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 AWilliams7 |
Johan who? :) |
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Dawg in Training
Posts: 690 05/22/08 12:19 PM Dawg in Training |
Remember when we were all debating the trade for Santana? And some of us thought it was a no-brainer. Get him at all costs. Well, look what we kept: Lester
(WoW), Ellsbury (WoW), Buchholz (WoW), Masterson (WoW), Moss (WoW), Lowrie (Wow). We kept them, they are all cheap, and someone paid what? $150 million for
Santana? They got ONE pitcher. We got help this year AND a great FUTURE. This is one non-trade that turned out well.
Ann |
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Santsman |
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RemDawg
Posts: 4202 05/22/08 4:48 PM LOUD Dawg |
While our kids have performed well, I would still make the trade today for Santana. The deals as reported were Lester, Lowrie and Masterson or Ellsbury, Lowrie
and Masterson. Buchholz and Moss were never part of deals. While Lester now has the no-no, many pitchers have no-nos and have never done much afterward. We
still don't know what Ellsbury, Lowrie, Lester and Masterson are going to be. We DO know what Santana is and that is the best LHP in the game. Ellsbury and
Crisp are about the same player right now, Buchholz is likely headed back to RI when he gets back from his hangnail, Masterson may end up being the best player
out of all the prospects talked about. Lester may well become a very good #3 or even solid #2, but who knows. Lowrie is in a tough spot right now because there
is no place for him with Lowell signed thru 2011, Pedroia here thru at least 2012, Youk here thru 2011 and Lugo here thru 2010. If the trade had been made, the
Sox would have Beckett, Santana, Daisuke and Buchholz for the next 4 years, that would have meant a pretty good bet for 4 more championships. Right now the Sox
have a #1, 2 #3's and 2 #5 pitchers in the rotation. With Santana, you have two #1's, two #3's and a #5, pretty hard to have a long losing streak
there.
With all that said, I am expecting that Ellsbury, Buchholz, Lester, Masterson, Lowrie and Moss will all be very good major league players whether here or not. This is looking more and more like the repeat year we all expect.
Sants
Thanks 5, 18, 45, 38, 34, 24, 33, 49 and 7 for 2004. Thanks 24, 34, 18, 33, 46, 59, 38, 19, 15, 25 and 7 for 2007. Thanks 8, 9, 27, 14, 19, 42, 39 and 21 for all the good years. Here's to back to back championships in 2008. |
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marcgoldman |
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RemDawg
Posts: 6886 05/22/08 5:54 PM RemDawg |
Sants makes some very good points. Certainly one is that Lowrie is possibly a player without a position on the RS MLB team. Most scouting reports conclude that
he is best suited to be a big league 2B. Last year's ROY plays there.
Now depending on how Lester and Masterson progress will determine if this goes down as a "great trade never made". From the RS perspective as Sants points out Buchholz and Ellsbury were never on the table. Their best and final was Lester, Masterson, Crisp and Lowrie. Masterson's two starts are not super informative. As Clay Buchholz has learned the book gets out there rather quickly on what guys tendencies are and they either adjust (he is in that process) or they coming crashing down to earth. Buchholz IMHO will be fine but they probably will send him down to Pawtucket to throw a steady diet of fastballs to improve his command and confidence in that pitch. Once that comes around he could be a devastating performer. But as is so often the case we all as fans probably assumed too much from his short tour in MLB in 2007. Chances are good that we are just starting to see Jon Lester at full strength and that he will be a pretty darn good pitcher.Not getting to ever see him pitch in Pawtucket I never really got Gammon's man crush but if he can consistently throw that mid 90's fastball with explosion in the zone, as a lefty he will be a real force. The recovery from his cancer treatments likely did take steam out of him and we may have never seen him at 100% in 2006. If he becomes what Gammons thinks he will, long term the Twins may regret having taken the Mets package. From a $$$ perspective it is likely a good long term "no trade". Santana's deal would have been very inflationary and would have put greater stress on the team's economics as guys like Youkilis and Papelbon followed by Ellsbury and Pedroia head in to arbitration years. But Sants point about the short term is likely true. For one thing Santana has been a notorious slow starter so his best is yet to have been seen with the Mets this season. And a rotation of Beckett, Santana, Dice K and whoever in the post season would have been formidable. The better way to frame this thought may be that the RS have enough depth in their young pitching corps that they can walk away from the failed deal for arguably the best left handed pitcher in baseball and still be in excellent shape. Now if the bullpen were performing better one could say that they were the undeniable class of baseball. As it is they are an excellent team... |
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marcgoldman |
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RemDawg
Posts: 6889 05/23/08 3:15 PM RemDawg |
An interesting post on ESPN by Buster Olney is probably timely to this thread:
After the item on Johan Santana's diminished velocity was posted here yesterday, some scouts from other teams chimed in, indicating through e-mails and phone calls that they were seeing the same thing. "The Mets were asking around about that in spring training, about what his true [velocity] baseline was," said one talent evaluator. "They were concerned." Said an AL scout who has seen Santana this month: "His stuff isn't even close to what it was [with the Twins]." How much has his diminished stuff affected him? We have less than two months of starts to consider from 2008, a very small sample, and keep in mind that except for last season -- when Santana suffered a significant statistical decline in the last six weeks -- he has often done his best work in the second half. With that said, here are the primary indicators:
As I wrote a lot about during the winter of Santana trade talks, rival talent evaluators saw a noticeable -- not dramatic, but noticeable -- decline in his stuff after his 17-strikeout performance against Texas on Aug. 19. He's made 17 starts since then, and here are his primary numbers:
(Since the beginning of the 2007 season, Santana has allowed 44 home runs -- most in the majors.) Look, Santana is still obviously among the better pitchers in the game, and his remarkable ability to change speeds means that he probably is going to age better than a lot of his peers. He is smart, dedicated and seriously competitive, so if there is something to figure out and there are adjustments that can be made, he'll get there. This question remains: Will he be worth to the Mets what they will pay him over the duration of the contract? We'll see.But it's probably not a good thing that rival scouts are seeing signs of diminishment less than two months into a seven-year deal. |
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