He and Zeppelin are rightly pointing out that the marginal value of a win is different for the Yankees and that the financial scarcity issues are different for them (to put it very lightly). I don’t think they are too worried about a “lack of likely surplus.” They may well be worried about Meche’s age and/or injury situation.

I never did really understand the Bradbury debates… it seemed too crazy to be true

Please DO NOT “defer” to my so-called “expertise.” I’m just like any other fan on here, in that I can look up projections. Please DO “differ” from my statements if you think they are wrongheaded— that’s how progress happens. Or at least interesting discussion.

I guess I should stick with the more solid point that perhaps can be made more clearly and maybe we can then agree (or disagree!): The Yankees should not trade Swisher for MEche, as Meche is at best equal in value to Swisher, and Swisher makes less money, and the Yankees don’t have other RF options. Unless they’re going to sign Matt HOlliday or Jason Bay, the Yankees don’t hav a better option than putting Brett Gardnerin the OF, and he’s almost as valuable as Meche, and they can use the money better elsewhere… like signing a starter almost as good as Meche.

Montero is the more interesting issue, I guess… I don’t think they’d do it, but I leave the “should” issue up to people who know prospects better than I.

1) Easy way: FanGraphs player pages have fan projections on them. I think they’re actually pretty good (and by the way, everyone here should go be and enter them for all the Royals and more!)

2) Slightly harder: go to CHONE’s www.baseballprojection.com and look at each team’s page. The pitcher listings have projected RAR (to get basic WAR, just divide by 10; relievers are not leveraged) For position players, rally has context-neutral offensive lwts per 150 games listed for his projections, then a TotalZone defensive projection for the player’s listed position. The defensive projections are of varying value — TotalZone is good, but it isn’t UZR, and the OF ones in particular can be troublesome. You can also use Jeff Zimmeman’s UZR projections from BtBS. Anyway, to get projected RAR/150, just add Rally’s lwts to whatever defensive projetion, then do a positional adjustment. These are really approriate for 162 games, but for 150 it’s close enough:

DH: -17.5
1B -12.5
LF/RF -7.5
2B/3B/CF +2.5
SS +7.5
C +12.5

You can use different ones if you want, of course, not everyone agrees with these.

or

3) You can just wait for nerds at FanGraphs and elsewhere to talk about the player, or, if you’re REALLy desparate

4) you can ask me. My projections are either taken fro CHONE or from my own crappy projections. That’s not woth much in general, but I’m pretty vain.