Monday, May 20, 2013
Joe Maddon calls ump’s position ‘baseball anarchy’
(www.tampabay.com)
Is this the MLUA
Or is this the MLBPA
Read More...Rays manager Joe Maddon insisted Monday he was right — and the umpires were wrong — in the interpretation of replay rules on Sunday, saying it was “baseball anarchy” and “sandlot” for crew chief Gerry Davis to “make stuff up on the field.”
But an MLB review found that that Davis did follow guidelines properly in awarding the Rays’ Matt Joyce a home run.
...“Regardless of what they say, that rule is not in the book where you can change a double to a ...
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Exactly. People who say "why don't they just give that money to free agents?" overlook the possibility that there is no reasonable amount of money that will convince free agents like Sanchez or Jackson to sign with the Royals. We don't know whether the Royals kicked the tires and were rebuffed, although I have to think they did at least send out a feeler or three.
I don't have a real problem with this deal. Having seen Wade Davis pitch quite a bit, I too think there's more upside there than he's shown - he's really not a lot different than Hellickson, in my opinion - and while Wil Myers certainly looks good, this management team believes that it can't afford to take the risk of having to rely on him to be productive at the major league level in 2013, they really need pitching, and they don't have a lot of other chips to cash. It's a gamble, to be sure - but it's about all that Dayton Moore has right now. Given that the Royals were always going to try to get pitching, this is about as good a deal as they could have made.
-- MWE
As noted above by Yeaarrgghhhh, this sounds like the Planet Royals on which Dayton Moore has been living recently, with his player development guys consistently producing can't-miss prospects who take three or four years to become real assets to the team.
Alex Gordon (99 OPS+, 1172 PA in first two seasons - then sent back to the minors)
Billy Butler (99 OPS+, 838 PA in first two seasons)
Mike Moustakas (90 OPS+, 979 PA in first two seasons)
Eric Hosmer (100 OPS+, 1161 PA in first two seasons) (118, then 82)
But none of those guys has EVER had a season as low as 81 OPS+, like Francœur did last year!
Hosmer's 82 was close...
Urg, this is not fun. Francouer should have nothing that resembles a starting gig in 2013. But Myers also might not be a step up from him, at least right out of the gate. Which seems to be all that matters to Moore.
People seem to be excited about Wil Myers' future, but I think we've been spoiled by Trout and Harper this year. The hottest prospects don't also become superstars right away, and sometimes they don't even become good players.
Wil Myers turned 22 today. He's got 1644 minor league PA (about 2.5 full MLB seasons) with a .303/.395/.522 line, 64 home runs and 29 stolen bases, 207 BB and 339 K. Baseball America rated him the #10 prospect in baseball pre-2011, and dropped him to #28 pre-2012. He'll probably climb in the rankings this year. That's all quite promising.
But there's a guy who Baseball America ranked #3, #3, #1, and #3 in four consecutive years. He reached AAA at age 19 (Myers was 21). In 1584 PA he hit .317/.362/.519, with 61 HR and 75 SB, 98 BB and 289 K. He had 29 assists as an outfielder. That guy looks even MORE promising right?
Of course, you all know who that guy is: Delmon Young. (I included his 9-game AAA stint from 2011 because I didn't want to do extra work.)
I've never seen Wil Myers play and I don't really know anything about him except the numbers. I don't think he's truly "similar" to Young, but based on age and prospect-ness it seems fair to compare them. He seems to have better plate discipline than Young, but less speed and perhaps less "hitting" (batting average) ability.
So if, five years from now, it turns out the Royals traded away the next Delmon Young* -- regardless of what Shields does -- I hope you all jump back in your windows.
* Brandon Wood, Cameron Maybin, Lastings Milledge, Jeremy Hermida, Travis Snider, Andy Marte...
That's unfair to Maybin.
According to all of the twitter talk from various writers, Wade Davis will be given a shot in the rotation. But I am more than willing to defer to AG#1F.
If the Rays had offered Big Game James in a 1x1 trade for Jake Odorizzi, I'm not at all certain I'd agree to the trade if I was the Royals GM.
That has little to do with how I view Shields or Odorizzi in terms of on the field talent. For the record, I do think Odorizzi is pretty valuable for what he is: the overwhelming consensus seems to be that while his ceiling is low (#3 starter most likely), his floor is perhaps higher than any pitching prospect in baseball (#4 starter). That type of pitcher has value, especially when it is cost controlled. Health is a concern with all young pitchers, but Odorizzi is reported to have a smooth delivery that makes injury less likely. So my opinion on Odorizzi might have me biased.
But honestly, the reason I'm not sure I'd do a Shilelds for Odorizzi trade has little to do with Odorizzi. It mostly has to do with the fact that (1) I think that the 2015 and 2016 seasons are more likely to have a winning Royals team on the field than 2013 and 2014 and (2) a team with an artificially low payroll like the Royals needs to be extremely cautious in accepting increases to payroll.
Since Shields won't be around in 2015, he doesn't help the team long term as has been noted in most the posts in this thread. No need to elaborate on that.
And while Shields is signed to a team-friendly deal, Odorizzi is completely under team control. Odorizzi wouldn't be the ace of the staff in 2015 (one hopes ...) but his cheap salary would go a long way to allowing the team some flexbility to do creative trades like the one for Ervin Santana this offseason.
If you are going to run a MLB team like a Walmart store, you need to be awfully cautious about when you decide to trade cheap talent for the more expensive variety. I just don't see how either 2013 or 2014 is the time to go for broke.
*Not saying this is likely to happen, just that the more I think about the trade the more I can see this completely blowing up for the Royals.
Concur.
That's unfair to Maybin.
Yeah, a little bit. He can field and he can run, and he's only 25, so he's a useful major-leaguer with some room to improve. But he still hasn't hit (career OPS+ 89) and he's certainly not a star.
I don't think Tiger fans miss him much.
I'm sure he'll get a shot, but right now the rotation is Shields/Santana/Guthrie/Hochevar/Chen. They like Mendoza a lot too, and he was probably their best starter last year. Its quite possibly, maybe even likely at this point that they cut Hochevar in spring training and only pay 1/5 of his salary or whatever it is. But Mendoza is probably next in line, then Davis.
Sure, but they do become stars more often than not.
Position Players who won Minor League Player of the Year in the last two decades
Manny Ramirez
Derek Jeter
Tim Salmon
Andruw Jones
Alex Gordon
Rocco Baldelli
Delmon Young
Mike Trout
Jason Heyward
Joe Mauer
Jay Bruce
Eric Chavez
Paul Konerko
Wil Myers was Player of the Year. The worst on that list is probably Rocco and he had injury problems or Delmon who is still a serviceable regular.
They might be right but given Dayton Moore's history as a GM I am inclined to believe that they are wrong.
Yeah, I certainly don't mean to say that I expect Wil Myers to flop. Just that he definitely could, and he wouldn't be the most promising prospect to do so. That doesn't make it a smart trade, but there's a decent chance (20%?) that in 5 years, Royals fans won't particularly care that they lost him.
Delmon who is still a serviceable regular.
I beg to differ. He might be regular (though for 2013, who knows?) but IMHO he's not serviceable. :-)
93 and 103 sort of touch upon this in the general sense that the Royals are criticized for not doing things that they simply cannot achieve at this point (i.e., signing no. 2 starters as FAs), but in general terms, saying things like (no offense) trade Myers to Seattle because they will probably overpay for hitting seems like wishful thinking to me
are youse seriously saying that either anibal sanchez or edwin jackson is as good or reliable a pitcher as jamie shields?
the royals had absolute crap for starting pitching and no obvious solutions coming up in their minors. they had to do SOMEthing. what exactly is it that they were supposed to do, in your opinion? not have any pitching again and DFA francoeur, put myers in the OF and tell the fans who needs pitching with myers out there?
as for trading off wil myers - well, we can all sit here and name off the top hitting prospects who were supposed to come up and kill ML pitching and didn't. for some bizarre reason, they are in luuuvvvv with frenchy - i mean, the guy belongs in the dale murphy hall of fame for Good Guy - but he is a lousy baseball player. so they weren't gonna use myers ANYWAY. (I am NOT defending their use, in any way, of francoeur - so please don't go there) it took alex gordon 4 YEARS to learn how to him ML pitching. moustakos was supposed to be this great prospect and he took 4 years to come up and he didn't hit league average. there aren't real too many pujols/longoria/braun who come up and immediately kill ML pitching and keep killing it.
at some time, a team is supposed to be trying to put a winning team on the field - a team with major leaguers on it. unless, of course, you are the marlins or astros. there is a difference between always dumping all of your prospects for 3 months of worn out major leaguers (see the astros and aubrey huff) or 5 of em for an overpaid underachiever like miggy EFF tejada - and always waiting and waiting and waiting for all your prospects to suddenly magically form this good team, which seldom happens.
He didn't need to be protected from the Rule 5 draft yet, so he was left off the 40 man roster.
I think the point is that Myers + (Sanchez or Jackson) > Shields + Francoeur. The Royals decided they had to improve by improving their starting pitching, but a run on offense is the same as a run on defense (almost).
In 99% of all the mistakes you will ever make, see, or hear about, the line "We had to do SOMETHING" will come up at some point.
In this case, the Royals really didn't have to do something. Myers is a righthanded right fielder. He matches up directly with their biggest need. Pitching arguably *isn't* their biggest need, because they've got Duffy and Paulino coming off the DL in midsummer.
But then so could Shields. While his ability to start 33 games year after year is impressive, it also means he's got a lot of mileage on his arm now. Him going the way of Carlos Zambrano (without the nuttery) isn't some unthinkable proposition either.
Right. I think the theory behind the trade is a good one, but the actual value was a bad one. They should have tried other things - trade for Chris Capuano, trade only for Davis, maybe bid for Ryu since he then can't sign elsewhere.
This. Plus the Royals didn't do themselves any favors by publicly announcing that they were going to trade Myers for a pitcher.
As others have noted, he turned them down becaus he wanted $12M+ per year. As such, a three-year contract for less than he wanted was less attractive to him than a one-year contract with a higher AAV.
The Pirates do have a legitimate problem attracting free agents, but Jackson isn't an example of that.
Meanwhile, Odorizzi is the one whose loss hurts KC the most, I think. Low ceiling, high floor -- the Royals need solid pitching in their pipeline, and he was the closest to a 'sure thing' for a reasonable back-end starter they had. But he's arguably the major value in this trade, not Myer.
I'm surprised to find myself on the contrarian end of this one at BBTF. I have little regard for Moore as a GM, generally. But this isn't Omar Minaya burning Montreal to the ground by dealing Cliff Lee, Brandon Phillips and Grady Sizemore for half a season of Bartolo Colon, either.
That's fair, but if there is no team willing to pay a steep price for Myers, then don't trade him. And if you can't sign #2 starters, there are other more creative ways to get good pitching. Why not take Mark Buerhle on in a salary dump? Why not take a gamble on Tommy Hanson? Heck, even a cheaper FA like Joe Blanton may not be a #2, but he's a big upgrade from what you have.
And while I agree that its not as easy as saying "overpay for a free agent and they'll come here", I will remind everyone they did sign Gil Meche.
Or, if you offer the biggest posting fee for a pitcher from an Asian league, they can't pick another team over you.
Neither of whom has proven anything in the majors yet, let alone that they can handle a full-season rotation load as anything more than the rest of the back-of-the-rotation fodder that the Royals have been running out there.
James Shields is a legitimate front-of-the-rotation guy that the Royals don't have. Chris Capuano isn't, Wade Davis isn't, and who knows whether Ryu is. I don't think that the Royals could have gotten that guy anywhere else.
It's an overpay, to be sure - but in the Royals' position, I think it's defensible.
I also agree that if Dayton Moore is being put into a win-or-else position that Glass should have just gone ahead and fired him now, but given that he didn't I really think that Dayton's done a decent job operating under the parameters he's been given.
-- MWE
Having said that, I just heard the Effectively Wild podcast this morning (it included an interview of Mike Petriello of Dodgers Blog Mike Sciosia's Tragic Illness) and I was a little surprised when they mentioned that quite a number of teams are willing to take money in salary dumps right now (I can listen up the exact quote if need be). So I don't think it's as clear cut as that.
As to Meche, a sparrow does not a summer make.
I would argue Myers is more likely to flop than Shields simply because he's a prospect. We can all list off any number of prospects that busted. I think a big reason this trade is being so widely panned is the two teams involved. On one side you have an organization that has been run as well as any in baseball in the last several years and on the other side an organization that has been as bad as any for an awfully long time. I think if this deal were in the other direction there would still be criticism of Tampa for dealing Myers away but it would be tempered with "gee, I wonder if they see something dicey in Myers' game."
Shields is one of my favorite pitchers in the game, but he's had one ace-level year in the last 4, in front of one of the best defenses in baseball. I'm not sure he is that guy.
But Moore doesn't have time for that. From the quotes and all that, Moore's job and impatience from casual fans or some other source brought this trade about. I think he believes his lineup is good enough to produce an above-average offense, that the bullpen is good, and he only needs to get an average rotation to contend. I think he's wrong. They've got huge holes at 2B, RF, and probably CF, and only hope at 1B and 3B. The only guys they can count on are Perez, Butler and Gordon.
They are behaving as if they have a complete lineup. There has been no hint of shoring up 2B or the OF. Maybe these moves pay off with a decent rotation, but if they have three guys in their infield hitting .220 and 2/3 of their outfield with a .630ish OPS, they will still lose a lot of games. They have put themselves in the position where they are absolutely hopeless if Hosmer and/or Moose fails, where keeping Myers mitigates that risk considerably. My feeling was always that he was the best of the bunch.
Kill me now.
What position?
The position where they're still a good year or two from fielding a good lineup? Because, Shields will be gone by then.
The only "position" is that Moore is one more 70 win season from the unemployment line.
And the list of good pitchers whose arm went after logging a bunch of innings is short?
I'd much rather have Niese/Wheeler than Shields/Davis. Ugh.
Why? Shields > Niese, and while Wheeler is probably going to be > Davis, I doubt that difference in 2013 is enough to make up the difference between Shields and Niese.
-- MWE
-- MWE
Probably b/c they're both under team control for a long time.
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