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[continued from previous]

Choo and Cabrera are the two big 10-Second Sound Byte Demagogue bumper sticker incriminations of Bavasi.  

But come on, gentlemen, let's be fair.  In July 2006, exactly nobody thought we had traded away two future All-Stars.  To go back and say that Bavasi should have seen that Choo and Cabrera were coming stars, simply isn't fair.

Dr. D would cheerfully agree that there are lessons learned from trading your #7 and #8 org prospects for a Rent-A-DH.  But teams trade prospects for hired guns.  Broussard and Perez were packing a combo SLG of well over .500.  

A fair CEO would want a lesson-learned paper.  He wouldn't call for your job.  He wouldn't do anything like calling for your job.

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2004-08 didn't work out.  

Jeremy Reed, Miguel Olivo, Erik Bedard, Adrian Beltre, a whole bunch of things just didn't work.  Felix ran an ERA of 4.50 one year.

DePodesta and Ricciardi ran into that, too.  Sometimes Dr. D dearly wishes that certain sabermetricians would get their own chances :- )

I know for a fact that if somebody handed me the Red Sox right now, I'd foul it up royally.  Stuff happens.  Only the magicians survive.

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=== Roster Moves vs Talent Import ===

To be sure, the 2004-08 era didn't work out.  My opinion is that it was mostly because of a lot of busted drafts.  In my opinion, the separation between Zduriencik and Bavasi is mostly in that amateur draft.

The last few years, Zdurienciks' team has added Hultzen, Paxton, Ackley, Seager, and Nick Franklin in the top rounds of the draft.  Bavasi's draft team handed him Josh Fields, Dennis Raben, Phillippe Aumount, Matt Mangini, Brandon Morrow, Jeff Clement, and Matt Tuisasopo.

Where would Bill Bavasi be right now, if he had Zduriencik's high-draft talent?  He would not be getting jeered at, guarantee you that.   

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Don't get me wrong.  The Lee trade was great, and then the trade for Smoak was great, even leaving out the Yankee finesse.  The Putz trade was great.  Yada yada.  But Jack Zduriencik is far above the standard, as baseball at large will tell you.

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As an F-500 consultant, I was verrrrrrry skeptical of the GM-By-Committee dynamic in 2004-08.  Not only Armstrong's chalk talks, but the long shadow of Pat Gillick on speed dial, the interoffice politics, yada yada.

Committees are incoherent.  They are not agile.  They are as ambitious as the most cowardly committee member.  Committees don't compete well with individual geniuses.  IBM's corporate board was not going to outperform Steve Jobs.  And the Bavasi Committee was not going to outperform Theo Epstein or Bill Stoneman.

The drafts get blame, and the committee mechanism gets blame.  To cast Bill Bavasi as unintelligent is simplistic, superficial, and unfair.  It's also incorrect.

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Be that as it may, my assertion is simply this.  The causes of the M's losing, and winning, are not as simple as listing 9 bad acquisitions and declaring the argument over, the other side stupid, let's unfollow him now.

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