Mulder to Cardinals
As first reported (tee hee) at today’s USSM Feed — Oakland has traded Mark Mulder to the St. Louis Cardinals for RP Kiko Calero, SP Danny Haren and C Daric Barton. With Tim Hudson gone and Mark Redman sent to the Pirates as part of the Jason Kendall deal, the A’s have now dealt three-fifths of their 2004 starting rotation. If the season started tomorrow, they’d likely run out a rotation of Barry Zito, Rich Harden, Joe Blanton, Dan Meyer and the aforementioned Haren.
That said, I have serious doubts they’ll begin the season with three rookies in the rotation; Billy Beane most likely has something else up his sleeve, be it a free agent signing (Odalis Perez?) or a trade (AJ Burnett?). At first glance, however, yet another piece of good news for M’s fans.
Also — a couple of people have asked about the Big Board. I stand by my promise that we’ll have a new one before the first of the year.
Comments
60 Responses to “Mulder to Cardinals”
Ron Villone accepts Salary Arbitration. According to Price, “He just takes the ball and pitches”
Yeesh.
…yes, and not very well at that.
I’m not convinced Texas is flukey. Nobody in their starting IF is over 30, and their 2 best hitters overall (Texeira and Blalock) are 25 and 24 next year.
Also: Moyer’s 1997-1999 stats are just as impressive as 2001-2003- excepting wins, which had a bit to do with the team he was on, and the fact he was pitching in the Kingdome instead of Safeco (which is only half-true in 1999).
Also, nobody in the AL West has a very solid pitching staff at the moment… which is very odd considering recent history.
Finally:
Beane is a magician.
He’s a good GM, but he makes mistakes (Jermaine Dye) or odd decisions sometimes (Scott Hetteberg going long-term). Nobody’s perfect.
Texas’ pitching was flukey. It was also incredibly well-managed. But flukey. If they sign some decent arms, or just have what they have outperform once again (and therefore begin to remove flukey from their rep) they could be trouble. They certainly have the infield and bats.
Beane also made a highly questionable decision on Rhodes. I actually liked that guy, and thought he had great mound presence, but I also watched him pitch. Did anyone in M’s land think he was going to be the closer the A’s thought they were getting?
I did.
I saw no reason to believe Rhodes wouldn’t be as good a closer as he was a set-up guy, and I thought he was over his injury problems.
Well, even last year, our offense wasn’t that far behind Texas and Oakland. Again, depending on which park factors you use and how sophisticated you get in applying them, Anaheim was clearly the best offense in the division last year, about sixty or so runs better than Oakland and Texas (which were basically the same quality), with Seattle about 20 runs back of that. Seattle has obviously done the most to improve the offense this offseason, so it wouldn’t be a shock if we did wind up with the best offense in the division next year. Park factors might hide that, though. Safeco is pretty brutal.
#36: Assume that your 1 through 4 hitters are already determined (as they are for the Ms in 2005 in any sort of sane world). Then arrange these three players in the 5 through 7 slots, based on their 2004 lines (ba, obp, slg).
Player #1 – .275 .335 .500
Player #2 – .251 .317 .423
Player #3 – .304 .353 .472
Most people are going to either do Player #3 in the 5 slot, then 1, then 2. Some will do 1, 3, then 2, which is defensible.
Which means that you’re looking at Ichiro, CF de jour, Beltre, Sexson, and then either Ibanez, Jacobsen, and then Boone, or Jacobsen, Ibanez, and Boone. Boone’s 2004 line simply fails to be even remotely as good as either Jacobsen’s or Ibanez’s. Until he can re-establish himself as a hitter of note or the people ahead of him fail downwards in the order, Boone is not the Ms’ rightful #5 batter.
Ob pushing the debate forward: If I were Harvasi (that being the Vulcan mind meld of Hargrove and Bavasi that looks at issues like ‘I need a #x hitter, who can I get and what do I have to hive up to get it?’), my #2 concern behind my starting pitching (and it’s a pretty distant #2, to be fair) is trying to find a #2 hitter that’s worth putting between the best leadoff man in baseball today and the man who led MLB in home runs the previous season. The prospect of putting Winn or Ibanez there fails to excite. Reed certainly projects as the man to put there, but as of the season opener, I’m not confidant that I want to place that egg in that basket. Boone’s .317 2004 OBP is something I want to keep far, far away from my #2 slot. And that would my #2 concern for the Ms, if I were Harvasi.
The first thing I thought of when I heard Mulder was gone was how much salary Beane had just cleared in the last few days. Sure, the attraction of the Big Three was that they’re young and good and cheap, but he got even younger and cheaper by dealing them (we’ll see how much better, if any). He plugged some holes, and probably cleared enough payroll to replace at least one of Hudson or Mulder, while stocking the Rivercats and his bullpen even further.
I guess 2005 is the year we find out who was really more responsible for the A’s success the last 4-5 years, Beane or the personell that he inherited….
Here’s a good story with Beane’s insight into his method/madness:
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=klapisch_bob&id=1950110
Deanna, that sounds like am awesome idea!
So this being the season for stubborn unrealistic optimism, the Angels could be injury-prone, the Rangers could continue to be the never-rans, and the A’s could be just so-so. AND, the Mariners COULD perform above expectations. This off-season is taking way too long.