Officially The Worst Trade In Franchise History
John Hickey gets Bedard to talk, and it’s not good.
“The start after I hurt my hip, I felt discomfort in the last inning I pitched,” Bedard said. “I know exactly when I did it. After that it got worse and worse”.
“We knew what it was after the MRI — it’s a tear in the labrum and a cyst,” Bedard said. “Surgery was always an option, but you want it to be the last option. You’re never 100 percent sure what will happen in surgery.”
“The surgery we’re talking about can be six to nine months (of rehabilitation) or it can be longer,” Bedard said. “To not be able to pitch, that’s the most frustrating part of the whole season. To not be able to do what you love is hard.”
A torn labrum isn’t quite the career ender it used to be, but it’s still as bad an injury as a pitcher can have. Apparently, the whole “exploratory surgery” thing was a lie, as Bedard clearly believes he’s having his labrum repaired when they cut him open.
Realistically, this news puts Bedard out until at least June or July of 2009. Since Bedard’s eligible for arbitration this winter and the team would have to offer him at least $6 million, there’s a pretty good chance he’s going to be non-tendered. In which case, he’d almost certainly sign elsewhere, and the Erik Bedard era in Seattle would be over.
80 meaningless innings in the worst season ever – that’s potentially Bedard’s entire Mariner career. No trading him for some prospects to try to recoup the losses. No draft picks when he leaves as a free agent. Just labrum surgery and a potential release, while the M’s try to rebuild without the core of their farm system, now enjoying success in Baltimore.
In terms of results, this is easily the worst trade in franchise history. Everyone involved in making that trade should resign in disgrace.
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So let’s recap:
We argue against the trade, get the ‘proven ace’ tag shoved down our throat.
We then point out that Bedard’s always been injury prone while Seattle’s media goes on a witch hunt for him being a wimp.
And now he has a torn labrum. I imagine that the reaction from the mainstream will be that we should have expected this from the start?
Baker, Hickey, et al owe him a huge freaking apology.
I wonder how much he’ll be worth after next season? I mean, he will have missed an entire year and didn’t really wow anybody over the 80 innings he pitched here.
The Mariners will have to eat his salary, but if he thinks he’s going to get $6 million from anyone I doubt it. Unless Bavasi has a job somewhere next year.
He’ll just sign one of those Mark Mulder contracts – $1 million or so guaranteed, huge escalators for playing time (like $500K per start), with big money vesting options if he hits certain incentives.
And remember, he doesn’t get a say if he’s tendered a contract or not. If the M’s determine that he’s not worth at least $6 million to them next year, they won’t offer him arbitration, and he’ll be a free agent.
I think most people are owed massive apologies for this debacle.
The saddest thing of all: whoever the new GM is they will be very gun shy in trying to sign any high profile pitcher for years to come.
Good. Big name free agent pitching is always a landmine
Do you think it would be worth 6 million to be able to get some sort of draft pick compensation for him when he leaves next year? Probably not, huh? Ah well, sigh. I knew this trade was bad the moment it was rumored, but this has turned out even worse than my worst fears. I figured we could get one season out of him before his arm gave out at least.
I think I’ve used this picture half a dozen times. Never has it been so appropriate until now.
He’ll just sign one of those Mark Mulder contracts – $1 million or so guaranteed, huge escalators for playing time (like $500K per start), with big money vesting options if he hits certain incentives.
Would it be worth the Mariners signing him to that contract? Or should we just cut our losses?
And yeah, this is the Kevin Mitchell trade all over again… with the only upside being that we recovered from that one in but a few years, and it also helped serve as a housecleaning of sorts.
Why does Baker owe him an apology?
Regardless, can we just rename this post to The Worst Franchise In Franchise History? We’re historically bad in so many ways.
Let’s see…
Lowe/Varitek -> Slocumb: Totally horrid…though Slocumb was at least good for 10 or so (dicey) saves during a pennant race…
Tino/Nellie/Mecir -> Davis/Hitchcock: Also fairly putrid…though the M’s at least got one 190+ inning year out of Hitchcock and were “able” to run Davis out there for four years (well, actually 3-1/2, since he was on the DL half of ’96)…
Carlos Guillen -> Ramon Santiago: Completely unacceptable…though it was still only one guy for one guy…
So, yeah…without a doubt, this has to be the absolute worst.
I wish that was Mark Mulder’s contract. Mulder signed for 2/13 if I recall correctly.
Thanks for reminding me, EC…I’d almost forgotten how much that one reeked as well.
this is the Kevin Mitchell trade all over again
That was worse? Better?
We punted him after one season (for ~40 innings of Norm Charlton) and he went on to hit about .330/.400/.640 over the next two seasons.
Hey, somebody could start a “Coulda/Shoulda/Woulda Hall of Fame” for “ace” starters:
Don Gullett
Sid Fernandez
Juan Guzman
Mark Prior
Erik Bedard
and here we thought that Woody’s miss-hearing of Lowe or Varitek would be the gold-standard
well, lie might be a little strong here– as we know, with the HIPAA laws, the M’s can’t tell the press what he is having done without Bedard’s permission.
ok– with an internal impingement, the labrum “is often frayed or partially torn” and with a tear the first treatment is still to see if it heals with rest & PT. If it doesn’t respond after several months, then they do surgery.
Hickey mentioned the other day that Yocum was to do a labral debridement, which should mean that the tear is small, and they are simply removing the frayed edges and any loose parts of the labrum that are snagging (as it were) when the shoulder moves, causing the impingement. This would be the best-case scenario, and might not take quite as long to rehab as Bedard was mentioning.
They’ll also have to have a little look around the rotator, and the capsule while in there, so I suppose that would count as exploratory…
And now we have Chuck Armstrong’s rationale for insisting on getting major league starting pitching back in any deal for Washburn.
Somewhere Heathcliff Slocumb is joining Bill Buckner for a drink at the “Monkey Off My Back Bar & Grill”
(Steve Bartman is still wandering around in the alley with his fingers crossed, hoping to get invited in.)
If Chuck Armstrong doesn’t go after this season, I’m done being a Mariners fan for the moment.
Ya, maybe people on this website don’t agree with Pat Gillick’s thinking all the way, but he’d be a much better leader as president of this team than Chuck Armstrong is right now.
Hey Mariner staff, I hate to say I (we) told you so… but… yeah.
a1.
Wow. The Mariners’ season just keeps on getting worse and worse.
What’s next? Clay Bennett offering to purchase the Mariners and move them to Oklahoma City?
I think we should put Ichiro in bubble wrap just to be safe and prevent some freak thing from happening to him with only a few games left.
but wait! I thought Steve Kelley said Bedard didn’t like pitching! You mean he was wrong?!
And, Russ Davis has just stopped by to join them — having dropped a buck in the jukebox to play “Sweet Home Alabama” on his way in.
We shouldn’t forget Omar for Felix Fermin and Reggie Jefferson, should we?
But I don’t think you can really stack this one up against the Slocumb trade just yet. For one thing, Lowe stayed in Boston until they won a World Series and Varitek is still there after they won a second one and might well do one more this year. With all due respect to the players the Orioles heisted from us, none of them has really done diddly-squat yet (yeah, Sherrill made an All-Star team, but it’s not like they’re contenders).
So I’d say wait and see.
Does anyone know if it is customary for MLB teams to include an MRI of a pitchers elbow and shoulder during the physical prior to a trade/acquisition?
I’m numb. Seriously. I have no words for how #$%&ing PO’d I am. So, while this is easily the worst trade in franchise history, where does this rank on the worst trades of all time list for all of MLB? And by that, I mean deals that the teams should have known going in that they were doing something stupid, not say, Bragg for Moyer where no one could have really seen Moyer suddenly figuring out how to pitch at an elite level in his mid thirties. The injury history was there, the FO should have known Bedard was the wrong guy to give up this much for.
Can anyone tell me what a “labrum” is? I couldnt find it in any english czech dictionary. Thank you
Why are we finding out about this now? Why didn’t he just have the surgery in July so he’d be ready for the start of the 2009 season? Instead, we just waste all this time delaying the announcement and in the process lose 3-4 months of Bedard for next year?
Mothy wrote: Do you think it would be worth 6 million to be able to get some sort of draft pick compensation for him when he leaves next year?
Considering his mediocre 2008 and the fact that it looks like he’ll miss a significant part of 2009, Bedard isn’t going to be a Type A or Type B player in the Elias rankings, so there will be no draft pick compensation to be had.
Vlad-
I am an expert in no conceivable fashion, but based on my limited, Google-dependant knowledge, the labrum is a cuff of cartilage surrounding the shoulder socket. A torn labrum restricts freedom of movement at the joint significantly. It’s one of the worst injuries a pitcher can sustain.
Vlad-
The labrum is what magically changed Gil Meche from top pitching prospect into the steaming pile of crap we ended up with.
Is my understanding correct:
- If the M’s tender him, they have to pay him at least as much as this year.
- If they non-tender him, they can’t re-sign him at a lower salary
OR
- they might be allowed to re-sign him a a lower salary but he probably won’t agree to that, preferring to go elsewhere instead (just imagine: he might go back to Baltimore…).
I guess, if it looks like he’ll be out a significant part of next season, in either scenario, the only sensible way to keep him would be to sign him to a longer contract (e.g. two years for 8M), hoping that he’d give us 1 1/2 seasons of good pitching for that while driving up his free-agent market value by showing that he’s healthy.
When’s the deadline for making a decision? I hope not too early to know how he’s recovering.
…Although even a steaming pile of crap would’ve been an improvement to what we got out of Batista, The Bus, and The Burger Chef this season.
Well, as a replacement for that huge Eric Bedard hole in the M’s rotation, I’ll bet the Yankees would offer the Mariners (Glass) Carl Pavano for practically nothing…which is really what the Mariners have to offer, aside from Felix and Ichiro.
That would be the ultimate return insult for another karmic trade, Buhner for Phelps.
The Bavasi era was reckless incompetence bordering on gross negligence enabled to the extreme by an executive office that saw him as the perfect embodiment of their philosophy.
The almost certain likelihood of their meddling in the future aside, there is zero reason to believe that they are capable of making an enlightened choice for Bavasi’s successor. If they do, there isn’t much chance that they’ll let that person actually do his job.
Hyperbole? Perhaps. But chewing on the Bedard trade once again (it just doesn’t seem to go down), makes it difficult to see the Ms as anything other than the worst franchise in the majors.
Even haikus don’t help.
Hope like a flower
Withers amid the green field
without wisdom’s water.
Bavasi is to blame, but so is everyone who was with the M’s FO and coaching staff. As far as I could tell, everyone from the coaching staff to Bavasi and above thought that this was a good deal. If Armstrong, Lincoln, and the rest try to lay this at the feet of Bavasi alone, it would be dishonest at best.
What the M’s (and others who supported this trade) need to realize is that the Bedard trade was a failure from the moment it happened, not a failure because of bade luck and injury. Even if Bedard pitched like a Cy Young contender, the trade would have been a miserable flop.
It’s my fault.
When I was a young Orioles fan, my team traded Schilling, Steve Finley, and one other (Pete Harnisch?) for the renowned slugging 1B Davis, who promptly injured away the rest of his career
At this point it doesnt even feel good to say “I told you so”. It just makes me more angry and frustrated at the Mariner FO.
Irony: The Angels or Athletics picking him up for lets say $2-3M, he plays well, beats the Mariners, they trade him for a better package.
It’s going to happen and its killing me.
This is what happens when a desperate GM is just out there to save his job. He was on the hot seat so he had to make a move to please the owner and fans. That’s why we should’ve fired his ass 3 years ago.
Larue has a nice talk with Bedard as well.
I was looking for a nice illustration, and found some enthusiatic blogger had put up a lot of info about labrum tears in response to an injury to a USC player …. and that there is a lot of info out there
isn’t it the job of a GM “to please the owner and fans”?
Is this really the case? After all, they think Washburn is worth $10M next year. Plus they may not want to admit their incompetence by non-tendering Bedard. I’m sure the non-tender decision rests mostly with the new GM, but this PR-sensitive franchise may mandate that Bedard stays.
They’re not going to pay Bedard $6 million to rehab his arm and maybe pitch a couple of months in his walk year.
In about 8 years there will be a Seattle based sitcom starring a local comedian. His sidekick will work as the assistant to the travelling secretary for the Mariners. One day when he is mistakenly determined to be dead, Howard Lincoln will go to the sidekick’s parents house where he will be greeted with a “Why did you trade Adam Jones!?” from the sidekick’s father.
Erik Bedard, Mo Vaughn. Wow — what a Legacy, Bill!
I wonder if KJR will apologize en masse to Bedard, I recall Sickels calling Bedard a wimp a few months ago.
Is it not possible to non-tender him and then give him an incentive laden deal?
As to whether this is the worst trade ever, if most of the prospects flame out for the Orioles, than I think it’s hard to put it in that column. Though Chris Tillman has been as advertised for the Orioles AA affiliate.
They’re not going to pay Bedard $6 million to rehab his arm and maybe pitch a couple of months in his walk year.
No, that wouldn’t make sense. But this is the Mariners. It wouldn’t make sense to give a three year, big-$ contract to a slumping, 32-year-old catcher with a swing ill-suited to his home park (when he actually connects, which is increasingly rare). But that’s what the M’s did.
Dave, you know how you always do those posts in the offseason about what the M’s should do, if they had a roster construction process that used rational decisionmaking based on sensible evaluations of talent? And then you do a completely separate post about what they probably will do, that has nothing to do with such a process?
Yeah.
One thing about signing Bedard to pitch a handful of starts at the end of the year — they get the draft picks when he leaves. Which they’ll then trade for the next Bedard. Woohoo, I love this team.
The M’s aren’t well run, but even they won’t waste $6 million on a guy rehabbing from labrum surgery.
And he won’t get you any draft picks next year. The free agent rankings are based on the last two years, so his ’07 goes out the window – there’s no way his ’08 + ’09 performances are good enough to demand compensation. He just won’t pitch enough.
Bedard is the Lehman Brothers – his value has become nil.
So guess I don’t understand why the M’s would have to offer Bedard $6 million in aribtration. Is the risk that by low-balling him the arbitrator might pick Bedard’s number, which could be much higher? How could a number like $3 million for a guy who will be recovering from surgery at the time of the hearing, and who hardly pitched at all the previous season not be considered a fair number?
Chuck Armstrong should maybe be careful walking around town. Something bad might happen to him when he’s not looking.
If there is one person that owes Bedard an apology it’s Ian Furness from KJR. I was at the opening night game that Bedard won and was listening to Ian bash Bedard on the trip home. The guy wins the first game of the season and he gets bashed? On top of that, Ian hasn’t let up on him the entire season. I’m sure it won’t happen though, Ian will never admit that he was in the wrong.
And people wonder why he doesn’t like the media.
I know that a lot of people are emphasizing how bad this trade was, but for me, the worst part of this whole thing is going to be not getting to see a really good pitcher doing his thing for the M’s. I think a lot of people forget that even while he was hurt, Bedard showed us some signs of how dominant he could really be. It’s a shame that we’ll never see him pitch for us while healthy.
This goes well beyond the walls of the Mariners.
Worst. Trade. Ever.
Well, I do add one caveat: in baseball.
So guess I don’t understand why the M’s would have to offer Bedard $6 million in aribtration.
It’s the rule – you can’t offer less than 80% of the previous season’s salary. If you want to offer less than that, you have to non-tender them, make them a free agent, and then bid for their rights against everyone else.
- If the M’s tender him, they have to pay him at least as much as this year.
and
So guess I don’t understand why the M’s would have to offer Bedard $6 million in aribtration. Is the risk that by low-balling him the arbitrator might pick Bedard’s number, which could be much higher? How could a number like $3 million for a guy who will be recovering from surgery at the time of the hearing, and who hardly pitched at all the previous season not be considered a fair number?
Actually, his salary could decrease as much as 20% in arbitration. Since it appears to be $7m this year, it could be as low as $5.6m for 2009. Obviously that would be the extreme end, but it’s possible.
Vlad,
Lots of responses, but I’ll add my nutshell version. Your shoulder is a ball-and-socket joint, with the top of your upper arm bone being the ball and your labrum basically the socket. It’s cartilage, not bone (and it’s also where the biceps tendon attaches). Your shoulder has a greater range of motion than any other joint in your body, mostly because of the labrum.
Remember that you always say a trade should not be judged by information that was not available at the time of the trade. Yes, the Mariners overpaid, but Bedard could have been a nice acquisition – or could have been what he is. It was a roll of the dice and we crapped out, but when judging the trade you have to include the possibility that things would have worked out.
And is this really worse than the Varitek/Lowe for Heathcliff Slocumb trade? Or Billy Swift and a few other good arms for Kevin Mitchell?
and he had a very nice 2007.
to the point of monomania.
A couple of months ago I posted a comment arguing that we should stop obsessing over the Bedard trade. I stated that, although the trade was bad for the Mariners, it could not be undone and we should simply focus on enjoying a pretty good pitcher (Bedard). I analogized the trade to swapping a house for a new car. Although the trade was poor, once it was done you might as well enjoy driving your car.
It now appears that the car’s transmission is shot and it will cost more than the price of the car to fix. Screams of frustration are justified.
But when trading for a pitcher, part of the information available at the time of the trade is that pitchers are much more susceptible to career-threatening injuries than position players. When you trade a whole parcel of guys for one pitcher, you are putting a lot of eggs in an injury-prone basket. All pitchers are injury prone. Every single one of them, regardless of their prior history. Throwing a baseball is hard on the body, and the injuries that result can be very difficult to completely recover from.
Since Dave used the Lehman Bros. analogy, I’ll say that pitchers are like junk bonds – high risk, high reward. The M’s made this trade without considering the risk and just got horribly burned.
Argh.
David Ortiz (Arias at the time) for Dave Hollins.
Mike Hampton for Eric Anthony.
Jose Cruz Jr. for Timlin/Splojaric
Varitek/Lowe for Slocumb.
Carlos Guillen for Ramon Santiago.
Danny Tartabull for Bankhead/Kingery.
Jamie Moyer for 2 worthless minor leaguers.
Matt Thornton for Joe Borchard.
Kevin Mitchell for Bill Swift/Mike Jackson
Tino/Nelson for Hitchcock/Russ Davis.
Snelling/Fruto for Jose Vidro.
Randy Johnson for Guillen/Garcia/Halama (After watching him win 4 consecutive Cy Youngs & World Series MVP this was terrible, and yes I realize he didn’t want to be here anymore.)
We must have some of the worst trades in MLB history!
Bloviate, the official language of KJR, contains no words for ‘apology’ or ‘sorry’. It’s like asking a Papuan tribesman to translate the word ‘microchip’.
the other day I flipped past Furness’ show, and stopped to listen as he had Cara Capuano in the studio. she was great– good radio voice, smart, knew what she was talking about on a variety of subjects … wouldn’t want someone like that working in local radio or tv.
isn’t it the job of a GM “to please the owner and fans�
Yes, but by making smart moves that result in a competitive team on the field. The Bedard deal — and this is totally overstating it — turned out to be the equivalent of shuffling papers around noisily when your boss walks by. Instead of making a substantive move, he made a “big” move that was substance-free.
Bloviate, the official language of KJR, contains no words for ‘apology’ or ’sorry’. It’s like asking a Papuan tribesman to translate the word ‘microchip’
Well played, sir.
No way you can put the Johnson trade in there. What you were selling was two months of Randy Johnson for three top prospects, one of whom has an ERA title, one of whom is an All-Star (still, though we traded him for a pot of lentils) and one of whom was okay. It was the Astros who got screwed in that deal.
2008:
Orioles
Chris Tillman,age 20: AA, 28gs, 135.2 IP, 10.22k/9
Tony Butler, 21: A, 11gs, 55 IP, 7.2k/9
Kam Mickolio, 24: AA/AAA, 58.1 IP, 9.72k/9
George Sherill, 31: ML, 43.2IP, 9.48k/9
Adam Jones, 22: ML, CF 88 OPS+
Mariners
Bedard, 29: ML, 15gs, 81IP, 8k/9
and that’s just 2008.
2010 AL championship, Orioles vs. A’s?
I remember in ‘Naked Gun’ the Mariners were in the playoffs and that was part of the joke. Welcome back to those days.
Was that the first Naked Gun when Reggie Jackson was the assasin?
When your job is on the line you tend to make irrational decisions. He made this trade because it was a big name player so he was hoping the fans would say, “Hey, Bedard is a very good player! It’s great to see the GM trying to win now!” GM’s do it all the time when they feel they’re on the hot seat. They go after a big name player in hopes of trying to fool the fans that they are making an effort to win now. That’s what I meant to “please the fans”
don’t forget 1994′s Little Big League, where the Twins battle the Mariners for the right to the American League Wild Card playoff spot …
[this is not a board]
This may be off topic, but [deleted, may be off topic]
This is about the worst analysis I’ve ever seen posted here. If Bedard was injured when the trade happened and the Mariners didn’t do due dilligence then I’d agree with you.
Look at it this way, if Bedard didn’t get injured ,and pitched well this season, and Adam Jones suffered a torn ACL would the trade suddenly become the best trade in Mariners history and the front office deserve huge raises and extensions?
No, I didn’t think so.
Thus, the phrase “in terms of results” at the beginning of the sentence.
I believe they are talking from a results stand point.
It was already a pretty awful trade from a theoretical stand point.
So, awful + awful = extra awful.
Plus, if Adam Jones suffered a torn ACL, there are still 4 other players in the deal who could help justify it from the Orioles’ side.
Please let’s not have any revisionism about the pre-trade analysis of this deal. The reasons stated for NOT doing it included:
Jones and Sherrill would help the major league club significantly THIS YEAR, so trading them was not a “win now” strategy.
Tillman was likely going to pitch in the majors before Bedard became a free agent.
The other two minor leaguers were prospects, not filler. They would likely help the big league team eventually.
The sum of the first three points is that the value equation for the deal…assuming Bedard stayed healty was not positive for the M’s.
Furthermore…
Bedard had less than a single season of ace-like performance on his record.
–BECAUSE–
Bedard was injury prone. He’d never pitched a full season. If he lost any significant time to injury the deal would be pretty bad.
SO, adding this risk of injury to the equation which already disfavored the Mariners…it was a LOUSY deal. Fate has stepped in to drive the point home, but whether you look at the deal in hindsight, or with information available at the time…IT STINKS.
Tillman can blow out his arm and Butler can get hit by a car and that would help the trade look better… If we non tender Bedard I believe that He’ll make quite a bit but not 6 mil because a Lefty TOR type starter floating around is quite tempting to sign even if he was injured… If we sign him to a long term deal and he pitches well then you can say the trade was ok but we still lost a lot of talent in that deal…
It could’ve been worse, as most thought we should sign Bedard to an extension since we gave up so much for him at the time of the trade.
The only good thing that could turn out from this is the M’s use the 6M they save from not tendering him in signing Strasburg. But they must end up with the worst record first, which they are at this point, half a game behind the Pads. I say let’s lose every game the rest of the way, because you know the Padres aren’t really trying hard to win anyways.
That’s really the best case scenario: Bedard was so bad that the M’s get the #1 pick. The trade would be 1 year of Bedard + Strasburg for Jones, Sherril, Tillman, Butler and Mackilio. Still a horrible trade, but if we get Strasburg, it will lessen the pain a great deal.
Still a horrible trade, but if we get Strasburg, it will lessen the pain a great deal.
I don’t know, getting Strasburg would be a total team effort. Excellent work Bavasi!
That won’t wash, if Riggleman sends Reed up to pinch hit for Johjima against a right handed reliver, and Reed hits into a double play, would you write:
“In terms of results that was the worst move Riggleman made in the entire game”?
Because a move like that doesn’t pan out in the results, that doesn’t make it a bad move. When a trade doesn’t work out because of an injury it doesn’t make it a bad trade. Was Len Bias the worst draft decision ever made by the Boston Celtics? It sure was unlucky, but it was a good pick.
Okay, but you’re arguing the validity of judging it by results, rather than its perceived value at the time. We’ve written a lot about this in the past, and this ties into a lot of the results-oriented rants here.
That said, I think the point there is that it was a pretty horrible trade judged at the time and still worse judged by its results.
Read the post again. Dave isn’t saying this is a bad move BECAUSE of the results. He’s saying that in terms of the results, the trade has been horrible. There is a significant difference.
You’d be right if Bedard wasn’t a HUGE injury concern before the trade. A great many people expressed concern that something like this would happen. It’s not as if thousands of bloggers were saying, ‘he’s a pitcher!! he’ll get hurt!!11′. He’s Erik Bedard- buy at your own risk.
Also, Dave is pretty good about not doing ‘results based analysis’, so I’m more than willing to give him the benefit of the doubt here.
It was a pretty terrible trade to begin with (at least, for those of us not wish-casting) and the injury makes it awful.
The fact that we gave up what we gave up for one fragile pitcher without the history of a #1 starter is sickening. I don’t care if the players we gave up have great careers, what made the deal horrible on our end is we gave up valued assets, regardless of how they turn out.
There’s really no need, Dave of course knows the pitfalls of “results-based analysis”, he was, just for this post, making an exception which he communicated by saying “In terms of results”.
Where I think he violates his own exception is with the rest of the line: “this is easily the worst trade in franchise history.” Based on results, it’s too early to tell — the results are not in yet. One season simply doesn’t provide as much in the way of results as the decade since the Slocumb trade: there’s a lot more VORP (or WPA or whatever measure you wish to use) in a decade of Lowe+Varitek than there is in a partial season of Sherrill, Jones, etc.
If Jones fails to produce and gets sent back to the minors and Sherrill doesn’t come back from his injury and the other players end up never contributing in the majors, and Bedard miraculously recovers and re-signs with the Ms and pitches great, those results would add up to a positive trade.
That may be an unlikely scenario — but that judgement comes “ex ante” not “ex post” (in other words, it comes from a projection-based analysis, not a results-based analysis).
It might indeed end up being the worst trade, but it isn’t there yet, based on results, because the results are so scanty so far. Until the results come in (and e.g. we know that Bedard leaves and we know that Jones patrols centerfield for a decade and etc.) it’s only a horrible trade ex ante, not yet horrible ex post.
The gun is in the wrong creature’s hand. The Oriole is being convicted based upon circumstantial evidence for a crime he did not commit!
I’ll agree that this wasn’t the worst trade ever, based on what was known the day it was made. It was a bad trade, no doubt, and injury history played a role. However, Bedard had at least the potential to be a big asset.
Heathcliff Slocumb, on the other hand, had the potential, at best, to be a mediocre closer for a couple of years and looked for all intents and purposes to be finished as a worthwhile reliever. For that we gave up two near major-league-ready starting prospects.
But to say it’s too early to judge the trade fails, I think, to give weight to what we already know. First of all Sherrill and Jones performed well enough this season to be worth much much more than Bedard has been. If we have Jones in right field all season this is a better team. If Sherrill is able to take over for Putz when he goes down the M’s are clearly much better off than with Bedard’s few decent starts.
So how good does Bedard have to be next year? Good enough to both make up for Jones and Sherrill’s surplus contribution this year AND next. If he doesn’t start pitching until June he’ll have to go 10-0, hit four grand slams, cure cancer and stop the wave. I just don’t see it happening.
How many of you guys who are saying “I told you so” correctly predicted that there would be a labrum injury for Bedard?
I’d give credit to those guys alone.
This is stated well, and is the rough sentiment expressed in this thread. By that logic, the M’s traded 4 guys with significant injury risk (because that’s inherent in pitchers) plus one excellent (but not a sure thing) prospect for a pitcher coming off a stellar season who’s always shown Cy Young level stuff and potential. A pitcher, who albeit has a history of somewhat minor injuries, who displayed no specific evidence whatsoever that his labrum was going to give out.
Is this trade bad with respect to the results? Of course. Sometimes you roll snake eyes. The debate as to whether they could have contended with their roster is a legitimate one. However, I’m not in the camp that believes that you should have punted on the year going in. I don’t see how keeping Jones and Sherrill would have put us in that much better of a situation than we’re in right now. There are plenty of good arms in the system now and if Fontaine can pick a Tillman and Butler from that draft, he can do it again in the next one.
My beef with this thread is not the opinion that the trade was bad. My beef is with those who would claim “I told you so” because they somehow knew something that is impossible to know. And no, you shouldn’t get credit for predicting injury because someone has pulled a muscle in their ribcage or had bouts with tendinitis. Their is no history of significant injury that would in and of itself predict a labrum tear (if indeed that’s what Bedard is dealing with).
As JM states, all pitchers carry injury risk, including Johan Santana, Tim Linecum, Chris Carpenter, Billy Wagner, George Sherrill, Tony Butler, Chris Tillman. All of ‘em. Just a blanket statement that Bedard’s injury was predictable carries no credibility. That’s like saying your buddy is going to get a divorce, since half of marriages end up in divorce and a long marriage is not likely. That’s not correct prediction, it’s a correct guess.
I do not classify this as the worst trade in M’s history because that implies they could have predicted a result that no one really can. I think they weighed the risks and took a big one. I applaud them for that. It’s one of the few times in the 31 years I’ve been a Mariners fan that they took risk with a goal in mind. I think the Guillen for Santiago trade was the worst in terms of predictable outcomes and odds of success.
There’s no legit “I told you so” point of view here, IMHO. But then, I’m a contrarian by nature. I don’t expect many to agree…
Not all pitchers carry the same risk of injury, and there was ample evidence to support Bedard being a higher injury risk than most pitchers, at the time the trade was made.
And you really think that only people who correctly predicted the specific injury that Bedard ended up with should feel validated?
Even if Bedard weren’t injured, the trade was still a bad trade based on the information available at the time (even a healthy Bedard’s contribution would have been less useful to the long-term prospects of the team than Jones/Sherrill/Butler/Tillman).
The fact that he’s now injured and likely will never pitch for the team again just makes it all the worse, but a lot of us hated the trade even at the time it was made.
Applauding the franchise for this trade is like telling your son “I know that mack truck hurt when it hit you, but nice job not having fear of playing in traffic!”
This trade was a disaster from the moment it was conceived. Anyone still defending it doesn’t deserve to be listened to.
The whole thing is ridiculous. I’ve been saying since day one that this was the worst trade ever. People disagreed, thinking he would be that “missing piece.”
It doesn’t even feel good to brag about it.
The whole situation is derpessing…we gave up three major league players and two that have a shot in the future…
What did we get? Zip. A couple wins.
The entire group that made this decision should be banned from sports for life…
A couple wins in a 100+ loss season, no less! Making holes in the ship’s hull to upgrade one cannon is awesome.
But that’s the whole point, isn’t it? If you are an investor, you diversify your portfolio to moderate the risk. Given the choice, one doesn’t dump one’s entire life savings into a single financial institution. If you had investments only in Lehman Brothers, you are now completely hosed. If you had investments in Lehman and three other companies that aren’t investment banks, you may still be hurting, but you probably didn’t lose everything.
Yes, there was a chance that Bedard would have been very, very good. But even if he had been Cy Young himself, it was a long shot for the M’s to be contenders this year, and most people not in the Mariner front office knew that at the time. Bedard was a desperate gamble on a razor-thin upside. When desperate gambles go bad, it is entirely justifiable to look back at them and shake your head about the decision-making.
Thank you, notanangrygradstudent, for getting the gist of it. I’m amazed at the amount of desire to defend the Bedard trade. Anywho, about the razor-thin margin.
That’s one of the big problems with the M’s under Bavasi. Most of their deals required the guy(s) they got to max out their possible results. Bedard had to be a Cy Young contender. Vidro and Sexson had to bounce nearly 100% back to pre-injury, pre-30th birthday, performance. Washburn had to duplicate his career year four times over.
In other words, they buy high. Or else they are high when they buy…
I’m disgusted with the front office for the mess and bad joke this franchise has become.
I’m disgusted with Riggleman for having the nerve to continue saying the team is “playing hard.”
I’m disgusted with the players, who, when faced with any pressure, always take the easy way out.
I’m disgusted with the strategy of an organization that has no idea on how to play the game, and does an abysmal job of teaching its prospects fundamentals.
I’m disgusted with the Mariners entire announcing crew who, in their failure to call a spade a spade, lack any credibility.
I’m disgusted with the elderly couple who, after my friend and me booed Richie Sexson, asked aloud if “we could do any better.” It’s a small thing, but it demonstrates the clubhouse atmosphere that exists in Seattle.
I’m disgusted with Erik Bedard, not for his injury, but for being a whiny and pouty major-leaguer who is too damn stupid and stubborn to see his riduclously good fortune in life.
And I’m disgutsed with people who tell me that “Bedard actually is a good guy.”
No, and hopefully for the last time, he is not. He treats people below him disgracefully. I’m not advocating a bunch of milk-driners make up the team, but the only thing major league about EB is his creepiness.
There. I feel better now.
When has Bedard treated people badly?
I agree there was plenty of risk. I applaud teams willing to take risk. I’m not sure that the downside is as big as folks here make it out to be because even the best prospects wash out a majority of the time. My point, which seems to be lost on several, is that no one accurately predicted this particular injury because no one really can. There are too many variables. To use this injury as validation of a guess is ‘connect the dots’ type logic. You could use it for anything. Again, where’s the evidence that someone knew for a fact that this type of injury would be an issue? I’m not trying to argue the merits of trade – though there certainly were some, Dave’s generalization notwithstanding. (BTW, you don’t have to listen to me if I “don’t deserve it”).
I just don’t see how you could take an injury totally unrelated to any other injury and then say that because he’s had other injuries, it was a correct prediction. That’s not scientific – it’s just a good guess. It would be one thing if he was missing every third start because of some minor tweak here or there. It’s completely another to say that those types of tweaks mean you’ll blow out an elbow or shoulder. You cannot know – even with probabilities because there are far too many variables genetically alone.
BTW, I am not a front office defender. I think the losing culture here is systemic and won’t be fixed until Howie and Chuck are out of the way. I just think, in investor’s terms, the present value of future production (i.e. that of the group of guys given up) has to be discounted on the risk of them not developing in the best case. Bedard had already shown his ability. You discount his value based on injury risk – but there is again no evidence of serious injury in his past – just a bunch of nagging stuff. This is no guarantee whatsoever that major injury is on the way.
BTW, I’m not saber-illiterate – I like walks, K’s, HR’s and all that stuff as much as THT, USSM, and all that. I was not particularly high on this team’s chances coming into this year, but even with an average offense and defense, which was not completely unreasonable, this pitching staff’s ability, with Bedard could contend. That’s what they play for right? Why play the schedule if you don’t give it a shot? And the assets are replaceable. Fontaine’s proven that IMO.
Yawn, the old “young players should inherently be undervalued because past prospects didn’t always turn out to be good” argument again.
As far as Bedard goes? There was a pretty significant history of minor injuries, and minor injuries often lead to more major problems. Bedard presented a significantly higher risk of either continuing minor injuries costing him time OR a minor injury developing into something major, than most pitchers.
That people didn’t specifically predict a torn labrum doesn’t mean anything.
Gambling five talented young players on one talented injury-prone player is hardly ever, if ever, a good bet.
There is a difference between “it was a bad trade the day it was made and it’s getting worse by the minute”, which is pretty hard to disagree with unless you live in Chuck Armstrong’s universe, and “In terms of results, this is easily the worst trade in franchise history.” On that one, I still say, “not proven.”
On the day it was made, it was a trade in the class of Denny McLain for Joe Coleman and the left side of the Senators’ infield, which won the Tigers the AL East in 1972. In other words, it overpriced the value of a single starting pitcher (though the Tigers at least threw in a few prospects, including Elliott Maddox, who was supposed to be good but wasn’t), and undervalued what was being traded for him.
It was also a trade in the nature of the 1998 Johnson trade, from the standpoint of the Astros (though they had enough in the farm system to replace the three guys we got, while the M’s couldn’t replace Adam Jones with anything all year).
Its best competitor for worst trade ever, the Slocumb trade, is a lot like the Doyle Alexander trade in 1987. The Tigers got what they wanted, a division title, and the Braves got 20+ years of John Smoltz. The M’s got similar results from Slocumb. But remember, at the time, it was the Cruz trade, not the Slocumb trade, that everyone was up in arms about.
The real difference between the Slocumb and Bedard is in the evaluation of where the team was, not what they were giving up. With four potential Hall of Famers in their primes, the 1997 M’s had a reasonable expectation of winning a lot of pennants if they could fill a hole. After that trade, Dan Wilson did indeed play in three playoff series (with perhaps the worst playoff batting record of any player ever), so it’s not like the M’s didn’t consider Varitek expendable. Lowe was considered a failure in his tryout in early 1997, and thus also expendable. While, as I’ve argued before, Sherrill was also expendable, Jones clearly was not, and the team’s complete misevaluation of the longterm prospects of three of its other starters makes the “throw-in” of three pitching prospects foolish in the extreme.
So, to reiterate, bad trade at the time. Might be worst trade ever. Can’t say so yet.
I agree there was plenty of risk. I applaud teams willing to take risk.
That’s a little like saying “I applaud you for betting the mortgage money on Black 13 at the roulette wheel”, in the case of the Bedard trade.
I’m not sure that the downside is as big as folks here make it out to be because even the best prospects wash out a majority of the time
So do the best established players (injury, declining skill set). In fact, when using sophisticated analysis that looks at minor league performance and scouting information, prospects AREN’T really riskier than established MLB players… and they have the bonus of being a hell of a lot cheaper.
The reality is that the Bedard trade was, on its face, not knowing what would happen in 2008, a bad deal for Bavasi to make at the time. Bavasi took a team that objective evidence suggested was a .500 team with significant problems, weakened it at two positions (OF and bullpen) that were problems all year in 2008, and while adding a superior player in the rotation, blew the farm system wad while ignoring other problems (DH, 1B, overall defense).
The fact that Bedard turned out to be damaged goods is just the cherry on top of the hot fudge sundae of awful decision making that went into this.
How about the Shin-Soo Choo for Ben Broussard trade? Now, I’m not saying this is on the same level as Bedard or Slocumb trades, but we literally gave him away to the Indians for nothing, since they in turn gave Broussard away to the Rangers.
How does a .304 BA, .394 OBP, & 13 HR 57 RBI’s sound for a LF?
I’d take it!