Odds & Ends: DeRosa, Bruney, Cooper

"Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle sees Bobby Crosby as perhaps a more pressing trade situation for the A's than Matt Holliday."

huh? Crosby = salary dump. Holliday = get prospects back. Holliday is MUCH more important to trade and get an ROI.

Will people please stop with the "Pirates should spend less on their draft pick to compensate for Sano" crap? Either spend on both or don't sign Sano. The draft pick is MUCH more important than Sano IMO.

"Will people please stop with the "Pirates should spend less on their draft pick to compensate for Sano" crap? Either spend on both or don't sign Sano. The draft pick is MUCH more important than Sano IMO."

Melonis, this is EXACTLY what I was thinking.

If the Pirates really, really want Sano, then why not fork up big money to him while also giving money to the best prospect available with the fourth pick?

If the Pirates want to get better, they're going to need to acquire all of the best available amateur talent that they can.

If they end up overdrafting on someone like Wil Meyers or Bobby Borchering, then Pirate fans should be really unhappy.

They oughta draft someone from the Gibson/Meyer/Scheppers/Crow/Paxton group of college pitchers, pay him, and give the money to Sano anyways.

All it means is that they can't sign some mediocre platoon guy next offseason.

Yeah, that was always the problem..

I hate no-trade clauses, what a dumb thing to put into a deal.

Roster flexibility is huge and no-trade clauses destroy that.

And I used to like Lee a lot.

But his declining bat speed and Lou's insistence on batting him third or fourth in the order anyways has made him arguably Chicago's most frustrating player.

"Didn't Coop receive an extension earlier this season?"

Yep.

Another great management move by Houston, eh?

"Although I think Milton Bradley beats out Lee for Chicago's most frustrating player very, very soon though (I have nothing against him; I just think he hasn't carried himself well since he signed that massively overpaid deal with Chicago)"

Bradley's got a .200/.328/.390 line in spite of an absolutely brutal .208 BABIP, although the massive decline in his line drive rate coinciding with a massive increase in his groundball rate is seriously, seriously concerned.

If Bradley can get his BABIP back up around .300 though, then I wouldn't be too frustrated by him at all.

Actually, I'd consider their most frustrating player to be Aaron Miles, because I'm just absolutely frazzled as to how he managed to land a 2/4.9 deal from the Cubs. He's definitely one of the worst players in the game to be under contract for this year and next year. He's just so freaking bad. At everything. Ughhhhh. I miss DeRosa.

I, being a Cardinals fan, think that Bernie Miklasz is a moron. All he does is ***** an moan about what is wrong. However, on this front, he is probably right. The Cardinals won't make any big, big moves. Why? They don't need to. The just need someone like DeRosa (will cost too much) just for utility purposes and as a stopgap.

I must say though, calling the farm system a bunch of Faberge Eggs is sad. Can he honestly not realize that Wallace, Rasmus, Perez, and others have a bright future and will be much cheaper to control than someone like Holliday or Peavy or anyone of that status. Bernie, this is no longer the Walt Jocketty Era is St. Louis. Wake up and smell the darned roses. It's over! Get over it already!

"I must say though, calling the farm system a bunch of Faberge Eggs is sad. Can he honestly not realize that Wallace, Rasmus, Perez, and others have a bright future and will be much cheaper to control than someone like Holliday or Peavy or anyone of that status."

LOL. Faberge Eggs? I had to read that article now. Oh wow, the stupid burns.

I'm pretty sure if Mozeliak wanted to trade Wallace for Holliday (which would make Bernie jump for joy), that trade would be accepted with open arms. The A's loved that last shipment of "Faberge Eggs" they got from STL back in '04.

i heard correctly that there's (virtually) no chance the cards call up wallace this year, right?

i cringe when i think of what soriano will be in 5 years. the lee contract looks bad now, but at the time it was perfectly reasonable. '06 was lost due to the wrist injury, '07 wasn't a bad year, and now he's on the downside. there are middle of the order hitters on the team to handle his decline (or were before ramirez' injury). i applauded hendry for the risky/upside play with bradley and i still do. 2 months in i'm not willing to jump ship on him yet. very well could be a disaster, though.

Couldn't agree more, Scribble.

“and honestly I wouldn't mind seeing Micah Hoffpauir and Jake Fox getting major playing time at first base.”

No, no, no, no, no, no, no!!! I cringe every time I see someone says this. Hoffpauir is a 4A player, and will never be anything more then a 4A player. He got lucky a couple times to start the season, and might continue to get lucky seeing a couple pitches a week off the bench. But if we plug him into the lineup for any real amount of playing time, we will see him, well, do what he is doing now – tank! When pitchers are pressed to get him out, he is about as easy of an out as you can find.

“Let's not even talk about Soriano until it really starts to hurt”

You don’t think it hurts now? Remember, its 8 years, 136 million and he will be taking home 16 million this year. He is paid like Miguel Cabrera, yet cant even out produce cross-town counterpart Jermaine Dye; a player who signed back to back contracts totaling only 4 years, 32 million combined (with 2 options making it only 6/50 overall). Soriano makes more then that guaranteed amount in half the time, and the 6 years for Dye is 86 million less then the 8 for Soriano.

Remove such a horrible deal from our books, and we could bring in a player like Bobby Abreu this past off-season (who would most likely out produce Soriano) and still have 10 million or more to spend else ware (ie, never being forced to deal DeRosa, and still having money to sign an actual good relief arm)

I think Soriano hurts this team more then any other single player right now, and it will only continue to get worse for the length of the contract. His cost is too out of whack for the production he brings, and the huge amount hinders other moves we could be making. It’s the Todd Helton problem, without the Todd Helton production. And we might be a bigger market team, but we should have actual stars making that cash instead of throwing it away when we could have his production at a fraction of the cost. If Soriano wasn’t here, taking the chance on Bradley wouldn’t have even looked that bad, or people probably wouldn’t care about the Lee contract with his struggles/injuries as much. With Soriano being a sinkhole though, they become forefront problems

"He is paid like Miguel Cabrera, yet cant even out produce cross-town counterpart Jermaine Dye; a player who signed back to back contracts totaling only 4 years, 32 million combined"

Huh?

Soriano is a far, far better player than Dye.

In the past four years that Dye has been with Chicago, he's been worth a total of 6.8 wins. In that same span of time, Soriano has been worth 16.1 wins. It's really not that close.

Soriano is definitely overpaid and there's a decent chance that this deal is an absolute disaster by the time it's over.

But to say that it's a major issue at this point is simply unfair.

Soriano may be overpaid at $16M, but it's not by a crazy amount. He's an extremely productive hitter, even if he's a bit streaky, and his defense has actually been pretty solid, at least according to UZR.

Unfortunately, Soriano is pretty dependent on his physical tools to produce at such a high level, and as his bat and foot speed slow down, he'll definitely have a brutal decline to watch.

If you're that mad about the Soriano deal right now, then you're going to be plotting to assassinate him by 2013..

“Soriano is a far, far better player than Dye.”

Okay, let’s have a look

2009 Dye 119 OPS+, Soriano 106
2008 Dye 126 OPS+, Soriano 121
2007 Dye 105 OPS+, Soriano 123
2006 Dye 151 OPS+, Soriano 135
2005 Dye 118 OPS+, Soriano 109

So, Soriano is not out producing Dye at the plate at all; outside that fluke season he had in Washington that is. That leaves us with only defense, which we can not actually accurately factor for since one plays Right, one is in Left. Overall, WARP is skewed by Soriano’s insistence in leading off (giving him an extreme amount of PA to put up his lesser rates in) and the fact that LF is basically DH-2 for most clubs. Since neither is a fantastic fielder, but both get the job done, I want the consistently better hitter making more then half the cost then the one who makes his counting stats look better by insisting on hurting the club.

“But to say that it's a major issue at this point is simply unfair. Soriano may be overpaid at $16M, but it's not by a crazy amount.”

He is making around 5+ million more a year then he should be based on his actual production and finding similar players producing in that range. And that 16 million only goes up. It is a huge hindrance that we will be putting up with for a long time. But right now, it is costing us a ton because of the problems we have with the sale tying up money. We couldn’t keep DeRosa because of money reasons. We had to dump Marquis for nothing because of contract reasons. We couldn’t resign Wood and are stuck with Gregg (who is cost us too much money and prospect value) because of cost restrictions. And we had to go out and sign a middle of the order bat this off-season to a large contract because the one we are already paying refuses to hit there.

To say it is a major issue right now, is the only way I see it. If the Soriano deal never takes place, our roster would look completely different right now. We would almost certainly have everything we don’t right now – middle infield production and pitching depth.

And this all comes from someone who lives in Chicago and roots for both the Cubs and the Sox.

"If you would rather have Dye at his contract then Soriano at his, then you should recognize the problem Soriano is, and will continue to create."

I'm definitely willing to recognize the issues that Soriano creates.

I just consider them to be more in the long term than in the short term, as he deteriorates to the point where he's not just overpaid, but overpaid to the point that it's ludicrous.

I expected Soriano to be overpaid pretty much from the moment that he signed that deal.

I think what's really frustrating is that it appears that Hendry and the rest of the front office completely overvalued Soriano as a superstar cornerstone player who could replicate his 2006 performance, rather than as the solid star-quality player that he actually is.

Initially, I thought that you were arguing that Dye is a better player than Soriano overall, which I obviously disagree with.

But there's no doubt that this team would have substantially more roster flexibility and therefore a better roster if the Soriano deal didn't happen.

I also just think that it's curious that the Cubs seemed to completely forget how unimpressive Soriano was while playing in a major hitters park in Arlington.

Nah, Dye was just one of the guys that popped into my head that provides fairly similar production at a fraction of the cost of Soriano. His being just across the way made him an ideal comparison to make. He specifically doesn’t make any difference, it’s purely Soriano being paid like Miguel Cabrera and posting middle-tier numbers that is the problem. Without mega-star numbers, he doesn’t make up for the lack of flexibility he brings about elseware. His money, even today, could have been spent so much wiser. And over the next 5 years, that will become more and more of an issue.

That is why I consider him the biggest detriment to the team; currently and going forward. He is overpaid and will only get worse because the contract gets bigger. It is a sunk cost we are stuck with. This cost isn’t providing anything near the return you would expect, and at least similar return can be had at a fraction of the cost. The team being hindered so horribly during this specific off-season, to the point we had to make bad moves just to save money, is also directly tied to this poor contract more then any other. A contract like Lee’s might not be ideal, but he is at least semi close to actual market value and finding a replacement would take most of the money save if Derrek was never resigned. And that Lee originally signed for merely half the length (it was a 4 year extension), there was always the possibility of getting rid of the contract if needed. Not so with Soriano. The amount we would need to eat would erase any benefit we would receive from dealing him. Sunk cost. Zambrano’s contract is similar in a lot of ways, and not one I care for either. But at least I understood where that one was coming from. I don’t with Alfonso.

“I also just think that it's curious that the Cubs seemed to completely forget how unimpressive Soriano was while playing in a major hitters park in Arlington.”

Sadly, they seemed to have made a similar mistake a mere two years later. Granted, they didn’t get as foolish and offer the amount or years, but they signed Bradley off his contract year just the same. Again, a player seeing a huge spike right before receiving his first real free agency contract. Again, we anticipate returns we are almost certainly not going to receive. Their insistence on his being “the one” over better options, and signing him so quickly before gauging the market… Well, similar tendency, don’t ya think? That’s where the real frustration comes in for me, and one of the many reasons I despised the Bradley deal the moment I saw it. But at the end of the day, it too is little more then a result stemming from problems originally created by our cleanup hitter that can’t bat cleanup.