Wigginton---> O's
by JI on Feb 3, 2009 11:02 AM PST
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PrintThe Orioles have signed free-agent Ty Wigginton to a two-year contract, according to a major-league source.Wiggington will receive $6 million for the two years, the Baltimore Sun reports.
Wigginton hit .285 with 23 home runs and 58 RBIs with the Astros last season.
Wigginton likely will serve as a right-handed hitting first baseman and DH, replacing free agent Kevin Millar.
He also will back up Melvin Mora at third base.
Wigginton is a nice little ~league average player, and I'm amazed that he didn't get overvalued after coming off a career year. I'm becoming more and more convinced that the Orioles aren't the worst run team in baseball.
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Does anything...
the Tigers have done compare to a multi-year contract for Willie Bloomquist?
i think...
there was someone else involved in that deal. Willis sucks, and the Tigers are poorly run, but the Royals are awful.
Wait really? That other person must have been a nobody.
And surely I wasn’t talking about the contract extension given to Willis and not the trade itself, which is good because you know, that would have been in line with answering a question about a poor contract given out.
Ok...
fair enough. That contract was horrible, but it was an example of horribly flawed talent evaluation. The organizational philosophy – shoot the moon before your core of aging players becomes useless – is way better than what I see in KC – overpay mediocre players to try and scrape your way to 70 wins.
Overall I think Dombrowski grades out significantly better than Moore if you look at his entire tenure.
One point that drives the Tigers up is their willingness to spend big in the draft when very few other mid-market teams were doing so. They’ve traded away 2 of the biggest payoffs from that decision, but going over slot for tough-sign guys in the draft is something I really wish the Mariners would do more often.
Actually...
“Overpay mediocre players” is giving Moore too much credit. That seemingly stopped with Gil Meche. Now it’s more like overpay replacement level players and block prospects to try and scrape your way to 65 wins.
I don't think that's necessarily a fair evaluation of the Royals' organizational philosophy
In the short term, his major-league-level moves look pretty bad, but I think the Royals’ primary focus is on improving the team in the long term. As far as I can tell, they only have 3 players under contract for 2011 right now (Meche, Greinke, and Soria), so he hasn’t really killed their long-term flexibility, and I’ve heard that the farm system is slowly improving.
To a certain degree, I think he’s signed the veteran stopgaps as a measure of good faith to the fans—hey, look, we’re not just sitting on your money while we wait for the farm system to improve. I think that’s kind of misguided, but if he can’t use the money in future seasons, I don’t think it has exactly cost them any pennants.
This is absolutely correct.
You just don't know when to keep your mouth shut, do you Saxy boy?
by oc on Feb 3, 2009 2:24 PM PST up reply actions
Haven't they been doing this since about 1994?
Seriously, the mantra from the Royals has ALWAYS been “our drafts are teh awesome111!!!!!”. Then the guys crash and burn (Dee Brown), or end up being good players on a team surrounded by veteran crap that eventually get traded away (Beltran).
by eponymous_coward on Feb 3, 2009 2:33 PM PST up reply actions
I'm not big on guilt by association
Under Moore, new people have been in charge of the Royals’ draft, and I’m not quick to say that they’ve been unsuccessful in doing so. Checking around, it looks like Keith Law has the Royals’ farm system at 12th in baseball, and I’m not sure where Baseball America has them. So rumors of their strengthened farm system could be exaggerated, but I’m willing to give Dayton Moore some time before I hang him for that offense.
At this point, I wouldn’t call Dayton Moore a great GM, I just think that it is unfair to characterize KC’s organizational philosophy as “overpay mediocre players to try and scrape your way to 70 wins.”
Moore's...
moves this offseason have put KC in a situation where they’re not ready to capitalize when the young core shows up. The 2009 Royals aren’t anywhere near the 2008 Rays, but they have a decent core of guys who are young, cheap, and good. A few key breakouts from these guys combined with a roster that’s filled out well with good role-players, and this could easily be an 85-win team – maybe good enough to contend in the Central with a little luck.
Instead, Moore’s big moves were trading for Coco Crisp and Mike Jacobs, locking up Bloomquist for 2 years, and plugging the holes in his bullpen made by the trades with a 2-year, $9 million commitment to Kyle Farnsworth. That’s a horrible, expensive way to fill out a roster, and by signing bad players with virtually no upside, he’s shot his team in the foot.
Dayton Moore is not good at his job.
Moore's "big moves"...
…were not good for this year, but they are no worse than a lot of the off-seasons that the Twins have had lately, and no one is talking about how much Bill Smith or Terry Ryan sucks. (Livan Hernandez—waste. Rondell White—mostly waste. Craig Monroe—waste. Juan Castro—waste. Tony Batista—waste. Mike Lamb—waste. Ramon Ortiz—waste. Sidney Ponson—waste. For all the credit the Twins get, when is the last time they signed a free agent from outside the organization and it truly helped the team? Mike Redmond maybe? Matt Guerrier? Bobby Kielty and Dustan Mohr?) When you’re talking about small contracts and role players, you’re talking about futzing around with the details. Moore’s off-season isn’t the difference between the Royals contending and the Royals not contending in 2009. It didn’t help, but it’s not the sort of thing that disasters are made of.
I get the feeling that you’re not putting this comparison in its proper financial perspective. Comparing Moore to Dombrowski or Kenny Williams, for instance, the latter two GMs can spend their way out of problems that Moore can’t. That doesn’t make Moore worse than the other two, it just means he’s in a more difficult position. The truly awful GMs are the ones who have a huge financial advantage and squander that advantage, or put their team in a hole for years and years to come.
Moore hasn’t been good at optimally aligning the talent on his major league roster, but he started out in a difficult position and I’m willing to let him develop some talent before I hang him.
The Ordonez contract is pretty defensible
According to the fangraphs win values, Ordonez has been worth $63M so far and has been paid $52M over that time period. If he can roughly repeat what he did last year, he’ll have essentially justified the cost of the contract.
It was certainly a risk—and maybe not a risk that I would have taken—but he’s performed well enough that I’m inclined to give Dombrowski the benefit of the doubt on this one since he had more access to Magglio’s health records and had a health opt-out put in the contract.
The Dontrelle contract, on the other hand, was insanity.
Using hindsight is a bad way to evaluated players
and Magglio’s big year was a complete fluke.
by JI on Feb 3, 2009 2:33 PM PST up reply actions
Magglio was a very good player...
…up until his injury. His big year was a fluke, but whenever you sign a contract there is a chance that a player will have a fluke good year, so I don’t think that ought to count against Dombrowski.
From 2000-2003, Ordonez was worth roughly 35-40 wRAA per season. Over the course of his current contract, he’s been worth roughly 25 wRAA per season. Those runs aren’t spread out evenly, but no one can predict exactly which seasons a player might have value, anyway. 2006 was the only year he was significantly overpaid and 2007 was the only year he was significantly underpaid.
Provided that he was healthy—and he’s been healthy plus there was a health clause built into the contract—I don’t think that expecting a 1-1.5 wins per season drop-off for a 31-34-year-old is totally crazy. It’s not like Ordonez had old player skills like Sexson. He was a fantastic all-around hitter who happened to get injured in his contract year.
The Ordonez situation was just a completely different ballgame from the Willis situation. With Willis, he was never that good in the first place. With Magglio, it was mainly a question of whether or not he was healthy, because he was certainly talented.
I don't remember what the other offers on the table were...
…but even if this contract is off by a couple of years, it wasn’t that crazy.
If I recall correctly
the Tigers deal was the only long term deal on the table.
by JI on Feb 3, 2009 3:28 PM PST up reply actions
2007 was a massive fluke...
…but reasonable projection systems would have projected Ordonez to play better than he did in 2005 and 2006. So in the first three years, two unlucky years and one very lucky year. On the balance, this was not a stupid contract. Ordonez was a 5.5-6.0 win player in the seasons before he was injured.
Nope
There’s no reasonable projection system for a guy coming off of experimental knee surgery in Austria. Dombrowski got very, very lucky that he didn’t end up with an absolute albatross on his hands for 5 years.
There was an out clause
And Dombrowski’s team doctors actually got to examine Ordonez before he went back onto the field. Health-wise, they had more info than any of us, and I believe that gives them the benefit of the doubt.
Your answer doesn't count unless it's in picture form.
by JI on Feb 3, 2009 11:56 AM PST up reply actions
The Royals are waaaaaay worse than the Nationals.
by Aaron Campeau on Feb 3, 2009 1:01 PM PST up reply actions
Yep.
Bowden sucks too, but at least the “get as many guys as possible who were rated highly because of their tools in a 5-year-old copy of Baseball America lying on your desk” strategy has a some upside to it.
No way the Nationals are worse than the Royals.
The Nats actually made a ton of remarkably good moves last offseason, the sorts of acquisitions we’d be shitting our pants with glee over if Jack Z had done them. And then every single one of them worked out in the worst possible way imaginable. The Nats had to have absolutely terrible luck to finish with the record they did.
That said, Jim Bowden should still be fired. The Crow debacle was obscene, and Bowden’s inability to build a starting rotation + his comical obsession with toolsy outfielders and ex-Reds players (it really is true!) + his credibility gap = the wrong fit for Washington.
Don’t fool yourself into thinking Bowden is worthless as a GM, though. He’s one of the best bargain-shoppers in all of MLB, and is particularly talented at finding and targeting quality players who have, for whatever reason, fallen into disfavor with their organizations.
Patriotism, Pepper, Professionalism
I think the Milledge for Schneider + Church deal was a pretty great one too.
Patriotism, Pepper, Professionalism
Ok name 3 pitchers on the Nationals worth a damn
Why do the Nationals stockpile OF?
Basically the worst roster construction you’ve ever seen. All their talent is in their OF (and backup OF) besides Guzman and Zimmerman. Sure the trade for Milledge looks good but does it help the team much? No a pitcher would have helped much more.
by Edgar for Pres on Feb 3, 2009 6:49 PM PST up reply actions
width=200You did put in 'width=200'
I fucking hate you Mariners
He's going to look damn sexy in a Nationals uniform.
And let me tell you, if he isn’t in one by the end of the year — unless it’s because he snapped his arm in half or something — dear god I’m going to turn into a mad bomber or something.
Patriotism, Pepper, Professionalism
I said above that Bowden's real weakness is/was an inability to put together a decent rotation...
…but John Lannan is a genuinely promising pitcher, and Tim Redding and even Odalis Perez put together serviceable enough back-of-rotation turns last year. It’s their bullpen that fell apart in 2008, not their starting (in 2007 the situation was reversed). That, coupled with a warzone’s worth of injuries last year, and general offensive futility/underperformace, was the source of their 30th-place finish. I agree though that there was nothing remotely close to a 1/2 or even a serious 3 on the roster, though.
But just because Bowden does a shitty job of roster construction does not make him the worst GM in the world. Don’t forget he’s working with an ownership that seems to be turning out to be every bit as much the same kinds of skinflints as Pohlad or McClatchy. In that situation he’s forced to dumpster-dive and work through the draft. Remember when Baseball America rated the Nationals’ 2007 draft as the best in all of baseball? Well one of the reasons that things look grim right now is that most of those guys (with the exception of Jordan Zimmermann) took a step backward in their development this season. But you can’t blame Bowden for drafting stupid that time. The Crow debacle is another situation entirely…I still have no fucking idea what was going on with that.
Patriotism, Pepper, Professionalism
Hmmm
the Orioles aren’t the worst run theam in baseball.
Small and manageable sig
by .Taylor on Feb 3, 2009 11:38 AM PST reply actions
I think he likes the negative attention
up to the point where Robert makes him cry.
by JI on Feb 3, 2009 11:55 AM PST up reply actions
It's a surprisingly interesting point?
Determined, Jonesing Commentor | Proud proprietor of Wyomingroutes.org & Washingtonhighways.org
It's still difficult to believe
Determined, Jonesing Commentor | Proud proprietor of Wyomingroutes.org & Washingtonhighways.org
Actually I think he's pointing out the typo, which is way more annoying.
by Aaron Campeau on Feb 3, 2009 2:06 PM PST up reply actions
That would be annoying, but I don't think that's what he's doing
Determined, Jonesing Commentor | Proud proprietor of Wyomingroutes.org & Washingtonhighways.org
Nope. Not what I'm doing.
Small and manageable sig
by .Taylor on Feb 3, 2009 3:00 PM PST up reply actions
They got Rich Hill from the Cubs, too.
The Cubbie master plan to get Jake Peavy gets stranger and stranger, I guess.
by eponymous_coward on Feb 3, 2009 2:16 PM PST reply actions
I wanted him..... Aw....
Small and manageable sig
by .Taylor on Feb 3, 2009 3:00 PM PST up reply actions
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