So…as a purely speculative exercise, what would it take to pull a DeJesus from KC? I’m assumingthat prospects might do the job for a building (eternally) Royal team. Who might the M’s be willing to part with…and conversely, the Royals be wiling to take…

Pondering hypothetical Dayton Moore trades can lead to irreversible brain damage or, in extremely rare cases, epileptic fits of Posnaski satire. Risking the former is not worth the latter in my opinion, but that’s just me.

why do the minor league clubs give guys years of experience at positions they know they won’t play instead of positions they will play?

I think teams are generally reluctant to slide players on the fielding spectrum (1B – LF – RF – 3B – CF – 2B – SS – C) from positions of defensive difficulty to easier defensive positions. It is very difficult to move a player to the right during any phase of his career than to move him left.

The strategy to keeping a guy like Truinfel at SS involves multiple factors. I think the idea is to maintain flexibility from an organizational standpoint.

He’s only 19 years old. If he can cut it at all as a ML SS, he’s much more valuable than a 3B. Teams tend to give prospects like this every opportunity to succeed in the minors. If it turns out that he can cut it at SS, that would be huge. A team might also be able to better maintain a prospect’s trade value if they hold him at a position on the right side of the defensive spectrum. Since finding a SS who can hit and field well is a relative scarcity in baseball, it makes sense to give the kid every chance to stick there. I don’t think a shift from SS to 3B, or even 2B is considered a major change. Since he is still probably a couple of years away, it makes sense to keep him at SS for the time being.

One example that comes to mind is the hit that Jeff Clement’s value took as he shifted from a can’t miss catcher prospect to a likely 1B/DH. The more the M’s played Clement at 1B/DH, I imagine other team’s perceptions changed dramatically.

He hits from the appropriate side, is a plus glove guy, is durable and consistently puts up 2.7-4.0 WAR’s…oh, he comes cheap! For two years (’11 is an option year, I think), he’s a bit LESS costly that Jack Wilson was.

So…as a purely speculative exercise, what would it take to pull a DeJesus from KC? I’m assumingthat prospects might do the job for a building (eternally) Royal team. Who might the M’s be willing to part with…and conversely, the Royals be wiling to take….for a guy worth 6 to 7 wins cheap over the next two years?

Keith

Keith

why do the minor league clubs give guys years of experience at positions they know they won’t play instead of positions they will play?

Because every other guy on their roster would be even worse at that position? You play the best guys you have, but you’ve got to play somebody.

As far as the outfield is concerned, I’d love to see the M’s pick up Mike Cameron and have the best defensive outfield in the history of the solar system. With Ackley, Halman, and Gillies on the horizon, it seems that a one to two year fill-in is all that’s needed, and Cameron could do that well, albeit a bit on the pricey side. He could also serve as a good mentor to Saunders, and provide an extra spark to a clubhouse that really seems to put a bonus on hugs and smiles.

That leaves openings at 1B and 3B (assuming Branyan will serve best as a DH, which I believe). Someone somewhere tossed out Joe Crede’s name, and that got my attention. His defense is superb and his offense is about average or slightly below. His back problems could be helped significantly by a platoon situation with Hannahan. The thought of Wilson and Crede holding up one side of the infield gives me little happy feelings all over.

Finally, for a 1B/DH option, of all the FA’s out there, I like Nick Johnson first and Adam LaRoche second. Both have good OPSs, hit for good average, are decent defensively–and the big plus, they both bat left-handed, which means that likely, Safeco will smile upon them. The negatives for them probably aren’t too bad, given how they would be used respectively. Johnson has injury issues, which could be assuaged with a platoon situation. And LaRoche strikes out a lot. That’s the biggest concern, given that I don’t know if I would want two 130-150 K guys in the lineup at the same time.

Anyways, these are just the musings of a campus security officer between patrols. Tear it apart as you wish…

Upgrading LF, 3B, DH, and the starting rotation are all much more critical to the future success of the M’s than replacing a +2 WAR shortstop

Wins are wins. Whether you get them at short, center, left, right, third, second, first, catcher, pitching, or the designated hitter. If we could have gotten a ~4 WAR short stop, it would have been two more wins we didn’t have before.

You’re getting stuck in the mindset that we must only fill the positions where we have obvious holes. If Chase Utley comes available tomorrow for peanuts, you’d better believe we’ll dump our 2 WAR second baseman for him.

there would seem to be a signficant probability that this deal won’t appear as “adequate” in two years.

All of the factors that you mention are figured into the projections. It’s just that the projections are really a midpoint on a statistical range, not really a fixed number. However, if management makes a reasonable contract for someone who projects to a certain number of wins, and he doesn’t produce or is injured, then it’s wrong to criticize the move with 20:20 hindsight. It’s when you pay someone like Sexson or Silva more than even an optimistic view of their projected wins that you get in trouble. Or when you improperly discount a value like defense or give too much credit to a value like avoiding strikeouts.

Exhibit A for this, as Dave will tell you anytime you want (and the person second most likely to make the same argument is our current GM) is Mike Cameron. Great defense, lots of strikeouts. And his teams always get better when he arrives and get worse when he leaves. This is not random coincidence.

So is Jack Wilson “the answer” at shortstop? No. But he won’t be the reason the M’s don’t win the pennant in 2010 or 2011 either.

Oh, and I like signing Jack Wilson at ss. We weren’t going to get someone with great glove and bat at that position, and if we’re looking for hitting, there are easiler positions to find it at.

Hey, isn’t Rich Aurilia available?

I think he and Jeff Cirillo are busy getting together bail/rehab/tatoo money for Speizio.