Dave With Brock And Salk
Dave · January 21, 2010 at 1:21 pm · Filed Under Mariners
I’ll be on with the guys on ESPN 710 at 2:00-ish.
Here’s the link to the audio – apparently they made fun of how fast I talk after I get off the air. I can’t help it. Salk gets five hours a day to give Washburn a tongue bath, and I only get 10 minutes to make the opposite case.
Okay, I just listened to the audio of their speed test between me and Pete Carroll… and it’s really funny.
The goal of Lopez isn’t trading him because we don’t like him. The purpose would be that he’d have more value to other teams than he does to us, given that this is pretty much the worst situation he could be in. By trading him we could get something that has more value to us than he does, while the other team would get a player who has more value to them than he does to us. This would then allow us to sign Hudson, who has similar value to Lopez, leading to no downgrade at 2B, and an upgrade elsewhere.
Yeah, in his Liriano post. More in the comments than in the post itself since Lopez was just suggested as a way to get Liriano, which as everett just noted, is the point. You’re not trading him to get rid of him, you’re trading him to get something of value. You then go get Hudson not because he’s better but because you need a 2B and Hudson isn’t any worse. The net effect is that the team gets better, even though you didn’t upgrade at 2B, and you’re not blocking Ackley if he develops even faster than expected.
So you’re not chasing Hudson because he’s somehow “better” and you don’t trade Lopez just to get him off team. If you’re not using Lopez to get something of value, you sit tight with your nice cheap 2B with some power, poor range, and lousy OBP. As Dave said in another post
I’m not sure about that last point, though: if the team picks up their 2011 option on him, he will be owed $4.5M and will no longer look “cheap” to other teams (unless 2010’s “big year” was really big*). If Ackley looks ready, rather than a “sign and trade” scenario they may just decline the option.
*Which would be awesome. Hey Jose: if there’s ever a year to go “big”….
Well, if it ends up being Liriano for Lopez (as suggested in the link above), sign Hudson, I think there’s also case of keep Lopez, sign Sheets (as an example of a FA out there). You don’t HAVE to trade Lopez (and I suspect the market for 2B isn’t all that awesome, given that Hudson’s still on the market).
Then again, presumably Zduriencik and the M’s scouts has a better idea of whose arm is more suited for throwing 180 midlevel starter innings (which is basically what we are wanting at this point) than any of us do.
As for Washburn, if Sheets and Liriano don’t pan out… well, on a one year deal that isn’t too extravagant, sure (Washburn’s a ~1.5 WAR pitcher). Problem is that he turned down one year, $5 million from the Twins. I don’t think you’d want to pay much more than that.
Before they can trade Lopez for real value, they need to figure a way to slyly suggest that the other team should look at home/road splits.
Colorado might be an interesting fit. They have solid depth in the outfield and are in the market for Hudson. Only problem is that all the outfielders that might be availabe in trade are lefthanded.
I could see Lopez exploding at Coors Field though.
How about posting them on billboards in a few select Major League citites?
*cities.
Tried to edit but was told I didn’t have permission to edit my comment.
I remember way back at the beginning of the offseason, Dave suggested a Lopez/Lowe/Vargas trade for John Danks. I realize that he wasn’t necessarily saying that the M’s SHOULD use those exact players for that exact player, but that that was an idea of the kind of move he expected.
What happened to this idea? Did I miss something about Danks being less than available? Did the fact that the Teahan acquisition implies that Beckham is being moved to 2nd make Lopez undesirable to the Sox?
It seems like Danks would be a pretty decent option, though I’m not sure whether the Sox would be willing to give him up. He would cost more than Liriano ($3.45MM vs. $1.6MM), and would possibly have a lower potential upside. But this could be balanced out by his higher potential downside.
I dunno, just an idea that was revived in my mind last night whilst listening to Dave set mouth-speed records.
From one of Dave’s comments,
“I’d be surprised if more than one or two of these moves actually happened. It’s not really a prediction of what the team is going to do.“
I heard the call-in part but just listened to podcast of the speed test. Dave, you rock!
I really didn’t think Carroll was all that fast. Dave seemed fast, but not exceptional. Then I realized that y’all are on the West Coast, where people taaallllkkk sssllloooowwwweeeerrrrr.
So yeah, Dave. You gotta play to your audience; when it’s a slow-talking audience, you gotta slow down or they’ll miss stuff.
Or come to the NYC area, where there are plenty of folks on the air who talk as fast (or faster) than you do. The downside is that you’ll probably have to talk about the Yankees 🙂