User Comments, Suggestions, or Complaints | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Advertising
|
Demarini, Easton and TPX Baseball Bats
|
AllianceTickets.com has cheap MLB Tickets. Get all your Colorado Rockies Tickets, Seattle Mariners Tickets, San Francisco Giants Tickets and all your favorite baseball tickets here. We also carry cheap Denver Broncos Tickets, Seattle Seahawks Tickets and Denver Nuggets Tickets. |
For wholesale prices on baseball gifts and equipment, check these stores out! |
Page rendered in 0.3942 seconds
50 querie(s) executed
Reader Comments and Retorts
Go to end of page
Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.
1. FJ Posted: July 18, 2006 at 01:24 PM (#2103169)And I'm not just saying that because I have him on my fantasy team and he'd probably improve his R, HR, and RBI totals if he played half his games in the Skydome with that lineup around him :p.
F
Well...it does...or is the writer suggesting that Ricciardi has a hole in his calculator that doesn't allow him to evaluate shortstops but does O.K. on other positions? The Mets couldn't find a decent third baseman for, what, 25 years? How many GMs was that? It happens.
I would be curious to see what Tampa would want for him, and if Toronto would have the ability to sign him to a multi-year deal.
I hate Steve Simmons and his unsightly eyebrow.
Despite their SS woes, though, the Jays have a great offense this year, and JP should get credit for that. With Halladay, Burnett, and Lilly as a pretty good 1-2-3 (much better than any other 1-2-3 in the AL east), they could make things interesting for the Yanks and the Sox down the stretch.
At least he got a pretty good second baseman out of it. Yes, JP traded Felipe Lopez. I think it was part of the trade that brought in Lilly.
With perfect hindsight the Jays should have held onto Cesar Izturis. They have a good enough offense that they could use a glove man batting 9th. They could probably get an Izturis from an LA area team at the trade deadline.
I like Maicer but with Cabrera signed for two more and playing well, Aybar ready and Wood on the way the Angels could afford to deal him. Not sure what the return should be. Maybe Brandon League? That would be a similar deal to one we did in spring training, Callaspo for Jason Bulger.
If Mussina, Wang and Johnson don't outperform those three over the next 11 weeks, I'd be very surprised. And I'm a Jays fan. They are certainly not much better.
I'm not really sure actually. Certainly some credit... but how much?
A lot of the hitters were inhereted. I don't give him credit for glaus at all. That credit either goes to ownership, or it is a negative for not just signing him the year before and keeping your trade chits.
I'm not sure how much credit to give for overbay.
Zaun and Molina yes he gets credit. Hill and McDonald he gets what ever credit is given and might be negative...
It's a tough evaluation.
League seems like too much to ask for Maicer - even though he's not much of a prospect, he was the Jays top rated prospect going into 2005, I think. Even though his performance has sucked, i think his stuff is supposed to be pretty good still. he seems like the type of guy that a team should overvalue relative to his intrinsic value, just because the risk/return on a guy like that is so different than a guy like maicer izturis. alex rios would have been in that category last year; think how jay fans would feel if he were playing like this for the angels while maicer izturis hit .265 with no pop in toronto.
How can the credit for Hill be negative?
They traded O-Dog, got Glaus, and Hill has been just as good as O-Dog.
As for McDonald... I think the negative would be in how he's handled the SS position, not in the performance of a guy who's supposed to be the back up.
Why wouldn't you give credit for Overbay?
I think one of the underappreciated parts of running a team is how playing time is distributed and how the roster is managed.
Playing time, not money, is the most valuable and limited resource a team has. It is the only way that your players can improve and its the only way you can know that they have. In this regard I think Ricciardi does a superb job.
While I think it's a tough case to make that PT is more valuable than cash, it's still a good point. Unfortunately it isn't a point in JP's favor since it's the managers job, at least traditionally.
My thoughts on it are, he has been productive (.280) but has he been worth the cost to acquire? That where I'm stumbling a bit.
Well I think Hill this year has been a small positive all in all, but not much. We you consider the opportunity cost of drafting him is where it gets sticky. It might be negative, or it might be a small positive. A .250 EQA secondbaseman with a borderline glove (my opinion) isn't really a valuable player.
To be honest I may not be unbiased on the issue. I have trouble being fair, even though I try as I think of him as a snake oil salesman, one small step above Lucky Larry Luchinno.
That's fair.
I suspect that David Bush wouldn't succeed in the AL East, but we can't know that for sure.
If that's true, then yeah, they didn't get much out of that pick. If, however, he can hit better than .250 EQA (which I think he can) and if he can play spectacular defence at 2b (which I think he's doing) then i think the equation has changed. Again, only time will tell on that part though.
I remember your thoughts on JP from an earlier thread. I can see where you're coming from.
Or that Burnett is as fragile as something really, really fragile.
Or that Randy had a great second half last year and a great ten years before that.
I'd rank them something like this. Of course, the only indisputable part of this ranking is that Halladay is the best:
Halladay 9.5
Mussina 8
Wang 7.5
Randy 7
Lilly 6
Burnett 6
That may be the case traditionally but Ricciardi hired Gibbons and, if you watch the team, they are exactly the same page. You can see this in everything that happens on the field from the platooning to the liberal use of BJ Ryan.
This is another area where Ricciardi deserves credit. A lot of teams suffer from a disconnect between the manager and the general manager. This causes teams to be operated at randomly and without direction. Ricciardi has a plan and has taken his shots. The odds were always against him and it may not work out but it won't be foiled by some Jim Tracy like jackass.
He is slugging .589 at home, .411 on the road if that matters to anyone.
David Bush has pitched 130 innings with an ERA of 4.41 and a WHIP of 1.21. 7.6 strikeouts per nine innings. Over the last month he has been very solid for Milwaukee. If he doesn't progress an inch he is eating innings and that has value.
Gabe Gross' line is .256/.355/.457 in 129 at bats. Gross of late has been in something of a platoon with Brady Clark in centerfield and done well. He also has 3 pinch hit homers. So Gross has contributed.
Zach Jackson pitched pretty well in the minors but not so well in the bigs. 38 innings pitched with only 22 strikeouts and 14 walks. 5.40 ERA and earned every bit of it. Too often when he comes inside his fastball tails back over the middle of the plate and KAPOW! But it's early and he hasn't been a Ben Hendrickson type disaster so there is hope.
Prince Fielder, who took Lyle's place, started off well, took a dive in June, and now has picked it back up after the break. He's slugging around .500 with 17 homers. Defense is very rough. But already has more career stolen bases then his Dad. As if that was hard to do. ha, ha.
Those are the actors in this one-act play. I will let others assess who "won". I know Milwaukee is ok with the results. One of the unspoken elements of the trade was that Doug Melvin absolutely KNEW that Lyle would do well no matter where he went. Lyle's 2005 season was undermined by first an injury in early May and then Overbay going into a bit of a funk when Prince was called up in early June. Lyle snapped out of it in July but as the rumors swirled he just didn't cope very well. So Milwaukee had a good inkling that Lyle would return to his 2004 if not better it. But with a kid like Prince and his future the deal had to be done.
Just glad it was with someone in the other league................
1) He wasn't an established major league pitcher so he was undervalued by the market
2) His biggest problem is giving up homeruns
3) Rogers Centre is an extremely good homerun park, in a very good hitting division
4) So Bush was never likely to maximize his value while pitching for the Blue Jays
5) This being the case I think they did pretty well to get a solid regular in the exchange
Sure I would have rather given up Chacin or better yet traded a couple of relievers for Bill Hall and Overbay but not everybody is as lucky as Jim Bowden.
BTW Hill, despite a horrific April is now hitting over .300 and is 2.4 WARP which is a valuable season for a half season work from a guy making the minimum. Now, granted, Bpro's fielding numbers are screwy but in this case I think Hill is, at least, legitimately good.
This is a point FOR keeping him.
One of Toronto's papers has hammered on JP from day one (like the LATimes hammered on Depodesta)- why should they stop now?
First, to Harvey, I'm not sure that anyone had to "win" that trade. I can certainly see from Milwaukee's perspective how the trade has benefited their club, but I believe that the TO front office would say the same thing.
To Rauseo (on Overbay), he has been offensively productive but as someone who watches a fair amount of Blue Jay games, the difference in defence has been astonishing between Overbay and the Hillenbrand/Hinske platoon of last year. In trying to develop two very young middle infielders (obviously Adams is not working out like planned, but let's set that aside for this argument), I believe that it was vital to secure a good defensive 1B, especially as the shortstop's biggest issue was arm strength, followed closely by arm accuracy. This doesn't even include the fact that Glaus is not wonderful at third, and can use some help picking balls every now and then. As an aside, some might say that the Jays should put Glaus at 1B but he wouldn't have agreed to waive the no-trade (IMO) had he not been guaranteed the 3B job...
To have that defensive quality that can also competently hit in the 5,6 or 7 spot has been a serious help to both the O and the D.
Not if your goal is to show how brilliant Snake Riccardi is.
Which is why I wrote that I will let others determine if someone could be called the winner. I know Milwaukee is pleased. And if Zach develops they will be delighted. The real surprise is that Gabe Gross can play center without being a liability. With Brady Clark being in his early 30's and Tony Gwynn Jr. doubtful as a centerfield option having Gross provides some latitude.
If you would read the whole post you would have seen why I believe Bush was never going to realize his full value in Toronto. Therefore trading him before the season when he could acquire the player they needed was good timing. I think Bush is a good pitcher but I don't think he would ever have good results playing in Toronto.
I also don't see why a winner has to be declared. The goal of every trade should be a win-win proposition. Otherwise in the quest for getting the next great steal you will have passed on a number of smaller gains that would have helped your team in the mean time.
Overbay, on the other hand, is perfectly suited to the Rogers centre... he is a moderately powerful left-handed hitter, which means he can hit more than his share of home runs there, and is otherwise a hitter who gets most of his value from OBP, which has greater value in a powerful lineup like toronto's (not that the brewers are lacking for power).
FURTHERMORE, overbay's defensive chops are better suited to the AL, where a team can stick its iron-glove guy in the DH spot rather than having to reserve first base for him...
Let's give JP a break...his team is performing as expected, and even if they come up short on the playoffs, the jays are going in the direction they want to go--by creating some excitement this year and next, they stand a good chance of building the fan base back up to a point where the rogers centre (that they now own) is actually fairly full...at the beginning of this season, perhaps no MLB team was better poised to increase its fan base. If they can raise attendance over the next few years, JP's budget increases will continue, and the burnett/ryan/glaus acquisitions will look more justifiable despite the fact that burnett and glaus almost certainly won't be worth the money in terms of field performance alone...
Besides, the red sox have a pretty crappy shortstop last time i checked...
Not unless he gets every batter to hit pop ups.
Hudson has rated very poorly in defensive play by play measures, and the AZ fans have generally confirmed those poor ratings.
Getting Glaus was a great trade. Maybe even a F***in Jay trade.
And as it does the value of his word shrinks rationally. How did he get himself hired again? Something about being able to field a winner on a 50 million dollar payroll...
I can only assume that "inhereted" means something different than "inherited". Wells, Johnson, and Rios are the only holdovers from the Ash era. Wells is the only one who was an obvious keeper when Ricciardi took over.
wow, you mean JP oversold himself during his job interview, for shame, I bet no other currently sitting GMs have done that.
I wouldn't be suprised if 100% of all "outside hire" Gms (ie: hired from other organizations) made some claim during their interview that they could "turn the team around in X days" (if currently losing); that they could win on $X (if the team ownership is really known to be budget conscious).
and I have little doubt that every such hiree (even Syd Thrift back in the day) believed their claims when they made them.
And the Canadian dollar has gone from about 66 cents American to 88, so that helps too.
I'm not buying this; I see no reason to believe that Glaus was going to consider signing with Toronto as a FA, so that objection does nothing for me. And whether there was ownership pressue to acquire a power hitter or not (I don't know), JP still had to go out and execute it.
Keith Law Chat.
This year's Jays have been a shock, mainly because Rios, Wells, Hinske, Johnson and Cat have outperformed their projections, and by a lot. The Jays are either no hit/good pitch, no pitch/good hit or neither. Their biggest strength going into this season was a deep pitching staff, and that hasn't delivered as none of the young talent has stepped up big. Towers implodes, Chacin gets hurt, Burnett goes down before the season starts, and still, they're only 3 1/2 games out. If they had young talent to deal, I'd say go for it, but the cupboard's a bit bare right now other than League, Rosario, McGowan- guys who are at low point in their trade value.
Second, they couldn't sign Delgado when Delgado became a free agent because the budget wasn't raised until after the deal to buy the Rogers Centre. They didn't decide to sign Koskie et al instead of Delgado, they had no choice.
When there are so many horrible general managers out there to hate it amazes me that people think that JP is one of the bad ones.
One of Toronto's papers has hammered on JP from day one (like the LATimes hammered on Depodesta)- why should they stop now?
Heh... on the other end of the spectrum, the Globe and Mail is pretty much Riccardi's PR vessel, it seems.
Off how the MIL/TOR deals were covered this past offseason, I wouldn't trust them for straight-up coverage without a big grain of salt. Compared to what the other papers and what the Wisconsin papers were reporting - and to what really occurred - they were on another planet (or being misled by their sources).
But they made zero effort. The Delgado thing represents a failure of the organization, not JP in particular. If the deal was coming, they should've pushed it.
JP has acted like part of a vangaurd while making some pretty bad moves. He's not a good GM or a bad one. His teams have been up and down. I pull for the Jays, and it has been frustrating watching the way he uses resources- Adams was a pick with a lot of questions around him from day one.
Jeff Blair at the Globe is pro-Ricciardi when compared with the rest of his colleagues, but he's more of a "just the facts" reporter. Unlike the inhabitants of the Bitter Barn (the nattering nabobs of negativism, I've taken to calling them) he doesn't do much commentary.
As a result, the professional ######## dislike him, and they backstab him, etc. Oh, it's a real healthy atmosphere up in that press box, let me tell ya.
I think almost every GM goes through this. It seems more and more that the best GMs aren't the ones who make brilliant coups, they're the ones who avoid making mistakes.
This year's Jays have been a shock
Almost no one who has been following the team is surprised by their performance. The shape of the performance has been somewhat surprising - a little better run prevention and a little worse run production was generally suspected. They're on pace right now for 91 wins; the most common prediction I saw in the offseason by those following the Jays was 88-92 wins.
Wells, Johnson, and Rios are the only holdovers from the Ash era.
And Johnson and Rios were prospects going nowhere until Ash's gang of clock-punchers was turfed out of the developmental staff.
The same could be said for almost every major-league team this season. Arena baseball sucks.
Well, I've tried to encourage the same, but since he said before 2003 he'd build a serious contender in five years, it's now close put up or shut up time. This year and next year, if he doesn't win, he'll have failed. Most first-time GMs do.
Two high draft picks in the last few years and neither looks like he will be able to hold down the position.
That's the draft. It's not surprising if two mid-first-round picks end up producing one bench-quality guy and one starter who's OK but not an All-Star. In fact, that's about par for the course.
I think of him as a snake oil salesman
Even if he proves to be, I'm happy to have had him. He's played a major role in stabilizing baseball in Toronto; the alternatives would have been much worse. Don't kid yourself; this franchise was in trouble in 2002/03. If it took snake oil to be the magic cure for that, so be it.
You must be Registered and Logged In to post comments.
<< Back to main