According to Blog Talk Radio, because of technical errors on their end last night’s Roundtable Radio Show was not recorded and is lost forever. AAAARRRRGGGGHHH.  Obviously this irks me to no end, and if you were looking for the show then I have to apologize. Anyway, here is a summary of what we discussed with our friend Cory Schwartz of MLB.com

Topic one was the Jonathan Broxton situation in LA. I threw out an over/under of 15 saves. Everyone but Mike Podhorzer went with the under, but only Jay Sarney said he would be “way under.” We also discussed closer strategy, with there being a split on whether to draft closers early or late.

Topic two was whether we preferred Brian McCann or Russell Martin for the rest of the season.  Baseball HQ had them both as equal for the first half.  This ended up being a spirited discussion, with Eric, Jay and Cory coming down on the Martin bandwagon, essentially because of the speed.

Mike and I came down on McCann, and I think McCann wins by a healthy margin. Martin had zero steals last September, and is projected for only 5 SB and 6 HR for the rest of the season. McCann has a healthy lead in power and BA projections for the remainder of the season. Based on that plus the fact that Martin will wear down as many catchers do in September, the speed is usually the first thing to go when they wear down. McCann’s power is more likely to stay than Martin’s speed.

Next up was Gio Gonzalez. We all were unanimous that he is not likely to be a solid pitcher in the majors right away should he be called up. I brought up Dallas Braden and my opinion that he is better right now than Gonzalez and looks like a league average pitcher. The others were surprised at how well Braden is doing in AAA this year, and he should be a fair AL only pickup.

Are you crazy–Yes I was crazy; I threw out the idea that Chipper Jones would hit under .300 the rest of the year. The “Are You Crazy” segment is meant to show the non-percentage plays that we can make that are still reasonably likely to happen; you might call them the 20% plays. With that in mind, I think there is a 20% chance that Chipper hits below .300. The hit rate is declining and still due for a continued fall, he is playing through an injury and pre-season projections had him hitting around .310, so to get to the .310 range he will have to hit below .300. This is not a likely scenario, but fits in with the “Are You Crazy” theme.

Last up was the Tee-Off, my favorite segment.  Cory led us off with people who still try to lowball trade offers at this point in the season, citing an example from one of his leagues where someone offered to sell high on Adrian Gonzalez for Jimmy Rollins.

Mike was rightly Teed-Off at people who have no common sense. In one of his leagues Mike was offering an owner something for Johnny Cueto. The owner didn’t negotiate with Mike nor did he seek anything; instead he cut him!

Jay was Teed-Off, less so than normal, at the use of wins in 5×5 leagues. Recognizing that Wins are such a variable stat, look at John Lannan and Jeremy Guthrie versus Radhames Liz for example, Jay proposed that we jettison wins as a category.

Eric Teed-Off about the Randy Wolf trade and why Houston would make such a ridiculous move.

Lastly, I was really irked by Jim Palmer’s comments that the Joe Blanton trade made the Phillies a lock to win the division. How a Hall of Fame pitcher can know so little about what goes on is beyond the pale. You have a pitcher going from a great pitcher’s park to a great hitter’s park and a guy who is borderline rosterable anyway. The Phillies may indeed win the division, but it is very unlikely to be because Joe Blanton is the next Rick Sutcliffe.

So that was the show, the now sadly “Lost Podcast.” In terms of listeners it was our number one show ever, so the loss of the show makes it doubly disappointing.