More on the Jason Bay Trade

Shoppach, Lee, and Guttierez for Bay and Paulino? That would have been huge. No real young guys there, but they could have been turned around this offseason for a boatload of prospects.

Pirates fans should consider themselves lucky to have such an great beat writer.

is that Boston and LA ended up with premier players and gave up very little in return. Manny had quit on boston in 08, had long been a source of annoyance, and thus was the very definition of addition by subtraction. Beyond him, Moss and Hansen were spare parts of no particular value (zero value in Hansen’s case), especially when measured against what they returned – a high level producer, and the elimination of a team cancer.

To me, all sides in a trade should be saying to themselves, “you know, we’re happy with the return,but we really hated to give up Player XYZ.” In this trade, not su much.

The Dodgers clearly had soured on LaRoche, and their other contribution was a Low A pitcher with arm trouble. As for the Red Sox…I live in New England, work among Sox fans, and listen to the sports talk radio here. No one…NO ONE – not in the organization or fan base – was the least bit mournful over losing Hansen and Moss.

If you’re LA, you can’t believe your good fortune – you get Manny Ramirez and all you give up is a guy you have zero faith in and a pitcher light years from the show. If you’re Boston, you’re thinking of NH, this guy’s even dumber than the one who gave us Mike Gonzalez as a throw-in for Brandon Lyon – Jason Bay for Hansen and Moss? Not as bad as A-Ram and Lofton for Jose Hernandez and Bobby Hill, perhaps, but basically a whole lotta nothing for a whole lotta something.

Now, what the other teams and their fans think is irrelevant if the trade works out for the bucs, but so far, we’re nowhere close to that.

No one can point to any comments I’ve made that have bashed this trade. And yes, I understand the rationale, just as I did at the time it was made. So, I don’t need any tedious explanations about Bay’s impending FA blah blah blah. There’s a difference between theory and execution. Littlefield had no understanding of the correct theory, but still managed to pull off some decent trades. Oliver Perez and J-Bay for Brian Giles comes to mind*.

NH gets the theory, but gets too much credit for that alone. He also gets big points just for not being Littlefield – ironically, just as the early Littlefield did for not being Bonifay. At that time, he also was credited with having a plan, ,just as NH is now. Stockpile pitching and trade the excess for other needs. There was a not inconsiderable consensus at the time that tha was the right way to proceed.

So, theories and plans are fine, but it always boils down to execution. And yes, if LaRoche actually turns into a player, and Morris into anything more than a 4-5 starter, I’ll revise my opinion of this deal, but until and unless, the Bay trade will always be four quarters for a dollar, IMO . Thus, poor execution.

If the idea was to rebuild the farm system, one recuperating low A pitcher doesn’t contribute much. I have to think Boston and LA could have parted with some serious high A or AA prospects if they were desperate enough – and Boston in particular clearly was. I would have been way happier with Lars Anderson as part of the deal. If teams like LA and Boston are not willing to part with prospects, there’s no reason other teams (like the Pirates) are required to do business with them. We don’t need to be a feeder team, like the old KC A’s were for the Yankees.

But it’s all over now, and all we can do is hope that LaRoche ST 09 doesn’t = Paulino ST 07. And that Bryan Morris makes a rapid ascent thru the system.

*I realize that Littlefield fell bassackwards into success on that deal (having set his sights initially on josh barfield and x-man), but I’d rather be lucky and successful than right and holding a bag of crap.

You can’t possibly evaluate this trade, or any of its type, in the short term. It’s quite obviously reliant on how well the prospects pan out. So all you have to go on is the process, and I think the process worked. I’m sure the Pirates asked about Lars Anderson…I’m sure they asked (as noted in the article) about a ton of “top 100” prospects. And at the end of the day, even if they only got “four quarters for a dollar”, to me that’s a LOT better than getting nothing after ’09 when Bay leaves in free agency.

The reality is that Jason Bay had practically zero chance to ever be part of a winning Pirates team. Once you accept that, you have to appreciate that the process worked. It’s a results oriented business, and it should be, but let’s wait at least 24 months before we judge the results on this one.

After this year, when a healthy LaRoche shows he can be an above average everyday player, Moss gives us a typical X-Man year, Hansen turns into a semi-usable reliever, and Morris jets through the system as a real stud, the trade is going to look fantastic.

After the following year, when LaRoche dramatically regresses, Moss is overexposed and ends up in the minors, Hansen walks 74 batters in a row, and Morris’s arm falls off, the trade is going to look horrific.

The year after that, when one of them turns it around again and is OK, we trade one of them for a promising prospect, and two of them go home and start selling real estate, the trade will look…?

Ridiculous to criticize this trade at this point as “poor execution.” We seem to live in a world that demands instant judgments, but really, there’s no way to give value to this trade for several years. And we can, indeed, give credit to NH for getting the theory right.

PECOTA already scores the trade a win for the Bucs:

’09 projected WARP

Bay —> 2.3

Moss —> 1.3
Laroche —> 1.8
Hansen —> 0.5

did anyone else see the Beyond Optimism MLB commercial that just ran during the Phillies game?

All these fans of different teams (white sox, Yankees, etc.) saying “This is our year” type things and then the Pirates fan gets on screen and says “We’re on the right track”

Made me chuckle more than it should have.

I think it could have been done better, however, because this is essentially a one-source story (granted, the one source is the one we care most about, but still …). and we don’t hear from the other parties involved. If Dejan had been able to include the POVs of the Red Sox and the other interested teams and described how they negotiated and interacted with the Pirates — in fact, if he had written it ONLY from that perspective — that might have been even more enlightening.

As it is, it’s not nearly as interesting as Michael Lewis eavesdropping as Billy Beane manipulates and fleeces people like Omar Minaya. And again, I say that granting that Dejan likely didn’t have the access or the space to write that Lewis did.

BTW, this piece reminded me of one of the best newspaper pieces of the type I’ve ever read. It was Bruce Keidan describing how the Penguins, holding the No. 1 draft pick that became Mario Lemieux, were courted and wooed for the pick up to the second they called his name. He revealed that the (then) Quebec Nordiques, I think it was, offered all three Stastny brothers for the pick.

Dejan’s reporting doesn’t let us in on who else was on the table. So while I believe he’s a terrific beat reporter and deserving of any prizes and recognition that come his way, I can’t call this piece an FAW, as a buddy of mine in the newspaper business used to say (that’s F***in’ Award-Winner).

The Red Sox liked to play innocent victim, but if Manny was such a critical component (good or bad) and had such high value as a hitter, the Sox could have extended him and made the situation go away. Manny would have shut up and played if he got payed. To suggest Manny forced their hand is disingenuous. The Sox chose to take a hard line (to an albeit questionable demand) and had to live with the consequences. You could argue Manny took an equally hard line.

Whatever you want to say about Moss/Hansen or Manny, Bay is not nor will he ever be the hitter Manny is, however great a guy, teammate, and very good ball player. A lot of people in Pittsburgh were distraught over the return for Brian Giles at the time of that deal. Bay seemed like a toss-in who was old for his professional trajectory and ironically seemed like an inferior return than the desired Nady . Perez couldn’t find the strike zone and had Dr. Andrews drooling over his bizarre delivery (still don’t know how to evaluate Ollie). The only downside was that deal may have buoyed DL’s tenure longer than he deserved.

Too bad I subscribe to the Trib….

A wise man said that following a mediocre plan is better than acting without a perfect plan. With that being said, I like the tangilbe direction of the PBC. Of course I was one of the ones bitching at the collateral damage done by the Bay/Nady trade, but my ire is more towards the marketing of the PBC that has turned PNC Park into Kennywood sans the rides (oh God please dont them add any rides).

While we still need gimmicks to fill the seats, I know that Pirate fans will return once major league baseball returns – not the AAAA crap we have had to endure that past 16 seasons. When I interned with the Pirates in ’98, we saw Three Rivers Stadium electrified when Mark and Sammy were chasing Maris. My boss at the time said, “This is what it will be like when we put a winner on the field”. Ot has been a long time coming, but the Yankee game was a snapshot 10 years later of what PNC Park will look like when we put out a winner.

Now that we have a tangilbe direction, I can feel confident saying “when”.

Big layoffs and downsizing

Bay would have been the wrong guy to build around. Can anyone honestly say they missed Giles? Let us not forget he came from Cleveland with comparable expectations to Moss and he was pegged as a 4th outfielder because he’d never hit lefties.

I was most encouraged by DK’s article that the Pirates considered not making a deal to be a viable option too. It would have been easy to take cover behind the Nady/Marte trade and assert that a Bay deal had to get done when it didn’t.