Last week, Dave Cameron at Fangraphs.com published lists of the ten best and ten worst trades of the past off-season. It probably comes as no surprise to find the trade between the Tigers and the Nationals that sent Doug Fister to Washington in return for a prospect with possibilities and roster filler that addressed some key issues within the Tigers' likely 25-men topped both lists. There was a lot of head-scratching at Baseball Think Factory to the amount of 309 comments. It was nearly the transaction that relaunched this blog, even. (In fact, I came closer to writing about the Mets' signing Curtis Granderson.)
Cast your mind back eleven-and-a-half years ago, to June 2002. Dave Dombrowski had a few months earlier fired Randy Smith and become general manager. The Expos were still in Montréal. That horrible Tigers' 2003 season was still in the future. At that time, Dombrowski sent a key member of the Tigers' pitching rotation in a three-way trade that netted him a prospect pitcher, a reliever and a prospect slugger. It was a better return than he got for Fister, but Jeff Weaver was a better-paid pitcher. The players the Tigers got were all relative disappointments in that Jeremy Bonderman did not quite live up to expectations, while Franklyn German and Carlos Peña fell well short.
The thing is, at the time rumours swirled around that Weaver was being exiled from Detroit. A month later, we were able to read more detailed allegations of the kind of behaviour that Dombrowski (or possibly Mr Ilitch) found unwelcome in a member of the Tigers' team. (Note the name of one of the players allegedly using profanity on that occasion was the Tigers' rookie manager for 2014, Brad Ausmus, back then the team's catcher.) The question is whether Fister created some kind of issues in the clubhouse. The answer is that I haven't been able to find any, despite a vague memory of him saying or doing something I thought was a bit much during 2013. (No, as much as I would like to, I am not going to wade through all the 2013 Tigers' broadcasts using my MLB GameDay Audio subscription.)
Using the 2002 Baseball America Prospect Handbook, the Tigers' got back for Weaver the #1 (Peña) and #9 (German) prospects for the Athletics, plus the Athletics' #1 pick in the draft. In 2011, in trading for Fister, the Tigers sent their BA-ranked #4 (Francisco Martinez), #7 (Chance Ruffin), #19 (Casper Wells) and #26 (Charlie Furbush) prospects, and got lefty David Pauley as well. At the time those who knew their baseball knew that Fister was doing an excellent job for the Mariners, so the question becomes how does the haul the Mariners got in 2011 compare with the Tigers who came over from the Nationals? In 2013, the Nationals sent #18 (Ray) plus their #10 from 2012 (Lombardozzi) and the Athletics' #29 (Krol). Ray, however, jumped to #5 in the 2014 list, compiled before the trade.
Looking back over that Baseball Think Factory thread, the analysis of the trade by fans falls into two broad camps. On one side are those who agreed with Fangraphs' Cameron that the Tigers got fleeced ('the Fleecers'). On the other are those who think Dombrowski knows something we don't. Looking at the Weaver trade and the two trades of Fister, I'm inclined to think that Mike Rizzo got a good deal, but more of the '15 per cent off' kind, than a 30 per cent or 50 per cent deal that the Fleecers believe. Dombrowski may have decided to take the deal in order to crack on with other moves, rather than holding out for something that was closer to Fister's WAR value. That seems to be the underlying message in this article. The overall point is that it appears the fans don't judge the value of players available in trade in quite the same way that real-life executives do. It may be that in a couple of years we'll come back to this trade as the moment when the Decline and Fall of the Dombrowski Empire began. But at the moment, I think the Fleecers are being a bit overenthusiastic.
Showing posts with label Mike Rizzo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mike Rizzo. Show all posts
Tuesday, 25 February 2014
Sunday, 18 April 2010
What a difference a year makes?
From 1-10 to 6-5. .500 baseball. Huzzah!
Not to rain on everyone's parade, but this year's start puts last year's in perspective:
The difference in runs allowed would actually only add up to about half a win.
QMAX is a system from the old Big Bad Baseball Annuals of adding some 'granularity' to the Quality Start, showing that some Quality Starts are better than others. 2009:
2010:
Click on the images to make them bigger. The blue area marks the 'Success Square' outings, where the combination of hits allowed and walks surrendered is good enough to mean you should win half the time. The red zone shows the 'Hit Hard' starts, games one is unlikely to win. There's not a whole lot of difference between this year and last: one fewer hit hard and an elite quality start, and that was Livo!'s of yesterday. That one also probably skewed our runs allowed statistic.
The 2009 edition of the Nationals underperformed badly. The 2010 one has overperformed slightly. You could put it down to Mr Rizzo's choice of 'winners' versus Bowden's 'lollygaggers'. You could put it down to a firmer hand on the tiller than last season, when Mr Acta seemed to be on borrowed time from the autumn, and MLB wouldn't let Mr Rizzo shed the 'interim' tag. You could put it down to luck. I know which one I think. How about you?
Not to rain on everyone's parade, but this year's start puts last year's in perspective:
Runs Scored Runs Allowed
2009 54 75
2010 53 66
The difference in runs allowed would actually only add up to about half a win.
QMAX is a system from the old Big Bad Baseball Annuals of adding some 'granularity' to the Quality Start, showing that some Quality Starts are better than others. 2009:
2010:
Click on the images to make them bigger. The blue area marks the 'Success Square' outings, where the combination of hits allowed and walks surrendered is good enough to mean you should win half the time. The red zone shows the 'Hit Hard' starts, games one is unlikely to win. There's not a whole lot of difference between this year and last: one fewer hit hard and an elite quality start, and that was Livo!'s of yesterday. That one also probably skewed our runs allowed statistic.
The 2009 edition of the Nationals underperformed badly. The 2010 one has overperformed slightly. You could put it down to Mr Rizzo's choice of 'winners' versus Bowden's 'lollygaggers'. You could put it down to a firmer hand on the tiller than last season, when Mr Acta seemed to be on borrowed time from the autumn, and MLB wouldn't let Mr Rizzo shed the 'interim' tag. You could put it down to luck. I know which one I think. How about you?
Monday, 5 April 2010
Off-Season 2009-10, Final Grade
Spring training is over and the first game is today. Thus, the off-season is officially closed. How do we rate Mike Rizzo's performance?
Rather than moan about what I think he should have done, I'm more interested in interpreting the targets he set himself. Back in January he gave an interview to my favourite punch-bag, Old Leatherpants, and by reading between the lines one can establish some priorities. Here are my grades.
Grade: C+
In this case, Guzmán's shoulder has simply shifted the second-base instability to shortstop. The knock on Desmond has always been his glove. Pudge, Kennedy and Morgan give stability on paper to the other positions, but none of them is a long-term solution, and all of them are injury risks to one degree or another.
Grade: B+
The Marquis signing, and the return of Livan!, have bought a bit of time for Balester, Martin, Stammen, Martis, Chico and Strasburg. Whether any of them other than Strasburg is really good enough to benefit from the time is a rather different matter. The move I liked best was putting Mock on the 25-man roster. It's time for us to know if he has any long-term future here, regardless of his poor showing last week. That's part of the same overall project of gaining time for younger pitchers.
Grade: A
Jesus Flores did not come back from surgery, so Rizzo did a good job anticipating a problem and fixing it with a stable solution that also will potentially lead to a long-term solution. Pudge isn't the All-Star he once was, but he's got leadership abilities to match his ego.
Grade: D+
Oh really? Taking a gamble on Capps was a shrewd move, and picking up English shows promise, but Walker had a difficult spring. Last year the bullpen was a trainwreck and the highest hurdle for the Nationals' trying leap away from the dreaded '100' number in the loss column. It tripped them up then, and I could see Capps doing a Hanrahan 2009. The holdovers are a mixed bunch, to be honest. Fixing the bullpen would have required a more solid acquisition than these hopefuls we've got now.
Overall grade: B-
There are still far too many uncertainties in the team, and more worrisome is the mediocrity of the farm system, rated 21st overall by Baseball America. Any gains made this year could easily bleed away as the Nationals lack the young talent in the system to keep the forward march going. The biggest concern to my mind is that few players have been developed from within, which suggests that either development staff or philosophy needs a major overhaul. Low-level prospects seem to stagnate at the A+ and AA stage, and the AAA roster is populated with retreads. Keep things in perspective, though. This was Mike Rizzo's first offseason; a B- grade is a decent showing. His problem is a lack of room to manoeuvre, and he faces a major challenge in offseason 2010-11.
Rather than moan about what I think he should have done, I'm more interested in interpreting the targets he set himself. Back in January he gave an interview to my favourite punch-bag, Old Leatherpants, and by reading between the lines one can establish some priorities. Here are my grades.
We're trying to get better defensively up the middle. [...] And we think we've helped ourselves with Pudge behind the plate and Morgan in center. Guzzie at shortstop, he's got fairly good hands and fairly good feet but his range obviously has backed up on him a little bit, and we do need to get better at second base
Grade: C+
In this case, Guzmán's shoulder has simply shifted the second-base instability to shortstop. The knock on Desmond has always been his glove. Pudge, Kennedy and Morgan give stability on paper to the other positions, but none of them is a long-term solution, and all of them are injury risks to one degree or another.
the moves like a Marquis and others have given us time for our minor leaguers, the guys that we've grown through our system, to reach their fulfillment in the big leagues
Grade: B+
The Marquis signing, and the return of Livan!, have bought a bit of time for Balester, Martin, Stammen, Martis, Chico and Strasburg. Whether any of them other than Strasburg is really good enough to benefit from the time is a rather different matter. The move I liked best was putting Mock on the 25-man roster. It's time for us to know if he has any long-term future here, regardless of his poor showing last week. That's part of the same overall project of gaining time for younger pitchers.
to get him on a two-year deal kind of gives us a timetable to get our other catching prospect, Derek Norris, into the big leagues. We think the timetable worked out well for us. We needed a guy who was more than a backup, a guy who could play on a every-day level for 80, 90 games, in case Jesus Flores is not coming back from shoulder and elbow surgery that he's had over the winter.
Grade: A
Jesus Flores did not come back from surgery, so Rizzo did a good job anticipating a problem and fixing it with a stable solution that also will potentially lead to a long-term solution. Pudge isn't the All-Star he once was, but he's got leadership abilities to match his ego.
I think that we've improved our bullpen.
Grade: D+
Oh really? Taking a gamble on Capps was a shrewd move, and picking up English shows promise, but Walker had a difficult spring. Last year the bullpen was a trainwreck and the highest hurdle for the Nationals' trying leap away from the dreaded '100' number in the loss column. It tripped them up then, and I could see Capps doing a Hanrahan 2009. The holdovers are a mixed bunch, to be honest. Fixing the bullpen would have required a more solid acquisition than these hopefuls we've got now.
Overall grade: B-
There are still far too many uncertainties in the team, and more worrisome is the mediocrity of the farm system, rated 21st overall by Baseball America. Any gains made this year could easily bleed away as the Nationals lack the young talent in the system to keep the forward march going. The biggest concern to my mind is that few players have been developed from within, which suggests that either development staff or philosophy needs a major overhaul. Low-level prospects seem to stagnate at the A+ and AA stage, and the AAA roster is populated with retreads. Keep things in perspective, though. This was Mike Rizzo's first offseason; a B- grade is a decent showing. His problem is a lack of room to manoeuvre, and he faces a major challenge in offseason 2010-11.
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