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1. Tripon Posted: February 11, 2013 at 08:59 PM (#4367417)You're looking at two 90+ win teams at the top of the NL East already. Something would have to break very, very right.
If Heyman is right as to terms, 4/48 with $12M vesting option, that's a steal for Cleveland.
Don't they still get a sandwich pick? Cle just loses a 2nd rather than a 1st.
I know the Braves don't actually get Cleveland's pick.
No. The Braves' pick just disappears (IIRC). TB also gets a sandwich.
I generally agree. I don't care so much about appearances, but I do think it's generally a good idea to acquire reasonably valued assets that will help your team win. To the point raised in #5, signing Bourn would reduce the amount of crazy #### that would have to happen for the Mets to contend. If you can make a few moves like that, all of the sudden, you're a contender.
Not to mention it's a great deal for Cleveland. They're paying for him to average 2 WAR over the contract.
You're that high on the Phillies?
That sounds high to me, and I generally tend toward optimism in February. The infield actually isn't bad, but that OF is horrendous. Didn't the Cubs just DFA Campana to make room for Hairston)? Even that might be an upgrade over what's on hand.
That's a reasonable deal for the Indians and I would have been happy had the Mets made that deal. How about someone like Grady Sizemore?
Doesn't mean you don't try. Replacing Colin Cowgill with a guy who has been worth over 14 WAR the past 3 years is a good way to improve the odds.
At this point, they should be sending spring training invitations to every available outfielder who's started a game in AAA or higher in the past 3 years.
Scott Podsednik, come on down.
I'm excited about the steps forward Flores took last year-- I don't know what the scouts said about his gains, but he's finally showing some real power. He's in the F-Mart boat, in that he has been in the system for so long it's easy to forget he'll only be 21 this year.
Silly. I can see not wanting to lose the #11 pick, but $12M 5 years from now?
He's Grady Sizemore, the Nick Johnson of outfielders. He's going to be out to start every season.
I admittedly ignored the Mets for most of 2012, so I had to look. Which leads me to the obvious question. Who the #### is Mike Baxter?!
The Mets best outfielder? You probably heard of him last year when he crashed into a wall to save Johan's no-hitter, injuring himself in the process, then missing a couple months.
Problem is, the Mets can't make a few moves like that. No money, no talent it makes sense to trade. They're also in exactly the wrong place to sign a guy whose trajectory is likely to be 4-3-2-1 wins. Adding a guy like Bourn in the 2014-15 offseason will probably make a lot more sense.
That's Starting Right Fielder Mike Baxter.
Why would you expect that rapid of a decline from a 30 y.o.?
You're assuming the Mets ever intended to sign Bourn.
edit: why would you not? Anyway, it's not a rapid decline for a good, not great player. It's hard to last into your mid30s in baseball as a regular. Those guys are the exceptions. It's not insult when it's assumed that you won't last past 34 or so. 3.5-4 win players don't typically have nice gentle declines stretching from age 30 to 37.
.
Not really. Mike Baxter sounds like a lawyer from Connecticut.
ESPN says that the reluctance to give up the #11 pick was the issue. I think that's a valid reason, so long as the Mets pick somebody with a higher ceiling than Gavin Ceccini this year.
He averaged almost 5 WAR from 26-29. At this price you're asking him to generate 10 WAR through age 34.
It would require a total collapse for him to be not worth the contract, and then you're out of the deal after 4 years, b/c you bench him and the option doesn't vest.
Rotoworld said that they offered him 4y/48m so it looks like they made him a legit offer.
Who do the Mets have in the mix right now in the OF? Marlon Byrd, Duda, Baxter, Nieuwenhuis, and Cowgill? Is that it? That's going to be awful.
They have Andrew Brown too. He's not very good, but I like him more than Byrd or Cowgill (as a hitter).
Well, if he's almost certain to be worth the deal, and might be a good bit better than that, and they have no OF, why wouldn't they sign him?
Only reason is to reline the Wilpons' empty pockets. Assuming the pick wouldn't be lost.
Of course, if the only difference between signing and not signing is that the Wilpons keep the money, by all means get him. Still, in that scenario, I would have kept Dickey and used the difference between Bourn and Dickey to fill in starting in 2015.
edit: you seem to be under the impression that the Mets are like other, saner baseball teams. I've taken over the last couple of years to see them instead as practitioners of a kind of performance art, meaning I want to be entertained. Dickey was by far the most entertaining Met, so I would have kept him. Waiting for the Mets to win under the Wilpons is like engaging in eternal foreplay. You keep searching for ways to be tittilated, but there won't be a climax.
Bourn could be worth 4/48 and still not be a good idea as a signing. If the thinking is that this team has no chance to contend this year or next, all signing Bourn accomplishes is getting the team a worse draft pick the next couple years, then when the team is ready to contend, it's entirely possible they're stuck with an untradeable fourth outfielder who makes $12 million and impedes improvement elsewhere on the roster.
I don't agree with the thinking, as I think this team is closer to contention than the anti-Bourn crowd feels, but it's understandable.
This cracked me up.
They have their best run of prospects since the Reyes/Wright/Kazmir/Milledge days, that's something worth watching for.
To answer your question, last year's Astros began the year with Schafer, Martinez and Bogusevic in the outfield. They were all below replacement level last year. That's pretty bad, and of the three Martinez is the only one that looked like he might have underperformed - Schafer and Bogusevic were known to be garbage. Their 4th outfielder Justin Maxwell had a very nice year and eventually won a starting job. So, yeah, they might still be better than the Mets.
You left difference-makers LaTroy Hawkins and Brandon Lyon off of your list.
Snagging Marcum was a good move.
Strongly agree with this. And if Alderson concluded the same and began focusing primarily on fun or wacky players, I would support that.
I would agree with you if this were a contract that was likely to significantly hamstring the Mets on the back end. But, even if Bourn were just a 1 WAR player in the last year, that's only $7 mil in deficient value (assuming $5 mil/WAR, which is probably low), and Bourn would still be worth the contract at 4-3-2-1 (which is a very pessimistic assumption). This signing would make the Mets better and they would be acquiring an asset that looks to be undervalued at the moment. Those kinds of moves are good moves any time. Maybe Bourn would have helped the Mets accomplish the unexpected or maybe they would have traded him for prospects or maybe he would have just made the Mets a bit more fun to watch. I'd like any of those things.
The other thing is, you can't expect to become a contender all at once. And the market for professional baseball players isn't terribly liquid. Sometimes you have to make a move when a good move is available rather than waiting until the perfect time to make a move - the right move might not be there for the making at the perfect time. So you pick up 5 or so 2014 wins with Bourn now, and maybe a few more with trades in season, and maybe a bunch more this offseason after Santana and Bay come of the books (mostly). But if you don't get the 5 now with Bourn, you have a bigger hill to climb and you still have to find a CF.
2009 Braves : Garret Anderson / Nate McLouth / Jeff Francoeur ( Matt Diaz having a miracle season , his last good season, stopped this from being the disaster it seems on paper ).
Edit: To correct myself, Kotsay wasn't traded until late August, and all of Norton's outfield starts came before then. From then on, it was Anderson in CF, with a mixture of Blanco, Infante, and Brandon Jones (I did not at all remember him getting 27 starts that year) in LF.
Bad times.
George Bell, Devon White, Joe Carter, Shawn Green, Shannon Stewart, Vernon Wells, Alex Rios, Jose Bautista. They've always had at least one guy in the outfield, usually two, who was probably a top 25 OF at the time.
What they lacked in quality suck they more than made up for in quality suck.
The Mariners called up Jay Buhner in May, traded Wilson for the mercurial Darnell Coles in July, and called up Griffey in '89. So things turned around pretty quickly.
The '97 Royals OF Was Bip Roberts (90 OPS+), Tom Goodwin (71), a young Jermaine Dye (69), a young Johnny Damon (88), and Yamil Benitez (88).
Ok, I looked at everyone (last 30 years) who had 3.9 to 4.1 WAR in their age 3 seasons
here's what they averaged by age:
30: 4.0
31: 2.5
32: 2.6
33: 1.9
problems:
sample size- just 19 players- age 32 is thrown off slightly by Brett having a monster year
selection bias: the 19 players on average likely had less than 4.0 "true talent" at age 30.
However they also had Moises Alou, who put up another great season at age 38, and they eventually traded for Randy Winn.
FTFY
Yeah, you probably want players who averaged >4 WAR in their 3-4 prior seasons, but then SSS gets even worse.
The 1985 Pirates were pretty bad. Left-to-right on opening day, you had Doug Froebel (.189/.301/.258) filling in for an injured Steve Kemp (.250/.317/.347 in his last season as a regular), the worst season of Marvell Wynne's not-particularly-distinguished career (.205/.247/.258), and a could-not-possibly-give-less-of-a-#### George Hendrick (.230/.278/.313).
That said, the reserves (rookie Joe Orsulak, Mike Brown, Sixto Lezcano, and Bill Almon) ended up being at least half-decent, so it wasn't a complete and total wash once the starters played their way out of the lineup.
1978 Jays - Bob Bailor (82 OPS+), Rick Bosetti (81), Al Woods (79). Otto Velez was very good off the bench though. That was the same outfield in 1979 with pretty much the same results and Velez being good again off the bench.
How bout them 2011 Mariners? Ichiro (86), Carlos Peguero (76), Franklin Gutierrez (54), with reserves Michael Saunders (23) and Trayvon Robinson (67). Mike Carp (125) also played 27 games in LF and Milton Bradley and Casper Wells were decent in very limited action.
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