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Jeff Zimmerman of Royals Review takes a great look into how Ervin Santana's velocity decline among other things, could result in Tommy John surgery for the right-hander: Ervin Santana: Damaged Goods - Royals Review
In 2012, his velocity stayed near 92 mph and his injury factor steadily increased with a couple of large jumps along the way. On August 26, his injury index spiked near .8. It is the highest value I have seen without the pitcher eventually needing Tommy John Surgery.
Eric Seidman of FanGraphs discusses how Denard Span could be a good option in a crowded market for center fielders: Don’t Forget About Denard Span | FanGraphs Baseball
Denard Span isn’t discussed as much as a potential trade target, but he combines some of the best attributes of everyone mentioned above: He fields the position terrifically, he’s a very good baserunner, he has a high career walk rate and a wRC+ 5% better than the league. He’s also signed to a team-friendly contract.
I missed this link last week, because of the hurricane, but Matt Swartz and MLB trade rumors have combined again to create a great resource with their projected arbitration salaries for this offseason: Projected Arbitration Salaries For 2013: MLB Rumors - MLBTradeRumors.com
As explained in this series of posts, Matt Swartz has developed a very accurate model for MLBTR to project arbitration salaries. We've heard from many MLB teams and agencies that reference the projections in their work. By my count there are 213 remaining arbitration eligible players. Click to download an Excel spreadsheet with our projected salaries, or click below to see everything.
Patriot explains how he is voting for the Rookie of the Year Award for this year's Internet Baseball Awards: Walk Like a Sabermetrician: IBA Ballot: Rookie of the Year
The NL race is competitive, although if you insert any sort of future projection/historical significance/age factor into your thinking, it becomes a runaway as well. I don’t though; I attempt to make an honest evaluation of each player’s value for the season in question and use that as the criteria for my ROY ballot. I might allow those considerations to seep in if it’s a virtual tie and one player clearly has the edge in the other factors.
In an interesting article over at Baseball Prospectus, Maury Brown discusses Josh Hamilton and the possibility of the slugger receiving a $175 million contract: Baseball Prospectus | Bizball: Sizing Up a Seven-Year, $175 Million Deal for Josh Hamilton
So let’s say it happens. Let’s say Hamilton lands a seven-year, $175 million deal. How would he stack up compared to the highest-paid players in the league? Based on total contract dollars, $175 million would rank Hamilton ninth, moving CC Sabathia down to 10th. Mark Teixeira, who would sit just ahead of Hamilton with the seven-year, $180 million deal that he reached with the Yankees for the 2009-16, is the only player beside Sabathia to have a lower WARP in his platform year leading up to their high-dollar contracts.