Brad's Blog : CBSSports.com Blogs

25 Man Roster Made up of Current Free Agents.

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 14:09:58 EST

MLB.com has an interesting article posted right now about the Top 25 free agents still available. I didn't believe there was a strong enough market to make a decent team, but it seems like I was wrong. On the other hand, this team would be way overpriced. I went through and added in their 2009 salaries (some will make more, some will make less, but it's a good starting point), and found the team would be WAY overpriced (in my opinion) at $195,593,291. That places them squarely in between the two most expensive teams, the New York Yankees and the New York Mets... and I would expect the quality of their play to be somewhere in between the two.

Here's the list (with 2009 salaries added by me). The article will follow.

The Free-Agent 25-man Roster (Salary)

Brad's 2008 Oakland Athletics Awards

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 10:38:57 EDT

Borrowed from an Oakland Athletics Message Board Thread that I felt deserved a blog post...

Team Awards:

Front Office: B (Hard to see a lot of those guys go, a couple seemed like poor deals, but the dividends from Nick Swisher and Dan Haren are already apparent)

On Field Management (Geren & Co): C

Billy Beane - Genius?

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 11:47:01 EDT

I posted this in response on the message board, but felt it deserved a blog post of its own. Feel free to comment and discuss.

It's funny that not until the past two years (last year while injuries ran rampant and this year in a rebuilding year) did anyone ever question Billy Beane. You know why? Because he was winning. And on a budget not even close to his competition in the AL (Angels, Yankees, Red Sox).

While the skepticism is understandable, I think that Billy Beane's "genius status" among MLB general managers is rightly placed. He was named general manager of the Athletics in 1997, and in just a few short years he was able to turn around a team that was was averaging 73 wins a season (.454 pct) into a team that went 664-469 from 2000-2006, a .586 winning percentage (average of 95 wins a season). How many other general managers have done that? Not just that, but he did it with a payroll that was one of the lowest in the majors! The Athletics made the playoffs five times in those seven years, how many other teams made the playoffs that consistently?

Pythagorean Theorem Rankings - Week 7

Tue, 13 May 2008 3:15:18 EDT

These are the Pythagorean Theorem Rankings for MLB at the end of May 12, 2008 using 1.86 instead of 2 for the exponent (see this article).

Chicago Cubs .632

Atlanta Braves .624

Oakland Athletics .617

Pythagorean Theorem Rankings - Week 4

Sun, 04 May 2008 22:18:42 EDT

So I ran a modified version of the Pythagorean Theorem (using 1.86 instead of 2 for the exponent, see this article) for the season so far and this is how the teams came out. (Apologies for the poor formatting.)

Arizona Diamondbacks .703

Chicago Cubs .655

Atlanta Braves .625