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Also, I can't wait for the mudslinging to start. Youkilis is going to be a walking soundbite now that he's finally out of Boston.
From the White Sox' point of view, it'd sure be nice from the point of view of Youk's health if their two best players didn't play 1B and DH. However, the upside is that their 3B situation is so horrible that Youk will probably still be their best option even if his head falls off.
Ew, take that back.
This trade puts a lot of pressure on Middlebrooks, especially if he wakes up one day and realizes he's Mark Reynolds.
I'd much rather have seen the Sox had gotten a long shot prospect rather than a couple of MLB mediocrities.
1. By the middle of the week, we'll hear how the clubhouse chemistry has suddenly improved.
2. Somehow, I thought he'd end up in Oakland for a couple of middling prospects.
3. I'm seeing this as an amazingly poor trade for the Red Sox. The problem with getting someone like Lillebridge is this will just tempt Valentine into actually using him. I'd have rather seen a mediocre LOOGY than Stewart.
And to be fair, Youkilis is a guy who developed a skill (power) out of nowhere, so maybe Middlebrooks can do the same.
Stewart's a guy who's never pitched as well in the majors as he did in the minors. It wouldn't surprise me if he turned into a solid relief pitcher.
Cherington traded Youkilis because Valentine told him to? Interesting.
-Youkilis clashed openly with Valentine early in the year
-Youkilis has some history of clubhouse problems (see Manny)
-there have been stories about conflict between players and coaches in the clubhouse
-Valentine's comments about benching Youkilis were sort of weird
-Valentine has benched Youkilis
-Youkilis was traded for a minimal return
The trade is weird enough to demand some explanation beyond its baseball logic, and clubhouse issues are a non-crazy explanation if you need something along those lines.
That's not to say any evidence exists that it's the case.
You're surprised? You don't remember Nomar? Or Manny? The Red Sox fan turn is as epic as it is predictable.
The Boston press is entirely predictable in its treatment of ex- and soon-to-be ex-players, but the fans have been weirdly equated with Dan Shaughnessy even though the actual behavior of the fans doesn't support your claim in the first place.
**With a "plays for the Yankees" exception, it should be added.
The thing speaks for itself. Cherington got jack sh^t back in this trade. Which means that he did it for non-baseball reasons. Which means that Valentine was likely the non-baseball reason.
No, there's no "evidence," because none of us work for the Red Sox. But there's no evidence that anyone with half a brain cell makes this trade for baseball reasons, either.
And of course, I'm not a Red Sox fan, so there's no 'turn' against him here on my part. I don't really know or care about Youkilis as a personality (though generally speaking, when it comes to these sorts of things, I subscribe to the one single semi-intelligent thing Bill Maher has ever said: "all rumors are true"). I'm simply drawing the obvious conclusions based on the external evidence: clashes btw. Valentine and Youkilis earlier in the season, countless thinly-veiled media stories about his bad attitude, and the fact that Sox literally dumped him within 48 hours of his return from the DL (i.e. the moment he was dumpable) for pennies on the dollar. Doesn't take a genius to figure out that Cherington et al. took a look at an aging, injury-prone Youk with a pissy attitude vs. their new star manager Valentine and decided to go with Bobby V.
It later became clear that the deal was actually done for baseball reasons. Nomar was no longer capable of fielding his position, and he was moved to 3B, then to 1B within two seasons.
It's also entirely plausible that Cherington and Valentine think Youkilis is cooked, that his hip problems have ruined his swing and slowed him in the field. And maybe lots of other folks around baseball also think that - and maybe his medical records make it pretty clear - and so Youkilis' trade value is a lot lower than his current projections.
This is why I'm taking a wait-and-see approach.
Well, we pretty much know for a fact that his trade value was low, because they actually traded him, and got nothing for him. So that question has been answered. I highly doubt Cherington was turning down better offers, or not shopping around for them.
The real question is, why trade him when his trade value is zero. They were far better off playing him. I thought they were trying to contend. And that's where Valentine comes in.
As you pointed out in 29, I obviously mis-read Eso's post.
I'm just saying it is possible that these facts are true and the Cherington knows them, and it's not certain that these facts are "Kevin Youkilis was a problem in the clubhouse and Bobby Valentine hates him". It could be other facts instead.
Or it could be a crap trade.
I do think it's more implausible than you do, or even MCoA does.
I simply don't think Valentine has anywhere near the suction required after the way the season has gone so far to say "Hey, trade this guy" and the GM would be all "Hey, ok, gotcha chief." I think it's likely that Cherington thought he was done, asked Valentine what he thought, and was probably agreed with. That's about it.
I disagree that the trade happened because "Valentine can't work with a player like Youkilis".
(I also think it seems like a pretty bad trade at the moment.)
("Shtick"?)
As for not possibly being done for baseball reasons...Lowriecoughcouh...Reddickcoughcough...but the reasonable responce is "What did you expect to get for him"
On its face, it's idiotic. They paid 5mill or so for players more likely to return negative value, and lost any back-up for AGon and WMB. If you're going to give him away, you may as well keep him. i fully expect him to hit .790 or more OPS for the rest of the year. Give away Youk, pay for him and keep Punto? Insane.
Seems obvious. Early on, many here (including me) opined that the only way a Youkilis trade could work would be as part of a 3-way deal. :-)
This is what happens when a team boxes itself into a corner where they "need" or "have to" trade a guy. It's just the way these things snowball.
AKA Red Sox fans.
They paid 5mill or so for players more likely to return negative value
And this is pretty weird. They saved $2 M. OK, I guess that's better than releasing him outright but it makes so little difference in the grand scheme of things. I suppose it makes it a bit easier to grab somebody mid-season if need be.
Or maybe they do think Stewart can be decent.
I don't know why you're focused on what opposing teams thought of him (again, answer: very little). The fact is they got nothing for him. So they must have traded him for Bobby V and/or Cancer reasons.
I mean, it's pretty clear that his real value is higher than his perceived value. So you don't trade him.
I dunno. It just seems that if the deal was "We'll give you Youk and $5.6 million, what can we get back?", the Red Sox should have been able to get more than the 25th guy on the roster and a marginal reliever who aren't even particularly young.
I have to believe out of 28 other teams, there had to be a better deal out there, but I could be wrong.
Well, Alfonso Soriano was available ...
a wild-card won't come out of the Central.
True dat. Toronto, 5th in ALE, 37-35; White Sox, 1st in ALC, 38-34.
OK, it's possible, Cleveland is just 2 out of the 2nd wild card. But sheesh.
1) Youkilis is done - or, at least, there's a pretty good chance he's done. He is not the player he was a few years ago, because of injuries, age, and his weight.
2) There are four positions you could have even fathomed of him playing in 2012: 3B (but Middlebrooks is playing too well not to keep him in the lineup, and Youkilis' range at 3B is severely limited); 1B (but Gonzalez is there); DH (Ortiz is having a great season, including hitting very well against lefties); and LF (which was always a stretch, but with his health and age, was not feasible in 2012; also, Nava is hitting way too well to keep off the field). There is nowhere to play him.
3) He pretty obviously is not very good at sitting on the bench. As a longtime Sox fan, I love his intensity, but even fans of Youkilis could see how he would be a little much with some of his teammates. The thought of him sitting half the time, with some young gun playing at third every day, is not an image that would likely work for long...).
4) He's a free agent at the end of the year. They aren't going to pick up his 2013 option, and he makes a lot of money with the option, anyway. They've got half a season left - is trading a guy hitting, like, .225, that big a deal?
5) This is a team that traded Scutaro explicitly because they wanted to save some money. I know the team is saving "only" $2 million in this deal, but that may be what allows them to make a deadline deal for a useful bullpen arm without going into luxury tax time, which they clearly want to avoid at all costs. And they pick up an arm and a useful utility guy.
I think people that are surprised by the lack of return to the Sox in this deal are vastly overestimating Youkilis' value to the Red Sox, or Youkilis' abilities, at this point. He is done. The White Sox are one of the few teams with such bad 3B play right now that even Youkilis is an upgrade, so good for them. But it doesn't mean very many other teams felt the same way - because they didn't.
http://espn.go.com/boston/mlb/story/_/id/7036983/underachieving-boston-red-sox-flunked-chemistry
EDIT: To elaborate, he can play all over the field, plays great defense, is a great baserunner and is fast. Yeah, if he's getting regular at-bats you're probably in trouble. But having a guy who is so versatile that he can spot start, pinch run, pinch-hit vs. lefties or be a defensive replacement anywhere (except C) is extremely valuable, IMO. Numbers will never capture that value.
That's because they're mostly in AAA.
(Kidding.)
Yes, but that's because few non-pitchers are able to stay in the majors with a 70 OPS+, let alone be featured in a trade for a player who has provided 4-5-6 WAR the last three years. EDITED.
The trade is beyond ridiculous for the Red Sox.
And that's why it really hurt.
Early on I thought an AL central team had a shot at that second wild card given the relative weakness of the division and the unbalanced schedule. But given how the Angels have performed, I don't think it's going to happen. I figure the likeliest wildcard outcome is Angels + AL East #2.
The playoff odds in ESPN seems to agree: AL East: ~222%, AL Central ~ 115%, AL West - 163% So that means they figure 20% chance of 2 wildcards coming out of the East, about a 65% chance one out of the west, and about a 15% chance of one out of the central. I realize you can't strictly interpret the percentages this way, but it isn't far off.
BBTF's Newsblog Discussion :: Valentine: Youkilis not as much into the game
http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/newsstand/discussion/valentine_youkilis_not_as_much_into_the_game
That doesn't sound right to me. If at least two teams both want a player who's going to be traded, one has to outbid the other. And then the other one has to counter-offer until basically both teams reach the point where they're offering what they think is fair value and won't go any higher.
This is no less true of a player that "has to" be traded than any other.
Which is not to say that Cherington managed to get the best possible deal he could have (I've no idea) or that it wasn't foolish to deal Youkilis now when his value was so low (I again have no idea). Just that even a player that everyone knows is going to be traded can still be traded for solid value so long as at least two teams want that player.
Yea, who did the Sox even get for Manny? Does anyone remember?
If you were GM and the White Sox came up to you and said "We'll sell you Lillibridge and Stewart for 5mill...but here's the deal. You can't use that Youkilis guy for the rest of the season." Would you take it?
Also, look at it this way. White Sox upgraded at 3B for nothing. Sox paid 5 mill for players who may provide negative value AND lost depth for that right.
Huh? I don't think the White Sox can accept the 5 million dollars and *not* pay the 7 million owed to Youkilis.
The problem is, that isn't what the Red Sox were trying to do. They were effectively willing to pay you to get him the #### off their team! He wasn't going to play (Middlebrooks, Ortiz, and Gonzalez play in his possible spots), and he's a complete ####### if he has to sit on the bench for any length of time. He is a free agent at the end of the year. They weren't going to resign him. He probably can't play anymore, anyway.
It's more like, "We'll see you Lillibridge and Stewart, and take your pain in the ### of your hands, for $5 million." The Red Sox weren't going to use Youkilis the rest of the season, anyway...which was the problem!
There are tons of guys like him. We make regular fun of Willie Bloomquist for being the 78 OPS+ version of Lillibridge. Miguel Cairo is this guy. Tony Campana is probably better than this guy. Reed Johnson is better than this guy. Nick Punto is better. I will grant he might be better than Darnell McDonald but that is damning with faint praise.
And I'm not sure what it is about his "career" 237/286/433 line against LHP that deserves a reputation as a guy to play against LHP (the ISO is nice). He even throws in a K ever 3 AB overall to make things extra nice.
He's a nice guy to have around for the day-to-day injuries and rest, a perfectly cromulent 25th guy, but pretty much every team has one of these and AAA is full of them. He's basically just another guy with good speed who can't hit. It is hard to tell with guys like this which positions they can still handle and which not (due to limited playing time anywhere) but the Sox have used him predominantly at OF and 1B in 2011-12. He's still presumably a better 2B/3B than Reed Johnson, say, but it's not clear you want him there as anything but a last resort (nor is it clear that you don't).
Fair value means a gain of nothing plus epsilon. If three teams offer diddly-squat that means a 33% chance of getting something for nothing, because he HAS to be traded. You don't even have to coordinate or communicate with the others, just hold back and and hope that the other teams are as cool as you are, if the Brewers go and wreck it by offering something, let them, you have only lost an epsilon.
the concern i would have as a white sox fan is boy does this make the lineup stocked with slow guys. dunn. konerko. aj. viciedo. ramirez isn't slow but his into a fair number of double plays.
but if youkilis really hits and can play third at all ok i guess you live with it.
Yea, who did the Sox even get for Manny? Does anyone remember?
Are either of these meant to be serious? Who was ever talking about Hamels?
Also, Jason Bay, if you were serious. I hope you weren't, though.
I'm sure Boston would have tossed in Scott Podsednik, too -- but that might have upped the cost to include Eric Stults in the deal...
I was not serious about Bay. The Red Sox "had" to trade Manny, and still got a decent (great?) deal for him, so the urgency of this trade shouldn't excuse the piss-poor return.
AL East winning percentage against the AL Central and AL West - .586
AL East winning percentage against the NL - .589
Not really any difference. Obviously the record against other AL East teams in .500.
He's no longer taking Leprechaun Growth Hormone.
That isn't how auctions work, unless there is some form of collusion. If the 'something' you are buying is worth x, 3 people submitting a null bid gets you 1/3 x. If you let somebody else get the 'something' for 1/10 x, when you could have gotten him for 2/10 x, you missed out on 7/15 x for free. That's just dumb, and rational bidders don't act that way, unless they know there is no collusion.
And of course, with more than 3 bidders, the value of the null bid goes down, and the risk that somebody busts your strategy goes up.
I would have preferred that. I wonder if he would have been claimed.
I really can't understand this deal. If you pay salary, get something useful, if you don't get something useful, don't pay salary. Maybe Lillebrige is a better pitcher than Darnell McDonald?
They are paying the salary either way. They determined that he was worth more to them on the White Sox roster than theirs and the White Sox were willing to give them the players.
And I think they were wrong in that determination. They obviously know the inner workings of the clubhouse better than I do but it is hard for me to imagine what Youk could be doing/would eventually do that would be so detrimental to the team as to just give him away.
An economic theory that says that a club that has their balls to the wall will get fair value for something they're peddling has little connection to reality.
Not that it is really an auction if both the bids and the identity of the bidder is secret. Any buying club would suspect that the Red Sox were pulling a Boras by spreading word of other interest. I don't think you can get bidding going if the interested clubs believes any other interest is fiction.
For someone of such middling future, he's been involved in deals that have included Edwin Jackson, Scott Rolen, Edwin Encarnacion, Mark Teahan, Jason Frasor, and now Kevin Youkilis.
Except, as we saw with Ellsbury earlier, he was a huge pain in ### in the clubhouse and this time with his livelihood threatened he might be even worse.
Which multiple teams? We have no idea if that was the Red Sox blowing smoke or reporters making up stories. If there were other teams do we have reason to believe that any offered a better deal, if they offered a deal at all?
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