The full trade is RHP Zack Grienke from the KC Royals to the Milwaukee Brewers for SS Alcides Escobar, OF Lorenzo Cain, RHP Jeremy Jeffress and RHP Jake Odirizzi. I have to say I like the trade from both sides, but unlike most commentators, I like it a bit more from the Royals side.
On the surface, the trade gives the BrewCrew a solid rotation, while not quite in the same class as the Giants or Phillies, makes them very competitive with second tier rotations like the Dodgers, Braves, Reds and Cards: Grienke, Gallardo, Marcum, Wolf and Narveson. The big question is which version of Zack Grienke are the Brewers getting, the Cy Young winner from 2009 or the guy who went 10-14 with a 4+ ERA last year? While the most likely answer is somewhere in between, it's not an automatic that Grienke is their #1 guy for the next 2 years or that he will be a $13 M/yr pitchers over those 2 years.
I don't mind the Brewers giving up young players and prospects if they are going for it now. The one chip they gave up that I think hurts just a bit is the SS, Escobar. Some of the commenters on other internet baseball sites are saying he's already a bust with the bat, but go look up the first 1-3 year stats on some historical all-star field-first shortstops like Dave Concepcion and Omar Vizquel who eventually became more than adequate hitters. Next, look up how many highly ranked, MLB ready shortstops are out there on the top prospect lists coming out. I did that when I was trying to see if there was anybody out there the Giants might be able to trade for. The list is not a long one! The Brewers got a stopgap back for at least 1 season, but will now probably have to struggle to fill the position for years to come.
From the Royals side, Grienke was coming off a down year and was demanding a trade. They didn't have to trade him, but they also couldn't risk a further eroding of his value with another down year either. The Royals have a monster farm system and are going to be a very good team in 1 to 3 years. One way or another, Grienke was not going to be part of that future good team. As loaded as KC's farm system is, they didn't have anybody who definitely projected as their future SS or CF and you can never have too much pitching.
Escobar is already a plus defender at an elite position. The D should get better as he learns the nuances of the position at the MLB level. His OBP was just .288, but with a BA of .239, that can easily get up into the .320-.330 range if he can get his BA up to .270 which his likely projection. With just that much offense, he should become a 3+ WAR player in the near future. Just to show you how much I like Escobar, for awhile this offseason is I was holding out a slim hope that the Giants could make a trade for him if the Brewers had soured on him.
I've always liked Lorenzo Cain and not just because he carries the same surname as our favorite Giants pitcher. Cain has always brought a big toolbox with him. At the very least, he'll be a positive defender in CF. His offensive record in the minors has been spotty. He will likely continue to be alternatingly spectacular and frustrating. Again, natural CF's don't grow on trees and this was a hole in KC's future.
Jeremy Jeffress has a 100 MPH fastball that he has struggled to control. He's also missed some development time with a couple of drug suspensions for Marijuana. Let me just say that while I don't advocate using Marijuana, especially if you do it by inhaling smoke into your lungs, I don't think it's as addictive as Nicotine nor as dangerous as alcohol. Like all substances including food, it has the potential for overuse and abuse, but probably should not be illegal and should be treated differently by MLB than violations for PED's and harder drugs. Assuming Jeffress can avoid a lifetime ban, he looks like a Closer in the making, and possibly as early as 2011. He was blowing hitters away in the Arizona Fall League.
Odirizzi is a former first round draft pick who has done nothing in the pros to diminish his standing as a prospect. He is still probably at least 2 years away, but gives the Royals yet another high ceiling prospect in their system. You can never have too much pitching!
Summary: Win-win here, but I like the trade slightly better for KC.
PS: If you think the internet community has been unfairly critical of Brian Sabean, you should read what most of them have to say about Dayton Moore. I see some parallels here. Moore has had a lot of trades and FA signings not work out the way fans hoped, and that is probably a negative. On the other hand, KC has never had a basic core strong enough for a quick turnaround. Moore's plan and mandate was/is to build the team through scouting, drafting and the farm system. He has quietly built the best farm system in baseball, and it's not at all a close call. Some commentators like Kevin Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus are going so far as to call it the best in history! The KC Royals are going to have very good team within the next 3 years and when that happens, all those people making jokes about how Moore and Omar Minaya battling for the title of worst GM in baseball are going to start singing a different tune.
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My pick with Sabean was his confrontist demeanor. We live in a negative thinking society/media who only thrive on insulting anyone and not just the participants, but the fans knowledge of the sport.
ReplyDeleteIn baseball, I believe that euphoria is reached only by attaining one object. Right now Sabean is the God GM of baseball. Is there anything better? If he told me "I told you so" I would probably take a ricochet.
opshuns -
ReplyDeleteAgreed. Sabean put together a team basically by default. He found a gold deposit for cheap with Uribe and Huff (who was 3rd or 4th choice), basically made the easiest draft call in the past decade at #5 by taking Posey (who was only there because of his contract demands), trusted a scout on Bumgarner, etc., etc.
I don't want to make Sabean out to be a terrible GM, he has made some gutsy moves that I actually like (Alderson for Sanchez) comes to mind for some reason. I just don't think he is top of the line. He is a very average GM who had the cards fall his way and ended up having a Manager who knew what to do with pitching.
Hey team,
ReplyDeleteIMO, Brian Sabean has been about as humble as a World Series winning GM can reasonably be. As far as his past "lunatic fringe" comment, well, maybe he was right about that one.
I totally reject the notion that Sabean put this team together by default:
1. Pretty much every pundit in the game thought Matt Cain was an overdraft.
2. 9 teams passed on Tim Lincecum because of his size and unorthodox delivery. Sabes didn't.
3. Most fans and analysts thought the Giants should take a hitter in 2007. Sabes took Bumgarner.
4. An awful lot of fans thought Justin Smoak was the guy for the Giants in 2008. Sabes took Posey.
Go ahead and call 4 consecutive home runs on first round picks luck if you want. I call it good scouting and good decision making.
DrB -
ReplyDeleteI agree with a lot of what you said in the previous post. I tend to agree that Sabean is an average GM as the last "anon" said. The Cody Ross/Aubrey Huff/Juan Uribe may have been lucky; Posey may have been the obvious draft choice for many; but, for all of those guys there is a Jonathan Sanchez, a Freddy Sanchez, an Andrew Torres, a Pat Burrell, a Brandon Belt, etc.
Basically, this team got a little lucky and got hot at the right time, which isn't Sabean's fault. In fact, outside of the AL East and perhaps the Phillies at this point, any team that wins the world series needs a serious dose of luck and a hot streak in them.
Lastly, Sabean, in my opinion has proven that he is learning from his mistakes. Aaron Rowand = bad contract, then he lets Uribe walk. He recognized the Giants ability to develop pitching and goes out and gets us good, projectable pitchers. I think Sabean could learn to be a bit wiser with how money is spent, but with mistakes like Zito and Rowand, I doubt he will compound those with similar deals in the future.
I agree 100% with DrB.
ReplyDeleteSee, DrB, this is the stuff that drives me crazy, saying that Sabean was lucky. Luck is always a factor in any World Series championship. If one really want to stand on that as a reason to take away credit from Sabean, one is basically taking it away from the history of MLB, because every team had some fair amount of luck involved. And if one really stands by that, then one may as well take your APBA game and play with the dice, real MLB baseball is just the same.
Sabean constructed this team. Any GM will get some luck along the way in that other teams passed up your gem. But what most of these naysayers forget is that Sabean KEPT all these pitchers together when all the Lunatic Fringe was BEGGING him to trade any one of them, including Lincecum, for a hitter. That alone should be evidence enough that he earned his championship, but some people just hold onto their bias.
OGC,
ReplyDeleteWell, I don't recall many wanting to trade Timmy, but certainly there has been a pretty loud chorus for trading Cain and/or Sanchez over the years.
IMO, luck is the residue of design, or to put it another way, chance favors the prepared mind. Yes, Sabes had some good fortune on some of the FA signings, but it wouldn't have been near enough without the core of young pitching plus Posey that Sabean has patiently built. Besides, how long does your string of luck have to be before it starts to defy the odds and become more likely due to skill in evaluating players?
Also, don't forget that Sabean didn't exactly bat 1.000 on the acquisitions. Wellemeyer was pretty much a bust and turned out to be just a short bridge to MadBum. Jose Guillen was pretty much a bust. Sandoval had an unexpectedly terrible season. If Sabean had some good luck, he also had some bad luck. Whether it was skill or luck, the good finally outweighed the bad, mostly because the core was so solid.
There was a ton of people who wanted the Giants to trade Lincecum for Rios when the Blue Jays leaked what they offered, including one prominent Sabean basher for a local newspaper.
ReplyDeleteThere were strong rumors of Cain for Fielder a number of times (plus for Rios as well), and Sanchez has been strongly tied to Carlos Gomez (long ago, maybe 2007 or 8) and Corey Hart last season, among others that I can recall.
The only one who escaped without a major rumor (at least that I can recall) of being wanted in trade for some hitter was Bumgarner, but I know I've seen fans who said that we should trade him at that time in order to win in 2009.
I agree that luck is the residue of design. He followed his plan - pitching, pitching, and more pitching - to the T and filled in as necessary to win with that pitching.
I'll bet if we were able to ask for a show of hands of people who still won't give Sabean his due despite winning the 2010 World Championship, and then ask them to lower their hands if they had at any time advocated for the Giants to trade their pitching for a hitter, I bet 99.999% of them would have to put their hands down.
ReplyDeleteThe reason the Giants won was clearly because their pitching pitched great and allowed the offense to finally join the party and win the game. Not the other way around. And that was the design of the GM, Sabean.
I don't get much chance to read the SF papers, so I must have missed the Timmy for Rios talk. Most of the internet discussion I participated in was against that trade. Man, I'd still like to know what really happened with that deal and how close it came to actually happening. Can you imagine?
ReplyDeleteActually, it was the San Jose newspaper columnist plus KNBR talk show hosts. Maybe SF too, just don't remember if any of them jumped on that bandwagon. But two loudmouth media loudly proclaimed that the Giants must do this trade for Rios.
ReplyDeleteMy assumption, given Sabean's subsequent behavior is that the Blue Jays approached Sabean regarding Rios for one of their two top pitchers, and maybe Sabean didn't return his call, which an ESPN poll famously embarrassed him with. So they leaked the rumor which drove the media to Sabean's doorstep.
Sabean, who likes to, quote, keep everything under his kimono, unquote, follows his policy to never respond to rumors, publicly says that the Giants are in no position to ignore even trading one of their top pitchers in order to improve. I read that as Sabean-speak for "If someone wows me, I'll listen".
Meanwhile, the Blue Jays keep on leaking out info from their viewpoint, first they wanted Cain, but then they "settled" on Lincecum as the one to target. Obviously, they and no other team wows Sabean, so after a while, he publicly says that he's not trading any of them now.
I don't think he was ever serious about trading either of them, in terms of any team making an offer that made sense to him. I'm sure if a boatload of good prospects were offered, he would have at least listened, but at that point, these were the same teams who passed up on Lincecum or thought the same as these teams, that Lincecum was not far from the DL at some point. The offers probably reflected that. Plus, his overall season's numbers belied the fact that after he figured out his month long problem early on, he compiled a 2.9-something ERA.
Yeah, had that trade been made, Sabean certainly would have been fired after Timmy's second Cy Young, if not his first. It would have been the worse trade in SF Giants history, surpassing George Foster, Gaylord Perry (well, that one probably worse given Sudden Sam McDowell's sudden career decline), Bobby Bonds, etc.
Well, the most important fact is it didn't happen, thank God!
ReplyDelete