I’m slacking and forgot to start a new month. There’s plenty of trade deadline talk in last month’s thread, but feel free to continue here.
We’re in the last third of the season, and there are still plenty of contenders!
I am happy to see the Yankee’s trying to start over with prospects. If they can just dump A-Rod and Texeiria I’ll be thrilled.
Wow, Dodger drama with Puig missing the team plane after being told he was going to be traded or sent to the minors.
Yasiel Puig has a tantrum, is not allowed to go on class trip.
Well, road trip.
So much talent. So little maturity. Dodgers fans, any particular insight? I don’t follow him or the team very closely. Could the team have handled him better? Or is that just the way he is, no matter what?
The good answer there is long and complicated. The short answer is yes to both questions.
This didn’t have to be this way, but decisions were made years ago that are playing out this season. Molly Knight’s book on the sale of the Dodgers has some good insight. It’s a good book too. The Best Team Money Can Buy.
My wife asked me today how I’d feel about Puig being traded when the rumors were flying earlier today. My feeling is that Puig has loads of talent, and that it would be a bit sad to see them come to life in another uniform. But the reality is that whatever talent he has is basically guaranteed to go to waste with the Dodgers, so he may as well move on. Correctly or not, I think the Dodgers have tried everything reasonable they had at their disposal to make him the best player possible, and whatever they’ve got isn’t working. So it’s probably in the interests of both sides for them to go their separate ways.
Puig hasn’t been happy since the Dodgers traded a few of his buddies. He’s an extraordinary talent, but it is becoming quite clear that he will never blossom as a Dodger. Ditch his troublesome ass and give Toles and Van Slyke a shot at right.
The Royals’ Danny Duffy just broke the franchise single-game record for strikeouts with 16, giving up just one hit in 8 innings of work.
There is not enough mustard in the world to cover Yasiel Puig.
Raised eyebrows at the Phillies being unable to deal serviceable starter Jeremy Ellickson, with reports claiming other GMs said the Phillies asking price was too high; which reports say was a top 5 prospect in return.
Stories like this make me wonder if the trade deadline needs to be pushed back, Im guessing many teams think Aug 1 they still have a crack at that fifth wild card spot. I have a feeling theres a better than 50/50 chance Ellickson will get traded via waivers. At 29, he is of no use to the Phils but surely, a contending team could still use that arm.
Something I find humorous:
This weekend, one of the Dodgers pitching prospects (I think in A ball), was trying to punk fans by hugging teammates (some fans see a player hugging teammates as a sign that he’s saying bye, as he’s been traded) on the field.
Announcers were quick to point out that he hadn’t been traded. That he was playing a joke.
Until Monday, when he was included in the deal with Oakland.
I’m at work right now, so I don’t have the cite in front of me. I’ll post it when I get home, unless someone beats me to it.
Grant Holmes. Really good prospect. Learned not to joke about being traded. 
And this is Puig’s biggest problem. Everyone is primed to expect the worst, and that really isn’t all his fault.
Thanks for that. You get credited with the assist.
The Blue Jays traded Drew Hutchison to get Francisco Liriano. How this improves them I cannot explain.
Liriano has absolutely blown up this year and he’s not going to be better in the AL. Why they didn’t just promote Drew Hutchison I don’t understand.
Puig reminds me a little of Manny Ramirez. Loads of talent but lacking maturity. Manny being Manny got to a point where it was comical in Boston, but Terry Francona understood that he had to let Manny march to his own beat to get the best out of him. Puig’s situation is not exactly the same, but I do think the Dodgers could have handled him better.
The gamble is half the fun of the trade deadline. Plus, changing laundry any closer to September just doesn’t feel right.
They used to say this about Reggie. The difference is, Reggie actually got the job done. He hit and hit and hit, and then the playoffs came around and he hit some more.
Same with Manny Ramirez. Sure, Manny could be Manny… but Manny hit, every year, regular as clockwork. Terry Francona didn’t have anything to do with it. Ramirez hit like a crazy bastard in Cleveland, under two or three different managers. Then he went to Boston and he hit some more,
never having an off year, under still more managers. Then they sent him to LA and he hit like crazy there. Whatever his personality, he got the job done.
Yasiel Puig is batting .260 with seven home runs. He is not getting the job done. You can forgive a guy a lot of he’s winning ballgames for you. Puig is not. Even if he’s the nicest guy in the room, a corner outfielder hitting like that just isn’t a very valuable commodity.
I assume it was for the other guys in the trade The Blue Jays basically bought prospects, which usually a pretty good deal if you can afford it.
Wonder how the whole Puig thing got so badly reported!
I get the Ramirez comparison, but of course he was already an established star by the time Boston got him via free agency. The comparison I thought of at first for Puig was a younger player: Darryl Strawberry.
Of course Strawberry had his personal issues that helped prevent him from becoming the slam-dunk HOFer many people anticipated, but the Mets didn’t do a good job with him from the beginning…they basically anointed him as the franchise’s savior, the Star for the Next Twenty Years, which not only put a lot of pressure on him but fed into an already overly large ego. (They sent him to the minors to begin the '83 season; that was fine, Strawberry said, as long as he was up in the majors early enough to win the Rookie of the Year award.)
The team’s difficulties setting boundaries for him and inability or unwillingness to tone down some of his natural arrogance didn’t help. I guess I was wondering if the Dodgers had done similar stuff with Puig.