Mets Interested in Boone?
Jeff · July 5, 2005 at 9:05 am · Filed Under Mariners
Speculation in Newsday about the Mets possibly bringing in Bret Boone to fill in for/supplant Kaz Matsui. A choice excerpt:
Kaz Matsui’s transition to second base has made the position a question mark for the Mets, and Boone would be considered an upgrade if he could solve his hitting problems.
Wouldn’t virtually any bad hitter be an upgrade if they could solve their hitting problems?
Comments
136 Responses to “Mets Interested in Boone?”
Wow, a hundred posts on trade talk that isn’t substantial enough to be termed “rumor” (or “rumour” for our Canadian contingent).
Probably a good metric for how bad the team is this year….
English is a relatively easy language for Japanese speakers to learn, largely due to its consistent syntax. Also, like Japanese, English doesn’t grant its nouns gender, nor does it use complex tones or inflections for denotative meaning.
Japanese speakers would have a terrible time with Icelandic, which has no rules of syntax at all, relying entirely on inflection to relate grammatical structure.
On the Podsednik-Winn comparison: Clearly Winn is inferior this season due to his own decline. I was referring to multi-year value.
Except Winn is the better defender.
With Foulke sucking it up so bad in Boston, any thoughts of dealing Eddie to the Red Sox? They must have some prospects we could use.
We could use pitching in return, but I do kind of want Youkilis.
Is Reed the Mariners long-term guy in centerfield or will he eventually have to be moved to left? Before the season i remember everyone talking about him being a below average to average centerfielder, but i was drafted into the majors as a centerfielder, and he has better instincts from what i’ve seen then i ever had, which is why i was eventually moved to catcher though i guess. Anyways, is he going to stick there, because it seems like the mariners have some guys destined to be leftfielders, and some shortstops destined to be left or centerfielders…
I would say Reed’s defense has been exceptional. Much better than advertised.
No Doyle and no Morse (Bloomie) today.
Hargrove is starting to piss me off.
#100, here is something from the Firebrand of the American League blog. http://www.all-baseball.com/firebrand/archives/019482.html
#104: I’m sure the Red Sox would love to pick up Eddie, but Mr. Bavasi seems to think that if the cards fall just right, the M’s of 2005 can repeat the story of the M’s of 1995 and reach the postseason. http://www.baseballprospectus.com/statistics/ps_odds.php says those chances are, uh, rather remote, but that’s what the GM says, so he’ll be slow to deal the best pitcher in the bullpen.
#105: Boston has no surplus pitching to sell; they need to buy it in the worst way. And to paraphrase Lou Gorman, the former Sox GM, if the M’s got Youkilis, where would he play? He’s a 26-year-old corner infielder (really a 3rd baseman just now learning to play 1st), and the M’s bought $56m worth of 3rd baseman and $58m worth of 1st baseman this offseason. Spots at those positions won’t open up until at least 2009. (Figures from hardballdollars.com.)
#108, and the thing is Winn is in a deep slump right now, so there doesn’t seem to be any sense (or political reasons) in not giving him a day off and Doyle 4 AB’s. This is just stupid.
Bavasi is smoking a big one if he thinks the M’s have a rat’s chance. He’s just saying that for PR purposes. He’s also said he feels his job is on the line if things don’t get better quickly.
Plus, we can lose 90 games with or without Eddie. Trade him.
#79, why not trade Ibanez, get prospects back for a guy who won’t be around by the time we’re in playoff contention, find out what Snelling and Choo can do by trading off Winn also. And finally, after you’ve figured out what holes you can and can’t fill by playing the youngsters, then use the extra cash in FA next season (extra cash from Ibanez not being there and hopefully Snelling replacing him statistically).
I don’t see the point in not playing the guy with upside and who’s completely cost-effective. Sure, he’s likely to get injured, but Bucky, Choo and a million other guys are your fall-back.
The 4-5 mill that could be spent on Ibanez and some other mid-tier FA can then be combined into a top-line FA.
#106-
Do you mind me asking what your real name is?
Evan, you keep saying the only way to judge trades is by the informatino available at the time the trades were made. But since reaosnable people can disagree about the information available on most trades at the time (some trades are obvious stinkers), you’re basically just saying that whatever you thought about a trade at the time remains true, and damn the results. Maybe the other person’s reasons were more valid than yours. Maybe they had more information than you. (In the case of Olivo, doesn’t that seem likely?)
It seems to me that there’s a useful distinction to be made between whether a trade looks good, and whether the results pan out, and those are both legitimate ways to evaluate trades. And that saying there were good reasons is not the same as being right. There are people who refuse to give Brian Sabean credit for getting Jeff Kent for Matt Williams, because so many people thought it was stupid at the time. They were sure they were right then, and they refuse to be wrong now.
(And I doubt that Jeremy Reed is our long-term answer in center.)
“And I doubt that Jeremy Reed is our long-term answer in center.”
Why is that?
Because he doesn’t look that good in center.
I think Meche thinks he is in little league. 6 innings since he usually only goes 5.
#118 which games have you been watching?
You disagree, then? Okay. I’ve only seen a few games; how are his defensive numbers?
Reed’s pretty good for Zone Rating and Range Factor (think he’s tops in AL for both); not as great on Fielding percentage. Make of that as you will.
I think someone needs to actually read my post they are quoting.
Hint : “except his career peak’s coming later than theirs” is an important part of it. Go look up Martin and Higginson’s career stats on baseball-reference.com (another hint: not their age 33 stats, since I explicitly stated Ibanez is having a later career peak), and see why they are comparable. You might look at park+league adjusted OPS, for instance.
I’m still hung up on the “OMG you can’t trade Ibanez he is teh r0xx0r” argument. Yeah, he’s a good player on a team that’s going to struggle to win 75 games and has a huge, Grand Canyon-sized chasm in their starting rotation. I’M NOT ARGUING THIS POINT. I’M ALSO NOT ARGUING WE SHOULD TRADE IBANEZ FOR LUNCH AT DENNY’S. But why are Guardado and Winn possibilities to be shipped off because they are replaceable, but Ibanez isn’t? If Ibanez > Winn, doesn’t that mean what we get for Ibanez in trade > what we get for Winn?
Right now, the organization looks like it’s awash in corner OF’ers who can hit a little (without having big power numbers) and there’s a huge sucking sound where the rotation should be. Last I checked, you can’t have 6 outfielders at the same time in a batting order- but you HAVE to have a starting pitcher. So why is a 33 year old left handed OF with some power somehow sacrosanct when it’s gettting close to 3 years since your team had a winning month, and 2006 is looking possibly as dodgy for contending as 2005 was- where you have to do a lot of “well, if this kid has a ROY season and these NRI invites pan out, and these injuries heal up well, we have a shot”? I just don’t get it.
OK, two years since a winning month.
But anyway, still not understanding why you’d make Ibanez untouchable.
116 – That’s a problem, yes.
The important qualifier is information AVAILABLE at the time of the trade, not information possessed. Their performance after the trade is unknowable at the time the trade is made, so it’s unfair to judge a GMs performance based on information he couldn’t have had at the time an important decision was made.
On Youk – he’s not a great gloveman. I’d happily DH him, but I think he’s also a more valuable trade chit in the slightly longer term than Eddie is. We need young pitching, but no team who wants Eddie is willing to part with young pitching. So, we need to look for teams that need hitting if we’re going to get pitching back, but we don’t really have much hitting to offer.
But it’s not unknowable; it’s unknowable with certainty. People are making educated guesses. Some people have a track record of making better guesses than others.
My formulation would be more like: “Performance after a trade is subject to many factors, and our information going into a trade is necessarily incomplete. We should keep in mind that there were almost always good reasons to make these trades on both sides, and that often there are developments that no one anticipates that affect the results of trades. Nonetheless, these people are paid to make educated guesses about future performance, and the most useful way to judge their jobs is the accumulated results of their guesses.”
A trade you have sound reason to make: A trade that looks good.
A trade with positive results: A trade that is good.
Scraps, that is well said.
And when we evaluate the results, we can do so a day after the trade, a week later, 6 months later, or at any time. If we refuse to evaluate the results, are we simply going to let the grade earned at the time of trade stand? That can’t be right.
We don’t want to judge whether the trade worked out well. We want to judge whether making the trade was a good decision.
Certainly anyone who trades for a player is trading for unknown future performances. But all of the information from which one might project those future performances are available at the time of the trade.
A gamble isn’t any less of a gamble just because you won.
We’ve had this “do results justify any decision” argument here many times, and the it’s-a-good-decision-to-play-roulette-with-your-life’s-savings-if-you-win crowd has never conceded anything, so I don’t see where progress is going to be made here.
Scraps has a good point, though, D. What if you have information that the roulette wheel is broken, and has been hitting on 18 black 80 percent of the time? Then, its not really gambling, because you know something that isn’t public information.
What he’s saying, and I agree with, is that there can be a real disagreement over what the information available at the time is and what it means. If I say that playing roulette is a bad decision, but you’ve done the analysis and know that playing 18 black is actually a good risk, you didn’t get lucky when 18 black came up. You knew something I didn’t.
We have to allow leeway in our judgments for the possibility, or sometimes probability, that the organization knew something we didn’t know, and that affected why the decision turned out better than we thought it would.
Dave,
with all due respect, and without knowing your qualifications, don’t you have to allow leeway in your judgement for the likelihood that the organization has better information.
Your analysis doesn’t have holes by adding the caveat that the organization likely knows more about the issue at hand. Speaking for most of the readers here, we don’t care about who knows more, because USSM has the best available information outside the organization and that is reflected in the quality of your posts.
With respect to information available to baseball decision-makers, are there areas in which the M’s have shown to be lacking compared to USSM?
Scouting – M’s know more.
Quantitative Information – You and Derek know all the metrics and definitely weight them higher.
Psychological make up (of a player)- M’s know more by virtue of first-hand observation.
Business/Finances – M’s know more.
Dave,
with all due respect, and without knowing your qualifications, don’t you have to allow leeway in your judgement for the likelihood that the organization has better information.
Sure. The organization certainly has better information than we do.
It’s arguable whether or not they have the right people in place to actually make that information useful and translate it into results on the field.
I’m not arguing that we’d do a better job. I’m simply saying that the M’s organization still lacks some understanding of player valuation that a significant amount of other organizations have picked up on.
Understood.
“Right people in place” – I assume you mean Bavasi.
Bill Bavasi is a giant mixed bag. There are positives and negatives, and we really have no idea what kind of GM he’s going to be here in Seattle. Those who are extremely excited about his hiring are misguided, being led on by quotes a decade old and presuming to know something about his abilities that we simply have no chance of ascertaining. On the other hand, those ready to throw themselves off a bridge are misguided, as we’ve had 4 years of experience that a GM who does not do things the sabermetric way can succeed in this organization….
… Bill Bavasi might turn out to be a bad fit, a mini-Gillick who repeats the mistakes of the previous management, but he might not. There are qualities that make up a good general manager that we simply have no possible way of knowing about Bill Bavasi right now that devoid us of any ability to make a strong stance either way on this issue.
I’m sure many of us would be interested in a sequel to your views expressed in November 2003.
My real name is steve quealey, for whoever asked me
re 133
I’m not so sure he means ONLY Bavasi….