Yesterday the Rockies made some big trades. Well, some trades, how's that. Here we go:
Colorado sent Preston Wilson and cash to Washington for pitcher Zach Day, outfielder J.J. Davis, and either a player to be named later or cash. (Wonder which one we'll take.)
To Oakland we sent pitchers Joe Kennedy and Jay Witasick for outfielder Eric Byrnes and minor-league middle infielder Omar Quintanilla.
The two biggest names in these trades are Wilson, who leads the Rockies in home runs and RBI, and Byrnes, who, at least statistically, is a lot more comparable to Wilson than I would have thought.
This year the 30-year-old Wilson is hitting .258, getting on base at a .322 clip, and slugging .491. Byrnes is 29, hitting .266, OBP of .336, and slugging .474. Pretty comparable. And their career numbers aren't so different, either: .265/.333/.481 for Wilson; .270/.336/.462 for Byrnes.
Which is not to suggest that the two players are neck-and-neck in all-around skill. Wilson plays centerfield, which is much more valuable than Byrnes in left, and possesses some speed on the basepaths...but wait. While Byrnes hasn't stolen a ton of bases, he does steal at an incredible success rate (85%, but just 35/41 for his career).
Wilson does have a big edge in experience, playing in almost twice as many career games, and he has put together a few impressive-looking seasons. Before last year Wilson seemed to be more durable as well. In terms of batting statistics, it's worth pointing out that Byrnes has at times been platooned, and thus his numbers may slightly overstate his ability.
Of course, only fans care about talent.
We all know that one number matters to the Rockies management, and that's where Wilson has a huge edge: he's cashing checks for $12.5 million this year, while Byrnes is compensated to the tune of a mere $2.2 million.
While Wilson is, in my mind, clearly the better player, the Rockies would actually be better off employing Byrnes at his salary and then investing the $10.3 million elsewhere to improve the team, because any edge Wilson provides is not worth ten million dollars. That would be a brilliant move (by Colorado baseball standards), as opposed to what the Rockies will choose, which is to make half of a good move and pocket the change.
You don't have to read the news to know that's what will happen.
But what the heck. In the aforelinked article, Rox general manager Dan O'Dowd said, "We believe we've added some good, young talent that will help us in our rebuilding process."
And later: "We love what Preston has done for us, but he more than likely wasn't going to be a part of our rebuilding process."
By all means, sacrifice the team for the "rebuilding process". No wonder the man can't get fired-he's the perfect mouthpiece for bargain-basement ownership.
Of course, Wilson and Byrnes weren't traded straight-up or even involved in the same trade. The Byrnes deal makes me nervous because we dealt with Oakland, which has something like a five hundred-fold advantage in terms of front office brainpower.
We gave the A's the two pitchers for Byrnes and Quintanilla, who's shown a little bit of power in his time in the minors and is considered one of Oakland's top prospects. However, I'm reminded of when the Rockies traded to the A's for minor league outfielder Mario Encarnacion. Encarnacion was an intriguing 20-year-old five-tool prospect. I think the trade happened around the time of 9/11, because Encarnacion had to produce a birth certificate for some reason not long after and it turned out he had about half a dozen birthdays unaccounted for. Thus he immediately went from prospect to never-was.
I don't think Quintanilla's necessarily lying about his age; I just question any young star Oakland would give up on.
To Oakland we sent the pitchers Kennedy, who was solid last year, awful this year, and young enough to turn it around, and Witasick, who has been a superb reliever. But we got Byrnes; as long as Kennedy doesn't improve immediately, at least we didn't get completely shafted.
As for the rest of the Preston Wilson deal, I don't know why we gave up both him and cash, or rather why we're paying $3.5 million of what's left of his salary. Why do we get rid of guys for financial reasons, and then still agree to pay a lot of the money? Seems kinda pointless.
Anyway, we got J.J. Davis, who in his limited opportunites has tried his best to prove he absolutely cannot hit (.179 in 67 career games), and Zach Day. What's interesting to me is what O'Dowd said about him in the Denver Post:
"He's a guy I have liked all along. He has a tremendous groundball-flyball ratio similar to Aaron Cook."
That's funny to me, because the first thing I noticed about his statistics was his groundball to fly ball ratio. Not in the way Dan thought of it, though. Day's has dropped from 3.14 in 2002 to 2.72 the next year to 2.09 to 1.55 this season.
That's a guy we liked all along? A guy who gets progressively worse at his bread and butter?
A guy who's turning into a fly-ball pitcher...moving to Coors...
Oh, and here's another fun fact: he's coming off a broken arm-actually a hairline fracture in his throwing arm.
In other words, the official Hole Punch prediction: he's going to get shelled.
8 comments:
Rockies suck!! Nothing can save them. Nothing.
Thank you, Alex, we had no idea.
alexis... master of the obvious and master keynote speaker at elite business conferences.
seriously, he must be a sadist because he keeps coming back for more.
he's like glass joe in mike tyson's punch out.
as much as the "invest young, invest early" route doesn't pay off immediately... which fickle/uninformed baseball fans in colorado will certainly not digest.
i definitely think it's the best route.
everyone uses the twins and a's as an example of this, almost ad nauseum... but it's because it worked so well.
i will be really pleased if the rockies can start developing a base that will be a great core of players in 2-3 seasons looking forward.
granted mike, you had a great point about questioning the validity of the prospect in lieu of the a's being willing to get rid of him, so we'll see how that pans out.
i for one... am planning on making a shift to becoming a nationals fan.
and an even more abrasive nuggets/broncos fan out east.
Yes, I agree with you that a youth movement does require patience, but of course a youth movement will not necessarily result in success. I don't know how many youth movements the Nuggets tried to force on me. The biggest question of course is the young pitching, which still has a ton to prove, as all young pitching does.
Well, the Rockies have to try a little bit on pitching, but I'm not sure Coors is the place to develop young arms. Or, rather: I'm certain Coors is the worst place to try to develop pitchers, from the standpoints of:
1) Confidence-you're gonna get rocked.
2) Your pitches don't break, best of luck
3) The constant need to monitor pitches thrown by young players-or at least this should be a priority.
I say find some veterans who can eat innings and hand it off to a good bullpen. But if you can't hit, and we can't hit, it doesn't matter anyway.
your pitches can break... you just need to be good.
i think home grown boys here have an advantage.
there was a guy by the named of darren holmes... in the mid 90's who had a NASTY hook... so it can be done.
i'd say... you just can't have pitcher who's bread and butter is the slider/curveball.
i say sinkers, forkball, or power pitcher with a change up would suffice.
like a johan santana, roger clemens esque? i know we are talking extremely rare talent... but those types of pitchers.
i'm just glad the rockies got out of their side-arm fetish phase. that style digusts me.
"comeuppance"
john gets the 1800's lexicon award of the week.
The Rockies go a little overboard with the whole we-have-to-play-differently from everyone. In general, some pitchers won't work well here-especially fly-ball guys-but basically, you want the same type of pitcher, you just have to give them a little more slack.
Every once in a while a manager or front office guy will say, well, at Coors, you just ignore the ERA because it's going to be bad. True in a sense, but not really at all. You still want a lower ERA, it just won't be as low as league leaders.
As far as pitching, John's correct about not going for the big contracts. That doesn't just go for the Rockies; it goes for everyone and almost every pitcher. A six or seven year deal is absurd-pretty much only Greg Maddux has been very good each of the last seven years or so (even Clemens has had years of 13 wins, or ERAs over 4). And some of Maddux's years haven't been that great. Plus, in baseball, players are generally older and have already had some of their best years behind them by the time they hit free agency.
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