, very low probabilities of success."
"Aside from truly great players draft classes will start to produce value in year 4 and hit their peaks in year 6."

Good stuff that I haven't had time to completely digest.

Update, 10/17/04: The study has moved.

The End of Collusion

Birds In The Belfry in their "Around the Horn" section recalls that the collusion penalty is still being paid by the owners:

Jack Morris, the star free-agent pitcher, offered George Steinbrenner the opportunity to have an arbitrator decide his salary. Andre Dawson, another star free agent, gave Dallas Green, the Cubs' general manager, a signed contract with the salary line left blank, to be filled in by Green.
Ah, the good old days of collusion. They are gone now, at least those days of collusion. Some people on the players' side - agents, for example - suspect they are operating in new days of collusion. But the old days are finally over.
With the distribution of checks to more than 650 players containing interest payments on damage awards the players previously received, the case is closed 18½ years after it began and 13½ years after the owners agreed to pay the players $280 million as settlement for their transgressions - which they have never admitted, incidentally.

The players are only now getting their checks, some of whom have already been voted into the Hall of Fame, or are managing teams. Amazing.

Update: Thanks for the lack of attribution, guys. This appeared in the New York Times.

Park Parked on the DL

Not that you didn't suspect something like this would happen, but ex-Dodger and current Texas Rangers pitcher Chan Ho Park has hit the DL again, with back problems.

// posted by Rob @ 10:33 PM link // 1 comments