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ESPN.com: MLB – Report: Rockies strike deal with free agent Harnisch

In the magazine we say: “After elbow surgery to repair a slightly torn ligament late last season, the Reds doctors said his prognosis was excellent. If his recovery is routine, a sub-4.00 ERA should follow, making him a nice little bargain. If it’s not routine, he is one bad stretch away from retirement.”

Given the contingent nature of this supposed deal the Rockies must not be sure that the elbow is perfect. But even if the elbow is sound, all the Prozac in the world isn’t going to turn Harnisch into a plus pitcher at Coors.

Those with daily trannies will have a tougher decision.

A while back Chris Maher wrote about Kazuhisa Ishii for Baseball Prospectus. The article was called January 16, 2002 – The Latest Import

Chris thought he’d be headed to MLB’s Little Tokyo, Seattle, but the basic elements of the story aren’t changed by moving it a thousand miles down the coast.

For my take, read the next post…

ESPN.com: MLB – Report: Ishii, Dodgers agree to deal

How good will Ishii be?

He’s coming off a down year for him, in which he had a 4.01 ERA, struck out 7.6 per 9 IP while walking four. His career numbers are all better than that, which either means he’s on a downslide or he’s likely to bounce back.

He’s 28 years old and has been pitching for Yakult, a park that favors hitter, for seven years. He moves to a park that favors pitchers.

Clay Davenport at Baseball Prospectus recently published an indicative but not conclusive study of Japanese Baseball Equivalencies, using the stats of Major League and Triple-A hitters who have gone back and forth. You’ll find it here.

Roughly, he found that pitchers stats decline by about 10 percent when going from Japan to the Majors, which I think means that without taking into account park effects his ERA in LA in 2001 would have been about 4.40. Given the park effects both in Japan and LA it would more probably be about 4.20.

If he’s healthy and last year’s decline in strikeouts per nine innings was a blip, then I’d expect him to win 10-12 games with an ERA of about 4.20. But the blip is troubling (he’d never before struck out fewer than 9 per game since his rookie season). So while you can hope for those numbers, you have to be prepared for him to give up a lot of walks and nearly a hit per inning pitched, in which case he isn’t really draftable.

My bid price right now? $4.

I think this link MLB Projected Stats will only work if you’re a RotoWire subscriber. It takes you to a page where they list changes they’ve made to the MLB projections that I did for the magazine.

You may not find it as interesting as I do, since for me it is a direct comment on the assumptions I made for the magazine. Some of these have changed: I projected Kelvim Escobar as a starter. It appears he’s going to be the Blue Jays’ closer this year. RotoWire fixes that.

Others are matters of opinion. The first change they made was to reduce Juan Encarnacion’s “counting stats,” which I had projected pretty modestly: 57 runs and RBI, 13 hr, 11 SB in 453 AB. We’ll learn a lot more during spring training, and the Reds have a lot of outfielders, but those numbers project out to $6. If Encarnacion goes for less than $10 you have to be all over him.

They’ve bumped Ivan Rodriguez up from 400 to 440 AB based on recent reports. I’m not sure what difference it really makes, but the last two years have amply demonstrated the danger of hoping that an aging catcher who plays every day won’t get hurt.

In the magazine I tout Mitch Meluskey strongly, but don’t give him a projection. I’m not sure what happened there, but my friends at RW fix that and reduce PT for Brandon Inge. They should also cut Javier Cardona while they’re at it.

I could go on and on. Jeff Cirillo gets downgraded, so does Todd Zeile! They boost Mark Johnson and bump Josh Paul. About that one I think they’re wrong, though I know Johnson is starting to show up on a lot of sleeper lists this year.

The bottom line is the projections in the magazine are really rough because of necessity they had to be done early. And they need this kind of massaging. You’ll find my massaging at rototouts.com in Statland a little later this spring, and at mlb.com before the season starts.

Would you trade Ichiro Suzuki $27 and Jerry Hairston $8 for Magglio
Ordonez $33 and Kelvim Escobar $1? I am in a 4×4 AL $260 League.

By my reckoning Hairston and Ordonez are near their prices, which if I do the algebra right means this is a cheap Ichiro deal for a very cheap Escobar.

Escobar is expected to be the Blue Jay’s closer, a role he performed adequately as a rookie sensation in 1997. Since then he’s bounced around, relieving and starting. When he’s been good he’s been effective, but there have been a lot of down times, too. Last year he pitched well as a starter in the second half, which perhaps explains why the Jays have decided to make him a closer.

On top of all that indecision (for instance, after his rookie success, why exactly wasn’t he made the closer in 1998?), there are questions about his health. He suffered with numb fingers in September last year. The Jays attribute it to fatigue, but isn’t that what you’d hope for if you didn’t really know?

Ichiro, on the other hand, is coming off a great season, and is a bona fide steals and AVG producer. If he were available in a draft his price would be better than $40. For it to be a better deal for you to keep Escobar, his price would have to be more than $15. At least.

While I think you can expect, assuming he’s healthy all spring, that Escobar’s uninflated price will be more, somewhere about $17, there’s far more chance that he won’t earn his price than that Ichiro won’t earn his.

To give up a blue-chipper, you’ve got to get a blue-chipper, is a good rule of thumb. In this case, stand pat.

On Carlos Pena: “He’s kind of like a poor man’s Keith Hernandez. He’ll hit more home runs than Hernandez. He won’t have quite the average. But he’s got great makeup, great poise. I like his swing. I like his approach. I think he could struggle for a couple of months. But in time, he’ll be a very productive hitter.”

That’s Jason Stark quoting a scout about Pena, about whom everyone is talking these days. The key words here are: “I think he could struggle for a couple of months.”

Everybody loves potential and Pena has it. But it would be crazy to bid on him this spring as if that potential was anything but unrealized.

RotoWire Fantasy Baseball Magazine

The official on sale date for this year’s magazine is February 14, but I found copies in my local Barnes and Noble today. If I can get this to work you should see a picture of it here…

I got it to work!

The link above will take you to a page that has a link to spring updates.

ESPN.com: MLB – Report: Angels’ Ortiz three years older than he claims

When we learned a couple of years ago that El Duque Hernandez was 35 rather than 32 our perception of him changed. He went from being a pitcher in his prime to being a pitcher who was racing the clock. Suddenly, his health problems became real problems, rather than the usual blips a hurler might face from year to year.

Oddly, the perception of the suddenly older Ortiz goes the other way. Suddenly his debilitating 1997 campaign, when he threw 170 minor league innings at age 21 becomes a developmental bump that happened when he was a much more reasonable 24.

Generally, pitchers have a better chance of burning out when young than once they’ve reached their late twenties. I don’t know if it’s because young arms are more vulnerable, or because the vulnerable arms have been weeded out when young, but as pitchers get older they get more durable. Up to a point, anyway.

I think this means that one may be a little less wary of Ramon’s health this year, though you still have to worry those hits he allowed. He isn’t yet dominating enough to be entirely confident of, but he certainly moved nicely in that direction last year.

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This site is now powered by Pro Blogger. This is something of a test of the new system.

ESPN.com: MLB – Phillies’ Abreu undergoes emergency appendectomy

This is how Rotowire reported Adrian Beltre’s emergency appendectomy on January 17, 2001: “Beltre had surgery early last Friday and remained hospitalized Wednesday. Beltre is expected to be released within the next few days and should be fully recovered by the start of spring training according to Dodgers VP Derrick Hall.”

No, I’m sure not every appendectomy performed in DR results in a large hole in the colon and sudden and devastating weight loss. But Beltre’s was the first appendectomy that came to mind when I heard about Abreu’s, and he went on to miss more than four months.

Another recent baseball appendectomy was Brian Moehler’s. He had emergency surgery in April 2000 while the Tigers were playing the White Sox in Chicago. His next big league start was a month later.

That’s probably a more reasonable timetable for Abreu, but Beltre’s plight last year reminds us that accidents do happen.