I agree with this. Lets see if Melky was a one year wonder. If he is then Cain is ready imo. He's worth a lot.

They were on the edge of competing this decade?

News to me.

And I honestly don't mean this to be a smartass question, but what's wrong with Jurrjens? Seems like his stats were pretty good, but a lot of people don't want him. Injury? Great defense behind him? What's the deal?

Go back a couple pages.

I don't blame you for being confused, if you look up his baseball card stats you might be confused about the negativity.

The reason is because it is obvious, moreso than most pitchers, that he was very fortunate and that he benefited from a lot of smoke and mirrors.

First the good: he was 13-6 with a 2.96 ERA. Superficially, even in the junior league, that seems pretty decent. Sure, Myers might be a steep asking price, but you'd jump all over it for Cain, right? Before we dive into the deep dark pool that is the bad news, lets show just about the only thing he's good at. BB/9: 2.61 He doesn't walk many people. Pretty decent number, not spectacular, but decent. Also, his 0.83 HR/9 rate is decent (though perhaps aided by luck).

The bad:

He never threw for much velocity, and last year he lost even more speed off his fastball. Next year he might not regularly hit even 89 any longer, which is a recipe for disaster with almost anyone.

Jurrjens is injury-prone. He was able to make over 30 starts in 2008-09, but not the last couple years.

His strikeout rate is not good. Only 5.33 per 9IP in 2011.

He's a bit of a flyball pitcher, but not an extreme flyball pitcher, so its not like we're talking a pitcher in a tiny or dry air Coors Field kind of park who would magically improve in our spacious outfield.

Most importantly, his BABIP (batting average on balls in play) was 0.269 in 2011. That is crazily low, and prime evidence that he benefited from amazing luck. Not because of his pitching, but despite it, he still managed to watch batters hit balls right at his defense more often than usual. You can't count on that, as we learned with Brian Bannister.

Jair Jurrjens is not a bad pitcher. In a vacuum I would not be upset if he was my #4 or #5 pitcher, or maybe even #3 if we were desperate. However, I'd only pick him up for cheap. If the price is Myers or Cain, then he is crazily over-valued due to his fluke 2011, we've got a few pitchers in our own system right now who might do better.

Rany’s thoughts on Jurrjens…

DO NOT TRADE FOR JAIR JURRJENS.

Superficially, Jurrjens has been a fantastic pitcher for the Braves. In 115 career starts, he has a 3.40 ERA, and a 50-33 record. While he had a subpar 2010, with a 4.64 ERA, that season is sandwiched between a fantastic 2009 (2.60 ERA in 215 innings) and a pretty damn good 2011 (2.96 ERA in 152 innings). Jurrjens is one of only seven pitchers who have had an ERA under 3, with at least 125 innings pitched, in two of the last three seasons. Clayton Kershaw and Roy Halladay have done it each of the last three years; the other four pitchers are Adam Wainwright, Tim Lincecum, Felix Hernandez, and Matt Cain.

That’s pretty impressive company. Jurrjens belongs in their company the way Kim Kardashian belongs in a “Diamonds Are Forever” commercial.

I don’t know how Jurrjens does it. He doesn’t strike out a bunch of guys, and his control is good but not great. He’s not a groundball pitcher. It seems he owes his success more to luck than anything else, except you’d think that after four seasons his luck would have run out by now. It’s as if he had Brian Bannister’s rookie season four years in a row.

In 702 career innings, he’s struck out 480 batters, or 6.2 per nine innings; he’s never struck out 7 per 9 in a season, which these days is the baseline for most pitchers. He’s allowed 222 unintentional walks, or 2.8 per nine innings, which is good but not that good. When you strip out the intentionals, Jurrjens’ career strikeout-to-walk ratio is 2.16; by comparison, the NL average in 2011 was 2.60. Jurrjens has also given up just 57 homers in 702 innings, despite a groundball rate no higher than average.

Jurrjens’ career BABIP is just .280, which is unsustainably low. Just 7.4% of flyballs hit against him have cleared the fence, which is also unsustainably low (the league average is around 10-11%). For his career, batters have hit .254/.306/.400 with no one on base, but with runners in scoring position, they’ve hit just .234/.334/.355. The higher OBP is not surprising, since all of his intentional walks have been give out with runners in scoring position; it is surprising that batters have hit 20 points less and slugged 45 points less in situations where a hit will drive in a run.

In isolation, it’s possible – unlikely, but possible – that any of these three characteristics are for real. Some pitchers may be able to induce a lower batting average on balls in play. Some pitchers (or at least Matt Cain) might be able to keep flyballs in the ballpark. Some pitchers might be able to get consistently better results with runners in scoring position.

I refuse to believe that Jair Jurrjens has the ability to do all three. Betting on him to regress is the easiest money in baseball. It’s even easier when you consider that Jurrjens’ fastball, which was a pedestrian 91-92 mph at its best, dropped to an average of 89.1 mph last year, with a concomitant drop in his strikeout rate to 5.3 per 9. He missed the start of the 2010 season with shoulder problems, and he missed all of September this season with knee inflammation, so you can’t even rely on him to be durable: he’s made 43 starts in the last two seasons combined.

If someone can come up with a plausible reason why I should expect Jurrjens' success to continue - perhaps he's secretly a witch - I would love to hear about it. But all I see in his future is regression and pain.

Please, Dayton. Stay away.

http://www.ranyontheroyals.com/

What's even more frightening is if you look at Jurrjens numbers from the second half of 2011.

His BABIP normalized (.305 is about as close to normal as you can see), and teams OPSed .947 against him as his ERA skyrocketed up around 6.00. OPS+ against him in the second half was a staggering 156.

And that's with him giving up a NORMAL BABIP.

He's Brian Bannister.

If the Royals surrendered, say, Chris Dwyer and David Lough for him, and the Braves took it, I wouldn't complain much. But nothing more than a B- prospect should be headlining the deal.

If he played for any team other than the Braves, would this even be discussed? I doubt it.

A little info about Jurrjens's injuries from 2010 and 2011 -

Seems like he is injury prone as well, at first just looking at #'s alone (even though k's arent high) i was all for trading cain for him. Not sure about that now. I wouldn't mind getting him but for cheaper. I'd like to have Prado a 2b

No thanks to Jurrjens at any price.

I'd give them the rights to Jason Kendall...but that's about it.

http://mlbbuzz.yardbarker.com/blog/m...anchez/7885915

Report: Giants willing to trade Sanchez

Jon Paul Morosi on FOXSports.com reports that the Giants are willing to trade Jonathan Sanchez this offseason.
The Giants have resisted dealing from their stockpile of pitching in an effort to add a hitter, but evidently they've reached a point where they feel a move might now be necessary. They'd be selling low on Sanchez, as he fell back to a 4.26 ERA and 1.44 WHIP this season and ended the year with an ankle injury. But, he's also slated to earn around $6 million in his final year of arbitration before becoming a free agent, so if they're going to barter him, now might be the time. Teams interested in the 29-year-old would be hoping he could recapture the form he displayed in 2010, when he posted a 3.07 ERA while piling up 205 strikeouts.

Someone like you who probably doesn't follow what is going on in the off-season may not know, but the Royals traded two of their best relievers for two broke-dicks. Namely, Mike Jacobs and Coco Crisp. It destroyed our bullpen and made our offense even worse. In 08, the Royals won 75 games and if they got more offense and a starting pitcher, they could've competed.

Dayton Moore screwed it up and had the usual 65 win season.

Fangraphs weighs in, they aren't really hammering on the "he is Bannister" angle that Rany went. They were saying that if you set aside the fact that he did well despite bad peripherals and you make the assumption that what he did is sustainable, they believe he's hurt and probably permanently damaged goods, and that his upside, regardless of his past, is now probably league-average.

Jurrjens Isn’t Worth A Top Prospect

I'd move Cabrera before I'd deal Cain. Cain is younger, a better defensive player, and projects to at least equal Cabrera offensively.