holliday overload

just like i can't get used to christmas carols at the grocery store before thanksgiving, the MAJOR LEAGUE DRAMA of WHERE WILL HE SIGN? is starting to get goddamn old. and there's still a week left before he goes on the market. front page articles everyday on what admittedly is probably about the only interesting baseball topic in st. louis right now have begun to wear me down. right now, i no longer really care. i just want the damn thing over. i know i should care. i know we're talking about what could be one of the top twenty-five players in baseball (13th among position players by WAR in 2009), and we're probably talking about a 9-figure contract that could hamstring the club for the next 5, 6, or more years if done wrong. i know all this. i just can't read another article whose basic theme is the same thing we've been batting around since we stopped yammering about "HFS (tm) BRETT WALLACE AND MORTENSON?"

he's going to cost a lot of money.

like a lot of money. a metric shit-ton. like maybe the household income of 2,500 ordinary american families. since each family has an average of 2.6 members, that's a decent size town - like a population the size of Brentwood, MO. do the cards have that much money? probably. is that the best way to spend it? uhh . . . the cheap answer is it depends on the years and the actual dollar amounts. the real answer is i have no clue whatsoever. there's no question he's better than everybody else on the market -- claims from the Bay camp notwithstanding: the Bay camp, incidentally, IS the Holliday camp. i'm a big fan of some of our rising OF prospects, an issue i rarely see discussed on the boards in relation to the holliday signing, and, while none of them look like a 6 WAR player like holliday, i could easily stomach a year of mike cameron with allen craig cameos, followed by a year of DJTools, henley, and craig running wild in the OF at league min, allowing us to spend some money on retaining albert and getting some needed high-ticket players.

the holliday contract will just be a huge leap; a decision that could make or break a franchise for years. and i am so sick of talking about it.

so, interestingly enough, is mo. the discussion has gone from dewitt saying that they wouldn't have traded for him without intending to resign him to mo saying that he'll basically make a take-it-or-leave-it offer to holliday - which he has not yet made - and that he feels sure he can find other options in the free agent market.

probably the varying themes expounded by the club reflect efforts to curry favor with particular audiences; in the case of dewitt's july optimism, whipping up enthusiasm in the ticket-buying public; in the case of mo's recent comments, an effort to tamp down the flame of boras's wild teixeira comps. it's hard not to believe there's a kernel of real holliday fatigue behind mo's comments, if for no other reason than i'm feeling that fatigue myself. but surely it's tedious to go through the weeks of window dressing just to get to the point where you know the game will come down to money and years.

a brief request: we are hitting hot stove season. everybody has a thousand and one ideas (in a typical off-season, it would be a million and one, but the free agent market sucks and we have nothing much to trade) about what direction the club should go this off-season and which players to sign and which players to trade.

please Play Nice.

you'll probably start to see designated hot stove threads cropping up on the sidebar. when they appear, please put all trade and free agent talk in there. if everybody puts in their personal fanpost about why we should give up yadier molina in a four-way trade with the mariners, the astros, and the l.a. clippers that will result in miguel tejada moving to point guard by mid-december, the fanposts will be dropping off the main page after a day and a half.

if you are new, welcome. we love new members. and no, you don't have to have a phd from the academy of the hardball times to express your opinion on these pages. all we ask is that if there's a catch-all hot-stove thread, please use it. it helps if you show that you have thought the trade or signing through carefully, and asked yourself whether the other team would accept the trade or the player would accept the offer. if somebody disagrees, that's healthy - not a personal attack (hopefully). if a poster says "he's too old/too bad at defense/too injury prone/doesn't play professional baseball but is in fact a character actor from 1970's sitcoms," then think about their point. agree or disagree, but support what you're saying in your reply. or acknowledge that your point is unsupported and is just your opinion.

if you are not new, please remember that you were once new, too. if somebody floats an idea that seems dumb to you, offer constructive criticism - while that term may be overused, think "will this point educate the poster and make him want to come back to this site to learn more, or would a reasonable poster think you're making fun of him?" please also keep an eye on the groupthink/ganging up. if somebody has already pointed out that jermaine dye plays defense like a rutting yet visually-impaired musk ox, don't pile on. if somebody's made the point, move along and make a new one.

/lecture

weekly tidbit roundup -

fangraphs had a neat analysis of david dejesus as a legit trade target. someone for the cards to keep their eyes on. a good defender with a decent if somewhat inconsistent bat. capable in left; sub-worthy in center. hits from the wrong side to sub for colson rimbaud, but could platoon with craig. not sure what they'd be looking for in trade. if mike aviles doesn't look like he'll be ready for the season, tyler greene (or possibly the starting SS at the high school nearest the stadium in kansas city) could be a decent SS option for them over yuniesky betancourt. it probably takes more than tyler to get this done -- the salary dumped is not enough to make KC desperate. not sure where else we go to sweeten that pot without giving away some essential players.

early in the week, dave cameron had a hard-to-argue-with explication of why mike cameron (sign MIKE CAMERON) is significantly better (and cheaper in terms of money and picks) than jason bay (BOOOOO!!).

i thought this was a nice rundown of the limitations of WAR. i've been guilty of at least some of these WAR crimes on more than one occasion. read the comments, too, nerdbra.

if you're not sick to death of the titular individual, this might be interesting.

do you stay up late nights wondering what exactly is the average and replacement value wOBA for each position? put that ambien down. no, seriously, put the ambien down.