Washburn to Detroit
Dave · July 31, 2009 at 9:07 am · Filed Under Mariners
For Luke French and Mauricio Robles.
Awesome. French is Washburn – a strike throwing flyball lefty who fits Safeco perfectly and should slide in as a nice back-end starter. He just doesn’t cost any money, and we have him for the next six years. That they threw in Robles, a 20-year-old lefty with a ton of strikeouts in A-ball, is just gravy.
This is a fantastic deal. The M’s didn’t even get worse. It’s 50-50 on who pitches better the next two months, French or Washburn. And, of course, we get to keep French next year without paying anything for him.
Sweet, sweet deal.
Dave I think with a solid year last year and a good one this year Washburn will likely be a type A free agent and no way at his age will he accept a one year arbitration deal he will want 3 year 30 million deal and he will easily get 3/30 on the open market as a left handed pitcher with a solid career and a very good 2009.
I agree Zack got fair value for Washburn but I think he went for a MLB ready lefty with 4/5th starter potential, and those guys can get you to .500 but not contend. The M’s are two years away and I think he should have went for a higher upside A ball talent.
I rather have 4 + 0 =4 then 2+2 =4, as 2s are easier find and 2s are role players. Give me a high risk 4 anytime over 2 role players.
He will not.
Washburn will not be a type A free agent.
He will get something like $12-$15 in arbitration.
He won’t get offered more than $10M per year in free agency.
Thus draft picks were not part of the equation. Seattle wouldn’t have offered arbitration, and Detroit won’t offer him arbitration either. This is as pure a rental as you’ll see.
Washburn might be interested in coming back to Seattle, but he’ll probably get offered more by some other team, and Zduriencik certainly won’t get into a bidding war (if he bids at all). His first choice would be the Twins (since they play just a couple hours from his Wisconsin home) but the Twins probably won’t offer him the best deal either (though he might take a lower offer to go there, depending on where he falls between the opposing poles of Boras and family).
I’m sure Zduriencik would’ve taken a guy like that if he was available. For Washburn, such a player clearly was not. Zduriencik is only “sacrificing the future” in some imaginary world where Bavasi-like GMs were on the other side of potential trades.
According to Ken Rosenthal (I think) on the Saturday Fox broadcast, when the Yankees inquired about Washburn Zduriencik asked for Austin Jackson, their top prospect. So he clearly was looking for a “quality long range prospect” if he could find a team desperate enough to deal one (or he just wanted to tell the Yankees to eff off).
Didn’t someone else report the M’s wanted Joba/Hughes? Pretty much all of these leaks appear to be attempts to make the M’s look unreasonable and justify the Yankees not getting Jarrod.