Or is that unfair? Is it a time-value thing — would it have to be for a winter 2007-level Brett Anderson and Chris Carter?

what about a michael bowden/lars anderson based offer from the red sox?

if the red sox called and offered me bowden/anderson/tazawa for lee, i wouldn’t be able to agree fast enough.

other pitchers that would make a nice start to the offer: tim alderson, jake arrieta, mat latos, madison bumgarner, brian matusz or jarrod parker.

Chris Carter could help the Browns.

No doubt he could, but what would be the point? If we don’t add him back to the 40-man in the fall, he’s a minor league free agent. If we have any interest in him at all, we have to keep him through the winter, sneak him through waivers in the spring if necessary. Having said that, we may not have any interest in him at all.

So Fausto used to sit 92-100?

On his bad days. On his good days fans in the lower rows were advised to bring protective ear equipment in case of any sonic booms.

Nice load of crap detection

More seriously, I think Fausto did throw harder when he first came up. I was at his major league debut, and if the guns at Comerica Park are to be believed, he was steady in the 95-96 range. I’m not sure that harder, at least harder in the sense of consistently hitting peak velocity, was necessarily better when it came to movement and effectiveness. Fangraphs data has his average steadily declining from 2006 to the present, but not a terribly precipitous drop going from an average fastball velocity of 94.1 to 92.6 over that time.

One thing I know about you, Andrew, is that there are certain sites where you get your BS Detector all shined up and polished before you even click the link.

Andrew,

No, Fausto never hit 100, but his sinker was regularly 93-96, even hitting an occasional 97-98. Therefore, the point still stands that his sinker is no longer a power sinker like it was when Komminsk had him in the Indians’ system. And Komminsk should know as well as anyone – he had Carmona for some time in the Indians’ system, so his evaluation should be given careful consideration; this isn’t a blogger or an interviewer just guessing here. And I presume also they were evaluating his velocity with a radar gun, so they should have empirical data to prove that he was only hitting 87-92 (very specific numbers, not numbers you would normally conjure off the top of your head, like 85-90 or 90-95).

As I mentioned in the Meloan-Abreu trade thread, this continues a disturbing trend in our system where our pitching prospects seem to lose velocity. I can understand reducing the velocity on one’s fastball to better harness command of it, but it’s to be expected that you regain the lost velocity after you have harnessed the command so that you can be back to your former velocity with better command.

If you look at our recent pitching prospects, Lewis, Carmona, Meloan – all these guys threw consistently harder at one time (Lewis was 93-95 in 2007, now is only about 90-91, with an occasional 92-94; Carmona was 93-96, with an occasional 97-98, in 2007, whereas he’s only being clocked at 87-92 – that velocity is very similar to Sowers’, so it’s not that surprising that Carmona was described as a “right-handed Jeremy Sowers,” even if Carmona’s sinker still moves more than Sowers’ pitches; Meloan, I believe, used to hit 93-95, even touching 97-98 when he was dominating and moving up the Dodgers’ Minor League system, but was only hitting 91-93, occasionally hitting 94-95).

My question is, “Why does it seem virtually every notable pitching prospect of late has been losing velocity and not regaining it?” I understand you have to take velocity off of the fastball in order to work on command, and I understand that Carmona’s sinker will work better if it’s not thrown too hard, but he was hitting 94-96 with it and it was still moving a ton in his banner 2007 year (sometimes, too much, but the point is that it had plenty of movement – it wasn’t straight), but you expect these guys to regain that old velocity, especially at their ages.

Therefore, is it something with our organizational philosophy in trying to harness command that is making our prospects lose velocity, an unintended “side effect” if you will? This doesn’t just seem like a coincidence to me – Lewis looks like an average reliever (reminds me a bit of David Riske, a pitcher with no plus pitch and who pitches on “guts” more than stuff, and not able to get away with the same mistakes he did in 2007 without giving up a ton of long balls) without that 93-95 MPH fastball, Meloan didn’t look anything close to his dominating form with the Dodgers (I understand he was turned into a starter, but to look virtually nothing like his old self after a year or so of being a starter still seems unusual to me – he shouldn’t have lost that much that quickly), and Carmona pitching like a finesse guy when he had an overpowering power sinker that gave him a front-of-the-rotation starter ceiling, but now looks only like Jake Westbrook’s sinker (solid, sure, but hardly overpowering), effectively knocking down Carmona’s ceiling to a 3-4 starter.

Somehow, I find this hard to believe that this is just a coincidence – if it is, we have pretty bad luck then (and I know this is Cleveland, with its recent poor sports history), but come on – there seems to be something up; the few power arms we do have all seem to be disappearing and turning into average-velocity arms, which is all the more reason why we are trying to pick up power arms from other organizations, such as Perez, Veras, and now, Abreu.

Just my 2 cents.

Well, again, who cares what Komminsk thinks of Grady’s elbow?

My point remains, Komminsk kind of seems like a dunce here.