Beltre on Perez, other good stuff
Good stuff in the PI: The M’s are working on Odalis Perez, and his friend Beltre’s part of the full-court press. But even better for me was this toss-off at the end:
The non-tender process will create a new pool of low-priced free agents. General manager Bill Bavasi has said he’ll take a good look at the non-tender pool.
I looooooove hearing stuff like this. Gillick had a kind of open disdain for building full rosters, occasionally tossing money at a Colbrunn when it crossed his mind — which is why his benches sucked, and the Gillick M’s were often unprepared for injuries. Knowing that team’s paying attention to stuff like this, even if they ultimately do nothing, makes me happy.
I wonder if Bavasi knows this about the hard-core M’s fans and is just saying stuff like that to buy our affection. (pause) Well, it’s working then. Go Bill go!
Comments
66 Responses to “Beltre on Perez, other good stuff”
I’ll ditto everyone’s support for Gillick and especially the Ibanez signing. At $4 million a year, there’s nothing wrong with Raul’s performance that a little help in the lineup can’t fix.
Only problem with Gillick was his poor skill when it came to July trades. The man could work a roster.
Bavasi is not the second coming. It doesn’t take a lot of skill to sign a guy (Sexson) that states he wants to play on you team. Follow that up with a guy that wants to stay on the West Coast, limiting his own options. Of course, I am as happy as anyone to have Beltre.
Don’t forget that this is the same GM that wanted to help the team get younger by trading Carlos Guillen for that young kid Omar Vizquel. Not saying he is bad, just not great. he doesn’t seem to know where he wants to go.
As far as Raul, Winn, etc, not being great, no kidding. We can’t afford greatness at every position. We can afford a few very good players that are surrounded by complimentary players.
Tyler … true, but that doesn’t give him a free pass for everything wrong he did afterward. Gillick deserves a rightful place in Mariner history … just not an uncritically laudatory one.
In my mind, the essence of the cricisms levied against Gillick is this: like every other GM on the planet since the introduction of free agency, he hasn’t been able to eliminate the success cycle. (Or, in a weaker form designed to account for the current Yankees, he hasn’t been able to eliminate the success cycle without an ever-increasing payroll). If that’s the worst that can be said of him, I’ll take it.
The stuff about not adapting doesn’t fit. He was running a playoff team just two years ago. It’s not that he couldn’t adapt; it’s that he couldn’t continue to win (in theory, since he wasn’t there) when his roster got too old and/or expensive. Just like in Montreal, Cleveland, Oakland, Florida, Arizona, etc.
I meant to add: And precisely because of Gillick’s risk averse approach, in theory we (and Baltimore and Toronto) should be able to recover MORE quickly because we aren’t saddled with huge long-term bad contracts.
Why dont we wait with all the praise for Bavasi, till we now how this team will do. What if Sexson gets hurt early in the season and Beltre has problems to adjust and wont put up the numbers he did in LA?
On the proposed Unit-Yankees-Dodgers trade: “The deal is no more,” says DePo.
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=1951207
LA woulda gotten really screwed over. So would the D’Backs.
The Yankees were the only team that could’ve even possibly won on that trade, and I am not even sure about that. That trade looked like a lose-lose-lose situation.
56:
He finally put his feet in the water and showed some guts. Even if they flop, he did a good job. I promise NOT to whine about Sexson or Beltre or Bavasi about Sexson or Beltre if either or both of them stink. The Mariners did the best they could. (that looks weird in a sentence)
If Beltre has problems adjusting it doesn’t make the deal a bad deal. At the time that Bavasi signed Beltre it was a great deal. I don’t think anyone can say yet that Bavasi is a great GM. However I can say with certainity that Bavasi is doing a great deal to erase the idiot stamp that I had placed on him after last years deals, and in the case of Vizquel, almost deal.
#56 because this tends to lead to revisionist history. The question is based on the information he/we had at the time, did Bavasi make good moves. I think Dave (or Derek) put it best when he said if you close your eyes and run across the street and don’t get hit by car, does that mean it was a good decision?
Back to the specific topic, let’s say Beltre averages .350 with 55 HR and wins two MVPs over the next three years. Does that make Bavasi a genius? No, it makes him lucky that Beltre peformed at the top 5% of his expected range.
“Back to the specific topic, let’s say Beltre averages .350 with 55 HR and wins two MVPs over the next three years. Does that make Bavasi a genius? No, it makes him lucky that Beltre peformed at the top 5% of his expected range.”
Ack. No….it does not make him lucky, because it was a calculated gamble that Beltre performed that high, because he gave a lot of various indications that he had the potential for that.
Now, if it was SEXSON who did this, yeah, THAT would be lucky.
It wouldn’t make him a genius, or lucky. It would make him right.
#63: I think Beltre can perform well under those Bonds-ian numbers and we can still consider Bavasi “right”. Performing at such a high level for a period of three years would be unexpected by almost all observers.
I still remember an amazing quote from Gillick somewhere around the offseason after 2002. He complained that teams (the A’s?) were allowed to have totally different rosters at the end of the season than the ones with which they began the season.
I have no idea what, if anything, about Gillick’s philosphies about the game would prevent him from making trades and upgrading his team as much as Beane did. That’s not an issue of looking for toolsy players versus judging solely by performance. It isn’t a matter of preferring older or younger players. It wasn’t a matter of preferring a few superstars and a supporting cast of lesser lights as opposed to a whole cast of guys at the cusp of being all stars. It was about getting up off the couch and working. At least that’s what it came off as and it harkened back to the “Stand pat” rep that Gillick had dispelled with the Rickey Henderson and Cone to the Blue Jays trades.
I don’t think Bavasi is a great GM. I remember I said “fire Bavasi” and “fire Melvin” last September. Well, after that Beltre signing, I’ll keep that “fire bavasi” card board under my bed until June 2005, at least.
After some major signings, which give all of us a merry christmas and some hope for next year, we’d better back off the guy a little bit, and wait and see. Don’t be too harsh, people! It’s christmas!