Vazquez to Yankees

[strawbossisevil]

Instead of complaining, I think we should find the golden strand in all of this.

 

This makes Philip Hughes much more likely to be dealt. I think he is a guy the Brewers should definitely be going after as a cheap pre-arby SP who could be slotted in our rotation. (And from here I'll take this to the Trade Rumors forum)

[endaround]

Hughes, Gaudin and Joba, one should be moved you'd think. Given Hughes was lights out in the pen, he would seem to be the least likely.

[bklynbrewcrew]

Melvin just doesnt know how to maximize his resources. He waited too long on Hardy and as a result traded him for way less than his previous years value. He has also held onto Hart too long and now it seems that he has no value. Its pretty likely that McGehee turns into a pumpkin in 2010 and that commodity will be worthless. Melvin is the guy that sold the market at 6500 and bought it before it tanked at 14000.

 

When has Doug ever sold high on one of our players and bought low on someone elses. The Podsednik for Lee trade was a good example of this but I just havent seen any others. It takes very little creativity to pay LaTroy Hawkins close to 4 mil per year or pay Wolf 10 mil per season when we could have had him the year before for little more than half that. Clearly the Suppan and Hall deals have hurt us badly but its other moves like paying middle relievers Hawkins and Riske big money that has hurt us as well. Teams with our payroll limitations cant go out and spend more than 15 million on the bullpen and then say they dont have money for bigger needs like starting pitching.

[twobrewers]

1. Casey McGehee. Probably just as good of a bat as Cabrera and cheaper as well.

 

2. Vizcaino is in A ball. Take your choice of Odorizzi, Peralta and Scarpetta.

 

3. Zach Braddock. A lefty who had the best rated slider in the Brewers' system, doesn't throw as hard (low 90s) but also has much better control (5.65 BB/9 for Dunn and 1.56 BB/9 for Braddock) and a better strikeout rate (12.15 K/9 for Dunn and 13.84 K/9 for Braddock.)

I'd HATE that deal for the Brewers. We would be trading our starting 3rd baseman and possibly our best two pitching prospects. But I agree, that is a comparable deal.

[pingman]

once again would you give up that package of players for a one-year rental??????

 

....the Yankees could afford to do that....the Brewers can't

 

btw...I like MacGhee a lot but how would the Braves use him? ....IMHO I like Vizcaino better than any Brewers' pitching prospect you mentioned

[brewcrew7]

I don't understand what all the fuss is about here. Most would complain if we gave up a bunch for a rental player again even if it is for garbage. And the difference between Wolf and Vazquez is not that great. Doug has looked at every pitcher that was on the market and was rumored to be shopped. Sometimes you just don't have anything a team wants. He had to move before the market started moving and players were gone. He saw a good option and had to make a decision. If he didn't get Wolf and waited, and then was unable to get Vazquez, things would really get ugly on here. We can still make a move and things may change a couple times in the next month or two. I just think it is a bit early to tell yet and to bash Melvin for not getting a one year rental is a bit silly.

[dlk9s]

I still don't get the whole "Melvin sucks because he didn't sell high on every young player we've ever had" thing. People act as if he was supposed to anticipate one of the best (and young) shortstops in the game crapping the bed last year. And that he should have known his All-Star right fielder wasn't going to bounce back from his late 2008 slump (which he was actually starting to do until he went on the DL). Oh, let's not forget that McGehee is obviously going to be bad next season, right?

 

I guarantee that if the Brewers traded players the moment they had a good season, fans would complain that we can never keep guys once they get good.

[Invader3K]

Yeah, the idea that Melvin should have traded Hardy before '09 is a joke. Escobar wasn't ready and fans would have revolted after the season Hardy had in '08. All this revisionist criticism gets kind of old.

[Teatoe993]

I guarantee that if the Brewers traded players the moment they had a good season, fans would complain that we can never keep guys once they get good.

 

I agree. Everyone would be saying "Same ol' Brewers". To me the Pirates come pretty close to using this philosophy. They just seem to be unloading and rebuilding with prospects every single year. I don't want to be the Pirates.

[bklynbrewcrew]

Its called maximizing your assets. Melvin knew that we werent keeping Hardy past last season and that we needed started pitching so he should have moved that asset at its peak instead of selling at the bottom. Part of being a GM is having the ability to look past the upcoming season and doing whats best to keep your team competitive every year. That means trading players that wont be around long term before you are left settling for a guy like Gomez who has shown no ability whatsoever to hit major league pitching.

 

Melvin continues to take the easy way out in regards to pitching. Instead of dealing for a fantastic pitcher like Vazquez or taking a chance on a true power arm in Morrow he would rather overspend on a decent but not great pitcher like Wolf and continue to overspend on the bullpen when we have guys like Axford and Braddock waiting in the wings at minimal cost. Now we are most likely tapped out financially and have to hope that Mulder can pitch again after several seasons off or that Suppan wont be as bad as he has been. Melvin has blown chance after chance to acquire top notch pitching like Vazquez or young power arms like Morrow.

[rluzinski]

Yeah, the idea that Melvin should have traded Hardy before '09 is a joke. Escobar wasn't ready and fans would have revolted after the season Hardy had in '08. All this revisionist criticism gets kind of old.

 

Agreed. Now if Escobar was 2 years older and had dominated AAA in 2008, that would have been a different story.

[Invader3K]

Its called maximizing your assets. Melvin knew that we werent keeping Hardy past last season and that we needed started pitching so he should have moved that asset at its peak instead of selling at the bottom...

Melvin has blown chance after chance to acquire top notch pitching like Vazquez or young power arms like Morrow.

Please. I think you are overrating Vazquez (again, just a one year rental anyway at this point), and Morrow might not even be able to be a full time starter. People are clinging to these half baked upgrade ideas like they would have been the salvation of the franchise for years to come. Of course later the same people would be complaining that Melvin had dealt all our possible trade chips. Also, I really doubt most would have been OK with the idea of Escobar starting at SS last year.

[kramnoj]

Instead of dealing for a fantastic pitcher like Vazquez or taking a chance on a true power arm in Morrow he would rather overspend on a decent but not great pitcher like Wolf

 

If you have to use hyperbole like this, you don't have a point worth making. How could you define Vazquez as fantastic and Wolf decent?

 

Now we are most likely tapped out financially

 

If Melvin had gone after Vazquez instead of Wolf, he would have spent more money for 2010 and would have had to give up talent. All for a year when the Brewers hope to be competitive, but aren't in a year where they should really think about going for it.

[brewcrew7]

If Melvin had gone after Vazquez instead of Wolf, he would have spent more money for 2010 and would have had to give up talent. All for a year when the Brewers hope to be competitive, but aren't in a year where they should really think about going for it.

 

Now this is well said. We need to shed these bad contacts and try to have a good year. But taking on Vazquez and his money this year plus giving up players is silly. Plus seeing Wolf deferred money this year makes everything a bit clearer. But in the end I think Vazquez has been blown up into a great pitcher while Wolf is looked at as a middle of the road guy. These two are much closer than people like to think. If Vazquez is so great why is he always moving to another team?

[logan82]

Oh, let's not forget that McGehee is obviously going to be bad next season, right?

 

Nobody has ever said McGehee is going to be bad. There are doubts that he will repeat 2009 and it is possible Gamel would be a better 3B in 2010 than McGehee.

[gobrew23]

Its called maximizing your assets. Melvin knew that we werent keeping Hardy past last season and that we needed started pitching so he should have moved that asset at its peak instead of selling at the bottom. Part of being a GM is having the ability to look past the upcoming season and doing whats best to keep your team competitive every year. That means trading players that wont be around long term before you are left settling for a guy like Gomez who has shown no ability whatsoever to hit major league pitching.

 

Melvin continues to take the easy way out in regards to pitching. Instead of dealing for a fantastic pitcher like Vazquez or taking a chance on a true power arm in Morrow he would rather overspend on a decent but not great pitcher like Wolf and continue to overspend on the bullpen when we have guys like Axford and Braddock waiting in the wings at minimal cost. Now we are most likely tapped out financially and have to hope that Mulder can pitch again after several seasons off or that Suppan wont be as bad as he has been. Melvin has blown chance after chance to acquire top notch pitching like Vazquez or young power arms like Morrow.

 

If trading Hardy last offseason was such an obvious move, how come I don't remember anyone on this board suggesting it. Were we supposed to have Counsell (.226 BA in 2008) play SS full-time last year? I don't think anyone felt that Escobar was ready going into last year.

[logan82]

gobrew23 wrote:

If trading Hardy last offseason was such an obvious move, how come I don't remember anyone on this board suggesting it. Were we supposed to have Counsell (.226 BA in 2008) play SS full-time last year? I don't think anyone felt that Escobar was ready going into last year.

People did. I wasn't one of them, but people did.

[gobrew23]

gobrew23 wrote:

If trading Hardy last offseason was such an obvious move, how come I don't remember anyone on this board suggesting it. Were we supposed to have Counsell (.226 BA in 2008) play SS full-time last year? I don't think anyone felt that Escobar was ready going into last year.

People did. I wasn't one of them, but people did.

 

Yeah, that may be true. I guess I was referring to what bklynbrewcrew wrote about how Melvin should have traded Hardy last offseason. Which is kind of funny because this is what he wrote about Hardy last offseason on January 16, 2009:

If we can sign Hardy long term which I think is a good idea we can trade Escobar in a package for Peavy. Maybe Escobar, Salome, and an A ball arm could get the deal done. I think having Hoffman around might be incentive for Peavy to be willing to play in Milwaukee.

 

Obviously he was still talking about targeting a pitcher, but going off of this quote he wanted to sign Hardy to a long term deal, not maximize the asset by trading him.

 

EDIT: Don't know why the formatting is a little funny.

[bklynbrewcrew]

I did want to sign Hardy but at the time I wanted to trade Escobar for pitching and keep Hardy. Most importantly I wanted the Brewers to make a choice between the two and trade the other shortstop for a top of the line starting pitcher. The last thing I wanted to do was keep both Escobar and Hardy as one of the two would have been great bait for starting pitching. Hardy had two years before free agency and was coming off a great year so I wanted the team to lock him up and trade Alcides who was and still is considered a top shortstop prospect. The worst decision was to hold onto both and not maximize the fact that we had two good shortstops while most teams dont have any.

 

Melvin had to make this decision last offseason to get the most for whoever he was trading. I believe that Melvin had decided that Escobar was his shortstop for 2010 and beyond so he should have traded Hardy last offseason and signed a stop gap to share the position with Counsell last season. By waiting that extra year we were short in starting pitching for 2009 and were forced to sell low on Hardy whom had a bad year.

[TheCrew07]

Yeah, the idea that Melvin should have traded Hardy before '09 is a joke. Escobar wasn't ready and fans would have revolted after the season Hardy had in '08. All this revisionist criticism gets kind of old.

 

It's only a joke to you because you clearly haven't taken the time to consider the other side of the argument at all. You seem to view all of this discussion as revisionist history and Melvin bashing. I'm literally unsure how else to explain the concepts as I've beat them into the ground the past 2 seasons... Claiming that we simply don't like Melvin is about as far from the truth as you can be, many of us just think if he doesn't adjust his tact this is all the Brewers are ever going to be. They will compete for a playoff spot but never really compete for a championship, like the Twins and As.

 

So one more time as simply put as I can make it. It's not about dumping a player because he's going to tank, it's about giving value to get value, and trading from a position of strength to acquire a position of need. When you have payroll constraints to deal with it's not feasible to move expendable assets for a rental in Sabathia and then not move one of Hardy, Braun, or Fielder to fill the gaping void left in the rotation. As I've stated numerous times Braun wasn't going anywhere because of the contract he signed, Fielder didn't have a capable replacement waiting right behind him, which made Hardy the most valuable and expendable trading chip Melvin had. We don't need to sit on every position player who shows promise, Melvin proved last year that it doesn't matter how good your offense is as long as the starting pitching stinks. The idea is to move some valuable pieces to fill holes with talented players elsewhere, we simply don't need to keep every single position player on the roster to maintain an offense in the top half of the NL, it's doesn't matter whom... Hardy, Hart, Hall, McGehee, Gamel, whomever... we simply didn't need to keep them all then and don't need to keep themall now. Moving Hardy had nothing to do with him tanking and everything to do with trying give enough value to get what we needed back, I've never proposed a trade on this forum that I didn't think was fair for both sides. By holding onto him we ended up in the worst possible situation possible, Hardy tanked and Escobar proved his value, thus further reducing Hardy's trade value.

 

They tried to move Hardy at the deadline anyway so would the team really have been that much worse off with Escobar playing short and a different quality pitcher in the rotation from the start of the season? I'd argue they would have been a significantly better baseball team, and that's been my point since the first time I posted the idea. Even if Hardy would have performed as well as I expected him to I would have made the deal, because I believe pitching > hitting. Instead of getting hung up on these player vs player comparison, compare the team vs team, as they are not the same thing. I tend to favor prospects over incumbents in general as they cheeper, and I'm honest about that... I wanted Hardy over Hall, Escobar over Hardy, and now I want Gamel over McGehee (not because Gamel is cheaper but I think he's going to be a much better player). I've wanted better pitching from the get go, and I'm sorry but I'm just not into signing Free Agents or trading for big name players like others on this forum for all of the reasons I've already posted. You're free to disagree if you wish but continually posting that "you don't get why" or "is a joke" doesn't add anything but your frustration to the conversation, and that's pretty much all you post when someone within the organization is criticized whom you happen to think highly of be it Braun, Melvin, etc.

 

Finally, I grow weary of the "XYZ team was asking too much so Melvin must have walked away" defense every time he doesn't make a deal. I wouldn't have made this trade, because I don't think the Brewers are in the position as an organization where trading for rental players makes much sense. However, I can see where posters who believe our window closes when Fielder walks would have made the deal, I just don't agree. DM has already established a history in his tenure as a GM, and his history bears out that he doesn't trade for young pitching. I know for a fact he's admitted as much in an interview, but I just don't remember where I read, heard, or saw it as I've literally exposed myself to hundreds if not thousands of interviews/articles since finding this site. I spend way too much time every single day on baseball, especially in season. DM did a great job turning around the franchise, but that fact doesn't give him a free pass on a laughable starting rotation to go with a very good core of young position players. He can keep beating the injury drum all he wants, but from opening day last season our starting rotation didn't stack up against the post season competition. It's not like teams such a Philly didn't have their share of misfortune either, who other than those of us who worry about the workload of young pitchers would have predicted Hamels would fall off the way he did? It's an empty excuse, the organization has had no pitching depth since he became the GM and every organization has to deal with injuries to pitchers, both prospects and at the MLB level. Injuries to Jones and Rogers aren't anymore to blame for the organization's pitching issues than injuries to Suppan and Bush were the problem. The organization has stated many times they feel they can trade hitters (which they are good at developing) for pitching, but it's only been done once for a rental. Either DM addresses the organizational wide situation or he doesn't and thus far all he did was bandaid the situation with a rental player(regardless of the playoff appearance, viewing the situation as a whole), it shouldn't be difficult to understand where we are coming from even if you disagree.

[strawbossisevil]

While you may disagree, I don't think anyone in MLB thought that Escobar was ready to step in as a Major League ballplayer last season.

 

You also repeatedly ignore the fact that having Escobar up last season starts his arby clock during a period of his career when his bat will be more of a minus than a plus. A team like the Brewers is extremely dependant on having players cheap during their prime years, and to bring up Escobar a year sooner than need be (since JJ was still under contract for two seasons at that point). In that sense it would be utterly ridiculous to trade Hardy last season. The only way it makes any sense is with the benefit of hindsight.

 

I'm a big believer in the idea that it is not in the Brewers' best interest to rush prospects.

 

As much as you like to hammer on the downfall of last year's SP, last year saw horrible years from Parra and Bush which few saw coming, as well as a worse year from Looper than anyone could have honestly expected. If those three pitch at the level they were expected to, the Brewers would likely have been right in the hunt at the trade deadline.

[logan82]

His arguement was always Escobar + whoever we get for Hardy + money saved on Hardy > Hardy. We have no idea what we could have traded Hardy for though. If it was a #1-2 starter, the Melvin made a bad decision. If Hardy for Gomez was the best we could expect, I think Melvin made the right call regardless of the results. It really doesn't seem like there was much of a market for Hardy last offseason.