Wlad to Cincy
Dave · July 29, 2009 at 12:15 pm · Filed Under Mariners
The M’s traded Balentien to Cincinnati for 25-year-old RHP Robert Manuel. Manuel’s fastball tops out at 87, but he has a decent change-up that’s let him destroy minor league hitters. There’s almost no upside here, though. At best, he’s a strike-throwing middle reliever. At worst, he’s a Triple-A arm who will get pounded in the majors.
I’m not a big fan of this deal either, but I guess we can hope he turns into Mark DiFelice 2.0.
Yawn… this is nothing special. Thanks for the report dave. So two trades adn two players gone who really had no roster place on the M’s for two players who at best will have minimal impact on the club.
When will we use our Ace In the Hole by trading Wash?
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RHP with a fastball topping out at 87? If we moved the outfield fences back about 30 feet to give the stellar outfield a better chance at catching Manuel’s “flyballs”, then I’d like the deal a little more.
And I thought Bowden was no longer the Reds’ GM?!? Apparently they have an organizational fetish for toolsy outfielders. Frankly, as ugly as Balentien has been this year, its hard to believe this was the only or best offer.
With Bavasi in the Cincy FO I would have though we could get more in return.
Perhaps Zduriencik saw he wasn’t going to add great value to a larger deal by throwing Wlad in, and decided to get what he could for him just to continue to clear out the organizational cholesterol.
[previously promised to not leave another comment]
John Halama 2? The right handed version? Look out, PCL…
Guess Cincy just really misses Wily Mo Pena, which is odd because they could have had the original for free.
Struck out 38 in 36 innings in a pretty good hitting league, I wouldnt call Manuel useless (and no, im not saying you are, Dave). Not a lot of upside, but I’d take him over batista or corcoran based on what I’ve seen.
How does this guy get drafted, yet I can’t make it out of college ball with the same pitches??? 🙁
This is a “ho-hum” trade. An AAA outfielder, who never fit Safeco, for an AAA pitcher. Great. Doesn’t seem like anything to get excited nor disappointed about.
Are they making moves, just for the sake of making moves now? It sounds like it’s just ‘we gotta do something’ mentality. Hrmph.
Also, with Wlad being DFA’d, it’s not like Zduriencik could demand much.
Wait wait wait… has it not been said that the ability to miss bats and get people out at any level is a sign of pitching talent? Regardless of how he does it, doesn’t it still signify some modicrum of talent?
How does this guy get drafted, yet I can’t make it out of college ball with the same pitches?
Actually, he didn’t get drafted.
Wlad was already DFA’d, so he was potentially available for nothing in a few days. Getting anything back is kind of a bonus, I would think. Which is why it’s not “making moves just for the sake of making moves” which would be strange and stupid anyway.
Great American Ballpark is a hitter’s park in general and a much better fit for a RH pull hitter like Wlad than Safeco. Though he still has trouble with breaking balls, I hope he thrives there. (And given that the park and the league may enable him to thrive there in ways he never could here, if he does have some good years I hope I don’t hear a lot of whining around here about “giving up on him” and “giving him away”).
Who cares about this deal. It’s a wash deal for a player that had proved beyond doubt that he was not major league talent.
So I don’t understand, why is this a bad trade? We got rid of an OF that had no value to us and got back a pitcher who has no upside but is fairly consistent, especially considering he’s a flyball pitcher who should thrive at Safeco with our OF defense?
I actually didn’t understand why they DFAd him, which seems like only shrank what remained of his marginal value, and diminished the return.
They wanted to bring Saunders up to see what he could do, apparently. The M’s have an interesting problem of too many outfielders knocking on the door. This year’s top draft pick, Ackley, is expected to reach the majors quickly. Ichiro and Gutierrez obviously have two spots locked up, so the question is what you do with all the other guys eligible for that last LF spot, starting with Saunders. Wlad is not part of that conversation, so they DFA’d him to make room. There’s very little marginal value there to shrink. I don’t know that you would’ve got more for him even if the DFA clock wasn’t ticking.
Apparently, Robert Manuel was MiLB.com’s 2008 Double-A Reliever of the Year. Just fyi.
I suspect that is part of the problem.
He is what Ron Shandler’s Baseball HQ group had say about Manuel when he was called up 3 weeks ago
The rating of 6 means they’re ceiling is a platoon or relief player and the C rates the likely hood of reaching that ceiling at 50%. Needless to say Manuel isn’t much to write home about. Please note they say he’s been clocked between 87 mph and 91 mph. That’s a far cry from topping out at 87 mph.
Thought that Balentien would be worth more as a extra piece to a Washburn deal. Maybe Washburn is off the table now.
So is pretty much is Bastista without a $10M contract next year?
I like the trade.
We aren’t losing much in Wlad, and I don’t think he ever had a future here.
Baseball America says Robert Manuel has the best control of any Cincy prospect. That’s something the M’s could really use, a reliever with good control.
At the very least, Manuel replenishes our minor league system a small bit after sending away three pitchers to PIT.