I/O: Adam P. Boyd, at Prospect Insider, does a great job collating 16 of Jack Zduriencik's trades. Here is Part I and here is Part II. :golfclap: Thanks Adam!
CRUNCH: An overall evaluation of Zduriencik's performance would have billions of moving parts -- and even an overall evaluation of his trades would require a weighting factor -- VORP in, VORP out, to say nothing of the atmosphere, Stars & Scrubs ramifications, etc etc.
Adam does have the VORP for each player since the trade occurs, which helps.
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There's nothing more fun than sitting in the upper deck, cracking peanuts and scanning through the trades as if they were singles, popups and home runs. :- )
SSI will take its Jamesian-wannabe sense of history and kibitz these trades from the 30,000-foot view.
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=== Dec. 2008 - Gutierrez et al for Putz et al ===
Two years on, Adam aptly characterizes the deal this way:
This trade was, obviously, a slam dunk. Zduriencik gave up little, and you can argue he gave away zilch nothing of value, and was able to get a stable of players that have contributed significantly at the big-league level.
From a historical standpoint, Gutierrez-for-Putz? ... this is exactly the kind of trade that the giants of the game have always used to turn 100-loss teams into 100-win teams.
As James has often remarked, most of the huge ripoffs in MLB trading history involved an aging star for a young talent. Brock-for-Broglio beng the archetype.
I was never as much of a Franklin Gutierrez fan as the guys who used to give Jack standing O's at blog get-togethers.
Last year they were calling him a +60 runs player. This year that's down to +25... Early on, Jack got credit for scoring a borderline HOF'er. SSI gave him credit for scoring a solid-average player with a cheap contract.
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But! Objectively speaking, Gutierrez is precisely the kind of young player you build around. He's a cheap, club-controls player; he fills a hard-to-fill Yahtzee slot; he's an org loyalist.
I hope that Safeco doesn't rob Guti of his love for the game. His strikeouts and EYE got worse at age 26, when they should have gotten a lot better. That's pressing and that's the ballpark. Like Adrian Beltre.
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SSI keeps preaching the OF system that Earl Weaver used with the Orioles: he used 5-to-make-3, even when one of them was a player like Frank Robinson.
OF is a great place to mix-and-match your batter-pitcher duels. OF is inherently flexible.
As Franklin Gutierrez' bat slides down the drain at Safeco, I hope the M's will consider the heresy of using Guti about 120 games per year in center field. In that context, he could have a Paul Blair impact on the M's pennant fights.
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