To wrap up, let's take a look at the short bus. Note that these places in the standings have adjusted slightly from when I started giving out Mid-Season grades.
Cheeseheads - 10th Place
Strong Moves: Found a lot of offensive help in the draft (Adrian Beltre, Corey Hart, Vernon Wells). Unfortunately, this didn't address the major weaknesses of the team coming in, which was pitching. Got some much needed youth in Ike Davis. Found Kelly Johnson early, who's been very good at 2B. Got younger with Gavin Floyd, who has been good over his last 9 starts (after being dreadful to start the season). Found Clayton Richard and Ian Kennedy early on, both of whom are young and have been solid. Found John Axford, who seems to have a solid hold on the Brewers' closing role.
Boner Moves: Struck out with the arms in his draft. Gave up on Corey Hart way too early. Taking on Ibanez seems to be moving against the strategy of getting younger, as Granderson was younger (but has been on a downward trend the last few years).
Future Outlook: Huge question mark with the Miguel Cabrera trade, which is a classic high-risk, high-reward situation. Posey and Bard immediately step in and become legitimate starters, and both have super high ceilings. If Nathan comes back in 2011 as the closer, then the bullpen is stabilized, and some trade pieces can emerge. Chapman is a huge lottery ticket, that you won't find out about until half-way through 2011, at the earliest. In addition to these 4 players, there are some very solid veteran, keepers to build around longterm (Crawford, Tulo, Soto), as well as in a 2-3 year frame (Soriano, Wells, Pena) on the offensive side. Some decent, young pitching can also be built on (Cain, Richard, Kennedy, Floyd), and there are some closers to round out the roster (Soriano, Axford, Aardsma). Overall quality of the roster needs to continue to improve to move into podium contention.
Mid-term Grade: B. Is currently in the middle of getting younger. Has found some nice, young parts. But the grade probably should be an incomplete - the real result is what happens with Posey, Bard, Chapman, and Nathan.
Westy's Sluggers - 11th Place
Strong Moves: Drafting Bucholz, Loney, and Latos, which gives quality and youth. Picking up Ike Davis, and using him to get Beltre. Keeping Alex Rios from last year, who has been very good this year. Carl Pavano and Brett Myers have been solid veteran contributors. Finding a likely keeper C (Martin) at a low cost (a 3rd 2B in Kendrick).
Boner Moves: Giving up on Latos too early (while hanging on to questionable pieces - who the hell's Scott Baker?). Selling Matt Holliday too cheaply (and has been intent on doing so for a while, it seems). Moving their best pitcher (Lester) for Kinsler, who's redundant at 2B and only so-so at UTIL, without an obvious follow-up plan. Not addressing closer effectively enough in the draft.
Future Outlook: This roster needs an overall quality increase, and needs to get younger. Dotel, Pavano, Abreu, Hunter, Young, and Berkman are all 33+ this year. Lackey, Webb, Beltre, and Utley are 31. Myers is 30. Really, only Loney (26), Bucholz (26), Nunez (27), Martin (27), Kinsler (28), Sizemore (28), Rios (29) look to be keepers under 30, and none are exactly young anymore (and some of serious questions, like Sizemore). This means that some trades need to happen, otherwise, this team will be in purgatory.
Mid-term Grade: C-. The drop-off from 2009 is stark, though many of the players from 2009 had career years. An honest assessment of 2009 success should have prompted more urgency in the trade market, particularly with Abreu, Hunter, and Berkman. Got unlucky with injuries at 2B, so there wasn't a real opportunity to get value for Kendrick. But when C-Lauff starts mocking you and telling you to "Have fun in 19th place," then maybe you need to get things straightened out.
Muddy Mush Heads - 12th Place
Strong Moves: Found Mike Leake, who looks to be a nice, young arm. Rode some success from Carlos Silva, who has since cooled a bit. Has gotten solid pitching efforts from Benoit and Gorzelanny.
Boner Moves: Got off to a horrible start by gambling on Jermaine Dye as a keeper. Gave up on Chris Young way too early. Has dropped Cueto and Tommy Hunter, who have both been solid and are still young. It appears that the Derek Lee trade isn't going to be a winning one, as Jonathan Sanchez has continued his solid play.
Future Outlook: Probably should have rode Cueto and Hunter for longer stretches - those two would look awfully nice with Johan Santana, Phil Hughes, and Mike Leake as your starting rotation in 2011. This is a very old offense, with guys like Carlos and Derek Lee, Ichiro, Furcal, Brian Roberts, and Chone Figgins being relied on heavily. The only legit, young star on offense appears to be Joey Votto. There isn't enough value on Roberts or either Lee to get a worthwhile trade done. However, there may be some willing takers for the speed.
Mid-term Grade: C-. This team needed to have a major overhaul, and get at least a little lucky. Neither has really happened. In fact, the good moves are relatively small in magnitude, in comparison to the Cueto and Hunter drops.
Chicago Zambroneheads - 13th Place
Strong Moves: Acquired Matt Holliday and spare parts for Michael Young and Grady Sizemore, which has worked out very well. Solid production from Tyler Clippard, Mike Pelfrey, Jose Guillen, Alex Gonzalez, and Ty Wigginton, all of whom were found in free agency. Getting some speed from Scott Podsednik in the draft.
Boner Moves: Gave away David Ortiz, right before Papi righted the ship. Wasn't able to find any value for Ibanez. Bad draft restricted the ability to make trades to improve team. Has held on to Billy Wagner (who is retiring after this season) too long - the gameplan should have been to hope for a strong start from Wagner, and then move him out in May/June to get good value. Now, may not be able to get as much for a 2 month rental.
Future Outlook: There are always going to be hiccups with expansion, and this team needed to be perfect to get into the top half this year. The goal is to end up with 18 reasonable keepers, and try to attack in 2011 or 2012. The team started with about 10 or so of these players, and at this point, only have 8 or 9 on the roster, so this has been a bad opening set. Looking at ways to get value should be the key between now and the trade deadline.
Mid-term Grade: C-. Even if the moves had been perfect, there's a chance that this team could have been stuck in the bottom 1/3 of the league. But in reality, a few small wins was overwhelmed by one big mistake (Big Papi).
-Chairman (O.N. Thugs)
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4 comments:
That is a fair synopsis.
In fairness, I tried to move Berkman (no takers for top 100 talent) and Hunter has actually been pretty decent. Abreu has stunk, which I was not expecting.
Also, injuries have killed me. Webb not coming back (at draft time it was being stated a May return was possible), Utley and Kinsler, and probably worst of all, Sizemore going out for the year.
In some ways, it's easier to deal with guys like Thome, Hafner, Helton, etc. They're older, so you're not looking to use them for more than 1 (maybe 2) years. You don't feel the need to hang on to them for too long if they're not producing the way you want, and you're willing to move them for anything of value.
But with guys like Baker, Hunter, etc., you feel bad selling at a 30% discount, much less just releasing them. That's me with Barry Zito, Kris Benson, Brett Myers, Tony Armas, Javy Vazquez, etc. over the years.
Westy - if Berkman gets moved to the Sox in the next day or so, like they say he might be, I'll zip you an offer for him.
Now , if he goes to the Yankees, what happens? A lot of it hinges on Posada's health. Figure that Posada's healthy enough to play C for 4 games per week of the games, then he'll probably still get another 1 to 2 games at DH. So, there are probably 4 games at DH for Berkman. If he can play OF, that makes this a much easier solution, since you can rotate him in (slide Swisher to LF or slide Gardner to CF) once or twice a week. Of course, he hasn't played OF since 2007, so this may not be a reality.
Now, if it were Dunn, I wonder if they wouldn't try to live with him in RF (the arm has never been the question - it's everything else in the field).
Berkman has always been a lefty who happened to learn to switch hit. So, that would play to Yankee Stadium well.
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