The Padres claimed pitcher Sean Henn off waivers from the Yankees. Will the wisdom of Kevin Towers show itself again? Only time will tell. This is such a big deal that it was inserted as a blurb in an article about Jim Edmonds’ release and the blurb says that Sean Henn is a righty. Blasphemy — Sean Henn is a Loogy through and through!
Categories: post by johnstevens
Tagged: Sean Henn, the wisdom of kevin towers
The Padres selected Michael Gardner, a Yankee Double-A relief pitcher coming off of his best season, in the Rule 5 draft. We all know what a relief mastermind Kevin Towers is. Chad Jennings of the SWB Yankees blog analyzes why Towers might have gone with Gardner over some other Yankees’ relief prospects.
Categories: post by johnstevens
Tagged: Michael Gardner, Rule 5 Draft, the wisdom of kevin towers
This installment of the bullpenternet has news, analysis, wild conjecturing, father-daughter games, and shopping!!
Categories: post by Gnopple
Tagged: bullpenternet, Carlos Guevara, Edgar Osuna, Francisco Cordero, Gary Majewski, holidays, japan, Johnny Cueto, Keith Law, Kirk Saarloos, Loogy, mexico, Mike Stanton, the wisdom of kevin towers
… because this guy’s team just signed him to a 4-year, $19-million contract. Also, more importantly, Linebrink probably is not worth that many years for that kind of money. You long-time Loogy Lounge readers might remember Gnopple’s first post, which highlighted a good SI article by Tom Verducci. Here’s what Tom had to say about Linebrink:
Towers, in the middle of a pennant race, traded off his own version of Romero: Scott Linebrink, who was about to turn 31, and headed for free agency, a big payday and a likely regression.
Towers had picked up Linebrink on waivers from Houston in 2003. Over the next three seasons the Padres used Linebrink 73 times each year and paid him a total of $2.6 million. Just as the mileage-to-salary ratio was about to get out of whack, Towers turned Linebrink into his next budget-friendly reliever, Joe Thatcher, who posted a 1.29 ERA after his trade from Milwaukee.
Indeed, Linebrink actually has already begun to regress:
Look, Linebrink’s not a bad arm to have in the bullpen. Even his 06′/07′ numbers are above average. It’s difficult to imagine, however, that Linebrink — a 31-year-old reliever moving to the American League for the first time in his career — will regain his once-excellent form. For that reason, 4 years at $19 million seems like a bit much.
Categories: post by johnstevens
Tagged: free agents, Ozzie Guillen is an idiot, Scott Linebrink, the wisdom of kevin towers, White Sox
Welcome to The Loogy Lounge, a new blog devoted to the often neglected middle relievers in baseball. To get the blog going, I’m including a brief link to an excellent article by Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated:
Towers’ philosophy is that relief performance tends to be fungible, and buying free agent relievers — who tend to be older and overworked by the time they get to the market — is the definition of buying a stock too high before the regression hits. Think Danys Baez, Arthur Rhodes, Kyle Farnsworth, Tom Gordon and Hector Carrasco.
“Free agent relief shopping is dangerous,” Towers says.
In just a seven-month span in 2006, Towers obtained relievers Cla Meredith, Doug Brocail, Heath Bell, Kevin Cameron and Justin Hampson at the combined talent cost of Jon Atkins, Ben Johnson and Doug Mirabelli. None of those five relievers he acquired earned more than $500,000 last season. And San Diego’s bullpen wound up with the best ERA in baseball (3.01).
What, did you come here looking for insight? Well, we’ll have that eventually. But Gnopple is late for dinner and in no mood to delve in the San Diego’s admittedly excellent and cheap bullpen.
Who is Gnopple? He’s the guy who brought you The Lenny DiNardo Blog.
What is Loogy? As you probably know, it stands for Lefty One Out Guy – a left-handed reliever that you bring in to get . . . one out. Anyway, we’ll be discussing right-handed pitchers as well, we just think the Loogy Lounge sounds cool.
Categories: post by Gnopple
Tagged: lenny dinardo, San Diego Padres, the wisdom of kevin towers
