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Ed Wade Hired As Astros GM

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Jayson Stark confirms it: Ed Wade is the new Astros GM.  Wade came in for his second interview today.

The Phillies promoted Wade to GM in December of 1997, and fired him in October of 2005 after the team failed to reach the playoffs during that span.

An attempt to compile some of Wade’s bigger moves (I’ve yet to form an opinion on his overall performance):

  • 12-23-97: Traded Mickey Morandini to Cubs for Doug Glanville
  • Failed to sign J.D. Drew; drafted Pat Burrell first overall in 1998
  • 11-19-98: Traded Ricky Bottalico and Garrett Stephenson to Cardinals for Ron Gant, Jeff Brantley, and Cliff Politte
  • 11-13-98: Traded Jerry Spradlin for Chad Ogea
  • 5-5-99: Traded Paul Spoljaric to Blue Jays for Robert Person
  • Drafted Brett Myers 12th overall in 1999
  • 11-10-99: Traded Steve Montgomery, Carlton Loewer, and Adam Eaton to Padres for Andy Ashby
  • 12-7-99: Signed Mike Jackson to be closer (spent entire year on DL)
  • 7-12-00: Traded Ashby to Braves for Jimmy Osting and Bruce Chen
  • Drafted Chase Utley 15th overall in 2000
  • 7-26-00: Traded Curt Schilling to Diamondbacks for Omar Daal, Nelson Figueroa, Travis Lee, and Vicente Padilla
  • 7-29-00: Traded Gant to Angels for Kent Bottenfield
  • Drafted Gavin Floyd 4th overall in 2001
  • Fired Terry Francona, hired Larry Bowa
  • 2000: Signed Ricky Bottalico, Rheal Cormier, and Jose Mesa
  • 1-29-01: Signed Paul Byrd
  • 6-5-01: Traded Byrd to Royals for Jose Santiago
  • Drafted Ryan Howard in 5th round in 2001
  • 7-27-01: Traded Chen for Dennis Cook and Turk Wendell
  • Signed Terry Adams
  • 7-29-02: Traded Scott Rolen for Bud Smith, Mike Timlin, and Placido Polanco
  • Drafted Cole Hamels 17th overall in 2002
  • 2-20:02: Signed Bobby Abreu to five-year, $64MM extension
  • 11-24-02: Signed David Bell to a four-year, $17MM contract
  • 12-3-02: Signed Jim Thome to a six-year, $85MM contract in December 2002
  • 12-20-02: Traded Johnny Estrada to Braves for Kevin Millwood
  • 2-3-03: Signed Pat Burrell to a six-year, $50MM contract in February 2003
  • 11-3-03: Traded Brandon Duckworth, Taylor Buchholz, and Ezequiel Astacio to Astros for Billy Wagner
  • 12-3-03: Traded Carlos Silva, Nick Punto, and a PTBNL to Twins for Eric Milton
  • 12-9-03: Signed Tim Worrell in December 2003
  • Drafted Greg Golson 21st overall in 2004
  • 8-9-04: Traded Elizardo Ramirez, Javon Moran and Joe Wilson for Cory Lidle
  • 12-3-04: Traded Felix Rodriguez to Yankees for Kenny Lofton
  • 12-8-04: Signed Jon Lieber to a three-year, $21MM contract in December of 2004
  • 12-13-04: Selected Shane Victorino from Dodgers in Rule V draft
  • 5-14-05: Traded Marlon Byrd to Nationals for Endy Chavez
  • 6-8-05: Traded Placido Polanco to Tigers for Ugueth Urbina and Ramon Martinez
  • 6-13-05: Signed Jimmy Rollins to a five-year, $40MM extension in June 2005

Torii Hunter To Texas Musings

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The Rangers are the early favorite to sign 32 year-old center fielder Torii Hunter for several reasons. 

First off, Hunter and his family live just 47 miles away from The Ballpark In Arlington.  Sometimes the whole hometown team thing is overrated when predicting where free agents will land, but Hunter has basically said that the Rangers have an advantage and it’s what his family wants.

Second, the Rangers have vacancy.  Brad Wilkerson will be gone and Kenny Lofton already is.  Sammy Sosa could assume a lesser role or none at all.  The Rangers do have some interesting internal candidates for center field in Marlon Byrd and David Murphy, but they might be better suited as fourth outfielders.

Third, the Rangers can probably afford Hunter even with his bare minimum 5/75 demand.  My back of the napkin math has the net change to payroll as about $13MM off the books.  There are small gains for Millwood, Padilla, Blalock, Catalanotto, and arbitration-eligible guys, but good money off the books for Teixeira, Gagne, Wilkerson, Lofton, and Sosa.  The Rangers have held at a $68MM Opening Day payroll for the last two seasons but Tom Hicks has had it up past $100MM before. 

So with Hunter the Rangers could have a $70MM payroll (or less if they backload his contract).  But it gets better: if Alex Rodriguez opts out of his contract, the Rangers gain $8.1MM in ’08, $7.1MM in ’09, and $6.1MM in ’10.  It’s certainly easier to envision Hunter in a Rangers uniform if A-Rod opts out.

Vote For MLBTR For Best Sports Blog!

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MLB Trade Rumors is in the running for Best Sports Blog at the Blogger’s Choice Awards.  Thanks to those who have voted.  If you haven’t, please consider it.  It takes about one minute, but it is slightly confusing.  You’ll have to be careful not to accidentally vote for the blog that is currently in first place (that one is titled Mlb-rumors and is not mine. Mine is MLBTradeRumors.com).  Here’s how to vote:

          1.  Sign up for an account with a valid email address here.

          2. Wait for a "Welcome To Blogger Choice Awards" email from do-not-reply@bloggerschoiceawards.com.  Click the link in the email to confirm your account.  (If you don’t get the email within a few minutes it might have landed in your spam folder.)  After you confirm your account go directly to Step 3.

          3.  Go here and click the small yellow "vote" button in the middle of the page (near the faceless man’s head).  You’re done!

Rangers To Shop Vicente Padilla?

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Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News asks whether Vicente Padilla’s start today against the Twins will be his last as a Ranger.  He highlights Padilla’s inability to go deep into games as well as his questionable behavior off the field.  He also notes that Padilla’s beaning and subsequent brawl with Nick Swisher and the A’s didn’t sit well with teammates:

Jarrod Saltalamacchia and Hank Blalock missed the Rangers’ next game with soreness incurred from being at the bottom of the pile trying to break up the fight, a fight which Padilla crawled away from after the benches cleared.

Grant suggests the Rangers try to swap Padilla and his remaining two years, $24.75MM for a bad contract like Jose Contreras or Carl Pavano or even just cut him and pay the money.

To all this I say: the Rangers knew what they were getting into.  Here’s what we knew about Padilla before the Rangers signed him in December of last year: headhunter, injury and conditioning problems, alcohol issues, doesn’t speak to the media.  If any of those things bothered the Rangers they shouldn’t have locked him up for 3/33.  These things didn’t just surface for the first time this year.  Note that I am not dogging him for not speaking to the media – he may just be self-conscious having begun English lessons in 2000.

I thought Padilla was a relative bargain at three years guaranteed instead of four.  Just one year into the deal, he’s being viewed as a burden by Texas.  One interesting note: Padilla came up as a closer; maybe some team would like to try him in that role if the Rangers eat some salary.  It could keep him healthy.

Brewers Hope To Retain Francisco Cordero

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This may just be feel-good lip service, but both Francisco Cordero and Doug Melvin are talking about keeping the closer in Milwaukee. 

There are a decent number of free agents with closing experience.  But if you take Mariano Rivera and Jason Isringhausen off the board, Cordero’s the best available.  As pitchers often do, Cordero’s improved his control and strikeout rate coming over to the NL.

In a market where setup men are priced at three years and $5-6MM annually, Cordero figures to cost $10MM over four years at the least.  It’d probably make sense for Cordero to wait and see what Rivera and Isringhausen get in terms of average annual value.  Cordero’s agent Bean Stringfellow got Billy Wagner his four-year, $43MM contract in November of ’05.

Alexei Ramirez To Join ’08 Free Agent Class?

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I won’t lie -I hadn’t heard of Alexei Ramirez until today.  He’s a 26 year-old 2007 Cuban League home run king described as "primarily a shortstop and center fielder" by ESPN.

ESPN’s Willie Weinbaum also says that Ramirez will establish residency in the Dominican Republic and then try to become an MLB free agent.  He shares an agent with Jose Contreras; there’s a news conference Thursday.

If Ramirez is truly capable, his agent should position him as a shortstop.  Sight unseen the guy’s still a contender for the best one available.  The competition among free agents would be David Eckstein, Cesar Izturis, Juan Uribe, and Omar Vizquel.

Not so fast though.  We’ve seen some position players come over from Cuba in the past, namely Yuniesky Betancourt and Kendry Morales.  Betancourt has been OK with the stick, Morales a disappointment.  When trying to translate back in ’05, Baseball Prospectus’s Clay Davenport equated Cuban baseball with short-season A ball over here. 

We’ll have to wait and see how Ramirez fares in the bigs; his agent thinks he’s MLB-ready.  Click here to read a little bit more on Ramirez from Baseball America, including a minor age discrepancy.

Boras Offers Opinion On Carlos Pena

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I have to admit it: sometimes I like Scott Boras.  I always love a good villain in a movie.  My personal favorite is Kurtwood Smith (the dad from That 70’s Show) in Robocop.

But sometimes even I get annoyed with Boras’s hyperbole.  He seemed to stretch the truth a bit on Kyle Lohse.  He implied the Cardinals would fail to win the division this year because they didn’t sign Jeff Weaver.  And now he’s making his pitch for Devil Rays first baseman Carlos Pena (hat tip DRays Bay). 

The difference is that while Lohse and Weaver are mediocre at best, Pena truly did have an elite season.  Boras called him "the greatest player to ever put on a Devil Ray uniform."  That’s a bold statement given that the D-Rays have employed a near Hall-Of-Famer (Fred McGriff) and an actual Hall-Of-Famer (Wade Boggs).

I’d like to take a quick aside and determine if Pena’s 2007 is even the best-ever single season by a Devil Ray.  So far he’s got 565 plate appearances with a robust .279/.401/.608 line.  His total offensive and defensive contribution this year has been worth 8.2 wins according to Baseball Prospectus.  If you want to get all technical about it, Julio Lugo’s 2005 was worth 8.4 wins.  Pena still has ten games to close the gap, but it’ll be close either way.  Just saying is all.  Boras also said Pena’s 2007 was one of the five best performances in the Majors this year, which is not even remotely true.

Back to the matter at hand.  Boras says the DRays basically got a $15MM season for the cost of $1.2MM and also takes some digs at the franchise.  But it’s disingenuous to imply that a fourth-year player should be earning free agent prices.  That ain’t the way it works. Albert Pujols earned $7MM in his fourth year, which seems like some kind of record.  Jason Bay is earning $3.25MM in his fourth year.  Matt Holliday is at $4.4MM.  I could make a laundry list of young players who are huge bargains because of baseball’s pay scale.  Hanley Ramirez is making $402,000 this year.

Pena reaches free agency after the 2009 season, and Marc Topkin says the Rays have already begun discussions on a three or four-year deal.  If the Rays are to buy out a year or two of free agency, those might cost $12-15MM each.  More likely, the team just goes to arbitration with him twice and trades him in a summer of ’09 blockbuster (assuming he remains a 40 HR threat). 

Will Mariners Finally Move Sexson?

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Call it educated speculation, but U.S.S. Mariner is wondering whether the Ms will try to trade Richie Sexson this winter.  Derek Zumsteg suggests that recent vibes put out by the team’s broadcast crew may portend a future trade of Sexson or even Jose Lopez.

Even more interesting to me is the note that the Mariners "could have let Detroit pick [Sexson] up on waivers."  We learned back in August that Sexson was claimed off waivers but withdrawn.  It puzzled us at the time, because most GMs would be dying to unload Sexson’s $14MM for 2008.  Anyway this is the first indication I’ve seen of which team actually won the claim.  The Tigers were apparently willing to take the risk.

Cards Need Starters For ’08

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Larry Borowsky of Viva El Birdos writes today that the Cardinals again will need to revamp their starting rotation this winter.  He says Adam Wainwright and Braden Looper are the "sure things" for ’08.

We all know how weak the free agent market is.  Borowsky points out that the trade market looks much better, with a host of good pitchers set to reach free agency after the ’08 season.  And don’t forget possibly available young under-contract guys like Joe Blanton and Noah Lowry.

Borowsky prefers A.J. Burnett but finds a Jon Garland rental more reasonable.  However the Cards’ cupboard of prospects is a bit bare and a trade would probably center around Anthony Reyes.   

Andruw Wants To Stay…Sort Of

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I’d take it with a grain of salt, but Braves center fielder Andruw Jones had this to say yesterday regarding his future:

"If they want me here, I’ll be here.  It just depends on what the Braves want to do.  We’ll have to see what happens. Hopefully, they’ll come up with something. Maybe it will happen, maybe it won’t."

I don’t know about you, but that’s not entirely convincing.  I do believe that Jones will wait to see what Atlanta offers before testing the free agent waters.  Jones made $13.5MM this year and was awful.  Both parties might be amenable to a one-year, $14-15MM deal.  Scott Boras typically encourages his clients to declare free agency, though, and if Andruw does that he’ll probably find a better offer elsewhere.      

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