Annual Card Speculation Thread

[LMBombers]

Chris Coste and Josh Bard look like high dollar catchers to me.

[Rant]

Assuming Coste gets a card, he should be interesting. Decent power, great against righties.

Another Phil who might have an interesting and not too expensive card is Shane Victorino. He'll get carded at all OF positions, a cannon arm, no errors, and speed/range that should be a 1 or 2. His stats suggest a hitting card like Hector Luna. (.287, .346, .414).

[worrierking]

I noticed that Arod did not play short this year, so that changes a lot of possibilities. It also halts the annual thread about him being a "2," which includes the conspiracy theories, NY bias theories and the general "what are they thinking in Glen Head?" speculation. Doesn't Joe Torre understand that we have a messageboard here? How would it have hurt to stick him out there for an inning or two? :D

[UrbanShockers]

How about this guy, who I never heard of:

http://sandiego.padres.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/stats/individual_stats_player.jsp?c_id=sd&playerID=448592

[maligned]

The relief pitching available will be unbelievable.
Cla Meredith's allowed OPS stats are better than Mariano Rivera's of last year. If he ends up being an R2, he could be $7.5M.
Also, BJ Ryan, Papelbon, and Joe Nathan all will have stronger cards than Rivera or Billy Wagner of this year. As R1/C6's, they should all be close to $7M.
On the flipside, the starting pitching will be a little down. It seems that any top pitcher will have a salary about 5% higher than a pitcher from the '06 set with comparable stats because of offensive production around both leagues being about 5-6% higher across the board. With that said, there's no one that compares with Clemens from the '06 set. Francisco Liriano's stats as a no star SP are slightly worse than Felix Hernandez and Roy Halladay of last year. With the description of pitcher inflation I gave, I would guess Liriano will have a salary around that of Hernandez and Halladay from this year.
Among the *SP's, Santana will be tops. However, even he had worse overall allowed OPS numbers than last year. I imagine his card will be worth about the same as it was this year. In summary, I don't expect any SP to reach the $10M mark, and Francisco Liriano will probably end up being the highest priced pitcher--probably worth close to a million more than Santana.