He turns 35 next year and if he has a good year, will hit his 600th home run…… but I wonder if he has the “drive” to stay in the game long enough to go after Bonds record.

Supps is gong to cost MIL $25 over the next 2 years. Looper will probably want, and get, a 3-year deal from someone for $9-12M a year. If they are indeed comparable, Supps might work out to be the better deal over the next two years. Plus, there’s that postseason thing Supps seems to have…….

arguable. Here are their respective FIPs for the last 2 years:

Looper — 4.82 (2007), 4.77 (2008)
Suppan — 4.30 (2007), 5.38 (2008)

by FIP, Suppan was half a run better last year but Looper is .61 runs better this year. Seems like they’re about the same over the 2 year period. I will agree (obviously) that the Cards made the right choice.

of how a grade a moron Yost is as well. Mind you he has been bad the whole year

but it seems to have made a difference with the Mets.

hope the rest of our Houston area friends are as well.

out in West Houston. We’re in pretty good shape — most of my friends have power back now. My wife’s school (she’s a counselor, not a student) is set to re-open tomorrow and mine (teacher, not student) is set to re-open Thursday. We’re very fortunate. If none of you have seen some of the pictures from Galveston, particularly the Bolivar Peninsula — it is completely screwed. Remember the pics from Hurricane Andrew near Miami — very similar. Fortunately, the Bolivar Peninsula isn’t as densely populated as the Homestead, Florida area and most Galvestonians had evacuated. Right now, much of Galveston looks like it was destroyed in WWII.

But it was one hell of ride wasn’t it?

How did the long-tern deal to Edmonds hurt the team? If you are referring to the 2-year extension for 2007-2008, then yes, that was not too bright. But his original, 7-year deal was great.

And Rolen was great, too, for the first 3-4 years of his deal. I’ll grant that the last year here was not good value – but when that contract was flipped for Glaus, it became a moot point, no?

People love to look at long term deals and say stuff like “Oh, the Cubs are going to love having Soriano playing LF for them 6 years from now when he’s old and sucks.” Well, the bottom line is that if a team wants a superstar player, they are going to have to give him a long term deal. You hope you won’t have to, but most teams accept that they’ll wind up paying the price with the extra years at the end in return for the great years at the begining. Depending on the situation of the team, that can be a sound strategy. To all the “Soriano in 6 years people,” I would say, “yeah, but don’t overlook the tremendous value he’s giving them RIGHT NOW.” (And please, don’t turn this into a thread about Soriano, I have no idea if he’s “earning” his contract to the dollar. It’s just an example off the top of my head.)

With Edmonds the Cards got lucky and really only had 1 sub-par year on his original deal. With Rolen, not so much. But Rolen stands as an example of how a team can wiggle out of such a contract – and frankly, is not all that uncommon.

to resign Carpenter. He had another year on his deal. We would’ve ended up only having to
pony up some kind of incentive-laden deal had we let it go to free agency. Definitely a poor
decision and one that I didn’t like at the time

LF!

From the P-D:

Manager Tony La Russa will speak this afternoon to a group of cadets in West Point, N.Y., at the U.S. Army’s military academy, before heading back to New York City to spend the off day saying farewell to a rival’s old home, Yankee Stadium. La Russa has been planning a pilgrimage to the ballpark in the Bronx for several months.

He will be the guest of Chicago White Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf, and he said he’ll be accompanied by his friend, retired Gen. Hal Moore, who marched into Yankee Stadium as a cadet. This is the last home stand at Yankee Stadium before it is demolished.

"I’m fired up," La Russa said. "I’m going to see as much as I can. I’m eager to see it and experience as much as I can of it."

Colby’s pending position on the USA Olympics team.

and 21 year old kids have a very very poor track record of performance in MLB, and virtually no chance of being as effective as 2008 Matt Holliday? Especially 21yo kids with a ~.750 OPS at AAA, coming off a serious injury, and a rehab assignment in which he was completely unable to hit A+ level pitching?

In the last 52 years, the “modern era” of post-WW2 baseball, only eleven kids have put up an OPS+ higher than Holliday this season in their 21 year old seasons, and all but two were either HOF or HOF-caliber (IE griffey, pujols, AROD). Only 190 21yo hitters (in 52 years!) were even given at shot at hitting MLB pitching for at least 2/3 of a season, and more than half of them finished the season with an OPS+ under 100.

Regarding salary, trading for Holliday likely would have meant making the playoffs this year. That alone would have virtually paid his salary this year and next.

The more I look at this, the less I think it was about saving money and the more it seems like the organization is trying to take care of colby. What good would it have done to send him to the wolves, to watch him hit .190 and strike out 30 or 40 times in a month? Of course we don’t know that is what would have happened, but it was a real risk, at least as likely as him having success, and one that could have hurt Colby’s long term potential. OTOH there was very little to gain, AND it would have cost the team a year of control.

I think our expectations were way too high, and that in the rasmus case the organization did exactly the right thing, except that they apparently communicated poorly with colby. I know it’s not what we want to hear; inventing “drama” is more fun than playing conservative with our prospects, but Colby has already been promoted very aggressively. He very probably wasn’t ready, isn’t ready, and probably won’t BE ready until this time next year at best.