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Wednesday Burn- Open Thread

By Freneau

I'll be in and out all day, consider this an Open Thread for today's news/rumors...

As "greggagne4hof" notes in the Diaries, the Royals, at least according to the Star are closing in on a deal for Rodrigo Lopez of the Orioles.

Lopez has a career ERA of 4.83 in 937 major league innings, but he hasn't actually posted an ERA that low since 2004. looking at his ERA+ numbers, he's been a good pitcher in two seasons and a bad one in four.

Rodrigo Lopez ERA+

-2000: 49
-2001: injury/minors
-2002: 123 (Rookie of the Year)
-2003: 75
-2004: 133
-2005: 85
-2006: 77

Remember, above 100=good, below 100=bad.

For the Baltimore point of view, click here.

In more random news, the Royals may be nearing a new TV deal with Fox Sports Midwest, which is good news. I was fearful the next TV deal was going to be with OLN.

Lastly, legendary Royals Blogger Bill Heeter is calling it quits.

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Update [2006-12-6 18:23:17 by royalsreview]:

"Spectator" weighs in with optimism regarding Bannister:

Regarding Bannister, Rany is way off. I know nothing about Bannister, but I definitely know it's a bad idea to base your entire argument on 38 innings of pitching. He has 7.74 K/9 and 2.54 BB/9 in 550 innings of minor league pitching - I'm not saying he'll replicate those numbers in the majors, but we shouldn't ignore them.

We had a staff era of 5.85 last year, and we had one pitcher on the team pitch more than 115 innings. I don't remember what the average length of a start was, but it wasn't good. Rany calls Bannister a "#4/#5 starter" like it's a bad thing - I'd love to have at least one guy on our staff that can legitimately be considered a major league starter, and I'm not sure we had one last year.

I tend to agree, if he actually is a #4/5 starter (although does anyone actually know what this means? most teams hate their #4/5 starters and are always replacing them) I'll take that over the 10% chance that Burgos has a nice 60 innings at some point.

Yesterday Joe Sheehan at BP gave a thumbs up to the deal for the Royals, only to change his mind today:

Sam (Columbia, MO): Ambiorix Burgos for Brian Bannister...how does this deal look for the Royals? Also, what do you make of them being in the hunt for Meche and Batista? Just throwing around money they should be saving? Thanks.

Joe Sheehan: What's fun about the winter meetings is that if you say something stupid, there are 15 people around to set you straight.

My initial reaction to the deal was that I liked it; the Royals need starters, and Bannister could be a bottom-rotation guy. Burgos just seems like a guy to me, someone to walk 50 guys a year out of the pen. When I expressed this to a few people--smart people, guys I respect--I was just about laughed out of the room. There's just no belief that Bannister is more than fodder.

In retrospect, I think I was wrong. Bannister is more a #5/#6 guy, and Burgos has a power arm with upside.

And theres the rub, namely, can Bannister even be a #4/5 guy? Only time will tell. The important thing to remember with pitchers is the inherent randomness of what they do: people get injured, take new approaches, learn new pitches, start tipping them, etc. Its always changing.

For what its worth, Chris Caraballo of the blog Lets Go Mets writes,

Bannister is a good young pitcher. He shows tremendous poise and contrary to Burgos gets himself out of the big inning. On a few occasions he got himself into trouble with bases loaded and nobody out and got himself out. He has pinpoint control, but when he doesnt have that control he turns into a 4-5 inning, 100 pitch pitcher.

Has anyone seen/heard any movement on the Rodrigo Lopez deal?

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