Estrada Traded to the Mets for Guillermo Mota

[Ando Calrissian]

I've got to say that it's amazing to see this amount of rage at this move. It's a shuffle move. They happen every off-season. Estrada was far from perfect. Mota is far from perfect. If we sign Kendall, he'll be far from perfect. Seems like Melvin is just picking his poison on this one. Also, since when has Melvin not taken a flier on a relief pitcher? Methinks brewerfan is lusty for some major transactions to take place and for the season to start tomorrow.

[hawing]

Brewerfan.net: Preternaturally obsessed with backup catchers since Keith Osik.

 

Ahh, TheBwaz: providing signature fodder for hawing for at least a year now. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

 

Just based on the comments in this thread, I could see Mota being the kind of 'reliever' that makes me want to get up and walk around the concourse when he pitches in games I attend. I'm going to choose to assume that Doug's "book" on Carne (my forever nickname for Estrada, though Johnny Onbase is hard to pass up) has information damning enough to make getting rid of him a priority. In short, my usual mantra of the last few years: In Doug I trust, in Doug I trust...

 

Also, wouldn't Jason Kendall's agent be rubbing his hands together and muttering 'ka-ching' by now? (if he's not signed, or all but signed)

[dpapo]

Estrada's comments on the trade, per Tom Haudricourt...

Catcher Johnny Estrada, traded by the Brewers today to the New York Mets for reliever Guillermo Mota, admitted he didn't see eye-to-eye with pitching coach Mike Maddux all the time throughout the 2007 season.

 

But, when reached at home tonight, Estrada took issue with accusations and/or insinuations that he didn't work well with the pitching staff and was a negative influence.

 

"I heard they wished I worked better with the pitching staff," said Estrada, who will be playing for his fourth team in four years. "That (ticks) me off. I think sometimes, as a general manager or an owner, or even a manager, you don't have the pulse of the team. (General manager Doug Melvin) is not in the clubhouse.

 

"The pitchers that carried us down the stretch, I got along great with. We had a great bunch of young players that I got along fine with. I'm going to miss playing with those guys.

 

"I didn't see this coming until I heard last week they were shopping me around. I don't want to point fingers. I'm not going down that road yet. The way I look at it, it's a great opportunity to go to New York, a great team that's all about winning."

 

Estrada and teammate Tony Graffanino were involved in a dugout altercation with manager Ned Yost in early August - ironically, in a game against the Mets - but that was not believed to be a factor in the trade.

 

"I don't really want to get into all of that," said Melvin. "It doesn't do any good to talk about negatives. We're just looking for more of an energy level and a catcher who works well with pitchers."

 

If Estrada's energy level was down, his agent, David Schwartz, said it probably was related to the injuries he played with.

 

"I don't think Johnny got enough credit for playing hurt all season," said Schwartz.

 

After the season, Estrada had surgery to remove a bone spur from his elbow and repair torn cartilage in his left knee.

 

http://blogs.jsonline.com/brewers/archive/2007/11/20/estrada-gets-his-say.aspx

[Weirdos19]

Kendall could hit .180 and have a higher OBP than Estrada.

 

When the Brewers acquired Estrada, we were all happy. I remember this board lighting up. But, we thought we were getting a great offensive catcher and an average defensive catcher. We didn't get either. His average was decent, but 12 walks? He didn't hit for much power either.

 

Kendall may not be fast anymore, but he won't clog up the bases either.

 

Estrada did nothing even average last year, if you take OBP instead of BA. At least Kendall will have a OBP >.330.

[SoCalBrewfan]

Meh. It's your shiny new trash for my scruffy old trash. Mota was at least as hated by Mets fans as Turnbow ever was in Milwaukee. A change of scenery could help him...or not. Clearly they had had it with Estrada.

 

At the very least, one can assume that Yost won't be tempted to bat Kendall fifth. Can't one? Pretty please?

[iluvlamp]

Cry, Carne, Cry. What a baby. Melvin is right about the energy level of his last catcher. Carne is a little baby. Wow, I shouldn't be this mad but I am. Played hurt? His ass played slow when he was healthy and it usually was ahead of him. The number of teams he has been on says it all.

 

/bah

[Brian the Automator]

"I didn't see this coming until I heard last week they were shopping me around. I don't want to point fingers. I'm not going down that road yet.

?

[iluvlamp]

[crewcrazy]

"I didn't see this coming until I heard last week they were shopping me around. I don't want to point fingers. I'm not going down that road yet. The way I look at it, it's a great opportunity to go to New York, a great team that's all about winning."

I hope he remembers that when the Brewers are running wild on him in the NLDS next year. Nice subtle jab, there, John.

 

[danzig6767]

Mota really wasn't bad last year, ERA is a terrible way to judge pitchers, especially over such few IP. He had 7 k/9 and 2.2 bb/9 with a 44% GB rate which is a 4.32 xFIP. Not great but he will have a place in our bullpen I'm sure.

When a pitcher has a poor ERA in four straight seasons, are there a bunch of abbreviations that can suggest he's just an incredibly unlucky guy? If Mota had pitched well the prior two three seasons, i'd have no problem accepting that maybe he caught a few bad breaks last year, but that's not the case.

 

4.81

4.70

4.53

5.76

 

If anything, Mota has been consistent, to bad it's consistently not good.

[Tbadder]

I think this is a good trade for several reasons.

 

1) Estrada is a pariah. Catchers are at such a premium and yet he keeps getting traded.

 

2) I'll bet Yost's preception of Kendall changes some of his asinine decisions like hitting Johnny 5th, 76th, 7th, which absolutely killed us. Yost will never put a non-slugger like Kendall in that position. 8th if he doesn't hit, 2nd if we get the Kendall of old for a month or two.

 

3) Mota can make a comeback--give Maddux a chance. He's a quality pitching coach.

 

4) I smell money somewhere, so as Mota to be relatively cheap.

 

5) This is further evidence (at not much cost) that Melvin is losing his touch (see Melvin confidence thread). He woulda been a lot better off looking for the next Villanueva in low A ball than Mota and throwing in a million to the Mets in an act of irony and baravdo.

 

6) Trades always knock over other dominoes, and maybe there's something we're not seeing yet.

 

7) If I'm being optimistic this could really set up one of those Melvin curveballs--like passing on Kendall and trading for Laird--whoa! Most of us would be happy about that one I'm guessing. And we could then ignore my #5 and welcome him back to excellence.

[don1481]

"I didn't see this coming until I heard last week they were shopping me around. I don't want to point fingers. I'm not going down that road yet. The way I look at it, it's a great opportunity to go to New York, a great team that's all about winning."

?

Well, Johnny, as we all know... Boys Don't Cry:

 

[SZBrewerFan]

Did anyone else catch his comment "I got along great with the pitchers that carried us down the stretch". Maybe I am reading something into this that is not there, but does anyone else think the problems were with Sheets and Capuano, both of whom were not pitching much down the stretch? Again maybe I am off here, but that seems like a funny way to word that statement and maybe Ben and Chris were not big fans of Mr. Estrada.

[endaround]

Mota really wasn't bad last year, ERA is a terrible way to judge pitchers, especially over such few IP. He had 7 k/9 and 2.2 bb/9 with a 44% GB rate which is a 4.32 xFIP. Not great but he will have a place in our bullpen I'm sure.

When a pitcher has a poor ERA in four straight seasons, are there a bunch of abbreviations that can suggest he's just an incredibly unlucky guy? If Mota had pitched well the prior two three seasons, i'd have no problem accepting that maybe he caught a few bad breaks last year, but that's not the case.

 

4.81

4.70

4.53

5.76

 

If anything, Mota has been consistent, to bad it's consistently not good.

Its only the past three years. The 4.81 from 2004 is with his time with Florida only. He excelled as a Dodger that year with a 2.14 ERA. Mota has been bad for different reasons. In 2005 he had no control and his walks skyrocketed. In 2006 and 2007 he gave up lots of home runs. If he can get his home runs down to his career average he could be ok. I doubt we'll see the Mota from his time with the Dodgers though.

 

[Ennder]

Mota really wasn't bad last year, ERA is a terrible way to judge pitchers, especially over such few IP. He had 7 k/9 and 2.2 bb/9 with a 44% GB rate which is a 4.32 xFIP. Not great but he will have a place in our bullpen I'm sure.

When a pitcher has a poor ERA in four straight seasons, are there a bunch of abbreviations that can suggest he's just an incredibly unlucky guy? If Mota had pitched well the prior two three seasons, i'd have no problem accepting that maybe he caught a few bad breaks last year, but that's not the case.

 

4.81

4.70

4.53

5.76

 

If anything, Mota has been consistent, to bad it's consistently not good.

 

Obviously the 5.76 is the outlier there though. The key to Mota seems to be keeping the BB's down and that is something that the Brewers in general do pretty well under Maddux. I think Mota is a tough nut to crack because he keeps switching teams mid season, I'm not sure exactly what we are getting. I'll still take my chances with him over some of the other chuckle heads we have in the bullpen.

[jackalope02ca]

Don't like it at all. Not that I'm against getting rid of Estrada but sometimes your better with the poison you know than the poison you don't. I can't believe we couldn't have done better than this. A decent A ball prospect would have been something at least. Instead we get another drug cheat. He was terrible when he was juiced. What's that leave us with when he's clean?

[RyDogg66]

Say Goodbye, Ponch.

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v627/RyDogg66/Ponch.jpg

[BCZF]

I'm indifferent to this trade, Estrada was a decent hitter, but called a bad game (IMHO) and was garbage defensively. Mota, eh, such is the nature of relief help, nobody's sellin, and this is what your left with. Mota is like that funky, week old piece of leftover pizza in the fridge, sure you know it might give you the trotts, but when yer belly's empty, it looks like filet mignon...

 

 

(^ home spun wisdom)

[MNBrew]

Mota is like that funky, week old piece of leftover pizza in the fridge, sure you know it might give you the trotts, but when yer belly's empty, it looks like filet mignon...

I'm not sure that's absolutely the best analogy for this situation, but it's close enough . . . and it sure made me laugh really hard!

Back on the catching side of this particular transaction ledger, I still don't get how so many folks seem to get SO obsessed with OPS that they can't see a non-power hitter, and his correspondingly lower OPS, as being anything other than an offensive liability. As someone else said, OPS is a "quick and dirty" general hitting indicator. But it's not the be-all-and-end-all. The only way a Kendall-type (or Podsednik, to bring up another example from today's news wire), could really overcome a lack of power to have a decent OPS is to have a walk rate like that of Barry Bonds or, esp. in his prime, Frank Thomas. And most of the time that's just not going to happen.

 

Estrada's .296 or whatever OBP, along with an overall decline in HRs and especially RBIs, hurt the Brewers in '07. He also seemed to drop off in his conditioning and became more susceptible to injuries. Putting a couple elements in a comparison format:

 

- Kendall gets on base a ton more than Estrada.

- Kendall, even after his poor Oakland portion of '07, still is a .297 career hitter.

- Kendall runs a whole lot faster than an anvil and can still steal some bases.

- Kendall walks at a decent clip.

- Kendall also strikes out less than he walks.

- Kendall plays/starts in a very high number of games/innings, which indicates a great pattern of durability, his horrible-to-watch broken ankle against the Brewers several years back notwithstanding.

- Kendall also makes pitches throw him a lot of pitches, which few Brewers could say of themselves from '07.

Kendall's not a bopper, but he is a decent, more "professional" hitter than Estrada. He's usually been a leadoff or #2 hitter, which explains in part his non-world-beating RBI totals. There's a distinct upside to Kendall. Yes, a distinct upside. His track record indicates that fairly clearly, although of course there's no guarantee how long that continues (see: Miller, Damian). And there's nothing to be embarrassed about a glass-half-full viewpoint.

 

Estrada wasn't a total waste. That said, he sure didn't perform as well as he ought to have. Injuries likely contributed, but injuries also can't be used to defend his knack for swinging at every 1st pitch or relatively poor walk rate. 55 RBIs wasn't all bad, but it sure wasn't the 77 RBIs he had the year before while hitting .300 in AZ, either.

 

Estrada was still an upgrade last year over the diminishing offense of Damian Miller. And Kendall, assuming he signs, should likely be at least something of an upgrade from Estrada.

 

Side note: Estrada wasn't a bad return on Doug Davis. I'm not saying it turned out like we dreamed it would. But y'all should recall that while Davis was arby-eligible last winter, anything other than a one-year contract was going to price DD at a ridiculous level. So the Brewers were wise enough to walk away from that unmanageable dollar request & to net Estrada in return. The scenario made a lot of sense at the time. At the time most agreed it was a very good return for Davis and overall upgrade to the lineup.

[Oldcity]

Estrada did nothing even average last year, if you take OBP instead of BA. At least Kendall will have a OBP >.330.

You can't say that as a given, since his OBP was .301 in 2007.

 

[clancyphile]

Back on the catching side of this particular transaction ledger, I still don't get how so many folks seem to get SO obsessed with OPS that they can't see a non-power hitter, and his correspondingly lower OPS, as being anything other than an offensive liability. As someone else said, OPS is a "quick and dirty" general hitting indicator. But it's not the be-all-and-end-all. The only way a Kendall-type (or Podsednik, to bring up another example from today's news wire), could really overcome a lack of power to have a decent OPS is to have a walk rate like that of Barry Bonds or, esp. in his prime, Frank Thomas. And most of the time that's just not going to happen.

 

Estrada's .296 or whatever OBP, along with an overall decline in HRs and especially RBIs, hurt the Brewers in '07. He also seemed to drop off in his conditioning and became more susceptible to injuries. Putting a couple elements in a comparison format:

 

- Kendall gets on base a ton more than Estrada.

- Kendall, even after his poor Oakland portion of '07, still is a .297 career hitter.

- Kendall runs a whole lot faster than an anvil and can still steal some bases.

- Kendall walks at a decent clip.

- Kendall also strikes out less than he walks.

- Kendall plays/starts in a very high number of games/innings, which indicates a great pattern of durability, his horrible-to-watch broken ankle against the Brewers several years back notwithstanding.

- Kendall also makes pitches throw him a lot of pitches, which few Brewers could say of themselves from '07.

Kendall's not a bopper, but he is a decent, more "professional" hitter than Estrada. He's usually been a leadoff or #2 hitter, which explains in part his non-world-beating RBI totals. There's a distinct upside to Kendall. Yes, a distinct upside. His track record indicates that fairly clearly, although of course there's no guarantee how long that continues (see: Miller, Damian). And there's nothing to be embarrassed about a glass-half-full viewpoint.

 

Estrada wasn't a total waste. That said, he sure didn't perform as well as he ought to have. Injuries likely contributed, but injuries also can't be used to defend his knack for swinging at every 1st pitch or relatively poor walk rate. 55 RBIs wasn't all bad, but it sure wasn't the 77 RBIs he had the year before while hitting .300 in AZ, either.

 

Estrada was still an upgrade last year over the diminishing offense of Damian Miller. And Kendall, assuming he signs, should likely be at least something of an upgrade from Estrada.

 

Side note: Estrada wasn't a bad return on Doug Davis. I'm not saying it turned out like we dreamed it would. But y'all should recall that while Davis was arby-eligible last winter, anything other than a one-year contract was going to price DD at a ridiculous level. So the Brewers were wise enough to walk away from that unmanageable dollar request & to net Estrada in return. The scenario made a lot of sense at the time. At the time most agreed it was a very good return for Davis and overall upgrade to the lineup.

A lot of that does seem to make sense. And there is something else to think about.

If Kendall bats #2, he will see a lot of good pitches to hit.

Three reasons: Ryan, Prince, and Corey.

 

Why do I feel so sure about this? I remember when Jose Valentin was dealt to the White Sox, and the Sox went and put him as the #2 hitter in front of Frank Thomas, Magglio Ordonez, and Paul Konerko. He proceeded to post his best offensive year since 1996.

 

With Kendall batting in front of Braun-Fielder-Hart, the same sort of dynamic will probably exist (if they put JJ in the #2 spot, I think he will do well for the same reason).

 

Kendall is getting older, but he is still not a bad option. The Brewers seem to have offered him two contracts - one that is multi-year (and I'd bet it's not at a break-the-bank level), or a one-year deal. If the latter, I hope Vinny Rottino is getting a lot of time behind the plate in Nashville - he's the closest thing to a catcher prospect we have.

[LouisEly]

I think the answer (Kendall with a .610 OPS + Mota and a 5.76 ERA) is worse than the "problem" (Estrada and a .700 OPS).

 

Thanks Clancy - you summed up my thoughs perfectly.

 

I would have thought Estrada had a lot more value then a fresh batch of explosives for the bullpen.

 

LOL! This is why I love this sight - some of the most creative minds on the planet.

 

Here's the one thing that cautions me at this point - many of you are acting (or typing) like the Brewers have already signed Kendall. They haven't.

 

Right now the result of this deal is that Eric Munson and Mike Rivera are the Brewers catchers. Think about that.

[bigredrobbo]

Hey Mets, how about we give you a steaming turd, and in return you give us one of your steaming turds?

[Big Reed]

interesting trade. not one I would have made. Were there no AAA Brewers pitchers worthy of being promoted in 2008 to fill our relief void? Was there no pitcher among the potential rule 5 candidates that could possibly be claimed?

 

if a pitcher like Mota tests positive for steriods, you have to assume he's been using them for several years, not just the year in which he was caught. I guess melvin is not concerned about mota's image.

 

what's the odds if we sign kendall that his losing team will offer him arby after we sign him, and we lose our second round pick for signing him? kendell is a catagory B FA!

[endaround]

The odds are zero, you no longer lose picks for type B. Kendall only gets offered arby if the Brewers sign him before Dec 1st.