Vegas Watch

The Mets traded Carlos Gomez, Deolis Guerra, Philip Humber, and Kevin Mulvey to the Twins for Johan Santana today. If you are relying on this site for such breaking news, you are in trouble.

There will be plenty written about this elsewhere (start here), but I figured I'd add a few thoughts.

-The Mets didn't even give up their #1 prospect (Fernando Martinez). The Red Sox and Yankees were never offering either of their top guys (Buchholz and Joba) either. But those two are a tier above Martinez, prospect-wise. Many people said the Mets didn't have enough in their system to get Johan, yet they did it while keeping Martinez. Seems like Bill Smith waited too long on this.

-I think trying to value Santana in 2009 and on is very interesting. He is going to be getting paid a lot of money (6yrs, $150MM is the figure everybody throws out there). It's difficult for a player to be worth much more than that. But as MetsBlog points out, when you have an opportunity to acquire a guy of this caliber, you almost have to. This is just so far beyond what you can get via free agency. For example, would you rather pay Barry Zito $18.5MM in 2009, or give Santana $25MM? Even after factoring in the prospects/draft picks that you give up, this is not a difficult decision.

-At first I thought that Santana's numbers will get a huge bump because he's switching to the weaker league without a DH, and moving to an extreme pitcher's park. He'll certainly get quite a boost from moving to the NL, but not so much from moving into Shea. The Metrodome treats pitchers pretty well, and it's 2007 park factor was extremely low, at 93 (its multi-year PF was 96). Shea's multi-year PF is also 96, so that's pretty much a wash. PECOTA projects his '08 ERA as 3.32 with the Twins, and 2.94 with the Mets. The majority of that has to be a league adjustment.

-It's interesting that Silver has him at 227 IP in Minnesota, but only 225 in NY. I would've guessed his IP projection would have increased now that he'll be facing the pitcher every few innings. The only thing I can think of is he gets pulled for a PH more often, but that has to be outweighed by the easier opposing lineups.

-Going from the AL's 12th best offense (and that was with Hunter) to the NL's 4th best will certainly help Santana's Cy Young chances. I had forgotten that Johan finished only 15-13 last year. I blame Punto.

-Having Pedro and Johan in the same rotation is pretty cool. I don't believe I've ever seen Santana pitch in person but that'll certainly change this summer. He's out of the Indians' division, and out of their league, which is nice.

-At this point, I think Sabathia would be crazy to accept the deal that The DiaTribe has proposed. He'll be able to get both more years and a higher AAV on the open market.

Edit: Paul makes it clear in the comments that he doesn't think C.C. will accept the deal either. Which I understood, but completely failed to make clear. Here's my response for you non-comment readers, and RSS people:

My point (in theory) was that what the gap between Indians can reasonably offer and what Sabathia can get elsewhere is so large, that his return really seems unlikely.

It's obviously still possible that he wants to stay, and will take a substantial discount. I don't know why this would be the case (although at least Oakland isn't a feasible option), but it would be nice.

If he leaves it'll certainly be disappointing, but it's not the end of the world. They will have ended up paying the guy ~$35MM for something like 1600 innings of a 118 ERA+. They'll only get a couple draft picks at the end of it, but that's okay. The value there is unbelievable, and that's how you win baseball games in the Indians' situation. Not by signing pitchers to six year, $140MM contracts.

I doubt I need to convince you that trading Lastings Milledge for Ryan Church and Brian Schneider wasn't a particularly bright move by the Mets. I think everybody pretty much agrees that this was quite silly- the worst trade the Mets have made since Rick Peterson convinced Jim Duquette that he could turn Victor Zambrano into Pedro Martinez.

Let's see how the great Omar Minaya is justifying this transaction.

"We see ourselves as a better team now. [The trade] fills two needs with players in the primes of their careers."

What an awesome quote. Brian Schneider's OPS+es, since 2003 (the first year he played over 100 games):

2003: 78
2004: 83
2005: 97
2006: 72
2007: 77

Schneider just turned 31. I'm gonna go ahead and say that 04-05 was the prime of his career (and what a prime it was). It is unclear what Minaya is getting at here. Brian Schneider is terrible- we all agree on this, right?

"I'm big on defense up the middle," Minaya said. And he considers the Mets' catching "situation" as good as "any in the game."

I honestly have no idea what this means. I understand that he is completely wrong, regardless of what he is getting at. But is he trying to say that Ramon Castro and Brian Schneider give the Mets a big edge at the catching position? He can't be, right? Maybe just defensively? That's wrong, too. I really don't know. I don't think the writer, Marty Noble, understands either- putting "situation" in quotes was a nice touch.

Oh, and speaking of the writer:

"Schneider's offensive production, while not eye-catching, is quite comparable to that of Lo Duca. Schneider has averaged 12.9 RBIs per 100 at-bats over the last three seasons. Lo Duca, playing his last two seasons with the Mets' more productive batting order, averaged 11.4 RBIs per 100 at-bats from 2005-07. Schneider, likely to bat eighth for the Mets, hit 20 home runs in 1,187 at-bats the last three seasons, and Lo Duca hit 20 in 1,402 at-bats. Neither played his home games in a park conducive to home run hitting."

RBIs per 100 at-bats. Now that is a stat I wish I had come up with. While we're doing three year averages:

LoDuca VORP (05-07): 16.3, 27.2, 9.2 (average: 17.6)
Schneider VORP (05-07): 16.0, -4.9, 2.4 (average: 4.5)

Oh, but we weren't talking about crazy stats like VORP; we were discussing run production.

The Mets are going to pay Brian Schneider $9.8MM over the next two years. If they are lucky, they will get replacement-level production from him. They are doing this by choice- in fact, for this privilege, they swapped a 22-year old OF with a projected .813 2008 OPS for a 29-year old OF with a projected .815 '08 OPS.

All of this information was readily available to them, and people are getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to make these decisions. Good work by everybody involved, really.

More on this trade: Law, R-D, ShysterBall, MLBTR.

I like the DN's back page better, myself. There's an actual story here- Rollins wouldn't shut up way back in January. Really not necessary to resort to the kid crying.

Photos from the DN & Post websites, of course.

FanGraphs still gives the Mets a 7% chance of winning the game, which seems high. But with that number, the odds of a massive tie scenario are down to 1 in 56.

Over at BP, Sheehan is live-blogging all day, and Silver has a chat at 2.

The four AL spots are pretty much locked up, so the NL teams are what's interesting here.

I wonder how these different sites actually work. I think VIP is smaller than the others, so do they have to set more attractive lines to draw customers? That would make sense, since they're still making a (small) profit- this week their lines add up to 117%.

Anyway, the Padres at 14:1 is nice, mostly because of last night- they're up to almost 81% to make the postseason, with a 2.5 game lead in the Phillies in the WC with 11 games left.

Pedro pitches Friday night- if he looks as good as he did in his last start, you have to like the Mets at 7:1.

Beyond that, there's not much, although the Rockies are kind of a cool longshot (they're also up 9-3 on the Dodgers as I write this), and I continue to like the Indians because of the top of their rotation.

Futures Watch Archive

Update: Rockies win, and I missed this before but the Padres already won, increasing their lead to three games.

Less than four weeks left in the regular season- here's this week's Top 10.

I just went through the Futures Watch archive to see if I could find a better line than the Dodgers this week. I've been doing this since the beginning of July, and the only thing that comes close is the Mariners at 100:1 over two months ago(which is actually the reason this became a weekly feature).

The Dodgers have won three in a row, increasing their Playoff Odds from 16.2% on Sunday morning to 33.3% currently. They're actually also 45:1 at Bodog; the betting sites have either been slow to adjust their lines, or haven't realized how big an effect this winning streak has had on LA's playoff hopes.

The second best line is essentially the same thing- the Rockies have gone on a 3-game win streak, nearly doubling their percentage from 8.5% to 15.8%. This one is unlilkely to last for long; they're 100:1 at VIP, but just 50:1 everywhere else.

The Mets continue to have a high Index, as their best line has been 7:1 or 7.5:1 since mid-August. This is a good line for the same reasons it's always been- high run differential, solid Secret Sauce numbers, 98.5% chance of making the postseason.

All five sites have lines up right now, and the Playoff Odds are more volatile then ever, so here's this week's Futures Watch.


The Mets are on top for the second week in a row. To me, this seems logical. They have a 96.7% chance of making the playoffs, so let's just pretend they're in. Their odds (7.5:1) suggest they have an average chance, compared to the other seven teams that make the playoffs, of winnings the World Series. This is simply not true. They have the highest run differential (+64) of any NL team, and came in first in all of baseball the last time I ran the Secret Sauce numbers. The Mets have a much better than average chance in the postseason, and for that reason 7.5:1 is a very good line.

The Brewers are second; their line is extremely volatile, as they are currently tied for first with the Cubs. If the Brewers go one game ahead and the line doesn't change, their index would increase to about 1.5. But if they fall a game behind the Cubs, it would decrease to 1.2.

The Dodgers and Rockies, both at 60:1, come in as decent longshots to win the NLW/WC, and make a run in October. The Rockies currently have about a 21 chance of reaching the playoffs- getting a team with that high a percentage at 60:1 is pretty good.

Meanwhile, BetUS still has their MLB Awards odds up, and apparently they've been too busy with other props to bother updating them. This is a good thing.

Matsuzaka is still -120 to win the AL ROY. By the voters' standards, there haven't any particularly impressive rookie position players in the AL (I understand that Pedroia had a .394 OBP while playing second every day; they don't). So let's use Cy Young Predictor to see how the rookie starters stack up.

To recap: Matsuzaka at at -120 is a fantastic line. He starts against Tampa tonight.

In the NL, Ryan Braun, .889 Fielding % and all, is quite obviously going to win the award. (And I'm certainly not saying he shouldn't. But he should also win the Brewers' LF job next spring.) His odds continue to be -270; he's not as good a bet as Matsuzaka, but it's close, as he's even more of a sure thing.

I've already gone on too long with this, but the people at BetUS are just so accomodating. For the AL Cy, if Lackey gets the W tonight against the Yankees, he's a great call at 10:1. If not, the "Field" (including Beckett and Bedard) at 3.5:1 is probably your best bet. Johan at EV continues to seem unreasonable.

In the NL, if Webb continues his streak (or even just gets the win) tonight, he's part of the "Field" (which also includes Tim Hudson, who leads the NL with 15 wins), which, listed at 5:1, is quite a steal.

I'll update this post tonight after Matsuzaka, Webb and Lackey pitch.

Pictures taken from here and here.

Update: Well, Webb's scoreless streak ended, but he still pitched very well (7 IP, 2R), and got his 14th win. As Peavy also won his 14th tonight (6IP, 2H, 2R, 5BB, 11K), those two are now the co-favorites to win the award, as Peavy is 14-5, 2.21, and Webb is 14-8, 2.63 on a first place team.

Lackey, a great bet at 10:1 a week ago, has really hurt himself by not getting a W in either of his last two starts, after allowing 4 runs in 7+ innings tonight. Haren's gotta be the clear favorite at this point, with Beckett, Bedard, and Kelvim Escobar (14-6, 2.85) also top contenders. Interestingly, both Haren and the "Field", which includes those three pitchers, are 3.5:1 at BetUS.

The Mets have won three in a row, as their WS% continues to ascend (it was 11.9% on August 1), while their lines are stagnant. This doesn't surprise me- in the standings, the Mets are still in first place, a few games up, but in reality, their playoff % has gone from 81% to 89% this week.

Colorado is also on the rise, as they've won 3 of 4 against the Cubs and Padres to see their postseason odds go from 17% to almost 28% over the last five days. Despite this, they're still either 45:1 or 50:1 on three sites (SB, SI, VIP), so it's worth waiting to see how they play over the next few days.

The Braves come in as the third best line of the week. It was interesting- right after the Teixeira trade, the Braves' best line dropped all the way from 30:1 to 17:1. It was as low as 15:1 at one point, but I guess people have lost interest. Interestingly enough, the Braves' postseason chances have gone in the exact opposite direction as their odds, as they have won 7 of 10 to almost double their percentage from 25% to 49%. It should also be noted that the Postseason Odds simulation doesn't take into account the fact that their team is significantly stronger now than it had been over the first four months of the season. So it's possible they should even be a little higher on this list.