One suggestion: Would it help to move the archives further down on the sidebar? I, like a lot of commenters, have Bronx Banter as my home page, and keeping other baseball-links within a couple page-downs would be favorable. Thanks for keeping the site user friendly!

I had the same question with the Yankee blogs.

Thanks for thinking about these things - infromative and well-designed - you could make quite a living as consultants.

I agree with Mehmattski in 1 about perhaps moving the baseball links a bit further up. I thought the archives and search section can both be moved down since we all know they exist but unlikely to use them everyday.

By the way, so now the Yankees and Red Sox each has a Hideki.

The other sections are up to Cliff and Alex to rearrange how they see fit.

Any luck with a spellchecking or formatting toolbar for the submit text boxes? Seems like there's existing options out there that could fold into the preview page?

cliff - you should be an advance scout for the yanks! or, at least, GM-in-waiting. : )

I kid, I kid.

I did not know that. Thanks.

Speaking of Karim Garcia, has anyone noticed the sponsor of his Baseball Reference page? I wonder anyone from around here did that.

(as Ken and Jon hand me a note with legal letterhead while brandishing Tasers(tm))

But Of Course, That Would Be WRONG...

17 !! Ya think?? Or is this a case of "I don't wanna toot my own horn, but beep! beep! >;)

Cliff, just wondering - is there a reason for the big space between Alex's SI archive and his Variety archive, or am I the only one seeing that? (BTW - very nice article, Alex!) I applaud keeping the Yankee blogroll based on seniority of existence, it gives a nice sense of history.

When there's a lot of activity here, I find myself paging up and down a great deal. On other blogs I just read an earlier comment then hit the "End" key to go to the last comment, but here the sidebar is much longer than any comment page ever gets so from the end I have to do some hunting with page up. A conceptually simple way to deal with that would be to omit the sidebar under comments.

If anyone knows a way to handle that issue from Firefox then never mind.

If so, here's the cost
$26 mil - Bid
$18 mil - Salary
$7.2 mil - Tax
$51.2 Total / 4 years = $12.8/yr actual cost

Ted Lilly, et al
$36/4 years - salary
$14.4 - tax
$50.4 Total / 4 years = $12.6/yr actual cost

So basically, Igawa costs us the same as a 9.2 mil/yr guy.

Is this worth it?
(Not to mention a few bucks lost on the interest on the $26 mil paid up front)
Is this guy better then Lily?

And who is this ARod guy? I can't find anything to read about him.

Along the same lines (and way off the main topic), Mike Plugh has a new analysis of Igawa. (Can I call him The Iguana? It goes so well with Godzilla.)

Here's Mike's prediction:

29 GS
209 IP
14-9 record (1 decision for every 9 IP)
4.20 ERA
194 hits
21 HR
53 BB
172 K
1.182 WHIP
3.25 K/BB
7.41 K/9

(That ERA seems high for those the WHIP and K/9, no?)

Mike suggests that we might be looking at an Andy Pettitte type career. Having absolutely no clue about how good The Iguana might be, myself, I'm loving reading Mike's optimism.

Jaret Wright last season was 11-7, .611 winning percentage, 4.49 ERA.

If Plugh is right, the Yanks will pay around $13 million per year for a pitcher only slightly better than Wright.

I thought that EXACT same thing today.

Lily has a career ERA of 4.6, and his peripherals aren't quite as good as those posted above, so Igawa might be better then the FA market. Might be.

But there are still issues of not knowing the batters, the language, the culture and many other factors. We know Lily can eat American food without getting sick.

I can't say the Igawa bid was a bad deal, but I can't see it as that good either. Plus if Igawa had problems with the HR ball in Japan, he could be in for a world of hurt here.

Mike Plugh's Igawa prediction:
209 IP
1.182 WHIP

Jaret Wright 2006:
140.1 IP
1.52 WHIP

And hey, three extra wins for three million bucks? Cashman will take that any day. Me too. I mean, I'll take three extra Yankee wins for three million of Cashman's bucks. Personally, I need the millions more than I need the wins.

1. he actually made all his starts (albit almost all of them are mind boggling short)

2. he out performed his periphals by a good margin. with no real explaination other than luck. such as his insanely low HR/9 even when he routinely give up flyballs.

http://tinyurl.com/ykbcfd

A first baseman, no less...

My calculations put him at a 1.182 WHIP, but I also caluclated a 3.13 ERA or something. The math isn't perfect. Generally the walks, strikeouts, home runs, and hits come out far more accurately than the ERA. I adjusted the ERA to match the kind of boost that Clay Davenport got on his calculations compared to mine with Matsuzaka. I think I had Daisuke at a 2.60 or 2.70 for his MLB conversion, which seemed far too low. Davenport had almost the same peripherals, but a 3.40 ERA.

I went around baseball looking for player comparisons for the kind of ratios, walks, strikeouts, hits, and so on and found Randy Johnson, Andy Pettitte, and C.C. Sabathia in a comfortable range. I don't think that Igawa will be Sabathia, and he isn't even remotely similar to Unit, but he pitches very similarly to Andy Pettitte. It struck me. They could be very similar in pinstripes.

When I checked AP's numbers with the Yankees, I found that he had pretty mediocre ratios and a not at all pretty K/BB. He is a Yankee Legend of the highest order in many minds, but he may have benefitted from the situation. If Igawa can use his leftyness and put up the same kind of numbers as Pettitte, there's no reason he can't win 14, 16, 19, or 21 games for the Bombers in any given year.

I'm not saying it will happen, but it looks like a better than 50% chance that it will pan out. If any of my numbers crunching, and optimism based on having seen him pitch for 3 years, pans out we stole him at the money we're paying.

One question....where did $13 million come from? I've been reading 4 years at 4-5 million per. By my fuzzy math, that comes out to $10.5-11.5 million a year.

If you look at what Jaret Wright did over two seasons with the Yankees, you see about one season of work. He threw 204 innings over two seasons. Igawa will do that by himself next year alone, if he doesn't prove to be so bad that the Yankees option him to AAA. I'd say there's about a 1% chance of that happening.

Wright is a soon to be 31 year old right handed pitcher with a career ERA over 5.00 and a career mark of 91 for his ERA+. He is also one of the most injury prone player in baseball. That's why the Yankees wrote the buyout into his contract. If you combine his two season with the Yankees and divide them equally, you get the following per season numbers:

8-6 record
20 GS
102 IP
119 Hits Allowed
9 HR Allowed
44.5 BBs
59 Ks
56.5 ER
4.99 ERA
1.603 WHIP
10.5 Hits/9
3.93 BB/9
5.21 K/9
1.33 K/BB

Because of his injuries, you should expect that this is what you'll get out of him in any given season. If nothing else, Igawa's track record suggests that you'll do no worse on the numbers, and probably MUCH better, plus he'll do it over 30+ starts and 200+ innings....from the left side.

I think taking a flyer on Zuleta is a worthwhile idea, not just because he has some success against DM. With 1B wide open, why not have a few people competing for the job? If he loses out to Guiel or Wilson or whoever, someone like Zuleta might take an assignment to the minors, knowing he might get back up.