AROD trade contest

That sounds good to me.

then vote for it... :)

Tastycake Krimpets, not a twinkie

they wouldn't. Howard doesn't get paid enough to be a Yankee

But then Yankees have 5 outfielders all capable of starting. I suppose you'd then trade Sheffield for your replacement 3B. But you need to get a pitcher out of it somewhere!

Not a chance that the Yankees want Bonds, and especially not for the best baseball player on the planet, playoffs or no playoffs.

Isn't Bonds a FA? How can the Giants trade him?

Bravo, Manny!

Why trade a Yankee hero instead of someone the Yankee faithful don't like?

Because sweet Lou is manager now and A-Rod FLOURISHED under him... A-Rod BELONGS at short, I guarantee he'd play much better if he was playing short. Legend schmedgend... where did Captain November get them in this series? He played like "#2" all right...

A-Rod isn't gone... Torre is... Yanks continue to eff up personnel decisions! The wheels are falling off... Pinella is another Yankee re-tread manager... can we dig up Billy Martin?

Torre deserves to be fired.....should have set e-5 straight long ago. e-5 is gone, before Christmas. He will not see the new year as a Yankee. Lou will make a lot of changes...

yeah, it's broken, so break it more... Yankee fan, YOU NEED PITCHING! Not more overpriced free agents, mishandling rosters or trading for trading's sake

The topic was wishes for an A-Rod trade, Manny's wish of the Yankeeds trading Jeter in stead is on topic.

Yeah, I think a TRUE Captain could have motivated the team's most skilled player...

"...for a decent 3B" - that's quality stuff Yankee (Myopia) Fan...

NEVER< NEVER? How about those years in Seattle??

I would LOVE to see the Yankees continue to take steps backwards... they'll get 20 cents on the dollar for a 2 time MVP and he'll be Dave Winfield II - leave the Yankees, win a World Series

Oh how far we've come since LAST YEAR'S MVP...

What? They're gonna trade Jeter???

It's easier than a Home Frontal Lobotomy kit...

Hey A-Non, log in and we can showdown about whatever topic in which you want to prove your utter ignorance; ArmchairUP, I won't hurt you too bad, I promise... =)

ArmchairUP, whimp... a TRUE Yankee fan wouldn't hide their allegiance.

hell, even a Met fan wouldn't be AFRAID to sign in...

You call yourself a Red Sox fan? A-Rod is a waste of oxygen, I thank God every day we didn't get him. We need pitching, not a whining shortstop.

No, Gonzalez (career OPS:.684) is the real waste of oxygen. Typical A-Rod year is worth 10-11 WARP; typical Manny year is worth 7, you do the math. I'm not saying they don't need pitching, but if NY is so dissatisfied with A-Rod that they just can't stand to have him anymore, I can think of, oh, I don't know, about 29 teams that would gladly take him off of their hands.

He's a perfect fit for the Sox and you know it. Don't get me wrong, the pitching needs an upgrade too, but the Sox are a team that needs to score 920+ runs to be super-successful (they were pretty good in 2003 and 2005 despite allowing more runs than the league avg.); they scored only 820 this year, thanks in part to the punchless Cora/Gonzalez duo. A-Rod would immediately remedy that situation, propelling the Sox closer to those 2003-2005 levels.

No, I don't know it - that doesn't make any sense at all. It didn't then, and it doesn't now. He's a terrible fit for the Sox, just as he is for the Yanks. He was an ass in New York, and he'd be an ass in Boston. His defensive problems are not just because he was shifted to 3B; it was because he couldn't handle the pressure of New York, and the pressure of Boston isn't a whole lot different. The only thing A-Rod would be able to "remedy" is having the best defense in the league. That terrible situation would immediately be remedied. Boston, like NY, has to move away from relying on big hitters and HRs, not towards increasing that reliance. One of Boston's biggest problems in recent years has been that their offense, while powerful, was one-dimensional. Therefore, it went through extreme ups and downs, and wasn't consistently effective outside of one or two players. We need a multi-dimensional offense and fewer jerks on the team, not more HRs and more personality conflicts.

More of this tripe. "A-Rod couldn't handle the pressure"... "We need to play small ball"... You'd better get with the program -- walks and three-run homers are the answers to all of life's problems. But the Sox didn't do that nearly enough this year, hence the mere 820 runs scored. Oh, but you want the team to move away from an offensive philosophy that scored nearly 1000 runs in 2003 and 2004, huh? Let's steal more bases, waste more outs, right? And you call yourself a Red Sox fan? Whoops, I forgot, on the same planet where people believe in clutch hitters and light-hitting "character guys", scoring less is always in the team's best interest.

Oh, and the "best defense in the league"? Are you high? Try 27th-best. Please. Couldn't handle the pressure... You just keep thinking that.

And another thing...

"One of Boston's biggest problems in recent years has been that their offense, while powerful, was one-dimensional. Therefore, it went through extreme ups and downs, and wasn't consistently effective outside of one or two players."

If this bit of pedantry were true, the standard deviations of the Red Sox's game-to-game runs scored totals would be high. Let's take a look-see:

Year		Standard Dev
2003		3.708520562
2004		3.262562503
2005		3.291501956
2006		3.116159760

They were actually among the lowest in baseball. For some comparisons, let's look at this year's Yankees squad:

Year		Standard Dev
2006 Yanks	3.685721241

Why, that's higher (and significantly so) than every Sox offense but 2003!

The 2001 Mariners had one of the most consistent offenses in the AL; how did they fare?

Year		Standard Dev
2001 M's	3.406697824

Still higher than all but one Sox offense.

Hey, what about the 1927 Yankees, the GOAT of offenses? Pretty consistent, right?

Year		Standard Dev
1927 Yanks	3.939424017

So what you're basically saying is, no offense is consistent enough for you.

"27th-best"? Are you high? Try best or best or third best or......oh, so you picked a stat to prove your point, you say? Surprise, surprise.

Second, I never mentioned small ball or base stealing, and I never wrote anything against walks. That's purely your imagination. I mentioned we needed to rely less on HRs and big hitters. What I meant by that was not that we needed to change our offensive philosophy per se, but that we needed to change our team philosophy and spend more time working to make a more complete team. The team needs to focus on improving the bullpen, the defense, and the starting rotation much more than they need to sign a guy like e5 just to increase the HR total. Third of all, you managed to misunderstand the vast majority of what I was writing, surprise, surprise. You'll notice that I didn't write that the offense wasn't consistently effective - I wrote that it wasn't consistently effective outside of one or two players, and when I wrote that "it" went through extreme ups and downs, I meant the individual players on the offense, not the offense as a whole. Having Manny and Ortiz on your team makes up a lot for inconsistency elsewhere. Youkilis started very strong, then faded. Crisp never really produced; neither did Gonzo (though I personally feel that the latter's defensive contributions made up for his offensive failures). Nixon was inconsistent, 'Tek had a terrible season at the plate. After Manny and Ortiz, the offensive prowess slacked off considerably.

So what you're basically saying is, as long as there are a few exciting HRs, you don't really care much about anything else.

Besides all of that, no good Red Sox can ever defend anything about A-Rod after what he's done as a Yankee.

You're using errors and fielding percentage to measure team defensive prowess. How quaint.

And as for an A-Rod trade: 1) I never said it should be higher on the priority list than pitching. 2) Like New York would trade him to Boston, anyway.

But don't you see how delicious the irony would be if they did? Here's one of the best players in the game, and Yankee fans are so stupid (caught up in the myth of clutch hitting, among other things) that they boo him out of town. His trade value will never be lower than it is right now, and if the Sox could somehow get him in a deal... The team would instantly be improved, you know Boston's not going to be as unlucky next year as they were in '06 (unlucky injury-wise, unlucky in Crisp underperforming, etc.), and the Yankees seem to be considering a total tear-down job this offseason (which is pure idiocy -- they won 97 games, and a 4-game playoff series is a ludicrously small sample upon which to base sweeping personnel changes). In other words, the AL East would be ours for the taking! It'll never happen, but don't succumb to Yankee-style thinking when it comes to A-Rod. We're supposed to be smarter than that crowd. He's an ass, you say? Ty Cobb was a total ass, but wouldn't you want him on your team? He couldn't handle the pressure, you say? He's a freaking major-leaguer. If there was some innate defect in A-Rod that made him an unreformable choker, don't you think it would have prevented him from getting to this level in the first place? A-Rod may not have endeared himself to Red Sox fans over the past few years, but he remains an outstanding ballplayer, something that Yankee fans seem completely oblivious to. Stealing him from right under their noses -- and then winning with him -- would be the ultimate triumph over New York.

Yeah, you're right. How well you field has nothing whatever to do with how good you are at defense, and home runs are the ultimate measurement of a team's offensive abilities. Any statistics that prove your theory are right, and any that back up me (and conventional wisdom) must be worthless.

I never said A-Rod was a choker. I think those arguments are silly, too. I said he couldn't handle the pressure of New York, and he wouldn't be able to handle Boston, either. Many, many players have been extremely successful elsewhere and not been able to deal with the high-pressure environments of Fenway and Yankee Stadium. Jose Offerman and Edgar Renteria spring immediately to mind in Boston.

This is the whole point of my argument. I don't think the team would be instantly improved by switching Manny for A-Rod. You'd be switching two players of similar offensive and defensive ability, with the added bonus for A-Rod that he's an ass. You'd break up one of the best offensive tandems in history, Ortiz-Ramirez. So you'd have a much more annoying Manny on the team, basically. How does that make any sense at all? How does that improve anything? Same stats, more problems. Why is that a good idea?

Fielding percentage is one of the worst stats out there. It is completely reliant on the concept of the "error", which is nothing but a subjective decision by the team's official scorer, and the number of chances that a player (or team) gets, which is dependent on luck and the team's pitching staff. If you have no range, you can't get to balls, and therefore can't get an error. So under fielding % (especially at the player level), it's actually better to not be able to get to balls, because the more you get to, the more opportunity there is to commit an error. Does that sound like a useful stat to you?

Defensive Efficiency (in which the Sox rank a measly 27th) is a far better metric. It's a simple concept: the best defenses are the ones that turn the highest percentage of balls in play into outs. No need to involve the opinions of scorers. No loopholes for players who don't even have the range to get to the ball. Simply ask, was it an out, or not?

Fielding Runs relate this back to the individual level. For instance, Gonzalez may have had a great .985 fielding percentage, but his range factor was below average. Fielding runs even takes into account the tendencies of Boston pitchers (goundball-flyball, lefty-righty), and compares Gonzalez to what an average SS would have done in the same situation: he was 2 runs below average this year. In fact, he's consistently been worse than an average SS throughout his career. Rodriguez, on the other hand, was consistently better than the average SS, and by a very wide margin. His 3B fielding numbers have been bad in NY, but they coincide with Jeter's numbers getting much better, meaning that A-Rod may have been deferring to Jeter in the field.

It's all moot anyway, because the Yankees would never trade A-Rod to Boston in a million years. But the notion that Boston shouldn't jump on a trade if it did happen if, to put it mildly, foolhardy.

Oh, and the ultimate measurement of a team's offensive abilities? Duh, Runs Scored!

wow... disgruntled Cubs fan?

Gee, how could you tell?

Don't forget a caseof Old Style.

Boooooooo!

I'm a ventriloquist and Anonymous #1 is my dummy... Now you all know my 'secret', Met-boys!!!!

I thought Pnatt was your dummy... now Anon #1 too?

I've looked up Jeter's stats. Yes they are in line for a player of his caliber when he is not under pressure. Any player of his caliber can hit well when the game is not on the line. I've provided, ad nauseum, the data that show Jeter is NOT clutch in pressure situations in the playoffs. I welcome data to the contrary. In fact, if you look up the data, and using the same criteria you are using, (eliminating '06 just as you eliminate Jeter's '01) ARod is actually BETTER than Jeter under pressure in the playoffs. Again, I know it blows your mind, but hey, numbers don't lie.

That guy? That's all I am to you anymore? (sniff sniff)

(Sort by Score) at the top of the comments instead of "sort by date" =) You're more than "that guy" to ME, JB!

Trade Jeter reason #358968457: Jeter is a Nike guy and the Yankees are sponsored by Adidas

He could pay Johan Santana 25 million for his DNA too

just out where?

"good Red Sox fan" that should've been, and it should've been a reply up above, sorry 'bout that folks :)

I've never met a bitter Red Sox fan. Yankees fans are more bitter now about not having won a WS since 2000 than Red Sox fans ever were about not having won one since 1918. Red Sox fans never gave up, even in the middle of the dry spell; that's hardly bitter. Are you high?