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Transaction Oracle — A Timely Look at Transactions as They Happen Wednesday, January 12, 2005Blue Jays - Acquired HillenbrandToronto Blue Jays - Acquired 1B Shea Hillenbrand from the Arizona Diamondbacks for P Adam Peterson. Believe it or not, I don’t hate this acquisition the way I hated the Schoeneweis move - the Blue Jays have to sell the fan base a little after the loss of Delgado and while Hillenbrand is a mediocre 1B, if you’ve got to go with a name, he’s as good as anyone left who’s available. John Olerud? Didn’t leave Toronto on great terms thanks to Carter and is perceived as being at the end of his career. Magglio Ordonez? Knee problems and SkyDome not the best idea. Ben Grieve? Commonly perceived as a failure. Jeromy Burnitz? I rather have Hilly.
Hilly’s mediocre as hell, but he’ll have good defense at 1st and most of his value in a near-.300 BA and I can’t think of the last scrappy white BA good-defensive that didn’t have the rubes slobbering.
Not my favorite move (if they wanted a bat, I would have liked them to get someone like Val Pascucci after Bowden blocked him for no particular reason and he went to NPB), but it won’t kill them. Peterson has a nice fastball, but serious durability concerns and has never been able to really hold his own at levels he’s not too old for. He could very well still pan out, though, but you can say that about a lot of interesting minor-league flamethrowers.
Dan Szymborski
Posted: January 12, 2005 at 10:32 PM | 102 comment(s)
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1. Kevin Sweet Child Romine (aco) Posted: January 12, 2005 at 11:03 PM (#1075750)JP said Hinske will be at 1B, Hillenbrand at DH.
Dan, ignoring your choice of verbs in the above ;), most other comments I am hearing about Hillenbrand's defense are that he is awful at both infield corners. Have you seen metrics that suggest the contrary?
Ricciardi has been doing the talk show rounds this afternoon saying how Hillenbrand is the team's DH.
'01 - -4
'02 - +4
'03 - -15
'04 - -11
Also, I wouldn't call Hilly "mediocre" as an offensive 1B. The average 1B hit ~360/465 over the last few years. 330/430 makes for a position-adjusted OPS+ in the range of 84.
And Hillenbrand is arb-eligible, so he'll cost a few million.
Where are you getting your UZR data? Thanks.
First I've heard of it. Olerud is still highly regarded around here.
Who is Dave Rozema? Hilly was really stupid ... on and off the field. It'd be tough to beat him. He even called the GM a fag after he got traded for #### sake.
BEFORE he got traded ("Trade me, faggot").
Which makes him even more stupid.
http://www.tangotiger.net/
I read that JP will play him at DH and at 1B vs LHP so Shea should get a decent number of at bats. He is not bad, really, if you could overlook his 20+ GDP or his pedestrian walk rate. That being said, he can be counted on to hussle a lot. I won't be shocked if he can even hit 20 homers in Toronto; I was told that in AZ, the hitting coach had him shorten his swing so his power ended up lower than expected. Who knows.
I don't know what to think of Peterson. I know that AZ got him because Tosca supposedly was really fond of him back in TOR. Liked his guts or something. AZ has a few fireballers in the AA/AAA level already (not counting Bruney, we've got Bulger and Wechsler) who throw hard and can be expected to battle Peterson for a rotation spot later this year or next year. He could become a decent trade bait or a fill in if someone gets traded. I liked his AA stats a lot, but then again, he was a bit too old for his league.
BEFORE he got traded ("Trade me, faggot").
Jesus, I forgot about that story. True or not, I will say this: Hillenbrand has one of the worst-looking swings I've ever seen. When he swings and misses, it looks like he rocks back on his heels and stops his swing short rather than following through. It looks like he's trying to produce power, but has no balance and an artificial hip.
If you're referring to Hillenbrand/"faggot", he did it on a radio talk show, so it would hard to deny :)
Hinske is not going to hit like 2002 again. His 2002 looks superficially like his 2001 in AAA, but that was the PCL. His MLE's look more like his 2003 season. Don't know his UZR, but he cut his errors from 22 to 8, so he looks to be improving at 3B. He's not as good as Koskie, though, and that makes him a sunk cost.
Hillenbrand is, well, you know what he is. He's pretty consistent, but you can do better than that at DH.
Here are some 2004 MLE's, in runs created per game. *These are NOT projections for 2005*
Player RCG Age
Larry Sutton 6.9 34
Adam Hyzdu 6.3 32
Val Pascucci 6.2 25
Mike Coolbaugh 5.9 32
Joe Vitiello 5.7 34
Joe Dillon 5.7 29
Russ Branyon 5.6 28
Kevin Witt 5.3 28
None of these guys would have cost much, would they?
Koch: mouthy jackass
Schoenweis: mouthy whiner
Hillenbrand: mouthy punk
This from a GM who took offense when a player said "JP's a smooth lookin' cat... looks like he was a pimp back in his day. He's a good dude."
Fun times ahead!
When Hudson made his poorly considered remarks, Ricciardi did not take offense, at least not publicly. And since then, I haven't heard him change his story.
Brewers resigned him last month for $800K....
It was never clear to me that he actually took offence at that. In fact, I recall reading JP saying something to the effect that no, he wasn't the least offended, and that, on the contrary, he was down with the street lingo because he coaches high school basketball. I think there's a thread somewhere here on Primer in which somebody claimed JP was a bigot because of this . . . hmmm . . . google search . . .
Oh, you mean the kool-aid that just won them a world series?
He can play 1b, 3b, lf, rf and even a wee bit of 2b and hit while hes at it. And hed probably come cheap enough to make his injury history less of an issue.
That's no better or worse than Hillenbrand, although Crozier hadn't done much before 2004 and could be a fluke. Small sample or not, 19 whiffs in 33 big league at bats does not inspire confidence.
His new circle of friends - Kenny Williams and Chuck LaMar - told him Hillenbrand and Schoenweissfeller could be difference-makers :)
that doesn't mean i don't think he's overpaying for these guys.
F-Cat also can't hardly play anywhere in the field except left field. So I guess this means Riccardi's giving up on Gross as well? Beautiful, just ####### beautiful.
See if you can determine which of the following is not like the others?
The category is: SLG vs LHP, AL-2004:
Guerrero, V....723
Rodriguez, A...659
Mench, K.......646
Ramirez, M.....631
Phelps, J......618
Tejada, M......616
Byrnes, E......599
Konerko, P.....577
Rowand, A......575
Wells, V.......573
And I think JP wants to start Gross in AAA, then call him up when there's an injury.
Either I'm getting old, or there's some young dudes hanging out here. He got into a fight wiht John Castino in 1982.
They picked him up for free. He was depth, a chance, maybe trade bait. A little help to catch the Twins. But they weren't giving him a job over Hafner or Broussard, so they let him go. They had him for a month or two; they never invested anything, so I don't consider it giving up on him.
Unlike the Jays, who actively chose Catalanotto over him to DH, knowing also that they had no 1B for next year.
So now they rent Hillenbrand at $4M? and F-Cat at $2.5M, instead of Phelps and Gross and a plan for 2006? Urgh.
So if we just overlook the ways that he's bad, he's not bad. . . . .
How does Heilman for Gross sound? ;)
Just ignore karlmagnus.
Good advice.
Yup, this sums up the entire thread.
If anyone knows what the Jays are doing, let me know.
Invasion of the 1B/DHs!
Japanese pitchers fear!
Japanese pitchers fear!
It's why the A's were able to sign that pitcher; he fled the country.
The legend of Larry Sutton precedes his arrival !!
yeah he did, he said some #### like "Orlando will learn that there's an appropriate way to speak and comport yourself" blah blah, something really patronizing. Hey JP, how about "thanks for the compliment," letting it go, and getting some good players for your piece of #### team?
So far Phelps has shown an ability to hit soft tossing left handed pitching. I don't think that makes him a starting first basemen.
The Schoenweiss signing was terrible and this one is almost but not quite as bad. Hilly's 04 UZR at first was -12 per 150. He appears to be terrible at either corner. His best role is probably as a DH. His hitting is stone cold league average, which actually isn't bad for a DH. For some reason, teams do not employ DH's properly. There are many cheap hitters in the minors (and majors) who are better than many teams' DH's, who for whatever reasons, are not employed as DH's...
Not just brothers-in-law; they married sisters who were strippers.
At least once they got into a fight at the club when someone did somethig they considered inappropriate.
They obviously have the money to spend. And since they refuse to redeploy their assets to the 2006 budget, or too international free agents or to the 2006 draft. Then it's good that they will get some production out of the position.
Hillenbrand will likely be the Jays second best hitter, which is more of an indication of how bad a job JP has done putting together the team, rather than a pure indictment of how bad this move was.
The Jays have a bunch of regulars who not only aren't all that good, but really need to be platoon. Having a guy like Shea who has normal splits and who can play every day should help their lineup stability.
Also despite the fact that Shea is an average offensive player, he is a good run producer due to his high average and his extra base hits. This is for a team that outside of vernon wells doesn't have ANY run producers (I know that term has a negative connotation among stat heads, but I can't think of a better one, that describes the other end of a table setter).
This will be a brutal offensive team.
Yuck.
Possibilities include:
1. If you can't beat two teams in your division, you can't make the playoffs. And if you can't make the playoffs, your focus should be on getting the fan base to believe that you're trying nonetheless. To the extent that they can, they should sign low-priced names, but pay them above value to give fans the impression that they're not worthless. Not anything like a $100 million deal for, say, Jeromy Burnitz... but more like the Hillenbrand deal.
2. Lots of teams make deadline deals, and are usually desperate for whatever "talent" they can find. JP's just stocking up.
3. He's biding his time until the American dollar becomes much weaker; at that point he can outbid a lot of teams.
4. The Toronto ownership strategy is for MLB to buy them out, too.
. . . .
OK, having said all that, I think JP doesn't really have a plan any more. I think his original plan was to do the Moneyball thing, but because it's catching on elsewhere it has become more difficult to exploit market inefficiencies.
I liken the JP situation to Rick Pitino with the Celtics, whose overall GM strategy appeared to be, "Show up, draft Tim Duncan, wait a few years, get called a genius." But San Antonio won the lottery, preventing Pitino from enjoying the fruits of M.L. Carr's heinous reign.
Instead, Pitino started collecting underpants in the hopes that it would lead to profits.
He was sort of a local hero in my youth, since he's from South Haven, MI, about 45 minutes from where I grew up.
I bet any one of those guys would have played for the minimum.
Or maybe he's just in an untenable situation based on the exchange rate, the Blue Jays ownership, and being in a division with the Red Sox and Yankees.
If this isn't completely obvious by now, people don't want to see it. Latest quote from the Globe and Mail: "Ricciardi said the Jays might discuss a multiyear contract, before moving quickly to play down speculation that Hinske will now be traded."
This move is stupid without doing that. Not the dumbest thing that the Jays have done this offseason-signing Koskie to a three year deal when you've got 2B/SS filled with cheap talent, and a reasonable prospect in AAA is dumber, but if he gives him multiple years, this moves up the list.
JP might as well just walk up to F-Cat in Spring Training and break his leg to get it over with. He'll be injured by the end of May anyway.
If he wanted a 1B/DH, there are a bunch of ML-pedigreed choices still out there. Granted, some of them (Mondesi and Fullmer) have inconvenient ex-Jay pasts, but he could've easily gotten a Travis Lee or a Brian Daubach for a lot less than Hillenbrand's going to want. That's even if you completely discount Pascucci, or minor-league refugees like Mike Hessman, or possible Japanese returnees like Fernando Seguignol, or internal options like Alfaro, Crozier, and Gross. Hell, Henri Stanley just got DFA'd; I'd give him at least a 30% chance of out-hitting Hillenbrand in equal PT, and he can play CF without completely embarassing himself to boot.
I move to toss JP out of the club. All in favor?
DH may be the optimal use of Hillenbrand, but JP is still an idiot.
I did that when he traded for John McDonald. I didn't think you could do worse than SuperHole McEwing, then I looked at McDonald's stats.
JP put himself in a bad spot here- Shea will get probably $5 million in arbitration. The only way to avoid that is a multi-year deal, which is really dumb for a guy who could post a .310 OB% and has no defensive value.
Well he's not even taking advantage of basic concepts of properly understanding the fungible nature of mediocre hitters at the weak end of the defensive spectrum. Committing ~$7M to Hillenbrand and Catalanotto for 2005-06 is just asinine while claiming that they can't compete with the Yankees and Red Sox because of payroll. $7M a year is more than the Red Sox are paying Ortiz in the next two seasons!!!
If the Jays are going to be competitive, Ricciardi's got to start making those kinds of deals. Not overpaying for mediocrities was, at the very least, what was expected from Ricciardi. While he was extremely unlucky in 2004 with injuries, that doesn't change the fact that most of his personnel decisions have been ill-advised. He should be fired, IMHO.
I think Theo's offseason this year was filled with the kind of high upside/low risk moves that JP ought to have been making - Miller/Mantei/Halama - as well as getting the guy JP wanted.
I might count David Wells signed to an incentive-laden contract as one of those deals. Then again, his base salary isn't low-risk for some teams.
I'd be nervous about bandying Pascucci's name about as an alternative to HIllenbrand. I remember when he came up for his cup of coffee last year, I was listening to games eager for him to do well and help the cause of sabermetrics. He then supplied a .297 OBP and a .290 SLG in 62 ABs. The OBP wasn't an absolute disaster, since his BA was about 177, so if he could get his average up to .200 (only two more hits) you're looking at a .320 OBP which beats Hillenbrand's 2003 total. But that power outage was depressing, considering how well he had done at Edmonton.
JP would lose all hope of future employment in baseball if he took Pascucci over Hillenbrand and it didn't pan out. It's all right to do something courageous yourself, but sometimes I feel people visiting this site are urging Tom Hanks to go save Private Ryan while they sit back at HQ reading the intelligence reports.
Well, if the Jays stumble through another year like 2004, there's a decent chance of that happening anyway. Success is the only thing that can really guarantee JP's future, and he'd stand a better chance of succeeding with someone like Pascucci than with Hillenbrand.
If I tried to list every longtime MLB regular who struggled over their first 60 AB, I'd be here all week. As such, I'll have to content myself with one comp: Brad Wilkerson. Similar skill set to Pascucci, no? 1B/Corner OF, regular job at 26, .260ish BA, walks and power, runs maybe a bit more than he should. Wilkerson staggered through 117 AB on his way to a .205/.304/.325 line as a rookie in '01.
If a GM doesn't have the balls to take a chance on a guy like Val when he's in a position of need, he doesn't deserve to keep the job he's got.
I'm certainly not going to defend either of those moves, but it's also entirely unfair to compare Toronto's worst moves with Boston's best. NYY and BOS can both easily waste $7M (and they both do, NYY more so) and not have it matter.
I might count David Wells signed to an incentive-laden contract as one of those deals. Then again, his base salary isn't low-risk for some teams.
I don't see that move as similar at all. If Wells is good, he'll be paid the way good starters were this winter. If he sucks, he'll still get paid.
I much prefer the Woody Williams signing. Same performance history, cheaper, and younger.
Jimy Williams, back when he was a good manager, before he went balls-out insane, stuck with Nixon and developed one of the better RFs in the league.
And I agree with Vlad's general point - the difference between Pascucci and Hillenbrand is not gonna save JP's job.
And if he were smart, he wouldn't bring in only Pascucci but also a guy like Brian Daubach, who's probably a better player than Hillenbrand right now. If Pascucci actually has some quality that makes his AAA production untranslatable to MLB, Dauber could step in.
If the Jays have another year like 2004, I'll give up my former life and move into a cardboard box under the Gardiner Expressway because it'll be proof of a malevolent universe.
No, he's not.
Now, I realize that regardless of which side of this idiotic feud between old and new you're on, you're supposed to call the other side names, but JP isn't an idiot.
JP may have said and/or done idiotic things, but that doesn't make him an idiot. If it did, every GM in baseball, and just about everyone in the world, would be an idiot.
It's similar in terms of high upside/low risk. I was taking it in terms of high performance upside/low financial risk. YMMV.
In terms of high financial upside/low financial risk, you're correct.
Paul, I agree with that statement, which is why I carefully crafted my words (which I usually try an do) by saying "He sounds like an idiot," based on the quote I was talking about, which I did not identify. I don't think he is an idiot, given any reasonable definition of idiot. Of course, arguing whether someone is an "idiot" or not is a silly and specious argument.
What I mean is simply that the evidence, if evaluated by a competent sabetmetrician, strongly points in favor if JP NOT being a competent sabetmetric GM.
Also, and this is a bit of hyperbole, when someone says something really stupid in a certain field of study (and they are serious of course), there is a very good chance that he is an "idiot" in that field, even though we all say stupid things now and then. An extreme, but serious example, is if I were to say that I sincerely think that the world is flat, what could you assume about my knowledge and competence in the field of science or geography?
DH is the optimal use of me, since I would be below replacement level at all defensive positions, but that isn't reason enough to sign me to play DH.
Or, to use an even more ridiculous example, pitcher is probably the optimal use of Shawn Estes. But that's not reason enough to sign him.
Perhaps it's just a lack of sleep lately, but Primer's been making me cranky. It seems as though every signing brings out someone saying that the GM is an idiot or incompetent or something like that, and instead of being funny, most of these comments just strike me as petty.
It could also be because I'm a Jays fan, and I'm depressed. Oh well, Go Raptors!
:)
In fairness, a lot of the deals this winter have been totally crazy. It's easy to lose the few smart ones in the noise.
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