40 man moves
The Mariners made two moves today to create room for Ron Villone and Adrian Beltre on the 40 man roster. They traded Aaron Taylor (#22 on the Future Forty) for middling non-prospect Sean Green. This is basically a rehash of last years Allan Simpson-Chris Buglovsky swap, where the Mariners send a potentially useful reliever to Colorado for minor league roster filler simply to open up space on the 40-man.
They also designated Rett Johnson for assignment, going against the rumor that Aaron Looper was next on the chopping block. Johnson has one of the better arms in the system, but the 2004 season was basically a lost year for him due to some personal issues (which we won’t elaborate on). There’s a pretty good chance that someone grabs him on waivers. Despite his issues, I certainly would have kept him over Aaron Looper, though it was known that Johnson was potentially vulnerable this winter.
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22 Responses to “40 man moves”
So what does this move say about the priorities of the Mariners organization? That protecting Benny Looper’s feelings is more important that helping the Mariners collect and develop useful players? Rett Johnson and Aaron Taylor have UPSIDE, man.
I have to admit … I’m glad to be back to Bavasi-bashing. Last week’s Oblong Head Lovefest felt more than a little weird.
Without giving away any confidences … is Rett Johnson ready to get back to work?
Ugh, bad day. My favorite dumpster-dive prospect, Aaron Myette of Gig harbor, was sold to the Sendei Golden Eagles of Japan for cash.
Today is a good day to get in touch with your inner David J. Corcoran and hit your ESPN.com transactions site reload button every 11 seconds … there are going to be some VEERRRRRRRY interesting roster maneuvers over the next several hours. We’re going to see this week just how good the Mariners front office is at evaluating and acquiring free talent.
I think the nepotism stuff in relation to Aaron Looper is overblown. The M’s did trade him to Los Angeles last year. They had to take him back (in exchange for Glenn Bott) when he came up lame. The M’s aren’t just hanging onto him because he’s Benny’s kid. If he’s healthy, his upside isn’t all that different from Taylor’s.
No one really knows with Rett. I doubt even he knows. He’s a longshot at this point.
Rett Johnson was pretty good on Baseball Mogul’s 2004 mod. Which is the true test of a prospect.
I wonder if Dobbs or Leone have any trade value… If not, I don’t see the value of keeping them on the 40 man roster with Beltre in town…
#5, I disagree about Leone (though not Dobbs). Justin will make a great bench player – he’s versatile enough to play anywhere in a pinch besides catcher and CF, and he’s got bat with some nice pop off the bench. He’s also about 4 times better (and cheaper!) than WFBloomquist.
The lesson here, as always, is cut Willie F. Bloomquist!
My guess is that Dobbs has more “value” than Leone unless he was traded to Colorado. I’d personally rather keep both of them though both project to backup 4A types or at best Dobbs becomes Corey Koskie/Joe Randa and Leone becomes Tony Batista.
I’d like to think that Leone is more valuable than Tony Batista.
Leone IS more valuable than Tony Batista…if for NO other reason than he costs 10% what Batista costs;)
By the way, in keeping with a discussion some of us were having at the pizza feed, Justin Leone is yet another Gig Harbor connection. His girlfriend is from there, and he lives during the season in a trailer behind her parents’ house, according to reliable sources of mine from my tenure as the editor of the newspaper there.
So, as far as I know, here’s the Gig Harbor-baseball connection roster:
— Mariner third-base coach Dave Myers
— San Diego Padres scout and Pizza Feeed guest Josh Boyd
— Former Mariner scout, current Padres scout and former Jetsons-T-shirt-wearing-major-league-reliever Charley Kerfeld
— Tacoma Rainiers radio broadcaster Mike Curto (Fox Island, actually)
— Mike Sweeney, Kansas City Royals first baseman (part-time Fox Island resident)
— Oakland A’s first baseman Scott Hatteberg
— Aaron Myette (family there, by way of British Columbia)
— John Fuller, whose major-league career consisted of one hit in three at-bats with the Atlanta Braves in 1974.
Information you couldn’t get to sleep without ….
i was just reading the new edition of Mariners Mailbag, and, Ladies and Gentlemen, we may have the most eye popping sentence yet. The caption under the picture says “Edgar Martinez never got the chance to prove he could close out games”. It sounds like he’s actually serious. Check it out and read the question about a DH closing, it’s so unbelievably out there it’s almost too funny to laugh at!
Aaaaahhhhh!!!! The 40-man roster is finally set! For now. I can relax again until the next round of roster moves to tweak the 14 position players and potentially overhaul the bullpen and/or rotation.
(Having 42 players on the 40-man roster was leaving me feeling all discombobulated.)
I have to laugh whenever I read something along the lines of “Rett Johnson, whose problems we won’t elaborate on.” I think the best thing to do is to stop making the allusions every time his name is dropped.
But then, you’d get questions like: Didn’t he have some personal problems? Do you guys know what they were? Can you elaborate?
OK, I gotta ask — how was this guy (Sean Green) ever a 12th round draft pick out of college? Look at his numbers from his draft season. 0-10, 8.53 ERA, 111 hits allowed in 77 innings. He walked 40 and struck out just 35! He must be some sort of groundball extremist, because the only number of his which looks good at all are his homers allowed (18 in 310 career minor league innings).
jason
Wow, Shaun Green! Now there’s the left handed pop that wee needed!….What? Not the right….uh, never mind.
Well, I was going through some old archives on google and it seems like he was a well-regarded pitcher at one point. Just fell off a cliff the season he was drafted and never quite recovered I guess. But BA didn’t have anything archived on him either, nothing saying “oh he fell due to (something)”, but then again those archives are back from 2000 and the info isn’t always so detailed back to that point.
Johnson is a total headcase and was the cause of his own personal issues dragging so far into the season. The excuse for his lost season, according to someone very very close to him was… “The spring training incident ruined me and I can’t focus.”… It’s a bunch of BS. He is a mental midget at this point in time. Sad, too, because he had talent.
That being said, he could learn from all of this, and possibly be back with the club in 2005, which is what the team would prefer.
The question in the mariner mailbag is hypothetical and doesn’t actually imply that Edgar has any pitching ability. But the best part is Jim Street laying into the fan asking if Griffey will return. His answer is actually right on.
When I was comparing Leone to Tony Batista, I wasn’t saying he isn’t better I was just saying that he *might* project to that type of career based on High HR/Low Average only (totally ignoring the fact that Leone’s more versatile and actually can take a walk). Value wise, Leone’s much better cause of the low price tag.
#19 My Griffey prediction is that he’ll back (ala Eddie Murray in Baltimore) the off-season after Carl Linder kicks the bucket and they buyout the remaining portions of his contract.
I don’t know much about Mariner baseball, but you may be impressed at Sean Green’s performance in the future. I watched him pitch in Tulsa, and was nothing short of impressive. He throws 95-98mph and continues to get better in his career. His confidence is growing..so his performance will do nothing but improve. He has gone from a wild pitcher who throws hard to a controlled strike out machine. Not to mention it is a nightmare for hitters to get his pitches out of the infield, much less out of the ball park. Good luck and God bless to Sean and his career with Seattle.