Disaster Area

2011 Seattle Mariners - Trade Horizons

It's been a long time since I really followed a baseball season very closely. In 2008 I hardly even noticed the season go by, never knew who won the World Series or big post-season awards until long after the fact (Phillies won the World Series? Dustin Pedroia was the AL MVP? Really? Lincecum and Lee won the Cy Young awards? Wow.).

The fact that the Mariners were awful didn't really help. Now things have calmed down a bit, and the Mariners have decided not to suck quite so badly, it's interesting to look forward to what might happen in the next month or so in the run up to the trading deadline. Will the Mariners cave in and end up trading away their veterans? (Oh, wait, we don'thave any tht anybody would want.)  Or will they hang in there and decide to go buy a piece or two to make the team better down the stretch? It's finely balanced, with Mariners leading the league in pitching, but dead last in hitting. So, what to do?

Trades, especially deadline trades, are the stuff of legend. However, they are almost always judged by the end of the season, rarely long after. Right now the Mariners could trade for a veteran hitter or two, but at what cost?

Past trades tell us that veteran hitters often don't hit, which is why they're the ones that are available. And that makes us feel bad for the prospects we gave away who we were sure were going to turn into the next Babe Ruth, or in Seattle's case, the next Ken Griffey Jr. But then, more often than not, they turn out to be middle of the road players or worse.

There's a great list over at Seattle Sportsnet from 2009 of ostensibly the worst 30 trades in Mariners history (the great trade list is way shorter). I don't agree that many of them are even bad trades. Some were made due to circumstances at the time, like a player had just got one too many DUI's for management's liking. Some looked reasonable at the time, but seemed worse immediately afterwards because who we acquired simply lost the ability to play (yeah, I'm looking at you, Jeff Cirillo). Some were just veterans for veterans trying to juggle odd pieces around. Only 11 truly involve trading away prospects for veterans. These are (in chronological order):

Mike Hampton and Mike Felder to Houston for Eric Anthony (12/10/93)

Hampton looked brilliant for a couple of seasons, eventually got one of the biggest contracts ever, but then fell off a cliff and was bad abd/or injured most of the time. Anthony couldn't hit. Bad trade, but looked much worse at the time. Felder was a nonentity.

Shawn Estes and Wilson Delgado to San Francisco for Salomon Torres (5/21/95)

None of these players amounted to much, ever.

David Arias to Minnesota for Dave Hollins (8/29/96)

Well, this looks bad in hindsight. Arias was, of course, the guy we now know as David Ortiz. Awful trade, wouldn’t you say? But it took Ortiz three years to be a regular and another four after that before he became DAVID ORTIZ aka Big Papi. Overall this was not necessarily a bad trade.

Jose Cruz, Jr. to Toronto for Paul Spoljaric and Mike Timlin (7/31/97)

At the time, Seattle fans saw Jose Cruz Jr. as the next Ken Griffey Jr. Both were sons of retired major league players - it seemed inevitable he would be great. Spoljaric and Timlin were brutal for the Mariners, so it added to the misery. But in the end, Cruz was just a major league spare part for his mediocre career. Call this a wash in hindsight.

Derek Lowe and Jason Varitek to Boston for Heathcliff Slocumb (7/31/97)

This was a terrible trade, no doubt. We knew it at the time. Two highly regarded prospects, both of whom are still playing today, fourteen years later (albeit in the twilight of their careers) for a terrible, terrible reliever. If Slocumb had been good, even great, even the best there ever was, this would still have been a terrible trade.

Brian Fuentes, Denny Stark, and Jose Paniagua to Colorado for Jeff Cirillo (12/16/01)

This wasn't a bad trade on paper. Nobody predicted Cirillo would forget how to hit completely. Sure, Fuentes turned out to be a decent closer eventually, but it's not like he's elite or anything. Only the sheer majestic awfulness of Jeff Cirillo made this a terrible trade in hindsight. Stark and Paniagua were makeweights.

Matt Thornton to Chicago White Sox for Joe Borchard (3/20/06)

While Thornton is a decent reliever(eventually) , and Borchard is long gone from baseball, this trade was basically a wash. Thornton's career up to this point was a big tease - lots of promise, little substance.

Asdrubal Cabrera to Cleveland for Eduardo Perez (6/30/06)

This and the next are undeniably the worst trades in this list. Is Bill Bavasi the worst GM there has ever been? Perez was a washed up DH who couldn’t hit and retired at the end of the season. For this we gave away a top rated middle infield prospect because he was blocked by – wait for it - Yuniesky Betancourt and Jose Lopez. How did that work out? Seems laughable now. Today Betancourt and Lopez are two of the worst hitters in baseball, barely clinging to jobs (thankfully with other teams), while Cabrera is stud in the middle of Cleveland's offense.

Shin-Soo Choo and Shawn Nottingham to Cleveland for Ben Broussard (8/24/06)

To add insult to injury, Bill Bavasi gave away another very good prospect for the other half of Cleveland's "can't hit the side of a barn" DH platoon. Admittedly, Choo had seen a glimpse of major league time without overwhelming anyone, and Broussard wasn't as washed up as Perez, but again, Broussard was quickly out of baseball and Choo, along with his buddy Cabrera, is now a mainstay of the Cleveland offense.

Rafael Soriano to Atlanta for Horacio Ramirez (12/7/06)

Bavasi certainly had a knack for super-disastrous trades. In this case he needed a starter. Atlanta had a very bad one they wanted to get rid of (but hey, he's a lefty! But so is my Aunt Fanny and we didn’t give away a stud reliever for her.) The wrinkle here is that Soriano had occasional elbow problems while with the Mariners. For whatever reason, rather than get him properly checked out, the team labeled him a malingerer, and to be disposed of ASAP. Hence, despite much talent already demonstrated, off he went, for possibly the worst pitcher ever to play in the majors.

Adam Jones, George Sherrill, Chris Tillman, Kam Mickolio, and Tony Butler to Baltimore for Erik Bedard (2/8/08)

This trade was widely decried by the baseball cognoscenti (aka statheads) at the time. Adam Jones was, you guessed it, the next Ken Griffey Jr. You don't just give him away, along with a valued lefty reliever, a promising starter a promising reliever and yet another pitching prospect for two seasons of  the admittedly very good Erik Bedard! Looking at it now, if Erik Bedard had stayed healthy this trade would probably have been a win for Seattle. At least a wash. Jones is good, but he's no superstar. Sherrill is a journeyman lefty who is OK, but now two teams removed from the Orioles. Tillman is just breaking in as a full time starter with a career ERA of 5.35 over 160-ish innings. Mickolio is also no longer with Baltimore and has a total of 31 innings pitched in four years in the majors. Butler is still struggling to get out of A ball. Meanwhile, Bedard, when healthy, has been the quality starter Seattle expected. The problem is, he hasn't been very healthy. And despite the local media taking a dislike to him because he doesn’t play by their rules in interviews, he has stayed with the Mariners through his injury recovery, posting excellent numbers this year until he just went on the DL a couple of days ago (but not arm related, so fingers crossed.)

So looking at that list there are a few general lessons. Of the eleven trades, I would say only four were truly disastrous and could be seen to be so at the time. Three of those were Bill Bavasi's crowing achievements of 2006:

 Cabrera, Choo and Soriano for a bit of string, a piece of used chewing gum and a rusty spittoon.

Woody Woodward had previously tried to set the record with:

Lowe and Varitek for the opprtunity to bang your knee on that awkward piece of furniture you're always walking into.

All of the others looked OK at the time (yes, even the Bedard-Jones trade.)

So the keys to successful trading are:

1) Don't trade for washed up, over the hill players.

2) Prospects are nearly always over-rated, especially by the home town fans.

3) Don't be Bill Bavasi.

4) If you actually get in performance what you thought you wanted, it wasn't a bad trade.

I hope that makes this July all the more exciting. You should stay in touch with Seattle Mariner progress via my chums at Lookout Landing and USS Mariner.

 

Advent...

...of an awesome Phillies starting rotation.

Also featuring the Yankees as the thwarted King Herod and the Texas Rangers as the shepherds - they just get to visit for a little while.

RIP Dave Niehaus

Today we lost Mariners legend Dave Niehaus at age 75 to a heart attack.

In 28 years in North America I've been privileged to have Dave Van Horne in Montreal, Harry Kalas in Philadelphia and Dave Niehaus in Seattle as the lead broadcasters for the local baseball teams. They were all brilliant at what they do. Last year we lost Harry Kalas and now we've lost another legend.

My favorite memory of Dave Niehaus was at a game where a friend of mine made a great ctatch of a foul ball leaning over the front rail of the 300 level in the Kingdome. Our seats were just to the left of and above the press box. Niehaus and Rick Rizzs waved us to come down, so we did. The door to the press box opened and Dave Niehaus waved us in, shook our hands and signed the ball - way better than having the player sign it...

Cell Phone Comeuppance

You know those people who talk too loud in public on their cell phones? Well, here's one for all of us who hate that...

Hope Springs Eternal

Not only was it Holy Week last week, it was the official start of the baseball season. The two might seem like chalk and cheese, but baseball is the one game that takes on an almost religious quality. Every new season in every sport is a fresh start, an opportunity to start with a clean sheet. The sins of past seasons are wiped clean and there is an air of optimism in every fan's heart no matter the apparent quality of the team.

The unique thing about baseball is that the game is played pretty much every day for six months. Teams get an occasional day off, but there are several games somewhere every single day. With 162 games to play, no one game looms large and the pace is more relaxed than all other major sports.

Another endearing feature of baseball is that it is uniquely suited to radio. In some ways it's even better to listen to a game unfold on the radio, and the masters of calling a game know just how to pace their delivery of the story to enthrall the listener. The very best voices are deep and measured, with just a hint of gravel. One of the masters for decades has been Harry Kalas, veteran announcer for the Philadelphia Phillies. Having lived in Philadelphia, I remember Kalas fondly, even though it was twenty years ago. It was therefore with much sadness that the baseball world heard this week that Kalas had died at the age of 73 of heart failure while at the stadium preparing for a broadcast.

That wasn't even the most tragic story of the season so far. A week ago, 22 year old Nick Adenhart of the Angels pitched a fabulous game, only the fourth of his young career, and was killed by a drunk driver in a hit and run car accident later that night.

And as if that wasn't enough, Mark Fidrych, an idiosyncratic pitcher in the 70's who had a short but fascinating career, died in a strange accident on his farm at age 54. He has been out of baseball for almost 30 years, and his career was over before I arrived in North America, but his is still an instantly recognized name.

Sometimes sport can be seen as a diversion from life, but it can also often show us more about life and encourage us to make the most of the time we have.

Oh, and it doesn't hurt that the hometown Seattle Mariners are off to an improbably good start, fueling the eternal optimism with which every seaosn starts...

Oh Wait - This Is More Like It

This is great:

But this is incredible:

Opening Day

Ah, the season opens (well, at least for the beloved hometown Seattle Mariners and most of the league).

20 year old phenom Felix Hernandez turns in an amazing performance - predicted almost exactly by Dave Cameron over at USSMariner .

We don't have tickets for a game until the 13th, but that will be soon enough.

Ah, Baseball

Wow, back to back posts. How unusual.

Well, I don't write much on the blog about baseball, but tonight was a ray of sunshine in the middle of a miserable month for the hometown Seattle Mariners. After clawing into the fringes of playoff contention by early August, a road trip where they lost all eleven games - to their division rivals, no less - pretty much blew that notion out of the water in much the same way the Bismarck went down in WW2.

After that ill-fated road trip, the team has been home to the Yankees and Red Sox this week. After surprisingly taking two of three games from the Yankees earlier, they have now taken the first two games against the Red Sox with the final game to be played on Sunday. Even better, Sue and I were at tonight's game in person.

Now, the Yankees are hated by everyone except Yankee fans, much like Man Utd in real football and the Dallas Cowboys in American football. And Yankee fans (much like the other teams mentioned) are generally pretty obnoxious. The Boston Red Sox were, until recently, the lovable underachievers who hadn't won the World Series for about a millennium. That all changed in 2004, when they did actually win the World Series again, since which time their fans have become as pleasant to be around as the aforementioned Yankee fans. So it was nice to see the hometown squad take yesterday's game from them 6-0, and then turn around and win tonight's game 4-3.

While I like to see a good play, or movie, or ballet, there's something different about sports - and that is that the outcome is not pre-determined (unless Sunderland are playing football - rimshot, please...) Tonight's game was a great example. Three times Boston took a one run lead, only to see Seattle tie the game. The game was well played and tense throughout, and the outcome was uncertain right up to the last out.

If opera were a sport, then it may not actually be over when the fat lady sings - the other team might have another fat lady ready to tie the game and maybe win it in extra innings. Or take the theatre - when was the last time you saw Sir Laurence Olivier head butt his co-star and get sent off for the last ten minutes of a west end play?

So there is something unique about sports as entertainment. And tonight was all that.

Chi-Town Brawl - Lego Style

Aaaarrrgggghhh. Too many boxes. But, oh well, what are you going to do. Nobody likes the work that goes with moving house, but I guess it's a necessary evil if you want to actually, well, move.

But here's a light hearted item from the baseball world. Last weekend there was a nasty brawl in the Chicago local derby match between the Cubs and White Sox. Video and photographs litter the internet, but only in one place can you relive the entire thing in Legovision. I point you to:

The Brawl at the Bitch: A Reenactment

...over at Batgirl.com

Notes for the uninitiated: the target of the thrown punch is A. J. Pierzynski, a one time Minnesota Twin and all around obnoxious personality by all accounts, hence the Twins interest. Also, the White Sox (or, as Ms. Girl prefers to call them, the Bitch Sox) are the hated division rivals.

Hu's on First?

The visit of President Hu (pronounced "who" to the uninitiated) of China to Seattle has been a veritable cornucopia of pun opportunities.

For instance, I really wish he'd finished that postgraduate degree. Then he'd be Dr. Hu.

And rumor has it that at these shindigs there's always a great deal of protocol to be figured out on who gets to speak when. Apparently, they finally did work it all out, and they decided that "Hu's on first".

For those of you uninitiated in perhaps the greatest comedy routine of all time (and I include anything British in the competition), here's a snippet (although it really does help to have just a smidge of baseball knowledge for it to make sense):

Abbott: I say Who's on first, What's on second, I Don't Know's on third.

Costello: Are you the manager?

Abbott: Yes.

Costello: You gonna be the coach too?

Abbott: Yes.

Costello: And you don't know the fellows' names?

Abbott: Well I should.

Costello: Well then who's on first?

Abbott: Yes.

Costello: I mean the fellow's name.

Abbott: Who.

Costello: The guy on first.

Abbott: Who.

Costello: The first baseman.

Abbott: Who.

Costello: The guy playing...

Abbott: Who is on first!

Costello: I'm asking YOU who's on first.

Abbott: That's the man's name.

Costello: That's who's name?

Abbott: Yes.

It sure doesn't hurt that the Mariners came  back from 6-1 deficit to win 9-6 tonight.