The newest Yankee? (Link to NY Daily News article.)
It’ll be a pretty huge surprise if Halladay is traded to the Yankees. I just don’t know that they have the horses to get him - or, more properly, that they’d be willing to part with the horses they’d need to get him. I don’t think Halladay goes to New York for anything less than Joba Chamberlain and Phil Hughes. If the Yankees offer anything less, the Red Sox have the capacity to blow any offer out of the ballpark. The young pitching the Sox can offer - and also Lars Anderson, if they decide to dangle him - would overwhelm any potential Yankee offer that doesn’t include both of the pitchers listed above.
Why would Toronto send Halladay to New York for Hughes, Austin Jackson, and BlahBlahBlah when he could send him to Boston for (say) Buchholtz and Daniel Bard and BlahBlahBlah? Ricciardi’s not a great GM, but he’s not brain-damaged. I don’t think Boston would offer a big bounty to keep Halladay away from, say, the Cubs, but they would to keep him from the Yankees.
And I don’t think the Yankees will trade away Chamberlain or Hughes. Bottom line, I think Halladay goes to the National League or, more likely, stays put in Toronto.
Yeah, I agree, I was just trying to give RickJay a little heartburn…
It could join the Pirates and Natinals in thread hell
Chamberlain and Hughes wouldn’t be nearly enough. That’s not even in the ballpark.
Remember that the opportunity cost of dealing Halladay is two first round picks and, of course, a year and a half of Roy Halladay (or a year of Halladay and the option of trading him next year.) Chamberlain and Hughes aren’t worth that; you’d need, at an absolute minimum, THREE Grade A, major-league-ready prospects or young players, and at least one has to be a position player who fills a specific Blue Jay need, such as first base, catcher or shortstop.
It’s also worth noting that as desirable as young pitchers are, the Blue Jays probably have more good young pitchers than any team in baseball. If you’re looking forward to 2010, the starting rotiation’s already filled; Marcum, McGowan, Litsch, Romero, Rzepczynski or maybe Cecil, plus you’ve got Tallet, Mills, Purcey, and Ray. You can only have so many guys starting in Vegas, so unless the Jays combine the Halladay trade with dealing off pitching it’s hard to figure out how you’re gonna find work for all these guys. The team’s weakness is OFFENSE; even with Halladay gone there is a lot of pitching talent. They need bats.
The team is not really enthused about the idea AND teams will be in an absolute frenzy over the possibility of getting the best pitcher in baseball, so the price is going to be sky-high. I don’t like Ricciardi’s judgment, but he’s going to demand a king’s ransom. It’ll make the Bartolo Colon trade look puny by comparison.
Of course, the other rumour is that the Jays might swing a “reverse king’s ransom deal” whereby if you want Roy Halladay, you have to take Vernon Wells.
Agreed, but mainly because Ricciardi is not going to be able to withstand the PR onslaught if the prospects he gets in return don’t pan out, but Halladay comes into town and smokes the Jays 3 times a year. He has to be on the edge already.
Much as I’d like Boston to get Doc, I don’t realistically see him being traded within the division either.
BTW, I just found out yesterday that Vernon Wells is getting **$125 million **over the next 5 years. That’s way more than even Manny. Not only does that prove Ricciardi is an idiot, it makes Wells untradeable too.
Your numbers are off - much of his contract is paid out in signing bonus. The actual figure from 2010-2014 is $94.5 million (his salary in 2009 is, for some reason, just $1.5 million.) It wasn’t actually as valuable a contract as Manny’s.
But the principle is the same. That’s why people are floating the idea of forcing a Halladay suitor to take Wells. His contract’s a disaster and it was offered in a moment of panic. Another idiotic Ricciardi decision.
I was trying to think the other day of a move Ricciardi’s made that’s been really GOOD. I had a lot of trouble coming up with any. In fairness they’ve gotten some good relief pitchers for next to nothing, but that’s all I can come up with.
Added Later: Ricciardi got Ted Lilly for Bobby Kielty. That’s a very good trade. So one. Unfortunately, it’s offset by the fact that they gave the Twins Shannon Stewart to get Kielty.
Well he hasn’t traded for anyone that doesn’t like baseball. You have to count that.
I was umpiring a Little League game for 16-year-olds (LL calls it their “Senior Division”) last week, and the batter fouled a ball off. I was watching the ball, and didn’t notice that he had caught a spike in his follow through and dislocated his knee…I was wondering why he was lying in the dirt at my feet, writhing in pain. I’d never seen a dislocation before, but I was able to make the diagnosis pretty quick.
Oh, and since I forgot to say it up until now…
CONGRATS PRINCE!!! Way to win the HR derby and give that much good publicity for the youth movement known as the Brewers!
(506ft!!!)
I’d give him Rolen for Glaus, and John McDonald for John McDonald as well.
4176 AB’s, 301 HR’s, 865 BB, 1,355 SO’s, .248 BA…uh, yeah. I don’t hate the guy. I watched him play a lot whil he was here in Cincinnati. He hits an impressive deep ball, and yeah, his OBP is .380 (because of all the walks).
But he doesn’t hit for average and far, far too many times I saw him get homers when it really didn’t matter to the outcome in the game, or strike out (like he does every fourth at bat) in a situation with runners on.
I just happen to believe that he isn’t a very clutch hitter and is a defensive liability in the outfield.
YMMV.
You say that like it’s some sort of insult.
Hitting “an impressive deep ball” is the single most valuable thing a player can do when he stands at the plate, and getting on base, even if it’s by a walk, is also pretty goddamn important. The key aim is not to make an out, and almost 4 out of every 10 times he comes to the plate, Dunn doesn’t make an out.
So it was Dunn’s fault that the shitty teams he played on couldn’t keep stay close enough for his home runs to tie the game? Jesus, what would you have preferred? That he lay down his bat and take three called strikes in situations where a homer wouldn’t affect the result?
The fact is that quite a lot of home runs are hit when it doesn’t really matter to the outcome of the game. If your team’s up or down by a bunch of runs in the late innings, then your solo home run probably won’t change the outcome, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not a good indication of your ability to hit a baseball.
I’m not saying that clutch hitting doesn’t exist, only that it’s nowhere near as important as you seem to be implying. Also, i looked up some Baseball Prospectus articles on clutch hitting, and in the stories i found where they list the best and worst clutch hitters for some previous years, Adam Dunn doesn’t appear on either the best or the worst lists. This suggests to me that, when it comes to clutch situations, Dunn is probably not much better or worse than his normal stats would indicate. And that is considerably better than the average major league hitter.
You’re definitely right that he’s a pretty crappy fielder, but if i could find somewhere to hide him on the field, or as DH, i’d definitely take a guy who i know will give me 40 homers and 100 walks every damn season.
Who cares? Batting average is a ridiculously contrived statistic that doesn’t mean squat.
So what sort of situation (generally speaking) would you associate with “it really didn’t matter”?
Over his career, Dunn strikes out .264 times every plate appearance.
When there are men on base, Dunn strikes out .259 times every PA.
When there are runners in scoring position, he strikes out .249 times every PA.
YMMV? There’s no “your” in this - his numbers are the same regardless of who’s looking. It should be pretty simple - come up with your minimum requirement for a situation to be considered “clutch”. Because every situational category that b-r.com has come up with, he’s pretty damn good.
Dunn is unquestionably a bad outfielder, but his lack of clutchiness is largely just reputation. His career clutch rating is -1.95 games, which is below average but within the bounds of random chance (and it’s almost wholly contained in two seasons.)
Guys like Dunn can be very frustrating to watch because it’s all or nothing, but he does help his teams.
Jimmy Chitwood: I see what you did there.
But what would it be if he had some protection behind him in the lineup?
Does he maybe try too hard, knowing nobody else is going to get those runs in?
There’s no way to extrapolate what he’d do with his bat as part of a solid lineup. That’s the same problem as with any superior athlete stuck on a bad team. Eventually it plays mind games, too. Yes, he’s a 1B or DH out of position, but that isn’t his fault.
Wow - RickJay and Elvis on the same side of an argument. It brings a tear to my eye. Is this some sort of All Star Game day thing?
Well, the jury’s still out on this one but it’s possible that drafting Romero wasn’t as stupid as people thought at the time.
Someone want to help me out here? Does it have to do with the Dunn fiasco?
Other than one looking only at individual stats and one looking at context, that is. Numbers don’t always lead to the wrong answer.
Or do you mean we agree that JP Ricciardi is an idiot? That isn’t an argument. 