6 IP and 7 Runs, but on the good side only giving up 12 hits to that lethal offence.

sky king .
elvis was king .
south of the red river , bob wills is still the king . (waylon jennings).
eddie feiner was the king (and his court).
even yul brynner was king .
and , of course , king crimson .

F-Her
F-Him
he ain’t no king .

would have been more interested to see you answer your own questions .

“wouldn’t count on anyone getting more than 20 (saves)”
…. no shizz , shakespeare …. the club’s struggling to win 63 games .

Which do you take?

So he was obviously answering it from a real baseball perspective, and quite frankly I don’t disagree with him.

3b is sneaky shallow, and Beltre’s a good player, and non Roto stats certainly make Beltre better than he seems in real baseball, but looking at that contract fantasy wise it’s definitely a bust.

My labeling him as a ‘bust’ follows your train of thought – his hitting (and roto value) has to be considered at least a slight disappointment given his breakout year prior to the contract. But Dave @ USSMariner actually is a baseball blogger (vs. a fantasy baseball blogger) and has a broader perspective of value. Given that Beltre is paid for baseball value vs. fantasy baseball value, I’ll mea culpa on claiming Beltre to be a bust.

As for the point that Silva was the victim of bad defense….not sure I buy that. I think he’d need a defense similar to the OF at a home run derby to make his ERA/WHIP worthy of a $10MM contract.

But to play Devil’s advocate, this, to my eye, is also the epitome of sabermetric tap-dancing:

“Belte’s career on-base percentage is .327 with a career walk rate of 7.3%. During his time in Seattle Beltre has posted OBPs and walk rates of: .303, .328, .319, .327, and 5.9%, 7%, 6%, and 8.3%. Average those out however you like and you’re essentially getting Beltre’s career totals.”

And there you go, Seattle fans! Your $64 million’s worth!

Also, I think it’s slightly disingenuous, or at least misleading, when people use three- or four-year-old contracts (Beltre signed for 5 years, $64 million in 2005) and compare them to current contracts to prove the player is a bargain. At the time, this was a huge contract. Salaries rise very quickly in sports, so perhaps the Mariners can be lauded for anticipating that a $12 million-a-year glove man would be a slight bargain by 2009 valuations.

But I would have loved to be at the press conference in 2005 where the M’s announced, “We’ve just signed Adrian Beltre for $64 million, and we’re looking forward to five years of 25 homers, an average hovering around .260, and excellent glove work.”

Here’s a quote from that Fangraphs article by R.J. Anderson: “Defense is the part of Beltre’s game that people widely ignore or undervalue. Over the last four years Beltre has been worth an average of roughly 9 runs per season defensively. Add in those four runs of offense, a positional adjustment and 20 or so runs for replacement level and you have a 3.5-4 win player worth around 16 million on this market, but instead will only make 12 million next year.”

I don’t think there’s much tapdancing going on here. Good defense + good offense + positional value = A player whose value exceeds that of his contract.

Gold Gloves aside, when you sign someone coming off a .334/48/121 season, and that player fails to top either .270, 26 HR, or 90 RBIs in three of the next four years, he better be Brooks Robinson with four arms at the hot corner for me to think of him as an underrated star.

Quick selfish question for anyone listening… If you had this shitpile to pick from at the end of a draft, which would you choose? Adam Jones, Chris Ray, Jair Jurrjens, Jason Motte, Ryan Spilbourghs, Dexter Fowler, Jordan Zimmerman? It’s a keeper league… Forget my needs, I just need to take the best avail. Ideas?

U.S.S. Mariner, please elaborate.