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EDIT: Ditto
I hear that every year...I'll believe it when I see it. Melancon has minuses coming in, Bailey has injury isssues...etc...etc..
I think Reddick has a ton of upside, he wasn't allowed to hit lefties enough in the MLB, and mostly succeeded when he did. I like his arm and his range. He was unlucky a bit last year and then got rookie jitters when the #### hit the fan in Sept. That's my story and I'm sticking with it. I hope him and Lowrie start the 2012 AS game.
Is Sweeney supposed to be the starting RFer? Holy #### the Sox may have two of the weakest corner OFers in baseball.
What are his options? I'd have to guess it gets tougher every year to find undervalued players, now that everyone is trying to do it.
At this point I'd think he's treading water and hoping for that new revenue so he can even the odds a bit.
EDIT: Coke to RB.
He should write another book.
He could quit and go get a better job.
Head destroyed the Sally League year.
Reddick is an interesting guy. He took a big step forward last year with his plate discipline. If that is for real I think he's a real nice pickup for Oakland, he's got good power, he's solid defensively and he has a cannon for an arm. If that is not for real, well, he's a nice 4th outfielder.
Yeah, but he's a few years removed from his glory days. Selling low isn't very sabermetric.
If the guess that San Jose will have a ballpark ready for 2015 is correct, Beane picked up several players who might contribute to that team. It's a strategy that probably will lead to a couple terrible seasons, and the talent back by no means guarantees a winning team four seasons from now.
Still, it's a coherent strategy, which this White Sox fan can appreciate while waiting for official news of the John Danks extension.
With the Angels and Rangers acquiring Pujols and Darvish, I have to think that Beane knows that he has almost no chance of contending. I can understand a strategy of acquiring prospects now and hoping that he can have a decent nucleus of players to build on when the San Jose stadium becomes a reality. This strategy could also give the A's prime drafting position over the next couple of years. As an Astros' fan, it surprises me that the A's may be bad enough to compete for drafting position with the Astros.
Which is silly. More than one team that looked good on paper fell completely flat in practice. I mean, Tampa Bay doesn't roll over because the Yankees and Red Sox are good (nor do the Jays). Plus there will soon be an additional wild card.
The San Jose thing has got to be it.
Holding on because the price has been higher is one of the most common mistakes in trading. Beane should place a stop-loss on his career in Oakland.
According to Cots this leaves Joey Devine as the only arb-eligible -- was he non-tendered? Doesn't matter much, he'll get less than nothing in arb anyway.
Oops, McCarthy is arb-eligible. Made only $1 M last year, so even with his good year hard to see him above $3.5-4.
So let's call their opening day payroll $27 M plus 16 guys at the minimum (did this go up in the CBA?) so, what, $35 M. And surely Balfour and Fuentes are on the trading block which could put another $9 M in Woolf's pocket.
I don't know. The A's aren't beating the Rangers or the Angels this year, or next year, regardless, and they're not beating the one of them that doesn't win the division as well as whichever two of Boston, New York, or Tampa Bay doesn't win the east, even with two wildcards. They're not going to contend and we all know it. What's the point of trundling around winning 75 games along with the crappy system that 5 years of drafting in the teens gets you? Especially when the ground is already scorched in Oakland and the fanbase is non-existent. Might as well bottom out and build some hope for the future.
Hardly. Bailey is an injured reliever. Reddick provides tons more value unless there's some wonder prospect I don't know about that Reddick is holding back.
Kalish I assume, covering for CF when Ells isn't in the lineup. Sweeny is perfectly cromulent as a 4th OF, plus his OPS+ is extremely OBP heavy, so it is better than it looks. And going from Oakland to Fenway can only help his power numbers.
Reddick could slug over .450 again which would make him power hitter supreme and cleanup man by Oakland's standards.
Sweeney will be fine against RHP; .350/.400 with very good D isn't the end of the world, certainly better than anything they got from Drew last year. Between his & Crawford's struggles against LHP, though, they're in bad need of a lefty masher 4th OF.
And give up that sweet, sweet little ownership slice he has with the A's? Yeah, that's not too likely. Another team would have to make a pretty overwhelming offer for that to happen, and that offer isn't coming.
But still...this is a team bereft of Major League talent at this point.
They got off-track during the pseudo-contending years of 2007-08 and are still paying for it. But even without those two years they aren't/weren't going to contend in the AL West for a while unless a deus ex machina like Joey Votto in Cincy were to fall in their laps in the draft. They haven't been in contention to win the division for a few years with the Angels and now Texas dominating, so they've been playing for the wild card ... right smack in the middle of the 3-headed monster cycle in the AL East. They should have blown it up a few years ago rather than waiting until now, but better late than never.
Reddick sucks. I hope I'm wrong but I just don't see him ever being better than, I don't know, Ryan Sweeney.
IMO the A's gave up the only valuable piece in this trade.
Great googly-moogly, I hadn't thought of that. Ms, As and Astros all in the same division -- at least one and usually two of the Rangers and Angels will be in the playoffs for the next 5-6 years.
Meh. I suspect the 109 OPS+ he put up last year is his upside unless he improves. Which, at 24, it's not out of the question that he'll do.
I get that the Sox needed to acquire a reliever, and they needed to save money, but I think Reddick's already better than Bailey. Hopefully Bailey can actually stay healthy for a season, and maybe the Sox have reason to be skeptical about Reddick, but I don't love this trade. It feels like a "they had to do this" trade rather than a good acquisition.
Miles Head is probably just organizational filler - bad-body 1B with a DH glove - but Raul Alcantara is a high-upside arm who pitched well against college draftees last year as an 18-year-old. Throws in the low 90s with good projectibility.
EDIT: It turns out Reddick's ZiPS projection totally blows. So the baseline on Reddick should indeed perhaps be "sucks". (Or "blows", to be consistent about it.) I think he's taken a real step forward as a hitter, but I should say that my first sentence is clearly wrong- Bailey will project significantly better than Reddick.
I understand not blowing it up until now. When the Angels were dumb, and it wasn't clear how smart Texas was, it seemed like the As had the components to compete. But they didn't have great luck with injuries, gave up on some players a year too soon (Eithier, CarGo) and just missed any window possible.
Now the Angels have just used their overwhelming strength in an intelligent way (at least for the next few years) and the Rangers keep doing smart stuff, it's foolish to keep players who will probably be too expensive for their value by the time the As move into the San Jose, and it's smart to load up the farm system with lottery tickets so he has something to build on and make deals with in 2015.
Not sure why Reddick, but Reddick sure seems like a better, cheaper version of Sweeney, using the old 3-2-1 weighting on his three years (and weighting for ABs) gives you a 95 OPS+, exactly the same as Sweeney's career. But Reddick is 25, while Sweeny is 27, and Reddick was the better minor league hitter and statistically seems to be a decent defensive player, obviously given a tiny sample size.
I didn't have time to check but Bailey had a pair of 200+ ERA+ years and Reddick snuck over 100 OPS+ last year on a smallish sample. Bailey, when healthy, pitches as well as Papelbon. Reddick is a 3rd OF on a mediocre team, as is Sweeney.
Let's talk about Alcantara in 2013 when his ability is visible as there are a number of live arms in the minors who bag groceries for a living five years later.
And Bailey has a career .240 BABIP over 174 innings, so he's clearly repealed the laws of Saberdynamics!
And he's often easily hurt, so he's got that going of him.
That, along with Bailey's cost, was one of the reasons the Sox only had to give up Reddick.
I mean, why keep Brett Anderson on this team?
Significant (relatively speaking, of course) contracts in 2012 according to Cot's:
Fuentes - 5m plus 500k buyout
Balfour - 4m plus 300k buyout
Kurt Suzuki will make 6.45m with a 8.5m club option ($0.65M buyout) for next year.
Dallas Braden will make 3.3m and go to arbitration one more year.
Brett Anderson makes 3m, then 5m, then has an 8m option.
That's all that's left that isn't dirt cheap. Brandon McCarthy had a nice year and will stand to get a raise in arb but that's it. Fuentes and Balfour are almost certainly on the way out, even if the A's have to eat something. But I can't imagine the other three leaving soon. They need some people to pitch and catch in 2012, and those guys are not immediately replaceable. One may think Suzuki would be traded but then why dump Landon Powell? Catching doesn't grow on trees.
Although, part of this is my perverse desire to see the A's go 36-126, or something ridiculous.
Can any Oakland fans speak to Suzuki's reputation or lack therof as a signal caller/"pitcher's catcher"/captain/teammate?
It's solidly above average. Whether or not this is an actual skill is unclear, but Suzuki certainly gets reputational props (although not Jeterian outright gushing) over his handling of the pitching staff and gregarious persona.
Bobby V. style! Sweeny can contribute, especially if you spot his AB's carefully.
The Red Sox have 4 closers!?!?!
############.
*flips desk*
Bill James has him quite a bit higher, at c. a .770 OPS, which (rough guess) is probably close to 100 OPS+. He's also pretty toolsy and could develop significantly.
Billy Beane really likes making trades, what else is there to this deal. He's not a great gm, he's an above average gm who has had his team in rebuild mode for 5 years, and enjoys trading his major league quality players for the hope of someday getting a prospect who will become an all-star potential player that he'll trade before he reaches that potential in the hopes of getting two semi-useful bench players.
not really, there are a ton of established veteran players who are useful for one year or injury plaqued pitchers who can be had very cheaply. Heck he could honestly probably sign both Jaime Moyer and Pedro Martinez today without spending more than 3 mil guaranteed, and it will probably ultimately be a plus move. At the worse it brings in 5000 fans extra for the season.
Hmmm. I'll be surprised if he doesn't exceed that significantly.
It seems like a decent deal for Boston. They already have Crawford in LF, Ells in CF, and Kalish--who has a very similar profile to Reddick's but with better discipline--in RF. Alcantra and Head are fringy so it's no surprise to see them in there.
He's well regarded by the pitching staff and has guided a young and talented staff to good success. He's smart and does a ton of preparation and knows how to maximize the stuff for every pitcher. He's regarded as a team leader. His best skill as a catcher is probably his ability to block pitches in the dirt. He's very nimble and athletic for a catcher. He's not been terribly successful throwing people out the last couple years, though some of that is on the pitchers. Braden has an excellent pickoff move, but the others are mediocre or worse.
He's got a little pop in his bat, but it comes from being a dead pull hitter on mistakes. He rolls over a lot and putting him in the middle of the order as the A's have done has negatively affected his offense. His discipline has gotten worse.
Bill James projections tend to use an unrealistically high league offensive baseline.
Reddick is 24.
And will be 25 next year. That's generally within a player's prime, right?
someone suggested Beane has no choice, waiting for a new stadium. What a weak excuse. Beane has been trading young talent for even younger talent for years now with nothing to ever show for it. Nobody ever holds him to account. Back in 2006, when they got young, there was talk how competitive the As would be in 2009-2010, same story in 2008, how the As were positioned for 2011-2012.
Whatever...
I don't think people are surprised he traded Bailey, they're noting that the talent he got back in return is quite meh. It's not like Beane has been stockpiling #1 prospects from other orgs or anything.
It's hard to say how the 2012 A's are made better by this trade and it will take at least reasonable luck for the 2015 A's to be made better by this trade. But he has to hit the jackpot one of these days doesn't he?
Nobody ever holds him to account.
Oh for crying out loud, people have been holding him to account for more than a decade. I don't think even Epstein or Cashman have been under as much scrutiny. The man can't even put in a waiver claim without somebody calling him a fraud.
SSSHHH!! The trick is to NOT respond to LotS's rants. Then he just goes back to the NCAA and NFL threads to rant about the NFL.
1) Reddick comes up for a week in late May, goes 5-for-12, and gets sent down for a few weeks.
2) As Drew continued to suck, there was a ton of chatter about giving Reddick a chance to play every day. Drew then goes on the DL (or something), Reddick comes up, and he goes bananas for a little while. Between June 19th and July 25th, he plays in 28 games, the team goes 19-9 over that stretch, and he has a slash line of .364/.414/.659, with very good defense and a uniform constantly getting dirt all over it. After five years of JD Drew, this hustling, slashing, emotions-on-the-sleeve kid becomes an instant fan favorite.
3) Reality begins to set in, but because the team plays very well through the summer, everybody's happy. Also, because his first month was so awesome, it takes a long time for his season stats to come back to Earth. Between July 26th and the end of the season, he appears in 54 games (40 starts), making 164 PAs. In those PAs, he hits .222/.268/.340, 9 BBs, 32 Ks.
4) Overall, it doesn't look half-bad: .280/.327/.457 - not great, but OK. Then you look at the 19 BBs, 50 Ks in 278 PAs, and all this BS about his improved plate discipline becomes unchanged.
I saw him play all season - there is no way Kalish isn't better, and I'll bet that Sweeney may well have a better season than Reddick. The Sox weren't going to play Reddick, anyway, and they got a closer and an OF that'll be better than Reddick in 2012 and 2013. I love the trade.
Cherrington hasn't made a lot of splashy moves, but I like what he's done. Guys like Lowrie and Reddick were not going to get much better, and do not meet their roster needs. Aviles is a better fit than Lowrie, and Kalish is a better fit than Reddick - and they got two above-average relievers in the exchange. Right on, Ben!
Not only is the talent he got back meh
Well it's not like they've been trading blue chip players. Cahill is a pretty decent pitcher with obvious flaws. Gio is a pretty good pitcher with obvious flaws. Bailey is a very good but injury-prone closer. And that's it - they've got nothing else worth trading. The A's problem is that the cupboard is completely ####### bare. Call it Beane being a bad GM, call it regression to the mean after the massive farm run from 1998-2004, but they've got nothing. Regardless of how they got here, they're doing exactly what we all say a team should do if they're in the middle malaise: blow it up. You get no points for finishing in the middle of the pack, in fact in hurts you.
The logical way would be to stock up on high ceiling position player prospects
If they go pitching heavy in this draft again I will be officially convinced they've gone insane. You can never have too many of them, but good god. They need to draft hitters. Hitters. No matter what. Hitters.
I thought prime was 27-28.
Ill take that bet
Agreed. But if all you do is trade Bailey and Sweeney for a guy who might be Bailey and a younger version of Sweeney (that you'll trade in three years) all you've done is save money and, if things go right, you're in the same spot three years from now. It's not that it's a bad deal, it's that it's a pretty pointless deal in a long string of pretty pointless deals.
No, that's peak. Prime is usually 3-5 years each way around it.
I'll miss Reddick, but overall it's a fair deal I guess.
On that basis there is some hope that they can keep Bailey generally healthy. Endless counterpoints make that a very small hope.
To be fair, I offered a bet that Sweeney may well have a better season than Reddick. On that lame basis, I've already won the bet, because he may not, as well...not intended...
That said, Reddick swung at too many pitches out of the strike zone prior to 2011, and after his first month of action in 2011, he was back to the same habits. As a bench OF with a good glove, decent speed, a little pop, left-handed bat, cost-controlled for several years to come - that's OK. But that's what he is.
The fact that Bailey (and Melancon) allow the Sox to try Bard and/or Aceves in the rotation is a pretty big plus, and I like this trade a lot. It is rearranging talent in the organization in a more efficient way.
I have a theory, although I don't have the chops to actually look deeply at the data. It used to be that you could trade your stud at the trading deadline for a couple of top prospects. Then it changed so that in order to get top prospects you had to trade the guy in the offseason before his free agency. Now even that's moved back some. But you can still get a haul by trading young cheap guys.
So here's what the A's do. They know that if you have, say, 12 projectable studs in your minor leagues, that usually only 3 will really turn into studs. Having 3 studs doesn't make the A's competitive. They need 6 or more. So they start with their 12 prospects. 2 years later, no surprise, they only have 3 studs. So you trade the studs to re-stock your minors and get back up to 12. If 2 years later you only get 3 studs again, repeat. One of these times you're going to get 6 studs out of your crop, and that's when you go for it.
If you don't do that, then when your 3 studs have developed, you only have, let's say, 4 prospects in your minors that project. So the help that's coming for the studs will probably only be one guy. Then you're the Royals (OK, they developed Greinke but no support and had to let him go while never competing).
Basically, Beane's trying to hit the jackpot like with Hudson, Mulder, Zito, Giambi, Tejada, etc. If you don't hit, you rebuild as quickly as possible.
Like I said, probably a theory full of holes, but it could be his attempt at a new type of success cycle.
Not only that, but when the part of my brain that holds park factors chimed in on my hastily made offer...I went 'ulp'.
I think it's a matter of probability. It certainly is possible that Reddick will develop and/or has made legitimate improvements to his plate discipline and that he will break out. This definitely could be a big win for the A's. The problem is that that likelihood is at best no better or worse than the likelihood that he'll fan 35 times in his first 100 at bats and be back at AAA by June.
One reason I don't like this for the A's is that Reddick, a high strikeout hitter, is going to a high strikeout ballpark. Put him a place like Arlington, Yankee Stadium or Camden Yards and I think those ballparks are well suited to his left-handed power. Oakland is probably as bad an option for him though. I don't think this is a situation where you say "oh, his skill set might play better here" (like the annual "his swing is made for Fenway" acquisitions the Sox seem to make).
You're right though, to state categorically that he WILL be this 90-95 OPS+ player and no other options exist is too narrow a view. I think it is the most likely outcome though and thus the one worth discussing when anaylzing this deal.
Looking at the Red Sox ZiPS projections, they have a 1% chance that Reddick is excellent next year, and an 86% chance he will be poor. I'd like to believe, after watching Reddick for a year, that I'm smarter than ZiPS. But I suspect my wanting to believe Reddick has taken a big step forward in 2011 - either because I enjoyed watching him play for my favorite team, or because I want to believe I can detect big steps forward that the numbers cannot - will lead me toward overestimating his upside.
(I've been reading this book lately.)
Edit: Just checked out hit tracker to see if it confirmed my anecdotal memory, and 5 of his 7 homers last season were 400'+.
I love MCoA, one of my favorite posters on BBTF, but I disagree on this one. I saw Reddick almost every day last year (as I suspect you did, too), and as much as I was rooting for him, his strike zone judgement was really poor at the end of the year. The Red Sox, weird as it is to say, are looking for low-dollar options to solve their problems right now, including in right field. Reddick is obviously a low-dollar option, and they know what they have in him. If they thought he had virtually any chance of being a significant part of their 2012 RF solution, they would've kept him - but they didn't, because:
1) they think Kalish is better (I agree),
2) they think Reddick is not only not a starter, but doesn't have a core strength that would act as a nice compliment to a platoon partner, and
3) they think his value will never be any higher than it is right now.
If he develops, he's a league-average outfielder playing in a lousy park for his skill set. He could be a decent starter next season, and struggle to hit .260/.335/.440. I personally think he'll be a strikeout machine next year.
But Reddick's upside is definitely All-Star quality. He has a plus glove and a plus arm, and big time major league power. He has to learn how to hit, still, in order to reach that upside. You're right he probably won't, and is highly unlikely to do so next year. But the upside is the issue I was discussing, and anyone with Reddick's tools can't be characterized as a "low-ceiling guy."
He could be an All-Star this year, with the team having traded away their 2009, 2010, and 2011 All-Stars.
I hate this phrase, but that's an undervalued asset - the team that recognizes you get NOTHING from being in the middle of the success cycle, whatever the win-now fanbase might want. You don't contend, and you don't rebuild your farm system. It's the worst place to be. It's all about being at one end or the other - the middle is a killer, particularly for a low-payroll team that can't buy its way out.
if all you do is trade Bailey and Sweeney for a guy who might be Bailey and a younger version of Sweeney (that you'll trade in three years) all you've done is save money and, if things go right, you're in the same spot three years from now.
In three years they're going to be moving into a new stadium in San Jose, or at least that's what the world was told last week. At which point if Reddick is indeed valuable he won't be traded.
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