At first I thought Bavasi was trying to sneak him through during the postseason, hoping no one would notice. Then I suspected he was doing it to make a point to Hargrove. “This guy you thought had no value was quickly taken by a division rival.”

By November 5th the roster has to be down to 40 players including the 5 players on the DL at season’s end. There is also about 5 players who need to be added to the roster because they are newly exposed to the Rule 5 Draft. Nothing new there.

Even if you DFA Rivera you have to add another catcher, and the only one with MLB experience is Quiroz. I don’t believe they are ready to give the back-up catcher position to Rob Johnson or Jeff Clement at this time.

Pineiro will be dropped and Campillo and Jimenez will probably also go. After that it gets tricky. We all assume Meche, Perez, Dobbs and Morse will also be dropped. Maybe not. Maybe they plan on trying to resign Meche before he talks to other teams. Maybe they intend to pick up the option on Perez. Maybe they don’t want to expose Dobbs and Morse to waivers.

Yes, I’m sure Bavasi would have loved to keep Cruceta into the December trade season, but it seems more reasonable that he believes they had to move him before the trade and FA season starts.

Maybe Cruceta’s not fixable, any more than Shaq will ever be good at shooting free throws. (Or Kendall Gill ever developing a jump-shot with his atrocious mechanics..but I’m dating myself.)

No reason to get excited about who owns his rights. Have you seen *anyone* say Cruceta is a potential 1 or 2 starter? I haven’t. If Cruceta’s ceiling is 5th starter/long reliever, who cares if he stays or goes. He’s a fungible commodity. Let him go and move on to the next Cruceta, or Ed Vande Berg, or… whoever, they’re just names on uniforms at that point.

Given what the depth the Ms have in relief, I can see where they wouldn’t want to spend the time. But that may not and does not apply to other organizations who may very well want to spend the time to fix it. And may put up with the walks and strike outs. If there are organizations like that, then waiving Cruceta is downright stupid.

THAT is what the fuss is about. I don’t see why people see THAT.

What you don’t see on television is that his plant foot is never “stable”, it’s always moving around, and as a result he’s all over the place. To extend that point further, he’s probably more likely to get hurt due to his inconsistent mechanics. It may be the M’s tried to fix that and finally just threw their hands up about it as “unfixable”.

If he’s ever more than a middling (read: fungable) major league reliever I’ll be surprised. I don’t see what the fuss is about.

This might be standard m.o. for the current coaching staff (see Choo). And it may take some heavy pressure from other parts of the organization for Snelling to have gotten the bats that he did.

Granted, there is an understandable bias for veterans, and most managers prefer vets over rookies. But I think this group really allows internal preconceptions to dominate their perceptions of reality.

Rather than nothing, which is what they got.

When a team seems to have an abundance of talent in one area (like the bullpen for the M’s right now) it seems to breed a groupthink that said talent has no value and can be easily replaced anytime.

In a year or two, maybe they’ll wish they had more help in the bullpen.

Unfortunately, he is under contract for 2007, they love him so much they asked him to interview for the managerial job (he declined) and as Daniels is thinking they may go a first-time manager, he will undoubtably be told that Rudy comes with the job.