Jones not called home, but may be sitting out, or something
All kinds of places reporting all kinds of things. The truth may be just as confusing as the conflicting rumors at this point, as Shannon Drayer pointed out:
Since speaking to the Mariners I have received an email reply from Adam saying that he is still in Venezuela and, “I don’t know what is going on, but I am just trying to stay cool.” If you know Adam at all, he can’t help but stay cool.
Interesting that he is in Venezuela and not playing. Adam has not played in a game for Lara since January 9, did not even play in a double header on the 10th. While the club may not have called him home, it appears that they have told him not to play.
Could be they are debating shutting him down after a good winter or possibly, something is in the works on the trade front.
So at this point, it appears that many places — the Baltimore Sun, wherever — are reporting that he’s been told to return home, which appears to not be true, from the original now-disputed Venezualean report, but at the very least Jones isn’t playing for reasons we don’t yet know.
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When what’s his name oh yea Pat Gillick left, our minor league system was in shambles. He had pretty much traded away all of our good prospects for hardly anything in return. All we had left were guys like Shane Monahan and Brian Turang (remember them) and we’ve come to find out that Monahan was steroid enhanced. I don’t believe Bavasi will ever let the M’s get to that stage.
Um… I wouldn’t call our farm system “one hell of a minor league.”
“One hell of a minor league” would produce Jacoby Ellsbury and Clay Bucholz type players.
#50-All I’m saying is lets not panic or get down on management until the deals are made or not made. My only gripe with M’s management is that they made it hard for Lou Piniella to stay here. I didn’t have a problem with the Soriano trade for Rameriz last year. Our strength was our bullpen and our need was starting pitching. You always trade from your strength to you weakness. It didn’t work out but I had no problem with it. You can’t predict success. Rameriz had pretty good numbers with Atlanta before he got hurt. Soriano was a question mark becasue you don’t know how he would recover from being hit in the face. Who knows? I didn’t hear anyone complain about the signings Guillen and Batista at the end of the season, when they had good years. I heard many complain on talk radio about how bad the signings were, yet they both had pretty decent seasons. You can’t predict anything.
We’ve pretty consistently given Bavasi credit for building up the minor league system. Although it can also be argued that that’s more Bob Fontaine than Bill Bavasi.
He is atrocious at properly valuing major league talent, though, and that is by far the more important part of his job.
And seriously, can we please stop beating the “you can’t predict anything” dead horse? Please?
Guillen didn’t have that great a year, all told.
Also: if you look back at our reaction to those signings, you’ll see that you can, indeed, predict things.
Heh.
No I won’t because its the truth. The Red Sox traded away Jamie Moyer because he wasn’t a dependable left handed starting pitcher. He comes to Seattle and resurrects his career. The Yankees trade away Jay Buhner becasue they needed a left handed power hitter (Ken Phelps) and the rest is history. You can’t predict it. The Mariners traded a young David Ortiz to the Twins for Dave Hollins, a pretty good player, who doesn’t do much for Seatle. etc, etc, etc.
Oh, cool, so you’re willing to throw out the entire concept of the predictive value of past performance based on three rather dubious counterexamples.
Thanks for the clarification.
The problem with most people today is that they are always looking for the negative side of things. It takes no work or talent to be negative all the time so most people will go that way. I always try and look at things more positive. I remember when the M’s got Randy Johsnon and Brian Holman and another picture for Mark Langston. Everyone thought it was a pretty bad deal. Holman paid dividends right away and proably would have had a great career if he hadn’t got hurt. Randy Johson took a bit longer but now is a Hall of Famer. Lets get real.
The problem with people today is they’re all making overly broad generalizations all the time.
You are right on that one. I apologize for making an overly broad generalization. Some people are really negative. I hope that is a bit better.
DMZ: What does it cost you to be more positive?
About 50 IQ points.
Look, I don’t know why you think we’re too negative because we’re not posting 50-50 “this proposed trade sucks”/”this trade is awesome” because we think the trade sucks, but beyond that —
You don’t know me. I don’t make assumptions about you, or how smart you are or your outlook on life or whatever based on your comments here, and I’d appreciate it if you’d extend the same courtesy to others.
How could you accuse Derek of being negative?
He was the one who decided to post Graham’s pony logo, after all.
If you’re not negative I apologize but you keep putting Bavasi down for a trade he hasn’t even made yet. I looked at that as pretty negative.
Please let me know where I put Bavasi down for a trade he hasn’t made yet.
Because I haven’t done that.
I said the rumored Bedard deal on the 8th was horrible.
Dave did some analysis just on Jones v Bedard on the 8th.
I wrote up a car analogy about overpayment for something that doesn’t meet a set of needs on the 9th.
I talked about how bad deals like the proposed Bedard-Jones deal often fall apart on the 11th.
Dave then made a comparison between the M’s and Blue Jays.
At no point do I put down Bavasi for a trade he hasn’t made yet.
I don’t like the rumored trade deals, certainly. Dave did some analysis on why it’s bad. I’ve been happy that no deal’s been struck.
But if I’ve repeatedly put down Bavasi, I’m not seeing it. So please late me know where I did that.
Thanks in advance.
If I see my friend trying to buy a home he can’t afford with a subprime mortgage deal, it isn’t being negative to put him down.
Being negative != not liking decisions you like.
That’s nice. I try to look at things more accurately.
When you get a piece of rotten fruit, and you look at the positive side of it, does it stop being a rotten fruit?
Hickey says Jones is back in action for the Cardenelas. No explanation provided by Bavasi for taking him out for two days.
Amen Scraps! Bavasi hasn’t showed good judgment while making trades. Kind of hard to be excited when looking at his track record.
Good grief, you guys! Tumwater Mike (correct me if I’m wrong) is just trying to say that he thinks us posters should be more open-minded.
However, to be fair, living in Seattle and being fans of a baseball team with a currently terrible management, we’re used to being somewhat sarcastic, and (more to the point) realistic as compared to, say, Boston fans.
Relating to the whole Jones/Bedard situation, I sure hope we don’t deal Tony Butler. He’s the next Scotty Kazmir, mark my words. Looks like it’ll be either Jones or (preferrably) Morrow, Sherrill, and Chris Tillman for the Big Canadian.
69 – Cautiously, I’m excited about that. Well, sort of. He still shouldn’t even be playing there, but the fact that he is welcome news.
So many things that I want to say to TumwaterMike, but I’ll just brag about being right in the first response on this page.
Tum,
I disagree. The minor league system should be in much better shap.
We passed up Tulowitsky and Maybin to take Clement. We passed up Linccum and Miller to take Morrow. It is likely that if we had drafted Lincecum, we wouldn’t be having this discussion about Bedard.
Name one major trade that Bavasi has made which resulted in improving the Mariner system. The Garcia trade is a bust. Carlos Guillen? Moyer? Villone? Where are those prospects?
Asdrubal Cabrera could easily be the Mariners’ second basemen, but for Bavasi trading him for a future ESPN analyst (Perez).
Finally, Jones and Balentien belong to Gillick.
“The problem with people today is they’re all making overly broad generalizations all the time.”
Great stuff! It had me laughing out loud.
OK. First off, I dislike Adam Jones. I feel like Mike Cameron will end up on his “comparables” list when it’s all said and done. Now, Cameron’s a nice player, but he’s no All-Star. So that’s what I see in Jones. I seem to recall that Jose Cruz Jr. was a bigger prospect, and he never really panned out as most prospects don’t turn into stars.
BUT… Erik Bedard is simply not enough for Adam Jones. Even if it ends up that Bedard brings more wins with him than Jones would have. From an emotional standpoint, Bedard is just another guy. He won’t have his own candy bar or specially named fan section. Jones, at least, is a “real” Mariner and offers hope. In fact, any thing for Jones that doesn’t involve a marketable star (or potential marketable star) is no deal for me. Bedard seems so typically above-average that I couldn’t enjoy any of the extra possible wins.
I’m sure you don’t mean you dislike him personally. Anyway — Cameron at his peak was absolutely an All-Star. Stellar defense and solid hitting, even with the strikeouts, made him one of the most valuable outfielders in baseball.
Jones was last year’s #1 prospect in the system, he might be this year’s, at which point he’d be the #1 as often as Cruz, who rated #1 twice. Alex Rodriguez got #1 twice as well. So did Felix.
Ryan Anderson? 5.
Anyway — it doesn’t particularly matter, they’re not at all the same player.
If we end up with a cheap Mike Cameron until 2013 I wouldn’t complain at all.
Comparing him to Jose Cruz Jr. is a little unfair. Jones has already proved to be a better hitter, and is much more valuable as a defensive player than Cruz.
There really isn’t any reason to trade Jones right now unless you’re really rather see the Mariners be an 81 win team that has a couple of great starters than an 80 win team that is more offensive and defensive oriented.
You can’t predict success.
Then there is no point in paying good money for a GM to run your team.
I mean, of course you can predict success. You won’t always be right, any more than a batter will get a hit every time he comes to the plate, but somebody with a good background in baseball or a good head for statistical analysis can predict things like, “Miguel Cabrera is likely to have a better year at the plate than Brandon Inge,” or “Jeremy Bonderman is likely to have a better career than Jeff Weaver,” or “Andrew Miller won’t be an effective major league pitcher unless he developes a reliable third pitch . . .”
And this is THE POINT.
If you use your tools right, you can improve your prediction of success….not to perfection….but if you can improve your success rate from, say, 40% to 65%…why wouldn’t you? Even improving it from 40% to 50% is still a big win—you’re improving your efficiency by 25%.
Big business jump all over processes that give them 5% improvements. Why are people so resistant to doing that in baseball?
59 DMZ The problem with people today is they’re all making overly broad generalizations all the time.
This is post of the month, right? Is this a semi-quote or did you come up with it. Fits perfectly anyway.
Yeah Jones and Balentien belong to Gillick. Bavasi is responsible for the poor team building that resulted in early 1st picks Clement and Morrow though, he’s much better for the farm system. A winning GM has a hard time picking so early.
Brand new, though the sentiment’s certainly been expressed many, many times before.
Well I realize that mlbtraderumors.com is an unreliable source, but apparently it is reporting how the Mets are becoming the front runners for Bedard, and the fact that Jones is playing again indicates that he isn’t being traded.
Is it still too early to celebrate?
81 – Probably. Nothing is stopping Bavasi from caving. But, yeah, I’m more optimistic myself.
I think that if I were in MacPhail’s situation, I would be playing it pretty much as he is.
He doesn’t need to accept the best deal he can get now. More particularly, if he holds Bedard until the trade deadline, he can certainly get a comparable haul of talent as he is asking now.
Right now, it’s a lot riskier for a team to deal for Bedard under the belief he will put them over the top. That assumption is built on other assumptions on how the season will play out.
Come mid-June, though, there will be teams who are actual or possible playoff teams who need to solidify their rotation. Teams won’t be speculating at whether someone such as Bedard would be the difference for them, making the potential payoff of having him for the rest of his arb time much more tangible.
The risk to the Orioles from playing that strategy is the risk that Bedard will get injured or his performance will collapse. If Bedard really is as good as hyped, though, the performance risk is lessened.
****
So if I were in MacPhail’s situation I would be holding out for a talent package now that is pretty comparable to what I could expect by holding on to him until June. If I can get someone such as the Mariners to bite, that’s great. I just got full value while passing off the risk that he gets injured before the trade deadline. Otherwise I just wait and let the market continue to come to me.
I don’t think that’s true. The return on Bedard for a full year is far higher than in a mid-year deal.
Further, while now there are a set of teams that expect to be contenders (and will be) and some teams that will also be legitimately contending and in the market, right now no one knows — the pool of teams that think they might compete is far larger than the ones that will actually be in the market later, if that makes sense.
For instance, the M’s now think maybe Bedard puts them into the playoffs and contention. It’s unlikely they’ll still think that at the trade deadline if they’re five games back from a solid Angels team and ten out of the wild card spot. There are a lot of teams like that.
There hasn’t been a deadline haul in years near the one they’d get now.
#84:
I don’t think you can simply look at the pool of teams who think they might compete as the players. The pool is the teams who think they might compete and for whom Bedard would make a significant difference. That pool is further thinned by removing another set of teams who assess their opportunities more akin to the analysis that you and Dave have provided. That is, there may be teams for whom Bedard would make a difference, but their prospects are not sufficiently certain for them to be willing to be serious about getting Bedard now.
Come mid-June, however, the setting will be different. Prospects will have developed (or not), pitchers will have gone on the DL, etc. You would likely see a different set of teams competing, and the urgencies for the teams involved could be very different.
If Bedard continues to perform, getting him for a 1-1/2 years (and not just the balance of one season) will be quite valuable because the team will have likely opened a two-year playoff window – for seasons 2008 and 2009.
If they can open a 2008-2009 playoff window with a mid-June trade, they get almost the same value as if they had Bedard the entire season.
I think that for a savvy team the calculus for completing a Bedard-type of deal changes significantly mid-season if they know the deal would enable them to contend for two seasons, versus the off-season when the teams hopes the deal would enable them to contend for two seasons.
DMZ-
I agree that teams get more if they acquire their “missing” piece for the whole year…that just makes sense…
But in Bedard’s case, it’s a little different, because if you acquire him at the deadline, you also have in under control for the next year…
It seems that most deadline deals are for players that are at the end of a contract, so the team acquiring them only gets them for the “playoff push”…
So Bedard might get you more at the trading deadline than your average “rent-a-player”
So Bedard might get you more at the trading deadline than your average “rent-a-playerâ€
Yep – and if that deal still sets you up for playoff contention in 2008 and 2009, you get virtually the same value as if you had done the deal before ST of 2008. But your risk of doing the deal is lessened.
That analysis is a simple extension of the logic espoused by Dave and Derek. If Bedard is worth more “as the last piece” for a contender, for a team that properly factors risk he’s got to be worth more if the team knows it’s a contender than if the team thinks it might be a contender.
Please, Please, Please do not trade Adam Jones.
Arthur Rhodes signed with the Mariners today. Is this a contingency plan for Sherrill or just temporary protection against bully Omar Vizquel during Spring Training?
I still don’t see it, and here’s why: right now, who think they’re potentially contending and could conceivably think themselves into the market for Bedard? Let’s say it’s:
AL:
M’s (West)
Chicago/Detroit (Central)
Toronto (East)
NL:
Philly/Mets (East)
Cubs/St. Louis/Cincy, maybe even Houston (Central)
LA? (West)
At the trade deadline next year, at the very least you’re going to lose three of those teams, and probably four. Teams five games out aren’t going to pay the price the Orioles are demanding now on the off chance they’ll make it up in the last bit of the season.
For every other bidder off that list that might drop you, you have to figure that someone else is contending — and those aren’t teams who’ll trade prospects. If the Twins are in the Central/Wild Card race, they won’t be trading four guys for Bedard, and neither will Oakland, or the Nationals (well, maybe the Nationals) or the Marlins, Milwaukee probably wouldn’t, Pittsburgh definitely wouldn’t, Arizona won’t, the Padres are unlikely to pay that price.
I don’t see a way that at mid-season there are additional bidders who can pay the current price for Bedard and will be in contention. They might be better off shopping him again in the next-offseason at that point.
I thought Detroit had already sold their farm for Cabrera/Willis. Who would they have left to offer for Bedard?
Granted, I would’ve much rather have Cabrera/Willis for what the M’s are offering for Bedard.
I don’t think we actually know what the M’s are offering for Bedard. Of the rumored packages, I’d rather have Jones, Triunfel, Tillman and Sherrill than Cabrera and Willis. I don’t know that I’d like the idea of trading Triunfel and Morrow for Cabrera and Willis. Jones and Tillman for that matter. Cabrera is a subpar defensive 3B (though might do well in a transition to 1B) and Willis a high risk medium reward pitcher. Though I’d like Cabrera as the DH, I think he would probably mind being off the field.
Trading for these 2 is a decent move for a team who needs a 5th pitcher and some offensive punch next year to put them over the top. The M’s do not need another 5th pitcher and adding a solid offensive punch would not put the M’s over the top. Without entirely upgrading the defensive sore spots (which the M’s seem to not be doing anything about at all) and adding a pitcher at least as decent as Willis they really have no chance next year.
I think it could have been possible to construct a team starting at the beginning of the offseason that would contend for years, including next, while making a move for Cabrera and Willis. Problem is they’d have to have added at least 1 player who’s already signed elsewhere, be adamant about moving 2 players that they don’t seem even willing to who wouldn’t fit into that plan and it’s far too late at this point. Cabrera doesn’t fill a need here unless he’s willing (and able) to move to 1B and Sexson is gone or Vidro’s on the bench, Ibanez is traded and Cabrera’s willing to DH.
This doesn’t mean I’d rather have Bedard for the same pieces, but there’s no reason to choose the lesser of 2 evils when no evil is necessary. I choose the good, patient plan.
I realized while rereading that just now that it sounds in spots like I think that Cabrera and Willis are still available. Yes, I know that they are not. I was mostly attempting to think from the time just before that trade was made.