Seven years, $126 million, and the Giants fly past the Astros at the last minute for the worst contract of the offseason.

Remember when Kevin Brown was the paragon of bad contracts at seven/$105 during the last wacky contract era? He was older, sure, but take a look at their stats over the three seasons before each pitcher signed:

          IP    K   BB  HR  K/9  BB/9  HR/9  K:BB
Brown  727.3  621  148  26  7.7   1.8  0.32  4.20
Zito   662.3  485  269  81  6.6   3.7  1.10  1.80

Kevin Brown was in the middle of one of the best peaks any pitcher has ever had; Zito is a pretty generic number one starter of the Really Durable type, with a declining strikeout rate and no particular ground ball tendency to his credit. He’s young, but he won’t be by the time his contract is up.

Was anyone even aware, before today, that the Giants planned on contending this year? Up to this point, their offseason upgrades are Bengie Molina and a Rich Aurilia/Ryan Klesko platoon at first base. Both Klesko and Aurilia are great bench options for a contender, and the Klesko signing was a fine deal, but when an aging shortstop factors into your plans as a starter at both infield corners–when Pedro “.244/.281/.428″ Feliz is resigned to protect Barry Bonds–you’re not a team that will benefit from overpaying Barry Zito until 2013.

The Mets, who have a lot of young players already on the roster and others still in the minors waiting to bloom, were just the right kind of team to commit too much money to a guaranteed pitcher to anchor their young rotation. But the Giants, whose GM has come up with the brilliant strategy of intentionally giving away draft picks to save money on signing bonuses, don’t have any cheap players with which to build around Zito. They’re going to have to overpay other free agents to play with their new ace, and unless they want to go Yankees on their playroll that’s just not a feasible thing to do.

Terrible move, and what’s more a terrible team to make it.

What does this have to do with the Cardinals? Nothing, except is there any possible way Weaver signs anywhere for less than $40 million? I don’t think so.

Not a lot going on, as is to be expected when the last major free agent is the relentlessly overvalued Barry Zito. Not that I wouldn’t love for the Cardinals to have a rich man’s Jeff Suppan–more innings and peripherals to go with a better ERA–but when Suppan himself is a rich man it’s just not feasible for any team but the most quixotically determined to sign him. Six years for a pitcher? I don’t care if his curveball is sentient, that’s just not a good idea.

So much for the idea of bloggers being regurgitators of the work done by more Educated Journalist Types; that’s an accurate representation, more or less, of what I do, but over the last few days we’ve had a top twenty prospects list from John Sickels and a bit of inspired batted-ball analysis at VEB weekend guy Erik’s minor league blog.

The most intriguing line is that of 2006 14th rounder(!) Jon Edwards, a huge right fielder who played his Appy League debut as an 18-year-old. His stats are nice enough on the surface; a .266/.360/.461 line, good plate discipline and an acceptable K rate. I’m more intrigued now that, in addition to having done it while injured, it appears he’s doing it while still having a way to go with his approach. He’s a 230 pounder with mediocre speed–do you think his coaches will let him hit groundballs more often than the average rookie leaguer for very long? That 26% home run/fly ball mark also goes a long way toward rehabilitating 2005 first rounder Tyler Greene, who had a well-publicized miserable time at high-A and was described by Sickels as “Rob Deer, with speed, playing shortstop with a good glove.” Not just speed–Greene, since his pro debut, is 52 for 56 on stolen bases. That’s Carlos Beltran-esque.

Greene certainly had a terrible time in Florida, but maybe his power-hitting ways just caused a complete collapse in the FSL, which suppresses home run hitting even more than it suppresses everything else. Certainly if his season had played out backward–the dominant Midwest League performance, followed by a miserable time in Palm Beach–we wouldn’t be so down on him. He’s not the fast-track collegian we envisioned, but he’s too young to write off just yet.

The new feature I planned to unveil yesterday has, obviously, been moved to next week. I had some other writing stuff crop up, and I’ve managed to procrastinate on that enough that I’ve got to push this back.

Archaeopteryx–I would like to thank my nerdiness in the second grade for still being able to spell that–had this to add in the blogiversary topic:

Congrats. I usually just lurk, but I always enjoy your site. Especially with pictures of Jenna Fischer. I guess you’re aware that she’s Brian Gunn’s sister-in-law.

Yeah; learning that only cemented a theory of mine. The first time Brian, or somebody, mentioned on RBN that he was a screenwriter I IMDb’d him, and since then I’ve been convinced that every person in Hollywood has or will soon have a Gunn Family Number of no more than three. Currently the only way to get a Moore number is to have appeared in a crowd scene during the epic finale of my high school Publications project, but if that ever changes I’ll be sure to let everybody know.

If you were hoping for Mark Beuhrle (whose name I can’t spell) under your tree in exchange for Blake Hawksworth and Some Other Pitching Prospect, as rumored for the last few days, I hate to be your Grinch. John Danks, the starter the Chisox acquired from Texas, isn’t ready for the majors yet, whereas Brandon McCarthy was going to be one of the rotation anchors if Buehrle was shipped out, so that about wraps it up for 2006’s damaged southpaw du jour spending 2007 anyplace but Chicago. Danks is young and he held his own in AAA, but I like this deal for the Rangers.

Baseball Prospectus has an interesting and free look at the greatest seasons of all time. It’s tainted a bit by their use of FRAA for recent seasons, despite the much better stats that exist now, but it’s interesting nonetheless. The one that shocked me most was Cal Ripken’s 1991, the second best season ever according to BP. By the time I was five years old he was an average-ish player known entirely for the consecutive games roadshow, so I never realized what a great player he was in his 20s until well after he retired. Rogers Hornsby turns one of the years in for the Cardinals; Pujols and Edmonds are both two wins or so away.

Finally, Erik is offering a chance to air grievances from the last year, in the grand Festivus tradition. My choice? TV shows where police officers have the ability to zoom in on about a hundred pixels in a grainy security-cam tape and show that tiny area in HD quality. If I had that sort of thing on my VCR I could direct the sequel to Publications Project 2004 on my camera phone.

Also, people who don’t like the caveman series of Geico commercials. Truly epic.

… what? He didn’t say they had to be baseball related.

Hey, you guys hear about that right-handed power hitting free agent who’s available on the cheap? You didn’t? I guess that’s all right, given his current condition. Not that it will ever, ever happen, but seeing as His Slamminess no longer considers himself above a minor league invite a hypothetical pickup would be no worse a risk than the Cardinals’ 2004 NRIs to Greg Vaughn and Ray Lankford.

And like Vaughn, if he can’t carry his weight his .671 OPS in 2005 means he won’t be given a lot of slack in making the roster.

Admittedly, the Cardinals, already getting enough mind-numbing steroid chatter from their McGwire connection, aren’t the likeliest candidates for a Sosa invite. And although they do have a need for a righty platoon outfielder, there’s no sense in hunting for scraps when Craig Wilson is available on the cheap, relatively speaking. But I can think of worse ideas than throwing whatever scratch they have left at Jeff Weaver and giving Sosa (along with several other washed up types) an audition.

Speaking of worse ideas, how about trading two of your best hitters–a brilliant defensive outfielder and a hard-hitting shortstop who is, ah, less brilliant, let’s say–for a bunch of relievers and a borderline infield prospect, and then, after the borderline prospect shows some of his old shine in his stint with your minor league club, DFAing him so you can trade prospects for Jeff Conine? Yes, Wayne Krivsky continues to astound; Jeff Conine is basically Chris Denorfia only ninety years old, and yet not only does the Krivmaster acquire Mr. Marlin, he dumps a useful player to facilitate it! Walt can be frustrating sometimes, with all of his non-moves, but whenever I see a guy like Krivsky actively make his team worse Jocketty looks positively saintly.

Brendan Harris is 27; he’s been putting up AAA OPSes in the mid-.800s for a while now, and he just barely has the range to cover shortstop. He’s an ideal utility infielder, if nothing else, and as the Reds’ roster is currently constructed I’m not really sure who it is they’re convinced leaves them free to dump infielders at will. Not only that, but Juan Castro and Ray Olmedo were both considered indispensable? They’re the same player, and even if one of them perished in a tragic slick fielding accident they’d have one too many.

The Cardinals should be jumping on Harris, but so should a ton of other teams; I’m not getting my hopes up. If the Cardinals did manage to give this website a nice birthday gift, he’d make a fine utility infielder now and good leverage for when the World Series MVP comes up for free agency at the end of 2007.

Is that spelled right? I don’t know if that’s spelled right.

Anyway, today Get Up, Baby!, a blog started at the worst possible time to start a blog about a baseball team, turns three. The date wasn’t the only problem. In hindsight, I did a lot of things wrong: for one thing, the URL was getupcards.blogspot.com, because I figured people would rather not type “getupbaby” into their work computers; as a result, websites started linking me as “Get Up Cards!”, which is already an emo band, I think. Not only that, but I started with a typical crappy introductory post and didn’t write the second entry until February. But as the Cardinals bullpen went, so went the website, and from those depths of 2003 I think I’ve pulled the site up to “pretty adequate, although too many high-leverage innings are going to Randy Flores.”

Three years ago, that joke would have been about Pedro Borbon, Jr. Ain’t progress grand?

Anyway, I hope you’ve enjoyed the site as much as I’ve enjoyed forcing my opinions on you. To everybody who comments or e-mails or just lurks–although you lurkers should delurk sometimes so that every other comment in the queue isn’t about microcap stock opportunities that just! can’t! wait!–thank you very much. I couldn’t do this without you guys, because I’m a narcissist in need of constant attention.

Last year I took this opportunity to upgrade the CMS to Wordpress and unleash the greatest test-pattern ever. In 2004 I–well, we won’t talk about the proposed wiki, although its decaying husk still lurks on this very server. So what have I got planned this year? Check back Tuesday–it would be Monday, but I think some holiday falls on the 25th. Hint: it’s a weekly feature, and I’m ripping off Aaron Gleeman. And it’s not having an Official Get Up Babe, although his recent decision to consider Jenna Fischer for the Official Fantasy Girl position was truly an inspired one.

In fact–heck, it’s my blogiversary, isn’t it? Isn’t it!? Google Image Search, can we get some Dundies action in here?

Perfect. I feel God on this website tonight.

In my post-Russian-final revelry I forgot to post. That’s okay; the Cardinals forgot to make a move, so I didn’t miss anything.

Of course, they missed out, if you want to get overly precious with the English language. Outfielder (and heir to the Jeff Fassero-memorial Springfield native spot in the State Journal-Register box scores) Jayson Werth signed a one year, $850,000 deal with the Phillies today. If you’re keeping track, that’s less than the Cardinals will pay So Taguchi this year. Werth plays center field; he’s right handed. Unlike Taguchi, he can hit, enough to function as the lefty-mashing/defensively-competent side of a Chris Duncan platoon in left field. But instead, the Cardinals are stuck with The Gooch. Not that it had to be mutually exclusive; I like John Rodriguez, but he’s the wrong handedness at the wrong time and So Taguchi appears to be a Permanent Cardinal.

This move, in a surprise dark horse victory, beats out the Gary Bennett resigning–while options like J.R. House could be had for free–for the 2007 Needlessly Frittering Possible Runs award. Werth was free talent, in an area where the Cardinals desperately needed it, and they whiffed. Weak.

But let’s move on, for my own sake. Derrick Goold recently listed the Cardinals’ minor league signings. Most of them will only be of interest to people living in Memphis or Springfield, Missouri, but it’s probable that one of these guys will be sucking up at-bats for the Cardinals at some point. The three most interesting:

CF Ryan Ludwick He’s no Jayson Werth, but it would be a shame if he didn’t reach the majors at some point in 2007. He was once a very good prospect, but injuries and ineffectiveness got in the way in the usual minor league free agent fashion. That said, unlike most of these sob stories he’s never stopped hitting; he had an .848 OPS for the Toledo Mudhens in ‘06, right in line with his career average. If the Cardinals get creative, they could have their Chris Duncan insurance right here.

1B Tagg Bozied Replaces Dennis Tankersley as the token ex-Padres prospect fallen on hard times. All-Name team, certainly (it’s pronounced Bo-ZAYD, according to Google), he was supposed to be a majors-ready collegian but his rise was slowed by injuries and a preponderance of the exact same player in the Padres system. In 2004 his PCL OPS topped 1.000, but 2005 and 2006, spent with the Mets, have largely been lost years.

He can hit; I’m surprised the Yankees didn’t take a flier on him. That said, you know you’ve fallen on hard times when you’re a minor league first baseman who willingly signs on to play behind Albert Pujols. That’s like volunteering to do a dramatic poetry reading after Dylan Thomas; you might be really good, but nobody’s going to be paying attention.

IF Edgar Gonzalez He could be useful, and as a result you will never see him on the major league roster. He can hit, though he’s mostly been forced to do it in leagues for which he was very old. He can play second and third base, and maybe shortstop, but none of them very well. Basically, he’s the opposite of the Cardinals’ usual utility suspects, which would seem to be a good thing.

It would seem that way. But the Cardinals seem not just content but strangely determined to duplicate their starters on the bench; as a result we get a parade of weak-hitting catchers and tiny, punchless infielders who are the same as their starting counterparts, only noticeably worse at everything.

Sean Forman, Baseball-Reference webmaster and Coolest Guy Ever, has just begun to roll out the site’s subscription PI service, which basically lets you do everything you ever wanted to do with statistics. The most recent feature is “Neutralize stats.” It does exactly what it promises to do, converting stats to a neutral stadium.

But here’s the cool part: it also lets you convert a player’s stats to any stadium environment in the last hundred years. So, say, Albert Pujols’s career line in 2000 Coors Field, or 1968 Dodgers Stadium? (Real line on the–well, you’ll be able to pick it out.)

  G    AB    R    H   2B  3B   HR  RBI   BB   SO  Avg   OBP   SLG   OPS
934  3263  526  931  209  11  201  531  395  394 .285  .366  .541  .907
933  3489  748 1159  260  12  250  758  493  394 .332  .419  .629 1.048
934  3813 1093 1481  332  16  318 1106  629  394 .388  .479  .734 1.213

He hits .420/.503/.781 in 2003 Coors, .311/.388/.580 at Chavez Ravine. But he’s got a ways to go: Babe Ruth hits 936 home runs in that environment, including 78 home runs, 235 RBI (he ends up with more than 3000) and a .400 batting average in 1927. You think Bob Gibson’s 1.12 ERA is great? So do I, but BR PI has its doubts; it becomes 1.65 in 2006, while Pedro’s 2000 and Maddux’s 1994 fall to 1.02 and 1.08, respectively, in 1968.

Of course, you can use this for more scholarly applications, too. The Crime Dog, Fred McGriff, hits 524 home runs when his peak–which unfortunately happened right before the offensive explosion of 1993–gets normalized. (Dave Kingman, you’ll be sad to learn, falls just nine short.)

There are some limitations, of course–the 1870s’s bizarre statistical profile give it fits, so you might want to take a look at Bobby Mathews’s page before the PI makes him disappear. That said, get going while this feature is still free; just clear your browser cache and click “neutralize stats” on a player page.

I really shouldn’t be posting on the night before my Russian final–codename Я неудачу–but a recent discussion on the VEB thread from yesterday has caught my eye. So I’m budgeting twenty minutes that would otherwise be spent memorizing adjective forms to talk about it.

To summarize: one of the commenters thinks that Jeff Suppan sucks, because his peripherals are less than scintillating and his ERA is the product of a good Cardinals defense. Other commenters think that he’s a good pitcher, because–well, look at the ERAs and count the ring. Everybody seems to agree that $10 million a year is a bit steep for his services.

First, what’s average? A commenter on Baseball Primer ran the numbers for 2005 and discovered that an “average” starter’s ERA+ is around 95. It makes sense, because it’s easier for a reliever to put up a gaudy ERA. Sometimes we forget about that and perfectly serviceable pitchers end up sucking in our mind, which explains the Third Starter phenomenon–maybe half the teams in the majors have one pitcher as good as most peoples’ Platonic conception of the third starter. By this standard, though, Jeff Suppan has been almost precisely average a ridiculous eight years in a row. Only in 2005 did he deviate from his startlingly boring ways, putting up an ERA+ of 120.

Ah, you say, eerily determined to one-up me in the middle of an entry, but that’s precisely what the guy was saying! He’s got a good ERA thanks to his defense, but his peripherals are subpar! He’s not really that good. So now, instead of him sucking, we’re talking about him being average only in front of the Cardinals’ locktight defense. Let’s say that’s true–Suppan might be a waste of a locker anyplace else–but it’s certainly not true for everybody the Cardinals sign. The 2003 Cardinals had an outstanding defense, aside from a certain well-meaning left fielder, but Brett Tomko, a decidedly average pitcher, still sucked. Pitchers who accrue a lot of the DIPS stats–strikeouts, home runs, walks–are simply less suited to take advantage of the Edmonds effect.

But Suppan is the ideal Cardinals pitcher in that regard; he’s a DIPS cipher, basically putting the ball in play and seeing what happens. Not only that, but he’s got groundball tendencies, so a ball in play is less likely to hurt him. It was a very Moneyball move, in the sense of the actual book as opposed to Joe Morgan’s idea of it, to sign him in the first place; his value for the Cardinals is higher than it would be for any other team, so he came on the cheap.

But where do we draw the line? In a strict ability sense, in Clean Room Stadium, Suppan may be worse than other pitchers. But the Cardinals are shopping for themselves, not ranking players on True Talent. Players who take more advantage of a park effect or a team skill than others can–the Mel Otts and Dante Bichettes of the world–may not actually be as good as their stats suggest, but they’re providing that value to their teams anyway. It didn’t matter to the Rockies that Darryl Kile was a better pitcher than Jose Jimenez; Jimenez’s heavy fastball was a better fit, so he provided more value than Kile would have. It didn’t matter that the Whiteyball Cardinals had less pop than W.C. Fields’s icebox, nobody would’ve hit for power in Busch Stadium, Jack Clark aside. Jeff Suppan may not be a good pitcher, in the above average sense, but with the Cardinals he had the circumstances in which he was particularly suited to approximate one.

That said, we can agree on one thing: he’s obviously not worth $10 million a year, unless we’re going to be in Tulip Mania mode through 2010.

tnek5 asks: what do you think of mark redman?

I answer: not very much. Here are his peripherals over the last few season. See if you can spot the outlier.

        K/9  BB/9  HR/9  K:BB
2002   4.83  2.26  0.67  2.14
2003   7.13  2.88  0.76  2.48
2004   4.81  3.20  1.32  1.50
2005   5.10  2.83  0.91  1.80
2006   4.10  3.40  1.03  1.21

Hmm. He’s had one good year, one very good year, and three replacement-level years. In that order. Somehow–somehow–he struck out seven guys per nine innings for a World Series team, and he’s been coasting on that ever since. His control has deteriorated, and his home run rate is back up around league average. Chris Narveson is not a particularly great prospect, but I’d be surprised if he didn’t approximate Mark Redman’s expected production this year. Heck–I wouldn’t be particularly stunned if this hypothetical Braden Looper, SP project ended up with better results. At least Bloop’s platoon split is in the direction most players hit–Redman has given up an .830 OPS to righties over the last three years.

Picking up Redman would be the rotation equivalent of Russ Springer. The Cardinals realize they need another starter; the problem is that Mark Redman doesn’t really give them another starter. As we’ve seen, the Russ Springer plan is this: realize there’s a hole in your team, and then pretend to fill it. I hope the Cardinals get a little more creative with the fifth spot, whatever their plan is.

With the Pettitte/Clemens train on its way back to New York and Japanese consolation prize Kei Igawa still awaiting a contract, the Yankees are suddenly flush with pitching. This, combined with the Cardinals’ anemic performance during the Winter Meetings, has led to a rash of rumors sending oft-injured Carl Pavano to St. Louis.

I’m all for it, under two conditons:

• The Cardinals don’t give up any top level prospects, and I mean top level with respect to the Cardinals, sad as that redefinition may be. I would hope they don’t go any further than Mark Worrell or Chris Lambert or any of the other slightly-damaged prospects that’ll fill up the middle of the prospect lists. Ideally the Cardinals would hand them a list and say “pick three!”; it’s like one of those Mystery Grab-bag door prizes where you end up getting a bunch of pencils and magnets with a failed politician’s name on them.
• The Yankees pay some of that contract. It’s looking slightly less gaudy now that Gil Meche is worth $11 million, but Pavano’s due $21 million over the next two years. It’d be ideal if the Yankees could pay half of that, but I’d rather the Cardinals keep their prospects than their money.

If those are met, he’s an ideal project for the Cardinals. He’s (nominally) a groundball pitcher, and not only that–he’s a groundball pitcher with good control and decent stuff. Unlike most pitchers who are flukey-good and then disappoint after signing huge contracts, there’s reason to be optimistic in his peripherals. Sure, he was never a Cy Young caliber pitcher like he pretended to be in 2004, but since 2003 he has a K:BB ratio of 2.83. He was victimized in his 2005 stint by an overly-high home run rate even more than he benefitted from the extremely-low rate he had in 2004.

Obviously he’s fragile–he transcends fragile, makes it his own, so that twenty years from now we will say pitchers are pavano–but 2006 was such a nightmare season all around that he’s undervalued. If the Cardinals can swing it, I think Pavano has the potential to be the biggest steal of the offseason. And even if he isn’t, it sure beats talking about Big Pickup Russ Springer.

Of course, this all becomes moot if Bernie Miklasz’s most recent Post-Dispatch forum bulletin is true; according to him, the Cardinals are negotiating with Tomo Ohka. Ohka’s a decent pitcher, sort of a poor man’s Jeff Suppan, but with so few steps taken to upgrade the team in other areas I’d love to see them go with upside and risk–i.e. Carl Pavano–over bargain bin pickups whenever possible from here on out. It’s great if you can get an adequate pitcher like Ohka on the cheap, but at some point adequacy stops being enough.