Toss up: Hardy or Escobar?

[TuesdaysWithRillo]

I don't buy into the home/road splits for Andrus. What major advantage does Texas's ball park give hitters? The answer to that is power. Andrus hit 6 lousy home runs and 3 of them came on the road so far this year so your supposed argument that home ball park is inflating Andrus's numbers to me is a weak one.

[TheCrew07]

I could live with the revisionist history take if this concept hadn't been discussed at length all off season, to make the assertion now that moving Hardy is revisionist history is disservice to the truth, and more truthfully, it's a blatant lie. This pitching issue has been growing for years and I believe it's truly an issue of people not being able to see the forest for the trees. A large segment of this site has been so caught up in minutiae arguing about position player vs position player, handedness of of the lineup, the lack of a true lead off hitter, and so on... while those issues do exist, they weren't going to make or break the pitching. I'm still amazed that the largest issue went relatively undiscussed and dismissed until it was so obvious it couldn't be ignored, and even now some posters have hinted that the situation with the rotation is bad luck instead of a lack of talent of physical talent.

 

It was never about Hardy vs Escobar, it was about which combination of players would bring back the most wins for the Brewers in 2009 and beyond, I have no idea why that's been such a difficult concept to grasp. Not once all off season did anyone say Escobar was a better player than Hardy, the issues run much deeper than that. Cost, years under control, talent, and trade value are all as relevant as the current production of both players. Endaround and Ennder I've seen you both tell everyone else how wrong they are, but I haven't seen either of you offer up a solution of your own though I've been mostly skimming the site since mid August. Can we at least agree that rotation doesn't have enough talent in it? What moves would you have made to arrive at a different outcome? What moves would you make now to rectify the situation? Would you make any moves?

 

As far as Escobar's readiness... that's all garbage as well... ready for what? Was Andrus ready by your defnition? Texas still made room for him and they'll be in the playoff hunt down to the wire. Esky is not going to to hit for power like Hardy, but he's not capable of it yet either. X's point about Esky's 29 year old season being more valuable than his 22 year old season is likely spot on accurate, but the issue just isn't that simple. It's entirely reasonable to assume that Escobar will become a better player as he matures, but with or without Hardy this team was going to score enough runs. I stated earlier I would have been fine with Hall moving back to SS over Escobar to start the season, Counsell would have been a decent everyday option as well. There were other alternatives that could have been considered. I tried to make the point in the off season that I didn't care who replaced Hardy, I just thought that he was the most valuable resource the team could readily part with to acquire pitching. Trading Hardy didn't have to be about Escobar, he was just obvious replacement as most people had written off Hall and Counsell already.

 

The primary issue in the off season was the gaping hole in the rotation, the biggest problem is still the gaping holes in the rotation, and going into 2011 we'll still have 3 holes to fill as the only pitchers under contract will be Gallardo and Parra. How do we best solve the problem? Our own pitching pitching prospects? 1 rental player at a time? Looper types? Target another team's prospects? Target talented pitchers who have underperformed in MLB? When taking the entire picture into account; talent, production, cost in salary, cost to acquire, percentage of team payroll/contract, # of years controlled, current team needs, and future team needs... what's the best strategy? For me personally, we have/had a bunch of bats, and not enough pitching, so I would have preferred moving bats for arms... it wasn't even my idea originally. I was wondering how to acquire pitching without "creating a hole" elsewhere when X made a post on the minor league forum about just drafting bats because the team was good at that and letting other teams develop pitching for us. He wasn't talking about MLB, but I was really intrigued by the idea. The more I thought about it, the more it made perfect sense in the short team... we had a surplus of bats, bats are relatively inexpensive in FA, and I felt we needed a serious talent upgrade in the rotation. I'm no longer concerned about "creating a hole" to fix a problem with the rotation, it's much easier to get an average and affordable position player than it is to get affordable pitching.

[logan82]

Unless we know what Melvin was going to get for Hardy, there is no way to say that trading Hardy would have made us better without using hindsight.

 

Considering Melvin said all he was getting offered for Hardy at the deadline was a reliever, I think there is a good chance Melvin didn't really get good offers for Hardy in the offseason.

[sveumrules]

i'm sure melvin realized that the rotation needed serious work in the offseason and made numerous attempts to rectify the situation. at the same time no one on this board has any idea what kind of offers we were getting or making for hardy. theoretically a SS of his caliber coming off back to back 4+ win seasons with two full years of service time remaining could net quite a nice haul, but if the offers being received were not amounting to fair value in DM's mind then of course you hang on to your 4 win SS. i definitely don't recall anyone forecasting his implosion this year at any time in the offseason threads.

 

 

 

as for the escobar/andrus comp that seems to be a fair one. for 2009 so far the ballpark ranks 4th in Runs, 7th in HR, 5th in Hits, 5th in 2B and 2nd in 3B so despite not profiling as a power hitter it has undoubtedly helped andrus put up an almost tulowitzki-esque split line in his rookie campaign. at the same time i would take his road line over JJs full season line, but again if you had logged in and predicted JJs current 226/297/356 slash sometime in february most here would have scoffed and rightfully so.

 

 

 

the only real lesson to be gleamed from all this is that baseball is crazy game and unexpected things happen all the time. was the pitching staff talented to start the year? no. was it talented enough to keep us in first place for a good portion of the year even with manny parra and carlos villanueva drastically underperforming before injuries hit bush and suppan? yes, it was.

 

 

 

i don't think that hardy even packaged with some combination of hart/mcgehee/salome is going to bring back that impressive of a package but at this time it is unfortunately the only move to make it would seem. i'd imagine most teams value escobar/gamel as our 4th/5th most valuable trade chips after braun/fielder/yo but they are just too necessary for our success over the next six years that trading either of them would be difficult unless we were somehow getting back a matusz or bumgarner or hanson type prospect which i just don't see happening as those sorts of high ceiling pitching prospects are rarely moved.

[Ennder]

I could live with the revisionist history take if this concept hadn't been discussed at length all off season, to make the assertion now that moving Hardy is revisionist history is disservice to the truth, and more truthfully, it's a blatant lie

 

Not saying it is revisionist history, I'm saying nothing that happened this season suggests you were right or that the Brewers made a mistake. You are being way too results oriented with it. Escobar didn't blow away AAA, there was no reason to think Hardy would have the year he has and one more pitcher isn't going to change how the season went overall.

[TuesdaysWithRillo]

I agree with TheCrew07, and I'd be all for trading bats like Hardy, Prince, Gamel, and anyone not named Braun for pitching this offseason. It makes sense because of his underlying point: In today's MLB atmosphere, it is easier to fill an offensive hole on a team than it is to fill a starting pitching hole.

 

Example: Jack Z had a major hole at 1B this year. What did he do? He cheaply signed Russell Branyan who was very serviceable for the Mariners this year. It's much more difficult for that to happen with starting pitching deficiencies.