It seems like team Bavasi has gotten better with their drafts each year, but increasingly worse with their Major league trades and signings.

Yea, I like Liddi more than Halman offensively. Halman could make up the difference with his glove, and they’re similarly valuable prospects, but just on offense, I’d prefer Liddi.

I live right near where the Quad City Swing play, so I’ll definitely have to check these boys out when they roll into town.

Going all the way back to post 7, are you saying Liddi has a higher ceiling as a hitter than Halman?

It also got us 2004 to 2006. Gillick burned any chances this team had to contend on his way out the door.

Adam Jones, a compensatory pick, didn’t turn out too shabby. Non-first round picks Feierabend, O’Flaherty, and Livingston all have good chances to become big leaguers.

Jones worked out, but given the amount of extraordinarily risky picks, it was inevitable that one of them would. Feierabend is a solid, unspectacular prospect, the kind that every organization drafts every year. O’Flaherty is a LOOGY, and Livingston’s not a major league player. So we’ve got two and a half good picks.

Contrast that with the worst draft of all time. The only major league player we selected in 2002 was T.J. Bohn, who isn’t really a major leaguer. Well, we also drafted Travis Buck, but didn’t sign him. But good luck finding a worse top ten than Mayberry (not signed), Womack, Martinez-Esteve (not signed), Frye, Bergdall, Cate, Bastida-Martinez, Perry, Forbes, and Stitt. They basically lit money on fire.

Of course, that draft was only slightly worse than this one in terms of talent added, but is arguably a bigger wasted opportunity since the club had two compensatory picks for losing A-Rod. Garciaparra, Rivera, Wilson, Abreu, Merritt, Livingston, Cole, Ockerman, Axford, Ellena, Blood, and Hintz in the first ten rounds.

Those drafts suck. So did the 2000 draft, where the best player we took was Chip Ambres. Of course, they forfeited their first three draft picks that year, so Mattox gets a bit of a pass for this clunker.

That’s a three year run where the M’s just completely whiffed on the draft. They didn’t get one ounce of value out of 150 selections over a three year period. That kind of ineptitude is remarkable.

It’s well documented Gillick clashed with the meddling Chuck Armstrong, and still had success.

He mortgaged the franchise’s future to win while he was in charge, then left it to others to clean up his mess. What a hero.

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Blame Chuck Armstrong for that. One of his many hats is possessing the club’s financial keys.

Why else would a good Scouting Director pass up better arms than Brandon Morrow in last year’s draft? Like Lincecum, and Miller. They allegedly scared off the team with high signing bonuses. Yet the team didn’t hesitate to bid $10-$13 million on Kei Igawa.