Was the "Hardy for Gomez trade" the biggest mistake Melvin ever made?

[3and2Fastball]

Granted, hindsight is 20/20, but assuming the Brewers could have extended JJ Hardy, I'm really thinking that giving up on Hardy and trading him for Gomez just might have been the biggest mistake that Doug Melvin has made and arguably cost the Brewers the 2011 NL title.

 

Considering how team friendly of a contract an extension of Hardy might have been after his down years, and looking at his 30 HR season last year, I can't help but wonder how much better the Brewers would be right now with Hardy as well. For one thing, they wouldn't have had to spend money on Gonzalez & Izturis and could have overpaid for Hairston if they wanted to, or spent that money elsewhere....I recognize that Hardy only has a .300 OBP so far this season but he does have 11 HR's and has continued to play great defense.

 

Anyways, just wondering what you guys would consider the biggest mistake by Melvin. He's obviously made a lot of great moves: extending Braun & Gallardo, trading for Greinke & Sabathia, extending Hart, etc.... but giving up on Hardy, and then trading him for Gomez cost the Brewers bigtime.

[RockCoCougars]

http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/dailyrft/assets_c/2010/06/suppanthumbs-thumb-225x168.jpg

 

 

The Hardy debacle is clearly number two though. I'd actually make the argument that sending him to Nashville and forcing his own hand was a bigger mistake than the actual trade though.

[3and2Fastball]

I'm not as down on the Suppan signing as others. Suppan was signed to be a pitcher but also a psudeo player-coach/team leader and I think pitchers like Gallardo & Bush learned a lot from Suppan, especially Yo...

[Bombers]

Suppan was a bad idea

Bill Hall's money was a bad idea

Giving Weeks all that money is looking to be a horrendous idea

Gagme for 1 yr 10 mil was horrible, albeit for only 1 year.

Trading Hardy and subsequently trading Escorbar is what makes it bad. If Doug had to do it over, you should have just kept Hardy and traded Escobar.

Whoever signed off on signing Macha was a bad idea. And while we are talking of Coaches, letting Maddux walk was a bad idea. Actually, letting Mike leave is probably in the top 3 on my list. He was under valued here.

David Riske was a bad idea too but that was only 16 mil.

 

Those are the ones I could think of ... so ya, the Hardy situation was handled pretty poor. And then the icing on the cake was trading Escobar. So we went from 2 good SS to none.

[monty57]

I'd say the Twins made a bigger mistake with Hardy, as they got rid of him just before he started hitting. If we could have sat him on a shelf and not paid him for two years and then picked him up just before he remembered how to hit, it would've been great, but I can't fault Melvin too much for trading a guy who was then dumped by the team we traded him to.

 

For me, Melvin's "biggest mistake" won't be known for a few years. If we "buy" rather than "sell" this season, don't make the Wold Series and end up with a barren wasteland of a team for the next few seasons, then I'll say his biggest mistakes were the moves which limited our financial flexibility and drained our farm system all to open a "window" which didn't end up with a championship.

 

Any one move can go right or wrong, but a methodology of putting all your cards on one or two years had better pay off in those one or two years, or it has to be considered a failed strategy.

[fondybrewfan]

I don't think the Hardy for Gomez trade was that much of a reach. After the horrible years Hardy had in MIL and MIN no one would have taken the bet that Hardy would be where he is now.

 

It really is a butterfly effect, if that trade never happened 2011 might have never happened. You just don't know.

 

Suppan is far and away Melvin's biggest mistake. I don't know that he really has made any huge blunders on trades.

 

Melvin is definitely at a cross roads; he has been used to winning for the last 5 years and we will find out soon enough if he is willing to sacrifice this year for the future. Melvin is hardly on the hotseat so I think he would be willing to sell if it came to that.

[JJHardy7]

Suppan was signed to be a pitcher but also a psudeo player-coach/team leader and I think pitchers like Gallardo & Bush learned a lot from Suppan, especially Yo...

 

That is one expensive coach!

 

I think it's easy to look at things now and say they were mistakes after the fact. I don't like selling low on players. I think JJ should've been traded earlier or never sent to Nashville. If we still had Escobar, it wouldn't have looked that bad. At the time, I believe many on the board here thought we didn't get enough for JJ, but I think that was more related to his most recent play.

 

I think Suppan was the worst move in free agency and at the time that deal seemed bad.

 

I wasn't a huge fan of the Carlos Lee deal at the time and I'm still not...and not because of Cruz. I just don't think we got enough back. I think Melvin's biggest issue is when we're selling...which worries me if we do that. We seem to have a good idea of which minor league players we want to keep for the most part. We haven't gotten a lot of value back when trading MLB players IMO.

[Outlander]

Having Rickie Weeks signed for 3 more years could be pretty bad. Will be right up there with Suppan if he is done.

[paul253]

extending Hart, etc

I'm not sure I'd call this a great move. As I recall, Atlanta was really hot after Hart the season before Melvin extended him and was offering pitching in return. I may be remembering this wrong but I thought I heard they were offering Beachy but we insisted on Minor. If that is the case turning down that trade may have been Melvin's biggest mistake because of all the trades it eventually led too. If we had Beachy we probably wouldn't have traded for both Marcum and Greinke, meaning we'd still have Lawrie, Odorizzi, Escobar, and/or Cain. Plus of course Beachy has quietly blossomed into one of the best pitchers in the NL

 

I also think the Aramis Ramirez signing is going to go down as a terrible move. Giving that much money to someone who is that old, over three years no less, was a huge mistake in my opinion.

[Eddiehitsthefoulpole]

Escobar has outplayed Hardy this year. That is the guy we will really regret losing.

[RobDeer 45]

That was not a bad trade at all. Hardy was terrible, and was terrible the next year. Lots of fans wanted him moved off SS. We had escobar coming up, Hardy had zero value. We got a guy that is as god as they get in CF and lacks at the plate. He then traded away escobar, yes, but that has nothing to do with the actual trade of Hardy (when it was made). Hardy would have been a hated man in Milwaukee after the years he put up.

[Funketown]

Why do I keep hearing that Hardy was so terrible in 2010? He posted a .268/.320/.394 clip and played solid SS defense. He was probably one of the top 15 SS's in the majors that season.

[fondybrewfan]

Weeks will never be a terrible extension IMO. He was well worth it at the time and there was nothing in his history to indicate he would flame out. Hall is entirely different; he had much less success over the long haul in MILB and MLB.

[HiAndTight]

I'm not as down on the Suppan signing as others. Suppan was signed to be a pitcher but also a psudeo player-coach/team leader and I think pitchers like Gallardo & Bush learned a lot from Suppan, especially Yo...

 

 

 

And people also like to forget that Suppan was pretty damn good the 4 years prior to the year we signed him.

57-37, 4.01 ERA averaged 194 Innings a season.

 

For Lilly, Meche and there was a fourth signing that turned out pretty ugly that year that I forget, but whatever. People got it stuck in his head that he was signed because of what he did in the post-season...which I find ridiculous.

 

He was an very quality inning eater which we very much needed and who given the time in which he put up those numbers made him a very solid #3 and a average deal for market value.

 

I didn't like the signing, but I'd have preferred they spent to sign Jason Schmidt instead and look how that turned out. He went from Cy Young runner up to Ben Sheets just totally falling off the map.

But he at the time would have been a signing I'm guessing most everyone would have loved.

 

So it ended up being a TERRIBLE signing, but I don't blame Melvin. First of all, it was pretty widly known that Mark Attanasio was the one who truly wanted to sign him..and as I said, it was a market deal for a pitcher who'd been very good the past 4 years and who just pitched his team to the WS as an added bonus.

[clancyphile]

It was a bad call, IMO. Worst ever? Perhaps.

 

Imagine, instead, dealing Escobar for Denard Span, instead.

[jerichoholicninja]

The worst was not flat out telling Hardy he will play 3rd base. A left side of Hardy and Escobar would look pretty good right now.

 

Maybe Gamel or one of the OF'ers goes to KC instead of Alcides and we still get Greinke.

[nate82]

 

Maybe Gamel or one of the OF'ers goes to KC instead of Alcides and we still get Greinke.

 

No we wouldn't have gotten Greinke by taking out Alcides and replacing him with Gamel. Why would the Royals want Gamel or another OF when they had Moustakas and Hosmer at positions that Gamel would be filling? That makes absolutely no sense for the Royals to even want Gamel at all.

[Polish Falcons]

Granted, hindsight is 20/20, but assuming the Brewers could have extended JJ Hardy, I'm really thinking that giving up on Hardy and trading him for Gomez just might have been the biggest mistake that Doug Melvin has made and arguably cost the Brewers the 2011 NL title.

 

 

Betancourt hit .310/.326/.500/.826 with a homer and 6 rbi in the 2011 playoffs. I think you could argue the playoff point the other way around. If they had Hardy there instead of Betancourt they might not have advanced to the NLCS, because Betancourt hit really well in the NLDS and they just barely advanced.

[3and2Fastball]

Betancourt hit .310/.326/.500/.826 with a homer and 6 rbi in the 2011 playoffs. .

 

...while playing horribly abysmal defense....

[Polish Falcons]

I could be forgetting something but I don't recall Betancourt's defense having an impact on the final outcome of any playoff games. I do remember him making a positive impact with his bat, in the playoffs. Still don't see how one could possibly argue that JJ Hardy leads the Crew to the WS in 2011 without that being a reach.

[jerichoholicninja]

 

Maybe Gamel or one of the OF'ers goes to KC instead of Alcides and we still get Greinke.

 

No we wouldn't have gotten Greinke by taking out Alcides and replacing him with Gamel. Why would the Royals want Gamel or another OF when they had Moustakas and Hosmer at positions that Gamel would be filling? That makes absolutely no sense for the Royals to even want Gamel at all.

 

That's why I said "or one of our OF'ers."

[3and2Fastball]

I could be forgetting something but I don't recall Betancourt's defense having an impact on the final outcome of any playoff games. .

 

I mean this in a completely respectful way but I wish I could forget how bad Betancourt's D was, especially in the Cardinals series

 

http://www.fox11online.com/dpp/sports/brewers_and_mlb/cardinals-take-3-2-lead-in-nlcs

 

It wasn't just the error in Game 5, it was all the balls he didn't get to with his Grandma range throughout the postseason

[FVBrewerFan]

1) Giving up Nelson Cruz for nothing.

 

2) Not matching Yankees offer for Sabathia. Now THAT would have been going "all in." WS Title last year very likely with Sabathia/Greinke/Yo. Although that may have been a Mark A decision, not Melvin.

[Raw Biz]

1) Giving up Nelson Cruz for nothing.

 

2) Not matching Yankees offer for Sabathia. Now THAT would have been going "all in." WS Title last year very likely with Sabathia/Greinke/Yo. Although that may have been a Mark A decision, not Melvin.

 

I doubt they do the Greinke trade if they already had Sabathia. I think this thread is starting to get out of control with stuff that happened/could have happened (i.e. keeping Hardy but still trading for Greinke/Marcum, resigning Sabathia but still trading for Greinke). The Greinke/Marcum trades happened because of the moves that did/didn't occur in previous seasons.

[RockCoCougars]

Not matching Yankees offer for Sabathia. Now THAT would have been going "all in." WS Title last year very likely with Sabathia/Greinke/Yo. Although that may have been a Mark A decision, not Melvin

 

Making a market offer to C.C. or Sheets (had he not been injured) was pretty much rendered impossible by the fact that they were all in on Soup for almost $30 million after 2008. I will never understand why the Brewers wanted Suppan so bad. I don't remember anyone else- including the Cardinals- having any serious interest in him. They were acting like a kid with money burning a hole in their pocket that winter. Remember when they were spurned by Dave Roberts? (thank God one other team had interest) They were like the guy at an auction who showed up for something cool, got outbid for it after standing around all day, and then ended up overpaying for something just to come away with 'something'.